Chapter 1602 — The Righteous Path of the World
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
Long Qilin hurriedly looked at Ling Yuxiu, who smiled and said, "Long Pi has not returned for many years, and must still go to the Ancestral Court to see Yan'er and the children. My dear minister, we can speak of it another time."
Xiong Qi'er had no choice but to give it up.
Long Qilin set off at once for Binzhou, on the shore of the East Sea.
His speed was extraordinary. He had already been faster than Shen Mu to begin with, and in these years of bitter cultivation in the Beast Realm, striving to help Long Xiao build a civilization for the Beast Realm, he had undertaken many pioneering works and gained no small ability.
Shen Mu returned to Jingping seldom, but Long Qilin was from time to time summoned by Xue Hu'er and the others for old times' sake, and so the fruits of Jingping's reforms had not been lost on him either.
Long Qilin was now far more mature and steady than before, and bore the dignity of the Beast Realm's young lord. Along the way he pored over the records of Gong Tianzun's reincarnation body, from the cultivation methods Tao Xiufang had studied to the divine powers she had mastered, the directions of her research, and the whole record of her life's battles, all set down in exhaustive detail.
Ever since Shen Mu had discovered that Xiaotianzun's reincarnation body had entered Jingping and silently crept to the center of Jingping's power, a quiet surveillance and net had been spread against the reincarnation bodies of the Ten Tianzuns.
Long Qilin closed the file and looked down. He had already arrived at Binzhou.
Binzhou lay north of Jiangling, a divine city that had flourished in recent years.
A hundred years had passed since the last calamity of Jingping. In that century Jingping had been turned upside down; wealth grew ever greater, but so did its problems. Divine city after divine city grew larger, holding more and more people, yet a city cannot expand without end, and so other divine cities rose.
Binzhou was one of them, and one of the better developed, easing the population pressure on Jiangling. Many of the young liked to gather here.
Long Qilin came into the city and found the place where Tao Xiufang lived, only to see a great wedding feast in progress. On inquiry, he learned that Tao Xiufang's household had gained a child, and a hundred-day banquet was being held for the infant.
"Gong Tianzun's reincarnation body married? The file said nothing of this."
Long Qilin was astonished and inquired further. Tao Xiufang had married a divine-power wielder of Binzhou, not a great house; she had been married into it for two years.
"How could someone like Gong Tianzun marry? Could the man be the reincarnation of some Tianzun?"
He quietly slipped into the feast and used the Book of Life and Death to examine the master of the house, and found his origins clean; he was no reincarnation of a Tianzun.
The man's aptitude and comprehension were not of the heaven-topping sort, neither too good nor too poor. He could likely cultivate to the divine realm, but to accomplish anything world-shaking was unlikely.
Long Qilin pondered a while, then examined Tao Xiufang as well. She was indeed the reincarnation of one of Gong Tianzun's souls; there was no trick to it.
His expression turned strange. A Tianzun in her own right, why would she marry an ordinary man?
"Could this be an illusion of Gong Tianzun's?"
His divine consciousness was powerful, and his abilities had grown ever greater over the years. He looked closely: it was no illusion.
Tao Xiufang's cultivation was inferior to his; had it been an illusion, he would surely have seen through it.
Tao Xiufang also noticed Long Qilin among the guests; this man of strange appearance could hardly fail to draw attention.
"Long Pi, could you wait until tomorrow?" Her divine consciousness rippled into Long Qilin's mind.
Long Qilin nodded silently.