Inside the basement of Xianshi inn, Josephine Wong was standing in front of the altar, with Jianmen on a wheelchair by her side. The silver box which was brought back from the Grant Academy by the four students of theirs, Caroline, Jason, Thomas and Aimee, was sitting on the altar. There were no magical or electrical lights in there, but the light emitted from the walls and ceiling was just enough to make everything in the room comfortably visible.

Purple energy waves pulsated from Josephine Wong’s fingers, each time the waves erupted into the air, the waves collided in the position of her palms, forming into two identical arcane symbols entirely made of purple energy - they were a True Word, not an overly powerful one, but one with very specific powers when conjured.

Josephine Wong chanted a spell written entirely of ancient language as she controlled her power and directed it into the two purple True Words. Shortly after a certain strange sounding phrase from the spell, the pulsating energy waves stopped, and the True Words started gradually growing bigger in size floating towards each other in midair. While they were in the air, thin but bright purple bolts of lightning shot from their bodies, releasing small amounts of the condensed and unstable energy concentrated in them.

It was not long before the purple True Words got close enough and they started merging together like two drops of water. Before they completely became one, however, Jianmen raised his right hand with a piece of folded paper sigil tucked between his middle and index fingers. Jianmen also chanted a short spell using the same ancient language, and with a flick of his fingers, the folded paper sigil shot out at the center point into which two purple True Words were merging. 

Josephine Wong swung both of her hands and arms close in front of her, the two purple True Words merged into one just when the paper sigil came into contact with it. The paper sigil was ignited by a purple flame and was burnt up completely without even ashes behind in an instant, and a thin transparent energy membrane was coated on the purple True Word. The energy membrane stopped the unstable energy from the words from dissipating and escaping, as well as the True Word itself from growing in size. But this was definitely not going to last very long, just when Josephine Wong took a deep breath and prepared to perform the next action, cracks already started appearing all across the energy membrane.

“Sword!” Josephine Wong called out, and Jianmen had already tossed a small chained pendant in the air at her. Josephine Wong grabbed the pendant in midair, and after an explosion of bright white light from her closed hand with beams of light seeping through her fingers, a long sword whose blade was made of two pieces of thin transparent crystal placed in parallel with a small gap in between appeared in her hand. When she infused the sword with her power, a purple energy construct filled the gap and completed the sword. The sword made a sharp but pleasant sound as it cut through the air, and then made a high pitched “Ting” sound when its tip struck the purple True Word enclosed by the transparent energy membrane.

The True Word was shattered into hundreds of thousands of pieces from this one strike. The pieces remained in the air, and only when Josephine Wong swung the sword again did they float towards the altar and the silver box.

The altar lit up in a faint orange and golden light, some kind of suction force appeared with the silver box at the center, which pulled in almost all of the scattered energy pieces. Before long, the pieces of the shattered True Word had already coated the silver box entirely. 

“Boom!” a small explosion came from the silver box, and the pieces of True Word all disappeared without a trace at the same time. Josephine Wong and Jianmen stared at the silver box with their eyes wide open all the while intentionally not to blink or even take a breath that was too deep, as if for fear of missing something out.

After around half a minute, some kind of silver liquid started seeping through the surface of the silver box and dripping onto the altar. This change caused both Josephine Wong and Jianmen to exhale in relief.

“Glad it worked.” Jianmen chuckled: “How long did it take for it to react?”

“Forty three seconds.” Josephine Wong sat down on the floor: “Definitely longer than anything else I’ve tried the same spell on.”

“Who could have thought that the Grant Academy had had this thing with them for all this time without even attempting to take a look?” Jianmen took out his clay jar and took a big gulp from it.

“Or they’re just too hesitant to try anything.” Josephine Wong shook her head: “I mean, bypassing the secret spell and decrypting process by extracting the memory of the box itself, that’s weirdly inspired on one hand, and requires a profound knowledge about True Words on another. How much do you expect we have?”

“Powerful artifacts, especially those that have been placed in environments with ample steady and not chaotic energy flow, can often ‘remember’ a lot.” Jianmen stretched her arms, shoulders and neck: “But let’s not forget objects and artifacts store memory differently from us, so the reading of the memory could be a potential challenge for us as well.”

Right this moment, the silver liquid stopped dripping, and the altar let out a gentle chime, and some kind of silver energy fireworks started shooting out from the top of the altar. The fireworks exploded in the air, leaving puffs of silver and red smoke behind.

When both Josephine Wong and Jianmen looked closer, they saw that the silver smoke seemed to be serving a canvas, while the red smoke was serving as ink, and both of them depicted a three dimensional image.

Josephine Wong immediately took out a crystal ball, which under her command started recording the image made of silver and red smoke.

Two rows of text, written in plain English, and below this text, was a three dimensional map of a mountainside with a very distinctive looking rock protruding midway up.

“Blessed be the blood of meek, cherished be the tome of old. Vengeance shall be cold and sweet, beware, my child, of the Night Wolf’s teeth.”

Sorry to all my readers, only one chapter today because I've been sick this week. Take care!