"So, Lord Willow Deity will act during the great calamity and forcibly stop it from happening?" The Great Demon God understood what Chen Yao meant. The secrets he had revealed undoubtedly indicated that the Willow Deity would shelter the Desolate Region, and even take the initiative to act.
"Yes. Fifteenth Master, you can tell the Stone Emperor directly that someone will intervene to stop the great calamity. There's no need to worry excessively." Chen Yao gave the Great Demon God a pill of reassurance.
"That's good, that's good!" The Great Demon God breathed a sigh of relief.
"Although there's no need to worry about the great calamity, there are still some things I want to know. Years ago, Zi Ling and that girl Yi Ning brought little Hao to the ancestral land to seek treatment. Where have they gone now?" the Great Demon God asked, worry in his eyes.
"Little Hao's parents... Back then, the ancestral land hadn't recovered to its current state. It was in ruins, and they were deeply disappointed. Seeing that little Hao couldn't endure the hardships of travel, they entrusted him to my care and sought the Willow Deity's protection, then set out themselves for the Primordial Sacred Mountain to obtain sacred medicine to treat him. After that, they never returned," Shi Yunfeng said.
"Ah! How foolish! Zi Ling should have set out with some of the elders and left Yi Ning here to look after Hao. What kind of behavior was that, both of them leaving Hao alone in the ancestral land? Leaving him all alone, with no one to turn to!" The Great Demon God sighed, quite dissatisfied with his son's arrangements.
"Grandpa, don't blame Mom and Dad. The Rain Clan kept pursuing them along the way. They really couldn't spare any more energy, and they didn't have many people to help," Shi Hao said consolingly.
"Hmph! Rain King! Once I return, I'll settle the score with him." The Great Demon God clenched his fists. "I just don't know whether Zi Ling and Yi Ning are still safe, or where they are now."
"I've actually divined that. Little Hao's mother was the holy maiden of Immortal Mountain in the Mystic Domain. Immortal Mountain is a major power in the Upper Realm, and its leader, the Immortal Mountain Heavenly Venerable Qin Changsheng, is a cultivator at the peak of the Escape One Realm, a full three major realms above Heavenly God. However, there was once a factional struggle. Little Hao's mother became embroiled in it, had her cultivation destroyed, and ended up stranded in the Desolate Region," Chen Yao said.
"Now, because she wanted to obtain sacred medicine to save her son back then, his mother had no choice but to return to Immortal Mountain to seek one last chance of survival for little Hao. Most likely, she's trapped there."
The Great Demon God's heart tightened as he listened, and only at the end did he breathe a sigh of relief.
"Immortal Mountain... Can you find out how they're doing now?" the Great Demon God continued.
On this point, Chen Yao could guarantee that things were not much different from the original story.
Because he knew the original plot, asking about certain matters within the Inner Landscape presented virtually no difficulty. Only matters the original story had never mentioned retained their normal difficulty. For example, asking whether the Pu Demon King would go to the Hundred Broken Mountains had zero difficulty, but asking for his location was extremely difficult. Asking whether the True Dragon's nest was in the lower realm was easy, but asking for the precise location of his small world was hard.
He had previously entered the Inner Landscape to verify quite a few events from the original story. None had been particularly difficult, and the answers matched what he knew.
It was just that the Willow Deity had always assumed he had observed them through reincarnation.
"Uh, I looked into little Hao's future for him before. They've been placed under house arrest by Immortal Mountain," Chen Yao answered.
"House arrest? Why?" Shi Hao and the others immediately felt their hearts tighten.
"Because her faction lost its internal struggle, Aunt Qin has little say there. But because she once gave birth to an Innate Supreme, Immortal Mountain values their bloodline. So, using the argument that brothers share a closer bloodline and a younger brother's origin blood essence could save little Hao, Immortal Mountain hoped they would produce a second Innate Supreme. Although they didn't want to harm another child to save little Hao, they had no choice but to compromise temporarily to obtain sacred medicine. By now, little Hao should have a younger brother a few years his junior," Chen Yao said.
"What...?" Shi Zhongtian sprang to his feet, then slumped back down.
Should he say they ought not to have conceived a second son with such an intention? Or sigh over how they had been forced to compromise because they were weaker? He felt his own children would never do the former, and could only sigh that, for the sake of sacred medicine, their second son had been born under such circumstances.
"Then did Mom and Dad get the sacred medicine? Why are they still under house arrest?" Shi Hao asked urgently.
"They did. But when they finally arrived with the sacred medicine, Stone Village had just relocated, and the Great Wilderness lay in ruins. At the time, the Willow Deity was asleep, and Stone Village was sealed off. They missed you. By now, they probably think you're dead." Even Chen Yao felt it was absurdly melodramatic.
