The Lord of Void and Real

Chapter 60: Chapter 59: The Ability to Shrink Objects

“The heavenly book, I still haven’t found the heavenly book!”

Shen Luo fiercely slapped his forehead, finally remembering the most important purpose of this trip, and hurriedly jumped back onto the Wupeng small boat.

All the things on the boat were piled up at the back of the cabin, and all the clay pots and jars were shattered, even the low-legged square table had a broken leg.

After moving away the table, Shen Luo found the stone box under a pile of fishing nets.

The stone box remained half-open as before. After Shen Luo picked it up, he gently pushed it, and the cover was opened. Inside, he saw a bamboo tube that was about a foot long and a thick, yellowed ancient book.

The bamboo tube was only as thick as an arm and had only two sections, which were lush and green, looking as if it had just been cut not long ago. The ancient book, on the other hand, was slightly rolled into a tube shape and placed below the bamboo tube.

“The heavenly book?”

Shen Luo’s eyes lit up, and he was about to reach out to take the ancient book, but suddenly remembered his previous rash act of opening the stone box, releasing the skull of the ghost. He quickly withdrew his hand, opened his bundle, and took out several talismans he had drawn a long time ago, affixing them to his chest and arms.

Among these talismans, there were exorcism charms and warding off evil charms, and even two peace talismans. Whether they worked or not, he had no confidence yet, but he felt better having them on him than not.

Although he was cautious, Shen Luo wasn’t particularly worried.

The reason was nothing more than that Master Yu, a mere mortal, could safely obtain this Nameless Heavenly Book, which indicated that there shouldn’t be fatal dangers inside.

It’s just that when Yu Yan mentioned this past event, he was too brief. Shen Luo didn’t know whether he had left out something after drinking or whether Master Yu didn’t tell his descendants everything. He didn’t mention the skulls and bamboo tubes at all.

After sticking another exorcism charm on the back of his right hand, Shen Luo finally reached out slowly and cautiously grabbed the rolled-up ancient book and took it out.

When he held the ancient book, he didn’t dare to use too much force for fear of crushing this seemingly aged ancient book into pieces by accident.

However, when his palm touched the ancient book, he realized it was not made of paper but was a tough and sturdy leather-bound book.

Then, a more bizarre scene occurred.

The scroll, which was originally only two inches long, suddenly flashed with white light the moment it left the stone box, instantly growing twice as long. The previously rolled-up pages also unfurled, turning into a book with both length and width of about four inches.

Shen Luo was shocked and didn’t react to what had happened for a moment. Holding the suddenly enlarged ancient book, he looked back and forth between the stone box and the leather-bound book several times.

“This…”

He was in doubt, so he first put the ancient book aside, picked up the green bamboo tube again, and took it out.

The bamboo tube, which was originally only about a foot long, also flashed with white light the moment it left the stone box. It directly grew three times longer, becoming about three feet long and hefty in his hand.

Shen Luo gently shook the bamboo tube. A “gurgling” sound came from inside, hinting the presence of a liquid flowing inside.

The bamboo tube was, by volume, obviously much larger than the stone box at this point.

“So big… How was it put back in?” Shen Luo frowned, pondering to himself.

Having said that, he skeptically moved the bamboo tube in his hand closer to the stone box, intending to put it back in.

The bamboo tube, the moment it got close to the stone box, was pulled by a gentle, invisible force. Under a swath of white light, it shrank back to a third of its size, returning to about a foot in length, and laid back down into the stone box.

“This stone box… could it also be a treasure?” Shen Luo’s heart jumped with excitement.

He quickly placed the bamboo tube alongside the rolled-up book, then turned around and pulled out the broken-legged low table.

He grabbed the two legs of the table, inverted it, and approached the stone box, wanting to see if anything more than the original contents of the stone box could fit in, such as this ordinary table.

To his surprise, the moment one corner of the table neared the stone box, a white light again emitted from the box, and an unseen force gently tugged at the table, pulling it out of his hands and drew it into the stone box.

Shen Luo quickly peered inside and saw the table lying “upside down” in the stone box, shrunken to many times its original size, now only palm-sized.

Witnessing this, the color of joy in Shen Luo’s eyes became more prominent. Three steps in a bound and he jumped off the ship, picked up a head-sized round stone from the chaos of the rubble beach and loaded it into the stone box.

Immediately after, he retrieved the bamboo pole used for paddling the boat, lowered it into the stone box, and likewise, it was shrunken and stored inside.

Shen Luo then tested all sorts of odds and ends by his side such as clay pots and pieces, fishing nets and axes, all of which could be stowed away without exception.

“It seems that ordinary items, as long as they are placed at the mouth of the box, can also be shrunken and placed inside.” Shen Luo held the stone box with both hands, placing it before his eyes to inspect. He still found it unbelievable.

The stone box not only could store objects many times or even tens of times larger than itself by shrinking them proportionally, its weight surprisingly remained almost unchanged.

Moreover, through the shrinking comparison of different objects, Shen Luo found that, seemingly, the larger the original object, the more it would shrink when entering the stone box.

However, how large an object the stone box could ultimately hold, he couldn’t verify at the moment.

“With such a magical function, could it be a magical instrument as stated in the legends?” The thought occurred to him and gave him quite a shock.

A magical instrument? That was something only Pavilion Master Fengyang and the reclusive Mysterious Ancestor could possess.

He would never have thought, his quest to find the heavenly book, would bring him all these unexpected surprises!

But then again, if he hadn’t accidentally found that peculiar jade pillow and thus dreamt about the chaotic world of demons and horrors a thousand years later, he wouldn’t have learnt about the existence of the Nameless Heavenly Book from Yu Yan. Perhaps he would still be in the pavilion painstakingly practicing cultivation for self-preservation?

This was the first time Shen Luo felt that being plagued by nightmares from the jade pillow might not be entirely a bad thing.

His mind drifted for a moment, and when he came back to his senses, he cleaned up the sundries in the stone box one by one, then picked up the yellowish scroll and started browsing through it again.

Just as Yu Yan had said, the outer cover of the ancient book was blank, without a title. Perhaps that’s why his ancestor referred to it as the “Nameless Heavenly Book”.

Shen Luo flipped a few more pages and couldn’t help frowning.

It’s not that there was something wrong with the contents of the book, but that the texts in the book were all a very ancient type of silver seal script. Despite having seen many old books, Shen Luo barely recognized any of them.

After a long while, he failed to understand any of it, so he gave up and put the ancient book back into the stone box.

“Snap…”

Just then, a faint sound suddenly came from his side.

When Shen Luo looked down, he saw that it was the bamboo tube lying next to him. The evening wind that was rising on the river had rolled it over, bumping it into a wooden plank.

He bent down to pick up the bamboo tube, and was just about to study it carefully, when suddenly a crack appeared at the top of the tube. A stream of yellow liquid squirted out of it, shooting straight towards Shen Luo’s face!