Li Yan straightened his tilted body and took another careful look at the statue's remaining eye.
The remaining eye, the arm held in an empty fist before it, and the slightly bent single leg created a curved posture that always struck him as very odd.
'This statue is in a contemplative pose. If it wasn't intentionally left as some kind of clue, then why sculpt it in this form? What does it represent?'
Li Yan's body floated gently into the air. He moved to a position diagonally above the statue and looked at it from the other side of its clenched fist.
But when he flew in front of it, he couldn't help but be taken aback. From his position in front of the statue, its posture had changed.
It no longer looked like it was aiming at something through its clenched fist!
Li Yan's eyes narrowed slightly. His mind raced as he once again carefully examined the empty fist.
After a short while, Li Yan finally let out a breath.
'So that's how it is. I was really misled by my prior knowledge!'
Looking at the statue now, the broken figure slowly became whole in his mind, and a picture formed in his head.
A military general, body leaning slightly back, legs bent, eyes wide, one arm thrown back, the other gripping a long weapon like a spear or a lance, poised to throw it at a moment's notice.
Once this image appeared, the broken statue before him immediately made sense.
The biggest misconception here was that Li Yan had previously witnessed the process of sculpting a stone statue. He hadn't considered that the statue's empty, clenched fist might have originally held something.
This was because the hand itself was perfectly preserved!
The art of carving stone statues of lions, tigers, dragons, and other fierce beasts, or of humans and gods, had a long history, having been practiced in the mortal world for countless years.
In Li Yan's small mountain village, there were people who made such things to trade for silver.
These stone statues were often used for warding off evil from houses or for worship. The artisans of the small mountain village would also take their carved statues to the Green Mountain Pass to sell.
As a child, Li Yan often went to the village's carving area to play. He was often amazed at how a lifeless stone could be transformed into a fearsome beast.
So, he would often squat to one side and watch, and he knew a little about the art of carving.
For instance, when carving a statue of a person holding something, or a beast with its foot on an object, the hand (or paw) of the statue and the object in its grasp were sculpted for appearance's sake.
The object and the hand (or paw) were actually still a single, solid piece of stone.
This was done, firstly, to have a connection point, to use the leverage to "hold" the object in hand and prevent it from falling.
Secondly, the stonemasons wouldn't bother with such useless details. Was he expected to carve out five hollow fingers and then separately carve an object to place inside?
Even if he did, the price of the statue wouldn't increase by much. For craftsmen who depended on this for a living, they wouldn't do it unless the client had special requirements.
Therefore, if the object "held" by a statue was destroyed, the statue's hand (or paw) that was firmly connected to it would, in ninety-nine percent of cases, be destroyed along with it.
At the very least, there would be obvious damage.
But the statue before him was different. Its clenched fist, apart from the green moss, was almost undamaged.
Li Yan hadn't previously considered whether the statue was holding something, and if that something was a separately carved object.
From the looks of it now, it should have been something like a spear or a rod.
For a cultivator, keeping a heavy object stable in a statue's hand would be a simple matter of a small restrictive sealing art.
Thus, once the restriction on the object in this statue's hand was broken, it could be easily pulled out.
Li Yan had failed to realize this today. In his view, if someone wanted to take the object from the statue's hand, the hand itself wouldn't be so perfectly intact.
'The statue must have been holding a weapon. After it was taken, it might have been given to some low-level Body Cultivators to use. Aside from being unable to channel spirit power, it would truly be better than an ordinary magical treasure. Could that missing arm and leg have been broken off in the same way and given to sect disciples to use for smashing people?'
Li Yan thought strangely to himself, his gaze falling once more upon the statue's missing limbs.
The statue's missing arm and leg had further led his judgment astray.
Otherwise, the posture of a complete statue would have been easily identified as a throwing stance.
At the same time, the other missing eyeball had also caused Li Yan's judgment to err.
Because that eye was just an empty socket, Li Yan had previously assumed that eye was supposed to be half-squinted or closed, while the other was in the "aiming" state.
If he had seen two eyes as wide as copper bells staring upwards, he naturally wouldn't have thought it was "aiming" at a distance through its fist.
Remembering how he had stuck his head in front of the statue's empty fist to "aim" forward, Li Yan couldn't help but touch his nose.
'I really miscalculated this time!'
Li Yan's mind was usually as sharp as a needle, but he was also prone to all sorts of suspicions. As long as he thought something was possible, he would try to guess at it in a thousand different ways.
Now that Li Yan had imagined the statue's original appearance, he still couldn't think of how it could be connected to the Desolate Moon Continent.
'This is a military general. Was this pose sculpted merely to highlight his valor? If he was a member of the Immortal-Seeking Lineage, he must have come from a military background before cultivating. But once one steps onto the path of immortality, all past valor becomes a joke. What is the point of carving such a statue here, other than to preserve a memory? It does nothing to display his strength.'
Li Yan pondered the meaning of the statue.
Whether it was a painting or a piece of calligraphy, it had its meaning. This statue should be no exception; it couldn't have been carved for no reason.
