"Five years. Still no sign of Ah Ying."
Bearing the Yingzhou cave abyss on his back, Xu Jing traveled wearily, still searching for traces of Xu Ying. His hair was streaked with gray, marked with weathered exhaustion. Five full years had passed since the Battle of the Heavenly Abyss. For five years, he had hurried from one place to another, searching far and wide for Xu Ying's whereabouts.
Back then, when Xu Ying was on the verge of sinking into the sea eye, the Xiaotian Hound had fled with Xu Ying's corpse on its back, vanishing without a trace ever since.
In that battle, Xu Ying was defeated, falling short at the final hurdle. The Demon Ancestor, the Last Lord of Ziwei, Great Dao Lord Xuhuang, and the others dared not linger in battle and each withdrew.
Immortal Emperor Mingzun had been occupied with refining the cultivation realms and Dao scenes harvested from Xu Ying's body and had no leisure to pursue them. Zaohua Supreme and his allies marched upon the Ancestral Court, only to encounter resistance from a mysterious powerhouse at the Wangxiang Platform.
The two sides regarded each other from afar. Zaohua Supreme did not make a move, uttering only a single name: "Dao Venerable Lu."
Both sides then retreated, securing a fleeting peace.
Xu Jing did not remain in the Immortal Court as Heavenly Venerable of the Dipper Department. With the Divine Mother's assistance, he searched for the Xiaotian Hound and Xu Ying, but had little to show for it after five years.
Within the Yingzhou cave abyss, Penglai immortals tended to Lan Suying, Yuan Tiangang, and Fairy Gushe. The physical bodies and primordial spirits of all three remained alive, still breathing, yet devoid of any consciousness within.
Over the past five years, the Divine Mother had cast countless divinations. Every hexagram indicated that Xu Ying was dead, but she had kept this from Xu Jing, telling him only that Xu Ying was still alive.
She could not divine Xu Ying, a dead man, but she could still divine the Xiaotian Hound. Yet for reasons unknown, the dog moved like a phantom, never settling in one place.
This dog had actually been running for five whole years without pausing once!
For five years the Divine Mother divined, and for five years Xu Jing pursued, yet they simply had not managed to catch up!
"We'll definitely catch up to him this time! Rest assured, Old Heavenly Venerable Xu—I have deduced his escape route. We'll wait ahead of him!" said the Divine Mother.
Following her directions, Xu Jing waited along the supposed escape route. Two or three days passed, yet the Xiaotian Hound still did not appear. Just as he was growing anxious with anticipation, a colossal head suddenly reached down from beyond the sky—one large enough to swallow the sun and the moon—wreathed in roiling thunder and fire, snapping downward!
Down below was a short, diminutive old Daoist—precisely the external avatar of Dan Xuanzi, an expert of the Wondrous Realm of Great Luo.
Although this old Daoist was only an external avatar, his strength was formidable and his magic power immensely vast. Shaking his sleeve, the fabric swirled and expanded rapidly, turning into a black hole capable of devouring all things. It rose to meet the Xiaotian Hound, growing even larger than the hound's jaws, as if intending to pull him right into the sleeve.
Without hesitation, Xu Jing charged straight into the fray. Catching sight of his approach, Dan Xuanzi's avatar sneered, "A junior played like a fiddle by Mingzun, whose very cultivation technique is one of Mingzun's traps—you think you are worthy to cross hands with me?"
He freed a hand to meet Xu Jing, but in the next breath, landscape paintings blanketed the firmament. At the sight, Dan Xuanzi's avatar blanched, crying out in shock, "The Landscape Heaven-Measuring Ruler? How could it be in your hands?!"
Leaving no mind for the Xiaotian Hound, he immediately leapt into the air to evade. Yet the Heaven-Measuring Ruler was renowned for its strike that never missed. With a loud smack, it lashed against his back, sending him vomiting blood.
Horror gripped his heart, and just as he moved to flee, the Xiaotian Hound pounced, clamping onto his shin and snapping the leg with a sickening crunch.
Smack!
Xu Jing brought the ruler down once more, striking his forehead. Dan Xuanzi's avatar burst with brains and gore, meeting a violent end.
To his dying breath, he could not fathom why the Landscape Heaven-Measuring Ruler had ended up in Xu Jing's grasp.
Putting away the Heaven-Measuring Ruler, Xu Jing hastily asked the large black dog, "Xiaotian, where is Ying'er?"
The large black dog had been fleeing the pursuit of Dan Xuanzi's avatar all these years, running across who knew how many worlds, only finding relief today. Knowing Xu Jing was Xu Ying's father, he hesitated for a moment before saying, "Follow me."
