Wei Taiping had brought a wagon drawn by four horses, yet merely heaving the great plum tree onto the wagon bed had cost him considerable effort.
Amidst an atmosphere of bleak despair, the setting sun gradually sank, casting its final rays across the earth from the direction of Jiuzhen Lake. On the distant horizon, a vague silhouette grew steadily clearer.
Carrying an umbrella on his back, Qian Chen approached from afar.
Seeing that familiar figure, Wei Taiping frowned slightly. He hardly believed a mere wandering cultivator at the Qi Refining stage could pose any hindrance. Behind him, a villager whispered, "Isn't that the evil Daoist who put a curse on the Jiang boy?" Before he could finish, someone hastily clamped a hand over his mouth. Before Qian Chen could even draw near, a figure bolted out from the side and fell to his knees before him with a dull thud.
Tears streaming down his aged face, Old Man Jiang held up the young grandson cradled in his arms for Qian Chen to see.
Qian Chen let out a sigh. "An innocent child spoke frankly, only to suffer such disaster. The blame for this truly lies with me!"
He took the boy into his arms and helped Old Man Jiang to his feet. Moving with deceptive ease, Qian Chen covered yards in a single stride. He looked past Wei Taiping as if the man were a mere insect, his gaze drifting over him without the slightest ripple.
A cold sneer was just forming on Wei Taiping's face when he quickly took stock of his men and realized they would still be hard-pressed to subdue a Qi Refining cultivator armed with a flying sword and solid swordsmanship. He muttered fiercely to himself, *Consider yourself lucky this once!*
Qian Chen reached out to check the child's breathing. After a moment's thought, his eyes fell upon the severed stump of the plum tree nearby. He reached into his robes and produced the Qi-Replenishing Pure Yang Pill Wei Taiping had seen the other day. Dissolving the spirit pill into crimson liquid elixir, he poured it over the tree's stump.
In the span of a breath, tender sprouts burst forth from the remnant wood.
From the top of the stump, several new shoots sprang out and unfurled. As if time had accelerated a hundredfold, one of the shoots shot up to the height of a man in the blink of an eye. It quickly overtook the main trunk, shedding its green bark to reveal solid wood beneath.
Like a vision compressing an entire tree's lifetime into moments, the young boughs twisted with archaic vigor. In mere breaths, it stood twice as tall as a man. Branches sprouted from the main trunk, stretching wide like open arms until the canopy formed an umbrella-like vault that sheltered the patch of sky where it had once stood. As the older leaves fell away, delicate plum blossoms burst open all across the tree.
The pink plum blossoms were strikingly beautiful, filling the tree to the brim before drifting down like a shower of petals.
Qian Chen stood beneath the tree as blossoms settled on his shoulders and broad sleeves. Yet this gentle rain of petals did nothing to soften the taut, blade-edge tension radiating from him. It was as though a peerless, razor-sharp sword had slashed through the falling flowers; cold light mirrored the blossoms, and when they landed upon the blade's edge, they looked like drops of blood.
Wei Taiping's ears buzzed. Looking at this display of supernatural ability that surpassed anything he knew—a spectacle bordering on the Great Dao itself—only a single thought flashed through his mind: *Could that really be the spirit pill he tried to trade for the diagram?*
Daoist Zhen's expression when evaluating the pill remained vivid in his memory: *The color is too pure, bearing no marks of an alchemist's fire refinement; the pill is too light, lacking any pill wax... An inferior spirit pill... nothing more than a spurious pill...*
At this moment, he wished he could drag Daoist Zhen here to see this with his own eyes.
The servants he had brought were in an even worse state. Several collapsed to the ground, their knees turned to jelly, while most simply stared in a stupor, muttering in awed whispers, "A tr-true immortal!"
Once the plum blossoms had fallen, tart green plums formed on the branches, swiftly turning yellow before flushing with a faint, tender crimson.
Qian Chen casually plucked the reddest plum, peeled it, and fed it into the child's mouth. The sour, tender juice seeped down the boy's throat in an instant. Though Old Man Jiang was equally astonished by the sight of the plum tree blossoming and bearing fruit, his primary concern was still his grandson. Seeing Qian Chen feed the plum to the boy, the elder breathed a sigh of relief as color returned to the pale little face, only for his heart to leap back into his throat when the boy still did not wake.
Gradually, color returned to the child's lips.
A fit of coughing broke the silence. The child slowly came to, but struggled for breath, his face turning bright red. Qian Chen gently patted the boy's back to ease his breathing until, with one great cough, the child spat out a toad the size of a thumb.
The moment the toad was coughed out, the child's eyes fluttered open.
"Grandpa!" he called out.
Tears spilled from Old Man Jiang's eyes, and he choked back a sob. "Huzi, Grandpa is right here."
The boy turned his clear, bright eyes toward Qian Chen and cried out in delight, "Immortal Grandpa!"