As the statue was missing an arm, a leg, and an eye, the image in Li Yan's mind kept changing. He considered all sorts of possibilities, especially those related to the "Immortal-Seeking Lineage."
If this statue had some hidden mechanism, Li Yan didn't think he'd have any chance of discovering it. Even Spirit Transformation cultivators had been here before.
If they hadn't found any hidden formations or restrictions, he shouldn't waste his time thinking along those lines.
Time passed quickly. In the dark bottom of the cliff, only the gurgling sound of flowing water marked the unstoppable passage of time.
After an unknown amount of time, Li Yan shook his head helplessly and gently pinched the bridge of his nose, which was throbbing with a dull ache.
'The Immortal-Seeking Lineage... hehe, if only I had known more about my Master Ji's past back then, perhaps I would have gained something today.'
He looked up at the dim light filtering down from above.
'Forget it, it's time to go back. It's time to return!'
With this thought, Li Yan soared into the air. Just as he was about to reach the top of the cliff, he subconsciously glanced back at the statue.
It was the look of disappointment from returning empty-handed.
From his angle, he could still see half of the statue's body. One leg was half-bent, its empty fist held opposite its face. No matter how he looked at it, it seemed to be "aiming" at something.
'That throwing posture isn't good for exerting force!'
As a dual Dharma-Body cultivator, this thought appeared instinctively. He naturally knew which arm posture could unleash the most power.
The moment this thought arose in his mind, his flying body suddenly paused, and a bolt of lightning flashed through his mind.
'No, that's not right. I think I've seen this strange posture somewhere before?'
For a moment, Li Yan stopped in mid-air, instantly lost in deep thought.
A cultivator's memory was very powerful, but they also experienced many more things and read countless Jade Slips and scriptures.
To search for a fleeting flash of inspiration from the vast sea of memories, especially when it was just a vague impression, truly required some hard thinking.
About the time it takes to drink a cup of tea later, the motionless Li Yan's eyes suddenly lit up. The next moment, his Divine Sense connected with the Earthen Patch on his wrist.
Within the Earthen Patch, Zhao Min was still sitting cross-legged on the grass at the foot of the mountain, the river flowing slowly and tirelessly before her.
With the refinement and nourishment of high-quality medicinal pills, her aura was almost fully restored.
If an ordinary cultivator had burned several portions of their Essence Blood, it would have taken them over a hundred years of arduous meditation to recover.
But how could a behemoth like the Sacred Demon Palace, a titan of a continent, not provide its core disciples with pills to rapidly restore Essence Blood, especially given Zhao Min's status?
In less than twenty days, she had already recovered seventy to eighty percent.
This was the benefit of having excellent cultivation resources. For a single top-tier resource, cultivators would annihilate entire clans and families; this was extremely common.
Above the halfway point of the mountain behind Zhao Min, the peak was already shrouded in thick, layered fog, obscuring half the sky.
The mountain itself was encased in stone-hard frost, covered by a thick layer of ice, from which a fluctuating wave of ice-attribute power pulsed endlessly.
After Li Yan's Divine Sense entered, he didn't disturb them but went straight to an isolated area that only he could access...
Outside, a light flashed in Li Yan's hand, and an object appeared in his palm.
It was a broken earthen jar. There was a chip in its mouth, taking up about a third of the entire jar.
Li Yan placed the broken jar in front of him. His eyes immediately fell on the three brown patterns on its body, and then his gaze fixed upon them.
The first image was of a small figure holding a long, spear-like object in one hand, the other hand resting on one leg. The body was bent forward as if about to throw the spear.
In the second image, the small figure's hands were empty, as if the spear-like object had already been thrown. Both hands were raised above its head, one knee bent and lifted off the ground, as if about to run or performing some kind of prayer.
In the final image, the spear-like object appeared again. The small figure held its rear end with both hands, as if about to thrust it upwards or downwards.
But the tip of the spear-like object in the image was missing. That was where the jar was broken, and the crack made it impossible to see the full picture.
And at this moment, Li Yan's eyes were firmly fixed on the first image, on the pattern of the small figure about to throw the spear.
Yes, it was this image, this posture. The first time he saw it, he had found it very awkward. It was a posture from which one could not exert their full strength.
And the small figure's hand was also opposite its face, holding the spear-like object.
When Li Yan turned to look at the statue below, the missing arm and leg were already fully restored in his mind's eye.
"Oh? This is quite a coincidence. Could it be that among the many ancient cultivators who died in that tomb, there was a powerhouse from the Hellsoul Clan?"
Li Yan turned and swiftly descended, holding the broken earthen jar, his eyes glinting with a sharp light.
This broken earthen jar was something he had obtained back on the Forsaken Continent.
At that time, Li Yan had been posing as a low-level Qi Condensation cultivator, and he had found this item in the ancient tomb on the back mountain of the Feng Tao family.
There had also been a blood pool in that ancient tomb, which Li Yan hadn't touched. He had found this item in a corner.
Li Yan had carefully examined this item more than once, but he had only sensed a faint fluctuation of soul power from within the broken jar.
After that, no matter how he probed it with spirit power or Divine Sense, he found nothing else.