39: Chapter 39 The Three Pillar Gods are no joke

"Xie Feng?" Wen Yushu's voice came from the jade plaque.

"It's nothing. I'll talk to you about it when I get back." Xie Feng withdrew his Spiritual Qi from the jade plaque, and it dimmed.

"Any clues, blind comrade?" Tu Ziguan chimed in sarcastically from the side.

The next second, Xie Feng used Spiritual Qi to knock the baked sesame cake out of his hand.

"No! My beef sesame cake!" Tu Ziguan wailed.

"Do you know that the beef in my family is legal? It's so rare!"

When Xie Feng stuffed the jade plaque back into his sleeve cuff, Tu Ziguan's beef sesame cake was still rolling on the ground. Tu Ziguan picked it up, blew off the dust on the surface, tore off the layer stained with dirt, and continued eating.

"Can't you be a bit more hygienic?" Xie Feng said.

"If you hadn't knocked it away, would it have fallen on the ground?" Tu Ziguan chewed on the cake. "Going to Liushu Village tomorrow?"

"Yes, the peddler's trail hasn't been checked yet." Xie Feng leaned his blind stick against the edge of the table. "Meng Yi's side isn't urgent. He tested me, and I tested him back. Let's leave this trap set for now; whoever moves first will reveal their flaws."

"Alright. Then I'll come over early tomorrow morning, and we'll rent a carriage."

"Where's your Spiritual Qi motorcycle?"

"It disturbs the peace, Big Brother. Have some manners, will you?"

The two sat for a while longer and swept away the remaining dishes. The night wind blew in from the direction of the west city, carrying the dampness of the moss beneath the city walls.

Xie Feng thought as he walked along the road:

That Immortal realm Meng Yi mentioned must undoubtedly be the Dreamlands. However, when Meng Yi described it, he used the tone of Immortal texts, breaking down the characteristics of the Dreamlands. He was testing whether I could recognize the Dreamlands.

That is the crux of the problem. Why would Meng Yi test me? A city-guarding Cultivator of the Ninth Heaven of the Fifth Realm heard about texts brought back from the Dreamlands sixty years ago. If he was experimenting according to the methods within to seek immortality,

then if the experiment went wrong and something happened in the Black Pine Forest, all of this could be explained.

But why did Meng Yi think I could recognize the Dreamlands?

I had transmigrated to this world for less than two years, and the original body was just a useless legitimate son thrown into the courtyard. His life before nineteen was unremarkable, and Meng Yi had never had any intersection with him.

In Meng Yi's eyes, Xie Feng should only be a role as an Inner Sect Disciple of the Qingyun Sect, blind, returning home to visit family. How could he possibly recognize the travelogues of the Immortal realm brought back from the Far North by a certain Cultivator sixty years ago?

Xie Feng's blind stick tapped against the stone slab road and stopped.

Unconsciously, he had walked to the entrance of the Xie Residence. The vermilion gates were tightly closed, and a dim, yellowish light leaked from the small window of the gatekeeper Old Zhou's room.

"Old Zhou, go to sleep, go to sleep. I won't abuse the elderly."

Xie Feng did not knock on the door. He turned around and walked back along the perimeter wall of the Xie Residence, going all the way to the base of the wall outside the courtyard.

Tu Ziguan had climbed in from right here.

Xie Feng tucked his blind stick into his belt, placed both hands on the top of the wall, and poured Spiritual Qi into his arms. With a push, he went up, confirmed there were no abnormal auras in the courtyard, and then silently landed in the courtyard well. He pushed open the courtyard door, entered the room, leaned his blind stick back against the wall, and sat down by the couch.

He didn't light a lamp; a blind person didn't need one.

He went over all of today's events in his mind: Zhang Kui's confession, the timeline of Zheng Youtian delivering beef, the three derivative entities in Xie Yuan's room, the houseplate of Xin-3, the three-snake symbol on the talisman paper, Meng Yi's probing, and the description of the Dreamlands.

With so many clues, pulling out each one individually could reveal something, but put together, they just couldn't form a complete picture.

Xie Feng felt a headache coming on. He was not a detective, and being a KP followed a script; when writing modules, it was always 'shoot the arrow first and paint the target later.' Asking him to deduce things was exhausting, alright?

"I really hope I can become one of those super smart, aloof reasoning male gods in novels. These clues are quite clear, but why do I feel like I can't integrate them together? Oh well, let's go to sleep first. If all else fails, I'll give Wen Yushu a call tomorrow; he's quite smart."

Lying on the bed, Xie Feng suddenly thought of a smart person.

In his right eye socket, Tawil's mark remained quietly.

Yog-Sothoth is one of the omniscient existences in the cthulhu mythos system, and Tawil at-Umr is His Incarnation, the gatekeeper of the Silver Key, holding the secrets of time and space.

If Xie Feng let Tawil look at the pile of fragments in his head, provided Tawil could come look, could this Gate Guide help him piece these fragments together?

As soon as this thought popped up, Xie Feng himself was startled.

Actively link with the Primordial Immortals? Xie Feng retied his veil and stood up.

He couldn't test it in the city.

