THE CRIPPLED SON-IN-LAW UNLOCKED IMMORTAL CULTIVATION

Chapter 15: The Seal That Should Not Exist

Crystal pressed the access record into my hand and pointed to the line at the bottom. The archive system had accepted an authorization that the Zhao family claimed no longer existed. Whoever had used it had not simply copied my name; they had passed a security check that should have been impossible.

“Did your grandfather ever say where the seal was destroyed?” I asked.

“He said it was dealt with after the inner archive was closed. He never told me where, and I never thought to ask.” Crystal glanced toward the corridor. “If he learns I kept this from him, he’ll take the record and lock me away from the archive.”

“Then we find out what happened before he decides what the truth is.”

I returned the paper to her. We could not afford to be seen examining it together, so we walked toward the family residence as if the meeting had ended and nothing had changed. My mind kept returning to the missing clerk. His token had been left behind, but his disappearance could mean he had been taken, had fled, or had chosen to hide. I would not decide which without evidence.

The entity stirred beneath my ribs.

The retired seal is not the source of the danger, it warned. It is only the door.

“What is behind it?” I asked silently.

Something you are not ready to face.

Crystal checked the record and tucked it into her jacket. “If they search my room, they’ll find nothing,” she said. “I copied the line and hid it where Grandfather won’t look.” Her preparation surprised me, but I understood why she had done it; she no longer trusted the family to preserve the evidence.

Crystal led me to a small sitting room used by the household staff. She had a reason to be there, she explained, because the archive clerks sometimes left requests for supplies with the senior servants. We needed someone who had seen the missing man shortly before he vanished.

A middle-aged attendant named Auntie Lin was sorting folded linens beside a cabinet. When Crystal asked about the clerk, the woman stopped working and looked toward the open doorway.

“You should not be asking about him,” she said. “The guards have already questioned everyone who spoke to him.”

“We only want to know when he was last seen,” Crystal replied. “No one is accusing you of anything.”

Auntie Lin lowered her voice. “I saw him near the old archive wing after midnight. He was carrying his work bag, but he had no ledger with him. He looked frightened, though he tried to hide it.”

“Did he say where he was going?” I asked.

“He asked whether the service corridor was still blocked. I told him it had been sealed years ago, and he said he knew that.” She hesitated, then added, “He left his identification token in the clerk’s room, but he took a small wooden case that he always kept locked.”

“Did anyone follow him?” Crystal asked.

Auntie Lin shook her head. “I did not see anyone. But someone had been in the corridor before him. I heard the service door close, then the sound of a metal latch.”

Footsteps sounded outside. Two guards entered before she could say more.

“Miss Crystal, the patriarch wants you back in the main residence,” one said. His eyes shifted to me. “Ryan, you are to return to your room.”

Crystal’s expression hardened. “We were only asking about the clerk.”

“Then you have finished asking.” The guard turned to Auntie Lin. “You will come with us. The elders want your statement.”

Auntie Lin went pale. Crystal stepped forward, but I caught her wrist lightly before she could challenge them. A public argument would only give the guards a reason to search us and question why we cared about the missing clerk.

“Take her statement properly,” I told the guard. “If she has done nothing wrong, there is no need to frighten her.”

He gave me a cold look. “You should worry about your own situation, son-in-law.”

“I do. That is why I’m asking you not to create another problem for the family.”

Crystal watched them leave, anger tightening her face.

“You could have stopped them,” she said.

“Not without exposing what we are doing. If I had used force, Grandfather Zhao would know we were hiding something, and the servant would still be in danger.”

She looked away, fighting her frustration. “I hate that you’re right.”

“Then help me find a way that doesn’t put her in greater danger.”

As we left the sitting room, I noticed a faint trace of energy clinging to the sleeve of the guard who had spoken to me. It was weak, but it carried the same uneven rhythm I had sensed around the archive ledger. I kept my face calm and followed them only as far as the next intersection before turning down a side passage.

The entity reacted at once.

Do not draw it into yourself. That trace may be bait.

I let my senses brush the residue without absorbing it. The energy stretched away from the guard’s path, leading toward the older part of the estate. Whoever carried it had passed close to the archive wing, and the trail had not yet faded completely. I moved slowly, careful not to let my own power answer it.

The trail ended beside a narrow service corridor hidden behind a row of unused storage cabinets. The corridor was not marked on the modern estate plans, and dust covered most of its floor, but a fresh scrape near the wall showed that something heavy had been moved recently.

Crystal caught up with me a minute later. “I knew you wouldn’t return to your room.”

“You should have stayed away. The guards are already watching us.”

“I’m tired of being told to stay safe while everyone else decides what happens.” Her voice was quiet, but there was no fear in it now. “If this concerns my family, I have a right to know what they buried.”

We moved the cabinet enough to reveal a narrow panel in the wall. A faded symbol had been carved into its edge: a circle broken by three short cuts. It matched the mark beneath the ledger’s metal strip and the pattern we had seen at Property Seven.

Crystal touched the wall beside it, then withdrew her hand. “This part of the estate is not on the plans I’ve seen.”

“The plans may have been changed.”

I studied the panel. Its lock had no visible keyhole, only a shallow depression shaped like the base of the retired seal. The metal around it was scratched, and a fresh line of dust lay across the floor as if the panel had been opened recently and pushed shut again.

I did not touch the depression. The entity’s warning had been clear, and the residue around the frame felt too much like the energy that had reacted to the ledger. Instead, I examined the hinges and the wall around them. A narrow gap on the left showed that the panel could slide inward, though the mechanism was concealed.

A soft pulse moved through the wall.

The energy in my body answered before I could stop it. Pain flashed along my ribs, and I clenched my teeth until it passed. Crystal noticed my reaction and reached toward me, but I shook my head.

“Don’t touch it,” I whispered.

From the far end of the corridor came the sound of approaching footsteps and the guards calling to one another. We had stayed too long.

Crystal stepped back from the panel. “We need to go.”

I took one last look at the symbol. The panel pulsed again, more faintly this time, and a voice came from the other side.

“Ryan Shaw.”

Crystal froze. The voice was low and rough, but it spoke my name with the certainty of someone who had been waiting for me.

The entity surged inside me.

Leave. Now.

I wanted answers, but the urgency in its warning was unlike anything I had heard from it before. I pulled Crystal away from the wall just as the guards turned into the corridor. We slipped through the opposite passage and kept moving until the calls faded behind us.

Crystal was breathing hard when we reached the stairwell. “Who was that?”

“I don’t know.”

It was the truth, though I suspected the voice knew far more about me than it had revealed. The access record, the missing clerk, the retired seal, and the chamber at Property Seven were no longer separate mysteries. Someone had connected them, and that person had known I would follow the trail.

Behind the wall, the voice spoke again, louder this time.

“If you want to know why they wrote your name in the ledger, come alone. Your wife must not hear what happened to the last man who carried that seal.”

Crystal stared at me, her face drained of color. She had heard every word.

The entity fell silent, and for the first time since our bond began, I could not tell whether it was hiding something from me or afraid of what waited beyond the panel.