Su Chen went to find Xiao Tan, but unsurprisingly, she was turned away.
"Why are you still doing this mission? Don't bother, just go back to your clan." Su Chen knocked on Ning Wu's door.
Ningwu: "Are you sure you don't want these points? Besides, not doing this task might change the course of events. Are you sure you don't want to do the task?"
Su Chen nodded. "This task is unworkable; continuing it will only anger both sides. Let the young people develop on their own."
Ningwu: "Fine, you're acting like you're some old man."
...
That night, Su Chen ran away.
Incidentally, the system set up a barrier around the male protagonist's courtyard, making it impossible for anyone to enter or leave.
"No, didn't you say you weren't going to care about them anymore?" Ning Wu glanced at Su Chen.
Su Chen: "Yeah, isn't this the barrier you set up? I didn't do anything about it."
Ningwu: ...
Su Chen lay on the cloud that Ning Wu Zhao had brought, "But I'm serious, I really won't care about them anymore. I'm really not doing this mission anymore, I have more important things to do."
"What is it?" Ningwu frowned, her two small hands behind her back, as clouds rose into the sky.
Su Chen grabbed the clouds to steady herself. "It's nothing, you'll see when the time comes."
...
Bai Zhiyu broke the barrier all night, and when dawn broke, the barrier suddenly disappeared.
As soon as Xiao Tan got up, she saw Bai Zhiyu standing at the garden gate and was overjoyed, but she still walked up to him with a cold expression.
"Why didn't you leave?" Xiao Tan asked.
Bai Zhiyu: "I don't know who set up a barrier on this courtyard wall, so I haven't been able to get out."
"Really?" Xiao Tan reached out to touch the courtyard gate, but her outstretched hand passed right through it.
Bai Zhiyu coughed awkwardly, "Just disappeared."
"Really?" Xiao Tan asked.
Bai Zhiyu: "Really."
...
Su Chen and Ning Wu rode the clouds and mist all the way, and finally arrived at Zhang E Mountain.
On the barren, gray mountainside, not a single ferocious beast was in sight, nor were the beautiful, emerald-green stones we had seen earlier.
"What happened?" Su Chen frowned. "They've all been taken away?"
Ningwu said somewhat blankly, "No way... no one would see Zheng Ning and still climb the mountain."
Su Chen shook her head. "Humans won't be afraid of a ferocious-looking beast forever. Humans dare to kill and eat anything." Su Chen didn't exclude herself from this group either.
Although the law of reality is survival of the fittest, as humanity develops, some destructive actions will inevitably occur that are completely detached from human needs.
Buildings will eventually destroy animal habitats; people will eat shark fin and bear meat for novelty; they will kill elephants and rhinoceroses for some boastful decorations; and they will kill pangolins for some insignificant effect...
Besides these animals, unrestricted mining and pollution will eventually take their toll on humanity.
"You mean, they...they were all killed?!" Ningwu's small body swayed, revealing his most devastated expression to Su Chen for the first time.
“Not necessarily, this is just a hypothesis.” Su Chen patted her shoulder. “However, I once heard people on the internet in the original world joke that the Classic of Mountains and Seas was originally a cookbook. The animals in it all have medicinal properties, and they are marked with some benefits after eating them, such as not being bewitched or ignorant, and not being affected by miasma.”
Ningwu burst into tears, feeling more and more that all her people were dead.
"Eh? Isn't this Ningwu?" An old voice rang in her ear.
Ningwu suddenly raised his head, "Waaah... Ah? Granny Nan, you... hiccup, you're still here?"
"What? You think I'm dead?" Granny Nan slammed her cane heavily on the ground.
"No, no, no, hiccup, where are the other tribesmen?" Ningwu cried so hard that he started hiccuping.
Grandma Nan: "Everyone's here, but they're all staying home. Who would come out in this sweltering heat?"
"Oh." Ningwu finally stopped crying, glancing sideways at Su Chen, who was laughing so hard she was about to pass out. "You're exaggerating!"
Su Chen said quipped, "Hey, you don't know this. It's about building up to a climax. How can a comedy make people feel ecstatic? You have to put the protagonist through some torture first, and then bring a happy ending to make the comedy truly effective."
Ningwu: "By the way, Suchen, we have a stone here. I heard that if you look at it, you can see how you died in your past life. Do you want to try it? I wanted to see it as soon as I got back."
Su Chen was naturally happy to agree. She always felt that she had experienced something extraordinary in her past life, and she wanted to find out more about it.
The two followed Granny Nan into a stone house.
"Grandma Nan, we came here to see the Stone of Past Lives, why did you bring us here?" Ningwu asked, puzzled.
Granny Nan tapped Ning Wu's forehead with the tip of her cane, and Ning Wu cried out in pain before Granny Nan put the cane away.
"Can anyone see the Stone of Past Lives?" Granny Nan glanced at Su Chen.
Ningwu: "Grandma, she's not an outsider. We have a contract binding us together."
Granny Nan: "What is a contract? I understand less and less of these young people these days. You too, a thousand years have passed before you came back, and now you're spouting all sorts of new terms that I don't understand at all."
“Mother-in-law, it’s just…” Ning Wu thought for a while and finally came up with a word, “It’s a contract.”
"A contract? You made her your master?" Granny Nan looked Su Chen up and down again. "She's just a female cultivator who has just established her foundation. She's not even worthy of carrying your shoes."
Granny Nan added, "The one you signed the contract with before is alright. Although he was born a tree demon, his cultivation level is sufficient."
Su Chen's eyes lit up when she heard "born as a tree demon," and she asked, "Grandma Nan, is the tree demon you're talking about Su Chen?"
"Su Chen?" Granny Nan closed her eyes and thought carefully. "Hmm, that seems to be the name. How did you know?"
Granny Nan looked at Su Chen suspiciously. "Judging from your appearance, you're only about twenty years old. How do you know about things from a thousand years ago?"
"Grandma Nan, do you think my soul is that of a twenty-year-old?" Su Chen stared directly into Grandma Nan's amber eyes.
"You know who I am?" Granny Nan asked, even more puzzled.
"You told her?" Granny Nan tapped Ning Wu, who was standing next to her, with the tip of her cane again.
"No, I didn't say anything," Ningwu said, sounding aggrieved.
Granny Nan was even more puzzled, and flicked the pale yellow light in her hand onto Su Chen's brow.
But the pale yellow light disappeared as if it had sunk into the sea.
"How could that be?" Granny Nan frowned, calculating with her fingers.
After a long pause, he said, "Alright, you two should bathe and fast first. I will take you to the Stone of Past Lives in three days."
"The Stone of Past Life is, after all, a sacred place of our clan. We must not disrespect our ancestors." After saying this, Granny Nan gave Su Chen a deep look, then turned and left.
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