Chapter 357 347: Embracing the Mountain Breeze and the Bright Moon

「Late at night. The Capital.」

As the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List stirred, the List Guardian at the foot of the steps sat dozing, his arms crossed and his head tucked down.

This list was incredibly special. It was a Nine-Zhang Jade Disc that had existed since time immemorial, towering over the center of Shangjing. When the Great Zhou Dynasty was building the Capital, a powerful expert had once attempted to move it. However, they discovered that while the Jade Disc seemed to have no Spiritual Qi fluctuations, it was, in fact, as hard as a Divine Artifact or a Spiritual Treasure.

Even a True Immortal Martial Saint could not move the Jade Disc in the slightest!

It was as if it had become one with the land itself; the area within a hundred-zhang radius of the Nine-Zhang Jade Disc was completely indestructible.

The Nine-Zhang Jade Disc, inscribed with the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List, was likewise immovable and indestructible.

However, every hundred days, the Celestial Pride List would automatically refresh itself.

Through some mysterious power beyond human comprehension, it would remotely gather information on the one hundred most remarkable Celestial Prides in the world and inscribe it upon the list.

Over time, the list became the most authoritative ranking in the hearts of all living beings. The Ten Thousand Races all considered it a great honor to be on the Celestial Pride List.

As for those True Immortal Martial Saints who first had the idea of moving the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List, well, there's no need to go into detail... In any case, no great expert would ever admit to such an embarrassing failure.

Later on, the Great Zhou Court even built a Martial Marquis Shop at the base of the Nine-Zhang Jade Disc, with a List Guardian stationed there year-round.

This List Guardian didn't actually have any specific duties. After all, the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List was indestructible and immovable—what was there to guard?

The Great Zhou Court only dispatched a List Guardian to symbolically assert the Court's sovereignty.

To put it bluntly: even though the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List was mysterious, its origins unknown, and its power uncontrollable, since it was located in the center of the Capital, it ought to belong to the Court.

The Great Zhou Court had the nominal right to manage it!

There were other anecdotes worth mentioning. For example, when the Great Zhou Dynasty was first established, the List Guardians assigned to the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List were all powerful experts.

But perhaps because the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List included not only Celestial Prides from the Human Race but also those from the Ten Thousand Races, the Demon and Monster Races paid close attention to it.

This led to a period during the first hundred years or so where experts from the Demon and Monster Races constantly infiltrated the Great Zhou Capital to visit the list, resulting in all sorts of conflicts with the List Guardians.

Sometimes the List Guardian died; other times, it was the expert from the Demon and Monster Races.

On many other occasions, it would provoke the True Immortal Martial Saints of Great Zhou into action, leading to battles against the old monsters and great Demons of the Demon and Monster Races.

During this period, many brutal and large-scale struggles took place.

Some were fought over the list, others for the independence of the Human Race, and perhaps... for various other unspoken reasons.

In short, for the first hundred years, the bloodshed never ceased.

The brutal struggles occurred so frequently that even the True Immortal Martial Saints were exhausted from constantly rushing to the rescue.

Later, a brief period of peace was established at the Four Great Demon Passes on Great Zhou's borders. It is unknown how the Human Race negotiated with the other races, but from a certain day onward, the guardian of the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List became a mortal below the Innate realm. The Demon and Monster Races also stopped endlessly dispatching their experts to the Capital.

The war seemed to enter a relatively stable phase, with large-scale conflicts ceasing, though small-scale clashes continued.

And so, on the Nine Provinces Land, the Human Race finally had a nation and a home to call their own!

The Nine Provinces were unified. The first fully recorded, unified Human Dao Dynasty on this land had appeared.

After several more centuries of development, it became the Great Zhou of today.

The Great Zhou people of today had grown accustomed to the feeling of the Human Race ruling the world. Their animosity toward demons and monsters was not as deep as it once was; instead, internal struggles and power plays seemed to have become more severe.

Below the Ten Thousand Spirits Celestial Pride List, the List Guardian, whose Cultivation was only at the Refining Tendons Stage, was deep in slumber, completely unaware that the list behind him had changed.

After all, the list hadn't changed in the slightest for nearly five years.

It hadn't changed once in five years, leading those who followed the list to lament the decline of the new generation's talent.

The "old-timers" on the list hadn't changed in five years. In a few more years, once some of them aged out of the Celestial Pride List's limits and were automatically removed, wouldn't the quality of the newcomers who took their places be greatly diminished?

...

Song Ciwan led the Big White Goose down Celestial Dragon Mountain under the cover of night. The path down the mountain was exceptionally smooth.

A cool breeze drifted through the mountains, the sky was dotted with countless stars, and from the mountain's depths came the occasional roar of a beast or chirp of an insect—all the colors of the natural world.

The girl and the goose descended Celestial Dragon Mountain and continued on into the distance, still cloaked by the night.

The Big White Goose didn't quite understand why Song Ciwan insisted on traveling at night, but as long as Wanwan was walking, it would follow. Walking at night was fun, too.

In truth, Song Ciwan wasn't traveling at night to meet a specific goal, like reaching a certain place by a certain time—

She walked at night without much of a reason.

Perhaps her heart was overflowing with emotions, so she walked through the night, seeking a kind of inner peace in the journey;

Or perhaps, she simply wanted to walk.

To walk just for the sake of walking, toward the distant horizon.

To see the vastness of the heavens and the earth, boundless and infinite.

To embrace the mountain breeze and the bright moon, to travel with the stars as companions, and to make a home wherever she went.

And with the Big White Goose by her side, they called and answered, back and forth.

"HONK HONK HONK!"

"GAAAWNK GAAAWNK GAAAWNK..."

Beyond Celestial Dragon Mountain stretched a long, desolate wilderness.

In the wilderness, Song Ciwan encountered quite a few Gray Travel Level apparitions. These Low Level apparitions had no intelligence or even a concrete form; they were merely floating, condensed clumps of Resentment.

Ordinary mortals who encountered them usually couldn't see them with the naked eye, but any contact with such apparitions would trigger a natural reaction in the human body.

They might fall gravely ill after returning home, or suffer all sorts of hallucinations and commit bizarre acts... More likely, they would drop dead on the spot!

That was why it was nearly impossible to encounter mortals on roads in the wilderness at night.

If you did meet someone, they were either not truly Human, or they were in such dire straits that they had no choice but to travel by night—

like Guo Laojiang and his group from before. They arguably fell into both categories.

When Song Ciwan encountered a Gray Travel Level apparition, she would casually eliminate it with her Blazing Flame Technique.

She would harvest some Low Level Mysterious Ghost Spirits, a meager amount that was better than nothing. Even if it was just a few qian's worth, she didn't mind.

As she walked on, she had yet to cross the wilderness, but Midnight had already passed.

Once Midnight passed, a new day had arrived.

Song Ciwan now had ten new opportunities to make a sale. As she walked, she summoned the Heaven and Earth Scale, selected the mass of Evil Spirit Death Qi, and chose to sell it.