What if I don't want to ascend to immortality?

Chapter 4 Destined Person

The feeling of being spied on was fleeting. Meng Qingtong was excited and didn't want to think too much. Besides, she knew that if the other party was really an extraordinary expert from over 1,800 years ago, she would be helpless even if he stared at her face to face. So why should she care? She simply steadied her backpack, quickened her pace, and went straight into the small cave.

She pinched a small talisman called "Radiance" between two fingers to use as lighting—this talisman was the most basic of all, and its cost was no more than the electricity consumed by a mobile phone's light mode, so she was quite willing to spend the money on it.

Unexpectedly, she was secretly startled as soon as the light was shone on the cave entrance.

Although the path was winding and long before it ended, as she looked around in the glow, all the stone walls within her sight were shrouded in a faint layer of solidified spiritual energy, flowing slowly like smoke and mist along the complex and intricate patterns.

Meng Qingtong unconsciously licked her dry lips, and finally felt a little nervous.

The location of the strongest reaction, as discovered by the survey, would be at least a hundred meters away if you dug straight ahead. The fact that the stone walls at the cave entrance could be stained with high-quality spirit stones at this distance is enough to give people a glimpse into the formidable strength of the senior who had gone into seclusion.

The spiritual patterns on the walls of this vast cave of spirit stones alone are enough for her to earn a hefty share of the research funding she can secure from the conservation association.

She was in a great mood, and her humming became a bit louder.

She took two steps inside, and Sun Shenglai caught up with her. After admiring her senior brother's astonished and dutiful performance as a member of the surprised crowd, she walked inside while holding the Radiant Talisman, putting the few spirit talismans she kept as a precaution back into the backpack on her shoulder.

In any case, given the strength of the person in seclusion here, these few talismans probably wouldn't even wake them from their nap.

"Junior sister, junior sister, slow down, don't... don't wake up the seniors inside." Sun Shenglai didn't know what he was thinking, so he quickly followed her to her side and didn't even dare to breathe loudly.

"What are you doing? It's been crashing like a mudslide outside for several minutes. If that doesn't wake him up, I could put my ear to the loudest volume of heavy metal and still not wake him up." Meng Qingtong said with a smile, then activated her spiritual power to make the glow even brighter, shining on the more open surroundings after the turn.

As expected, the distribution of spirit patterns became denser, and under the long-term immersion of spiritual energy, the surface of the cave wall gradually became transparent. At this point, these originally ordinary stones could be called spirit crystals.

"If I moved the whole cave to the Academy of Spiritual Science, the prize money would be enough for me to buy a nice motorcycle, right?" She joked to ease her tension, raising her hand to demonstrate the action of twisting the throttle. "Those big and cool road races, just thinking about them is so awesome."

"You're so frugal, yet you have such an expensive hobby?"

She shrugged. "The things I like are expensive, that's the driving force behind being stingy... Ah, sure enough, he's no longer here."

She bent down and touched it, activating a radiant rune that illuminated the small natural stone chamber at the end of the cave.

Anyone could tell that a spiritual practitioner once secluded himself here.

Because the surrounding crystallized cave walls underwent another change here—dense spiritual patterns completely penetrated the interior of the stone, causing the translucent crystals to emit a soft golden light from the inside out.

When something reaches this level of being available but priceless, it is generally called Spirit Gold. Ordinary people are prohibited from holding or trading it, and even spiritual practitioners must report it in advance before buying or selling it; otherwise, they will be subject to prolonged "concern and concern" from the Spirit Security Department.

The golden light surrounded a section of the wall in the center of the cave, forming a distinct outline. Even a three-year-old child could see from the glowing golden edge that it looked like someone sitting cross-legged, casting a shadow on the ground and wall.

However, the jet-black color encasing the gold-rimmed interior is not the real shadow.

After observing carefully for a long time, Meng Qingtong dared to confirm that this was a step further than spirit gold, with spirit patterns becoming the dominant carrier of spirit essence. If an ordinary person could obtain this amount and hand it over to the Spirit Science Academy, they would be set for life.

Fortunately, for non-research institutions, this thing only has a simple effect of replenishing spiritual energy. Even if it is spiritual marrow, it is nothing more than replenishing it quickly and in large quantities, allowing for rapid replenishment. Meng Qingtong doesn't need to worry too much about a villainous evil cultivator suddenly appearing to forcibly seize it. She can leisurely take photos, send them, archive them, and fill out a template to send a report to the association, notifying them to send someone to move the entire ruins away as soon as possible.

Still reeling from the continuous shock, Sun Shenglai managed to squeeze out a question after a while: "Junior sister, tell me, what kind of powerful expert could produce so many treasures just by going into seclusion?"

