Wonderful, Wonderful—The Great Dao Lies Within Reach

The next day, dawn had only just begun to break, yet the cold wind was even fiercer than it had been the night before.

Ren Shanshi had slept uneasily all night. Hearing movement outside the rear courtyard, he hurriedly threw on his clothes and rose, noticing Zhao Xiaoliu standing in the alley through the crack in the door.

"Shopkeeper Ren, it's me, Zhao Xiaoliu. Is the coffin ready?"

"Officer Zhao, the coffin is inside."

Ren Shanshi hastily opened the front doors. Zhao Xiaoliu's complexion looked much better than yesterday's, and he was hardly coughing anymore, though the whites of his eyes were still webbed with bloodshot veins.

"Officer Zhao, how about a sip of morning tea first? I'll wake my boy and have him help move the coffin."

"No need. I'll do it."

Zhao Xiaoliu waved impatiently and strode quickly over to the coffin.

"Officer, this coffin is very heavy..."

Ren Shanshi had just been about to warn him that the coffin contained something weighty. Even he and his son had found it extremely difficult to carry together, let alone someone as thin and wiry as Zhao Xiaoliu.

Yet what happened next took him entirely by surprise.

"Ungh."

With a muffled grunt, Zhao Xiaoliu hoisted the coffin and turned to leave.

Ren Shanshi stood frozen in astonishment. By the time the coffin had been set onto the handcart, he finally came back to himself, only to find Zhao Xiaoliu already preparing to leave the coffin shop.

Gritting his teeth, he chased after him into the rear courtyard. "Officer, I wanted to ask about the Immortal Ascension—"

Zhao Xiaoliu paused and turned his face slightly. "Last night, the entire Zhang household in the western district died. Only some bones were found; the bodies have vanished without a trace. Nine times out of ten, it has something to do with the Immortal Ascension Sect."

He gave Ren Shanshi a complicated look. "Don't worry, Shopkeeper. As long as you don't go spreading rumors, the Immortal Ascension Sect won't drag you into this."

With that, Zhao Xiaoliu said no more, his figure disappearing into the depths of the alley.

Ren Shanshi remained standing there at a loss, opening his mouth as if to say something, yet finding himself unable to speak.

"Dad, are you all right?"

Ren Qing emerged from the side room, his gaze falling upon Ren Shanshi, who was still standing there in a daze.

As expected of a mortal world—his Dao heart was weak.

Still, his bargain father's coffin-making business could easily draw danger upon them. He needed to find a way to change trades. The funeral business was unreliable, and it did not earn much silver anyway.

"N-No, I'm fine. I'll go tidy up the shop. Since the coffin has already left the premises, it has nothing to do with us anymore. From now on, let's pretend none of this ever happened."

Ren Qing chatted idly with Ren Shanshi.

Yet inwardly, he was pondering Zhao Xiaoliu's transformation. If he had not seen wrongly, the latter's Yellow Mud Immortal Ascension Method had already crossed the threshold, which was why his strength had surged.

And he faintly gave off an aura.

Ren Qing pinched the bridge of his nose. That was right—it was divine consciousness. Zhao Xiaoliu had already cultivated a trace of divine consciousness.

According to the records from his previous life, only ancient cultivators on the verge of ascending to immortality could nurture divine consciousness. Yet in this world, an ordinary mortal had reached the realm of an earthly immortal in a single night.

Truly... interesting.

Ren Qing licked his lips. He could now be certain that this world was the Immortal Realm.

Since he truly was in the Immortal Realm, the Daoist legacy he had inherited in his previous life would not go to waste.

"Ah Qing, I'll get back to work, then." Ren Shanshi gave him a string of instructions, which went in one of Ren Qing's ears and out the other, yet there was no obstacle whatsoever in communication between father and son.

"Dad, I'm going to the market to buy a few things."

"Got it."

Ren Shanshi readily agreed, showing not the slightest concern over whether his youngest son might encounter danger going out alone. In the past, he would at least have asked a few questions.

Before long, the sounds of timber being moved came from the rear courtyard.

