The courtyard was filled with the sight of Chen Xuan furrowing his brows tightly, staring at Bronze Horse as she gesticulated anxiously in midair with her hooves, trying to figure out what she meant.
"Roar, roar!"
"You mean your home is gone? Where did you even get a home?"
"Roar, roar!!"
"Oh, you mean that Underground Palace in Peach Town suddenly vanished? Huh? Why did you return to Peach Town?"
"Roar, roar!"
Bronze Horse hurriedly explained that she had not betrayed him. She had merely been away from home for a long time and missed it... So yesterday, she had secretly flown back to Peach Town for a look, only to find that the Underground Palace was gone!
"You've only been away for two or three days, and you're already homesick?"
Chen Xuan studied Bronze Horse suspiciously a few times, then generously offered to ask around for her.
"This can actually communicate?" A Qi Refiner from next door had come out after hearing the commotion. Now, he stared with his eyes wide open.
Early the next morning, Chen Xuan left the house to visit several Qi Refiners who had recently arrived at Small River Village.
He soon learned from them that when they had passed through Peach Town, they had not seen any horrifying Underground Palace at all. Ancient Demon was merely a desolate, dilapidated little town.
The Underground Palace had truly vanished!
"Brother Horse, that's how things are. Please accept my condolences."
Chen Xuan left Small River Village and found Bronze Horse behind a nearby hill. He helplessly spread his hands, then regretfully explained that he had important matters to attend to and could not return to Peach Town to investigate the truth. They would have to wait until later.
"Roar, roar!"
Bronze Horse shouted and spun around several times on the spot. Then, her expression turned solemn as she told Chen Xuan an earth-shattering secret.
She said that the person buried in that Underground Palace had an extraordinary identity. Once, in the dead of night, she had seen a figure walk into the Underground Palace to pay respects to the Bronze Coffin, letting out wails of grief.
"That's perfectly normal. Anyone who can live in such a huge house after death must have had a few relatives and friends, right?"
Chen Xuan explained that his conscience was clear and he had nothing to fear from shadows. Although he had entered the Underground Palace, he had not done anything improper to the female corpse inside the coffin. Even if someone came looking for him because of it in the future, he would not be afraid.
His morals were high, and he exercised restraint. If it had been another Qi Refiner, let alone the Terrestrial Treasure Tree in the coffin, they probably would have carried off the corpse and coffin together.
"Roar, roar..."
Seeing how calm Chen Xuan was, Bronze Horse felt somewhat reassured. She was merely an unwilling guide forced into the matter; if the sky fell, the rightful master was still there to hold it up! In the end, she accepted reality and left.
"And here I thought it was something serious..."
Chen Xuan watched the horse's shadow vanish into the sky and shook his head with a laugh.
Then he remembered the female corpse in the Bronze Coffin, dressed in golden clothes... Could she be a member of the Ancient Chu Kingdom's imperial bloodline? Why was she buried in a backwater like Peach Town?
"There must be all kinds of tangled secrets involved."
Chen Xuan did not dwell on it. He returned to his room and continued cultivating in seclusion.
That was the most urgent matter at present. The people from Green Deer Mountain could not remain in the Southern Wilderness Mountains forever. One day, they would surely leave the mountains to rest and recover.
Chen Xuan would wait for them in Small River Village.
He was not afraid of waiting, because with every passing day, his strength steadily increased.
Nine days later.
"Roar!"
A roar brimming with primordial savagery rang out from the silent little house.
Chen Xuan opened his eyes. A wisp of golden-white Immortal Qi coiled around him, swirling like a moving starburst and radiating a sharp, metallic aura like blades and swords.
White Qi!
Little White Ape Trick, barely grasping the basics!
"My strength has risen to six thousand jin!"
Feeling the explosively surging aura within him, Chen Xuan realized that after mastering the Little White Ape Trick, his body had automatically undergone a transformation, increasing his strength by a full eighteen hundred jin.
This effect was already no weaker than eating a precious Terrestrial Treasure Tree!
"At this moment, even facing those geniuses from Red Crow City, I won't be at the slightest disadvantage."
Chen Xuan was elated. He muttered to himself that he could perform a trick now, too!
Only after learning a trick could one truly be called a Qi Refiner!
Afterward, Chen Xuan left the courtyard and investigated the situation through some of the Qi Refiners he had recently met.
"Have the people from Green Deer Mountain settled down in the mountains?"
After consolidating the information he had gathered from various sources, Chen Xuan was stunned to discover that ever since Green Deer Mountain had entered the Southern Wilderness, they had not left even once. They seemed to have countless treasure maps in hand, scouring the mountains every day for rare treasures of heaven and earth.
