Chapter 114: The Longest Road I Have Ever Walked...

"Is there a temple over there?" The child's words echoed in Chen Jin's mind.

"Isn't there one?" Chen Jin paused for just a fraction of a second before countering with a question.

He had seen that temple with his own eyes, experienced it firsthand, and even the scent of incense lingering on the soles of his boots bore witness to its existence.

"No, there isn't," the child denied.

Chen Jin was not the sort to discard his own subjective judgment simply based on the word of a stranger, but he intended to verify it.

Therefore, hoisting the child over his shoulder, Chen Jin turned back the way they had come. After walking about three miles, feeling he must have reached the exact spot, he stopped.

Yet, the temple was truly gone; not even a trace of rubble remained.

"Are we here?" the child asked.

Chen Jin did not answer. Instead, he unleashed his primordial breath fully, blanketing a radius of a mile, but he discovered nothing at all.

Chen Jin refused to believe his memory was playing tricks on him. He had definitely seen the temple, and it had undoubtedly been located right here.

And yet, the scene before his eyes seemed to argue that facts spoke louder than words, and everything was an illusion.

*Who is playing tricks on me?* Chen Jin wondered. He traced a circle on the ground with his foot, secretly channeling his primordial breath into the earth in an attempt to set up a simple testing array.

Just halfway through, Chen Jin suddenly recalled something: he hadn't asked for that monk's religious name...

This was a remarkable oversight. Given Chen Jin's usual cautious nature, when encountering a mysterious and unfamiliar monk, how could he possibly fail to ask for his name to probe his background? Especially in such an ancient setting, Chen Jin would have asked for a name at the very first opportunity—after all, who knows if the person met could turn out to be some historical celebrity?

And in the flamboyant era of the Tang Dynasty, encountering historical figures was all the more normal. Consequently, whenever Chen Jin met someone of extraordinary eloquence, he would usually inquire after their name, just in case he happened to bump into an exalted being like Lü Dongbin.

Thus, Chen Jin could now be basically certain that he had been toyed with by some high-level master. Fortunately, this master still possessed a shred of conscience and hadn't tossed him into a pigsty to sleep with the swine.

Since the master had a conscience, Chen Jin chose not to pursue the matter further. After all, if he kept digging, he had no way of knowing whether the master might decide to consume his conscience and toss him into a pigsty after all.

Next, Chen Jin cast a glance around the surrounding environment. He could now be certain that this was not the location of the temple from the old fox demon's memories.

***

"How about it? Didn't I tell you so?" the child claimed credit proudly.

"Hmph. Well, I came here to eat a monk, but since there's no monk around, eating you might just have to do as a second-best option, hehe." Chen Jin dangled the child in his hand and spoke with a sinister expression.

"I... I'm fainting." The child swallowed hard, then deliberately listed her head to the side and feigned unconsciousness.

"Hehehe, I actually prefer eating unconscious kids," Chen Jin chuckled.

Without further ado, he tapped her pressure points to render her truly unconscious, relaxing the child's tense little body.

In truth, ever since Chen Jin had dragged this child out from the shadows, her entire body's muscles had remained taut, and she had been intensely nervous the whole time—even when she claimed she wanted to take Chen Jin as her master, she had been just as rigid.

Chen Jin intended to drop her off at some household. In any case, he had no intention of dragging along dead weight. Those stories in movies and animations where an older person takes in a young child and they mutually elevate their souls simply were not going to happen to Chen Jin.

"This place is filled with my scent," Chen Jin murmured, taking a light breath in the desolate clearing.

"Though there is still quite a bit of fox stench over there." Chen Jin's gaze fixed upon a spot ten miles ahead.

Currently standing on the mid-slope of a small hill, Chen Jin had a commanding view from afar, allowing him to perceive a good deal.

For instance, at the foot of the distant mountain, there was a thatched cottage emitting a faint yellowish glow.

*Whoosh...*

The wind rose.

Chen Jin's wide, flowing robes fluttered loudly in the gale, and then, rising with the wind, he lifted three feet into mid-air.

"Ascending the heavens" was one of the distinctions between the Spirit-Fixing Realm and the Qi-Fixing Realm.

Because the primordial breath of practitioners in the Qi-Fixing Realm lacked the condensed solidity of true essence, it could not support a human body in lifting off the ground unassisted. However, the true essence of the Spirit-Fixing Realm was capable of supporting the body to rise into empty air and perform low-altitude flight.

Chen Jin was currently lingering right between the Qi-Fixing Realm and the Spirit-Fixing Realm, which allowed him to wield a slightly diminished version of the abilities belonging to the Spirit-Fixing Realm.

***

Zhang Ba felt that his dilapidated dwelling was exceptionally lively today, having received three visitors. On ordinary days—aside from tax-collection dates or times when he proactively went out to bother people—he lived entirely alone in bleak solitude in this broken house. When dawn arrived, he would go out to toil in the fields all by himself, utterly isolated. Fortunately, he raised three chickens, an ox, and a dog; otherwise, he felt he might as well just... go die.

He had always dreamed of farming to earn money, then finding a wife to settle down with, and having a dozen or two children. Then his family would bustle about in this rundown house, bumping shoulders and crowding together. But things rarely turned out as wished; taxes had grown heavier with each passing year, leaving him barely enough to store grain for himself, while finding a wife had truly become a pipe dream.

The three guests looked rather peculiar, and the scent coming off them was very strange too—somewhat resembling chicken droppings and cow dung...

That said, they weren't hideous to look at; it was just that their clothes were somewhat ragged. One of them was quite elderly, appearing to be at least ninety years old. Of the other two, one was male and the other female, and both were very young, around twenty. The male looked somewhat wretched, while the female was quite pretty—clearly embodying the kind of wife Zhang Ba longed to find.

Therefore, to Zhang Ba, this was a marriage ordained by heaven, arranged by the deities themselves...

With great solicitude, Zhang Ba boiled three eggs to make soup for the three of them, and then began chatting with them enthusiastically.

"The three of you don't seem to be locals," Zhang Ba observed.

He spoke in the Sichuan dialect rather than the official Mandarin of Sichuan, and Zhang Ba didn't know any Mandarin, nor had he ever heard of such a thing as official speech. Although the language the three of them had spoken earlier sounded similar to his own, there were subtle differences upon closer inspection. Thus, Zhang Ba intended to use this as an entry point to converse with them.

"We come from... quite far away, I suppose." The male guest—the very one Zhang Ba least wished to answer him—took over the conversation.

"Just how far away would that be?" Zhang Ba asked, unperturbed.

"About..."

"Must be over eighty miles away by now," the old woman chimed in, continuing the man's sentence.

"That certainly is far. The furthest I've ever walked in my life is..."

*Knock, knock, knock...*

Suddenly, a rapping sound echoed from outside the door, cutting Zhang Ba's words short.