Homecoming, nine Cave Heavens

Deep in the Great Wilderness, amid a primeval forest.

Boom!

With a deafening crash, a low mountain suddenly vanished, razed to the ground.

A girl covered in dust crawled out of the rubble and spat a few times. Then she lifted her little face, showing pearly white teeth in a radiant smile.

"I didn't get lost! I'm back in the Great Wilderness. Love it, love it!" Shi Zhao stroked the dull fragment of the Six Paths Reincarnation Disk in her hand, unable to contain her excitement.

After all, this was a piece of an Immortal King's artifact, and it held the will of a divine spirit within.

Although she was certain that the unremarkable Tattered Cloth in her sea of consciousness had an extraordinary origin, the problem was that she couldn't activate it at all. Even throwing it at someone wouldn't hurt them.

The fragment of the Six Paths Reincarnation Disk gave no response. A faint glimmer flashed, and it slipped into her sea of consciousness.

It was somewhat astonished to discover how powerful Shi Zhao's primordial spirit was.

And what was that halo near her primordial spirit? A cave heaven?

The fragment of the Six Paths Reincarnation Disk was truly stunned. Yet it found that, no matter what it tried, it could not approach her primordial spirit. It even vaguely sensed a trace of inexplicable danger.

Shi Zhao blinked as the fragment of the Reincarnation Disk reappeared before her. Then it pried open one of her cave heavens, burrowed inside, and fell completely dormant.

She couldn't help pressing a hand to her forehead. Hey, whose cave heaven was this, anyway?

After resting there for a while and casually slaughtering two foolish ferocious beasts that had been drawn by the noise and come all this way to add to her meal, she began crossing the Great Wilderness in search of an inhabited area.

The Great Wilderness stretched boundlessly. Shi Zhao chose a direction by instinct and headed off.

The girl set out alone, moving swiftly through the Primeval Mountains and experiencing a journey through the untamed wilds.

The Great Wilderness teemed with savage beasts, and terrifying vicious birds circled overhead. But she was no easy prey either. After traveling tens of thousands of li, she even caught a vicious bird to ride.

Naturally, mounts like these had an extremely high mortality rate and needed replacing from time to time.

Along the way, Shi Zhao had several scares but escaped unharmed, crossing one stretch of mountains, rivers, marshes, and wilderness after another. Though powerful, bloodthirsty descendants of ancient beasts nearly caught her several times, she ultimately evaded them all.

Later, she actually settled down and stopped rushing. She explored constantly, actively seeking out dangerous places to temper herself, often fighting a bloody path to survival.

Traveling, adventuring, and cultivating along the way, she found twenty or thirty spirit herbs and harvested plenty of true blood from ancient beast descendants, all of which benefited her cultivation.

"Is this the Taiyin River? Wonderful!"

A great black river surged through the Great Wilderness, running for who knew how many tens of thousands of li across the Endless Mountains.

Following this river would make finding Stone Village much easier.

Shi Zhao stopped and used the Taiyin River to temper her essence, energy, and spirit. Her entire body became encased in ice. Suddenly, a change came over her, and her vital energy surged skyward, piercing the vast sky.

By the riverbank, nine volcanoes stood clustered together. "Magma" churned within them, spewing light of various colors, arrayed in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, black, and white. Even the Taiyin River was stirred into waves.

Her ninth cave heaven had been opened!

In fact, if she counted the embryonic primordial spirit cave heaven she had opened first, this was already her tenth cave heaven.

Shi Zhao closed her eyes and contemplated for a long time. At last, metallic ringing sounded throughout her body.

Nine cave heavens swayed around her, gushing auspicious radiance. Runes became rivers of stars, swirling around her. Eventually, all sorts of divine birds and ferocious beasts appeared within the cave heavens-Peacock, Big Peng, Bian, Suanni, True Hou, Luan Bird, Bifang, and others-all formed from runes.

