Chapter 69 : The System Suddenly Speaking Like a Human
Chapter 69: The System Suddenly Speaking Like a Human
In truth, Long Tao had already completely given up at this point.
Even if this Golden Core cultivator were willing to let him leave, so what? If he failed to obtain the Yaoguang Azure Phoenix Egg, he would still die from mission failure.
At the same time, he felt an intense sense of unease.
The difficulty of this mission was far too abnormal.
The first two missions had been outrageous as well—but that was only for him.
For Nan Yuchen, that Child of Destiny, they had been perfectly standard wish-fulfillment novel scripts.
But this mission? It required facing a Golden Core cultivator who was at least mid-grade or above.
Damn it… even if Nan Yuchen himself were doing this mission, he would die so hard there would be nothing left to die.
In the Cultivation World, there were occasionally some astonishingly gifted Qi Refining Great Perfection geniuses who could cross a major realm and slay a few Foundation Establishment cultivators with unstable foundations.
But that was as far as it ever went.
Foundation Establishment killing Golden Core?
Unless that Golden Core cultivator was actively seeking death—standing still and letting themselves be butchered—it was absolutely impossible! Yes, absolutely impossible! Surveying the entire Cultivation World, even a peerless genius like True Person Zhiying, who at the late Foundation Establishment stage had already touched the threshold of Time Sword Intent, had achieved his most glorious feat by battling a Golden Core True Person for a long time without defeat.
Even that had already shaken the world and been recorded in history.
Killing one? Don’t even think about it!
The Golden Core realm was an existence fundamentally different in terms of life level from Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment.
How big was the gap? To put it in a slightly crude way: there was already a de facto reproductive isolation between the two sides.
Cultivators at or above the Golden Core stage, unless relying on extremely rare and special secret treasures or pills, could not produce offspring with cultivators below Golden Core or with mortals—dual cultivation was out of the question as well.
Thus, in the Cultivation World, there was a common phenomenon: many Foundation Establishment Great Perfection cultivators with firm Dao Hearts who were about to attempt forming a Golden Core would often leave behind bloodlines with their lovers before entering seclusion to break through.
Because they knew that regardless of whether the Core Formation succeeded or failed, afterward they would almost certainly never have children of their own.
So Long Tao could not understand whether the System even knew that the final boss of this mission was a Golden Core cultivator.
If it didn’t know… then that meant the System’s capabilities were nothing special, and dying at the hands of such a thing would be unjust.
If it did know… then damn it, it was deliberately sending him to his death—an even greater injustice.
Just as his thoughts were in turmoil, an irresistible suction force suddenly arrived, violently yanking him toward the parasol tree.
Once he drew closer, he finally saw that on the gray robe was a somewhat faded Wuyi Sect emblem.
As expected, this person was indeed a Wuyi Sect operative buried here! And the other party could not even be bothered to conceal it in front of him.
“Oh? A passing itinerant merchant, yet cultivating the Nine-Xia Heavenly Sect’s Qi-Guiding Art?” the Wuyi Sect Golden Core said with mockery.
“Could it be that in the twenty years I’ve stayed hidden, the Nine-Xia Heavenly Sect’s techniques have become something everyone has a copy of?”
Long Tao had no time to pay attention to his sarcasm.
Because after being dragged closer, he was horrified to discover that Nan Yuchen was bound in a pitiful, helpless posture within the thick, gnarled roots of the parasol tree, clutching tightly in his arms an egg the size of an ostrich egg, radiating a gentle azure glow!
Nan Yuchen was clearly unable to move.
When he saw the disguised Long Tao, the defiance and anxiety in his eyes instantly turned into shock and disbelief.
That Golden Core cultivator seemed to notice from Nan Yuchen’s gaze that the two knew each other.
He did not immediately kill them, but instead casually tossed Long Tao to the side of the tree roots, right next to Nan Yuchen.
“Senior Brother Long?! Why are you here?!” Even in such dire straits, Nan Yuchen still recognized Long Tao at a glance despite his disguise.
“I’m not Senior Brother Long. I’m just an itinerant merchant,” Long Tao stubbornly insisted, though inwardly he sighed at how sharp this kid’s eyes were.
Nan Yuchen could not help but give a bitter smile.
“At a time like this… Senior Brother Long, you still have the mood to joke?” This height, this voice, this aura, and this Qi-Refining Fifth Layer cultivation using the Nine-Xia Qi-Guiding Art—who else could it be?
“All right, all right,” Nan Yuchen sighed, his tone heavy.
“If you don’t want to admit it, forget it. But I have to tell you… Senior Brother Chu Yuanbai… he was a traitor.”
The answer did not surprise Long Tao, but hearing it personally confirmed still made his heart sink.