Leading Xu Jing through many twists and turns, he brought him to the Yuanshou world and stopped before the grave where he had buried Xu Ying back then. "Second Brother had lost all signs of life, so I buried him here. I was worried those villains would desecrate his corpse, so I lured Dan Xuanzi's avatar away... Huh? Wait a minute, where did the body in the grave go?"
Only now did the large black dog notice that the burial mound had split open, as if something had crawled out from within!
"Second Brother turned into a walking corpse?" he exclaimed in bewilderment.
Xu Jing stared blankly, then wild joy surged in his chest. Tears streamed down his cheeks uncontrollably, and he choked back sobs as he said to the Divine Mother, "Senior Sister Feng, your divine calculations are truly miraculous—my wife falls far short of you! I am completely convinced!"
The Divine Mother's expression remained unchanged, wearing an inscrutable air, but she was muttering furiously to herself in her heart: Could Xu Ying really still be alive? But all my hexagrams were omens of death! He clearly died!
Just then, the sky darkened. The Xiaotian Hound, Xu Jing, and the others looked up, only to see a colossal multistoried ship tearing through the sky of the Earth Immortal Realm and descending upon Yuanshou!
The scale of the vessel was staggering—several thousand li long, with grand towers and magnificent architecture. The hull hovered inverted, its pavilions pointing toward the ground, sailing in the direction of Shendu.
As the vessel sailed out from the void, they saw the rift left in its wake slowly closing, and on the other end of the rift was none other than the Realm of the Great Void!
"That ship... is the multistoried ship from the Realm of the Great Void!"
Xu Jing recognized it and said in astonishment, "When I cultivated in Yingzhou, I often saw this ship pass above Yingzhou! But why has it emerged from the Realm of the Great Void?"
Xu Ying and Yuan Weiyang were currently aboard this World-Crossing Golden Ship as it sailed unhurriedly toward Shendu. Yuan Weiyang floated above the golden ship, the golden key drifting in front of her.
The golden key served as the central control of the World-Crossing Golden Ship, the magic treasure that steered it.
To pilot the ship, one only had to pour magic power into the golden key; as the key's tip moved slowly, the immense World-Crossing Golden Ship followed suit.
Tilted slightly upward, the prow of the World-Crossing Golden Ship would angle upward as well before accelerating sharply with incredible speed!
When held level, the acceleration halted, maintaining a steady cruising speed. Dipping the tip lowered the ship's prow slightly, reducing speed. Turning the key to the left steered the ship left; turning it right steered the ship right.
Because Xu Ying possessed no magic power whatsoever, Yuan Weiyang was the only one who could control the World-Crossing Golden Ship.
Their return from the Realm of the Great Void to Yuanshou was primarily to escort Uncle Xiao back to Shendu, as the World-Crossing Golden Ship echoed everywhere with the Dao weeping, and the Mortal Realm was similarly rife with it, making it impossible for Uncle Xiao to survive there.
At the moment, Xu Ying was honing his martial arts again and again aboard the ship, surging his vital qi and blood. It had become second nature to him—whenever he had spare time, he would practice a few rounds.
The white-bone divine dragon held its own head in one claw, placing it upon its neck, watching Xu Ying's postures and movements and mimicking them with serious intent.
Xu Ying became deeply absorbed in his practice when suddenly the qi of the five aggregates arose from the immortal mountains—five qis converging upon the origin—transforming into his first wisp of primordial qi in five years!
He froze in place, dumbfounded. An overwhelming joy surged in his chest, making him want to shout at the top of his lungs to vent all the bitterness and anguish of these past days.
Yet he stood there quietly, with only two lines of tears rolling down his cheeks.
The newly born wisp of primordial qi nourished his body, coursing from the first realm all the way to the thirteenth, completing a full cosmic orbit.
This wisp of qi was not the Qi of Taiyi, nor the Qi of Hongmeng, nor the origin qi of heaven and earth, and it differed from the innate qi of the Ruyi Great Luo Heaven.
It was merely a strand of martial Dao true qi, yet it was in no way inferior to innate qi or the origin qi of heaven and earth, nor to the Qi of Hongmeng or the Qi of Taiyi!
This qi was extraordinarily resilient, carrying a primal power brimful of wild ferocity!
This strand of true qi even began to penetrate the Dao injuries within his wounds, constantly grinding away at the alien powers lodged inside them!
Weak as this strand of true qi was, it was also astonishingly mighty. The alien powers within Xu Ying's Dao injuries had all been left by Supreme-level entities, yet this faint strand of true qi could actually contend with them—a true anomaly!
Building from nothing, it had taken Xu Ying five years to temper this single strand of true qi, but at last he saw the dawn of hope!
