After two faint knocks, the Illusionary Realm outside the Green Sky Mirror had been dismantled, and a person materialized on the ground.

The person had dust on his face and head, but his expression was still aloof and proud. He was none other than Tong Yan.

Tong Yan was surprised to see Jing Jiu, but he didn't show it; he didn't even lift his eyebrows.

It was Jing Jiu who had noticed that Tong Yan's eyebrows were thicker than before, asking, "What happened to your eyebrows?"

"It's perhaps because I have stayed under the ground a long time," Tong Yan replied while touching his eyebrows with his hand.

Jing Jiu said, "It's not the same as growing gra.s.s."

The small gra.s.s swayed slightly. The Green Girl flew out while flapping her transparent wings. She flew around Jing Jiu three times at a high speed excitedly.

She asked elatedly, "Why did you come here? How did you find us?"

"I didn't come here to find you," said Jing Jiu. "I came to the Cold Mountain to take care of something and met you two accidently."

Hearing this answer, the Green Girl didn't feel disappointed. She folded her tiny hands in front of her chest and exclaimed cheerfully with gleaming eyes, "This means we are bound by fate!"

Jing Jiu mused that their accidental meeting could be explained this way.

The Green Girl looked at Tong Yan and said, "You don't trust anybody, and are unwilling to ask anyone for help; but he came to us on his own. Don't let him leave so easily."

"Have you two been hiding here the entire time?" Jing Jiu asked.

The Center Sect was the leader of the orthodox Cultivation sects and had profound background and resources in the imperial court; they were extremely powerful. If they wanted to pursue a traitor by employing the full sources of their sect, it was believed that the pursued person would soon be dead, without a doubt. Unexpectedly, it had been a long time since their pursuit, and Tong Yan was still alive, and it wasn't until now that someone even had a clue as to where he had been hiding.

The case was even more unbelievable than when the Green Mountain Sect couldn't find the whereabouts of Liu s.h.i.+sui.

Yet, the important figures of the Green Mountain Sect and the disciples of Liangw.a.n.g Peak all knew that Liu s.h.i.+sui's betrayal was false; Tong Yan was an actual traitor.

…

…

Back when Tong Yan left the Fruit Formation Temple with the Green Sky Mirror on his back, he had no idea where he should go.

Regardless of how large Chaotian was, there was no place for him to stay.

Even Penglai Island, which was remote and divine, couldn't stay out of the influence of the Center Sect.

Did he really have to venture the remote Alien Land, or go to the Underworld like what the Immortal Taiping had done?

It was then that the Green Girl suggested an option for him: Cold Mountain.

The orthodox Cultivation pract.i.tioners seldom came here, and the deviant pract.i.tioners and demons hid among the barren fields and mountains. No matter how powerful and resourceful the Center Sect was, they had no way to have every square inch searched.

More importantly, she didn't ask Tong Yan to go to the surface of the Cold Mountain; otherwise, they would have to worry that they might be sold out by those free-traveling pract.i.tioners.

The place they were to go to was at the deepest part of the underground and by the hot river of lava.

A dreadful King of Fire Carps lived in the river of lava.

The King was a friend of the Green Girl's.

…

…

By now Jing Jiu learned that they had been hiding at the bottom of the Gathered-Soul Valley all this time. He asked the Green Girl, "Are you the friend of that golden carp?"

Hearing the words "golden", the Green Girl was certain that Jing Jiu had seen the fire carp. "Did you meet him?" she asked Jing Jiu astoundingly.

Jing Jiu thought that he had finally found out why that fire carp could speak so fluently even though he had lived in the river of lava all the time and had not socialized with the outside world.

The Fire Carp and the Green Girl must have talked a great deal after the two old friends met; as such, had the Fire Carp been influenced by the Green Girl's way of speaking? Yet, the familiarity he felt about the way the Fire Carp spoke had nothing to do with the Green Girl.

Jing Jiu thought of a possibility, feeling somewhat bewildered. "Have you brought the soul of the Fire Carp into the Illusionary Realm?" he asked the Green Girl.

The Green Girl felt even more surprised now, as she exclaimed, "You can even figure this out. What on earth don't you know?"

Jing Jiu had his suspicion confirmed.

