Of course, Wei Zhao, still deep inside the ancient tomb, had no idea that "he" himself had already pulled two robberies, two earth-shaking crimes. Nor did Qiu Lingshan know that anything had happened out there. Everyone was waiting for Old Black and Yu Xiaoke to finish studying the patterns on the Gate of Life and the Gate of Death...

Wei Zhao leafed carefully through the medical notes of Zhang Liju in his hands. At first nothing about them struck him as remarkable, but after a few pages he could not help quietly marveling. Zhang Liju's ways of thinking about medicine, his treatment plans, his prescriptions — time and again they made Wei Zhao's eyes light up. Zhang Liju was indeed a formidable man; had he still walked the earth, his medical skill might well have stood on par with the old man at home, and perhaps even surpassed him!

Yet interested as Wei Zhao was in what the notes recorded, at this moment he still kept his attention fixed on the search for news of the Fire Spirit Sacred Fruit.

Fortunately, Zhang Liju was not a man to split hairs over wording; his notes were all set down in plain vernacular. Doubtless he had kept them the way one keeps a diary, for his own reference, never imagining they would serve as documents for others to read — which spared Wei Zhao a great deal of trouble.

Otherwise, merely puzzling out the meaning of certain passages would have consumed a very long time.

To save time, Wei Zhao could only riffle through the pages quickly, hunting for anything that touched on the Fire Spirit Sacred Fruit.

At last, a little before the halfway point of the medical notes, Wei Zhao found word of the Fire Spirit Sacred Fruit.

Wei Zhao drew a deep breath and began to read closely. This section of the notes chiefly recounted how he had taken in a friend who had been stricken by a poison of yin-cold. After every cold-dispelling remedy had failed, Zhang Liju learned from an old record of strange tales a momentous piece of news: in the extreme cold at the far northern reaches of the world stood a snow mountain, and upon that mountain grew this Fire Spirit Tree. The fruit of the Fire Spirit Tree ripened once every thirty years and possessed a potent power to ward off cold and suppress cold poisons!

On a snow mountain in a place of such bitter cold, the trees that managed to survive there would naturally have a powerful cold-resisting capacity of their own; so it stood to reason that their fruit should carry such an effect as well!

Had it been an ordinary man, Zhang Liju might never have risked the journey to the far north in search of the Fire Spirit Sacred Fruit. But this friend happened to be very close to him, a man who was at once teacher and friend — the mentor who had first opened the door of pill refinement to Zhang Liju, the one who had led him into the craft.

And the reason that man had been invaded by cold poison was that during the refining of a pill he had suffered a backlash, which had reduced him to his present state. So Zhang Liju wasted little time; he gathered up his bundle and set out for the far north.

What followed in the notes was an account of the journey north. Wei Zhao did not read it with any great care. After all, times had changed. In the past, many towns were undeveloped, mere wilderness, and there were no trains, no cars, no planes; a man could travel only on foot or by horse, and the road was bitter hard. Now it was nothing like so difficult.

What puzzled Wei Zhao, though, was that in the notes Zhang Liju repeatedly used the phrase "it and I." At first Wei Zhao assumed Zhang Liju had written the character by mistake, that "it" meant the friend poisoned by yin-cold. But the passages that followed used the same character, "it" — clearly the "it" one uses for animals.

This left Wei Zhao rather perplexed. Just whom had Zhang Liju gone with? And this "it" looked to be an animal, yet one that seemed to possess rare intelligence — could it have helped Zhang Liju find the way to the Fire Spirit Tree?

And it was precisely with "its" help that Zhang Liju found the Fire Spirit Tree, plucked a Fire Spirit Sacred Fruit without mishap, and set out on the road home...

Nowhere in the whole diary did it say where on the snow mountain the Fire Spirit Tree stood; it said only that "it" had helped him find it. The location of the snow mountain, however, had been marked on a compass chart, which spared Wei Zhao a great deal of trouble.

With the rough location of the Fire Spirit Sacred Fruit in hand, Wei Zhao let out a breath of relief. So long as he knew where the snow mountain in the land of extreme cold lay, there was hope of finding the Fire Spirit Sacred Fruit; it was only a question of how long it took. But the "it" in the medical notes had roused his curiosity.

What on earth was this "it"? According to Old Man Wei, there was a divine artifact at Zhang Liju's side that could swiftly locate rare treasures and miraculous panaceas of heaven and earth. By the look of things, that "it" was this so-called divine artifact — but the artifact was plainly a living creature, not a lifeless thing!

Could it be something like General Weiwu? Wei Zhao's gaze suddenly fell upon General Weiwu. Certain animals had a singularly keen nose for the scent of medicinal herbs — this much Wei Zhao knew. But if it truly was an animal, then after all these years it must long since have crumbled into dust beside Zhang Liju...

Wei Zhao shook his head. It seemed the dream of finding such a divine artifact had crumbled as well. If he wanted the Fire Spirit Sacred Fruit, he would have to depend on himself alone!

No — wait! Wei Zhao suddenly gave a violent start, then shook his head again. Earlier, in the tomb passage, the monster he had seen must have been a grave-guarding spirit beast — did that not mean it had lived for more than a thousand years? If the "it" mentioned in Zhang Liju's medical notes was likewise a spirit beast, then the odds were good that it had not died either!

Judging from the record in the notes, it had been on excellent terms with Zhang Liju. So by Wei Zhao's reckoning, it very likely dwelled within the Gate of Death, together with Zhang Liju's coffin! At the thought of this possibility, Wei Zhao could not keep his eyes from drifting toward the two doors not far away, and he sank into silent brooding.

According to Zhang Liju's account, this spirit beast was not at all aggressive; it simply possessed an extraordinarily keen nose for rare treasures of heaven and earth. Even so, it was a formidable existence. With a greedy, insatiable nature like Old Yu's, if he ever learned of it he would surely make a grab for it — and then Wei Zhao might well have to come rob this tomb a second time himself.

But though Wei Zhao held Liu Bojia's materials in his hands and had the jade pendant as his own golden finger, he was no tomb robber by birth and suffered certain natural disadvantages. If... Wei Zhao's gaze came to rest on Yu Xiaoke. If he could bring Yu Xiaoke along, he might accomplish twice the result with half the effort.

But how was he to put it to Yu Xiaoke? And better still, he ought to avoid Qiu Lingshan and Chen Yutian. Both of them had come to catch tomb robbers. If he went on robbing tombs right under their noses, it would put them in a difficult position however one looked at it. Wei Zhao did not want to make things hard for them, so he simply decided not to tell them.

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