Chapter 20: Destiny

Chapter 20: Destiny

"Dad! Mom! They humiliated me!"

Su Xin cried loudly into the Cloud Mirror artifact.

Even though he was a Foundation Establishment cultivator, crying loudly was, as Su Xin had concluded, the trick that worked best on his parents.

And indeed, the couple on the other side of the Cloud Mirror—Mei Zhu and her husband—were furious:

"How dare they humiliate our child!"

"What kind of place is the Fallen Immortal Palace? It doesn't sound legitimate! We should investigate their sect's history thoroughly!"

They didn't even ask for details before convicting the Fallen Immortal Palace.

This was how the couple always treated Su Xin.

They had been childless for nearly ten thousand years, and their last few times personally teaching disciples were thousands of years ago. Having a child late in life, their long-delayed parental love came crashing down like a landslide, treating their late-born child like a mindless spirit pet—our baby is so adorable, the problem must be someone else!

Seeing this, Su Xin wailed even louder.

After all, the Fallen Immortal Palace poking at his sore spot (Master Zhao: ???) was hateful enough, but the most detestable one was that Zhou Hui!

Su Xin had initially hesitated to complain to his parents to save face, but given the Fallen Immortal Palace's attitude, wouldn't the whole Central Region already know that he had ranked last in the Celestial Spirit Sect's exam!

Su Xin's imagination ran wild, and his crying became seventy percent genuine:

"It's not just the Fallen Immortal Palace, but also the Celestial Spirit Sect!"

"Then investigate the Celestial Spirit Sect too!" Su Mei didn't bother with the facts and immediately took his side. "My poor child, I wonder what that He Yong is up to, letting even no-name minor sects dare to act so recklessly!"

He clearly didn't even know whose sect the Celestial Spirit Sect was.

Su Xin wouldn't remind him either. Fortunately, Xin Zhu still had her wits about her. She'd been about to join her husband in condemning them but paused and asked, puzzled, "Wait, isn't the Celestial Spirit Sect the sect of Tireless Immortal Venerable?"

Su Mei's expression stiffened. "Zhou Hui's sect?"

"That's right, it's that Immortal Venerable's sect!" Su Xin wasn't afraid of being exposed and struck first, determined not to give them time to think: "I thought he was a Senior close to my parents, so I prepared gifts and went to visit him in person. Unexpectedly, he said my coming was a stroke of fate and insisted I take the exam alongside his elite disciples, thoroughly humiliating me!"

"Did they hurt you?" Xin Zhu immediately became nervous upon hearing this.

"...No, it was just a written exam," Su Xin replied quietly.

He didn't dare lie about this—it could easily be verified. If he got his parents to confront Zhou Hui directly, wouldn't everything come out? So he had to tell half-truths, but he absolutely had to make his parents hate the Celestial Spirit Sect!

Su Xin, seasoned in this act, pretended to be deeply wronged and sobbed, "But they sent elite disciples with such high cultivation levels, deliberately making me take the exam alongside them. The papers were brutal! If you don't believe me, ask He Yong—it was clearly deliberate humiliation!"

Su Mei was indeed provoked into anger again: "The disciples of the Celestial Spirit Sect are truly detestable!"

"It wasn't the disciples—it was the Immortal Venerable himself who personally oversaw the exam!" Su Xin insisted on blaming Zhou Hui.

He wouldn't let his parents' anger shift onto the Celestial Spirit Sect's disciples!—Even though that Yu Wenxuan was the most detestable! But if his parents went to confront the Tireless Immortal Venerable, he'd surely give the disciple a slap on the wrist and call it a day! Because that's exactly what Su Xin's parents would do.

So he had to aim his complaint carefully, anchoring his parents' hatred squarely on Zhou Hui!

Su Xin was only exceptionally clever in this regard, and he had a real gift for sowing discord: "He must have done it on purpose! Giving such hard papers and making me take the exam with his prized disciples, just to prove he's a better teacher than my parents! I don't care about losing face, but I can't accept this! Because I'm losing face on behalf of my parents! Now the whole Central Region must be gossiping that my parents' disciples aren't as good as his 'Tireless' ones! I've let you both down, wuwuwuwu—"

Su Xin knew that the more he blamed himself, the angrier his parents would get at others. It had always been this way.