This was the result of using the Primitive True Understanding to analyze the precious techniques she had mastered, expressing powerful precious techniques in their simplest and most fundamental forms. It reflected a tremendous improvement in her mastery of runes.

After a long time, all the runes sank into her body, and the nine cave heavens withdrew. Shi Zhao opened her eyes, which shone with a clear brilliance brighter and more dazzling than a river of stars.

At dawn, all kinds of vital energy rose through the Great Wilderness, and ripples spread across the Taiyin River.

"Roar!"

A golden shadow charged over, opening its bloody maw to bite the girl by the river.

Shi Zhao rose to her feet, her gaze clear. She saw that it was a ferocious beast resembling a crocodile, with a pair of horns on its head. Its pale-gold body was powerful and several zhang long.

Bang!

Without wasting time testing it, she raised her hand and unleashed the Bian Method, then kicked the beast to a forced halt, knocking several sharp teeth out of its pointed jaws.

In that instant, she knew that this ferocious beast's strength surpassed the cave heaven realm.

But it was only so much stronger. It remained within her ability to handle and posed little threat to her-a big punching bag delivered right to her doorstep.

"A mutated crocodile. Still a long way from the level of kings and lords, but its flood dragon blood has awakened. Pretty impressive. Eating it will be wonderfully nourishing!"

This was no longer a crocodile with flood dragon blood, but a Crocodile Flood Dragon.

Shi Zhao was rather excited. All sorts of records spoke highly of flood dragon meat.

The Crocodile Flood Dragon was fierce, and its injuries only made it more violent. Yet purple lightning shocked it into howling, making its entire body shudder and turn charred black.

The girl charged forward, pouring out all kinds of precious techniques like a torrential rain, without repeating a single one. The Crocodile Flood Dragon immediately suffered devastating injuries and seemed to be somewhat dead.

"You couldn't even take ten moves from me? That's a little weak." She was somewhat disappointed. She hadn't even had time to use the Six Paths of Reincarnation Heavenly Art. Then she lit a fire and set up a pot right there.

Actually, this wasn't because the Crocodile Flood Dragon was too weak. The girl was simply too ferocious.

What normal person threw out six or seven supreme precious techniques of pure-blooded, heaven-tier ferocious beasts at the drop of a hat?

Even a genuine Pureblood Vicious Beast would have met the same fate. At most, it might have lasted a few more moves.

After eating and drinking her fill, Shi Zhao's heart flew home like an arrow. She raced upstream along the Taiyin River and finally saw familiar scenery.

As far as the eye could see, a hundred thousand li of mountains and rivers lay shattered.

"Looks like those guys started fighting again after I left. What kind of grudge could they possibly have?" The girl sighed softly, entirely unaware of her own role as the instigator.

Before long, she suddenly sensed a somewhat familiar presence. After circling around, she found a little golden monkey in a shattered valley.

It was just over a foot long, with three heads and six arms. Covered in dirt, it lay motionless as though it had been sealed away in dust for ages. Only its eyes still shone.

Who else could this be but Zhu Yan?

Shi Zhao hadn't expected that, even after she had intervened, Zhu Yan would still end up crippled. The rune bones within his body had shattered, leaving him nearly ruined. With no other choice, he had undergone a transformation to preserve a sliver of life.

"Eek, eek!"

Though Zhu Yan had even lost his memories, the sight of the girl before him suddenly made him inexplicably agitated. His eyes widened, and he scratched his head furiously.

There he was, scratching his cheeks and ears.

Even after a long while, he remembered nothing, his expression utterly bewildered.

Then golden light blazed all over him. He shed a layer of old skin and became a little monkey just over three inches tall, with one head and two arms. No bigger than a fist, round and gleaming gold, he was rather cute.

Shi Zhao blinked, reached out, and caught him by the scruff of his fateful neck.

"Eek, eek!" The golden ball struggled desperately, shrieking.

Just then, an eagle's cry rang out overhead. A silver-winged Green-Scaled Eagle dove out of the clouds, with a small figure on her back shouting excitedly.