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Chapter 84 Can it still be saved?

Hearing the Silver Furnace Boy cry out "turn into pus" in a tearful voice, Chen Guangrui, who was hiding behind the crowd, was so shocked that his mouth twitched.

These two kids... they really dared to do that!
Wasn't the mission to reinstate the official? How long has it been, and they've already turned the main character into a jade bottle and melted him away?

The shock left Chen Guangrui somewhat dazed.

When he came to his senses, he immediately felt two unfriendly gazes fixed on him.

He looked up and saw that it was Jinlu and Yinlu, the two boys, who had already spotted him hiding behind the crowd.

Jin Lu's usually composed face darkened considerably, her slender eyebrows furrowed, and her gaze towards Chen Guangrui was filled with wariness.
"Hey! You...you who's tending the fire!"

The Golden Furnace Boy puffed out his little chest and spoke with feigned authority, "Didn't I tell you not to come along? Why are you sneaking around here? Are you trying to steal the credit?"

"Don't worry, just mention your name to the ancestor when you get back."

The boy next to him, who had just finished crying and whose eyes were still red, glared at Chen Guangrui angrily.

Chen Guangrui composed himself, walked up to the two of them, and wore a perfectly measured expression of confusion.
“You two celestial children have misunderstood. I did not come here with you. This is the Two Realms Mountain, and I am here to handle some mortal affairs. Rather, I have some questions for you,”

His gaze swept over the two somewhat disheveled children. "Weren't you going to Yunzhan Cave on Fuling Mountain to invite Marshal Tianpeng? What are you doing here at Liangjie Mountain, which has nothing to do with you?"

"Two Realms Mountain?" Silver Furnace Boy had heard the term "Two Realms Mountain" several times already, and he wondered, "Are these Two Realms Mountain very far from Yalong Mountain?"

Silver Furnace Boy's eyes widened suddenly, still moist, as he looked blankly at Golden Furnace. "Golden Furnace, aren't we going... going to Yalong Mountain to find our godmother?"

The Golden Furnace Boy's face instantly turned bright red, but he still held his neck straight and pursed his lips tightly, clearly knowing that he had shown his fear. He glared fiercely at the Silver Furnace, as if blaming him for being talkative.

The Silver Furnace Boy, after being glared at by him, finally realized what was happening:

Did we go to the wrong place? This place must be quite far from Yalong Mountain, otherwise we would have never even heard of this fire-starter.

Realizing this, the Silver Furnace Boy jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, pointing at the Golden Furnace's nose, his voice becoming shrill.

"Jinlu! Are you stupid?! You were talking so confidently in the sky, mentioning 'the great mountains to the north,' but now that you're down here, you can't even find your way around? If you can't get to Yalong Mountain and find your godmother, what will happen to Zhu Ganglie?"

He was so anxious that he stomped his feet on the spot, and tears almost welled up in his eyes again.

The Golden Furnace Boy was so embarrassed by his shout in the street that he couldn't save face. His face turned red and white in turns.

He stomped his foot angrily, raising his voice.
"How would I know that all those dilapidated mountains in the mortal world look the same? Besides, I remember it clearly, there's no mistake, so why does it feel wrong as soon as I leave?"

He was still being stubborn, but the guilt in his tone was quite obvious.

Seizing the opportunity, Chen Guangrui asked, "Shouldn't you be going to Yunzhan Cave on Fuling Mountain? What are you doing looking for Yalong Mountain?"

The Golden Furnace Boy immediately shut his mouth, with a stubborn expression that said, "I will not tell you."

But the Silver Furnace Boy didn't care about any of that; all he could think about was the pig in the bottle that was about to melt.

He shoved aside the hand that Jin Fu was trying to stop him and shouted impatiently at Chen Guangrui, "Yalong Mountain, why didn't you answer when I asked you earlier? Where exactly is Yalong Mountain? Tell me now!"

The Golden Furnace Boy was so anxious he was jumping up and down, but he didn't even have time to cover the Silver Furnace's mouth.
"Silver Furnace, shut up!"

Clearly, the Golden Furnace Boy is tight-lipped; he doesn't want to reveal the secret, and even if things are urgent now, he won't say a word more.

Chen Guangrui already had a plan in mind. Looking at the two flustered people, especially Yinlu who was tightly clutching the bottle, he knew that they couldn't care less about hiding it now, or rather, Yinlu had completely lost interest.

They're trying to keep their distance from me. I don't need to ask them to tell me.

He deliberately feigned a thoughtful expression and slowly shook his head. "Yalong Mountain? I've never heard of this place. As far as I know, the name sounds strange and mysterious, so it's probably extremely far away from here."

"Extremely remote?" The Silver Furnace Boy's last hope was utterly shattered. His small shoulders slumped instantly.

"Jinlu, it's all your fault! You insisted on leading the way blindly. Now look what's happened! We can't find the place, we don't know the way, and we've wasted so much time! By the time we find the place, we'll all have turned to ashes!"

As she spoke, tears began to fall again, one after another.

The Golden Furnace Boy's face turned ashen. Looking at the Silver Furnace wailing and then at Chen Guangrui, he finally couldn't hold back any longer. He clenched his little fists tightly and lowered his head, which had been held high all along.

