Walker Of The Worlds

Chapter 3978: Expanding His Scope Of Records

Lin Mu carefully recorded all changes mentally.

If he appeared as Zhenyu, he would need to know which old terms had become outdated. Calling a modern department by an ancient name could immediately expose him to someone knowledgeable enough when he did not intend to do so.

He also paid close attention to the sect’s attitude toward Zhenyu.

The official records did not portray him as a saint but they did not portray him as a villain either. He was remembered as an exceptionally talented cultivator whose personality had frequently caused trouble. There were complaints about him, commendations for him and several disciplinary records.

Lin Mu found that rather useful as a perfect reputation would have been suspicious. An imperfect one gave him room to behave strangely. If Lin Mu forgot something, he could blame the passage of time.

If he acted differently from what people remembered, he could claim that thousands of years of solitude had changed him. If someone questioned his personality, he could simply say that the Mad Demon Depths had forced him to reevaluate his life.

There were plenty of explanations available.

Then, while searching through records several sections away from Zhenyu’s original archive, Lin Mu suddenly stopped as his immortal sense had caught something interesting. He opened the record and his brows slowly rose.

"Huh?" The document concerned Junior Elder Mengli Zhenyu, yet the date was strange. "This is much later." It was almost ten thousand years after his disappearance and Lin Mu immediately became more attentive.

"Someone actually looked into him?" He began reading.

The record had been created by a disciple belonging to the Records Division. The disciple had apparently been performing a routine review of historical documents when he encountered several discrepancies involving Zhenyu’s disappearance.

The official record stated that Zhenyu’s soul lamp had eventually extinguished and that was the basis for the sect’s conclusion that he had died. Yet the disciple had noticed something strange.

’The soul lamp itself could not be found?’ Lin Mu’s eyes narrowed.

He already knew that soul lamps were preserved even after their flames disappeared. Within a sect as ancient and enormous as the Heavenly Stream Guardian Sect, those lamps served a purpose beyond simply monitoring whether someone was alive.

They were records and markers. Or rather they were memorials for cultivators who had died without leaving behind a body. For an elder of Zhenyu’s status, his soul lamp should have been preserved indefinitely.

The disciple therefore began investigating.

The records stated that the lamp had apparently disappeared during a logistical transfer. That alone might have been dismissed as an administrative error but then the disciple discovered something else.

’Several other soul lamps were missing too.’ Lin Mu’s expression became serious.

The missing lamps had disappeared thousands of years earlier, making the trail extremely difficult to follow. The Records Division had apparently undergone several reorganizations during that period, and many old logistical documents were incomplete.

Some records were simply unavailable while others had references to documents that no longer existed. A few entries even contained vague statements indicating that certain archives had been lost during transfers.

Lin Mu immediately recognized the problem as too many things were missing and the disciple had noticed the same issue. He began looking into the people responsible for maintaining and transporting the soul lamps during that period.

Unfortunately, almost all of them were dead.

But that was hardly unusual. After all, for cultivators below the highest realms, ten thousand years was an enormous span of time. Even immortals could die during tribulations, battles or unexpected accidents.

Besides, personnel assigned to administrative divisions were often less talented in cultivation than combat-oriented elders, which made their survival over such periods even less likely. As such the investigation eventually stalled.

There was no evidence proving that the missing soul lamps had been deliberately removed and there was no evidence proving that Zhenyu was still alive either. The case was therefore marked unresolved.

Lin Mu stared at the final entry. "That alone is already suspicious."

He continued reading and then his expression changed. ’The disciple who initiated the investigation died?!’

According to the official record, he had been assigned a mission barely a year after closing the investigation. He had been ordered to retrieve records from an external branch of the sect.

During the journey, he encountered several beasts and he died. The report described the incident as an unfortunate accident.

Lin Mu remained silent.

"An accident." He repeated the word quietly as something about it bothered him.

He expanded his search and the disciple’s name appeared in several other records. Nothing unusual stood out at first. Then Lin Mu searched for the names of other people who had conducted similar investigations.

He found another and that person had investigated an unexplained disappearance involving a senior disciple. They had later died during a routine mission. Another had investigated inconsistencies surrounding an elder’s death and they had perished during a breakthrough.

Another had examined missing records concerning an old branch of the sect and they had died after being attacked by bandits while traveling. One after another, in different circumstances, different locations and different causes of death, people had been erased.

Lin Mu continued searching and he found more.

The pattern was impossible to prove and there was no single person connecting them. No common faction appeared in every investigation and no obvious killer emerged. Yet the number of investigators who had died after looking into strange historical discrepancies was enough to make Lin Mu uncomfortable.

"Is this a coincidence?" He leaned back slightly as he did not have an answer.

A coincidence was possible. The immortal world was dangerous. People died constantly. Someone who spent their time investigating old records might eventually encounter danger simply because they were alive long enough to do so.

Still, Lin Mu had lived long enough and seen a lot to understand that coincidence had a strange habit of appearing whenever someone wanted to hide something. He stored the information away and he would investigate further later.

For now, there was another name he wanted to find: Deng Siqi.

Lin Mu searched through the Records Division archives, but the result was far more limited than he expected. There were records concerning the man, several, in fact. Yet almost all of them belonged to his early life.