After leaving the mountains, Ian was in no rush. He didn't cross thousands of miles to immediately appear by Li Xingyun's side.
Upon seeing signs of human habitation, he opted for a more primitive method of travel. Bringing Li Bai's soul along, he rode a horse down the official road.
The road had been neglected for a long time and was overgrown with weeds. The fields by the roadside appeared to have been plundered, leaving behind only a few scattered corpses.
The wind carried not the fragrance of soil, but a foul stench of blood and rot.
Along both sides of the road, fallen skeletons could be seen. Some of the bones even bore clear bite marks.
By the roadside, an emaciated mother held her child—who might not even be breathing anymore—mechanically patting them with vacant, lifeless eyes.
As it turned out, the fields here had been forcibly harvested by the armies of neighboring warlords. Any farmers who tried to stop them were slaughtered on the spot.
Seeing this, Li Bai's soul fluctuated violently.
"Immortal, this..."
His voice trembled uncontrollably.
The Great Tang in his memory was a prosperous land where rice was abundant and white as snow, and granaries both public and private overflowed with wealth.
It was a golden age where heavenly gates opened to grand palaces, and envoys from ten thousand nations bowed before the emperor's crown.
It was absolutely not the hellish tragedy unfolding before his eyes.
Ian waved his hand, resurrecting the dead villagers nearby. Then, he transported all of them to Australia, which was currently abundant in resources.
Ian instructed them to survive in Australia for the time being, promising to bring them back to the Great Tang once the chaotic era was pacified.
The villagers knelt and kowtowed, thanking the immortal.
Ian continued onward with Li Bai.
The silhouette of a ruined city appeared on the horizon.
The closer they got to the city walls, the thicker the stench of blood in the air became.
The scene at the city gates caused Li Bai, the Poet Immortal who was accustomed to the prosperity of a golden age, to freeze once again.
Hanging from the tall flagpoles were not flags, but rather, air-dried human heads.
Men, women, the elderly, and children—their expressions varied, but the only thing they shared was the terror frozen on their faces.
Atop the city walls, a few soldiers in tattered armor were laughing and chatting as they hoisted up a still-warm corpse. With practiced movements, they severed the head, preparing to hang it in an "empty spot."
"Why is it like this?"
"Why must the people of my Great Tang be treated this way?"
Ian's gaze swept over the numb soldiers. "Oppressive taxes are fiercer than tigers."
"If they cannot hand over grain, they use their heads to pay the debt."
"This is the rule of the warlords here."
"Warlords?"
Li Bai muttered to himself. The term was both familiar and foreign to him.
He remembered that An Lushan was a regional warlord.
But the regional warlords of that time at least held a final shred of reverence for the Son of Heaven in Chang'an City.
The scene before him, however, was clearly the demonic act of treating human lives like worthless weeds.
"Is this... is this the future of my Great Tang?"
Li Bai's voice carried a hint of a sob.
"Why did it turn out like this?"
"Where is the Son of Heaven? Where are the officials? And where are the loyal and patriotic soldiers?"
His heart-wrenching questions received no answers.
Ian finally stopped walking. He turned around and looked at the emotionally devastated Li Bai.
"The Great Tang you know perished several years ago."
"The current dynasty is known to later generations as the Later Liang."
He began to narrate calmly.
From the peasant uprising that swept the world, to Zhu Wen usurping the Tang and establishing the Great Liang.
Then from the regional warlords' secession and chaotic battles, to the centuries of painstaking efforts by the Commander of the Buliangren.
Event by event, he laid out the history of this chaotic era before Li Bai.
Li Bai listened quietly.
The pride and radiance of the prosperous Tang in his eyes slowly extinguished, ultimately turning into dead ashes.
He couldn't fathom why the Land of Abundance had become like this.
Yet he could also understand, as history books were filled with precedents. He simply refused to accept that his own country had suffered such a fate.
Ian knew that the monument named "Prosperous Tang" in the Poet Immortal's heart had collapsed.
"However, in this chaotic world, a sliver of hope still remains."
"The bloodline of the Li Tang royal family has not been completely severed."
"Right now, a Child of Destiny, bearing the fate of reviving the Li Tang, walks upon these shattered lands."
"What?"
Like a drowning man grasping the last straw, the light suddenly reignited in Li Bai's ashen eyes.
He practically threw himself in front of Ian, asking urgently.
"Immortal, is this true?"
"Where is His Highness now? How... how is his character? Can he bear such a heavy responsibility?"
The barrage of questions highlighted his inner excitement and trepidation.
He desperately hoped it was true, yet feared it was merely a false comfort given by the immortal.
However, his excitement quickly faded, because Li Bai knew that given the current situation, unless Emperor Taizong were alive again...
Otherwise, even if the royal bloodline survived, it would be impossible to completely reverse the decline of the Great Tang.
Not everyone could be like Liu Xiu, able to borrow another two hundred years from the heavens when the nation was on the verge of collapse.
Moreover, the Great Tang was not the Han Dynasty.
With a thud.
Li Bai's soul unhesitatingly knelt before Ian, performing a full prostration.
His words carried a hint of pleading.
"Since the Immortal possesses heaven-defying abilities, why not directly intervene, wipe out the rebels of this world, and return a peaceful golden age to the people?"
"Taibai... Taibai is willing to serve as a beast of burden for the Immortal for all lifetimes, never entering reincarnation, to repay this grace!"
Ian didn't move. He quietly watched the prostrating remnant soul of the Poet Immortal, allowing him to vent the complex emotions in his heart.
After a long time, he slowly reached out his hand, and a gentle force lifted Li Bai up.
"The world, ultimately, belongs to the people of the world."
"Peace granted directly is nothing but a castle in the air; a single gust of wind will scatter it."
"As for the current chaotic era, I have my own plans."
"Just watch."
The next moment, light and shadows flickered.
The air was no longer filled with the stench of blood, but the freshness of a bamboo forest after the rain, mixed with the damp scent of soil typical of a rainy climate.
Li Bai looked around in bewilderment, realizing they were now in a lush, verdant mountain forest.
Ian pointed a finger toward a bamboo pavilion in the distance, shrouded in mist and heavily surrounded by countless dark figures.
"Look."
"That 'Child of Destiny' seems to have run into a little trouble."
Li Bai looked in the direction he pointed.
Outside the exquisite bamboo pavilion, swords and blades flashed, and the shouts of battle shook the heavens and the earth.
A heroic-looking young man dressed in a red martial outfit was being besieged by dozens of Miaojiang experts wielding curved blades.
The young man's facial features faintly bore the shadow of the Li Tang royal family.
However, at this moment, he was in grave danger. He had sustained several wounds, his movements were growing sluggish, and it looked as though he couldn't hold on much longer.
"Your Highness!"
Seeing that the last bloodline of the Li Tang was about to be severed here, Li Bai burned with anxiety, his soul nearly rushing forward recklessly.
However, Ian signaled for him not to panic.
He even had the leisure to pull out a camera from thin air and take pictures.
As if the life-and-death struggle before him was nothing more than a tourist photo op.
"Immortal!"
Li Bai couldn't understand what kind of immortal artifact the glowing contraption in Ian's hands was, but it didn't seem to have any effect on those people.
Ian simply made a "hush" gesture at him.
"No need to rush. There are still people who haven't shown up yet."
"Besides, don't be fooled by how he looks like he's about to collapse. In reality, he can hold out for at least another two hours."