Once the initial excitement passed, Bao Gu quickly calmed down. After sending out the warship, she immediately ordered the concealment formation on the main ship to be activated so they wouldn’t be discovered by cultivators on the green star. Discovering a living, verdant planet was an ecstatic, once-in-a-lifetime surprise—but if they barged in recklessly and provoked the hostility or vigilance of the cultivators down there and got attacked, that would be a disaster.
From another angle, Bao Gu was certain that if one day an unknown army suddenly appeared on her own turf, even if they claimed they meant no harm, there was no way she would tolerate them hanging around. Even if she didn’t fight them head‑on, she would absolutely drive them out.
The main ship, wrapped in the concealment formation, silently closed in on the green star and stopped at a distance from the ring of shattered magic treasures floating in space around it. At this point the main ship was extremely close. Through the formation’s projection, they could clearly see the layered green mountain ranges and the white, ribbonlike rivers winding through them. This world, brimming with life, had everyone so excited they could barely contain themselves.
For over four hundred years, they had kept teleporting through the starry sky in search of such a place. An entire four centuries. Some Nascent Soul cultivators had already died of old age, never managing to step into the Soul Transformation stage. Of the three hundred thousand Nascent Soul cultivators, nearly half were already at death’s door.
After sending out the first warship, Bao Gu successively dispatched more than ten additional warships, nearly two thousand people in total, to spread out over the green planet and scout in all directions. Streams of information came flooding back.
From the initial reports, this seemed to be a cultivation world even vaster than the one they’d come from. Their previous cultivation realm was almost entirely ruled by cultivators; the demon race had been forced into a corner of the demon domain, cowering in a marginal land. But here, there were all kinds of strange beings everywhere, dazzling them.
The scouting cultivators and warships were frequently attacked, and the enemies they met were generally powerful. Even cultivators at the Soul Transformation stage couldn’t match random patrols they ran into. There were even cases where they were wiped out in a single exchange before they had even realized the other side was there.
Bao Gu had seen birds and beasts before—but here, the ferocious beasts actually had wings. Tigers with human faces, wings more than thirty feet across, and bodies ten feet long—she saw them here! And qilin beasts—weren’t qilin supposed to have a pair of dragonlike horns? Here, the qilin had a single sharp horn growing right from the center of their foreheads. That horn could draw lightning straight out of the sky and smash a warship to scrap!
Then there was a giant toad, dozens of miles across. The mist it spat out was indistinguishable from the illusions created by a mirage dragon. When the warship flew over what they thought was just a little hill, a tongue suddenly shot up, snatched the ten‑zhang warship like it was catching a mosquito, and swallowed it whole. The tongue squeezed so hard the defensive formation shattered on the spot, and the ship was ground apart before it even had time to start a teleportation. Fortunately, the people on board reacted quickly, threw down a teleportation array platform, and escaped. After that, they saw the giant toad open its mouth and spew out a cloud of mist, and anyone who ran too slow…
There was also an extremely bizarre forest. The trees there ranged from two‑foot saplings to towering giants several dozen zhang tall. They all shared one trait: they looked disturbingly like people. Heads, arms, limbs—all eerily humanoid, with vines coiled around them and only a sparse scattering of leaves.
One cultivator noticed how strange the trees looked and, curious, apparently decided to dig up a two‑foot sapling to bring back to the warship. Then—whoosh—the little sapling bolted out of reach, and without warning, the ten‑zhang giant tree beside it lifted a massive foot and stomped the cultivator into paste.
The warship hovering in the air blasted that “grove” once. Instantly, the entire forest came alive. All the densely packed trees, stretching for hundreds of miles, whipped their vines and branches and let out a collective, howling “whooo, whooo” into the sky. None of the cultivators who had gone down into the woods made it out alive. The ones on the ship were so terrified they scrambled to pilot the warship away, practically rolling and crawling over each other in their panic.
These bizarre creatures left Bao Gu and the three hundred thousand cultivators absolutely stunned.
Only Ba, however, calmly counted them off on her fingers like she was listing familiar neighbors.
“That tiger with the human face is called a Human‑faced Winged Tiger. It loves eating people the most.”
“That qilin with the single horn in the middle of its forehead is called a Lightning Qilin, also called a One‑horned Qilin. A one‑horned qilin is not the same as a unicorn. Unicorns look exactly like horses, just with an extra horn on their foreheads. The thing they have in common is they both carry dragon bloodlines.”
