Zhou Hao felt space and time shift, as if he were once again wrapped in the light of the Taiji Stone and transported to the Wilderness World.
When everything around him settled and he could move again, he found himself standing in an ancient corridor.
"Where is this?" Zhou Hao looked around. Everywhere he glanced, he saw Red Copper Statues—and, as expected, they were all Feifei. (Pronunciation: feifei, third tone.)
The statues lay scattered along both sides of the passage, some as large as adults and others no bigger than a baby's hand. Zhou Hao couldn't help but marvel.
"Have I ended up in a Feifei's den?"
Of course, he had other guesses in mind, too.
"Ruins."
Those two words swirled through Zhou Hao's mind.
Were these the ruins of an ancient immortal's cave abode?
Or were they a legacy left behind by an ancient True God, like the Winged Snake Water Mansion Ji Ning had visited?
Zhou Hao's heart burned with anticipation.
In this world where immortals and demons appeared, there were countless ancient myths, tales of primordial gods and devils, legends of Pangu creating the heavens and the earth and Nuwa creating humanity and repairing the sky, and records of all kinds of immortals, gods, and devils.
Throughout endless ages, who knew how many powerful beings had emerged?
And who knew how many immortal mansions, ruins of gods and devils, and other such places these powerful beings had left behind?
Not to mention the adventures Ji Ning had encountered in the original story Zhou Hao had read. Even among people he knew, Yuan Lie had obtained a God-Devil Body Refining technique and the Chaotic Cloak Staff Technique, while Yang Yun had found an opportunity on the way to Jade Dragon City. Apparently, she had entered a cave abode left behind by an ancient immortal.
There were simply too many cases of people stumbling into the cave abodes of ancient immortals or the ruins of gods and devils.
Some lucky ones gained something from them and rose to prominence.
Others weren't so fortunate. Perhaps the owner of the cave abode had followed the evil or demonic path, or perhaps even a righteous immortal had left behind a special trial. In those cases, they could end up trapped in the ruins forever.
"He's this idle and likes cats this much... He probably won't be hard to get along with."
Zhou Hao glanced back. Not far behind him was the corridor's exit, where an invisible barrier held back the vast, seemingly endless water outside.
The water beyond that barrier seemed even colder, freezing the area around the exit into a thick layer of frost. Feeling the familiar chill in the corridor's air with his divine sense, Zhou Hao confirmed that he was still in the waters surrounding Crouching Ox Island.
"The most likely candidate is the Loose Immortal who occupied Crouching Ox Island back then."
Zhou Hao took out a beast-hide coat and put it on, then started down the corridor.
Whatever the case, since fortune had brought him here, it would be a waste not to explore.
As Zhou Hao advanced, the Feifei statues scattered along the sides of the corridor grew fewer and fewer. At the same time, they looked newer and newer, as if they had just been made.
"Just made?" Zhou Hao's heart jolted. "Could there still be someone in these ruins?"
He rounded a bend, and his pupils contracted.
It was a vast hall, dozens of zhang tall and nearly two hundred zhang long and wide.
What shocked Zhou Hao most was a Bronze Furnace, more than twenty zhang tall, floating in midair. Beneath it, the floor had caved in, and deep purple flames surged out, turning the bottom of the furnace red-hot.
A white Feifei that looked like a civet—but more like an ordinary orange tabby from Earth—lounged on a jade seat nearby. One raised paw waved now and then toward the Bronze Furnace.
"A cat... is forging an artifact?" Zhou Hao gaped.
Pff! A muffled sound rang out.
A streak of red light shot out of the Bronze Furnace and stopped in midair not far in front of the white Feifei.
"Mm~~~~" The white Feifei slowly rose and stretched on the jade seat. "Among all Feifei, I really am the most handsome."
Zhou Hao looked at the red light that had just flown out of the Bronze Furnace.
Sure enough, it was a newly made Red Copper Statue, and it looked exactly like the Feifei before him as it stretched.
"So all those statues were made by this Feifei." Zhou Hao suddenly understood. "I knew no one could be that idle..."
Still, a Feifei that idle was rare. Though, to be fair, this was his first time seeing one of these pets, supposedly kept by high-level immortals to amuse themselves in their cave abodes.
The white Feifei swiped the statue into a corner with its paw, then turned and looked at Zhou Hao. There seemed to be a hint of joy in its jewel-like eyes. "You've finally come."
"Who are you?" Zhou Hao asked cautiously.
Although the Feifei before him looked very much like a cat, with a sweet, harmless appearance, who knew how profound its cultivation was?
What if, besides being narcissistic and liking to make statues of itself, it also liked eating people... Cats were carnivores, weren't they?
"Me? I used to be a Feifei. After I died, Hongchen refined my soul into the Immortal Mansion Spirit."
The white Feifei licked its paw, then smoothed the white fur on its forehead.
"Hongchen used to call me 'Ou,' but I felt that a single 'Ou' didn't do justice to the bearing of the Feifei Emperor. So you can call me... 'Ou Huang.'" (Ou, first tone, written with the traditional character, is the same as 'Ou.')
A cat that had been dead for who knew how many years, with a few screws loose and an extreme case of narcissism...
