Fan Xian lay safely and comfortably in bed, his face pale, resembling a young man suffering from a hangover. A copper basin sat beside the bed, impeccably clean, as the vomit had long been cleared away.

Ruo Ruo had been sent away to sleep, and another maid was attending to him. Fan Xian's paleness wasn't feigned, nor was the vomiting induced by drugs. The force of the arrow from Yan Xiaoyi had genuinely damaged his internal organs, causing a feeling of oppression in his chest and abdomen, which would likely require several days of rest to recover from.

Thinking of that soul-snatching arrow, Fan Xian couldn't help but feel afraid. If he hadn't unleashed his true qi level beyond his normal capabilities at the critical moment, he might have been killed by that arrow. Even from such a distance, the arrow possessed such power, which was truly unimaginable. It seemed that the Commander had already reached the pinnacle of the ninth rank and was on the verge of stepping into the highest echelon of mortal existence.

Actually, when he slammed his hands at the arrow, Fan Xian's attack was still not as swift as the incoming arrow. He only managed to strike the shaft, which was dangerous. But thankfully, this also meant that he had no scars on his hands, otherwise, if seen by someone with ulterior motives, he wouldn't know how to explain it.

At that time, he ventured into Guangxin Palace partly to see if he could discover anything, but more importantly, he didn't want the people in the palace to connect Hong Gonggong's diversion by Wu Zhu with the key in the Han Guang Hall. This was the most crucial thing.

His fingers gently rested on his waist, slowly caressing the hard object there. He felt a sense of peace in his heart. His luck was truly good, but would his luck continue to be so good? He decided that he would never again hide things in the secret compartment under the bed, and he would never go to the palace to play again.

During the days of feigning drunkenness to recuperate, Fan Xian's "poet immortal" performance in the palace had already spread throughout Kyoto. In the following days, countless scholars and dignitaries visited, but Fan Jian coldly turned them away, saying that his son had overexerted himself that day and needed to rest.

However, the visitors were of increasingly higher status. Even several founding meritorious officials and high-ranking military generals came. Just as Fan Jian was having a headache, Fan Xian announced a decision through the people in the residence that puzzled and deeply disappointed everyone.

Fan Xian would no longer write poetry!

Many people thought this was just nonsense from Young Master Fan and didn't take it seriously. Only the Jing Wang residence and Vice Ministers Ren and Xin, who understood Fan Xian's temperament, knew that this was likely true. However, everything was still in the aftermath, so they would discuss it slowly later.

The summer heat in Kyoto had gradually dissipated, and an autumn rain slowly fell.

In fact, there were only three days left before entering the palace, but Fan Xian felt that these three days were the longest three days of his two lives. The box was under his bed, and the key was in his hand. No temptation was greater than this, but Fan Xian still endured for three days, like a child who steals a snack from the kitchen that his mother doesn't allow him to eat, then carefully hides it in the closet. Knowing the snack is there, he goes to sleep contentedly, glancing at the closet every night before going to bed, but not really wanting to eat it, until the snack eventually rots and spoils.

The box wouldn't spoil, but Fan Xian decided to "eat it" tonight.

The autumn rain outside the window pattered down, falling on the backyard of the Fan residence, on the flowers and plants in the yard that were about to face the autumn frost. Inside the window, Fan Xian didn't light a lamp. He knew his eyes were enough to see clearly in the darkness. The box was placed on the table. He steadily inserted the key, which looked like brass, into the keyhole.

With a click, the front panel of the box sprang open, revealing a small black screen with strange little squares. With a gentle press, the squares would sink in. Each square had a unique pattern that no one in this world could recognize.

Fan Xian smiled, but the smile was somewhat bitter, somewhat understanding, and somewhat comforted by the confirmation of a long-held suspicion.

He closed his eyes and couldn't help but smile again, feeling that this world was truly too crazy. So, with trembling fingers, he lit a pot of the fine local tobacco that Teng Zijing had presented, to calm his mood.

This was the first time he had smoked in the world of Qing Yu Nian. The tobacco tasted good, and white smoke rose in the dark room, while the autumn rain fell slowly in the lonely courtyard.

Fan Xian felt that he was no longer alone.

—————————————————————

The people in this world wouldn't know what these little black squares were, wouldn't know what the strange patterns on these squares were. But Fan Xian knew.

Because after the lock on the box was opened, what was revealed was... a keyboard. It was a keyboard that was very familiar from his previous life. The strange patterns on it were actually the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, along with the number keys, and Fan Xian's most familiar, the "F5" key.

