Volume One: The Cloud-Soaring Immortal Palace Arc, Chapter Eighty-Nine: Reunion After a Long Separation

On the summit of a verdant peak on Heart Island, several figures stood silently together.

“Damn it, where did that turtle get to?” Zhou Hao, having just finished discussing the matter of the Great Honored One with Dutou Lang, suddenly remembered something and was struck with alarm.

“According to the inner demon’s memory, it escaped the Dragon King’s treasury on its own, but I do not know where it is now,” Zhou Hao said, looking troubled.

“Do not worry. Let this immortal use divine sight to find it for you.” Beside him, Dutou Lang stood with his hands behind his back atop the yellow gourd, wearing the bearing of a lofty recluse, as though everything was already within his expectations.

“Then I thank you, Senior!” Zhou Hao said with a nod.

With a hum, Dutou Lang extended his right hand, joining his index and middle fingers while folding the other three into a sword-seal gesture. Then, with those two fingers, he traced lightly across his forehead. In an instant, a vertical eye appeared between his brows, glittering with golden light as it shone into the empty sky above Dutou Lang’s head.

Radiance flashed through the blue vault, and wind and cloud gathered around a single eye.

The next moment, the vertical eye on Dutou Lang’s forehead blazed, shooting its light in all directions, above and below, through the six reaches of space. Nothing far or near escaped it; nothing was left unseen. In a heartbeat, the golden radiance swept over everything like lightning and swordlight, comprehending every secret of this immortal dwelling.

“Truly formidable! This must be something like the Buddhist Palm-World Art, opening a domain, within which the opener may know all things at will,” Zhou Hao exclaimed. During these decades, he had read many books left by the ancients as well as various records of immortal-domain arts and divine techniques, and so he could instantly draw many comparisons.

“Not exactly.” At that moment, the little loli girl Huahuo, standing beside Zhou Hao, shook her head. “The Palm-World is a divine art, while an immortal abode’s world is a truly existing realm. Look, even if Gourd Grandpa is dead, the immortal dwelling still exists. That is the difference.”

“Oh, right. That is indeed the case. I forgot for a moment that an immortal abode is a real world, where all things grow, no less than the true great world itself.” Zhou Hao suddenly understood.

“Wrong again.” Huahuo rolled her eyes at Zhou Hao, who looked blankly at her and asked why he was wrong again.

“An immortal abode is still far inferior to a true immortal domain. First, the spiritual energy here is insufficient and the laws are incomplete, so it cannot provide cultivators with the best environment for cultivation. Second, everything here takes the abode’s master as supreme. The master of the abode is the creator; the living beings here cannot leave the abode, nor can they ever surpass the master’s level,” Huahuo explained solemnly.

“Is that so?” Zhou Hao turned to ask his beautiful senior sister.

“Hmph, you still do not believe this girl?” Huahuo said irritably.

“That is right. As Miss Huahuo says, although an immortal abode is also a real world, it exists only for its master. Even if the master dies, nothing in the abode-world will change,” said Su Qing, elegant in plain white robes.

“If that is the case, then I have a bold idea!” Zhou Hao suddenly said.

“What idea?” the two women asked in unison.

“You tell me, could the immortal domain and the mortal world also be... someone else’s abode-world?” Zhou Hao said with deliberate mystery.

“Young man, that idea is not at all novel. Many people have raised that question the first time they encountered an immortal abode, but no one can answer it!” Dutou Lang had just finished probing the abode-world, and he was rather helpless upon hearing Zhou Hao’s speculation.

“Then it seems this too is another unsolved riddle!” Zhou Hao laughed bitterly. If even a figure like Dutou Lang said no one could answer it, then surely no one truly could.

“Gourd Grandpa, did you help Zhou Hao find his turtle?” Huahuo asked, staring at Dutou Lang with her big round eyes.

“Indeed, strange. This is my abode. Unless that turtle has already left it, my divine sight should certainly be able to find it,” Dutou Lang said with a shake of his head.

“You still didn’t find the turtle? That... that thing should not have been able to leave the immortal dwelling. According to the inner demon’s memory, I suspect that at the time it had already seen through the fact that I was an inner demon and not my true self, which is why it fled. But where on earth is it now?” Zhou Hao asked in distress.

Boom!

Suddenly, while the few of them were fretting over the turtle, a deafening explosion shook the entire island. Outside the island, the sea surged violently, raising waves thousands of feet high. On the island itself, the scene was even more dire: black smoke billowed upward, and flames blotted out the sky.

“The volcano has erupted!” Zhou Hao, Huahuo, Su Qing, and Dutou Lang all looked toward the same place.

Howl... chirp... chirp...

The immense volcano standing at the center of Heart Island now seemed like a furious beast. At the crater, flames soared to the heavens, swallowing the sky in fire, while black smoke shot straight upward. At the same time, Zhou Hao and the others heard one roar after another, part dragon’s cry and part bird’s chirp, as though some monster were about to emerge from the crater.

