"Does that matter?!"
Yan Kuan's retort plunged the First Valley Lord and Third Valley Lord into silence. After a long while, the First Valley Lord, who had attained the Dao as an Immortal Crane, finally spoke.
"Third Brother, go fetch it! Brother Li is an honored guest of Ten Thousand Demons Valley. I believe we can have a proper talk."
With the First Valley Lord giving the order, the Third Valley Lord naturally had no objections. However, the warmth in his gaze toward Yan Kuan had vanished, and he could not shake the feeling that he had been deceived.
The First Valley Lord chuckled. "Brother Li, don't take offense. Third Brother has always been like this."
Yan Kuan openly admitted that his reasons for entering Ten Thousand Demons Valley had not been pure, that he had harbored other intentions. "First Valley Lord, I know what I did was indeed somewhat excessive. But before this, I wasn't certain I could share this secret with you, so I had no choice but to use a few tricks."
"Brother Li, this should be what you were looking for."
By the time Monkey returned to the pavilion, he had already composed himself. He placed a jade box before Yan Kuan. "As far as Ten Thousand Demons Valley knows, Great Sage Chisongzi of ancient times once obtained a piece of Immortal Bone at Mount Tiantai of Zhejiang. It was said to contain the secret of Becoming Immortal.
Following the clues, he came to Shu. It was said that part of the remnant diagram on the Immortal Bone pointed here. Yet he spent half his life in Shu without finding the ultimate hidden place. His efforts fell short at the final step, and he failed to become immortal.
Ten Thousand Demons Valley is considered a major force in Sichuan, so naturally we know many secrets from ancient times. Valley Lords throughout the generations have pursued this secret, even tracing the path Chisongzi left behind back then.
Our predecessors discovered that Chisongzi might truly have been pursuing a real immortal. He had nearly touched upon that secret.
In particular, an old Valley Lord five hundred years ago made a shocking discovery. Unfortunately, before he could reveal the secret, he perished in the Immortal Sword Sky Pool."
Monkey carefully recounted everything. After the Dao lineage passed down by Chisongzi faded away and departed, Ten Thousand Demons Valley had also begun pursuing that secret.
They expended vast manpower and resources investigating it, and by chance made a breakthrough discovery in ancient Hanging Coffins. They obtained several Ancient Jade Books from the oldest Hanging Coffins.
Ancient records mentioned it in more than one place. Ten Thousand Demons Valley had also seriously deduced that there might truly have been a real Earth Immortal, rather than a legend of a human deified by later generations.
"Earth Immortal's Dwelling, halfway up the cliff lie thousands of Hanging Coffins."
"They say immortal bones are buried there."
The experts of Ten Thousand Demons Valley discovered that the person Chisongzi sought might have been that legendary Earth Immortal.
As Yan Kuan listened to Monkey recount ancient tales, his right hand opened the jade box. Several pieces of Ancient Jade came into view. Their colors were dull, their age having long stripped away their splendor. Blood stains marked them, said to have formed from corpse blood seeping in after long contact with bodies.
He held them in his hand and turned them over. Though they possessed no shimmering radiance or unusual colors, they were smooth and delicate, warming his palm the moment he touched them. These were Ancient Jade Books; any one of them was worth a fortune.
Without question, they were all national treasures. The appearance of each one would cause a sensation, and their surfaces were carved with densely packed Oracle Bone Script.
The six pieces of Ancient Jade were all different in color—some golden yellow, some blood red, some white as mutton fat. Their luster was restrained, as though covered in dust, and mottled traces of time covered them. One glance was enough to tell they were ancient artifacts.
These had been obtained through the endless efforts of Ten Thousand Demons Valley's experts over generations. They had been taken from ancient Hanging Coffins, and no one knew how many coffins had been opened from Sichuan to Mount Wuyi. The two oldest pieces had been personally found by the first-generation Valley Lord, that Ancient Demon God.
Yan Kuan turned the ancient jade pieces beneath the sunlight, carefully studying every character on them. These ancient words resembled birds, beasts, fish, and insects, and were extremely obscure. He listened to Monkey's interpretation while comparing it with what he had learned, gradually grasping their general meaning.
The Ancient Jade Books found in the Hanging Coffins recorded a heaven-shaking secret that vaguely pointed to an Earth Immortal. Back then, Chisongzi possessed a piece of Immortal Bone bearing part of a terrain map. He came to Sichuan and personally opened tens of thousands of Hanging Coffins, only to fall short in the end and fail to obtain what he sought.
After learning this secret, the experts of Ten Thousand Demons Valley throughout the generations had also pursued it. Although they had no piece of Immortal Bone to guide them, they adopted a more direct method, traveling throughout the Eastern Lands and opening one ancient Hanging Coffin after another in search of what Chisongzi had wanted.
These six pieces of Ancient Jade were their final gains. They vaguely mentioned an Earth Immortal, but gave no location at all. No one knew where it was; it was exceedingly mysterious.
"This is... a complete Jade Scroll Map."
Monkey abruptly stopped speaking. Old Crane beside him also stared at Yan Kuan's movements in astonishment. Yan Kuan placed the six Jade Books on the table, then somehow produced three more and pieced them all together into a complete Jade Scroll Map.
When Chisongzi entered Shu and opened the Hanging Coffins, he had not come away empty-handed. He obtained three Jade Books, but later, for some unknown reason, abandoned his pursuit of that secret. He was eventually buried in an Ancient Tomb on Mount Ba Ling, attempting to undergo corporeal dissolution and become an Immortal Flame Burial Ground.
After Chisongzi, the Ancient Demon God Ancestor of Ten Thousand Demons Valley obtained two Jade Books. The remaining four were gathered by later generations over several thousand years.
Monkey carefully examined the terrain map formed by the Jade Books before Yan Kuan, then suddenly exclaimed excitedly, "These nine pieces of Ancient Jade are all different colors. Why do they look like a single whole after being put together? Even the Oracle Bone Script connects!"
Old Crane said gravely from the side, "They were originally nine Jade Books carved during the same period. They were merely separated later, which is why they can be joined together and their contents connect."
The nine ancient jade pieces merged into one, revealing an astonishing Dragon Mountain terrain. Beside it was an inscription in Oracle Bone Script, its words brief and concise, confirming the existence of an Earth Immortal: born without touching the ground, dead without entering the soil, an Immortal Fetus, untouched by dust for all eternity.
After the Nine Ancient Jade Pieces were joined together, they revealed Ninety-Nine True Dragons. Upon closer inspection, they were Ninety-Nine Dragon Mountains, coiling and converging in a grand, awe-inspiring formation. This was truly terrain rarely seen in all ages.
"What place is this? Setting everything else aside, this terrain alone is extraordinary!"
The Third Valley Lord repeatedly shook his head in amazement. "I have never seen terrain like this. I have traveled the world, both within the seas and beyond them, yet I have never encountered such terrain."
"This is a terrain map from ancient times, vastly different from the mountains and rivers we see today. Look—doesn't one of these resemble the Yellow River? Its terrain is like a Dragon, surging into the sea, twisting through nine bends, ancient and magnificent."
Old Crane was highly knowledgeable and spoke of ancient secrets he had heard. The ancient terrain legend of the Ninety-Nine Dragon Mountains was not empty fiction. This terrain map could not be false either; it simply needed to be carefully compared against the mountains and rivers of reality.
As Old Crane spoke, he sketched the ancient course of the Yellow River beside it. It was vastly different from the present one, for over countless millennia, the Yellow River had changed course an unknown number of times.
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