Ba’s clear, lively eyes turned as she drew out her words in a lazy drawl.
“That’s not something I can explain in just a few sentences. Why don’t you brew some tea and let me tell you slowly?”
Bao Gu shot her a look, not in the mood.
“If you want tea, just say so.”
Even as she said it, she was already walking back toward her own courtyard.
Ba happily followed behind her into the small yard. She noticed that all the spirit-treasure herbs that had been moved before were still gone; only the rich soil and the spirit stones buried underneath remained. Not a single herb had been put back.
Bao Gu sat Ba down at the jade table in the courtyard.
“What tea do you want?”
Ba tilted her chin up with a hint of pride and smiled brightly.
“That one… Coiling Dragon… oh right, Coiling Dragon Dao Comprehension Sacred Tea.”
Bao Gu took out a tea set and laid it out piece by piece, then brought out a top-grade spirit stone and tossed it into the teapot to boil spirit-stone water. With her other hand she retrieved a jade box of Coiling Dragon Dao Comprehension Sacred Tea seedlings. The moment she lifted the lid, her hand suddenly felt light—the box had already fallen into Ba’s hand.
Ba plucked out a leaf from the jade tea box and examined it closely. After looking, she swapped it for another one, then another and another, peering at each leaf over and over.
Bao Gu couldn’t help laughing.
“You think you’re going to see flowers on it or something?”
Ba blinked blankly, then returned the box to Bao Gu.
“I had a dream a few days ago. I dreamed about this tea tree.”
Bao Gu had given her this tea before. Ba had just chewed it straight, only feeling that it tasted good and strangely familiar. But after that dream the other day, she realized this Coiling Dragon Dao Comprehension Sacred Tea looked extremely similar to the leaves of the Taixu Divine Tree in her home’s back courtyard. Now, looking carefully, she found the veins on the tea leaves were exactly the same as those on the Taixu Divine Tree’s leaves—all traced with dao patterns, with not a single repetition.
She vaguely remembered her father sitting with her beneath the Taixu Divine Tree, watching the leaves flutter wildly through the air. The falling leaves never touched the ground; instead they swirled around the tree, clumps and layers of them shining with divine light, beautiful as a dream. She especially loved chasing after them. Sometimes when she ran too fast and was about to fall, the Taixu Divine Tree would catch her—and even laugh at her for being a little monkey brat.
As for what later happened to the Taixu Divine Tree, she had forgotten. She only had a hazy feeling that it had ended very badly. Ba scratched her head, trying hard to recall whether the Taixu Divine Tree had been affected by that great upheaval back then, but found she couldn’t remember anything at all.
Bao Gu heard what Ba said and just assumed she was greedy for tea, so she gave Ba a whole box of Coiling Dragon Dao Comprehension Sacred Tea seedlings.
Ba, head aching, tugged at the fringe of hair on her forehead.
“Um… can you let me take another look at this sacred tea tree of yours?”
Bao Gu stared at her.
“What’s so interesting about a tea tree?”
Ba said, “I feel like this tea tree is a bit like the Taixu Divine Tree of the Immortal Realm.”
Bao Gu snorted lightly.
“Nonsense. I got this tree from a jiao-dragon corpse fiend I… trick—no, extorted—compensation from.”
Ba froze at that. Listening to Bao Gu’s extremely disjointed tone, how come it sounded like this sacred tea was scammed from that corpse fiend?
She thought for a moment.
“Even if you did get it from a jiao-dragon corpse fiend, can’t it still have come down from the Upper Realm and fallen into that jiao-dragon corpse fiend’s hands? Wait—corpse fiend? What the hell is that supposed to be?”
Bao Gu said, “It was a jiao-dragon that was probably on the verge of death. It used its own corpse to build a city, using endless death energy to nourish lifeforce in hopes of reviving itself. But something went wrong. Before it could fully revive, its primordial spirit was sealed and suppressed into a pagoda. Come to think of it, that ‘using the corpse to build a city’ technique was passed down by you, wasn’t it?”
Ba asked in shock, “Was that jiao-dragon corpse fiend’s corpse-city inside a cauldron world?”
The question slipped out of Bao Gu’s mouth.
“How did you know?”
Ba thought a bit more, then asked, “Was that cauldron broken and tattered?”
Bao Gu finally sensed something was off. She thought about it, then said, “All I saw was that it was a cauldron. Whether it was broken or not, I’m not sure, but it probably wasn’t anything great. After all, it had been at least tens of thousands of years…”
She frowned and added, “If it were intact and truly a supreme treasure housing such a vast inner world, it wouldn’t have had such a strict limit that only cultivators below the Golden Core stage could enter.”
Ba suddenly thought of that dead-air-filled battleship Yu Mi and the others had piloted, forged from the jiao-dragon’s bones.
