Chapter 1

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A milky white fog rolled between heaven and earth, and the continuous Pythontooth Ridge stretched across the vast wilderness, hidden in the fog, resembling a green dragon.

Amidst the mist, a young boy, carrying a small bamboo basket, clung to the vines hanging from the cliff, searching for footholds on the jagged rocks, and struggled to climb up the mountain ridge.

The boy was dressed in animal skins, with a grass rope tied around his waist. His messy hair framed a delicate face, and though he looked frail, his exposed arms were muscular, with several cuts from the vines and sharp rocks.

He had left the village before dawn and climbed for half a day, reaching the halfway point of the mountain, where he was already exhausted. Finding a stone hollow that could shelter him from the wind, and seeing that it didn't seem to be a den for fierce beasts, he took off his basket and crawled inside to rest.

The humidity at the halfway point was particularly heavy, and the walls of the stone hollow were covered with dew, making the ground slippery. The boy found a stone slab to sit on, reached into his basket, and pulled out a piece of roasted meat he had prepared the night before, tearing off small pieces to eat.

After finishing the meat, the boy wiped his hands on his animal skin clothes and took out a scroll of silk.

The scroll, consisting of no more than twenty pages, had been handled by many people, and the edges were worn out, making the characters and patterns on it blurry. However, the boy held it carefully and read it with great interest:

"Mount Tushan, the foremost of the western wilderness ridges, with cliffs thousands of feet high, is covered with pines, firs, vines, and strange rocks. There is a beast that looks like a sheep with a horse's tail, and its fat can heal wounds..."

When Chen Xun first received this thin scroll, the cover still had the faint characters "Western Wilderness," but later, the characters were worn down to a pale gray trace.

Chen Xun had read the scroll countless times, memorizing almost every word and every picture, but whenever he had a moment to spare, he couldn't resist taking it out to read again, hoping to uncover more secrets of this world.

However, with only a few thousand words in the twenty pages, how many secrets could Chen Xun uncover?

Outside the stone hollow, the Pythontooth Ridge stretched for hundreds of miles, but it was just a branch of the northern ridge of Mount Tushan.

The main ridge of Mount Tushan, according to the "Western Wilderness Classic," extended for thousands of miles, but even this vast range was just a corner of the Western Wilderness, which itself was one of the nine regions of the vast Yunhuang Continent...

The vastness of this world was beyond what Chen Xun, who had been trapped in the Pythontooth Ridge for more than three years, could imagine.

The Western Wilderness was filled with fierce beasts, and only the areas near the tribes were relatively safe.

In the past three years, Chen Xun had never been able to venture more than a hundred miles from his village, let alone explore the vastness of the outside world.

Chen Xun took a deep breath, stood up, and walked to the edge of the stone hollow, gazing at the rolling fog sea in the distance, and the mountain ridges that seemed to stretch endlessly, resembling sharp fangs.

The sight of the fog and the vastness of the mountains slightly lifted his heavy heart. He crouched down, put on his basket, and thought about continuing his journey.

Although it was only twenty to thirty miles from here to the village at the foot of the mountain, the dangers after dark were unpredictable. If he couldn't reach the next ridge by noon, Chen Xun would have to descend the mountain early.

Chen Xun tied the grass rope hanging from the bottom of the basket around his waist, securing it firmly. Just as he started to climb along the cliff, dark clouds gathered in the eastern sky.

The fog had not yet dissipated, and the dark clouds were coming. Accustomed to the unpredictable weather of the Western Wilderness, Chen Xun clung to the cliff and watched the changes in the sky warily.

The mountain wind grew stronger, howling through the jagged cliffs.

The grass and trees in the valleys swayed like waves, and countless dead branches and leaves were swept up, flying everywhere.

The rolling fog was quickly swept away by the strong wind, and the dark clouds darkened the sky. The distant mountain ridges were struck by lightning, and the rain began to pour down.

