"Is everything settled?"
"Yes, it's settled, thanks a lot this time."
"No need for formality between us, have some tea."
Yu Ziqing poured tea for No.4, watching him.
No matter how many times, seeing the White Water Egg eating and drinking without a mouth always felt astonishing.
The idea of the Liao family's strong figures hiding themselves initially didn't come from Yu Ziqing.
It was No.4 who came up with it.
The strong members of the Liao family are also very cautious; even if the curse has been lifted, they instead want to find an opportunity to fake their deaths.
This wasn't done to deliberately cooperate with Yu Ziqing.
In fact, the Liao family doesn't even know Yu Ziqing.
Arranging for people to retire to the Southern Sea and asking the Feng family for help naturally required Yu Ziqing's effort.
Without Yu Ziqing, the Liao family wouldn't have had the ability to orchestrate such a situation.
And this precisely aligned with Yu Ziqing's wishes, so he lent a hand.
After having tea and snacks and chatting briefly,
"I've met with that person enough times, and I've managed to find out something."
"I noted down everything he said each time, from wording to tone.
Then, using my current privileges, I found some records in the oldest archives.
The things recorded there, from wording to tone, indeed have some differences from this person now.
At that time, some records used habits that probably belong to the Ancient Times.
Whereas the person now is definitely more accustomed to things of this era.
The more I interacted, the more sure I became that he is used to some of Daqian's terminology.
There was even a time he used a word—I specifically checked it out—that only appeared in the last five thousand years, not before.
And this word hasn't been used in the last two thousand years; it's been replaced, and its meaning has changed.
Older records ceased to exist by the time of the Ancients.
The only certain thing is that even before records, that person had already existed."
No.4 handed the pure records to Yu Ziqing to read.
Yu Ziqing read them carefully, and it matched closely with No.4's assessment.
Habits in phrasing and speech are directly related to one's original background and enduring external environment.
Take, for instance, the word for food—some places use it to refer to all stomach-filling food, while others specifically mean rice.
Drinking and quaffing, even subtle wording habits reveal a lot.
The more you interact, many little details inevitably reveal things inadvertently.
Cultivators going with the times are indeed numerous, but they surely don't include someone like Wig White Water Egg.
Standing at the cliff's edge, perhaps he's lost track of time, feeling that only a short while instead spans a millennium.
The mortal world might have undergone dramatic changes in the meantime.
For someone like him, changing is exceedingly difficult.
Especially since he always stayed on the fringe, without an external environment, making it harder to truly comprehend and delve deep.
Yu Ziqing finished reading and fell into thought.
This aligned with his previous speculation that Wig White Water Egg definitely isn't the faceless Divine King of old.
And what No. 4 found continues to push beyond his predictions.
Yu Ziqing was somewhat taken aback; following this path of speculation,
it implies that the current Wig White Water Egg might not even be the same Wig White Water Egg from the early days of the White Water Egg organization.
The style of action seems slightly different.
Yu Ziqing felt this point was crucial, yet he couldn't fathom why.
For now, he set it aside and went to seek the identity of Wig White Water Egg.
Assume he is from within the last five thousand years; he may have only become the current Wig White Water Egg within this timeframe.
Adding in Tao Jiajie from before, Yu Ziqing speculated that this current Wig White Water Egg might be a previous powerful figure.
And most likely a strong figure of the human race.
Narrowing down the identity should bring this to a very small range.
Returning with the intelligence from Song and the list from Yang, cross-referencing would be next.
Strong figures originating from Daqian between two thousand and five thousand years ago who've since vanished.
It shouldn't be too hard to find.
This period is so short to a strong figure that he certainly couldn't have erased this information.
If stuck, he'd ask You Zhen, who's from the same era.
"Are all these intelligence pieces you mentioned freely relayed within his interests?"
"No, but I reckon, he won't mind; he only cares about what I bring back."
"True, even if this intelligence leaked, no one can do anything to him.
Just right, here's one more piece of information for you.
The person he seeks, at their strongest, was at Ninth Tier Peak, yet their true strength surpasses that.
My power derives from him.
He's my sole blood relative in this world.
Before I was twenty, I hadn't encountered anything of this world, nor knew about cultivation.
My first breakout was in the Wilderness, then I was still a mortal.
After that wilderness mutation, I began contacting cultivation.
Subsequent cultivation, he guided me on the right path, prevented dire mistakes.
He wields authority far exceeding that of ordinary Earth Deities, practices Hungry Ghost Dao and Body Refinement, even imparted to me a top-tier Sword Manual, being a peak sword cultivator.
He's never used his true name outside, seldom revealing his true appearance.
He's now waiting for the path to the Tenth Tier to open in several centuries, where he'll advance to the Tenth Tier, and will utterly defeat that person.