That notebook of the Youtian Sect junior sister only contained the origins of Venerable Qingji, but the sculptures in the stone cave meticulously recorded its so-called merits and virtues.
It granted sweet water sources, inexhaustible food, and promised that the Divine Envoys under its command would protect its subjects.
The requirements it set were also very simple: its subjects must not leave the village, must not leave this paradise.
To die in the peach blossom spring was to return to its peaceful embrace, to be reborn through reincarnation, to obtain a stronger, more beautiful new body, and continue to be born again in the peach blossom spring, until after nine times nine, eighty-one lifetimes, when merits would be complete, and one would finally ascend to the ranks of immortals, becoming its Divine Envoy… At least, the final group of sculptures told such a story of generation after generation of cyclical reincarnation.
In the stone cave was a group of sculptures resembling a human evolution chart, from the initial frail farmer gradually transforming into a tall, straight, and handsome immortal.
Rong Chunsong thought to herself, there's such a good deal? Free food and drink, and they even let you join the ranks of immortals?
Looking at it this way, this was clearly—Northern Myanmar's big stage, come if you dare. As for after you arrive? All who come are guests, so just don't leave.
There were also a few in Northern Myanmar's big stage who discovered that this Evil Immortal was deceiving people, but according to the last few sculptures at the end, they had all been struck down by heavenly punishment.
Hmm, heavenly punishment?
Didn't the village chief's family discover the village's abnormality and invite those Youtian Sect senior and junior disciples to exorcise the demon? But looking at those few sculptures, those struck by heavenly punishment seemed to be only ordinary villagers, not cultivators.
Over there, Shang Daoling had also finished viewing the murals and sneered: "What paradise, reincarnation and ascension—isn't this obviously a bunch of deceptive nonsense? So it seems indeed, Sect Master, you as a Heavenly Venerable are more proper. Although your Daoist methods are 'peculiar,' at least you don't go around swindling and deceiving."
This guy was secretly putting on airs again, and even taking jabs at her.
If it weren't for the fact that there was probably some BOSS hidden here, she really wanted to immediately give him a "100% Chance to Fall onto Target."
Rong Chunsong immediately smacked him on the head and said: "Of course I'm a proper deity. On the contrary, you, with your crooked and twisted mind, had best 'comprehend' my enlightenment and influence. Watch your tone."
The handsome young man in the scene, having been knocked like this, took several deep breaths before recovering—recovering meaning barely maintaining the fake relaxed, fake unconcerned smile on his face.
Truly too Ah Q-like, daring to be angry but not to speak, so again with this mysterious smile, pretending to be relaxed, pretending to be mysterious, pretending to have class. Worthy of being the flexible and adaptable great male lead who suffers as a youth.
[Target of courtship Shang Daoling does not approve of your actions. Favorability Value -0. Current Favorability Value: 27.]
Fine, he still knows what's good for him, Favorability Value minus zero.
In the pitch-black depths of this great male lead's eyes pretending to be relaxed and pretending to be a bking, the eerie flames continued to burn, more and more wild grass being consumed.
Finally, after the crimson flames passed through, the last trace of grass blades clinging beside a massive stone-cast vertical pupil was also burned away. A deity statue the height of a small hill now stood before them.
Still with celestial robes flowing elegantly, but its features were no longer ancient and lofty.
No one knew how much manpower and resources had gone into carving this towering divine statue. Yet after expending so much manpower and resources, what they had produced was such an ugly great god. Curved, upturned eyes set upside down, an almost nonexistent nose, a mouth grinning to the ears—it was entirely a… snake-like face.
Not only was the face like a snake, the body was too. What first met the eye was an eerily long neck, covered in ring after ring of blue-black bands, alternating black and white. The shoulders were strangely narrow—almost nonexistent. A "single" person—when the words "a single person" crossed Rong Chunsong's mind, she really couldn't help but laugh twice. A single person—one-fifth of five people!
A faint smile, like clear spring water, made Shang Daoling glance again toward the direction the laughter had come from.
Perhaps infected by her, Shang Daoling also gave a contemptuous sneer: "This statue really is ugly beyond belief. It seems this Venerable Qingji isn't a frog, but a black-and-white snake."
What black-and-white snake? The great male lead was just reading pictures aloud. But remembering that he had never read any books, it was only natural he lacked natural history knowledge. A good child and good student who was curious about the world and loved observing it—she would encourage and educate him a little.
As it happened, in her previous life when she was in her second year of high school, in order to accumulate forty hours of volunteer service, she had once taken cute elementary school students on a tour of the aquarium and given them a grand explanation.
Rong Chunsong said, "Right, little Shang, you observed very carefully! But look at its ring after ring of blue-black circular patterns alternating with white patterns—actually, its scientific name is the blue-banded sea snake. This kind of blue-banded sea snake is mostly distributed along the eastern coastal regions…"
However, less than a minute into this little popular-science class, from the darkness, within the stone cave, came the sound of snake tongues flicking again and again.
It was that stone cave carved with the Divine Envoys of Venerable Qingji.
Inviting the gentleman into the trap—now that the gentleman had come, the things in the trap were gradually stirring as well. In the darkness, many miserable green points of light lit up—snake eyes.
The small monsters moved first, and battle was about to erupt! Rong Chunsong was full of anticipation.
Shang Daoling said with a smile, "Lord Cult Master, it seems it was you who kept saying its name and woke it up."
This fellow was putting on an act again.
