Volume Four: "An immortal's dream journey to Luofu" - At the summit, all other mountains seemed small

By the time Xing Yan realized that he had just met a lofty adept face-to-face and let him slip away, and hurried forward to catch him, the elderly Daoist who had come singing along the path was already nowhere to be seen. He seemed to have vanished into thin air!

"Ah! Such immortal powers, and I let him slip right through my fingers! What a pity, what a pity! It seems my destined blessings still aren't enough!"

The mountain path lay silent, with only white clouds drifting leisurely along the horizon. Gazing at the deserted stone trail before him, Xing Yan felt a pang of loss.

The stone path on which the boy stood ran beside a forest on the mountainside. There was nothing to shelter its right flank, and the mountain wind blew fiercely. After standing on the desolate trail for a while, Xing Yan felt a chill as the wind whipped his clothes. Remembering Chen Ziping, who was still resting in the pavilion halfway up the mountain, he could only turn back in disappointment.

Yet in the woods to the left of the stone path where the boy had just gazed so wistfully, an elderly Daoist sat on a blue-gray rock among the grass, his shoes off, rubbing his feet incessantly. He sighed in vexation:

"Ah! I really shouldn't have been so eager to take a shortcut. Now I've twisted my ankle on a rock and will have to rest for ages... rotten luck, rotten luck!"

Leaving aside the Daoist with the twisted ankle in the woods, Xing Yan and Chen Ziping climbed for more than another two hours before finally reaching the mountain gate of Shangqing Palace. An old stone gateway stood at the fork leading to Mount Luofu's four principal peaks. Tall and plain in