60: Chapter 60 The Path to Immortality

It tilted its head to look at you, something flashing in its amber eyes.

"I'm really leaving this time," you said. "I'm not taking you. Your legs aren't good, and you'll suffer if you follow me. The Junior Brothers and Junior Sisters of the Cangyun Sect will take care of you, and you'll have meat to eat every day."

Xiao Wang stopped moving. It slowly rolled over, lay down in front of you, and rested its big head on your knees.

Then it got up, walked slowly back to the stone steps, and picked something up in its mouth.

A cloth tiger sewn in a crooked, lopsided way.

That was something you had sewn years ago using its shed fur. The stitches were too rough to look at, and the shape didn't really look like a tiger; it looked more like a fat mouse. But Xiao Wang had always treated it like a treasure, carrying it wherever it went, and even hugging it when it slept.

It placed the cloth tiger in your palm, then backed up two steps, sat down on the ground, and watched you.

You clutched the cloth tiger, which had been stiffened slightly by saliva, and looked down at it for a long time.

"...Fine." You stuffed it into your robes, stood up, and said, "Then I'll keep it."

You patted Xiao Wang's head one last time.

Then you turned around and left.

A short, sharp tiger roar came from behind you.

You did not look back.

Three years.

You traveled throughout the ten provinces of the Great Qing.

From the Xuanshuang Pass in the northern frontier to the Miasma Forest in the southern border, from the Immortal-Gazing Cliff of the East Sea to the Quicksand City of the Western Regions, you went everywhere you could, and even places you couldn't.

You gained nothing.

No, that's not entirely true; at least you had accumulated a wealth of "experience in being scammed."

The first incident occurred in the fourth month after you left the Cangyun Sect.

In Yuzhou, you heard a rumor: there was an old Daoist priest in Wushan County who claimed to have lived for three hundred years, knew how to "fly on clouds," and lived in a dilapidated temple on top of a mountain. He would come down the mountain to perform magic on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month, and the surrounding villagers revered him as a living Immortal.

You trekked over mountains and through rivers for seven days before finding that dilapidated temple.

The old Daoist priest was indeed there. With white hair and a white beard, he had the bearing of an Immortal. He spoke slowly, and every time he opened his mouth, it was "This poor Daoist observed the celestial phenomena at night" or "This is a secret of the heavens that cannot be revealed."

When you asked him about the matter of becoming an Immortal Cultivator, he closed his eyes, stroked his beard, and said, "Benefactor, you have a connection with the Immortals." Then he told you that if you donated three hundred taels of incense money, you could "open the Heavenly Eye."

You asked him again if he could demonstrate flying on clouds.

The old Daoist said, "Today the celestial phenomena are not aligned; it is not suitable to perform magic."

You directly channeled your True Qi and shattered the idol behind him with a single palm strike.

A pile of gold, silver, and copper coins clattered out of the idol's stomach.

The old Daoist's legs went soft on the spot.

"Don't kill me, don't kill me! I'm just a scammer! The three hundred years is fake; I'm only fifty-eight this year! I don't want to die yet, I'm still young..."

You watched him kowtow until his forehead was bruised, expressionless, then turned and left.

The second incident happened half a year later. In a remote mountain village in Youzhou, you heard that there was "Immortal light" in an ancient cave behind the village. Every full moon night, it would glow with blue light, and people for a hundred miles around spread rumors that it was an Immortals Abode.

This time you were more cautious; you staked out and observed for three days, confirming that the "Immortal light" did indeed exist. On the night of the full moon, a faint blue fluorescence did indeed emanate from the depths of the cave.

You entered the cave.

After walking about half a mile, you found the source of the blue light on the rock wall in the deepest part of the cave.

It was a type of moss you had never seen before. It attached itself to the damp rock wall, and after absorbing moonlight, it would emit a blue fluorescence that really looked a lot like the light of a Spirit Stone.

There's such a thing as this moss?

You squatted in the cave, staring at the blue light covering the walls for a long time.

Then you stood up and patted the mud off your knees.

"Fine then."

The third incident was a bit more outrageous.

In the spring of the second year, you were drinking tea in a teahouse in Jizhou. At the next table, a traveling merchant who had been all over the country lowered his voice and told his companion something: "Brother, let me tell you a big secret, but don't spread it around. There is a cave behind Yandang Mountain. Inside the cave, there is a golden, incorruptible corpse sitting on a stone platform, and in front of it is a book. No one can understand the characters in that book. I saw it with my own eyes!"

You put down your teacup and left.

After traveling for eleven days to Yandang Mountain, you followed the location described by that merchant, crossed three mountain peaks, passed through two dense forests, and in a hidden rock crevice on the back mountain, you actually found a cave.

The entrance to the cave was completely covered by vines. You pushed aside the vines and walked in. In the air, there was a faint, indescribable scent; it wasn't decay, but rather closer to... dryness. An extremely dry, almost vacuum-like scent.

Your heart rate quickened.

The deeper you went, the stronger this scent became. There were some blurry carvings on the cave walls, looking like they were left by humans, but because so much time had passed, most of them had weathered away and were no longer legible.

You could only identify a few incomplete symbols.

They were not characters of the Great Qing.

Your breathing hitched for a moment.

Then you saw the stone platform.

The stone platform was indeed there, its surface smooth. It didn't look naturally formed, but more like it had been directly cut out by some kind of power. On the surface of the platform, there was a shallow depression, shaped like an imprint left by something placed there for a long time.

But the platform was completely empty.

There was no golden, incorruptible corpse, no unreadable book; there was nothing.

You turned the cave upside down. You searched every inch of the ground, the walls, under the stone platform, and in the rock crevices.

You only found two things.

The first was a jade piece the size of a fingernail, stuck in a crevice at the bottom of the stone platform. It was pitch black, with extremely fine patterns on the surface, and it felt faintly cold in your hand. It wasn't ordinary jade; you probed it with your True Qi, and surprisingly, there was a faint feedback from inside the jade piece.

You carefully put it away.

The second thing was a line of characters carved in an inconspicuous corner in the deepest part of the cave wall.

This line of characters was different from the other weathered symbols on the wall. It was carved extremely deeply, the strokes clear, as if the person who carved them was afraid they would disappear and had specifically used some method to solidify the handwriting into the stone wall.

You leaned in to look.

It was still not characters of the Great Qing.

Although you couldn't understand it, you memorized it, stroke by stroke, carving it into your mind.

You sat in the cave for the whole night. When dawn broke, you confirmed that this place had already been "cleaned out" by someone before you arrived. The indentation on the stone platform showed that something had indeed been placed there, but it had been taken away. As for the "golden, incorruptible corpse" the merchant spoke of, either he was bragging, or it had been moved by someone else after he saw it and before you arrived.

However, these discoveries gave you confidence. That black jade piece and those unreadable symbols all pointed to the same fact: Immortal Cultivators had indeed been to this land, and more than one.

At the same time, you were also inquiring about the whereabouts of your brother, Lin Hao, along the way.

You found three veterans who had enlisted at the same time as Lin Hao.

The first one opened a grocery store in Yecheng and was named Zhou Daniu. When you said you were Lin Hao's younger sister, his eyes immediately turned red.