“That’s a tree demon. Really bad temper. Set a fire down there and I guarantee the entire forest of treefolk will go berserk. Offend one, you offend all of them. And they hold grudges…”
“That’s called a Bone‑melting Suona Flower. Pretty, right? Huge, isn’t it? It eats people. One bite and it only takes a few breaths to melt someone into yellow sludge…”
Everyone in the control room stared at Ba as she explained one creature after another. They were shocked all over again.
Partway through, Ba realized everyone was gaping at her. She looked around in confusion.
“Did I say something wrong?”
Bao Gu asked, “How do you know all this? Could this place be the Upper Realm?”
Ba replied, “No. This place is so tiny. How could it be the Upper Realm?”
Bao Gu pressed, “Then how do you know about these things? Does the Upper Realm have all these strange creatures too?”
Ba’s gaze flickered. She made a vague “mm” sound, glanced at Bao Gu, then dropped her eyes back to the projection from the formation.
Bao Gu stared curiously at Ba for a long moment. She was certain Ba had some familiarity with this place. Then, thinking further, she realized there were humans here, and cultivators. That made it highly likely that after people here became immortals, the Upper Realm they ascended to was the same Upper Realm as theirs.
That thought gave Bao Gu an overwhelming surge of joy. If she could ascend to the Upper Realm from here, and then return from the Upper Realm, she could go back. Then reuniting with Yu Mi would no longer be some unreachable dream.
With that thought, Bao Gu couldn’t sit still anymore. She immediately decided to go personally, to find a large human city and gather information.
She ordered a warship to be prepared for her, then suddenly remembered the Taixu Divine Tree was still in the little courtyard. When that Taixu Divine Tree had first come out of the oversized storage bag, it had immediately tried to run. If it learned there was a lush, vibrant planet like this, filled with forests of living “tree demons,” of course it would bolt!
Thinking this, Bao Gu almost teleported back to the courtyard at full speed. What greeted her eyes was a huge pit where the Taixu Divine Tree had been rooted. Even the rich soil had been rolled up and taken away. On the jade courtyard wall beside the pit, a row of crooked, talisman‑like characters had been carved by roots:
“Wahaha, surprise! You’ll never get to pick my tender shoots again!”
Bao Gu’s face went dark in an instant. She could practically see how ecstatic that old tea tree had been when it realized it had escaped, and how it had literally yanked up its own roots and fled.
Sure, she had plucked its tender leaves—but she had also buried piles of spirit stones beneath it, and not just any spirit stones, but wood‑element spirit stones, the rarest kind in the starry sky, as its fertilizer!
The Taixu Divine Tree had run off and even rolled away all the soil from her courtyard. If it had taken the soil, it wouldn’t have spared the jade tables and stools either. Which meant—
Bao Gu took one huge stride into the house. Though she rarely lived here, the furnishings were all top‑quality, every piece carefully chosen. Now the place had been cleaned out, leaving only four bare walls.
If the courtyard hadn’t been built as an integrated structure, and if taking it away hadn’t meant cutting a whole chunk out of the main ship—too big a commotion, which would have alerted her—she suspected that old tea tree would have moved the entire courtyard too.
Bao Gu’s face wasn’t just dark anymore. It was practically green.
They had found the green planet. Happiness had come too suddenly, and she’d completely forgotten about the Taixu Divine Tree. In her joy she’d gotten careless and lost the former Guardian World Tree of the Immortal Realm just like that.
Even if it had been crippled, its soul destroyed and only a withered stump left to slowly regrow, the Taixu Divine Tree was still no ordinary immortal artifact.
Bao Gu’s heart ached so badly it felt like it was dripping blood.
Ba stood in the courtyard gate, red lips parted, staring wide‑eyed at the emptied‑out yard. She turned her head to stare at Bao Gu in disbelief.
Bao Gu rubbed her forehead and steadied herself. Then she said to Ba, “Qingying, let me tell you something. That old tea tree that ran away—that was your grand‑uncle. Just like you, he was badly injured. His primordial spirit was destroyed and he lost all his memories. When I found him, he was just a charred stump with a tiny spark of life left. I buried a lot of wood‑element spirit stones under his roots and only then did he recover.”
Ba blinked, then suddenly slapped her thigh and cried out in realization, “I knew it! No wonder the more I looked at him, the more he looked like Grandpa Tree. It’s just…”
A thought struck her. She fixed her eyes on Bao Gu.
“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“You never asked,” Bao Gu said. “Besides, it was so obvious I could see it at a glance. And you couldn’t?”
“I…” Ba was actually left speechless by Bao Gu’s words.
It was true she had been stuck on the idea that he was Grandpa Tree’s son, wondering how Grandpa Tree had a child, and whether there was a Grandma Tree somewhere. All this time she’d been trying to figure out how trees had children.
