Chapter 69: The Remnants of Tu Shan

  "What bear?" Jin Gang looked at me in astonishment.

  "I killed it on the mountain top, and I dragged half of it back to use as dry rations." I put down the fish meat and stomped on the ice surface, feeling that there was no major problem. The dead bear that I had dragged back with great effort was placed on the shore, so that other animals wouldn't take advantage of it.

  "Did you kill him?" Jin Gang Pao stared with wide eyes in disbelief.

  ……

  ……

  "Lao Yu, where's the other half?" Jin Gang Cannon held a half-cooked bear head in his left hand and a wine bottle in his right.

  "I'm really unable to drag myself any further." I propped myself up with a blanket, half-reclining on the stone bed. Although the stone hut wasn't sealed off, it was still much better than sleeping out in the snow.

  "I'll go up tomorrow and drag it down to roast into dried meat, keeping some for the road." The sight of Jin Gang Pao eating the bear's head with relish made me dare not look at him again.

  "Can't you just get rid of that head already?" I really can't take it anymore.

  "Either give me the bear's paw." The Golden Cannon pointed at the white wolf that was lying on the ground gnawing at a bear's paw.

  "Depend on it, it eats mine, yours is given to good people......" Jin Gang Pao shouted one after another, making me smell something and jokingly teasing.

  Exhaustion overcame me, and before long I fell asleep. When I woke up again, there was a commotion of people shouting and dogs barking outside the stone hut. It turned out that while I was sleeping, Jin Gang had dragged down the half-dead black bear from the mountain and was skinning and dismembering it like a butcher.

  "Old cow, you're going pretty fast!" The weather was clear and sunny, the rising sun shone so brightly that I couldn't open my eyes.

  "Hurry up and get it over with, you've been sleeping for two days." Jin Gang held his military knife and cut down the bear whip that was teasing Bai Lang, provoking him to continuously bark at him.

  I was so exhausted that I actually slept all the way until the early morning of the third day.

  "What is it, smells so good?" A strong fragrance was caught by my nose.

  "Look for yourself!" The cannon gestured with his mouth towards the right side of the stone house.

  I turned my head to look and was shocked, almost dropping my jaw. "You, you, you..." It turned out that Jin Gang Cannon had actually taken the remaining half of Sha Jinzhu's giant shell as a large pot, placing it on two stones to cook the bear bones, while Murong Zhui Feng squatted beside him adding firewood.

  "What's wrong with you? You've been dead for hundreds of years. This is called waste utilization." Jin Gang Pao said, handing over a bottle of mineral water "Snowflake."

  "She's our sect's senior, you actually..." I still can't help but look down on the true body of the Golden Gun Senior who desecrated our sect.

  "Alright, you don't eat it." Jin Gang held up the peeled bear skin in his hand and gestured as if drawing something.

  "This... she must have made a mistake in her work style back then, so she's been stuck here. Can't really be considered a proper cultivator anymore..." I muttered to myself as I turned around to help out. Having been out for so long, our food had been nothing but roasted meat, and today's pot of richly flavored stewed bear bones was something I didn't want to miss.

  After staying on the deserted island for a few days, I regained my strength, gathered enough supplies and finally set off again.

  "What the hell are you laughing at!" I cursed at Jīn Gāng Pào, who was smiling slyly beside me. Only a small part of the bear meat was eaten, and most of it was dried into jerky by Jīn Gāng Pào, supplemented with snow water as drinking water, so my backpack is now heavier than ever, weighing me down to the point where I'm gritting my teeth.

  "Intelligence can sometimes be a curse." Jin Gang patted the backpack on his shoulder with a pretended air of nonchalance "I'll carry the equipment, you carry the food and drink... that's the rule you set, after all..."

  A group of people chatted and laughed as they stepped onto the ice surface, heading straight north. By dusk, they finally walked out of Qinghu Lake and set foot on solid ground.

  Continuing northward, the weather became increasingly cold.

  The cold wind was blowing, and I, along with Jin Gang Pao, couldn't stop stomping my feet. Fortunately, I had previously used bear skin to sew a simple cape and bear skin boots for Murong Zhuifeng, or else she would have suffered by now.

  "Old man, it's almost here." Jin Gang held a cup of hot water, panting with frost. Tonight was unlucky, no cave to rest in, had to huddle under the windbreak cliff, starting a fire to ward off the cold.

  "It's almost there, just a few more days and we should arrive." I said, studying the map in my hand by the light of the fire. In the dark, it was necessary to use spiritual energy to see things clearly, but since I had used the Thunderbolt Technique earlier and suffered a great loss of spiritual energy, I tried not to use it unless absolutely necessary.

  "It's almost a week now, how can it still take two or three more days?" Jin Gang muttered "You mustn't lead us into another trap again."

  "This time it shouldn't be, the terrain marked on the map should be relatively flat, I estimate that after crossing these few mountains, we'll arrive." On the map, there were seventeen places where the air columns were marked. Several of them had the same color as the spiritual energy, but only the fourth column was white. If it weren't for the slight yellowish tint of the cold mouse skin, it would be hard to distinguish this white breath.

  "What did those two sentences say?" Jin Gang added firewood to the bonfire. He already knew that every breath would have two guiding sentences.

  "The remnants of Tushan fled for a thousand miles, and at the end of the twelfth cycle, it became three." I recited the words on another map of Hanshou.

  "What's the meaning of this?" Jin Gang Pao pulled out a dirty and tattered blanket and threw it at Murong Zhui Feng. In order to take care of Murong Zhui Feng, I gave all my blankets to her, including Jin Gang Pao's. At night, when sleeping, I hugged Bai Lang to keep warm, which left Jin Gang Pao shivering, having to add firewood several times throughout the night.