Rong Chunsong rapped him on the head: "The only one who can hear me speak is you. It's obviously because you're too showy and too attention-grabbing."
She had only said one sentence—that the only one who could hear her speak was him. For some reason, he felt that this sentence of hers was especially low in tone and color, like a night breeze brushing over bit by bit. But then he heard her say he was showy and attention-grabbing, which was clearly again that flippant, playful tone that treated him as entertainment.
…This Ghost Immortal spent all day mocking him and toying with him. In the future, he would slowly settle accounts with her.
As for right now, dealing with these low-grade things came first.
Miserable green points of light were dense and numerous.
The Divine Envoys in the stone cave each had an immortal bearing, awe-inspiring and brilliant. Some held golden whips, some pressed hands to precious swords, others cradled jade bottles of sweet dew, or embraced jade zithers and jade flutes. As if treading on lotuses, as if stepping on flowing clouds, spiritual elegance filled the whole cave heaven.
But what crawled out from behind those statues was—how to put it—not like the snake demons of traditional strange tales with human upper bodies and snake lower bodies, but more like alien monsters that fused humans and snakes together.
Some of them, at first glance, appeared human—human faces, human bodies, human limbs—but all four limbs were fused to slender, stick-like torsos, forcing them to writhe and crawl along the ground like human-serpents. Others, though their limbs functioned, moved on all fours, flicking forked tongues, their corpses-pale skin topped with serpentine faces as they crawled forward hand and foot.
Rong Chunsong thought to herself, So this is what they mean by the great evolution of eighty-one lifetimes—rolling out some truly grotesque aberrations.
And honestly, the ugliness was remarkably random.
Just as she was pondering this, one of these random "Divine Envoys" came scuttling over with a rush of wind—
A flash of pitch-black sword light, and its head was instantly severed, its body snapping in two.
Shang Daoling said with an air of disgust, "Honestly, can't I ever run into some decent-looking Demonic Entities? Every single time it's you ugly things—this is far too cruel to my eyes."
The male lead, who had only recently acquired his beautiful Painted Skin, couldn't stop complaining about how ugly the monsters were. Even killing demons required a sense of aesthetics, apparently.
A whirlwind of darkness swept through, and in an instant, every human-serpent crawling toward Shang Daoling was cleanly sliced apart, along with the nearby statues of Divine Envoys—some benevolent, some fierce—carved into the stone walls, all shattered to pieces.
Seemingly caught off guard that this newly lured prey was a tough bone to crack, the other human-serpents lurking in the darkness hesitated, holding back for the moment.
"What, scared already? Ugly as you are, it's been a long time since I've faced this many monsters at once. Killing a few hundred in one go—quite satisfying, quite exhilarating." Shang Daoling held his long sword aloft, a dashing smile spreading across his handsome features, his long brows arching slightly, like a magnificent tiger waiting for the hunt to begin.
But the next moment, his smile slowly faded, and he raised a hand to make a yawning gesture, as if he were utterly bored beyond measure.
The young man stood amidst the eerie, flickering flames and said coldly, "If this is all you've got, I'll have killed every last one of you within half a quarter-hour."
There he goes showing off again. Rong Chunsong thought he couldn't go even a single second without posturing.
She tapped the screen, shifting her view to the group of monsters facing him in the darkness.
A chorus of hissing forked tongues rose and fell. It was rhythmic, patterned—like… some kind of call. Soon, the entire cavern echoed with their alternating hissing cries.
Amidst the serpentine calls, the towering alien god-statues on the stone walls began to crack.
A massive tremor struck, sending countless fragments of rock tumbling down from above. Shang Daoling flicked his crimson robes, and with effortless grace, leaped up from the fractured ground, floating cross-legged in midair, even striking a pose with one leg crossed over the other.
In the image, the man propped his chin on his hand, long eyes half-lidded, and drawled lazily, "Well now, that's one big… black-and-white striped snake."
I told you it's a blue-ringed sea snake, why does he keep calling it a black-and-white striped snake? Rong Chunsong felt this male lead was truly rebellious—like a bad student in class who insists on arguing with the teacher just for the sake of it.
She switched the view again, looking at the final boss that had finally appeared.
Well, now. That was certainly… a thing.
A thousand-zhang-long sea snake with blue-black ringed patterns emerged from the darkness. At first glance, it seemed to be a snake. But the firelight in Shang Daoling's hand soon illuminated the human face atop the serpent's head.
Just as the sculpture depicted: curved, elongated eyes set upside down, an almost nonexistent nose, a mouth grinning ear to ear—a face that was neither quite human nor quite snake. Yet it wore a hair crown and a wooden hairpin, dressed like an ancient, otherworldly immortal of serene detachment, brows and eyes lowered, expression extremely calm—a sinister monster, imitating the calm, ethereal true immortals of ancient paintings.
A poser snake monster meeting a poser dragon protagonist—truly a match of equals.
But suddenly, she noticed that the hair on its human face was white. More precisely, the same color as the wild grass along the entire journey.
That peddler had actually gotten half of it right. It was hair, but not the hair of those Wraiths—it was this snake monster's hair.
A snow-white Daoist robe draped down from its serpentine body, which had only a single trunk. Beneath the robe grew over a dozen hands, each also bearing rings of dark green-black banded patterns.
A gust of foul wind swept through the dark burrow.
One of the snake monster's hands raised a snow-white immortal cord. As it waved, a brilliant white light flashed—
Red flowers, green willows, blue waters—a scene of a vividly colorful, richly hued peach blossom spring unfolded behind it like a mural.