Chapter 566: Yingzhou

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Like a high-voltage current was exposed to the air, the sizzling sound of the cloud grew louder, attracting the attention of many passengers who had yet to sleep in the cabin.

Puzzled, everyone left their seats and gathered at the window to look outside.

Flashes of lightning that resembled silver snakes flashed ceaselessly in the dark clouds. In the alternation between darkness and light, gushes of white mist could be seen soaring merging and converging together, as they exuded a faint yellow glow.

All of a sudden, a thunderous sound resonated, the fog that had gathered in a group transformed into a giant flashing door, revealing a mystery land hidden behind white clouds and drizzle that were billowing between strange jagged rocks and mountain peaks,

After a moment of flabbergasted silence, some stuttered and said, “I-It’s a mirage, right…” This caused everybody’s heart to become calmer. Encountering a strange incident while flying in the air was even more frightening than usual.

Unfortunately, not long after this speculation was made, a skinny, middle-aged man who had a moderate height looked at the ever-changing scenery in the light door and shook his head. “I’ve encountered a mirage in a desert the year before, and it was like watching somebody else in a mirror; the image would never move around, it’s differed completely from this. Now, we’re on a flying airplane, so if it was a mirage, it would have long gone in a flash.”

When the middle-aged man’s words left his mouth, the light door flashed in front of a stone monument. Although the scenery shot across in just a short amount of time, it was enough to let the Gate of Dao’s disciples who just wanted to join in the fun saw the two bold, ancient big words that had a heavenly character and style clearly.

“It’s Yingzhou! It’s Yingzhou. It’s the Yingzhou paradise…” When the Taoist exclaimed loudly in great shock, other people did not have much reaction, but when his comrades from the same Gate, who had been calm and nonchalant towards the strange phenomenon of the clouds, immediately had a change of expression when they heard this. Quickly, they leaped up to their feet and went to the window in an instant.

At this time, the scenery in the light door had changed. However, now that they looked at it after getting the hint, the feeling they had was different too.

“There’s a poem from the ancient time that goes like this, ‘Seafarers speak of uncharted lands in the Yingzhou, yet all anyone has ever seen of it are billows and fog. Nothing to prove such a belief. The people of Yue spoke of Tianlao, though around it hover clouds bright or dim, visible sometimes in her countenance.’ This saying is indeed right. How can such celestial islands be found in the mortal world…” The old man who was wearing old-style gold-rimmed glass and had been humiliated by his Junior Nephew for spouting nonsense looked at the strange cloud phenomenon with his eyes brimming with brilliance. All gloominess disappeared from his face as he spoke in ecstasy, “This is a great chance! This is a great chance this is really a f*cking big chance!”

Many paradises are circulating in the ancient Chinese legend, but there were only four most famous ones—Penglai, Yingzhou, Fangzhang, and Tianlao.

According to legend, these four places were the heavenly blessed spots that were usually isolated from the human world, not connected with the world at all. If any mortal was lucky enough to encounter any of them, he would often obtain a chance to have a meteoric rise and become immortal.

Since ordinary people could already reap such benefits, cultivators would naturally gain more. Even in modern times, looking from an optimistic point of view, such ‘paradise’ was probably an incomplete ‘half realm.’ A person could open it to reap benefit from it if one was capable. When the Gate of Dao’s disciples saw this, they were immediately ecstatic, even the old-time cultivators had forgotten to keep their voice low.

After a moment of ecstasy, they could not help but quietly looked at Zhang Lisheng, who was by the side.

Witchcraft and Dao had been fighting for thousands of years, and it had been passed down to the present. Although the Taoists had encountered many twists and turns before, the secular authorities often used them. For this reason, they were very strict in taking disciples and very meticulous in teaching their methods. Even ordinary Taoists in the Gate would have a very high disposition.

However, like a mouse, witchcraft had never dared to show their heads for thousands of years. Ordinary wizards even had to shuttle back and forth all the time just to eke out a simple living. Many of them were not even literate, let alone reading ancient Chinese literature. It was very likely that they did not know what the Yingzhou meant at all.

Despite this, Zhang Lisheng, who had a net worth of hundreds of millions, had inherited the ancient witchcraft, obtained a doctoral degree at a prestigious university ranked top ten in the world, differed from them. He must be clear about the estimated value of a ‘paradise.’

This chance was fleeting. If it was not for the fact that the Taoists had qualms against Guo Caiying who was on the plane now and that the young man had a profound and unpredictable strength that allowed him to kill two Taoists before fleeing away despite being trapped in the Four Image Formation, the Taoists would have long joined forces to make their moves on him. They could do this just by catching Zhang Lisheng by surprise and eradicating him with no hesitation to create a fake plane crash that would let several hundreds of people to be buried together with him,

Since they could not use a hard approach, that Gate of Dao’s skinny and handsome leader had a series of expression fleeting across his face for a few seconds before suddenly folding his hands and making a deep bow in an ancient greeting at the young man who was staring fixedly out of the window. Then, he pointed at the cloud light door and transmitted his voice, “Dr. Zhang, I’m Song Huiyuan. Nice to meet you. Yingzhou is a paradise for the Gate of Dao’s ancestors to cultivate, and now that we’re lucky enough to encounter it, I’m afraid we would want to…”

When Zhang Lisheng saw the emergence of the light door, his experience of buying the jelly gem by chance in the Amazon city suddenly appeared in his mind.