The familiar way the Fire Carp spoke hailed from a known person in the Green Sky Mirror.

That was the way the eldest son of Zhang Taiyue spoke.

Yet, that person didn't speak with such an accent before he was exiled to the south or after he returned to the capital of Chu State.

Later, he became the Chief of Taichang Temple, and often came to the palace to talk to Jing Jiu. Regardless of whether Jing Jiu liked it or not, he would stand in the grand hall and rambled on.

As time pa.s.sed and the eldest son of Grand Scholar Zhang grew older, his accent became more and more thick, which was one of the few bad memories Jing Jiu had in Chu State.

"What are you thinking?" the Green Girl asked with wide opened eyes.

Jing Jiu came to his senses and pressed, "The Fire Carp is the divine animal of the

Center Sect in waiting; why did he help you two?"

The Green Girl twirled around many times in front of Jing Jiu while flapping her wings. "He wakes up and contacts the Cloud-Dream Mountain once in a long interval," said she. "More often than not, the Center Sect disciples who talked to him would have died during his long sleep, which made him feel very sad. As such, he hadn't contacted the Cloud-Dream Mountain for thousands of years since. I'm the only one whom he has been talking to; so we are good friends. Of course, he will help us."

Hiding under the Cold Mountain and being s.h.i.+elded by the divine animal of their own sect in waiting, it was inevitable that Tong Yan wouldn't be found even by the Immortal Tan and the Immortal Bai.

Yet, it was a pity that they were discovered by the Mysterious Dark Church, though the Center Sect couldn't find them, since the Cold Mountain was the territory of the deviant sects.

The worst part was that the young church master had the Sun Banner even though the regular Cultivation pract.i.tioners had no way to access the hot underground to pose a threat to Tong Yan.

He used the Sun Banner to injure the King of Fire Carps. As such, the Fire Carp was irritated so much that he had caused the underground fire to spread to other parts; and Tong Yan was forced to come out from the underground.

The target more than three hundred disciples of the Mysterious Dark Church searched for, witnessed by Jing Jiu on the barren plain, was actually Tong Yan. They wanted to find him, kill him, and then s.n.a.t.c.h the Green Sky Mirror.

Jing Jiu had calculated all this. Though the details were slightly amiss, the situation was more or less such.

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"You could go to such a deep place. It's really awesome," Jing Jiu said to Tong Yan.

The place where the King of Fire Carps lived was close to the Abyss; so it was quite difficult to get there.

In comparison to his chess playing, Jing Jiu was more impressed by this ability of Tong Yan's.

Tong Yan smiled and said wryly, "Even though I haven't done as a good a job as you in chess playing, I am much better at digging tunnels than you are."

Back when he heard the help call from the Green Girl in the manor cave left by Luo Huainan, he started digging the tunnel. It took him several years without rest to get to the deep end of the earth source.

Judging from either the time he spent digging the tunnel without rest or the amount of dirty he had to dig out, Tong Yan should be ranked in the top spots in the entire history of Cultivation world.

Jing Jiu shook his head and said, "You couldn't beat me in chess playing; but I think you are even more inferior to me in digging tunnels."

Tong Yan chuckled proudly, but he didn't wish to argue with Jing Jiu on the issue.

Jing Jiu continued, "Since you are good at digging tunnels, why didn't you leave the underground?"

"The Mysterious Dark Church has set up something under the ground, so it's not so easy to leave," said Tong Yan.

Recalling the scene he had seen on the isolated mountain, Jing Jiu calculated the formations of the Mysterious Dark Church one more time, and believed that they couldn't possibly control all those pa.s.sageways under the ground.

"I'll go and check it out," said Jing Jiu.

His ability of digging tunnels was to be demonstrated soon enough.

Jing Jiu turned his body upside down.

Whoos.h.!.+

A chilly wind rose briefly in the wild forest, as a delicate hole appeared on the ground.

Tong Yan and the Green Girl eyed each other, both of them feeling helpless.

Though Jing Jiu was quite different from other regular Cultivation pract.i.tioners of Green Mountain, he still acted so hastily that they didn't even have time responding to him.

It didn't take long before a gust of heat came out from the hole.