"The person left without taking anything. Judging from their attitude of treating spiritual essence like dirt, they must be incredibly arrogant." Meng Qingtong casually dismissed the matter, then suddenly frowned, squatted down, and carefully observed the center of the cross-legged human-shaped shadow.

The distribution of the spirit patterns even seemed to have a gradual change in density, almost like tree rings. She found it increasingly unbelievable and couldn't help but mutter to herself, "Hiss—this is really strange. How come this senior seems to be constantly growing in this place? Could he be a super genius child who has been in seclusion here since before puberty?"

As soon as she finished speaking, she suddenly felt a pang of heartache, and the fleeting feeling of being spied on resurfaced.

But this is not the same as before. Before, she was outside the cave, but now, she is surrounded by cave walls several meters thick, and the inner layer is filled with spirit stones of varying grades. It is extremely difficult to enter by relying on spiritual power.

Strangely, a powerful person capable of this should not be detected as abnormal by her.

After a moment's thought, she simply closed her eyes and focused her mind. Then, she suddenly opened her eyes and turned her head to look in the direction her intuition indicated.

It was a cave wall covered with spirit crystals, but she knew that somewhere far away, beyond the cave wall, someone was watching her.

She guessed correctly.

Five miles away, in a remote mountain valley, a handsome young man in a coarse white robe frowned slightly. After a moment's hesitation, he decisively withdrew his outward-extended divine sense.

When the spiritual cultivator named Sun Shenglai came to the vicinity to conduct preliminary exploration, he made up his mind to interrupt the long body tempering that was not yet finished.

He couldn't even remember exactly how much time had passed. He could only guess from his current appearance of about seventeen or eighteen years old and what the young girl said that it had been at least more than 1,800 years.

He had never experienced the legendary feeling of a day in the mountains being equivalent to a thousand years in the world. This process of self-repair required him to concentrate his mind and mobilize all the subtle spiritual energy to recreate his former body from nothing. It was an almost endless, long, and dazed state, which gave him a rare sense of relief after he decided to stop.

If that fairy wanted him to temper his resentment and cultivate his mind, she would have undoubtedly succeeded. Now, as he stands here, the fire of hatred that had been burning within him at all times has unknowingly subsided.

The most obvious emotion he was feeling at that moment was bewilderment.

It wasn't a matter of uncertainty about the future. He had long since discovered that a large number of evil spirits still existed in the world. Although his hatred had gradually subsided, eliminating evil and protecting the people was still his heartfelt wish.

Even if his body repair was interrupted and had a significant impact, even if the spiritual energy in this world was scarce and there were nine anomalies, even if the power of the Heart Sword Meeting was reduced due to the influence of his will... he still would not lose to any evil spirit, not even the reborn Demon Emperor.

He believes that good will always prevail over evil.

All his confusion stemmed from the unknown. Once he fully regained consciousness and extended his divine sense to its range, the changes in the world were simply too great. Leaving aside the strange clothes, silver carriages, and iron horses, what were these methods of using spiritual power, so different from what he knew? Why were there spiritual runes on that thing called a cell phone? How did these runes, once activated, allow even inanimate objects to detect spiritual veins? In a world with such sparse spiritual energy, how did that young woman manage to open a mountain with just a few mediocre defensive spiritual arrays?
Her name is... Meng Qingtong, right?
Based on these factors alone, he wouldn't have paid much attention to a spiritual genius. With his talent and experience, he naturally wouldn't have looked down on Meng Qingtong, a general who was chosen from among the dwarfs—and he was ashamed to even glance at her overly revealing attire.

He only sensed something was amiss when the girl approached the cave entrance.

It was a mysterious and subtle attraction, as if a powerful being, somehow connected to him, had manipulated something deep within the girl's soul, deliberately trying to make him sense it.

Among our old acquaintances, there aren't many who have the ability to do this, and perhaps only the Demon Emperor is willing to do so.

Therefore, it seems necessary to annihilate that ancestor of evil once again in this world.

Knowing yourself and your enemy is the key to victory in every battle—this famous saying from a past life as a mortal strategist was firmly etched in his mind. The cunning and treacherous nature of demons was secondary; the crucial point was that demons seemed to appear endlessly, while he didn't have that many lives.

Putting aside the young girl surnamed Meng for the moment, he calmed his mind, regulated the spiritual energy within his body, and resonated with the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. He quickly spread out his divine sense and began to swallow a large amount of information into his sea of ​​consciousness in a haphazard manner.

He had extensive experience traveling through countless lifetimes to hunt down demons, and he knew that it was very important to understand the local customs and traditions when arriving in a new place. For example, Meng Qingtong's clothing seemed too revealing to him just now, but now that his divine sense was spreading, he realized that such clothing was quite common in the hot weather and not worth mentioning at all.