"Now that the Five Sacred Immortal Mountains have begun producing true qi, my cultivation speed will only increase. Once I forge a martial Dao Golden Core, cultivate a martial Dao primordial spirit, and open a martial Dao cave abyss, I can recover all those lost realms in one go and return to my peak! No, I will be stronger than ever!"
Just as the thought crossed his mind, Uncle Xiao's shout rang out from the stern: "Yingzhou! The Yingzhou cave abyss!"
Xu Ying's heart stirred. Leaping like the wind, he sped to the stern. Many chains hung from the stern of the World-Crossing Golden Ship, tethered to smaller immortal vessels. Uncle Xiao stood aboard one of these smaller vessels, pointing below and calling out to Xu Ying, "I see the Yingzhou cave abyss!"
Xu Ying looked down, and indeed, he saw the all-too-familiar Yingzhou cave abyss!
"This place is... the hill where I was buried! Weiyang, stop the ship, quickly stop the ship!" Xu Ying shouted.
Xu Jing, the Xiaotian Hound, and the others had been watching the World-Crossing Golden Ship depart into the distance when suddenly the colossal vessel halted, turned slowly, and flew back toward them.
While everyone looked on in bewilderment, a handsome youth descended from the sky, enveloped in dense incense smoke qi, and landed before them.
The youth was much taller than five years ago. His features had matured, his complexion slightly tanned—though not as dark as before—giving him a striking, noble air.
"Ying'er?"
Xu Jing was seized with shock and joy. He lunged forward and embraced the youth tightly, tears streaming down his aged face, choked for words.
The Divine Mother was equally stunned. Pinching her fingers to divine his fate, she still could not determine Xu Ying's life or death. She cast divination after divination; though Xu Ying stood right in front of her eyes, every hexagram showed that he had already died five years ago!
I can't divine it... I can't divine it at all... How can this be? Why can't I divine him even when he's right in front of me?
Father and son reunited with a whirlwind of emotions. For Xu Jing, every day of these past five years had been pure torment; only the belief that Xu Ying was still alive had kept him going until now.
Reunited at last, even a man as staunch as he felt a dizzying sense of unreality.
"Ying'er, it is time to return the Landscape Heaven-Measuring Ruler to you."
Xu Jing took out the Heaven-Measuring Ruler and said, "This ruler flew over with your severed arm and landed in my hands. Back then, my heart felt as if it were being sliced by knives..."
Xu Ying was slightly taken aback. "Father, you mean the ruler flew into your hands of its own accord?"
Xu Jing nodded. "At that time, you were in the Heavenly Abyss, preparing to fight Mingzun to the death. For some reason, the ruler brought your severed arm and flew over."
Xu Ying was amazed and examined the Heaven-Measuring Ruler repeatedly. This was not the first time the ruler had shown such extraordinary autonomy. Back when Changsheng Emperor seized it, it had broken free of his grasp and flown back into Xu Ying's hands on its own.
And this was the second time such a thing had happened!
There is definitely something strange about this ruler. Could it be that fair maiden across the river whom I saw within the ruler?
He recalled the beautiful woman on the opposite shore and thought, Could she have controlled the Heaven-Measuring Ruler both times? Alas, my cultivation is gone, and I cannot cast the Taiyi Divine Bridge again to rescue her. That woman should be one of the Six Supremes and Twelve Wondrous, but who knows whether she is good or evil?
Seeing Yuan Weiyang, Xu Jing was equally astonished and mumbled, "Zitong Yuanjun, haven't you already..."
Xu Ying tugged on his sleeve. Xu Jing stopped speaking and hastily took out two Ginseng Dao fruits, saying, "You gave these two Dao fruits to us out of filial piety, but your mother and I have already consumed one before. We couldn't bear to use these, so take them to nourish your health."
As he spoke, he glanced at Yuan Weiyang, growing even more puzzled.
Originally he had a third Ginseng Dao fruit, but that one had been given to Zitong Yuanjun. After consuming it, Zitong Yuanjun cultivated a Dao fruit, which had helped them through great perils.
The Divine Mother was just as bewildered. She hurriedly performed divinations regarding Zitong Yuanjun, only for the result to show that Zitong Yuanjun was dead, yielding nothing else!
Too bizarre, she thought to herself.
"Dog Brother!"
Xu Ying walked toward the Xiaotian Hound with open arms. Standing upright on its hind legs, the hound towered roughly a head taller than him. It held out a forepaw to halt him and asked warily, "Second Brother, I distinctly remember you dying. Did you turn into a walking corpse?"
Hearing this, Xu Jing grew tense and hurriedly checked surreptitiously to see if corpse hair was growing on his son.
