Chen Ping'an gently exhaled as he slapped his own cheeks to try and reinvigorate himself, then stood up and returned to his little room.0

Even from afar, he could see the glow of the lit lamp on the table through the window.0

He reflexively sped up, only to then slow down again as he chuckled to himself.0

Ever since he was four years old, he had never returned home to a lit lamp. After going back on his vow to his mother to work at the dragon kiln, he managed to earn some copper coins, but he still couldn't just leave the lamp on whenever he went out and allow the lamp oil to go to waste in his absence. 0

He had forgotten to put out the lamp prior to his departure, so what good would it do now to hurry back? He wasn't feeling sleepy at all, so this was going to be another night spent reading by the flame of the lamp. In that case, even if he were to put out the lamp, he would then have to reignite it, and there would simply be no point in that.0

With that in mind, Chen Ping'an made his way back to his room at a casual stroll, then closed the door and sat down at his desk to continue reading through the files and materials that had been brought to him by Tian Hujun.0

His mind wasn't calm, so there was no point in practicing his fist techniques, and cultivating in this state would've been an even more futile, perhaps even dangerous endeavor.0

Back in the Lotus Flower Blessed Land, he had come to discover that no matter how much he practiced his fist techniques in times of agitation, there was simply no point. That was why he would often go to that little monastery near Champion Scholar Alley to chat with the old monk who didn't like to espouse Buddhist teachings.0

On top of that, the more damning issue was that he was unable to muster up and vigor. It was as if his energy, essence, and spirit were languishing at the bottom of an abyss, weighed down by a giant rock, making it impossible for him to lift his spirits.2

Chen Ping'an closed the ill-maintained files, then picked up the small carving knife that had come as a bonus accessory back when he purchased those jade hairpins from that shop in the capital city of the Great Sui Nation, and he gently scratched a faint line onto the table with the carving knife.0

After a brief pause, he slid out a piece of paper that he had cut down to the size of the cover of a book, then picked up his brush and drew a straight line down the sheet of paper. On opposing ends of the line, he wrote down the phrases "Gu Can's misdeeds" and "Gu Can's goodness." These two phrases were written in rather large text, and between the...0