After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

"Now?"

"Now."

To entrust one's fate to the elusive concept of luck?

Zhou Ran never believed in that kind of thing.

Even if he has to turn the entire prison mountain upside down, he will still find that monk named Wuxiang.

For every day the four forces within the dantian wreak havoc, another crack appears in the meridians.

Bai Xuan wasn't bluffing when he said three months; it was a death sentence.

He didn't have time to sit in the shop drinking tea with retired old men and waiting for fate to bring them together.

He dialed the manor's phone:

"Chen Ya, take that pot of mushrooms from the greenhouse in the backyard to the airport."

Pack in a constant temperature incubator.

Chen Ya paused for a moment on the other end of the phone:

"Bai Xuan?"

What are you going to do with it?

"The spiritual energy of Laoshan is abundant, and the dimensional barrier is loosening again."

That lousy mushroom won't grow big in the flowerpot; maybe it can thrive in a different spot.

Zhou Ran hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair.

Bringing white peony is not just about changing its growing location.

When that golden spore thread touched his wrist, it even clearly revealed the matter of the black energy seeping from his dantian—

He himself couldn't detect it with his divine sense, but Bai Xuan's mycelium knew it as soon as it touched him.

Once he reaches Laoshan, even if he can't find anyone, at least he'll have an extra pair of eyes that are more perceptive than his own.

Moreover, the barriers of the Laoshan plane are loose, and the concentration of spiritual energy far exceeds that of Jiangcheng.

Bai Xuan had just recovered his intelligence after consuming the aftershocks of the heavenly tribulation and the dragon's energy, and was in the process of rapid growth.

The flowerpot is too small; I can't feed them enough.

Throwing it over might just unleash some new skills, giving him an extra card in his hand.

One thought kept running through my mind.

Three months.

Every day the four forces within his embryonic body wreak havoc, he gets one step closer to losing control.

Laoshan.

Formless.

Whether that monk is human or ghost, this trip must yield results.

The word "fate" doesn't exist in Zhou Ran's dictionary.

He lacked the medicinal ingredient, and since the man was in the prison, he would dig out the ascetic monk even if it meant crushing every stone in the mountain.

Two hours later.

The black helicopter tore through the clouds and landed steadily on the helipad at the foot of Laoshan Mountain.

It was the height of summer.

Laoshan was shrouded in a thick, impenetrable fog.

Hot winds swept through the forest, whipping up the leaves and stirring up the weeds on the ground.

The mountain road was rugged and steep, and with the bad weather, there were hardly any tourists to be seen along the way.

The surroundings exuded a feeling of both vexation and loneliness.

As Zhou Ran stepped onto the first bluestone step, the sensation under his feet made him forget the 499 white jade steps of Longhu Mountain.

That time, he carried the Gathering Yin Banner and Bai Xuan's flowerpot on his back. The Golden Light Mantra crushed his bones inch by inch, and he risked his life to get a nod from Master Xu Yun.

Another mountain.

Again, stone steps leading up to an unseen top.

The difference this time is that he doesn't need to carry anyone; he only needs to find one person.

"Go up the mountain."

Zhou Ran did not use his qi to fly. Instead, he carried A Ning and Xiao Rou, and climbed the stone steps paved with bluestone slabs step by step on foot.

Fully unleash your divine sense.

The combined power of the Foundation Establishment Peak and the divine sense of the Demonic Yuan is like an all-encompassing radar network, covering the entire Prison Mountain from its foot to its golden summit, even down to every inch of rock crevice.

He could sense the heartbeats of birds and beasts, the trails of falling leaves, and the breathing of a few scattered herb gatherers.

However, no.

There were no fluctuations of spiritual energy, no unusual phenomena of laws, and no traces of what one would expect from a "master who has transcended the three realms".

Zhou Ran frowned, his eyes growing colder.

If that old bastard dares to use false information to fool him, the first thing he'll do when he gets back is burn that old man and his shop to ashes.

The three searched for three days and three nights.

"Boss!"

There's nothing there!

"They can't even detect my spore strands!"

Bai Xuan poked half his head out of the flowerpot, muttering to himself.

"We can't even sense the aura of that illusory realm anymore!"

None of them responded; the three days of searching had left them feeling disheartened.

Bai Xuan's small, beady eyes stared at Zhou Ran.

There's something in the fog.

Zhou Ran's demonic eyes flashed as he stared straight ahead.

The fog grew thicker and thicker, and everything ten steps away was a vast expanse of white.

Zhou Ran stood on the cliffside walkway not far from the Golden Summit.

Just then.

A thick fog began to rise from the previously deserted cliff face.

Before my eyes, a bluestone path had appeared out of nowhere. From the depths of the thick fog came the sound of sweeping, extremely soft and slow.

sand--

sand--

sand.

Zhou Ran's feet were rooted to the spot.

Not right.

His mental network was still active.

He could count the legs of an ant crawling across a crack in a rock within a radius of thirty miles.

But this sound—

It was just the sound of sweeping.

Strangely, the stone steps ahead were completely empty.

But in my ears, I could hear the sound of a broom scraping against the stone slab.

Two pieces of information are conflicting.

But the sound of the broom was hitting the beat of his heart with every stroke.

Not a coincidence.

Something was reading his heartbeat.

The fog rolled in.

A hazy, gray silhouette emerged from the white mist ahead.

Strictly speaking, it wasn't something that "walked out" of.

Instead, the fog split open, revealing the outline.

Zhou Ran's muscles tensed, and the Primordial Totem on his left arm throbbed faintly under his skin.

He squinted and looked over.

He was a middle-aged man dressed in coarse linen clothes.

His body was hunched over, his face was dark, and he held a broken broom with all the leaves fallen from it. He was bending over and sweeping the withered leaves off the stone steps down the cliff.

There was no spiritual energy fluctuation, and the causal lines were unremarkable, just like a farmer working in the fields.

But what seemed normal to most people was, in Zhou Ran's eyes, the biggest flaw—

His spiritual network covered the entire mountain, and the man seemed to have emerged from the cracks in the rocks out of thin air.

I would rather kill the wrong person than let him go.

Zhou Ran suppressed his murderous aura, stepped forward, and politely clasped his hands in a fist and palm salute:

"Brother, may I ask if you've seen a hermit monk in these mountains?"

The voice just fell.

Xiao Rou, who was following behind, suddenly raised her head and looked at Zhou Ran with a surprised expression.

She grabbed Zhou Ran's coat hem, lowered her voice, and her tone betrayed a hint of panic from seeing a ghost:

"Owner……

What's wrong with your eyes?

Why do you call him brother?

This is clearly a little boy with a shaved head and wearing a tattered jacket!

"Little boy?"

"Are you two possessed?"

On the other side, Ah Ning stared wide-eyed at Zhou Ran and Xiao Rou as if they were two monsters.

She took half a step back, pointing at the figure, her fingertips trembling slightly:

"These are hardly men or boys..."

This is clearly an old woman with a face full of wrinkles and a back hunched over like a shrimp!

call--

A mountain breeze blew along the cliff, swirling up a few withered leaves.

Zhou Ran stood there, a sudden chill running down his spine.

There were three of them.

The distance is less than ten meters.

Looking at the same person.

Three faces.

Three ages.

Three genders.

Something in my head tugged at a string.

A long time ago.

An ancient monk who taught him the "Mahavairocana Buddha Purification Mantra" said four words before leaving.

Those four words were stuck in my throat; I was just a little bit away from being able to recall them all.

But he just couldn't remember.

The figure sweeping the floor kept his head down, the broom gliding across the stone slabs at a leisurely pace.

It was as if the argument between the three people didn't even exist.