Jing Jiu came back on the ground. With his white cloth slightly burned and his black hair slightly charred, he had never before looked as terrible.

Looking at Jing Jiu, Tong Yan didn't say anything, merely wearing a small smile.

Jing Jiu remarked emotionlessly, "It's not that my ability of digging tunnels is not good enough, it's because that Sun Banner is too formidable."

No sooner had he entered the underground than he encountered the intensive fire sources.

Under normal circ.u.mstances, those fire sources would have no effect on him. However, those fire sources had already integrated with the Sun Banner; and the natural underground fire combined with the fire of the Sun source had proven to be very perilous. Jing Jiu was. .h.i.t by the wind of the Sun source when he was not fully alert for just a brief moment. If he hadn't relied on the fast speed of the Underworld Fairy Sword, he would have been wounded.

Fortunately, he had used the Sword of the Universe to s.h.i.+eld his face, so his eyes were not smothered; otherwise, it would be truly disgraceful when the tears were running down from his eyes.

Though Tong Yan was not afraid of the mantra of Green Mountain, he didn't wish to hear it, which is why he didn't make fun of Jing Jiu, and agreed with what Jing Jiu said. "The Sun Banner is indeed formidable," he said. "Judging simply by its destructive power, it should be ranked in the top ten in the Cultivation world. But the secret instruction of the Sun Banner has been lost for a long time, and it could only be employed as the foundation of the formations; where did that young church master learn it?"

Jing Jiu of course knew everything about it.

The reason the secret instruction of the Sun Banner was lost was because he and his Big Brother forced the Great Grandmaster of the Mysterious Dark Sect underground.

Now that the Great Grandmaster of the Mysterious Dark Sect had resurfaced, the secret instruction would naturally surface.

It seemed that the whole thing had been controlled by the invisible hands of his Big Brother.

Seeing Jing Jiu lost in deep thought, Tong Yan suddenly commented, "That person is also quite formidable himself. He has become so powerful merely after twenty three years. Is it true that you didn't antic.i.p.ate this back then?"

It was twenty three years again.

Jing Jiu went back to his "home" the first time back when the Plum Meeting took place in Zhaoge City, and a famous ceramic bowl broke at the Manor of State Duke Lu for the first time. Tian Jingren lived in the old plum garden. Tong Yan defeated all those players at the chess stalls outside the plum garden. As the highly achieved Go players of the city gathered on the street, Jing Jiu placed a Go piece, which was the first time Jing Jiu and Tong Yan played the game of Go against each other.

An a.s.sa.s.sination attempt on Zhao Layue was carried out by the Old Ones, and s.h.i.+ Fangchen, who was the middle man in the event, had committed suicide. w.a.n.g Xiaoming left while crying wretchedly, and Yin San followed him after turning into a large bird. The Queen of Snowy Kingdom was pregnant, and the young and talented partic.i.p.ants in the Cultivation tournament suffered a heavy casualty, while Jing Jiu and Bai Zao were trapped in the snowland, which led to the death of Luo Huainan.

Looking back at that year, he found that so many events had occurred then.

After a pause, Jing Jiu asked, "What kind of person is he?"

"He is very distrustful, and also quite brutal and murderous. He tortured and killed many of the subordinates who were loyal to Su Ziye. He will kill anyone he feels suspicious of even now. In order to temper the Sun Banner, he led the highly achieved swordsmen of the Mysterious Dark Sect in wiping out fourteen small deviant sects on the Cold Mountain. Taking the free-traveling pract.i.tioners into account, he has killed more than four hundred people and offered their souls to the banner. It's interesting to note that he seldom kills the mortals and forbids the followers of the church from hara.s.sing the residents in Juye City and other towns."

Having said this, Tong Yan shot Jing Jiu a glance.

"If you glanced at me again," Jing Jiu said, "I would think you had stood right by us while Zhao Layue said those words."

Tong Yan asked, "What did she say?"

Jing Jiu said calmly, "She was adamant about killing this person in the same way on roots out the whole gra.s.s to prevent it from growing again. I didn't agree to do it because I felt it too troublesome."

Tong Yan didn't say another word.

The Green Girl sighed, "It's truly troublesome now."

…

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