Ren Qing glanced back at his bargain father. The Yellow Mud Eye between his brows had opened just slightly not long ago; with only the faintest urging of his divine consciousness, he had already influenced Ren Shanshi.

"This poor Daoist has already attained immortality and realized the Dao. Once I stir my divine consciousness, it is only natural that my every word and action can sway a mortal's thoughts."

Ren Qing suddenly remembered something and called toward the coffin shop.

"Dad."

"What is it?"

Ren Shanshi poked his head out, whereupon Ren Qing asked, "You should be over forty this year, right?"

"Forty-six. Your mother was frail, so she gave birth to you very late. Then she passed away early..."

"Dad, get back to work."

Ren Qing paid Ren Shanshi no further attention. The marvelous uses of divine consciousness were already beginning to show. At the very least, he no longer needed to hide his everyday actions so carefully. Mm, though Ren Shanshi was a great medicine for cultivating the heart, so in the future, he would have to guide him toward striving ever upward.

After all, forty was exactly the age to fight and struggle.

He lingered no longer, pulling the brim of his bamboo hat low before following the stream of people south.

The closer he came to the docks, the more clamorous the voices became. The cold wind carried the reek of fish, and even from far away, he could see the dense, dark mass of people all hurrying to market.

The marketplace was incomparably lively, with several black-canopied boats moored along the shore.

The fishermen were hauling cargo ashore, fresh fish flopping in the nets and scattering fine chips of ice.

Quite a few crude shacks had been erected nearby.

The scents of all kinds of breakfast foods wafted through the air; assistants from the cloth shops held up bolts of fabric and shouted their wares; bare-chested street performers turned somersaults...

Ren Qing feigned great interest, but his Dao heart remained as still as an ancient well.

His main purpose in coming was to test whether the immortal realm was real. Since it was an immortal realm, it surely contained abundant spiritual materials of heaven and earth—he had merely lacked divine consciousness before, making them difficult to detect.

At the same time, he needed to prepare for his first Molting. Given the current situation, he had to complete it as soon as possible.

Ren Qing suddenly noticed a herb peddler squatting on the ground some distance away, shouting at the top of his lungs.

"Fifty-year-old wild mountain ginseng! Cures a hundred ailments and prolongs your life!"

A thick-rooted ginseng lay in the bamboo basket, drawing quite a few people over for a closer look.

Before Ren Qing could approach the herb peddler, he caught sight of an even more crowded spot by the market docks. Several fishermen had hung a green fish over two meters long from a pole. Even more people had gathered to watch, packed three layers deep inside and three layers deep outside.

"This green fish has to weigh at least a hundred jin. Look at those scales—it must be an old thing that's lived twenty years!"

"What a rarity! An old green fish is practically a spirit already. This is the first time I've seen one."

Ren Qing blended into the crowd. The Yellow Mud Eye between his brows quietly opened, and immortal light flashed deep within its pupil.

"Let this poor Daoist see whether the immortal realm's spiritual materials have anything unusual about them..."

In an instant, the scene before him changed drastically.

Ren Qing sucked in a sharp breath. He saw the herb peddler pick up the ginseng and display it to passersby.

Beneath the ginseng's roots, more than a dozen finger-length little feet had grown in dense clusters. They looked strikingly human, shuffling about with faint rustling sounds.

When he turned his head, the green fish was even stranger.

Its eyeballs were exactly like a human's. From its mouth came the crying of an infant that ordinary mortals could not hear, while it stared unblinkingly at the three fishermen.

"Hiss, how... how can it be this sinister? Could it be that the older they get, the more human-like they become?"

Ren Qing also noticed something odd: tiny fish scales covered the three fishermen's necks, though in the eyes of ordinary mortals, it was merely a common skin ailment.

He quickly calmed down again and let out a cold laugh.

"It's an immortal realm. It's perfectly normal for flowers, birds, fish, and insects to gradually become more like living beings as time passes. Perhaps in another hundred years, that green fish might even become some sort of fish demon."

"The fishermen must occasionally eat demonized aquatic creatures in their daily lives and suffer erosion from demonic qi, which is why they've developed such abnormal traits."

"Wonderful, wonderful—the Great Dao is within reach!!"