"The weather is really nice today!"
Three days after the great battle at Immortal Mountain, a figure erged from a cave. Bathing in the glorious sunshine, he lazily stretched his back.
This person was none other than Su Xuan. He hadn’t died. He had only faked his death in battle to make a clean escape. With his immortal body, how could he possibly die?
During these three days, he hadn’t been lazing about in the cave. Instead, he had refined the elixir, successfully completing his mission on the mountain. Now he could finally return to his old ho down below with peace of mind.
"Alas!" Su Xuan sighed in distress as he gazed toward Immortal Mountain. He had saved many lives in the battle at the great pit, so so people were bound to be heartbroken by his "death." People like Ying Lan and Elder Ma... perhaps even Senior Sister Miao Tong would be upset. And he still hadn’t returned her shoe!
"Still not here?" Su Xuan suddenly looked up at the sky, his brow furrowed as if he were waiting for sothing.
But then, his expression softened into a smile.
The golden-scaled crocodile, disguised as a Nirvana Phoenix, ca skimming low across the ground toward him, moving furtively as if afraid of being discovered.
"Little White." Once the crocodile reached him, Su Xuan changed it back into the form of a white horse. "Want to co with to a new place? There may not be any spiritual birds or ferocious beasts, but the food is incredible. Oh, right..."
Su Xuan suddenly thought of Big White back ho and smiled. "I can introduce you to a new friend. He’s a bit older than you, so you’ll have to call him Big Brother."
The white horse snorted excitedly. It had been bored to death these past few days and was desperate for a change of scenery.
"Then let’s go!"
Su Xuan vaulted onto the horse’s back. Just as he was about to fly toward the world below the mountain, sothing strange happened.
WHIR!
The air suddenly vibrated with an odd hum. A cage of visible lines materialized around him and the white horse, trapping them inside!
"What’s going on?" Su Xuan squinted, swatting at the strange lines, but he couldn’t destroy them. This was surprising, considering he was at the Observing Appearance Realm, practically a terrestrial immortal.
Just then, sothing even more astonishing occurred.
CRACK!
With a sound like shattering glass, a door split the air, appearing from nothing! The sight of it gave Su Xuan a headache.
Could it be a monster from underground, coming to get revenge? Is an even more powerful entity about to appear?
In the next second, the door swung open, and four figures erged. Two adults and two children, one male and one female of each.
"ng Fan, please remove the restraining rule. Don’t frighten him," the woman, who was gentle and beautiful, said softly to the man beside her.
"Alright, alright, whatever my wife says. I was just worried he’d run off!" the man replied. Though simply dressed, he exuded an aura of imnse authority, and his handso features put Su Xuan under considerable pressure.
With a casual wave of his hand, the man dissolved the cage confining Su Xuan. Then he walked over, grinning. "Brother, got a minute to talk?"
"Sure." Sensing no hostility from the man, Su Xuan nodded. He already had a faint guess as to the man’s identity.
The two of them stepped to the side to chat.
"You’re Su Xuan, right?" The man called ng Fan patted Su Xuan’s shoulder. "You know who I am, don’t you?"
"Hmm..." Su Xuan gestured vaguely. "Soone who can casually invoke the Power of the Rules of Heaven and Earth to create a cage that can trap an Observing Appearance Realm expert... I’m afraid you must be..."
Su Xuan paused before speaking two words, "Ancestor ng."
"Hehe!" The man scratched his head. "Just call Brother ng." He then pointed to the gentle woman and the two children playing with the white horse. "This is my wife, Liu Xiaoxi, and my two children, ng Anxin and ng Anyi." His gaze was filled with happiness as he looked at his family.
Then, he turned back to Su Xuan. "You must have heard a lot about , right?"
"Not much," Su Xuan admitted. "I haven’t been in the mountain world for long, so I’ve only heard a little."
"Huh..." The man seed a little disappointed.
"However," Su Xuan quickly added, "everything I have heard about you concerned earth-shattering deeds that fill one with admiration."
"Hahaha!" The man laughed heartily and waved his hand. "Those were just small things I did in the past. Nothing earth-shattering."
"Why did you co back?" Su Xuan suddenly asked. "Everyone said you went to... that place."