"This..." Even Shi Hao was left speechless. Fate truly made fools of people!
"Then why are they under house arrest?" Shi Zhongtian frowned deeply. "Weren't they allowed to leave?"
"Because of the matter of little Hao's younger brother's upbringing. His name is Qin Hao, and he's considered part of Immortal Mountain now. Because his parents disagreed with Immortal Mountain's way of educating him, an argument broke out, and they were placed under house arrest and lost custody of their child. Now Qin Hao is being raised by those people from Immortal Mountain. They're even instilling the idea that his parents only had him to save his older brother, that they want to take his blood and don't love him. They're using this to sever Qin Hao's familial bond with his parents, make him side completely with Immortal Mountain, and hate little Hao. I don't know anything more. I can't see it for now," Chen Yao said.
"How dare they!" Shi Zhongtian shattered the stone beneath him with a slap and stood up again.
Shi Hao clenched his fists as well, his heart aching. To be unable to raise their own child, and to watch helplessly as he was fed false beliefs-how utterly tragic.
"After a while, I'll slaughter those bastards at Immortal Mountain." Sky Desolation, who had been listening nearby, transmitted his thoughts. During this time, he had continuously been bathed in immortal qi, and the two elders of the Void God Realm had also refined him. At last, he had regained an initial measure of wholeness and taken on the bearing of an immortal artifact.
"Kunpeng's son is also suppressed at Immortal Mountain in the lower realm. After a while, I'll make a trip there too, to seek some justice for Fellow Daoist Kunpeng's own child. You'll be able to reunite then." The Willow Deity also transmitted her thoughts. She planned to recover to the point of attaining immortality through an alternative path, then use the methods of the Transcendence Chapter to seal herself and head to Immortal Mountain before the great calamity.
"Thank you, Lord Sacrificial Spirit!" Overcome with emotion, Shi Zhongtian paid the Willow Deity a deep bow.
Seeing that the mood had lifted somewhat, Shi Yunfeng called everyone to the square for a communal meal to improve their spirits.
Watching the grandfather and grandson discuss how to approach Qin Hao once they reached Immortal Mountain, Chen Yao wandered over near the village entrance and sat not far from the Willow Deity. As he tended Sky Desolation's injuries as usual, he pondered his own path through Spirit Transformation.
He intended to rely on Grand Luo Insight to achieve transcendence during Spirit Transformation, yet he still could not grasp the key. If not for the Heavenly Demon Tribulation continuously raising his cultivation through heavenly demon seeds, and his divine-ability form of Qi-State Origin-Flow advancing further after absorbing the profundities of the Phoenix Precious Technique, he would probably have begun falling behind.
"Grand Luo" most often appeared in terms such as "Grand Luo Heavenly Immortal" and "Grand Luo Heaven."
Grand Luo Heaven was the highest heaven in Daoism.
Paired with "insight," it naturally meant observing heaven and earth from Grand Luo Heaven.
Only then could one see through the changes of all things in the world and gaze down upon the scenery from the boundless heights of heaven and earth.
To ascend steadily to "Grand Luo Heaven," one needed to become a "Grand Luo Heavenly Immortal."
Of course, he did not need to cultivate to that level during Spirit Transformation, but rather accomplish certain things involved in ascending to "Grand Luo Heaven."
Chen Yao believed this required achieving the legendary projection of the "Yang God."
In the world of The Outcast, those so-called projections of the Yang God were actually only Yin Gods.
What was a Yang God? Gathered, it took form; dispersed, it became qi. It possessed a genuine physical substance.
Although a cultivator's primordial spirit naturally acquired this trait upon reaching a certain realm, there were still further distinctions.
This Yang God could even replace the physical body, regenerating a new body from within itself after the original was discarded.
When the physical body became tainted by something harmful, one could decisively abandon it and use the Yang God to reconstruct a body.
Once the "Yang God" was cultivated, it became the true self, while the physical body instead depended on it to take shape.
A true unity of spirit and flesh!
He had chosen to cultivate the divine-ability form of Qi-State Origin-Flow through the Three Dantian Cave Heaven precisely to use the cave heavens and Qi-State Origin-Flow to reduce the difficulty of transforming Grand Luo Insight into a divine ability. Yet he still could not find a direction for putting it into practice, and merely continued tempering his primordial spirit, merging his spirit body with it.
Hm? This sensation?
Suddenly, Chen Yao froze. The reincarnation immortal qi that had fused with him to some degree trembled, and a familiar yet unfamiliar aura abruptly appeared within his perception.
An image appeared: a man shrouded in divine flames, with a fragment of the Reincarnation Disk flickering in and out of sight, moving through the depths of the Great Wilderness.
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