Elders thrashing juniors was something Xu Yuan had long grown accustomed to.
Owing to his temperament and innate love of fun, he had practically been beaten by his old man from childhood all the way to adulthood in his past life.
In elementary and middle school, he loved stirring up trouble and getting into fights. In high school, puppy love led to the girl's family coming knocking on their door. By college, he fell in love with wilderness travel; whenever he went off on an excursion, no one would see him at school for over a month.
And every single time the old man caught him, a brutal beating ensued.
Over time, Xu Yuan had gotten used to it.
If he couldn't afford to provoke him, couldn't he at least afford to hide?
The world was so vast—if he couldn't fight back, couldn't he still run?
In any case, they were father and son after all. Once the old man cooled down, Xu Yuan would say a few nice words, show a resolute attitude of admitting his mistakes, and once his living allowance came through, he would go right back to fooling around however he pleased.
In this world, however, Xu Yuan found that he couldn't run even if he wanted to.
His convenient older brother could string him up and beat him directly.
In the literal sense,
Strung up and beaten.
Strung up and beaten until he couldn't even speak.
As he was pondering these things, a clear, resonant eagle screech suddenly rang in Xu Yuan's ears.
Snapping back to reality, Xu Yuan looked at the unfamiliar room before him and gave a slight shake of his head.
After being beaten unconscious, this was the room he had woken up to.
A faint incense drifted through the antique room, where every bit of decor was rustic to the extreme.
Looking out through the wooden window by the head of the bed,
Xu Yuan saw a boundless blue sky.
Along with...
A colossal eagle wing that spanned well over ten zhang.
Two days had passed since his beating, and he was currently sitting aboard an "airplane" bound for Jingjiang City.
Unlike the steel behemoths of his past life, this "airplane" was a living creature—a colossal black eagle with a wingspan exceeding twenty zhang, upon whose broad back stood a luxurious, exquisitely carved pavilion.
It was Xu Changge's airborne travelling palace, though because Xu Yuan's strength was too meager, it had been temporarily loaned to him, the youngest brother.
As for Xu Changge himself...
That older brother was swamped with affairs. After stringing Xu Yuan up and giving him a thrashing, he waited until Xu Yuan woke, then flew off directly with the two giant python heads.
Xu Yuan estimated that he had likely rushed back to the Imperial Capital to report to their convenient father.
To save him, Xu Changge had already spent far too much time in the Wanxing Mountain Range. Right now was a crucial juncture, and he had to return to the capital to assist their father.
At this thought, the image of those two enormous python heads flashed through Xu Yuan's mind, and a strange look crept into his eyes.
He thought of Ji Fenghua, whose head had been chopped off by Xu Changge.
Ji Fenghua—a green-haired older sister character with gorgeous character art.
A very big, very pale older sister.
Yet compared to the death of another 2D waifu, what Xu Yuan found even more baffling was his older brother's strength.
As a mature Seven-Life Python whose seven blood lotuses had blossomed decades ago, Ji Fenghua was truly formidable—leaps and bounds above the snake demon clan's Second Princess, Ji Qingyue.
Yet such a character had actually perished at Xu Changge's hands just like that.
It was not that Xu Yuan doubted Xu Changge's strength, but rather that in the myriad worldlines of *Cangyuan*, Ji Fenghua had fought Xu Changge once.
In the late game of that worldline, the Western Foreign Demon Realm crossed the hundred thousand mountains of the Wanxing Mountain Range to invade the Great Yan Dynasty.
Outside Jingjiang City, Xu Changge and Ji Fenghua clashed in an earth-shattering battle.
And on that occasion,
With no outside interference, Xu Changge was defeated by a hair's breadth.
Covered in wounds, Ji Fenghua transformed into a sky-reaching python and swallowed him whole, extinguishing his life and cultivation.
Anyone with discerning eyes could see that back then, the gap in strength between Xu Changge and Ji Fenghua was minimal; a single split-second decision could have determined victory or defeat.
Yet the reality now was...
