Eternal Tale

”Moo?”

Black Bull turned his head, staring at Chen Xun in confusion.

Chen Xun smiled slightly and said, ”There’s something strange about this mountain peak. Let’s go in and take a look.”

”Moo!” Black Bull nodded gently, following behind Chen Xun.

Deep within the mountain, they discovered a cave abode, exuding a decaying aura of formations.

The worn stone pillars at the entrance and the mottled bluestone floor showed its age, revealing years of desolation and neglect.

The cave abode was quite simple, with only a few stone tables and chairs, and nothing else.

However, in the center of the floor, a figure sat cross-legged like a statue, motionless, still emanating a faint pressure despite the passage of countless years.

Both man and bull became instantly alert, approaching cautiously.

The person appeared to be a middle-aged man, dressed in a purple cloud-patterned Daoist robe, wearing a jade crown, with handsome features and an extraordinary demeanor.His eyes were tightly shut, sitting as if asleep, silent and devoid of life.

Yet, the man’s brows were tightly furrowed, with two persistent tear stains, strikingly visible.

Presumably, this was the owner of the cave abode, who had secluded himself here for cultivation, but failed to break through his bottleneck, resulting in his death. However, it was impossible to discern his cultivation level.

A cultivator’s powerful body often remains uncorrupted for tens of thousands of years. Without a prepared tomb, sitting in the wilderness could lead to corpse transformation or be exploited by evil cultivators.

The body of a strong cultivator needs to be suppressed by an immortal tomb, for future generations to worship. After all, those requiring an immortal tomb are often the ancestors of a sect, whose fortune is needed to protect their descendants, making it impossible to simply burn the body.

However, this man remained unchanged from his moment of death, indicating he was suppressed by this eerie mountain peak, making it an excellent burial site.

Chen Xun’s eyes flickered, and he smiled, cupping his hands, ”Fellow Daoist, meeting is fate. Sorry for the disturbance.”

”Moo moo~” Black Bull echoed, quietly eyeing the man’s finger, where a storage ring was located.

In the Wild Heaven Region, one cannot connect their primordial spirit to the star hub, and the Thousand Mechanism Spirit Seal cannot be used, so everything is stored in storage rings.

But it seemed this person had encountered some misfortune before death, as there were no cultivation resources inside, though the space within the storage ring was not small.

After staking out for several years, finally coming out to scavenge, it couldn’t be wasted. After all, even a mosquito is still meat.

Chen Xun raised his finger slightly, and the storage ring from the corpse instantly fell into his hand. He smiled peacefully, cupping his hands again.

”Moo!” Black Bull nudged Chen Xun, quietly watching him.

With a faint smile on his lips, Chen Xun began to inspect the contents.

Inside the storage ring were several jade slips and a jade token. The jade slips were golden, like cast gold, quite extraordinary, but the restrictions on them had worn away with time, making their contents visible at a glance.

As they opened them, a light screen suddenly unfolded, pulling their minds and bodies into it, as if watching a transmission stone.

It turned out this person was named Jing Yuxing, a Great Ascension expert from before the merger of Xuanji Sacred Land, whose main cultivation method was also the Five Elements!

Chen Xun and Black Bull’s eyes lit up. The world they had encountered before was too small, never having met a cultivator practicing the Five Elements.

The Three Thousand Great Worlds are vast and boundless, with endless immortal paths. It wasn’t surprising to encounter cultivators of this path. Even in the small boundary, cultivators could use the qi of the Five Elements to set up formations.

They continued to watch. This person was the offspring of the Great Elder of Tianxuan Sacred Land.

After birth, he was found to have a Five Element Mixed Spirit Root, not a supreme Five Element Spirit Root, and was not highly regarded or valued. However, his path in the sacred land was relatively smooth.

With such qualifications, relying on the connections of his elders, he could cultivate to the Void Refinement phase, but throughout his life, he could only look up to his peers.

Even his father rarely looked at him directly, spending less time on him than on his disciples.

Although respected from a young age, he was often ridiculed and gossiped about behind his back, never ranking in the sacred land’s competitions, covered in scars.

His father’s gaze was full of disappointment. He remembered seeing him sigh often in childhood, leaving behind a few bottles of Qi-Enhancing Pills and walking away, never explaining the immortal path, or even mentioning the outside world.

