Chapter One Hundred: Thunder

When Chen Jin returned from the Public Security Bureau a little after nine, he had left at eight, and in the intervening hour he had spent more than an hour coordinating with the officers there. After all, this involved a life, and not just any life, but that of a citizen with the potential to become a cultivator. It was only natural that everyone treated it with the utmost seriousness. The cultivator-association member stationed at the bureau, Zhuang Yue, had also come to the scene, and the whole matter had left Chen Jin with a splitting headache.

The case was therefore rather complicated. In particular, the deceased had also been from Xiahu County, and Chen Jin, who was connected to the incident, was himself a cultivator. The public security authorities in Xiahu County were preparing to form an investigation team and head to Egret City to look into it. In addition, the news of the death had already been passed on to the deceased's family.

After handing the audio evidence over to the police and making his statement, Chen Jin left. He did not tell them his suspicions. If he spoke of such things, the panic might only grow worse.

Because of all this, he spent the whole day in a low mood, with little energy to spare.

Most of the day, he simply sighed over the unpredictability of human life.

Business in the shop had gradually picked up again over the past few days, and lately they had even launched so-called feng shui furniture. That kind of utterly deceptive product sold surprisingly well, so Chen Jin's family could hardly be called anything other than sharp operators.

Still, all across the country, there were now countless shops peddling things related to feng shui cultivation and the like. Merchants were driven by profit by nature, and they would never miss even the slightest chance to make money. On this point, Chen Jin felt he had every right to speak, since it had been he who had suggested the idea of feng shui furniture in the first place. Of course, the furniture in his shop really did have some use for the body, because there was a cultivator like Chen Jin keeping watch over the place. From time to time, he would draw in strands of natural essence, and the vigor of his life force was such that the magnetic field of his body radiated outward and affected the surrounding objects as well.

If he were to nurture them directly with Primordial Qi, then these things would become even more extraordinary, and might even have a chance of becoming magical implements.

During the lunch break, the blazing sun hung high overhead, bringing a little warmth to this rather chilling February.

Across the way, the snack shop that had once belonged to Zhang Hui had been bought out by someone else. It was still a place that sold food, but now it specialized in braised chicken over rice.

Recently, Chen Jin had become addicted to it. Every day he came here to order a serving.

The owner was named Chu Xiong, a man in his forties with a beer belly and an impressively receding hairline. But his features were fairly rugged, and if one looked at his daughter, who had come home from winter break to help him out, then he must have been quite handsome when he was young.

When the老板 saw Chen Jin come for lunch, he asked directly, “The usual?”

“Mm.” Chen Jin's usual order was a large serving of mildly spicy braised chicken.

For some reason, even after he had begun cultivating, Chen Jin still could not handle food that was truly hot and fiery. So he could only make do with this mildly spicy version.

Besides, perhaps because the shop had only just opened, they were extremely generous with the ingredients. There was plenty of chicken, not the slightest stinginess, and that drew quite a few people from the commercial street to eat there, especially around this hour.

Thus Chen Jin could only sit and eat at the tables set up on the sidewalk outside the shop entrance.

A few of his employees were with him, though some lived nearby and had gone home to eat, while others lived at the far end of the county seat and would have found it troublesome to return, so they stayed here as well.

There were three people eating with Chen Jin, three who, like him, did not grow tired of braised chicken over rice.

“Boss Chen, may I take a leave of absence?” one of the employees asked over the table.

Her name was Zhang Yulin. She was twenty-seven this year. She had married two years ago, then divorced last year, and now she had a child.

“Why?” Chen Jin looked at her in surprise.

“I want to take my daughter to have her aptitude for cultivation tested,” she said cautiously.

“Fine. Take a few days. I can approve up to five days at most.” Chen Jin was quite lenient about such things.

“Just three days. We'll be back before long,” Zhang Yulin said with delight.

“Mm. Go to the counter and get a leave form to fill out. I'll sign it for you later,” Chen Jin said.

Their specialty shop was registered under Golden Orchid Furniture Company, and attendance records were also kept under the company name, so all the proper rules had to be observed. A leave request could not simply be handled by Chen Jin's verbal approval alone.

“Thank you, Boss Chen. You're the handsomest,” Zhang Yulin said, beaming.

“Be careful on the way. Things haven't been very safe lately,” Chen Jin reminded her.

“Got it, got it.”

In truth, the crime situation at home was still fairly good. Unlike abroad, where things were truly descending into chaos. In particular, in the so-called beacon of the world, the United States, ever since the announcement of the arrival of the so-called magical age, countercurrent marches had broken out day after day, and most of them were led by Black protesters. Europe was much the same. Reports of killings had already appeared in abundance, and some cult organizations had gone so far as to organize all kinds of so-called sacrificial rites. In this age of panic over a supposed supernatural revival, many ordinary people desperately needed something to place their hopes in, and these cults had taken advantage of that with various claims that one could gain power from the gods, luring many people into joining them.

In short, it was not only China that was in trouble. Abroad, things were even more chaotic.

In truth, the restoration of natural essence would still require a great deal of time. Chen Jin had personally experienced the dense natural essence of ancient times, so he could tell that the present concentration was still far below what it had once been, at least a whole street away from that level. It would take more than ten years before it could truly be called a revival, and perhaps even longer before the world could hold the kind of immortals who did not die.

As for beings of even greater scale... in ancient times the world had not been able to contain them, let alone now. Thinking of this, Chen Jin inevitably thought of his cheap master, the Taoist Master Cloud Elephant. He was probably one of those who had exceeded the limits of the human world, and so could only leave mortal lands behind and head for the legendary Grand Pure Heaven.

But did Grand Pure Heaven still exist now? No one knew whether the Thirty-Three Heavens of Daoism still remained, or whether the heavenly court of myth and legend still stood.

Chen Jin was still far too low in cultivation to probe such matters.

Still, when it came to the decline of the Dharma, who could say whether it had been the work of those big shots up in the Thirty-Three Heavens...?

Er, he could not think that way. Absolutely not. If he kept thinking nonsense like that, how was he supposed to keep living? For all he knew, a bolt of lightning might come crashing down in the next instant and turn him into charcoal.

Rumble...

Crack.

At the sudden clap of thunder, Chen Jin's hand trembled, and his chopsticks fell onto the table.

Rumble... rumble... rumble...

Then a series of rolling thunderclaps burst above the county seat.

The clear sky, bright only moments ago, was suddenly swallowed by black clouds, and serpents of lightning lashed and wriggled within them.

“It's raining! Get your clothes in!” someone shouted in the street.

...