Trouble at the airport

"Dad, did I succeed?"

"Yes."

"This doesn't seem nearly as hard as you made it sound."

"If you don't believe me, try teaching it to someone else."

Zhang Hongxing spoke expressionlessly, then turned and left the guard post. Less than an hour had passed, yet snow had already begun falling outside. The soldiers who had come out earlier still stood ramrod straight beneath the open sky, their gazes fixed on Buddha Country across the border.

It was because these men guarded the frontier through wind and rain that the people of the Xia Kingdom could live peaceful lives.

The youngest among them was only nineteen.

At thirty-one, Zhang Bing was already the oldest of the group.

The snow grew heavier, and fierce winds began to blow, but the soldiers remained standing straight.

"What do you think? They're good soldiers, aren't they?"

At some point, Zhang Bing had followed him outside. Seeing where his father was looking, he felt a surge of pride—pride in being able to lead these soldiers.

"They certainly are."

With that, Zhang Hongxing walked forward and made a full circuit of the Red Valley Garrison. Then he gathered things from nearby: stones, the bones of dead animals, and a small tree that caught his eye.

Having seen their situation, he could hardly stand by and do nothing.

He wanted to lay down a Heaven-Earth Grand Formation that would keep out the wind and snow and make this place as warm as spring all year round. Setting up such a grand formation without any spiritual object to serve as its core would cost him far more than a little effort.

To ensure the formation took shape successfully, he even forced out a trace of his own essence blood.

His strength, which had been at the Golden Core Realm, plunged straight back to early Foundation Establishment.

The formation rose, and the wind and snow fell away.

Within a radius of one li, plants sprang back to life, and flowers bloomed in the warmth of spring.

"Dad, why did you have to go this far?"

Zhang Bing had clearly seen Zhang Hongxing force out his essence blood. When his father's face abruptly turned deathly pale, he more or less guessed what had happened.

The changes that followed throughout the garrison confirmed his suspicions.

"We're all people of the Xia Kingdom. Doing this little bit is nothing."

"Dad!"

Zhang Bing solemnly gave Zhang Hongxing a military salute. Of all the times he had called him Dad that day, this was the loudest and most heartfelt.

Zhang Hongxing smiled and patted Zhang Bing on the shoulder. "All right, it's time I headed back. I still need to go check on Yingzi. There's not much more for me to say here. Work hard at your cultivation and keep yourself safe."

"I understand, Dad."

Though their time together had been brief, Zhang Bing had accepted Zhang Hongxing as his father.

All the way back to Shimen County, Zhang Hongxing pondered how to combine immortal cultivation with technology. The more he thought about it, the more feasible it seemed. At the very least, formations could be combined with technology.

He had thousands of formations in his head, large and small, if not tens of thousands.

The only questions now were how to combine the two, what purpose the result could serve, and how to adapt it so ordinary people could design and modify it themselves.

Aside from drawing on the power of heaven and earth, formations also required the creator's true qi as a catalyst.

Sometimes, true qi was also needed to inscribe runes.

What methods could ordinary people use to accomplish these things?

In the Zhang family's courtyard, Wenwen clung to the corner of her mother Zhang Ying's clothes, refusing to leave.

"Mommy, can we wait until Grandpa comes back before we go? Mommy?"

"Yingzi, why don't you stay another day? Your dad is probably already on the plane."

"Yingzi, you hardly ever come home. What's wrong with staying a few more days? How about I call Qin Dagang and talk to him? It's only been a few days. He's a grown man—what's so hard about being on his own?"

The family took turns trying to persuade her, but none of them could change Zhang Ying's mind. In the end, she led Wenwen, who cried the whole way, into a taxi bound for the airport.

Just as Zhang Hongxing arrived home, Zhang Ying's plane took off.

They had missed each other with almost perfect timing.

In a movie, people and events missed like this would usually be left behind.

Everything would be left to time.

But Zhang Hongxing was not that sort of person. After briefly seeing his family at home, he instructed Zhang Jun to take a Life-Extending Vitality Pill to Elder Zhuang as repayment for the extra twenty million he had given him.

Then he took another ride to the airport and bought a ticket for the next available flight to Capital City.

Since his daughter's marriage might involve domestic violence, he naturally had to investigate it thoroughly.

As for the identification needed to buy a plane ticket, Lin Kui had already taken care of that before Zhang Hongxing left for the Biler Red Valley garrison. In fact, he had originally only been reported missing, and his household registration had never been canceled.

All they had done now was make everything properly legal.

The only issue was his age. Being sixty years old while looking thirty was certainly a mismatch, but fortunately, there were some seemingly ageless celebrities in this world with similar discrepancies.

Compared with those celebrities, the gap between his age and appearance was not too outrageous.

With an hour left before departure, Zhang Hongxing arrived at the ticket-checking area, intending to wait in the departure lounge.

For some reason, only two ticket-checking lanes were open that day, leaving two long lines of passengers. Since he still had an hour, Zhang Hongxing was in no particular hurry.

The others did not feel the same, especially several elderly passengers. Their faces were tense, and they kept taking out their phones to check the time.

Even so, no one shoved, cut in line, or vented their frustration by shouting.

But when the lines had moved about halfway forward, two tall, blond, blue-eyed foreigners approached, each pushing a large suitcase.

One of the foreigners went straight to the front of the line and rattled off a stream of words to an airport employee.

Then the employee nodded at him.

After that, the other foreigner pushed his suitcase over.

By then, even an idiot could see what they intended to do.

They were cutting in line so blatantly, without so much as a word to the people waiting.

How could anyone not be angry?

The elderly passengers who were already anxious grabbed one of the foreigners' suitcases.

"Why do they get to cut in line? Is this how your airport does its job?"

"Exactly! Why do they get to go straight through as soon as they arrive, while we have to stand here and wait?"

The people at the front began shouting one after another. One foreigner frowned and was about to lose his temper, but the other forcibly held him back.

Seeing that things were going badly, the airport employee hurried to smooth things over.

"Everyone, these two are foreign guests. Shouldn't we show some generosity befitting a great nation when we welcome foreign guests?"

The airport employee's self-righteous words only fueled everyone's anger. Now it was not just those few elderly passengers who were upset.

Those who had assumed the two foreigners might have some urgent reason for going first suddenly felt that their intelligence had been gravely insulted.

"Generosity befitting a great nation, my ass! I think you've been on your knees so long you've forgotten how to stand!"

"Exactly! Foreigners who come to our country have to follow our country's rules!"

"That's right! Why should a foreigner get special treatment that we don't even get in our own country?"