But this time, he cried for a while without hearing his parents' angry voices. He had to look up to peek at their expressions, only to find not anger on their faces, but... helplessness?

"If it's Tireless..." Su Mei sighed.

"Yes, if it's him, then it really isn't intentional!" Xin Zhu also said.

"Father! Mother!" Su Xin said incredulously, "You have no idea how hard those papers were—"

"Of course it was hard—if it weren't, it wouldn't be Tireless," Xin Zhu said with a bitter smile. "My child, do you know the origin of 'Tireless'?"

"...I don't want to know."

Su Xin thought.

Unfortunately, once old folks start reminiscing, they can't stop. His mother had already begun telling the story:

"Back then, he was only at the Golden Core stage, yet he took first place in the immortal sect competition. According to the rules, he could pick any cultivation method from the participating sects to study. Unexpectedly, an elder from the Jade Pure Sect made trouble for him, tricking him into going to the Broken Cliff at Abyss Sea to learn a technique left by a True Immortal."

"A Golden Core cultivator naturally couldn't learn it; even looking at it too much risked going mad. But Zhou Hui sat on the Broken Cliff for nine hundred and ninety-nine days, memorizing the entire method word by word."

"If it were just that, one could only praise his perseverance. But for the next six hundred and sixty-six years, he traveled every corner of this realm without rest, visiting all sects, and managed to decipher the method's content, breaking the limits of talent and achieving the Great Dao. Hence, he was called 'Tireless.'"

"Later, someone asked him, 'Don't you think the True Immortal's method was too difficult, beyond what could be learned?' He replied, 'There is no truly difficult knowledge, only that which hasn't been learned yet.'"

Xin Zhu shook her head as she said this: "With Tireless's personality, he probably doesn't even have the concept of 'making things difficult.' On the contrary, he might think that the harder the questions, the more sincerely he wants what's best for you."

"But...!" Su Xin wanted to refute but couldn't find a starting point.

He recalled the Celestial Spirit Sect's exam papers. Because of his mistaken evaluation criteria, his feeling really seemed to match what his mother said.

At this point, Su Mei was also stirred by Xin Zhu's reminiscence: "He must indeed teach his disciples that strictly... Speaking of which, isn't the Ran family's child sent to his tutelage?"

"The Ran family?"

"The formation master Ran family," Su Mei said. "Their family has always had few descendants. I heard that the main branch recently only produced a girl, but she's lazy and refuses to learn formations. Beating her a few times didn't work, so they had to send her to Tireless's sect."

"Oh, how is she learning?" Xin Zhu asked with interest.

"She hasn't graduated yet, so I don't know how she's doing, but from what Xin'er said, she should be learning well!" Su Mei said.

The two said this and looked at Su Xin together.

The hairs on the back of Su Xin's neck immediately stood up. He suddenly had a very ominous feeling.

"Speaking of which, shouldn't Xin'er also study under Tireless?" Xin Zhu mused. "If he finds the Celestial Spirit Sect's papers too hard, it means his cultivation progress is severely lagging, right? Why not let Tireless train him for a few years..."

"Nooo!" Su Xin immediately cried out.

This time, he cried very sincerely.

He didn't know how the Celestial Spirit Sect studied, but that 'Coral Platform ranking list' was enough for Su Xin not to want a second experience.

It was only because of the Cloud Mirror separating them that he couldn't touch his mother, otherwise he would have clung to her leg: "Dad! Mom! I'll cultivate properly from now on! Study hard! Please don't send me to the Celestial Spirit Sect! I don't want it, wuwuwu—"

"Alright, alright, we won't send you! We'll teach you ourselves!" Su Mei panicked at his crying and quickly soothed, "With two Tribulation Transcendence cultivators in our family, are we afraid we can't teach?"

