Shrouding the Heavens: The Ultimate Daoist Venerable

Chapter 132 First Encounter
Dark clouds obscured the moon, plunging the earth into darkness.

In the dim night, so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, everything was silent and still.

Suddenly, the sound of horses' hooves broke the silence of the night. Dozens of figures rode past, their torches flickering brightly in the darkness.

"Search carefully, everyone! That kid can't have gone far!"

"Brother, where are we going to look for him in the middle of the night? What kind of knowledge could a country bumpkin have? Do you think he can fly to the sky? I think we can still look for him tomorrow."

"What do you know? This kid threw the eldest son of the Yang family into the mountains to be eaten by tigers. Now the Yang family is offering three hundred taels of silver for his life. If we're too late, someone else will take it."

"The eldest son of the Yang family? That spoiled brat who bullies men and women all day long? He deserved to die, didn't he?"

"He deserves it, but the second young master of the Yang family has entered the Kunling Sect of Zixia Mountain and become an immortal. We are just a group of镖师 (bodyguards/escorts), how can we afford to offend them? Anyway, this kid is doomed, so who cares who takes his life? At worst, we'll just give him a quick death so he won't suffer in the hands of the Yang family. That would be more than enough."

"Brother is right. These days, unless you become an immortal yourself, you'll never know how you died if you try to be a chivalrous hero. It's a pity about this kid."

"What's the pity? He's just a hothead, relying entirely on his passion. Even if he escapes from my White Sand City, so what? Is the outside world any more peaceful? He can run away once, but can he run away twice?"

"Dig three feet into the ground and find every place where people can hide!" the leading knight shouted, urging his men on.

In the darkness, a young man dressed in black lay lurking among a mound of earth, too afraid to make a sound, his body covered in dirt. Upon hearing this, he trembled slightly, but still remained completely silent.

At this moment, a burly man with a knife walked up to the leader and said, "Brother, we've searched everywhere, but we still can't find it."

"That's strange, can he fly or something? Wait, why isn't anyone looking over there?" The leader glanced around in confusion and found that all his men had avoided a certain area.

The burly man chuckled and said, "Brother, that's a mass grave. We're afraid of ghosts, so we don't dare go there."

The leader roared, "You're not afraid of the living, so why would you be afraid of the dead? You've been following me on these escort missions for so many years, what haven't you seen? What ghosts are there in this world?"

The big man said, "Brother, since there are immortals and monsters in this world, it's normal for there to be ghosts, right? I heard Wang Er say he saw a ghost here a couple of days ago. The way he was so scared, it didn't seem like he was faking it."

"Besides, there are many people in this mass grave who were killed by that young master Yang. If we go and dig up their graves, we'll make them look like ghosts even if there weren't any. That's really not a good idea."

Looking at his men, who were all trembling with fear, the leader said, "With a bunch of cowardly brothers like you, it's no wonder I never make a fortune! In my opinion, this kid will soon find out that the people the Yang family hired don't know the path in Yunyin Mountain, and then they'll take a boat down the Qingshui River to Chiyan City. That's not Kunling Sect territory, they can't interfere."

"Brother, shall we continue searching?"

"What are you looking for? Let's leave. We've done our best to search for you all this time in the middle of the night. Since you all think this money is too hot to handle, then forget it."

"Brother, we just want some peace of mind."

The sound of horses' hooves rang out, and the bodyguards disappeared into the night.

The boy breathed a sigh of relief, but he didn't move. He waited for a while and only got up quietly when no one returned.

Although he knew the bodyguards who were chasing him, they weren't particularly close. Unexpectedly, they had deliberately let him go and even pointed him in the right direction.

He muttered to himself, "I won't thank you enough for such a great kindness; I will repay you when I become successful in the future."

Then, he turned to the burial mound where he was hiding and said, "My friend, the situation is urgent today, and I apologize for any offense I may have caused." After saying this, he bowed several times to the burial mound, which belonged to an unknown person.

Suddenly, a hand emerged from the mound.

The boy staggered back a few steps in fright and said in a trembling voice, "My friend, I only hid under your grave for a moment. Even if you have a problem with it, just send me a message in a dream, and I will naturally come to apologize. Why bother to come in person?"

Upon hearing his words, the hand not only did not stop, but further dug away the mound, and a figure crawled out from it.

It was a bulky figure dressed in a Taoist robe. In the dim moonlight filtering through the dark clouds, a ruddy face was visible. He didn't look like a corpse or a ghost, but rather like a living person.

He coughed twice and said, "What kind of place is this? Why is the soil here so barren? Is Wuji trying to trick me? No, something seems different."

"A ghost!"

The boy took off running, at what seemed like the fastest speed he'd ever run in his life. But for some reason, his surroundings remained completely still. He glanced down and realized that no matter how fast he ran, he was stuck in the same spot, as if he were trapped in a maze.

Seeing that he could not escape, he stopped and turned around, saying, "Master Ghost, what will it take for you to let me go? I have nothing left but this life."

The figure that crawled out of the grave was naturally the Underworld Lord, or rather, a wisp of the Underworld Lord's divine consciousness, transformed into an avatar through a corpse.

He glanced at the boy, then suddenly paused, hissed softly, and muttered to himself, "How strange, how could such an oddball like you emerge from this wretched place?"

The young man forced himself to remain calm and continued, "Master Ghost, even if I am very outstanding, you don't need to look at me like that, do you? There's a cause for every grievance, and the debtor should be held accountable. Don't come after the wrong person."

The avatar of the Underworld Lord looked at the mortal boy and said, "Aren't you afraid?"

The boy said, "What's the use of being afraid? I can't escape anyway, so being afraid won't change the outcome."

The avatar of the Underworld Lord said, "You've thought things through quite well. However, I'm not a ghost; I'm just an ordinary cultivator."

The boy said, "Are you an immortal? Then how did you crawl out of your grave? Could it be that you've been brought back to life?"

The avatar of the Underworld Lord said, "There are no true immortals left in this world, and resurrection is even more impossible."

Seeing that the fat Taoist priest opposite him didn't seem to want to do anything to him, the young man shamelessly said, "Senior, I am devoted to the Tao, but I have never been able to find a way to achieve it. What do you think of my aptitude?"

The avatar of the Underworld Lord said, "It's so-so, neither good nor bad."

He said this aloud, but inwardly he was alarmed. Although this young man was a mortal, he possessed an extremely high level of physical attributes.

If the Celestial Venerable of Morality is a mortal with a score of 75, then the Celestial Venerable of Spiritual Treasure is a mortal with a score of 90, and this young man is at least a mortal with a score of 100. Of course, this only considers their starting point in cultivation.

If we exclude mortals like Ye Fan who returned to a mortal body in his eighth incarnation, then this young man possesses the strongest mortal body. At least in all his years of cultivation, the Underworld Lord has never seen a mortal body that can compare to this.

This mortal body can be considered a true seedling of immortality. Unless it is a chaotic body, most special bodies are not as good as it.

The reason the Underworld Lord was surprised was precisely this. This place was clearly the poorest and most remote part of the ancient primordial star, devoid of even a single cultivator, extremely barren. Yet, in such a place, a true immortal seedling had been born.

(End of this chapter)