And in the end… oh heavens, Grandpa Tree had actually been injured worse than she was, to the point of being completely deranged!
She smacked a hand to her forehead.
“No, I have to find Grandpa Tree and bring him back! He’s the only family I have left!”
Inwardly, Bao Gu thought, If you’re willing to go find him, that’s perfect!
Then she realized something about Ba’s phrasing was off. Her face tightened.
“Qingying, first of all, your Grandpa Tree is a tree, not a person. And secondly, your master doesn’t count as family?”
Ba shot Bao Gu a contemptuous look and muttered under her breath, “Master who doesn’t understand anything…”
Catching Bao Gu’s icy gaze, she immediately shut her mouth. This discount master of hers could refine pills, and not just any pills—very powerful ones. And she had an inexhaustible supply of spiritual delicacies and rare medicinal treasures.
Ba hurriedly pasted on a flattering smile, hugged Bao Gu’s arm, and drawled, “Masteeer…”
A shudder of goosebumps ran over Bao Gu’s entire body. She decisively yanked her arm out of Ba’s grasp and said sternly, “You’re coming with me to scout this realm. And while we’re at it, we’re dragging that old tea tree back by the roots.”
Ba swayed along behind her as Bao Gu turned and walked out.
“Master, aren’t you afraid I’ll run away too?”
“Go ahead and try,” Bao Gu said coldly. “Run and see what happens.”
Ba snorted softly.
“You can’t even beat me.”
“I can forge another divine‑metal coffin,” Bao Gu replied calmly, “and arrange another Heaven‑Sealing Forbidden Domain grand formation.”
Ba slanted a look at Bao Gu and fell silent. After a while, she pursed her lips into a smile again.
“If you keep treating me this well, I won’t run.”
She scooted up beside Bao Gu.
“Master, how about doubling my pills? Look how big this place is—there has to be tons of spiritual treasures and rare herbs. Let’s catch some Earth Immortals and use them to refine pills, okay?”
Seeing Bao Gu staring at her in shock, she immediately changed tack.
“Or… if we don’t refine pills, roasting them is fine too. Stewing them works as well. Don’t look at me like that. Earth Immortals aren’t really people anymore. They don’t have physical bodies. They’re delicious!”
Just thinking about the taste of Earth Immortals had her practically drooling.
Bao Gu felt a chill run through her heart.
Earth Immortals are delicious. Earth Immortals are a delicacy.
If Ba started eating Earth Immortals and more Earth Immortals came after her for revenge, Bao Gu’s current strength wasn’t enough to withstand a casual slap from any of them.
“If you’re not afraid of attracting an endless stream of Earth Immortals in this realm to hunt you down,” Bao Gu said mildly, “I have no objection.”
Once the Earth Immortals here learned of Ba’s existence, and that she treated them as rations, they would absolutely fight to the death and join forces to wipe her out.
Earth Immortals existed in this realm too, then? Thinking about it, the previous cultivation world had also had Earth Immortals. Monsters of Ba’s level, who had once almost destroyed an entire realm, were vanishingly rare.
Bao Gu’s words made Ba remember how she had withered away into skin and bones under the seal, starving for ages. She bit her lip, still shaken, and said no more.
“Come down there with me,” Bao Gu told her. “And don’t cause trouble.”
As she spoke, she led Ba to the teleportation domain gate. Using the coordinates provided by the scouts who had gone ahead, she activated the gate and transmitted directly to that location.
Stepping out of the domain gate, Bao Gu immediately felt something strange race through her entire body. She steadied herself and looked around.
She was standing on a street. The street was incredibly wide, her line of sight wide open as though she were in a plaza. Looking up, she saw grand, imposing buildings, exquisite and luxurious carriages, and in the air, cultivators flying atop magic treasures or riding the wind.
Bao Gu extended her divine sense in a sweep and found that these cultivators, too, came in every imaginable type. Just from the eyes alone, there were blue, green, red, black, brown, and dark eyes. Their hair came in black, white, and yellow. Some cultivators were as short as dwarfs, less than two feet tall, while others were nearly thirty feet tall, like walking towers. Their mounts were just as varied, including massive beasts more than ten zhang long and three or four zhang tall, each step booming like thunder.
There were many cultivators coming and going. Most of them were at levels Bao Gu couldn’t gauge. She could distinguish those at the Void Tearing stage and below; anything beyond that was beyond her senses.
Everyone was adorned with fine magical ornaments. Some were wreathed in rainbow light, dripping with treasure, while others were in tattered clothes, radiating raw ferocity. The street itself was spotlessly clean, lined entirely with shops. There were no peddlers hawking wares by the roadside.
