The ground suddenly gave way beneath them.
Before Yao Ranran could react, she had already fallen into a deep pit.
The mountaintop seemed to have been sliced flat by a sword. Mu Jialing too was caught in the collapse and failed to escape.
The violent tremor on the peak startled the disciples of Guan Fan Temple who were guarding the area.
"Quick, return and report to the abbot!"
Some novice monks darted off at once, while others were unlucky enough to tumble into the sinkhole.
Darkness.
Before Yao Ranran could even scream, she crashed into something soft and fleshy.
"What is this?" She reached down and felt around. A pained groan came from beneath her hand.
"Fairy… it's me…"
"Xiang Yin?!" Yao Ranran shot upright, quickly pulling the injured Tang Xiangyin to her feet.
"Ugh… Xiang Yin… are you alright?" Yao Ranran nervously touched her cheek.
Tang Xiangyin slowly regained consciousness. She shook her head weakly. "Fairy, I'm fine…"
"Good, good. That's a relief." At least she didn't need to feel guilty.
Yao Ranran held her close and glanced around. Suddenly, the ground beneath them began to rise again.
It shot upward at frightening speed.
Yao Ranran's organs shifted painfully inside her, and Tang Xiangyin nearly screamed.
Light returned as they broke back aboveground.
Looking down, Yao Ranran realized she was standing atop a massive, strange stone.
Tang Xiangyin hid inside her sleeve while the tremendous noise from the mountain summit had already drawn a large crowd.
"Fairy, are you unharmed?" A streak of white light flashed over, and Mu Jialing landed, his gaze full of concern.
Yao Ranran blinked in confusion. "What just happened?"
Mu Jialing glanced at the approaching cultivators, his expression grave. "Fairy, come down with me and see."
She nodded and leapt down with him.
The soft soil shifted across the stone as they landed in the midst of the crowd.
Only then did Yao Ranran see what it really was.
It was a statue of a Buddhist cultivator.
The statue rose a hundred zhang tall, wearing a crown of black prayer beads. Its face was serene and compassionate, its slender eyes gazing down as if pitying all living beings.
Mu Jialing dropped to his knees. "This is the statue of Master Mingzhi!"
"Long ago, Master Mingzhi sacrificed his three souls and seven spirits to seal away an evil being. Tens of thousands of Guan Fan Temple disciples built this golden body for him, hoping it would grant the master a chance at reincarnation.
Yet ten thousand years later, great turmoil swept the temple. The statue of Master Mingzhi vanished overnight, and no one ever knew where it went.
"Who would have thought it would resurface today!"
The usually calm and pure light in Mu Jialing's eyes now shimmered with emotion as he looked at Yao Ranran.
In his heart, it was all thanks to this Fairy.
She had brought Master Mingzhi's statue back into the world.
Yao Ranran rubbed the back of her head. This Fózǐ sure could talk—she hadn't even asked him anything yet.
But maybe she should remind him…
"Fózǐ, the one you're kneeling to right now… is not Master Mingzhi."
Mu Jialing froze. "Impossible. I've seen portraits of Master Mingzhi preserved in the records. This is clearly—"
He turned his head to confirm.
What he saw instead was a fat, fluffy cloud hound raising its leg and relieving itself right at the statue's feet.
Even worse, several cultivators had climbed onto the statue's face, shoulders, and thighs, prying and chipping away in search of treasures.
At this moment, Yao Ranran and Mu Jialing were the only two kneeling sincerely before it.
"?!!"
Mu Jialing's mind roared like boiling steam. His porcelain-pale face flushed crimson from his ears down to his neck. He had been kneeling all this time, only for the statue to be desecrated by a dog—and looted by strangers!
Yao Ranran watched his burning ears and reddened face and found the flustered Fózǐ unexpectedly amusing.
"Fózǐ, if you don't stop them, there won't be much left of your Master Mingzhi's statue."
Kindly, she chose not to laugh at him.
Mu Jialing snapped out of it, face still scarlet, and shot into the air. "Fairy, wait for me a moment!"
Wait for you?
Yao Ranran tilted her head up at the strand of black beads on the statue's crown. "If I wait for you, will you hand me that string of beads?"
Somehow… not very likely.
"No, sometimes you just have to rely on yourself."
With a push of her toes, she leapt a hundred zhang into the air.
The black beads were right within reach.
But as her fingers brushed them, a wave of dizziness struck. The glossy beads rippled like a kaleidoscope, strange patterns swirling across their surface.
Yao Ranran's eyes unfocused. Her breath vanished as the black beads swallowed her whole.
Behind her, the frenzied cultivators climbing upward seemed not to notice at all. They continued to scramble for the beads, only to vanish as the same fate consumed them one after another.
…
At Yan Family Fortress.
Massive crimson walls soared into the blue heavens, their flat crest drawing a perfect line across the sky.
The wall curved around the horizon, closing in upon itself to form an unbreakable fortress.
This was Yan Family Fortress, home to hundreds of families.
Yao Ranran now stood atop the fortress's greatest tree, gazing up at its towering crown.
"Does Fairy Ranran also wish to go to the Immortal Palace?"
A five-year-old girl stood beneath the tree, smiling sweetly as she asked.
Her voice was soft, dripping with honey.
Yao Ranran dropped lightly from the great tree they called Jianmu and regarded her. "Is this really the only way out?"
The child nodded brightly. "Yes, Fairy. There's only one path out of Yan Family Fortress. But why would anyone want to leave? The outside world is dangerous!"
"I'm not from here," Yao Ranran replied. "So eventually, I have to go."
The child's smile widened. "Fairy has a whole month to think it over. No one ever wishes to leave. With the protection of the True Buddha, no harm will ever come to us."
She giggled and skipped away.
Yao Ranran raised the Ancient Appraisal Mirror, brushing its light over the girl's back.
Target: Yan Xiaoyue
Aptitude: None
Spirit Root: Five Spirit Roots
Cultivation: Qi Refinement, Fifth Layer
Evaluation: A trash child with cultivation far too high for her own good.
"…This mirror really has a sharp tongue."
Yao Ranran confirmed the girl was indeed just an ordinary child.
But her cultivation was bizarre.
At only five years old, she was already at the fifth layer of Qi Refinement. If Jiang Shengxiang ever saw this, he'd probably faint from sheer outrage.
It had been three days since the black beads drew her into Yan Family Fortress, and she had discovered something very strange. Though the people here lacked talent, their cultivation speed was astonishing—far faster than those outside.
What was even stranger, everyone in Yan Family Fortress wore bright, blissful smiles. None of them seemed to know sorrow at all. At first, Yao Ranran thought she had stumbled into a paradise. But the longer she stayed, the more wrong it felt.
No one here cultivated. They simply worshipped a clay Buddha statue every day… and somehow their cultivation grew on its own.
This was a world unlike any she knew.