“You guys used the jiao-dragon corpse fiend’s remains to build a warship, didn’t you? The one I tore in half with a swipe of my claws?”
The doubt in Bao Gu’s eyes deepened. She nodded, looking at Ba in confusion.
“Why are you asking all this in such detail?”
Ba’s chest was heaving violently, her bright, agile eyes locked on Bao Gu without blinking.
“Then… this Taixu Divine Tree of yours—did you also get it from that cauldron?”
Bao Gu’s suspicion had turned into certainty.
“Don’t tell me you’re about to say that the cauldron, the jiao-dragon corpse fiend, and this Coiling Dragon Dao Comprehension Sacred Tea Tree—your so‑called Taixu Divine Tree—were all things that came down from the Upper Realm?”
Ba stared at her.
“My father has an innate divine emperor artifact, a life-bound cauldron called the Heaven-Refining Cauldron. The reason I could reach your realm was because my father’s cauldron carried me through the boundary between worlds and sent me there.”
Countless thoughts flashed through her mind. Memories long forgotten burst open like a chest, surging back in madness.
“Father was grievously injured. His life-bound emperor artifact was damaged as well. He put me inside the cauldron and sent me away… Uncle Taichen and the others led a group in pursuit. He thrust his war halberd at my forehead and I forgot everything. Later… later I vaguely remember I… I found the cauldron again. I also caught a jiao, planning to raise it into a true dragon.
“Dragons can travel freely across realms. They can switch between different living bodies at will. Even if they go down to a lower world, the Heavenly Dao laws won’t suppress their cultivation…
“After that, a lot of people came to attack me. They hit the point that even the cauldron got knocked flying. Those people kept coming, one wave after another, endless, impossible to kill off. In the end I was exhausted, hid inside a formation, got stuffed into a divine metal coffin, and was sealed away…”
Fragments of memory, messy and countless, left Ba’s head throbbing. She hugged her head and curled in on herself. All those terrible memories rose to the surface—those people rushing at her, wave after wave. Her father had been slaughtered the same way, buried under endless attacks!
But it was them—because they killed her mother, her father killed them. Because they wanted to harm Father, he killed them. It was because they were bad that Father never let her go out to play. She could only live under the Taixu Divine Tree and play with Grandpa Divine Tree. Grandpa Divine Tree was a particularly funny old man with a white beard…
Listening to Ba’s broken, halting words, Bao Gu was stunned. The information buried in those sentences was so huge she couldn’t process it.
The Primordial Ruins were actually her Heavenly Emperor father’s life-bound emperor artifact?
The corpse-city and the jiao-dragon corpse fiend inside were really connected to Ba?
And this Coiling Dragon Dao Comprehension Sacred Tea Tree was the Taixu Divine Tree Ba spoke of?
Oh no. Then that vast spirit medicine field full of rare spirit-treasure herbs she’d scammed from the jiao-dragon corpse fiend… that was probably Ba’s too, wasn’t it?
Thinking carefully—wasn’t it obvious? All those things that had gone extinct in the cultivation world, there were samples of them in that medicine field. She’d thought it was due to overharvesting over tens of thousands of years. Could it be they simply didn’t belong to this world in the first place?
Bao Gu’s face remained calm, but inside, a tiny version of herself had curled into a ball, jamming fingers in her mouth in terror.
This was terrifying.
The entire medicine field she’d scammed from the jiao-dragon corpse fiend actually belonged to Ba. And the foodie victim was sitting right in front of her.
Cold sweat broke out on Bao Gu’s back in an instant. She hurriedly changed the subject.
“Um… Qingying, don’t think about the past anymore. Look to the future, right? For example, we can continue talking about how to find a way out and escape alive.”
Ba looked at her pitifully.
“Let Grandpa Tree out and let me see him. Just one look. Please?”
Bao Gu thought, If I let you see him, that sly old tea tree will definitely tell you everything about that medicine field.
Then she recalled that the old tea tree’s soul and spiritual intelligence were also damaged. It barely remembered anything. On top of that, Ba’s watery eyes, paired with that innocent, aggrieved little face, were so pitiful it really tugged at the heart.
And in the end, that medicine field was something she had scammed.
Silently, Bao Gu took the Coiling Dragon Dao Comprehension Sacred Tea Tree out of the super‑large storage bag she’d moved the medicine field into earlier.
After years of being nourished with countless spirit herbs, the tree had put out many tender new buds, and its branches and leaves had become much lusher. Even so, its trunk was still covered in charred, withered scars. The whole tree looked jagged, domineering, wreathed in rainbow radiance and wrapped in spiritual mist. Extraordinary at a glance. Just from its aura and appearance, it was easily worthy of a ninth‑rank rating.
