Chapter 57 : Chapter 57

Chapter 57: A Hidden Immortal?

“One of the Ten Great Forbidden Lands?”

Chen Guan froze for a moment. He glanced at the shrinking Scarlet Flame Scale Ox, then smacked his own forehead.

Wasn’t the creature under his feet basically “Old Wang” from next door to Peach Blossom Hollow?

If he wanted to ask about the details of Peach Blossom Hollow, what could possibly be easier than asking this thing?

Then he turned and cast a glance at Luo Li, who was curiously watching him, and realized that this troublesome girl had managed to anger him so much that his mind had short-circuited. Such a simple thing, and it had not even occurred to him.

“Speak. Why is Peach Blossom Hollow called one of the Ten Great Forbidden Lands?”

Chen Guan tapped the ox’s back with the tip of his foot.

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox shuffled along while lowering its voice cautiously.

“A-about why Peach Blossom Hollow is called a forbidden land... this old ox doesn’t know too clearly either, because I’ve never gone inside. And... I can’t go inside.”

“You can’t go inside?” Chen Guan frowned.

He lifted his head and gazed toward the thickening mist ahead.

Then he closed his eyes and carefully sensed it for a moment before finally discovering that within that seemingly ordinary mist lurked an extremely faint hallucinatory effect.

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox lowered its voice even further, unable to conceal its fear.

“That’s right. No matter whether demon or fiend, once anything enters the depths of the Mist-Shrouded Forest, it loses all sense of direction completely. Even if it dies, its soul still drifts around inside.”

“Ever since the Mist-Shrouded Forest first came into being, no one in the Ten Directions Marsh has ever been heard of going in and then coming back out alive.”

Chen Guan’s face darkened at once.

That meant the depths of the mist were probably far more than merely hallucinatory.

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox, perhaps afraid Chen Guan would not believe it, stammered on in a trembling voice.

“And even if you don’t get lost, if you happen to encounter Peach Blossom Hollow in the middle of the Mist-Shrouded Forest, then most likely... most likely you’ll be turned into fertilizer!”

“Fertilizer?” Luo Li asked curiously despite her fear. “What do you mean by that?”

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox continued in a hushed voice. “This old ox once... once heard a passing Demon King senior mention that in the middle of Peach Blossom Hollow lives a Peach Blossom Immortal.”

“That Peach Blossom Immortal... has a hobby. She likes... growing flowers and trees...”

“Isn’t that nice? Growing flowers and trees, cultivating her spirit—she sounds like some transcendent fairy sister who keeps herself apart from worldly strife.”

Blinking her eyes, Luo Li muttered, “What’s dangerous about growing flowers and trees?”

“There’s nothing dangerous about growing flowers and trees!”

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox snorted roughly. “But... but she likes to use beasts like us—cattle, sheep, tigers, monkeys that have attained spirit—as fertilizer!”

“The previous Demon King of my Blackflame River territory, and the one before that...”

“It’s said that one day they suddenly went as though possessed, walked of their own accord into the center of the Mist-Shrouded Forest, and willingly became flower fertilizer for that Flower Immortal!”

“What?!” Luo Li’s little face instantly went pale with fright.

Chen Guan, meanwhile, furrowed his brow.

He looked back at the two little tree spirits clinging tightly to one another, and in that instant a thought flashed across his mind.

Could it be... that old tree spirit had no way of entering the Mist-Shrouded Forest herself, so she had deliberately used a scheme to make him carry those two little tree spirits through the Mist-Shrouded Forest into Peach Blossom Hollow to seek out some so-called opportunity?

Yet after considering it more carefully, he felt that something was off.

Because he could see in those two little tree spirits’ eyes that the bond had already been severed.

That was a peculiar form of perception unique to the demon race. Only when one’s kin had suffered complete destruction of both soul and spirit would that sense arise.

Even if Granny Huai had somehow survived, why would she go to such lengths to lay out a plan that shoved her own grandchildren into a pit of fire?

Just as Chen Guan was puzzling over it fruitlessly, the view before his eyes began to wobble.

Looking down, he realized that the brute beneath his feet had begun trembling like a leaf at some point without his noticing.

Clearly, the creature was genuinely terrified that all those thick, solid muscles on its body were going to end up rotting into fertilizer.

“Could you possibly be any more cowardly?” Chen Guan barked, then continued to question it. “If even Demon Kings can be taken so easily and turned into fertilizer, then could this ‘Flower Immortal’ be some top-tier great demon?”

“I don’t know!”

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox shook its massive head, listening in every direction and scanning all four sides even as it lowered its voice.

“Because anyone who ever saw her true form ended up becoming fertilizer under the trees... We lesser demons only know what we’ve heard in rumors.”

“Master, how about we take a detour?”

Chen Guan shot it a sidelong glance.

He seriously suspected this idiot was such a coward that it was deliberately exaggerating the danger.

“Still... Peach Blossom Immortal, Peach Blossom Immortal... So is she a peach tree spirit or a flower spirit?”

Just as Chen Guan was considering this—Creak—!

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox seemed to spot something so terrifying that it slammed on its brakes!

Its four hooves gouged four deep furrows into the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust before it finally managed to stop.

“Ah—!”

Luo Li had been listening so intently that she had not expected anything like this. Caught by inertia, she lurched straight forward!

Yet the anticipated face-first collision with the ground never came.