Seeing that the time was right, Chen Guangrui immediately said in a deep voice, "This is not the place to talk. Stop making a fuss and come with me."

He turned first, leading the two distraught children away from the bustling market. The two children were completely lost; they could only follow Chen Guangrui, hoping he could find a solution. After all, they were still children. Even if they had lived with Laozi for hundreds or thousands of years, having only refined elixirs and rarely interacted with people, they were still children hundreds or thousands of years old, and they panicked at the first sign of trouble.

The three walked quickly and reached the woods outside the market in no time.

After standing still, Chen Guangrui looked at the two dejected children.
"Tell me, what exactly happened? Where is Pigsy? How did he end up in your bottle?"

The Silver Incense Burner Boy was already sobbing uncontrollably, gesturing wildly and rambling incoherently while clutching the bottle.
"He...he won't listen...he's ugly...we've tried everything to reason with him...he...he just won't do it...and he even tried to run away...when I get angry...I just...boo..."

Chen Guangrui watched him gesturing wildly and crying, completely missing the point.

Finally, the Golden Furnace Boy, who had been silent and bowing his head, raised his head with a sense of despair.

Although he was trying hard to suppress a sob, his voice was still hoarse, but his thoughts were much clearer than Yinlu's.
"We...we did find the Yunzhan Cave in Fuling Mountain, and we also saw Zhu Ganglie."

“But…but he looks extremely ugly, and he’s still picking manure and working the land…Looking at him like this, we feel…we feel he’s really unworthy of the prestigious name of Marshal Tianpeng…we feel it’s disgraceful for the Heavenly Court…”

“So,” the Golden Furnace Boy’s voice lowered, tinged with a hint of annoyance, “then…”
“When we first spoke… our tone might not have been very pleasant… so we just told him to come back to Heaven with us and become an official.”

"But he doesn't know what's good for him! Humph!"

Jin Lu snorted again as he said this, but his momentum quickly weakened. "He...he refused outright!"

"Later," he glanced at the still-sobbing silver incense burner, "we patiently and spoke to him gently, saying it was a decree from Laozi, a truly great thing..."

A look of confusion appeared on the face of the Golden Furnace Boy.
"But he still wouldn't agree! He said he wanted to live a carefree life in the mortal world and didn't want to go back and be bound by the rules of heaven."

“Yinlu has a short temper,” he pointed to his companion beside him, “no matter how much he tried to reason with Zhu Ganglie, he wouldn’t listen to us at all. In his anger, Yinlu couldn’t hold back and, with a flick of his wrist, used this jade bottle to… to… to put Zhu Ganglie inside…”

The sound of the golden furnace grew fainter and fainter, and its head bowed again.

"When the ancestor bestowed the bottle upon us, he said it was powerful, capable of turning a person into pus in a short time. It's been almost three-quarters of an hour since we put it away..."

The Golden Furnace Boy raised his head, his eyes filled with genuine panic and pleading, "If we can't find a place to release him, he... he'll melt away..."

After he finished speaking, he and Yinlu looked at Chen Guangrui with their last glimmer of hope.

They seemed to have forgotten that this person was just a newcomer to the Tushita Palace, a Taoist priest who tended the fire.

After listening to Jin Lu's fragmented but still relatively clear description, and looking at the two boys in front of him who were terrified after causing such a big disaster, Chen Guangrui felt both angry and amused.

You were sent to invite someone to become an official, but you angered the person because he was ugly and had a bad attitude. In the end, you even took him in and he almost burned out.
The feud has been settled.

Now that this incident is over, it will probably be difficult for these two children to get Zhu Bajie to listen to them again.

He sighed, looked at the two bewildered little heads, and directly pointed out the key point.
“I say to you two, Laozi sent you down to the mortal realm to invite him back to the Heavenly Court to reinstate him and give him a new future! Not to turn him into pus and get rid of him! The most important thing now is to release him.”

"no!"

To everyone's surprise, the person the Silver Furnace Boy had taken in, the Golden Furnace Boy suddenly raised his head and objected, his little face filled with resistance.

"If we release him now, he'll have suffered so much. He must hate us so much while he was in that bottle! He'll definitely fight us to the death as soon as he gets out! Forget about getting him back to his original position, we'll be lucky if he doesn't become enemies with our Tushita Palace!"

Yinlu nodded frantically, her voice trembling with tears: "Yes, yes, yes! He must hate us to death now! We can't let him go! If we do, we're doomed."

What else do you know?

Chen Guangrui found it amusing. No wonder the two children wanted to go to Yalong Mountain to find their godmother; it was probably because of this.

Although Chen Guangrui didn't understand why Laozi's attendant would have a godmother in the mortal world, he realized that the two children had just been looking for that godmother to help them solve their problems.

He wasn't completely dazed; he wasn't utterly terrified.

At this moment, the Golden Furnace Boy bit his lip and said, "Hey, you who's tending the fire, this is the situation. Do you... do you have any good ideas?"

The Silver Furnace Boy stood to the side, watching Chen Guangrui. Although he didn't say anything, Chen Guangrui could tell that he hoped Chen Guangrui could help him solve this problem.

"What's the panic?" Chen Guangrui asked casually, with a confident air. "That Zhu Ganglie can still be saved."

(End of this chapter)