“Damn it, she’s out! She really broke free of the seal!” On the yellow gourd, Dutou Lang’s eyes turned blood-red as he stared fixedly at the crater, as though terrified of missing even the slightest movement.

“Luo Tianyi?!” Seeing Dutou Lang’s reaction, Zhou Hao naturally knew whom he meant: the female immortal king with whom he bore a murder of his wife, and also the true owner of that Dragon King treasury.

“What an oppressive aura. This power is too stifling; I feel that even heaven and earth seem diminished before it. What kind of power is this?” Huahuo’s delicate face turned pale, and her whole body trembled. Her current cultivation was at the quasi-Golden Immortal stage, yet the successive monstrous roars from the volcano’s mouth filled her with utter fear.

“It is truly terrifying. I feel as though I am about to kneel, even though I clearly do not want to, but my body will not obey...” Not only her, but Zhou Hao and Su Qing also felt some inexplicable emotion fermenting within them: fear, an irresistible urge to kneel, as though they stood before a true god.

Fortunately, Dutou Lang sensed the emotional reaction of the three beside him at once. With a sweep of his sleeve, a sheet of snow-white light enveloped them, preventing their trembling legs from actually giving way.

“Hah! That female dragon king is really putting on airs. She wants us to kneel to her? She can dream on. Nya nya nya...” The first thing Huahuo did after steadying herself was to denounce Luo Tianyi. Facing the volcano, she made faces and spat, just like a child.

“You’re adorable!” Zhou Hao was amused by the sight and could not help patting Huahuo’s little head with a laugh.

“Have you had enough of touching me, you big perverted wolf? You won’t even spare a child!” Huahuo looked up at Zhou Hao, who was grinning like a fool, and scolded him.

Yet because she was a loli girl, her voice was crisp and soft, and such a tone simply could not make Zhou Hao’s hand stop.

“I never expected your little head to be this fun to touch, little loli. Your hair is so smooth!” At that moment, Zhou Hao completely forgot the danger around him, because the feeling of his hand resting on Huahuo’s head was truly... too comfortable.

He thought of those youthful years in the mortal world. Back then, there had also been a lovely little loli girl beside him, and he had liked to place his hand on her head and mess up her hair, because the strands on top of a girl’s head felt so smooth, so pleasant to touch. At the time, that girl had also complained and scorned him in all sorts of ways, but not truly in dislike—only the bickering of siblings.

“Qingqing!” In a daze, Zhou Hao seemed to see once more the younger sister who had once burdened him with endless guilt.

“Is it raining? Huh, Zhou Hao, why are you crying? Oh, I know. Is it because touching my head and being scolded by me makes you feel so ashamed?” The tears falling from Zhou Hao’s eyes landed on Huahuo’s head, and the look of distaste on her face turned at once into a sly grin.

“How could that be? I... I... I just got sand in my eyes!” Zhou Hao hurriedly took his hand off Huahuo’s head to wipe away his tears.

“Hey, you...” Huahuo was baffled, yet a faint blush quietly rose to her cheeks, and in her heart she could not help but look forward inexplicably to that big hand touching her little head a few more times.

“Zhou Hao, do you like this girl? Then what about Yu Nan? And what about me... Never mind, what do I have to do with any of this?” Beside them, Su Qing’s beauty was peerless, yet her brows were faintly furrowed as she stared in a daze at the pair before her, one big and one small, one man and one woman.

Howl... chirp...

As the roars from the crater grew louder and more frequent, Zhou Hao and the others finally saw the true form of its owner.

With a thunderous crash, the volcano broke in two at the waist, and a gigantic five-colored peacock flew out. Its entire body was shrouded in golden light. In this dark world where the sky was obscured by fire, it seemed like a beacon between heaven and earth.

Yet as everyone’s gaze fell upon that peacock, they made a shocking discovery: its head was actually a dragon’s head. This was utterly inconceivable. Especially for Dutou Lang, whose face was even more bewildered as he muttered, “What is going on? How did Luo Tianyi become like this?”

“Hahahaha! Dutou Lang, long time no see. After thirty thousand years apart, I finally see the light of day again today. I said long ago that your seal could not hold me. One day I would break through it, and today my prophecy has come true! Hahahahaha...”

In the heavens, the five-colored peacock with a shimmering blue dragon head rose and fell amid the black smoke, half hidden and half revealed. From those dragon eyes, two blue beams shot downward, projecting onto the peak on Heart Island where Zhou Hao and the others stood. There was no doubt that Luo Tianyi had seen them all at a glance. More precisely, she had seen her enemy, Dutou Lang, at a glance!

“Hmph, I am happy as well that you have broken the seal. Do you know why? Because at last I can kill you and avenge the Snow Lady!” Dutou Lang rode the yellow gourd and rose into midair, coldly staring at the monster in the distance that was neither quite dragon nor quite peacock, his eyes blazing with the flames of revenge.