Qian Chen smiled as he handed the child back to Old Man Jiang, unable to resist touching his own youthful face. He mused inwardly: *Could it be that my mature demeanor is so obvious that even a child can see through it at a glance?*
By this point, Wei Taiping had abandoned all other thoughts. Leaving behind the wagon loaded with the felled tree, he tried to slip away unnoticed. But the moment he lifted his leg, his knees buckled. A cultivator at the Spell Comprehension stage tumbled headlong to the ground. Feeling entirely sapped of strength, Wei Taiping opened his mouth to beg for mercy, only for a dark green shadow to suddenly leap into his open mouth. He felt a wet, slippery slide down his throat as the living creature plunged straight into his belly.
In that instant, Wei Taiping felt his strength abruptly return. Forgetting all about what had just crawled inside him, he scrambled to his feet and fled for his life, tumbling and crawling along the ground.
The crowd of servants hurriedly scurried after him.
Throughout the entire ordeal, Qian Chen did not spare them so much as a single glance.
Old Man Jiang bowed low and said, "Benefactor, you have saved this child's life twice over. He has only his childhood nickname, Huzi. Now that you have granted him what amounts to a second life, I beg you, Immortal, to bestow a proper name upon him!"
"His surname is Jiang?" Qian Chen asked with a smile, teasing the child.
Old Man Jiang nodded. "He is indeed my blood grandson!"
Qian Chen immediately recalled the Supreme's peculiar, twisted habit of copying all manner of things from his past life. Stroking his chin, he chuckled and said, "In that case, let him be named Jiang Shang! In the future, when he takes a courtesy name, he can be called Ziya!"
Upon hearing this, Old Man Jiang's expression turned rather strange.
Qian Chen glanced at him, only to hear Old Man Jiang stammer hesitantly, "Immortal... this humble one's name is Jiang Shang!"
Qian Chen froze in astonishment, then burst into hearty laughter. "How about Nezha, then? With the childhood name Third Prince?"
Old Man Jiang waved his hands frantically. "I couldn't dare, I couldn't dare! Jiang Shang is fine... Jiang Shang is very good. This old man has lived in vain for more than fifty years, and everyone just calls me Old Man Jiang anyway. I'll just change my name!"
"No need for that!" Qian Chen reassured him. "Fifty is hardly old. Looking at your sturdy frame, you might well accomplish great things at eighty!"
Old Man Jiang continued to demur, and so the child's name was settled.
Having resolved a karmic tie that had originated on his account, Qian Chen glanced toward the dozens of badly injured villagers and left them with a parting word: "This tree of plums is left entirely to all of you!"
Carrying his umbrella over his left shoulder, he strolled away with easy grace, heading straight into the distance.
He had only stopped here to tie up loose ends; the true source of trouble was still waiting for him to eliminate it!
The onlookers remained spellbound by the spectacle, their eyes tracking the immortal figure as he vanished.
Just then, the lame Shi boy quickly picked up a fallen plum and took a bite. Very soon, he discovered that the wound on his leg was closing up, and even his injured bone no longer pained him.
"Plums... These are immortal plums! They can bring the dead back to life and make flesh grow over bare bones!" the Shi boy cried in wild delight. Casting aside his crutches, he scrambled up the tree. Reaching the canopy, he gathered armfuls of plums and showered them down. By then, the villagers had snapped out of their daze. Regardless of whether they were injured, they swarmed forward in a rush, scrambling for the few plums scattered on the ground.
The Shi boy hastily tossed more plums downward, shouting, "Don't fight! The immortal said there's enough for everyone!"
Even as he threw them down, he stuffed the largest, ripest plums into his own shirt. The villagers who snatched plums first hurried to share them with their wounded kin. Before long, even the village elder who had been kicked to the ground was able to lean against the tree and stand up. He groaned as he chewed on the teeth-numbingly sour fruit, his face puckered tight like a withered chrysanthemum.
Old Man Jiang did not join the scramble for plums. Instead, he lifted his grandson like a precious treasure and beamed. "Jiang Shang, Jiang Shang... Jiang Shang, Jiang Ziya! This is a name given to you by an immortal! You are bound to accomplish great things... You could become the prime minister of our Great Jin dynasty! No, if you're going to become anything, become an immortal! A prime minister among immortals..."
Sweating profusely, the village headman squeezed out of the crowd and offered a few gathered plums to Old Man Jiang. He grinned ingratiatingly and said, "Looks like the auspicious fortune promised to our village has fallen upon Huzi after all! Huzi, when you grow up, you mustn't forget your Uncle Shen!"
"You're of the grandfather generation already!" Old Man Jiang said, lifting little Jiang Shang higher. "This is Grandpa Shen..."
"Grandpa Shen!" little Jiang Shang babbled.
Chapter 58