Ba sensed the change in the aura beside her and saw a tree appear before her, quite different from the one in her memory but still faintly similar. She jolted, just about to look closely when an old, agitated voice rang out.
“You, you, you, you, you… what are you doing now?”
All of the tree’s roots stood up straight, looking from a distance like a man clenching his legs. Every branch pointed straight at Bao Gu, its posture one of exasperated anger mixed with complete helplessness.
Ba blinked and probed cautiously.
“Grandpa Tree?”
Only then did the old tea tree notice there was a little girl next to it. It lowered its crown and took a look, then immediately spoke in deep disgust.
“Well now, whose child is this, covered head to toe in death energy?”
Its roots shifted, and it decisively scooted several feet away from Ba. It scrutinized her again, a mouth sprouting on its trunk. It tilted that mouth and let out a sharp, disdainful “Tch.”
That look screamed: I can’t stand this.
Ba instantly bristled.
One glance at those many withered branches and the way its crown and trunk were clearly out of proportion, and she could tell this was a tree that had just barely survived calamity. A crippled tree, and it dared dislike the death aura on her?
She huffed angrily.
“You’re despising me? You’re not that much better yourself! You and I are about the same, and you look down on me? Why don’t you try looking down on yourself first? Hmph!”
The old tea tree thought it over.
…Fair point.
It looked Ba up and down again and asked, “Little girl, where did you come from?”
In this day and age, why were these little girls one more terrifying than the last? Was there no way for an old tree to live in peace anymore?
Ba started, “I came from—”
Before she could finish, she saw the old tea tree’s roots suddenly spring into the air. In a flash, its roots twisted into the shape of four legs and bolted, each leap covering several zhang. Then they folded back into two long “legs,” striding away at a crazy speed, dashing straight out of the outer courtyard. The only word for that speed was: faster than the wind.
In an instant, the old tea tree vanished from sight. They could only track it with divine sense.
As it fled, the old tea tree yelled at the top of its lungs,
“Wahaha! Today this old tree finally escapes alive! No more having my freshest, tenderest crown buds plucked every three years!”
Bao Gu covered her forehead, utterly speechless. She turned to the dumbstruck Ba.
“You’re sure that insane tree is actually the Taixu Divine Tree?”
Ba’s eyes were still fixed on where the tea tree had disappeared, her gaze vacant.
“Grandpa Tree wasn’t like that…”
She’d been completely scared stupid by the old tea tree’s wild behavior.
Bao Gu said to her, “Let’s keep talking about how to find an escape route and get out of here alive.”
Ba snapped back to herself with a small “Oh,” then couldn’t help glancing again in the direction the old tea tree had charged off in—still acting like no one could ever drag it back.
Her face stiffened in horror and she quickly averted her eyes, muttering under her breath,
“That definitely isn’t Grandpa Tree. If Grandpa Tree turned into that, it would be way too scary.”
Bao Gu thought, That insane tea tree is probably your insane Grandpa Tree, he just went through the same kind of catastrophe as you. You’re right, the two of you really are equally messed up.
Of course, she would never say that out loud. If she did, this tea tree of hers and that enormous medicine field full of spirit-treasure herbs might get reclaimed on the spot.
Ba steadied herself and said, “To find a path to survival, you can’t just fly around blindly. First you have to look for stars whose environment is similar to your cultivation realm. Only in that kind of place can lifeforms like you exist, and cultivators survive.
“Right now we’re in an extremely stable great world. From the nebulae we’ve seen before and the shapes of some of the stars I observed, we can conclude that this is a very ancient great world. A world like this is guaranteed to have life. The only question is what kind of life, and where it exists. That’s what we need to search for.
“Father taught me some methods for seeking out life in outer space. The most common way is to search for their aura fluctuations. Many lifeforms are separated by astronomical distances, but they still need to communicate. So they send and receive signals through the void. As long as we can sense the existence of such signals and follow them, we can find those lifeforms…”
Bao Gu listened, dazed. She kind of understood, but also kind of didn’t. Her brain felt like it had been stuffed full of porridge.
“Hold on. Let’s start with the first question. You said stars that are similar to the cultivation realm. Similar how? What do the cultivation realm and stars have in common?”
Ba: “…”
Bao Gu thought for a moment and asked, “Don’t tell me those star deities in the constellations are actually real?”
Ba: “…”
She drew in a deep breath, then used a sharp fingernail to quickly scratch a circle on the jade tabletop.
“The ‘cultivation realm’ you’re talking about, the world you live in—put bluntly, it’s just a star.”
She got too worked up and pressed too hard. She sliced clean through the jade tabletop. The circle she’d carved dropped straight down, leaving a perfectly round hole gaping in the table.
Bao Gu and Ba stared at the hole where the piece had fallen through, both stunned.
Ba suddenly wanted to cover her face and run away.
How could someone this clueless and ignorant be her master?