The sky was heavy and overcast, with the feel of an impending storm. People nearby seemed afraid of the coming rain, quickening their pace to move past her. Quite a few gave her strange looks as they went by.
Bao Gu glanced around. She didn’t think she looked that odd. She wasn’t the shortest or the tallest around; nothing about her figure should stand out. She looked down at her clothes. Though her outfit was composed of magic treasures, compared to many people’s gear it was clearly inferior—but not the worst on the street. As for her face, in a crowd this mixed, she ought to be completely unremarkable.
So why was everyone staring at her?
Suddenly, she noticed Ba take one step and then bolt, putting more than thirty zhang between them as she dashed under the eaves of a nearby building. Ba even glanced up at the dark clouds overhead.
Fine. If it was going to rain, they should get out of it.
Bao Gu used her Shrinking‑the‑Earth footwork to step under the eaves beside Ba.
“You’re afraid of getting rained on?”
As she spoke, she realized everyone around them was looking her way.
The shopkeeper of the building—nearly thirty feet tall, dressed in exquisite clothes and towering like a pagoda—walked out with a smiling face. He lowered his head to look at her and said a string of words she didn’t understand.
Bao Gu stared blankly at him, then used divine sense to tell him she didn’t understand his language. At the same time, the odd, oppressive feeling in the air intensified so much that her pores seemed to stand on end, though she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was wrong.
Ba lifted her head to glance at the rolling clouds overhead. With a look of deep distaste, she drifted away again, moving to the eaves across the street, far from Bao Gu.
The shopkeeper glanced up at the sky, and his expression suddenly changed. He raised a hand and reached for Bao Gu.
Seeing him make a move, Bao Gu, who had already been quietly on guard due to her unease, slipped a step and dropped from the eaves back to the middle of the street. Frowning, she was just about to ask how she had offended him when she felt an incredibly powerful lightning force crash down from the sky straight toward her.
It came too fast and too fierce. By the time she sensed it, she barely had time to instinctively circulate her energy in defense. She didn’t even have time to raise her arms to shield her head.
It really was so fast lightning couldn’t catch it.
A deafening boom exploded in her ears. Bao Gu saw golden sparks burst in front of her eyes. Her entire body burned and throbbed with stabbing, electric pain. At the same time there was a thunderclap like the sky splitting apart right next to her ears.
Furious, she ground her teeth and sent her divine sense sweeping out.
“Who ambushed me?”
Good thing she’d fused with the Xuantian Sword Body and her physique was tough. Otherwise, that lightning‑summoning technique would’ve flattened her.
Standing far away, Ba blinked and stared at Bao Gu, dumbfounded. Then she slapped a hand over her own face.
Is that really my master?
She was too embarrassed to show her face.
Everyone who had prudently backed far from Bao Gu heard her divine sense shout and turned to stare at her in shock. They watched, wide‑eyed, as she swept her cold gaze around, searching for the one who had “ambushed” her.
And then another bolt of heavenly lightning blasted down from the thunderclouds above and struck her again.
Yet she still stood there, completely intact, raising her head and squinting up at the thunderclouds as if trying to locate the “attacker.”
Everyone was stunned. Everyone was speechless.
Another bolt of lightning dropped from the sky, surging down like a river of pure force.
Bao Gu was ready this time. She shot forward nearly a hundred zhang in one leap—only for the lightning to accurately adjust mid‑fall and smash down right on top of her. It knocked her from the sky to the ground, made her roll once, then she bounced back to her feet in a single bound.
Bao Gu was livid.
She had just arrived here, had only just stepped into the city. Who had she provoked already?
She summoned the Xuantian Sword into her hand, unleashed her battle intent to its peak, and sent her divine sense surging in all directions.
“Cowardly rat who sneaks attacks from the shadows,” she shouted coldly, “get out here!”
Ba’s face had gone green.
The moment Bao Gu drew the Xuantian Sword, the thunderclouds overhead turned purple. They churned violently, the oppressive clouds pressing down over Bao Gu’s head and plunging the entire area into a darkness like night.
Ba parted two fingers over her face, peeking through the gap at Bao Gu.
“Stop looking. No one’s ambushing you,” she yelled. “You’re undergoing tribulation!”
She’d already been hit by three bolts and still didn’t know she was transcending a heavenly tribulation.
Ba really wanted to ask, Master, have you ever even gone through a tribulation? Have you ever seen anyone go through one? How can you not even recognize a tribulation when it’s hitting you in the face?
