Yi Shuyuan then steered the conversation elsewhere.
On his last visit, Yi Shuyuan had wanted to ask the Mountain God more about cultivation. Today was the perfect opportunity to make up for that, and there was an ancient pine elder of considerable attainment here as well.
Huang Hongchuan was right about one concern: it was best not to spread word of Wawa, at least until they had truly turned heaven and earth around and could set aside some of their worries.
The old pine was someone whose background they knew well. His name was Song Chao, meaning "standing in the mountains to greet the morning sun." He was a great demon who had cultivated on Broad South Mountain for over six hundred years, and his original ancient pine body was nearly a thousand years old.
The old pine had been on Broad South Mountain longer than Huang Hongchuan. Though trapped here, unable to leave his original form, his cultivation was anything but ordinary.
Even so, since awakening to sentience, the old pine had never harmed a person, nor had he ever deliberately injured an animal in the mountains. Like a great tree unchanged through the ages, he had offered shelter and protection to countless living creatures.
Even Huang Hongchuan treated the old pine with considerable respect.
The three drank tea and chatted beside the stream. When the old pine heard that a lightning tribulation might have descended during Awakening of Insects, he broke into a cold sweat. He had never noticed any tribulation falling upon Broad South Mountain that day.
Of the events on the night of Awakening of Insects, two had caught the old pine's attention. The first was Huang Hongchuan's Mountain God temple being struck by lightning.
The second was Wawa's death. But mountain spirits that became too