Just in case activating the Gate Guide wasn't just a link, but actually summoned Tawil over—even if it was just an Incarnation projection—the hundreds of thousands of commoners in Cangyun City would really go to "enjoy blessings."

The strongest person in Cangyun City right now was Meng Yi, at the Ninth Heaven of the Fifth Realm, who wasn't even worthy of carrying Tawil's shoes.

Leave the city.

Xie Feng pushed open the courtyard door and climbed over the wall out of the Xie Residence. The outer city gates had long since closed, and the guards in the duty room were dozing while hugging their long spears. Xie Feng didn't disturb him, found a section of the city wall, infused his hands and feet with Spiritual Qi, and climbed up the wall like a gecko.

Outside the city wall was a wasteland overgrown with waist-high weeds, and further out was a low-lying area of hills scattered with a few crooked-necked pine trees. Xie Feng dropped down from the wall top, his blind stick tapping against the dirt road among the weeds, and walked deep into the hills.

After walking about two miles, the sounds of any human activity could no longer be heard around him, only the wailing of the wind blowing through the pine trees and the chirping of insects in the grass.

"Almost there." Xie Feng sat down on a flat rock and laid his blind stick horizontally across his knees. He untied his veil, and the light of The Guide surged out from his eye socket. He didn't control the direction of the light, letting it spread naturally in all directions, and then he probed his Spiritual Qi toward the quiet mark in his right eye socket.

He gently touched it with his Spiritual Qi.

The mark did not react.

Xie Feng gritted his teeth and condensed his Spiritual Qi into an even finer strand, stabbing it in like a needle.

Then his brain exploded.

Information, a massive amount of information poured in from that hole.

To describe it, it was probably like someone trying to fit the Pacific Ocean into a washbasin.

Xie Feng's hands abruptly clutched the blind stick on his knees, his knuckles turning white. Those pieces of information weren't language, characters, or anything else he could recognize, but he just knew what each fragment was and where it should be placed.

Zheng Youtian delivered beef on the first and fifteenth of every month, unfailingly, while the date of the Black Pine Forest incident was August fourteenth—two days after the cow-slaughtering event, just one day shy of the full moon.

The three derivative entities in Xie Yuan's room weren't just bizarre; they seemed to have been contaminated by something.

The three-snake symbol on the talisman paper was a cthulhu mythos symbol, probably a mark on the text fragments, just like his mark—except Xie Yuan had no cultivation, so he couldn't draw it out!

Meng Yi wasn't testing whether Xie Feng could recognize the Dreamlands; he was testing whether Xie Feng knew how to enter the Dreamlands. Meng Yi definitely had text fragments in his hands, but they were incomplete. He couldn't enter what he considered the 'Immortal realm,' so he had been stationed here all along, looking for the remaining parts.

And Xie Feng had the big shot's phone number on him. Meng Yi didn't know about this, but he was definitely contaminated, so he most likely sensed the aura on Xie Feng through certain means, just like the mark on Xie Feng's body heating up!

Therefore, Meng Yi tested him because he wanted that thing on Xie Feng which even Xie Feng himself didn't fully understand.

The clues rapidly pieced themselves together in Xie Feng's mind, so fast that he didn't even have time to catch his breath.

The Sixth Realm was a major barrier; without talent, one could never reach it. With Xie Feng's six-meridian talent, he could never reach it in this lifetime, and Meng Yi and Xie Tianxiong were definitely the same, otherwise, they wouldn't be stubbornly huddled up in this Cangyun City.

Then immortality became very important.

Sixty years ago, when the Cultivator returned to Cangyun City, whether the texts were lost or carved up, Xie Tianxiong and Meng Yi had similar cultivation levels and certainly carved out a piece of the pie for themselves. However, the contamination the two suffered should be different. Meng Yi must be related to the church, because the butcher Zheng's trail pointed directly to his residence, while Xie Yuan should be Xie Tianxiong's handiwork. These two people probably harbored their own sinister motives, yet they had no choice but to cooperate because they wanted the secret of immortality!

Xie Tianxiong tested him because he went and came back, suspecting that Meng Yi was involved.

Meng Yi tested him because of his identity as a member of the Xie Family, suspecting that Xie Tianxiong was plotting against him!

Xie Feng suddenly opened his eyes—no, he had no eyes to open.

Xie Feng abruptly cut off his Spiritual Qi. The Gate Guide dimmed, and the information stream was severed along with it.

He sat on the rock, panting heavily. The night wind blew across the pine forest, drying the cold sweat on his body and chilling him to the bone. Xie Feng's hands were still trembling; he pressed them against his knees, managing to steady them only after a few tries.

"F*ck, Yog-Sothoth is awesome!"

His voice was scattered by the wind.

The pile of fragments in his head was now neatly arranged, like a puzzle finally finished. Every clue was in its proper place, and the chain of Karma was as clear as a straightened steel wire.

The amount of information was simply too overwhelming; his brain had just processed information that under normal circumstances would have taken days to sort out, and in a way he was completely unaccustomed to—skipping all the deduction steps and directly obtaining a reasonable 'answer'.

This was Tawil's "gaze".