"Tsk, a doting father raises a spoiled child," Xin Zhu said grudgingly.

But because Xin Zhu had entertained such a thought, Su Xin didn't dare to keep pestering them.

What if his mother suddenly gave up on the idea and insisted on sending him to the Celestial Spirit Sect?

Su Xin dared not speak further about the Celestial Spirit Sect or Zhou Hui, lest he trigger his mother's concerns. He hastily ended the call and decided to cut off contact with home until he returned to the Northern Frontier's Heavenly Dao Alliance headquarters.

Meanwhile, after ending the call, the Mei-Zhu couple kept discussing the matter for a while.

"Speaking of which, shouldn't we let the Celestial Spirit Sect have a few more slots for that secret realm?" Su Mei brought it up on his own.

"Is that necessary?" Xin Zhu hadn't thought about it that deeply. "I think the sect exams organized by Tireless are a routine matter for the Celestial Spirit Sect, unrelated to that secret realm. After all, knowing Tireless's style, if he truly cared about that secret realm, he'd handle it himself, wouldn't he?"

"I think so too. That secret realm is only for those below the Golden Core stage, at most a training ground for the kids," Su Mei, however, had his own agenda. "But if we do this favor for Tireless, his disciples might keep an eye on our Xin'er!"

"Keep an eye on Xin'er?"

"Exactly. The 'heavenly book' says our son is fated to face a calamity in that secret realm. We've sent plenty of people to protect him, but we can't change what's written in the 'heavenly book,' and we can't be there ourselves. We don't even know what the tribulation is. And that He Yong is useless—he actually let his servants take our son to a place like the Fallen Immortal Palace!" Su Mei said, his tone sour.

His aversion to the Fallen Immortal Palace was deep-seated, not just because of Su Xin's complaints. As Su Mei had initially fumed, that sect sounded shady from the start. With He Yong supposedly keeping an eye on things, someone still had the nerve to take his child to such a place—how could a doting parent feel at ease?

Su Mei laid out his reasoning: "That being the case, it's necessary to have the Celestial Spirit Sect keep an eye on things. Even if Tireless won't go personally, as long as his disciples have even a fraction of his care and thoroughness, they'll notice when our Xin'er is in trouble."

"Indeed, then let's give the Celestial Spirit Sect more slots!" Xin Zhu said, it dawning on her. "I'll make the arrangements right away."

"And don't forget to have He Yong look into that Fallen Immortal Palace!"

"Of course, anyone who tries to lead our child astray can't be allowed to stick around!"

*

The efficiency of the cultivation world could be painfully slow, but when it moved fast, it was lightning quick.

With the Mei-Zhu couple having made up their minds, a day later, Zhou Hui received five wagonloads of gifts along with a personal letter from the couple. Those in the know found it strange, and those unaware might have thought the Tireless Immortal Venerable had saved Su Xin's life!

Zhou Hui initially paid it little mind. He had Qu Qianxing store the gifts in the treasury while he read the letter himself, finally learning the purpose of He Yong and the others' previous visit.

"The secret realm at Renfei Peak? I see." Zhou Hui murmured.

This secret realm was a crucial scene in the "novel."

Not for this exploration, though.

Rather, several hundred years later, the so-called "protagonist," after becoming a disciple of the Celestial Spirit Sect, would sign up to explore the secret realm. Inside, through a series of coincidences, he'd be trapped with the sect's junior sister, Mo Bei, and feelings would blossom between them, setting off a chain of consequences afterward.

A place tailor-made for the protagonist to pick up girls—Zhou Hui wanted nothing to do with it!

Yet the exploration slots had been delivered right into his hands, which hardly seemed like the style of the Heavenly Dao Alliance in the cultivation world:

—From Zhou Hui's understanding, for such a coveted opportunity as exploring a secret realm, if he didn't actively ask for it, the Alliance would surely gloss over it and give him an honorary slot at best. This time, they were strangely generous, offering it to him on their own initiative.

Zhou Hui murmured, "Fate truly cannot be escaped!"

In that case, he might as well meet it head-on!