Yellow Millet Dream!
He was making progress every day, but his enemies were not falling behind in the slightest!
"Red Qi and White Qi conflict with each other. If I force myself to cultivate, the difficulty will double. I'll need at least twenty days..."
Chen Xuan muttered to himself, then looked toward the vast mountain ranges to the south.
Should I keep waiting?
He had already waited too many days.
No more waiting!
Chen Xuan decided to enter the mountains at once. He had already learned from other Qi Refiners that the people from Green Deer Mountain had shown themselves in certain parts of the Southern Wilderness Mountains.
If he still could not find them by then, he would continue practicing tricks in the mountains!
The mountain wind parted the mist, revealing ten thousand li of mountains and marshes. Peaks rose layer upon layer, like a painting slowly unfurling.
The Southern Wilderness Ten Thousand Mountains.
"What a spectacular sight."
Chen Xuan rode Bronze Horse southward for a little over twenty li, and the terrain suddenly underwent a heaven-and-earth reversal.
Mountain after mountain, each hundreds or thousands of meters high, rose abruptly from the wasteland, dividing the lands to the north and south. At the end of his field of vision stood countless majestic peaks soaring over ten thousand zhang, joined to the sky in one vast expanse. The sight was breathtaking.
"Whinny."
Bronze Horse let out a low whinny, indicating that they were nearing the Southern Wilderness. She could fly no farther. Beneath those ancient trees stretching away like a verdant ocean, countless primordial auras were spreading.
Flying through the air recklessly could easily lead them into the territory of some ancient mountain beast, which might snatch her down and eat her.
"You wait here at the edge and find something to do."
Chen Xuan soothed Bronze Horse, then landed and entered the Southern Wilderness mountains and marshes alone.
Bronze Horse was unsuited to moving through the forests. The tree crowns blotted out the sky and blocked her flight. That very day, she had been careless and ended up captured by Chen Xuan.
The mountains and marshes were deep and secluded, with few traces of human presence for twenty years.
"Qi Refiners have gathered here recently, and they've stamped out quite a few mountain paths."
Chen Xuan followed a small path into the Southern Wilderness. After less than half an hour, he unexpectedly reached a somewhat wider mountain road. It was an old road.
Since ancient times, the Southern Wilderness Mountains had been the habitat of the Twenty-Four Ghosts and Monsters. This old road was a trace left behind by their movements.
At this moment.
Chen Xuan had completely left the Ancient Chu Kingdom and entered a world where demons, fiends, and ghosts ran rampant.
"Twenty li southwest, there's a Small Stone Lake. Ghosts and monsters often appear there..."
"Qi Refiners have seen people from Green Deer Mountain wandering around that place, trying to catch the treasure fish in the great lake..."
Chen Xuan muttered to himself, then headed toward Small Stone Lake.
The mountain wind howled, blowing melted snow from the tree crowns. Low beast roars came from the forests on either side of the road, sending birds and beasts fluttering into the air.
Chen Xuan was extremely cautious. The farther he went into the mountains, the greater the danger became. Before long, he noticed a pair of eerily green eyes watching him from the grass beside the road.
"..."
Chen Xuan stopped. It was a mottled tiger four or five meters long, its eyes like torches as they locked firmly onto him.
"Roar!"
Behind Chen Xuan appeared the phantom of a white-furred, red-faced giant ape as large as a small mountain. Its fists, each as big as a basin, pressed against the ground. The White Ape's face was savage, its scarlet eyes glaring fiercely at the mottled tiger.
Little White Ape Trick!
An incomparably primordial aura spread out, like a breached floodgate drowning the mottled tiger.
"Yow!"
The mottled tiger immediately let out a terrified cry, tucked its tail between its legs, and fled in panic.
There was an abundance of food in the mountain forests and plenty of opportunities to hunt. It had no need to risk its life provoking such a dangerous existence.
"The beasts in the Southern Wilderness Mountains are actually this huge."
Chen Xuan watched the tiger flee and breathed a sigh of relief. The mottled tiger's body was extraordinarily massive, and its fangs were as long as daggers. It was countless times fiercer than the tigers of the Ancient Chu Kingdom.
If he had not frightened it away with the White Ape's aura, he might have had to stage a tiger-fighting act today.
Chen Xuan continued forward. When the sunlight slanted westward, he encountered a group of drenched Qi Refiners preparing to leave the mountains.
They were people from the Li Family of Red Crow City.
