After his mother had recovered her health, his father and she had set off to travel and gain experience everywhere.
Immortals are born with a thousand-year lifespan, and their longevity only extends further as they cultivate. It was truly nothing to make a fuss about if someone disappeared for a few thousand years, unless there was an anomaly with their soul tablet.
Recalling the ridiculous ancient books he had seen when he doubled back that day, Li Jiushu looked at the Li family ancestor with suspicion. Was this old man really planning to put those ideas into action?
“A thousand years ago, didn’t you see with your own eyes that your drop of blood was used on your father’s soul tablet? How was that a trick?” the Li family ancestor said. He truly felt that this junior was the most rebellious and unconventional person he had ever seen.
Li Jiushu replied, “It was used, but the person was right here in the clan at the time.”
The Li family ancestor: “…”
“That was just a coincidence; your father happened to return at that moment,” the other elders quickly added to smooth things over for the ancestor.
Li Jiushu nodded. “The concerns of the Ancestor and the elders are not without reason. I shall trouble the Ancestor to take out my father’s soul tablet, and I will directly cast a spell to find his tracks.”
This statement silenced the Li family ancestor and the elders. They sheerly forced themselves not to look at each other, communicating only through their eyes.
“Very well.”
The Li family ancestor raised his hand, took out the soul tablet of Li Jiushu’s father, and sent it before him.
Li Jiushu performed a hand seal and struck a drop of essence blood, along with a dharmic seal, into the soul tablet. The blue jade tablet lit up with a blue glow; the distance could be estimated based on the intensity of the light.
Regardless of distance, as long as the light remained steady and did not flicker, it proved the person was fine and their life was not in danger.
Li Jiushu withdrew the dharmic seal and looked at the Li family ancestor. “My father is still within this realm. Do you wish for me to find him and bring him back?”
“Since he is still in this realm, there is no need to bring him back. I see that the term of your contract with the Divine Tree is nearing its end. I was simply worried that if your father were in another realm, there would be no way to seek help if something happened.”
After saying this, the Li family ancestor suggested, “Why don’t we also verify your mother’s?”
Li Jiushu smiled. “Ancestor, if anything happened to my mother, the first thing my father would think of to seek help would surely be my divine ability.”
The Li family ancestor: “…”
“I am going into seclusion. Unless there is a major matter, the Ancestor and the elders need not look for me.” Li Jiushu bowed and took his leave.
“What seclusion? Get back here!”
Once one reaches the rank of Immortal Venerable, moving up further—no matter how high your talent—takes at least ten thousand years. During this long stretch of time, it was naturally impossible to rely solely on closed-door meditation. On the contrary, one needed to find an opportunity before entering seclusion to comprehend and cultivate, and such opportunities were hard to come by.
The more the Li family ancestor shouted, the faster Li Jiushu walked, vanishing in the blink of an eye.
The elders looked at each other and then turned to the ancestor.
“I told you this wouldn’t work. This junior, Jiushu, has eight hundred schemes in his heart. I suspect he was born from a lotus root.”
“We’ve alerted him today. In the future, we can forget about it even more.”
“Ancestor, perhaps you are overthinking. I have never heard of a Pregnancy Fruit escaping. Besides, if a child could be nurtured so easily, the family wouldn’t have had to wait five thousand years for a single newborn.”
“What if?” A small spark of hope remained in the Li family ancestor’s heart.
“Is it possible that Jiushu sensed your intentions long ago and stole—ahem, took the Pregnancy Fruit away?”
The group: “…”
With that divine ability of his, entering as if through an uninhabited land, it wasn’t impossible.
Now, even the Li family ancestor’s last bit of hope was gone. This was exactly the kind of thing Li Jiushu would do; the Divine Tree cub he wanted was not going to happen.
After leaving the Ancestral Land, Li Jiushu saw the Li family head. He suddenly remembered his grand-nephew, who hadn’t been born for long. Feeding an unrelated cub while ignoring his own grand-nephew seemed a bit improper.
Li Jiushu took a basket of Kaiyuan Fruits from his space and handed them to the Li family head. “For the child.”