Xu Ying cursed with a laugh, "You're the one who turned into a corpse!"
The Xiaotian Hound leaned in and sniffed suspiciously around him. Detecting no corpse qi, it finally asked, "How did you come back to life?"
Remembering his first life, Xu Ying's expression darkened with melancholy.
The Xiaotian Hound patted his shoulder and said, "Whatever the case, it's good that you're alive. Take that blasted Ginseng fruit as soon as you can; maybe it can heal your Dao injuries. Next time you pick a fight, bring me along. We're sworn brothers, not strangers."
Xu Ying nodded gently.
After much hesitation, Xu Jing finally recounted the condition of Lan Suying, Fairy Gushe, and Yuan Tiangang, saying, "They have been in a deep slumber for five years."
With a heavy heart, Xu Ying spent some time keeping vigil at Lan Suying's side.
After several days, he decided to depart. Bowing deeply with hands clasped, he said, "Father, Dog Brother, Weiyang and I must go to the Mortal Realm. The ship is still plagued with the Dao weeping, so you cannot accompany us. Let us part ways for now."
Xu Jing did not stop him, watching as he departed.
Aboard the World-Crossing Golden Ship, Xu Ying took out the Ginseng Dao fruits. Rather than consuming them directly, he planted the two fruits upon two of the immortal mountains and continued to hone his martial Dao.
The spiritual energy of the Dao fruits gradually wafted forth. Treasures meant to facilitate cultivating a Dao fruit had their spiritual energy and power captured by the Five Sacred Immortal Mountains, continuously refined through Xu Ying's martial tempering into his true qi!
As Xu Ying's true qi cultivation grew steadily stronger, the World-Crossing Golden Ship sailed through the sky, floating above the long river of spiritual light, heading toward the Mortal Realm.
Below, countless rays of spiritual light danced, resembling a great dragon bridging the starry cosmos.
Stars lay spread like an ocean flanking this river of spiritual light, myriad astral bodies coalescing into the wondrous spectacle of the Heavenly Sea.
The Mortal Realm.
"Found you at last!"
A hearty laugh rang out as Dan Xuanzi appeared before the Holy Venerable and the Ancestral God. At the same time, countless silhouettes flickered within the darkness, converging upon Dan Xuanzi and stepping into his physical body!
The Holy Venerable remarked indifferently, "Dan Xuanzi, you are merely a defeated foe of mine, yet you dare hunt me down? Even if I have only a single breath left, I can easily slaughter you!"
Dan Xuanzi smiled faintly and said leisurely, "If that is so, why is the Holy Venerable undergoing Zangification all over? And you, Ancestral God—why have you undergone Zangification as well?"
Branch-like patterns floated around the Holy Venerable's body—it was the disintegration of his own Great Dao!
The Ancestral God was in the same state. The Dao weeping around both of them was severe, unmistakably caused by the Dao injuries Lu Yiren had inflicted upon them!
Dan Xuanzi said serenely, "I never expected you two to have weakened to such a degree. Today, perhaps I can use the pair of you to establish my, Dan Xuanzi's, illustrious fame!"
Excitement gleaming in his eyes, he leapt into the air and charged toward the Holy Venerable and the Ancestral God.
The Holy Venerable and the Ancestral God both sighed inwardly, forcing up a breath as they prepared to strike. Suddenly, a deafening crack resounded, and the Mortal Realm's sky shook violently.
Dan Xuanzi's alarm flared. Whirling around, he saw an immense golden multistoried ship barreling right toward him!
"Who dares ambush me?! Ambushing an expert of the Wondrous Realm of Great Luo—what brazen insolence!"
Unafraid, Dan Xuanzi roared, continuing his lunge toward the Ancestral God and the Holy Venerable. Simultaneously, countless external avatars burst from the shadows behind him, each raising their hands to push against the oncoming ship.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
His external avatars suddenly burst apart one after another, their bones and sinews snapped by the impact, some even ground into pulp!
Dan Xuanzi's expression changed abruptly. He whirled around and shoved both palms against the crashing ship. Instantly, a horrific, tremendous force slammed into him; even with his Dao fruit and Dao domain raised, he could barely withstand it!
Dan Xuanzi was pushed skidding backward, blood leaking from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.
At that moment, the Holy Venerable and the Ancestral God exchanged a glance. The two old figures thrust their hands out simultaneously, slapping them right against his back.
Dan Xuanzi sprayed a mouthful of blood and hurriedly leapt into the air, tearing through the void in flight.
The Holy Venerable and the Ancestral God both breathed a sigh of relief. Just then, a familiar voice drifted from the golden ship: "Weiyang, didn't I tell you that you hit someone? You were driving way too fast!"
Chapter 634