"Grandpa Han Song, another day has passed, and we're still returning empty-handed. We didn't catch a single treasure fish." A Li Family youth of about twenty years old drooped his head as he spoke.
The Li Family head, Li Han Song, walked at the front and reprimanded him, "Stop looking so mournful. Doing things is just like cultivating Qi; one mustn't fixate on gains and losses at a single moment. We'll come again tomorrow."
Chen Xuan recognized their identities.
The members of the Li Family also saw Chen Xuan at the same time, and all of them were shocked. Wasn't this the peerless fiend who had committed a massacre more than ten days ago?
These past few days, this fiend had remained in Small River Village, but today he had suddenly entered the mountains to compete for treasures of heaven and earth! And now they had even encountered him on a narrow road!
"Don't look at him. Don't look at him..."
The members of the Li Family immediately stopped talking. They lowered their faces like ostriches and cautiously walked forward.
When Li Han Song passed in front of Chen Xuan, he took the initiative to nod amiably, revealing the benevolent smile of an old man. "Fellow Daoist Wang is here too..."
"Mm."
Chen Xuan returned the greeting politely, then brushed past him.
The members of the Li Family had gone a long way before looking back and seeing that Chen Xuan had vanished. Only then did they let out a collective sigh of relief, feeling as if a huge stone pressing on their chests had finally been lifted.
"Grandpa, it's already so late, but Senior Wang still dares to travel alone into the mountains. He's so bold, so formidable. It's truly admirable."
The Li Family youth could not help sighing.
"What senior? He's a brat about the same age as you!"
Li Han Song snorted and earnestly lectured him, "That man relies on his worldly martial arts and acts as if he fears neither Heaven nor Earth. Sooner or later, he'll get himself killed... You must understand, what use is martial skill no matter how high it reaches? What Qi Refiners rely on are tricks. Don't imitate him. In both conduct and action, you must keep your feet firmly on the ground..."
"Huh? Grandpa, could the direction he went in also be Small Stone Lake?"
"Heh, people from Green Deer Mountain appear at Small Stone Lake at night. Does he dare go? Those are the true powerhouses of the world. He wouldn't dare..."
"..."
As they spoke, the group from the Li Family headed toward Small River Village outside the Southern Wilderness.
Before long.
Chen Xuan left the narrow mountain road and turned toward his destination, Small Stone Lake.
It was a vast body of water, stretching more than a thousand meters in every direction. The sight was magnificent.
Snow lay piled along the shore. The lake water was a deep, ghostly green, its depths unfathomable. From time to time, treasure fish as long as a forearm darted across the surface, their bodies covered in scales that gleamed with a silvery-white metallic sheen. They were extraordinarily spirited.
"The members of the Li Family just left from here. They went into the water, but gained nothing."
Chen Xuan watched the Over Mountain Treasure Fish occasionally surface in the lake. Then he lightly tapped the ground with his toe, sending a pebble shooting toward a treasure fish near the shore.
"Plop!"
The stone struck the water. The silver-white treasure fish, over a foot long, shot away like an arrow loosed from a bow, vanishing rapidly beneath the surface. In the blink of an eye, it had appeared dozens of meters away.
If not for the excellent eyesight he had developed through martial arts, he would not even have been able to see where the treasure fish had fled.
"They're too fast, and the lake is too deep. Catching them bare-handed is impossible."
Chen Xuan decisively abandoned the idea of going into the water to catch them. That would be foolish; there was no chance of success.
Moreover, he discovered that these treasure fish had rows of sharp teeth. They gnawed on pebbles underwater, crushing the stones with a single bite and leaving him dumbfounded.
"I didn't come here solely for the treasure fish."
Chen Xuan muttered to himself and stopped paying attention to the treasure fish. He walked around the entire lake once, studying the nearby terrain. Then he entered a place from which he could observe the entire lake, sat down, and concealed himself.
A pair of bright black eyes hid in the darkness. He practiced the Little Firebird Trick while silently waiting.
Would the people from Green Deer Mountain come today?
He still could not be sure.
The Southern Wilderness Mountains were boundless. Searching for a few tiny humans was no different from finding a needle in a vast sea.
Chen Xuan could only wait like a rabbit beneath a tree stump.
The wait did not last long.
At dusk, several people riding cyan elk nearly two meters tall approached the lake. They chatted and laughed all the way.
...Wang Chan.
In the darkness, Chen Xuan heard that name appear among their conversation.
He slowly rose to his feet, like a shark cruising through the deep sea, and soundlessly swam toward the prey he had chosen.
Before you continue