Seeing this thing in front of him, Fan Xian finally had the strongest confirmation of something he had been secretly guessing for a long time: his physical mother, the woman named Ye Qingmei, came from the same place as him. At this time, he didn't associate it with the "Celestial Vein Person" mentioned by Zhuang Mohan and the Eldest Princess in their conversation at Guangxin Palace.

The ember of the tobacco pipe dimmed and glowed again in the dark room. The expression on Fan Xian's face had returned to calmness. He gently placed his hands on the keyboard and began to guess what the password should be.

"It's a name." Wu Zhu, who had arrived beside him at some unknown time, stood in the corner of the room. Although his eyes were covered with black cloth, his face, turned toward the box, still revealed an emotion that people called sadness. "I only remember it's a name. Miss said it's only five strokes."

Fan Xian nodded calmly and began to type. After all, it had been sixteen years since he had touched such a thing. At first, he felt a little unfamiliar, but after trying many times, that familiar feeling returned to his body, his hands. His fingers danced on the keyboard.

But after many attempts, he suddenly raised his head with a wry smile, "Where in this world is there a name that only needs five strokes?"

As soon as he said this, he knew where the problem lay. He took two more puffs of tobacco, looked at the box in front of him, and shook his head, sighing, "Mom, you're really being absurd! But the problem is, did you ever teach Wu Zhu Wubi?"

Wubi wasn't five strokes, but the Wubi input method (a Chinese character input method).

"kfh lca nhd" Fan Xian input the first name, Ye Qingmei, but there was no response. He input his own name's Wubi with some uncertainty, "aib usi".

The box still didn't respond. He smiled wryly, thinking that his name was given many years later, how could Ye Qingmei have known it back then? Suddenly, he had a thought, and he looked at Uncle Wu Zhu in the corner of the room with a smile that wasn't quite a smile.

Wu Zhu seemed to sense this strange gaze and tilted his head slightly, saying, "What are you doing?"

Fan Xian didn't answer him, but instead input Wu Zhu's name, "gg ttgh."

The box clicked softly and then opened. Fan Xian glanced at Wu Zhu again, smiling, "Uncle, I'm now very suspicious that there's some kind of illicit secret between you and my mother."

————————————————————

Fan Xian had carried this box from Danzhou to Kyoto, so he knew its weight and wasn't worried that it contained a hydrogen bomb. But when he saw what was inside the box, until he finally walked out of the room, walking through the rainy night in a somewhat dazed state, he still couldn't help but shake his head, thinking that his mother really didn't have any creativity.

……

……

The box was divided into three layers. Due to its shape limitations, anything placed in each layer had to be long and narrow. The first layer contained metal tools divided into three parts. Some parts were tubular, and some parts seemed suitable for gripping. Fan Xian frowned as he looked at these metal tubes. Although he was also from Earth, he couldn't figure out what they were for a while, until he inserted his finger into the inside of a metal tube and understood a little.

He held up a part and looked at it carefully, discovering a line of letters written there: m82a1.

"M-eighty-two-A-one." Fan Xian's fingers trembled slightly. Although he wasn't a military enthusiast in his previous life, he knew what this line of letters represented.

This was a sniper rifle, the best sniper rifle in that world. If equipped with armor-piercing bullets, it could penetrate a thick wall from a kilometer away.

Fan Xian grabbed the barrel of the gun with his right hand, and his hand couldn't help but tremble. He deeply understood what it meant to have a sniper rifle in a society like the Qing Kingdom, which was still in the age of cold weapons.

It meant that from now on, he had the ability to kill anyone from miles away without worrying about being discovered.

It meant that whether it was the Commander with his astonishing arrow or Yun Zhilan from the Dongyi delegation who looked at him with unkind eyes, as long as he wanted, he could try countless times to kill them – he just didn't know if it would work against a Grandmaster-level expert.

Fan Xian nervously placed the sniper rifle, which had been disassembled into three parts, gently on the table. He had long put the tobacco pipe aside. He put his hands on the table, took a few deep breaths, and calmed his mood. He seemed to have all the necessary conditions to become a demon of the night.

Of course, the premise was that he had bullets.

Fan Xian was dumbfounded when he looked at the second layer. It contained nothing but a letter. There were no bullets, not even the ten or more that he had expected.

Without bullets, this sniper rifle was no better than a fire poker.

……

……