Even an elite of the sect had betrayed them…
“A petty villain like that betraying the sect isn’t strange,” Long Tao said with feigned calm, then deliberately steered the topic toward the core issue.
“But you… holding the Yaoguang Azure Phoenix Egg—are you incubating it?”
As soon as those words left his mouth, not only was Nan Yuchen stunned, but even the previously indifferent Wuyi Sect Golden Core cast a slightly surprised glance over.
“Oh? I underestimated you,” the Golden Core True Person said with a trace of suspicion.
“You can actually recognize a Yaoguang Azure Phoenix Egg? Since you’re a smart person, you should know you’re not getting away.”
Long Tao naturally knew this.
But for someone about to die, curiosity instead overwhelmed everything else.
He carefully observed Nan Yuchen’s posture as he was trapped while holding the egg, and a vague guess gradually became clear.
Could it be that this man was using Nan Yuchen’s vast Destiny Luck to accelerate the incubation of the egg?
“Whether I can leave or not is for the Heavenly Dao to decide,” Long Tao forced himself to remain calm, his gaze sweeping over Nan Yuchen.
“However, in my shallow view, this trapped young friend is likely a Child of Destiny bearing great Destiny Luck, isn’t he? You’ve confined him to borrow his fortune to nourish this phoenix egg and help it hatch sooner.”
These words were like a thunderclap! Upon hearing “Child of Destiny,” Nan Yuchen’s eyes went wide, his face filled with disbelief.
And that Wuyi Sect Golden Core, for the first time, truly narrowed his eyes, carefully examining this seemingly ordinary Qi-Refining minor cultivator, as if trying to see straight through him.
Yet no matter how he probed, the other party truly was only at Qi-Refining Fifth Layer.
“This level of insight is not something an itinerant merchant should possess,” the Golden Core True Person said, his voice sinking slightly with an almost imperceptible scrutiny.
“However, since you already know, there’s no point in hiding it. What you said is correct. It’s just that my original target was the Nine-Xia Heavenly Sect brat named Fang Wuqi. I didn’t expect that during the twenty years I lay dormant in this secret realm, they would obtain another piece of precious jade… This child’s Destiny Luck is so deep and vast that it even surpasses that Fang Wuqi. Truly… enviable.”
Even though the other party had admitted it personally, a massive question still lingered in Long Tao’s mind.
Destiny Luck was something illusory, existing only in legends and diviners’ deductions.
How exactly was this man “seeing” it? Long Tao had never heard of any cultivation art in the Cultivation World that could directly peer into another person’s Destiny Luck.
If such a heaven-defying method truly existed, why would the major sects bother with competitions and examinations of temperament and roots? They could just go out and search for “children of Destiny Luck” directly.
“Oh?” Long Tao suppressed his shock and asked calmly, “I didn’t know that the Wuyi Sect possessed a secret art capable of directly perceiving another person’s Destiny Luck.”
“The Wuyi Sect? Heh…”
The Golden Core True Person let out a laugh of unclear meaning, one that carried a barely concealed… disdain.
That laugh stunned both Long Tao and Nan Yuchen.
For someone willing to remain here for over twenty years for the sake of sect interests, he should have been utterly loyal.
Yet that tone… clearly carried a sense of distance and contempt toward the name “Wuyi Sect” itself.
Unfortunately, this Golden Core was not the kind of dull villain who would reveal all his plans at the last moment.
He merely smiled meaningfully, his gaze returning to the azure-glowing phoenix egg in Nan Yuchen’s arms, satisfaction overflowing on his face.
After that, he fell silent and refused to say another word.
Long Tao’s thoughts raced.
The reason the man did not kill him immediately was likely because he had sensed that Nan Yuchen knew him and feared that acting rashly would cause the “Child of Destiny” to experience intense emotional fluctuations, thereby affecting the incubation plan.
Once this bird successfully hatched… Nan Yuchen’s fate was still uncertain, but Long Tao would definitely be doomed.
He only hoped his luck would be a bit better and that he might directly transmigrate back to his old home on Earth.
Just as despair completely overwhelmed him, and he even began thinking about how to beg later to at least earn a quicker death—
A voice, without any warning, suddenly sounded directly within the depths of his mind!
This tone… was unbelievably familiar! It was almost identical to the System notification sound he had heard countless times!
But Long Tao instantly knew—this was absolutely not the System!
Because… it was no longer that cold, grand, emotionless mechanical synthesized voice.
This voice carried an extremely vivid sense of humanity—confusion and surprise as if just waking up, along with an almost chatterbox-like rambling and complaining!
“Hey—ow! This… has my consciousness recovered? Mm… let me see… what’s the situation now… System? Huh? System? …Holy crap! This system really did come into being! Wait… this system’s Host… damn! So weak! Why is this Host only at Qi-Refining Fifth Layer?!”