Chen Xun nimbly climbed back into the stone hollow, watching the rain curtain form outside, and thought that even if the rain stopped now, the wet and slippery rocks would make it impossible to climb the mountain ridge and pick the Wu Lingzi grass today.

The stone hollow was slightly inclined, and the rain quickly formed a puddle inside. Chen Xun found a higher spot, leaned against the wall, and placed a short wooden spear in front of his knees to guard against any wild beasts that might seek shelter in the hollow.

As the rain continued, Chen Xun was trapped in the stone hollow and had nothing to do but recall the strange events that had happened to him over the past three years:

Three years ago on Earth, he was just a young medical student who had recently graduated. After leaving school, he had two months of leisure time before officially starting work at the hospital where he had signed a contract. He packed his bags, carrying the sorrow of a recent breakup, and set out on a solo journey to the top of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

On the road from Lhasa to Jiangzi, passing by the legendary Mount Sumeru, the sun was shining brightly and the sky was clear at the foot of the mountain, but suddenly, clouds surged at the peak, forming ripples.

The clouds in the sky swirled, quickly forming a massive vortex that seemed to engulf the entire Mount Sumeru. Lightning split the sky, and a black, swirling wind column emerged from the center of the vortex, causing rocks to fly and trees to break.

Chen Xun didn't know why a violent tornado would suddenly appear on a clear day at Mount Sumeru. He didn't have time to escape and was swept into the black wind column, pulled up by a powerful suction force.

At the top of the wind column, instead of a chaotic void, there was a dark, bottomless hole, where the light was severely distorted.

When the dark hole first appeared, it was only as large as a stone mill, but it had an infinite suction force, pulling up countless trees and rocks, as well as living and dead animals like antelopes and yaks, into it.

In the blink of an eye, Chen Xun was sucked to the edge of the void, and a monstrous face with a large green horn on its forehead suddenly appeared, with a blood-red mouth and three blood-red eyes, the central eye emitting a dark, eerie light, and the breath from its nostrils smelling of volcanic sulfur.

Seeing the six-armed demon, Chen Xun almost fainted from fear.

As the demon struggled to pull its body out of the small space, Chen Xun saw that four of its six arms were severed at the elbow, its black, scaly skin was peeling off, revealing numerous deep and shallow wounds, and green, smoking blood was oozing out.

Strangely, whenever a drop of the demon's blood fell, countless lightning bolts would strike, instantly vaporizing the blood, as if rejecting any contamination from another world.

The sky was filled with blue lightning, and the demon seemed hesitant to fully emerge from the void.

Seeing Chen Xun floating at the edge of the void, the demon asked, "What realm is this?"

The demon's voice was like thunder, and Chen Xun was immediately stunned, or perhaps frightened, into unconsciousness.

When he woke up, Chen Xun found himself naked in a deep valley of the Pythontooth Ridge.

Purple lightning bolts rained down from the sky, more violent than any storm on the plain, but the six-armed demon sitting in front of him seemed to have an invisible barrier behind it, protecting him from the lightning.

The distant mountains, though towering, crumbled to dust when struck by the purple lightning.

Before Chen Xun's eyes, the majestic mountain ridges turned to dust.

The sky was dark, and in the midst of the lightning and thunder, Chen Xun saw that the six-armed demon was even larger than when it appeared on Earth, sitting at least thirty to forty meters tall, like a mountain in front of him. The green horn on its forehead was broken, and green-black liquid was oozing out.

Each drop of the green liquid, when it hit the ground, sizzled and corroded a deep, bottomless hole, terrifying Chen Xun so much that he crawled away on all fours.

Chen Xun's limbs were already trembling with fear.

Outside the invisible barrier, the purple lightning from the void had nowhere to go, causing the surrounding mountains to crumble.

Countless large and fierce beasts and birds were killed by the lightning.

Even a dragon-like creature emerged from the ground but was instantly reduced to ashes by the lightning, leaving only a massive skeleton to fall into the valley.

