[Year 201, age 225.]
[The Pollution continues unabated.]
[The entire planet is shrouded in a thick black mist with severely reduced visibility.]
[After prolonged exposure to the black mist, the abnormal phenomena among mortals have indeed appeared as predicted.]
[They have become violent, brutal, and irrational. A single word can trigger their tempers, making them highly aggressive and prone to attacking everything around them.]
[Mortals with backing from influential powers have been gathered up by cultivators and locked away in designated locations.]
[They are fed three meals a day and kept there, waiting for the Pollution to recede.]
[Those without any protection are left to fend for themselves.]
[Some who provoked cultivator forces were outright eliminated on the spot.]
[The vast majority of those killed were humans.]
[The Alien Races had always harbored resentment toward humans, and now they had found a legitimate excuse.]
[As for the Alien Races' own mortals, they did their best to preserve them, unless the Pollution was expected to persist for an extremely long time.]
[After all, if cultivators themselves couldn't even get enough to eat, there was no way they would feed mortals.]
[The Alien Races' preferential treatment wasn't entirely due to discrimination against humans, either.]
[It was because the Alien Races generally had low population numbers.]
[If they abandoned their own mortals entirely, many Alien Races might face a severe gap between generations.]
[You and your companions roamed across Vermilion Violet Star, searching for areas where the Pollution was weaker, overhearing plenty of cultivator complaints along the way.]
["I cultivate every single day, yet my cultivation level keeps dropping instead. This damned Pollution!"]
["The mortals have all gone mad. Sooner or later, we'll be the ones sent to mine ores and till fields. Otherwise, what are we supposed to eat and use?"]
["I heard those people from the big powers have already fled to the Eastern and Western Star Realms. There's no Pollution over there."]
["Can't run now even if we wanted to. Word is the Star Harbor is damaged and has been sealed off."]
["How much longer will the Pollution last? Where the hell did this thing even come from!"]
["Latest from the Celestial River Monthly Report: there are many 'Pollution Seal Pools' throughout the universe. The Pollution in the Southern Star Realm happened because one of those seal pools broke."]
["Why did it break? Who did it?"]
["Heaven only knows."]
[Year 202, age 226.]
[Vermilion Violet Star is enormous.]
[When you traverse her not by flight, but by measuring her with your own two feet, her vastness becomes all the more apparent.]
[Though you had already spent decades training on Vermilion Violet Star, you still visited many places you had never been before and witnessed countless unique cultural landscapes.]
[That year, the three of you arrived at a mountain village.]
[All the residents here were humans.]
[As the Pollution persisted, fewer and fewer mortals outside could maintain their sanity, yet every single resident of this village remained perfectly normal.]
[The three of you found this highly suspicious, so you climbed the steep cliffs and entered the village named "Shoumu."]
[The village was originally a mortal settlement, but recently quite a few cultivators had been moving about within it.]
[Clearly, you three weren't the only cultivators who had noticed this village's peculiarity.]
[However, all the cultivators who came here were humans.]
[The Alien Races had never been fond of humans. Some even regarded humans as filthy things and refused all contact with them.]
[So for now, only human cultivators had taken notice of this human village.]
["These people are just like us, here to investigate the cause."]
[The three of you settled down at a small eatery in the village.]
[Ji Baiming didn't actually need to eat anymore. He had comprehended the Divine Ability of "Fasting," and by casting the corresponding Ji family Divine Art, he could convert Immortal power into the energy needed to sustain life.]
[However, given the current situation, eating was still the better option. Might as well save the Immortal power.]
[The eatery was packed with people.]
[The three of you pricked up your ears, using the superhuman hearing of high-level cultivators to absorb every sound in the entire village, sifting out useful intelligence.]
[The waiter at the eatery was a hunched-over Old Woman.]
["Three guests, what would you like to eat?"]
[Your attention was focused entirely on gathering intelligence, so you casually muttered, "Anything's fine."]
[Ji Wuqing, on the other hand, was quite enthusiastic.]
["Old Woman, do you have any signature dishes here?"]
["We do, we do! Lots of out-of-towners have been coming lately, so you might not know, but our Shoumu Village has a secret family recipe passed down through generations."]
["A secret family recipe? Excellent! What is it?"]
["Why, the Ancestral Soup, of course."]
["Ancestral Soup? Now that's a domineering name! Give us one bowl each."]
["Coming right up."]
[The Old Woman went off to ladle out the soup.]
[Among the discussions around you, three matters caught your attention.]
[The first matter: changes in the Pollution.]
["Haven't you noticed? The Pollution is much weaker in this area. My cultivation level finally isn't being reversed anymore."]
["Now that you mention it, I've noticed it too."]
["Then why am I still having my cultivation constantly neutralized?"]
["Because your talent is poor, your cultivation technique is poor, and your cultivation speed is slow!"]
[You and Ji Wuqing and her father had also noticed this phenomenon.]
[The Pollution here was indeed somewhat weaker, but it still severely hindered cultivation.]
[If it truly had zero effect, the Alien Races would have already seized this place for themselves.]
[The second matter: the Emperor's Tomb.]
["Say, you don't think the weaker Pollution here has something to do with the Emperor's Tomb, do you?"]
["You mean that 'Emperor's Tomb' on the mountain behind us?"]
["Is there any other Emperor's Tomb on Vermilion Violet Star?"]
["I went to check it out. Nothing special about it."]
["Then how do you explain the people in this area being unaffected?"]
["Maybe there's some other factor at play."]
[The Emperor's Tomb.]
[You had heard of it during your travels across Vermilion Violet Star.]
[According to legend, it was left behind from the era of the Celestial Emperor, the burial site of a certain Celestial Emperor.]
[Unlike the cenotaphs of the Celestial Empress, legend had it that this Emperor's Tomb truly contained the Celestial Emperor's remains.]
[Whether that was true or not was anyone's guess, because no one dared to rob the tomb.]
[The third matter: someone could eliminate the Pollution's effects on mortals.]
["I heard that near Haosong City to the north, there's a woman who can remove the effects of Pollution."]
["Really? Brother, take me there! I can't stand this Pollution anymore. I've been cultivating so hard, and I just have to watch my cultivation level drain away day after day!"]
["Don't even think about it. She can only remove Pollution affecting mortals. And she also... also... what was it? Something about needing to believe in her, I think she said."]
["Is she someone who cultivates the Faith Dao?"]
[Faith Dao?]
[Could it be...]
[Just then, the Old Woman brought over the signature dish, the Ancestral Soup.]
[It was a bowl of green, oily soup that gave off a strange odor.]
[You furrowed your brow.]
["Wuqing, what did you order? Is this even edible?"]
[Ji Wuqing picked up her bowl and drank it straight down.]
["Just take a sip and you'll know."]
[You picked up your bowl and took a sip as well.]
["Not bad at all. Smells weird, but it tastes pretty good. Old Woman, another bowl, please!"]
[Out of curiosity, you asked the Old Woman nearby.]
["Old Woman, how is this soup made?"]
[The Old Woman replied with a smile.]
["It's very simple! Just toss all your leftover scraps into a big clay jar and let it simmer. Give it enough time, and it naturally becomes delicious! People around here don't even take medicine when they're sick. Just a bowl of this soup and they're good as new!"]

Comments

Loading...