Xu Changge had marched straight into Ji Fenghua's home turf and chopped her head off.
Factoring in the environmental disadvantages, the fact that Xu Changge had returned virtually uninjured, and the other demons lurking in Guyuan watching from the sidelines, Xu Changge's current strength relative to Ji Fenghua was practically an overwhelming curb-stomp.
This combat disparity, completely departing from the storyline and at blatant odds with the original plot, left Xu Yuan feeling faintly uneasy.
In less than ten years, and without a player's leveling cheat, even if Ji Fenghua grew stronger, she could not have progressed that fast.
Moreover, Xu Changge was an outright genius himself.
If Ji Fenghua could grow stronger, Xu Changge naturally could as well.
Through fortuitous encounters or special events, the gap between them might narrow, but reaching a deadlock should have been impossible.
In other words...
Xu Yuan's thoughts stalled for a moment as an absurd notion surfaced in his mind.
Between now and when Guyuan invaded Great Yan...
Had his older brother's strength not only failed to grow, but actually weakened?
Why?
Xu Yuan could not comprehend it.
In *Cangyuan*, even players with an omniscient bird's-eye view were kept in the dark about many things.
Take Ran Qingmo, who had just parted ways with him.
Xu Yuan had no idea how Ran Qingmo had learned that the Prime Minister intended to eradicate the Tianyuan Sword Sect.
After all, at this point in the plot, only Xu Yuan's convenient father and a few trusted confidants knew.
When playing *Cangyuan*, Xu Yuan had initially suspected a mole among the Prime Minister's subordinates, since only those few individuals knew about it. But as he cleared every ending in the game, none of those powerful confidants had ever been redeemed or exposed as traitors.
Every one of them had remained loyal to the boss until the very end.
The development team dug plot holes and left them unfilled, styling it as 'giving players room for imagination.'
Xu Yuan let out a soft sigh.
With insufficient information, any amount of speculation was pointless; he could only look for opportunities to investigate later.
Refraining from letting his thoughts wander any further on the matter, Xu Yuan slowly shifted his gaze to the head of the bed.
Before departing, that older brother of his had casually tossed him a dozen or so pill bottles.
He had claimed they were for this useless wretch to heal his wounds.
Telling him to recover quickly so their father wouldn't blame him for being too heavy-handed.
Unlike the three supreme-grade pills he had found in the cave abode—each sealed alone in a jade bottle—these jade bottles each contained over a dozen pills.
Qinglin Pills: accelerates the recovery of the intent-soul and temporarily enhances the intent-soul's ability to perceive Source Qi.
Guangling Pills: strengthens the resilience of meridians, a miraculous medicine to fortify foundations and nourish vitality.
Meridian Protection Pills: upon ingestion, a thin membrane forms along the inner walls of the meridians, allowing the user to circulate cultivation methods non-stop for all twelve two-hour periods of the day without fear of meridian damage.
Soul Cleansing Pills: as the name suggests, tempers the intent-soul.
Right... for healing. That brother had said these were for healing his wounds... Well, these pills technically *could* heal, pfft.
Calling these pills divine medicines for novice cultivators would not be an exaggeration in the slightest; they covered virtually every hurdle one might encounter during cultivation.
More importantly,
these pills had zero side effects.
In *Cangyuan*'s alchemy system, most pills that aided a character's cultivation inflicted permanent debuffs after consumption.
For instance, intent-soul weakening (reducing the mana bar), meridian damage (increasing required leveling EXP), and certain bottleneck-breaking pills even caused irreversible harm to internal organs (reducing max HP).
Pills without side effects only existed under one condition:
The value of the ingredients required to refine them far exceeded that of the pills themselves.
In other words, using rare mid-to-late-game materials to refine items needed for the early game.
Staring silently at the dozen or so jade bottles for a long while, Xu Yuan suddenly felt a bizarre urge to run up and take another brutal beating.
Immediately dumbfounded at his own thought, he chuckled and shook his head.
Though his older brother had truly held nothing back when beating him, he was just as generous when handing out good stuff.
Chapter 26