Crossing a World, Snatching a Fairy's Opportunity

"At midnight, something is going to come out from under this stone slab!"

These were the words spoken by Li Lao Er, the current Temple Master of Willow Forest Temple, as he descended the mountain.

Lin Xiaosu didn't believe a single word of it.

He was a highly educated university graduate, had taken the civil service exam once, and was currently preparing for his second attempt. How could he believe that something would emerge from a giant bluestone slab?

But what else could he do?

He had promised Li Lao Er that he would guard the Willow Forest Temple for a night!

The whole situation started because Li Lao Er's wife had fallen ill. Whenever she got sick, she would rush to Lin Xiaosu's mother to cry, and once she started, she couldn't stop. Even twenty years later, she could still recount, with tears streaming down her face, how Li Lao Er had peeked at the widow Feng bathing when he was young.

Lin Xiaosu, out of consideration for their neighborly relationship, and because this aunt always gave him good food, and most importantly, because her daughter Hu Ya had grown up playing with him since they were naked toddlers, had gone to ask his Uncle Li to come down the mountain.

He never expected that he would be able to go up the mountain, but not be able to come back down!

Uncle Li had said that today was an Astrological Shift Day, and someone had to be at the temple to stabilize the Mystic Gate. Otherwise, at midnight, something would emerge from beneath it.

Lin Xiaosu had voiced his objections, but he couldn't sway the old man, who was truly stubborn.

Thinking of Hu Ya's growing chest, Lin Xiaosu finally made a rash decision, slapping his chest and saying, "Uncle, stop worrying. I'll guard the temple for you, okay?"

With that promise, Uncle Li happily went home to comfort his wife about the trauma from twenty years ago, leaving Lin Xiaosu alone on the mountaintop, bewildered by the wind...

Fortunately, Uncle Li had a daughter.

He had barely descended the mountain before his daughter came up.

Carrying a basket, she brought dinner for Lin Xiaosu.

Lin Xiaosu used to have psychological trauma associated with Hu Ya's dinners. Why?

This girl was peculiar. She would catch rabbits on the mountain, catch frogs in the fields, pull large snakes out of rock crevices by their tails, and poke wild boars' rear ends with huge sticks. She'd poke them so hard that mother pigs avoided her like a plague, and male pigs were ashamed of their own masculinity...

All these wild game dishes, without exception, were cooked by her. Lin Xiaosu had been tricked into eating her cooking countless times, to the point where every time he ate her food, he would habitually check the bones to see if the creature he ate was what it was supposed to be.

Today's chicken seemed quite normal.

But the current state of Hu Ya, lying on the bluestone slab with her limbs splayed, her clothes slightly askew, was she normal?

That was truly unknown.

Lin Xiaosu glanced at his phone again...

There was only one minute left until midnight.

He turned off his phone, looked at Hu Ya sprawled on the ground, and told himself: once midnight passes, I will have completed Uncle's request. I'll carry her to the bed in the back to sleep; the ground is cold...

Midnight arrived!

The mountain did not shake, the earth did not move.

Uncle Li had indeed been speaking nonsense with a straight face!

Just as Lin Xiaosu was internally confirming this "indeed"...

A faint light flashed.

Extremely faint, like starlight from the heavens, or perhaps a firefly that had flown into the temple.

It came from the bluestone slab beneath him.

Lin Xiaosu took three steps and moved to stand above the point of light. He crouched down, placing one eye against the light, trying to see what was inside the stone.

The moment he looked, his entire body turned to stone!

The stone, which had looked ordinary during the day, now seemed to have opened a skylight...

Looking through the "skylight"...

Inside the stone was an endless river of stars.

Within the river of stars, an ancient stone tablet.

On the stone tablet, a bare little tree, with only one branch. On the branch were more than ten leaves, each emitting a seven-colored glow, extremely peculiar, as if it were a miniature universe itself.

Beneath the stone tablet, there was a crystal coffin, with clouds and mist swirling within.

As Lin Xiaosu's gaze fell upon the coffin, his mind was greatly shaken. There was someone in the coffin, a female corpse lying peacefully within.

From her neck down, clouds covered her, revealing only her face. Even with just her face, it still gave Lin Xiaosu the greatest shock.

Words like "sinking fish and falling geese" or "hiding the moon and shaming the flowers" were insufficient to describe her...

She didn't look dead.

She looked like she was peacefully slumbering beneath the vast expanse of stars.

Her sleeping posture was a beauty that no painter in this era could capture.

At some unknown time, Lin Xiaosu felt his consciousness shift, transforming into a small silver fish, swimming above this incredibly beautiful face, quietly gazing at the slumbering immortal.

Suddenly, a leaf on the stone tablet above flicked, and a drop of dew fell.

This drop of dew shimmered with seven-colored light, as if passing through endless time and space, falling down.

Just as it was about to drip onto the female corpse's eyelids, Lin Xiaosu was startled and instinctively blocked it.

With this block, a bone-chilling sensation spread through his sea of consciousness, and a mysterious message entered his mind: Heavenly Dao Insightful Eye, perceive the infinitesimal, reverse time and space