The family head was overwhelmed by the favor and hurriedly accepted them. “I thank my uncle on behalf of my son. If the boy knew his grand-uncle cared for him so much, he would be very happy.”
Li Jiushu, who had only remembered this grand-nephew after the fact: “…”
Li Jiushu took out another treasure box, sent it over, and his figure vanished.
The family head straightened up. Who said his uncle was a hoarder? Look, wasn’t he sending gift after gift to his own grand-nephew?
Inside the Library, Ye Wan spent an entire day just looking for information regarding Suisui. Finally, she saw a record in a travelogue of a certain ancestor on the third floor:
Legend has it that when an exiled god unites with a human, their offspring have a very high chance of awakening ancient divine abilities.
This ancestor had once obtained an opportunity to go to another realm and was fortunate enough to see an immortal who was said to be a descendant of an exiled god. That immortal united with a person from the lower realm to conceive a child. Unfortunately, the immortal fetus required too much nourishment. The couple barely managed to sustain the pregnancy for ten months through countless heavenly materials and earthly treasures. On the day the immortal fetus was born, the mother was sacrificed to the heavens, thunder rolled, and half the vitality of the world was absorbed…
Ye Wan flipped forward but found nothing more. What happened to the world that had half its vitality sucked away? Did the immortal fetus survive after birth? What was the ending?
At this moment, Ye Wan wanted to rebelliously curse that ancestor for a bad ending.
From this perspective, Suisui probably wasn’t an immortal fetus. Aside from not knowing how she was conceived, everything else was normal. A normal ten-month pregnancy, birth at ten centimeters dilation—no heavenly thunder, no crowing cocks or barking dogs, and certainly no auspicious signs filling the sky.
If she had to mention something abnormal, it was likely that a female cultivator giving birth would cause her cultivation to drop, yet hers hadn’t.
Ye Wan then looked for legends regarding plants.
One book said that because it was difficult for immortals in the Immortal Realm to conceive, there was a fruit produced by a certain divine tree called a Pregnancy Fruit. It could nurture offspring through the essence blood of both parties. The nurturing time ranged from over a thousand years to as long as ten thousand.
Ye Wan thought of the fruit that had knocked her unconscious when she first transmigrated. At that time, the original owner had failed to open the inheritance stone and, in desperation, had spilled her essence blood all over the ground.
No way, right? Suisui couldn’t be a Pregnancy Fruit that escaped from someone’s home, could she?
But that wasn’t right either. Even with the essence blood of both parties, it required a secret technique and thousands of years of nurturing. Suisui’s situation clearly didn’t fit that.
Ye Wan looked for other things, but nothing matched. As for the records Doctor Kong mentioned about some being born as immortal fetuses, Ye Wan saw those too.
That referred to a one-in-a-million probability. For instance, if an ancestor had immortal blood, it might be inherited in a certain generation. Even then, there was another one-in-a-million chance that the ancestor had a special divine ability in their bloodline, giving the descendant a chance to awaken a family-inherited divine ability.
As for how the ancestor got immortal blood, it could be a sequel to that unfinished story about the immortal fetus—the fetus survived and had descendants. Still unable to determine Suisui’s origin, Ye Wan stopped obsessing over it. Regardless, stocking up on heavenly materials and earthly treasures to replenish energy was the right way to go.
She spent the last two days “restocking” her brain, cramming everything she could—known and unknown—into her head like a stuffed duck.
For example, regarding the war against the extraterrestrial invasion five thousand years ago, Ye Wan looked at the records in the journals and the mechanical remains displayed in the corner. She had a certain theory about those extraterrestrial entities.
Ye Wan also specifically looked up the Qianyuan Realm’s list of ascended figures. There was no cultivator named Qingwei, nor any records regarding the Weaving Dao. She suspected that this master and this inheritance had dropped into the Qianyuan Realm from another world.
Finally, Ye Wan couldn’t help but “touch” all the techniques on the third floor. The techniques here chose their own masters; if they didn’t like you, there was no reaction at all.
After flirting with all the techniques and not a single jade slip reacting, Ye Wan completely accepted the fact that she had no “protagonist halo.”
Just as Ye Wan was preparing to leave, streaks of light converged ahead into a bead, emitting a blue glow as it stopped above her.