The young seller’s words seemed to be ringing again in his ear. “I saw a dark yellow glow that appeared in the jungle out of nowhere when I was peeing behind my house…I found out that it was a large glowing door that was even bigger than 10 trees combined. The door connected to an island with strange rocks, rivers, and houses. I’ve never seen those square wooden houses with long roofs and sharp tips before, but they looked beautiful. Oh yes, there were many strange animals and big birds carved on those houses which looked like they were alive. The door felt like it had legs. It was walking around the enormous island and stopped when it arrived before a gigantic, colorful rock that looked like a mountain. I couldn’t help but extend my arm to touch that big rock. In the end, the door disappeared when I retreated my hand from the pain. However, I was lucky that I grabbed this piece of jelly gem, but I have no idea how it happened.”

That jelly gem had saved the young man several times. He realized that the stone was strange, so he began to study it meticulously; he could almost be sure that it was the only piece of sky-patching stone that Ancient Goddess Nuwa used to travel around the world and trekked through the mountains to refine the five-color soil by borrowing the sun’s divine flame Tiantai Mountain to save the people.

Now that Zhang Lisheng saw the Yingzhou paradise miraculously appearing right before his eyes, his heart jolted. At once, he realized that the place where the light door connected, thus allowing the native young man entered to grab the jelly gem, was most likely the place where Ancient Goddess Nuwa had turned into dust after taking materials to create the sky-patching stones and dried her own blood essence up—the Tiantai Mountain.

When the young man thought of this, he immediately was interested in going to the Amazon to explore it. After all, the five-colored soil and the relics, as well as the shattered remains of Ancient Goddess Nuwa, might be able to patch the worlds’ fences. To him, this had value so high that it was simply inconceivable.

In comparison, he did not even have to bother himself with the Yingzhou looming in the distant clouds. He might as well throw ‘it’ to the Gate of Dao’s people to struggle with it, and if they could reap benefits from it, they could indirectly help the Chinese government to increase their fighting strength against Atlantis.

Many thoughts flashed across Zhang Lisheng’s mind. When he snapped back to reality, he shrugged without waiting for the Taoist to finish his words, “Mr. Song, just do whatever you like. I just feel nothing but headache when I see such supernatural phenomenon involving space chaos. I just want to hurry up and dodge, so I can rest.”

Even if the words that the ancient witchcraft’s successor uttered in front were real or not, Song Huiyuan immediately felt relief in his heart. Bowing, he said, “In that case, thank you.”

Then, he proceeded to gesture his companions to leave the cabin together.

After watching the Taoists leave, the young man quietly put up with the glances he obtained from the surroundings and returned to his seat to sit down.

Shortly after Zhang Lisheng returned to his seat, Guo Caiying sat back beside him and asked curiously in a whisper, “Junior Brother, this name Yingzhou is very familiar. What is this place actually? Why would that old Taoist become so excited and actually recited a poem in the cabin to attract other people’s attention? These ‘special people’ usually would disguise themselves very well in public under normal circumstances.”

“Yingzhou is one of the four great paradises in ancient mythology. It’s mentioned before in one of the Four Classic Novels, Journey to the West. When these Taoists saw it, this paradise immediately blinded them; how could they possibly pay any more attention to whatsoever disguise anymore?”

“One of the four great paradises? Legend has it that it would bring great fortune to even an ordinary person who comes across it…” The girl pondered for a while before jokingly saying, “I’m an ordinary person, so why I don’t feel anything? I’ve heard of this one poem before, ‘When a deity caresses my head, my hair will braid, and my life will extend.’ I should feel some difference if my life span is extended, right?”

When her words left her mouth, the airplane suddenly shook a few times before resuming in their ordinary course.

“It’s ‘encountering’ a paradise, not ‘looking’ at a paradise. It won’t count if you don’t go inside Yingzhou,” the young man shrugged and said.

“Then take me inside and see how it goes. I’m a little curious, Junior Brother.”

“That kind of unstable mysterious ‘space’ is too dangerous, I dare not take you in. It’s effortless if you want to live longer. The main research topic I have been doing in the Shrimp World No. 2 is crushing the ‘power core’ of the supernatural creatures there and transplant it into the human bone marrow. I’ve made some breakthrough progress now, and if I carry out the surgery at all cost, the success rate is 90%, and after the surgery, you’d be able to restore to the peak of the human body, and your life expectancy would be significantly increased. Not only that, but you’d be able to master supernatural power too. It’s like killing three birds with one stone. Just let me know whenever you want to do it.” Zhang Lisheng shook his head and opened a blank check.

“I don’t want to do this kind of surgery to induce genetic variation,” Guo Caiying replied as chills ran down her spine. “It’s actually quite nice to be an ordinary person…”

Before the girl could finish her words, a sudden brilliance that was resembling the bright light of the rising sun shone through a row of windows on the right side of the cabin. When the light flashed, Zhang Lisheng carefully condensed water vapor to form a transparent armor, to envelop Guo Caiying and himself.

When the brilliance appeared, Guo Caiying stood up once again in bewilderment with her jaw dropped but inadvertently noticed the water flow covering her body.

When the young man saw the girl looking down at her body in shock, he stood up and whispered in her ear, “Senior Sister, we’re flying over 10,000 meters high now, so I think we better be more careful. This layer of ‘water armor’ can protect you from crashing even if the plane crashes. It can also change with your movements, so you can just ignore it and pretend that it doesn’t exist.”