Where could he run?

A dragon-like creature?

Chen Xun's limbs were paralyzed. What kind of world was this?

The demon, which had a third eye on its forehead that emitted a dark light, now no longer showed it. The other two eyes, like blood-red pools, looked at Chen Xun and said in a deep, eerie voice:

"Dao Xu, the old man, took my demon horn and crossed the endless void to kill me, but now he can only let you, this insignificant ant, benefit. I am unwilling..."

Dao Xu?

Demon horn?

Me, this insignificant ant?

Chen Xun's mind was in chaos, and his body was frozen. He watched as the six-armed demon tore open its own chest, removed its heart, which was as large as a horse and throbbed like thunder, and held it in its hand.

The heart floated in the air, rapidly shrinking, and finally condensed into a small drop of golden blood, like a tear, which fell onto Chen Xun's chest.

The golden blood, as hot as fire, sizzled on Chen Xun's chest and quickly seeped into his body through his pores, like molten metal, piercing his heart.

It felt like being pierced by countless metal needles and burned in the hottest fire, causing Chen Xun's body to twist and convulse uncontrollably.

The golden blood drop seemed to contain endless roars and screams, bombarding Chen Xun's fragile soul, causing him unbearable pain.

Chen Xun wished he could die, but his consciousness remained clear, as if the six-armed demon wanted him to fully "enjoy" the extreme pain of being pierced and burned.

He watched helplessly as the golden tear drop completely seeped into his heart, leaving only a palm-sized burn mark on his chest.

"Go..."

The six-armed demon spat, and Chen Xun was instantly thrown tens of thousands of meters away, landing on a cliff that seemed to have no bottom.

At the same time, the invisible barrier that had protected him from the lightning shattered like a crystal bottle, and the massive lightning bolts that had been held back now struck the demon's body.

After an unknown amount of time, the lightning and dark clouds gradually dissipated, leaving a clear sky and a devastated landscape, with countless mountains reduced to dust.

The six-armed demon, now unimaginably large, lay in the valley, its body stretching for hundreds of meters, like a mountain, motionless.

Chen Xun realized that the demon had been completely killed by the lightning, and its remaining scales were peeling off like rusted iron.

The demon's massive body quickly withered and disintegrated, turning into wisps of smoke, leaving behind a white, jade-like skeleton and black-golden organs, with a large hole where its heart had been.

A gust of wind blew, and the demon's skeleton and organs, like ancient mountains, crumbled into fine powder, leaving only some colorful gemstones scattered in the valley...

Just as Chen Xun thought everything had settled, the clear sky rippled like a lake, and the void again swirled with clouds, forming countless lotus petal-like vortices, exuding an indescribable solemnity and grandeur.

However, this time, no tornado appeared.

In the void above the mountain peak, at the center of the lotus petal vortices, a bright, mirror-like opening appeared, revealing a majestic figure, as if emerging from the endless void to observe this world.

The boundless divine consciousness swept over millions of mountains and Chen Xun's seemingly insignificant body.

Chen Xun felt a gentle touch, like a ripple, and saw the majestic figure, with supreme divine power, finally focus its gaze on the valley where the six-armed demon had been reduced to dust.

Was this the Dao Xu, the old man, who had crossed the endless void to kill the demon?

Chen Xun suppressed the urge to bow in reverence and faintly heard the majestic figure mutter, "After ten thousand years of cultivation, only a horn and a hundred bone pills were achieved. No wonder it was so useless."

Then, the mirror-like opening in the void disappeared, and the only sign of what had happened was the rolling thunder in the mountains.

Chen Xun wandered in the mountains for more than two months, enduring the elements, but couldn't find a way out. He finally encountered a group of wild men dressed in animal skins, who were hunting in the mountains, and learned that he was no longer on Earth.

Chen Xun followed the wild men out of the mountains and settled in the Wuyang tribe on the northern slope of the Pythontooth Ridge, where he has lived for three years.