Chapter 128: The Ancestor of the Pan King (Please Subscribe!)

With a flicker of their divine light, Red Cloud and Zhenyuanzi emerged from the Eastern Sea. For Great Golden Immortals like them, every gesture and movement could be considered a supernatural feat; as true masters of great divine power, it was nearly impossible for anyone to intercept them once they had resolved to depart.

Upon clearing the boundaries of the Eastern Sea, Red Cloud turned back, his gaze—veiled beneath the shimmering starlight of his jade sash—sweeping across the vast waters.

*Rumble.*

In his perception, he saw an aged dragon, covered in scars and tainted by patches of tribulation aura, which incessantly scorched the very fortune of the Dragon Clan. These malevolent energies twisted and roiled, tearing strands of vitality from the dragon’s essence and manifesting as scales imbued with the blight of destruction. Though this erosion seemed negligible against the vast fortune of the entire clan, he knew that even a thousand-mile levee could collapse from an ant’s nest; such accumulations of tribulation would eventually erupt.

Beyond this, countless pillars of pure, translucent light surged from the depths of the Eastern Sea, pushing back the encroaching filth. While there was no way to eradicate the corruption entirely, these pillars offered a temporary refuge from the impending calamities.

"So, these are the one hundred thousand immortal isles of the four seas of the Primordial World..." Red Cloud murmured to himself before turning to follow Zhenyuanzi.

*Hm?*

Suddenly, his heart leaped. In the ethereal void, he sensed something. Was it a stroke of fate, or a harbinger of something yet to come? Red Cloud attempted a brief divination, but the heavenly secrets remained obscured. With no choice but to let it be, he retracted his senses and continued on his way.

...

"If my senses do not deceive me, we should be near the destination now." Zhenyuanzi slowed his pace, waving his horsetail whisk as he pointed toward the ground below.

To the naked eye, the terrain below appeared unremarkable, no different from any other stretch of land. Yet, to those who opened their spiritual vision, the truth was laid bare.

"This is... the place where the East Victory Continent and the South Jambudvipa Continent are severed yet tethered, connected by the faintest of threads." Red Cloud looked at the earth veins, his expression growing solemn. He had once visited the site where the North Julu Continent and the East Victory Continent had completely fractured. That place was choked with monstrous aura, a breeding ground for great demons that had slaughtered countless of their own kind. Red Cloud, unable to stand by, had used his own means to seal one of those great demons away.

Such fissures, filled with filth since the dawn of the world, had long been occupied by powerful demons over the countless eons. The valley before them, stretching for millions of miles, was no different.

Even from high above, one could hear the roars of beasts and the whistling of crisscrossing sword auras. This was a perilous land, though many practitioners still ventured here to temper their blades and their hearts. Red Cloud scanned the area; while the tribulation aura was present, it was far less dense than what he had witnessed in the Eastern Sea.

At that moment, his focus sharpened. He sensed something, and his brows arched slightly.

"Brother Zhenyuanzi, are you certain this is the place you sensed?"

"Indeed." Zhenyuanzi replied, though his brow furrowed. "Yet, I find no trace of the karmic connection I sensed here, which leaves me somewhat perplexed."

"How strange. I, too, sensed something, though I cannot be certain of it," Red Cloud admitted, his own brows knit. Like Zhenyuanzi, he found no clear karmic trail.

Zhenyuanzi sighed, performed a quick calculation, and waved his whisk. "In that case, let us agree to meet here two thousand years before the lectures at the Purple Cloud Palace commence. If neither of us has returned within a millennium, we shall proceed ahead. How does that sound?"

"That is acceptable." Red Cloud pondered for a moment and agreed. Since his own divination had yielded no results, waiting was the wisest course of action.

Seeing Zhenyuanzi vanish into the Five Elements escape technique, Red Cloud did not rashly venture deeper. Instead, he began to carefully observe the great rift. Having only recently learned of the tribulation aura, he knew that any entanglement with it would likely bring about complications.

*Wait!*

Red Cloud’s eyes narrowed. With a flicker of his form, he vanished from his spot, darting into the depths of the rift. He had just caught sight of a formidable figure, and the direction of his own intuition aligned with the stranger's path.

His movement stirred the demonic aura of the valley, causing minor ripples. Nearby cultivators merely sighed at the disturbance, assuming some expert was passing through, and quickly returned to their own affairs.

...

"You, who neither cultivate in the Fire Cloud Cave nor roam the wilds of the Primordial World, why have you come to such a filthy place?"

Long before Red Cloud arrived, the figure had already noticed him, as Red Cloud made no effort to conceal his approach. The man stood still, his voice raspy. "Are you here specifically to find me? You know, when it comes to those who truly offend me, my courtesy depends entirely on the circumstances. If you insist on playing nice, I shall find ways to humiliate you in the shadows."

Red Cloud did not take offense at the man’s tone; rather, he seemed in high spirits. "Haha, you misunderstand, old friend. I am here on a matter of importance, and merely stopped to greet you upon seeing you. As for courtesy... such things are exhausting and unrewarding. I gave up on that long ago; it is better to live freely."

"Heh. If you had truly understood that, you wouldn’t have been foolish enough to give up your prayer mat that day. If I didn't know my own strength, I would have beaten you soundly and taught you a proper lesson."

"Heh, I regret that deeply as well. Come, taste this—a rare vintage from the Eastern Sea."

"Smells decent enough."

The man reached out, grabbed the jar, and without hesitation, pried it open and drained the contents in one deep breath. "Hah! You didn't expect that, did you? I’ve poisoned it."

Red Cloud laughed and tossed him another jar. "Here is the antidote."

"Heh, that isn't funny at all." The man chuckled, though the sound was harsh and grating. He finished the second jar quickly, then reached out from beneath his voluminous black robes with a hand that resembled a withered branch. "Bring me a hundred jars. I shall re-brew them with my own poisons, and we shall split the results fifty-fifty."

...

This was no ordinary soul, but the Old Ancestor Pan Wang of the Pan Wang Cave in South Jambudvipa—a master of great power who had known Red Cloud for countless eons and was one of the three thousand guests of the Purple Cloud Palace.

According to legend, Old Ancestor Pan Wang was born from the sentience of the world’s primordial poison. His mastery of the path of toxins was unfathomable, reaching the very heavens and earth. Having attained the status of a Great Golden Immortal through the cultivation of the Five Poisons, he was a figure of fear.

The word "poison" had always been a source of dread among cultivators, and those who practiced such arts were held in contempt by their peers. Coupled with the notoriously eccentric temperaments of such practitioners, they rarely had friends. Yet, by some quirk of fate, Red Cloud was one of the few who stood in the company of this old poison-master.

Though Red Cloud rarely utilized toxins, it did not mean he was ignorant of them. Born from the first cloud after the world was created, his essence was a mixture of the essence blood and turbid blood of the Father God Pangu—his very nature was, in itself, a form of supreme poison. However, constrained by the prevailing orthodoxies of the Primordial World, he had rarely studied or practiced the art. Very few knew of his potential in this field, and Old Ancestor Pan Wang was one of them.