  "The first sentence seems to mean that someone moved here to live, but the next sentence 'twelve zodiac tails as three' doesn't know what it means." I said, putting away the map and pulling out a cigarette.

  "It would be great if someone could do it for us, we can give them more money and let them wrap some dumplings for us." Jin Gang Pao wants to eat noodles now. Eating too much meat is also boring, these people eating bear meat every day, bear meat is warm in nature, eating it makes me and Jin Gang Pao feel hot all over, every morning we have a fever. Fortunately, it's the coldest weather of the year, otherwise we would get sick."

  "Kunlun Mountain shouldn't have any ordinary people." I pinched the cigarette holder and took a long drag. "It's so dangerous here, who would dare to live here? A few days ago, I used my technique to observe from the top of the mountain and didn't find anyone nearby." Now, with my technique, I can already detect human aura hundreds of miles away.

  "Maybe ordinary people can become immortals. Lao Yu, do you think there are really immortals?" Jin Gang Pao half sat up and asked me seriously.

  "It depends on how you define the term 'immortal'. China's ancient culture is vast and profound, with many magical techniques and spells that can extend one's lifespan and grant supernatural powers through Taoist practice. If people like this are considered immortals, then they really do exist." I poured myself a cup of coffee from the kettle.

  "Are Buddhas and Bodhisattvas also considered immortals?" Jingang Cannon found a topic that interested him, his eyes wide with excitement.

  "It's complicated to say whether it counts or not. We belong to the Daoist school. The practice of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism are actually similar, but Buddhism is different from us. We emphasize longevity and consider the body as the foundation of cultivation, attaching importance to self-cultivation and purification. In contrast, Buddhists believe that all phenomena are empty, everything is false, including one's own body, only Buddhist teachings are true. Therefore, they think the body is just a shell, useless. Ultimately: Buddhism values the afterlife more, while Daoism values this life more. Buddhism considers the body an obstacle to becoming a Buddha, whereas Daoism considers it the foundation for cultivating the Way. Buddhism emphasizes that everything except spirit is false, whereas Daoism believes all things in the world are true. Buddhism advocates for emptiness of all phenomena, whereas Daoism reveres the natural order of the Great Way..."

  "Humming hummmmm..." Just as I was getting into the swing of things, the sound of gunfire erupted. My lengthy speech fell on deaf ears.

  The next day, the weather was still fine, and the group of people took advantage of the time to cross over two mountain peaks. A dense forest appeared before their eyes.

  "It looks like there's a village ahead!" Jin Gang exclaimed excitedly, pointing to the faintly visible buildings in the distance amidst the trees.

  "Don't be too happy, that place is deserted." I mispointed the map, furrowing my brow. How could a village appear in the Kunlun Mountains?

  "Let's go, maybe it's too far to see clearly." Jin Gang Pao took the lead and walked forward with big strides, I followed behind him with a heart full of doubts.

  "Old Yu, look at this great thing!" Just walked a short distance, Jin Gang Cannon excitedly pointed to a nearby place.

  I looked up and saw a naked woman in the dense forest ahead. Her skin was as white as snow, her long hair cascaded down her shoulders, and she had no clothes on to keep warm. She stared at us with big, bright eyes. Although we were not close, those clear eyes seemed to be right in front of me, making my heart skip a beat and my scalp tingle.

  "Hey, what are you doing here?" Jin Gang Pao yelled at the top of his lungs.

  "Woof woof~~~~~~ Woof woof~~~~~~" The white wolf suddenly perked up its ears and rushed towards the woman who was not far away.

  "White Wolf, come!" I hastily called White Wolf back. When I looked up again, the woman had vanished without a trace.

  "Old cow, it's a bit suspicious." A woman appeared in the desolate mountain, which was indeed a bit strange. Plus the white wolf's frantic behavior, it made me even more suspicious.

  "I took a closer look, and the aura on her head is white. Don't be suspicious anymore." Jin Gang Pao said, tightening his backpack and pointing northwest "She was scared by your dog and ran in that direction, let's go take a look."

  I followed Ginga Cannon with a mind full of question marks as he darted through the forest, while White Wolf sniffed at something restlessly by my side.

  Suddenly, a human figure appeared again in the woods, this time a middle-aged man wearing clothes. He looked at us vigilantly from the front, turned around and ran away. I quickly pinched my fingers to look over, and the white spiritual energy he emitted was indeed unique to humans. The white wolf also let out a tense bark at this moment.

  "What are they running from, to scare the dogs?" Jin Gang looked at Bai Lang with a puzzled expression.

  "Maybe after a long time, I haven't seen people from outside and I'm a bit scared. After meeting, be polite for a while." Maybe the past few days I really saw it wrong, there is indeed a human settlement here.

  "You're being so polite?" Jin Gang Pao saw me taking out the divine turtle cannon and loading bullets, his face full of astonishment.

  "Just in case." I've always felt that something was off somewhere, and the clothes that middle-aged man was wearing earlier seemed familiar to me.

  After walking for a while, I walked out of the dense forest and suddenly the view opened up. A village appeared in front of me.

  "Great, there are not only people here, but also modern people!" Jin Gang Pao cheered. The village in front of him was a modern village, with houses arranged in order and red tiles covering the roofs. In the center of the village, there was even a two-story small building.

  "Great, I'm going to take a bath." I sniffed my own stench. Just now, I pinched the Guan Qi Jue and observed it, but didn't find anything unusual. The appearance of villages in the depths of the mountains is not strange, many ethnic minorities live in remote mountainous areas.

  "I want a Coke!" Jin Gang Pao cheered and rushed towards the nearby village...