Gradually, he understood that as the only son of the Great Elder of the sacred land, with wasted talent, he was no different from the spirit beasts raised by the sacred land, perhaps even worse, a complete waste.

He never had friends, his peers had long surpassed him, and even the younger generation had surpassed him. He only remembered exchanging a few words with his father.

Later, when he bid farewell to the sect, his father never gave any instructions or protective magical artifacts, only saying that the path of immortality was his to walk, hoping he wouldn’t die too quickly.

At that moment, Jing Yuxing finally felt a surge of resentment, leaving Tianxuan Sacred Land without hesitation, venturing alone into the Wild Heaven Region.

However, the outside world showed him what true fear was, narrowly escaping death countless times, always on the run.

Every night, when loneliness filled his heart, Jing Yuxing wanted to return to Tianxuan Sacred Land immediately, but then a cold voice would echo in his mind: hoping he wouldn’t die too quickly.

At those times, he gritted his teeth and persevered, refusing to return to Tianxuan Sacred Land, even becoming an immortal slave, but eventually escaping, as he had learned many life-saving spells from being frequently beaten in the sacred land.

He traveled to many places, even reaching the legendary Wild Star Sea, where a single drop of water was a celestial realm, with endless cycles of destruction and rebirth.

The ancient immortal clan of the Boundless Great World called the Wild Star Sea the birth of Hongmeng, the beginning of chaos, evolving into a world.

Although the star sea was still evolving, they had long decided on its name after evolution—Universe!

But no cultivator from the myriad clans understood its meaning, or what it meant to evolve a world, though it reminded them of the vast starry sky in the star hub.

”Universe...” Chen Xun looked at the words in the jade slip, his heart suddenly shaken, his fingers trembling, recalling the awe when he first saw the star hub.

He understood the meaning of these two words clearly, and Chen Xun took a deep breath, his fingers inadvertently trembling as he held the jade slip. Had he crossed space...

Or had he traversed the river of time?! Where did the Longevity System come from?! Who was he really?!

Chen Xun felt a slight tingling on his scalp, initially thinking living past a hundred years was a gain, but now, as the world he witnessed grew broader, the things he sought in his heart increased.

He no longer had his initial mindset, feeling compelled to pursue some fundamental truths.

”Moo moo?” Black Bull nudged Chen Xun, puzzled. It was rare to see Chen Xun so shocked. Did he understand what the universe was?

But it remembered Chen Xun always treated these things as stories, just reading them without believing.

”It’s nothing, Bull.”

Chen Xun looked at Black Bull, suddenly coming back to his senses, unknowingly letting out a sigh of relief, murmuring, ”Living past a hundred years is a gain, no need to overthink.”

”Moo moo!” Black Bull grinned, agreeing.

It then continued to read, not thinking too much, treating it as a story.

Later, Jing Yuxing comprehended the Dao in the Wild Star Sea, using his Five Element Mixed Spirit Root to gain insight into the Five Elements of Heaven and Earth, even able to directly borrow the power of the Five Elements to disperse others’ spells!

He rose against the odds with his Five Element Mixed Spirit Root, successfully breaking through to Nascent Soul, Void Refinement, and Unity, advancing triumphantly, with formidable combat power, though his physical body remained weak.

Cultivators who encountered him believed it was the Daoist art of the Five Elements, with ordinary spells unable to approach, all being decomposed and refined, only Daoist arts of the same level could match.

But unfortunately, all cultivators misunderstood. Jing Yuxing had no Five Element cultivation method, only practicing Five Element spells, nearly driven mad, never returning to Tianxuan Sacred Land.

Jing Yuxing encountered a bottleneck at the peak of Unity, consuming many Qi-Enhancing Pills and practicing many secret methods, but never breaking through, ignoring even the sacred land’s summons.

His father personally led a search outside the sacred land but found no trace of him, leaving many bloodline letters in various places.

But no one knew, Jing Yuxing had actually brought out a mysterious mineral vein from the Wild Star Sea.

He continued to cultivate in seclusion within it, solely to break through to Great Ascension, to prove to his father that spirit roots did not define the immortal path, and he would not die outside!

The day Jing Yuxing ascended to Great Ascension would be the day he returned to Tianxuan Sacred Land!