Soon, he noticed another anomaly in the world.

Although the spiritual energy was gathered in nine places under heaven in an extremely unbalanced manner, the flowing information was spread out in an extremely even and delicate way. It was unknown what powerful means were used, but from the highest heavens to the earth and rocks, complex and difficult-to-understand information was being transmitted extremely quickly everywhere.

Moreover, tracing any line of thought can easily lead to an extremely vast and terrifying area.

He frowned, unwilling to waste any more time, and decided to open his mind completely, intending to extract all the information from those channels in one go and digest it slowly.

Unexpectedly, in just a moment, he discovered that the information contained in that thing called the network was so much that his mind could not contain it!
Furthermore, the gap between the two sides was so huge that with just a slight guidance from him, it became an unstoppable backflow!

He knew something was wrong and was about to forcefully stop when he felt a tearing, excruciating pain in his mind. His vision went black, and he fell backward uncontrollably.

Before he fainted, he only had time to instinctively release the Heart Sword Mist to protect himself.

However, in this place where spiritual energy is scarce, without his active supply, the Heart Sword Formation cannot last long at all.

When he opened his eyes again, it was already dawn, and he didn't know what day it was. The mist had long since returned to his soul, and judging from the fact that the robes on his body, which were condensed with spiritual energy, were about to naturally dissipate, at least two days had passed.

He cursed himself for being careless, slowly sat up, and looked around.

It was still a desolate wilderness, nothing worth mentioning.

The truly terrible situation is happening internally.

His mind was so full that it was on the verge of collapse. In his unconscious state, his soul instinctively tried to save itself by forcibly absorbing a lot of easily understood common sense information and integrating it into his memory. This left him in a state of utter confusion, with strings of unfamiliar words flying around. If he thought about them even slightly, his head would throb with pain.

Now that he had the physique of a teenager, he naturally possessed some of the temperament of a teenager, and he became irritable without realizing it. Knowing that this couldn't go on, he beckoned and pulled a vine leaf from the cliff, condensed spiritual energy at his fingertips, casually wrote a talisman to calm his mind, activated it, and placed it in his bosom.

The spiritual energy was thin, and even the mobilization of spiritual power was more sluggish than before. With a thought, he remembered Meng Qingtong's spiritual techniques and tentatively searched his sea of ​​consciousness, intending to study these novel methods first.

Gradually, the calming talisman took effect, and his mind became focused and settled.

When the sun was high in the sky, he let out a long breath, and his tense expression relaxed. With his previous foundation, learning the spiritual arts of this world was a piece of cake for him. He had already grasped most of the subtle details, and only a few exquisite aspects still needed to be carefully studied.

The sorrow in his mind still could not be calmed. He could only wait until more and more of it was transformed into his own and the burden gradually decreased before his spirit could recover.

Since that's the case, there's no need to stay here and waste time starving. He stood up and decided to take the first step to start over.

This is a development zone on the western outskirts of Dongding City, so heading east is the right way to go.

Before setting off, he pointed his fingers like a knife, first cutting his long, jet-black hair, which was almost dragging on the ground, down to just waist length. Then, he used some spiritual power to select a decent-looking outfit from the collection of youthful clothing in his sea of ​​consciousness and conjured it up on his body.

To fit into this world, one cannot be too unconventional in appearance.

He wasn't walking fast. Traveling wasn't his goal. He was simply using the journey to familiarize himself with both this unfamiliar world and his still-unfamiliar body.

My footsteps rose and fell with the mountain's contours. My heart gradually found peace with each step.

At this moment, another side effect of the thin spiritual energy emerged after this body was officially put into use—spiritual energy alone was no longer enough to solve the problem of hunger. He remembered that the last time he was so hungry that his vision blurred was when he was a teenager learning martial arts at Sanxing Guayue Mountain.

He had no gold, silver, or copper coins, nor any of the things in this world called banknotes, bank cards, or payment software. His only magical treasure, the Heart Sword, was unsellable... So he turned around and headed higher into the mountains, wondering if he could find a place to pick some wild fruit first.

He circled around a mountain wall, frowned slightly, and stopped.

He saw two fruit trees, and at the same time, he saw a familiar yet unfamiliar figure from behind.

It felt familiar because he had explored it many times with his divine sense before; it felt unfamiliar because this was the first time he had seen it directly with his naked eyes.

Without needing to use his divine sense anymore, the subtle pull arose on its own as he drew closer. Strangely, he sensed the cause and effect of the demon within it, yet he didn't directly detect any demonic aura.

Why not go up and get to know them?

Just as he made up his mind and was about to go over and speak, he saw the girl, who had her back to him, sigh softly and suddenly leap off the cliff in front of her, jumping off as if committing suicide!

(End of this chapter)