"Right, right, I did go to a place." At this, the man’s interest was piqued, and he lowered his voice. "You wouldn’t know. There’s a power in that place that severed the human realm’s path of reincarnation. They treat our world like a farm. When humans die, they can’t be reincarnated. Their souls beco crops in a field, harvested at will. So, I took my family over to have a little ’talk’ with them."
"They must have been terrified when Ancestor ng went to ’talk’ to them," Su Xuan said with a sycophantic chuckle.
"Ah, don’t get started!" The man waved his hand again. "At first, they wouldn’t listen to reason, so things got physical. But after I sorted out that power, several others popped up. The Six Paths... you know, the Path of Humans, the Path of Beasts, the Path of Asuras..."
The man counted on his fingers with a frustrated look. "I had to ’talk’ to them for a long ti too, and they finally decided to behave. What a headache."
"About the great pit..." Su Xuan couldn’t help but ask the question that burned in his mind. "What was really going on?"
"Ah, about that... my apologies," the man said sheepishly. "I had a falling out with soone who called himself an Asura Lord. The pit was one of his sches left behind in the human realm..."
"ng Fan!" The woman called Xiaoxi cut him off, seeming to feel her husband was getting too long-winded.
"Oh, right!" The man shot his wife a grin before turning back to Su Xuan. "But don’t worry, it’s all been taken care of. I dealt with that Asura Lord. All that’s left are so shrimp soldiers and crab generals, nothing to worry about. The anomaly you encountered was just those minions trying to hide out in the human realm. What can I say? I tore their ho apart, and they thought I wasn’t coming back. They probably planned to run wild here, but there’s no place like ho, right?"
Though the man spoke lightly, Su Xuan could imagine what this person must have done over there. It was surely... earth-shattering!
"The reason I stopped you was to explain all this," the man said, patting Su Xuan’s shoulder again. "Alright, you can go now."
As he spoke, he slipped sothing into Su Xuan’s hand.
Su Xuan looked down to see a bead shimring with iridescent light. He wanted to ask what it was for, but the man had already rejoined his wife and was waving to him. "My family and I are going to visit so old friends. We can find a chance to grab a drink later!"
"Until we et again!" Su Xuan waved back.
And with that, the man—Ancestor ng—and his family vanished into thin air.
"He really is incredible," Su Xuan couldn’t help but exclaim.
At the sa ti, a series of system notifications sounded in his mind.
DING! Congratulations to the host for obtaining an earth-shattering treasure!
DING! Rewarding the host with the Power of the Rules of Heaven and Earth!
DING! Stage Three Mission: 7/10.
Su Xuan was stunned. In the past, whenever he acquired a treasure, the system would identify it as a celestial treasure and provide its specific na. This ti, however, it only called the bead an "earth-shattering treasure" without giving a na.
Could it be that Ancestor ng got this bead from that other place? Can even the system not identify it? And even though I’ve obtained this bead and it has automatically acknowledged as its master, I still don’t know what it’s for! It seems like my current abilities are simply not enough to control this bead!
But that was a problem for another ti. Ancestor ng did say they would have a drink together, after all. He could just ask him then.
"Let’s go!"
Su Xuan mounted the white horse again. Against the azure sky, he beca a streak of white light, speeding toward the world below the mountain.
「That night, in the world at the foot of the mountain.」
A white-haired old man sat motionless in Su Xuan’s mansion on Houhai Street, his gaze fixed on the front gate. A giant panda lay beside him, also staring at the gate. They did this every day, always waiting for soone to return.
Suddenly, a gust of wind pressed down into the courtyard. A handso, travel-worn young man on a white horse alighted in the yard.
"Old Liu, have you been waiting for ?" the young man asked as he dismounted and walked toward the elderly man.
"Master! You’ve returned!"
The old man stood up, trembling. He first reached out as if to shake the young man’s hand but then opened his arms wide and pulled him into a tight embrace.
The young man patted the old man’s back, murmuring, "I’m back. I’m back. And I’m not leaving again."
The old man’s voice choked with emotion. "You didn’t suffer any wrongs while you were away, did you?"
The young man’s mood suddenly turned playful. He grinned at the old man and said, "Old Liu, let get cleaned up and changed first. Then I’ll use the elixir to save soone. After that, we can all get together for a proper catch-up!
"I’ll tell you all about what I did up on the mountain. I’ll tell you now, the stuff I did was insane—you wouldn’t believe it! I was a total badass, and I’m just getting started!"
Reviews
All reviews (0)