Zhou Hao instantly reached his verdict.
"Uh, O-Ou Huang." Zhou Hao suppressed the urge to make a snarky remark. "You said 'Hongchen' refined you into the Immortal Mansion Spirit. Was Hongchen the master here? And where is he now?"
"Fifty thousand years ago, he knew he wouldn't survive the Loose Immortal Tribulation that came every nine hundred thousand years, so he left the Water Mansion alone." Ou Huang shook his head. "He's probably been dead for tens of thousands of years by now."
Zhou Hao nodded to himself. As expected.
If the master were still here, no one could stand having their cave abode occupied by countless Feifei statues.
"You said I'd finally come. Have you been waiting for me all this time?" Zhou Hao asked.
"Not for you. I've been waiting for someone carrying the Red Dust Immortal Mansion's Signal Talisman." Ou Huang grumbled.
"Before Hongchen left, he said someone carrying the Signal Talisman would come within eight hundred or a thousand years at most. But I ended up waiting a full fifty thousand years!"
"Is this the Signal Talisman?" Zhou Hao took out the Red Copper Statue from his Mustard Stone Space again.
"Mm, that's the one." A trace of nostalgia crossed Ou Huang's eyes as he looked at the statue. "Hongchen made it for me himself. It was my first statue, too."
So... had he spent all those fifty thousand years making statues of himself?
"Kid, is your surname Ling?" After reminiscing for a while, Ou Huang looked at Zhou Hao and asked, "Was this statue passed down through your ancestors? Why did you only come today?"
"Ling? Was that the surname of the Loose Immortal Hongchen?" Zhou Hao wondered.
He guessed that claiming he was a Ling might bring him some benefits, but he wasn't about to lie to an Immortal Mansion Spirit—especially one that seemed a little off-kilter.
"My surname is Zhou. My name is Zhou Hao. It isn't Ling." Zhou Hao shook his head. "I bought this statue at a market."
"You're an honest kid, at least." Ou Huang nodded. "There's a bloodline formation in this hall that Hongchen left behind. If you weren't descended from the Ling Clan, I could activate it and you'd be dead. Since you're not, there's no need to verify anything. Come with me and collect the benefits Hongchen left behind."
When Ou Huang mentioned the formation that could identify his bloodline, Zhou Hao felt a chill of fear. Good thing he hadn't pretended to be a Ling.
But when it immediately told him to come collect the benefits, Zhou Hao was stunned.
"We're collecting them just like that?"
Where was the trial?
Wasn't he supposed to complete some trial first, fight a bunch of puppets, struggle through untold hardships and narrowly escape death, then finally obtain the legacy left by the senior Loose Immortal? And wasn't he supposed to be deeply grateful, feel that immortal fate was hard to come by, and then rise to unstoppable prominence?
"What else did you expect?" Ou Huang seemed to see right through Zhou Hao's thoughts and scoffed.
"You make such a big fuss about wanting your legacy to live on, then deliberately leave behind some so-called trial to put obstacles in the way. Do you think Hongchen was that kind of vulgar person?"
"Besides, there was only one Signal Talisman. What was I supposed to do, keep it for myself? It had to go to someone eventually. Since you're here, it's yours."
You people really were so casual! And I loved it!
Still, Zhou Hao had some doubts. "But what if an evil person came?"
"What is good? What is evil?"
"You say you're a good person, so that makes you good? You do something bad, so that makes you evil?"
Ou Huang shook its head disdainfully.
"Even the Heavenly Dao's merit and sin are just shackles placed on powerful cultivators, to keep them from slaughtering living beings at will."
"Nothing is harder to fathom than the human heart. One thought can make you a Buddha; the next, a demon. What standard is there for judging good and evil? If they can't be judged, why distinguish between them?"
Zhou Hao listened, stunned.
At first, those words seemed wildly unconventional, but on closer thought, they made a fair bit of sense.
He knew that the Wilderness World had a concept of merit and sin.
Some evil cultivators and demonic cultivators killed countless living beings to practice their arts, piling up sins to the heavens. But why did they kill? Was it for the sins imposed by the Heavenly Dao?
Obviously not.
It was because cultivating that way could increase their strength far faster than normal cultivation, and it brought them benefits.
The sins imposed by the Heavenly Dao were a punishment and a warning, meant to stop other cultivators from following their example.
And then there was merit.
Doing good deeds brought merit. The more merit you accumulated, the stronger your fortune became. With stronger fortune, you had a better chance of encountering all sorts of lucky opportunities and fortunes. Even when you faced danger, divine aid seemed to lend you a hand, opening up another path to survival... The benefits were many.
So why did people do good deeds?
Because they were naturally kind?
Wasn't it still because accumulating merit benefited them?
"Why am I thinking about this? This is clearly a philosophical question! Let those virtuous cultivators rack their brains over it."
Zhou Hao gave a self-mocking smile.
"I'm just an ordinary guy. I'll do what my conscience tells me and stay alive as long as I can."
Seeing Ou Huang pad toward another corridor on one side of the hall, Zhou Hao hurried after him.
A free handout? My conscience told me I couldn't refuse!
Before you continue