Her face stopped a foot above the earth, suspended there awkwardly by an invisible force!

“Th-this... what’s happening?”

Startled to see herself floating in midair, Luo Li quickly pushed herself upright once she realized there was no danger and looked up toward the ox’s back.

Only then did she see that Chen Guan stood there rigidly atop the ox, hands clasped behind his back, paying her no attention at all as he stared fixedly into the thick mist ahead.

Luo Li instinctively followed his gaze.

There, in the depths of the rolling gray-white mist, a slender and graceful woman was slowly approaching, holding a red-patterned oil-paper umbrella.

Her bare feet floated half a foot above the ground without touching so much as a trace of mud, and she walked atop the unreal mist as though she were gliding upon it.

At last, she stopped roughly a zhang in front of the Scarlet Flame Scale Ox.

The paper umbrella tilted slightly upward, revealing a face of such breathtaking beauty that it seemed enough to dim heaven and earth.

Her beauty was not the seductive glamour of a worldly woman. It was instead something ethereal and pure, like a clear mountain spring untouched by mortal dust.

Most striking of all were her eyes—clear as twin pools of cold autumn water. With just a single glance, one felt that one might sink into them and forget the entire world around them.

Those autumn-water eyes first swept lightly over the still-frightened Luo Li, then settled upon Chen Guan.

“Sir, have you come to deliver someone?”

That cool voice instantly pulled Luo Li back to her senses.

She did not even have time to think before instinctively nodding and blurting out, “Yes! We came to deliver these two little tree spirits!”

Chen Guan did not answer at once. One hand rested on the Horse-Cleaving Saber at his shoulder while his eyes carefully measured the woman before him from head to toe. His brows slowly drew together.

“How strange.”

He could not sense the slightest trace of demon qi from this woman, nor could he detect even a hint of true qi.

And yet she hovered there so quietly above the ground, as though fused with the surrounding mist itself.

She leaked no aura whatsoever, seeming no more remarkable than an ordinary young woman from the neighboring village.

Could it be... this woman was truly some hidden immortal?

Yet that absurd thought was swiftly rejected.

So-called immortals were, in the end, only legends in the mouths of mortals.

Even though he himself had already reached the Purple Palace Realm, with methods far beyond ordinary men, he still remained ten thousand leagues away from that vague and intangible concept of “immortal.”

Chen Guan withdrew his scrutinizing gaze, reached back with one hand, and hauled the two little tree spirits from behind him. He then lifted his chin toward the woman.

“Take a look. Is she the Flower Aunt you were meant to find?”

Xiao Lü and Xiao Cong stretched their necks and carefully examined the woman. They nodded first, then shook their heads blankly.

“Hm? What exactly is that supposed to mean?” Chen Guan frowned.

Xiao Lü hurriedly explained, “Brother Chen... we’ve never met Flower Aunt.”

“But Grandmother once described what she looked like, and... and she looks kind of like that.”

Hearing that, Chen Guan could not be bothered to beat around the bush any longer. It was obvious that old tree spirit had never met the Peach Blossom Immortal herself. She had merely borrowed his hand to take a shortcut.

So he directly addressed the woman before him.

“You—are you the Flower Aunt they’ve been talking about?”

The woman glanced at the two little tree spirits beside Chen Guan, and something flickered in her gaze, as though she had instantly understood the whole matter. A faint smile appeared on her lips, and she nodded.

“I am.”

Then her tone shifted, and those clear eyes looked once again toward Chen Guan.

“However, I did not come here today merely to receive these two little ones.”

“Oh?”

Chen Guan arched a brow, and a teasing curve tugged at his lips. “If not to receive them, then what—is it me you’ve come to receive?”

The Peach Blossom Immortal still wore that calm little smile. She gently shook her head.

“Not you either.”

Then her eyes abruptly turned and came to rest upon Luo Li, who was peering about nervously from in front of the Scarlet Flame Scale Ox.

“I came to receive... Luo Li.”

The instant she heard that, Luo Li startled like a frightened rabbit. She spun around and scrambled back onto the Scarlet Flame Scale Ox’s back, hiding directly behind Chen Guan.

Chen Guan’s expression turned grave.

Could this troublesome girl really have lied to him?

Even if she was a princess, that did not mean everyone she encountered along the road ought to recognize her.

And this was no ordinary person, but the master of a forbidden land.

From the look in this woman’s eyes just now, it was obvious that she did not know the two little tree spirits at all. Rather, she had long since expected Luo Li to enter the Mist-Shrouded Forest by this particular route.

She had deliberately come out of the depths of the mist to wait for her here.

“You know her?” Chen Guan pointed at the troublesome girl hiding behind him and clutching at his clothing as he asked the Peach Blossom Immortal.

“I do.”

The Peach Blossom Immortal nodded, her tone tinged with reminiscence.

“When she had just been born, I was fortunate enough to see her once.”

“I only did not expect that in the blink of an eye, she would already have grown into such a graceful young maiden.”

Hiding behind Chen Guan, Luo Li wore an utterly baffled expression.

This mysterious woman, so beautiful that she scarcely seemed real, had lived deep within the Ten Directions Marsh for who knew how long—and yet she claimed to know her?

She had even seen her when she had just been born?

Then... why had her aunt and grandfather never once mentioned that she had such an “old acquaintance” living in demon territory?