"Ooouu! You got bigger! Good! Why don’t we have a match?" the muscular old man asked with his loud and boisterous voice.
"Master... please, not right now. We have a guest," Bob said with a wry smile before turning toward Wei Chen.
"Bro... this is my master, Xiong Potian," Bob introduced his master.
Wei Chen cupped his fist. "This junior greets Senior Xiong!" he said with a formal tone and deanor.
"Wahahaha! Stop with the formal nonsense! One look at you and I know you’re not the stuck-up type!" Xiong Potian said with his usual boisterous laughter.
"Hahaha..." Wei Chen laughed awkwardly.
"You can call Master Xiong, or just Old Bear is enough," Xiong Potian said without any ceremony or pretension of being a master. He looked more like a musclehead who did not care about formalities. Then he asked,
(Author Note: Xiong (熊) ans bear.)
"By the way, why are you guys here?" Xiong Potian looked around the campsite and at the strange artifacts Wei Chen’s team had assembled.
Wei Chen looked at Bob, then explained the reason he was here.
After a brief explanation, Xiong Potian finally understood.
"So... because that weird portal that might be at the bottom of this river could cause trouble in the future, that’s why you people from the Underworld Palace ca to check it out?" the old bear concluded.
He then looked suspiciously at Wei Chen.
"And what guarantee do we have that the Underworld Palace won’t seize this chance to invade the other world? From what I heard from Cotton, that world doesn’t have cultivators, and their strongest weapons probably wouldn’t even scratch us cultivators."
Wei Chen smiled aningfully. This old man only knew what Bob had told him. Bob ca from around the 1830s, but the current era was the 2000s. The other side had nuclear weapons. Cultivators could certainly avoid them, but whether they could withstand them remained an entirely different question.
After all, a nuclear explosion was no joke.
"Master! My brother has no reason to do that! He’s..." Bob was about to continue, but he stopped himself in ti. This was Wei Chen’s secret, and he intended to keep it to the grave.
"He’s what?" Xiong Potian asked, interested.
Seeing this, Wei Chen let out a sigh and cut into the conversation.
"It’s understandable that you don’t trust us. And we also don’t have any guarantee that we wouldn’t do what you said. You only have my word. Whether you believe it or decide to cause us trouble because of it is entirely up to you," he said matter-of-factly.
"Was that a threat?" Xiong Potian asked. A fierce, battle-hungry smile appeared on his face.
Wei Chen looked at the old man as if he were looking at an idiot.
"Don’t tell that when soone cos to cause trouble, you don’t smack them senseless?"
"Ooooh? What if I wanted to cause trouble?" the old man taunted, his biceps and muscles flexing with excitent.
Wei Chen’s face remained completely unimpressed, as if he were talking to a dimwitted gorilla. He turned toward Bob, pointing at his master as though pointing at a gorilla in a zoo.
"Bobby, was your master always like this?"
"I’m sorry, bro. Whenever he sees soone strong, he’s always like this." Bob said with a sigh.
Is this old man straight out of so hot-blooded fighting shonen manga? Wei Chen thought to himself, then turned toward the Old Bear.
"Old man... just... ugh, whatever. Don’t ss around, okay? If you want to eat barbecue or drink so nice wine, you’re always our guest. Just don’t cause trouble. I won’t be able to guarantee your safety if you do," Wei Chen said before completely ignoring the old bear. He didn’t have ti to entertain this violent old man.
Wei Chen walked to the assembled portable teleportation array. He then injected his vast spiritual qi into the array.
A bright flash of light shone as a feminine figure began to materialize on the platform.
"You look strong! Let’s have a go!" the old bear roared as he rushed forward, his fist already in the air, trying to force Wei Chen to defend himself.
But...
Bam!
The old bear’s fist, thrown with fifty percent of his strength, was caught by a lithe figure that had just stepped off the platform.
The light vanished, revealing Youqi’s cold expression as she stared at the old man. Her dainty hand clutched the old bear’s wrist and then...
Boom!
Before the old bear could do anything, he was slamd into the ground, his body digging deep into the hard earth. The old bear was stunned. He couldn’t even react at all.
Then...
Boooom!
A foot clad in a red high heel stomped down onto the old bear’s rock-like chest. The high heel punctured his chest and buried itself into his muscles, deep enough to injure him and keep him down, but not deep enough to be lethal.
The old bear felt as though all of his strength had been drained away. He couldn’t do anything other than groan and lie flat in the crater shaped like his body.
Wei Chen instinctively make an ’Oof’ face as he crunch up his body as if he’s the one on the receiving end of that high heel.
"Master!" Bob quickly rushed toward the old bear, but seeing that his master was safe and rely injured and shocked by how quickly he had been subdued, he let out a sigh of relief.
"Where is the problematic river?" Youqi asked, then looked at the river in front of her. "Is it this one?" She pointed at it.
Wei Chen looked at Bob. "Bob, is this the river you ca from?"
"Huh? Yeah, yeah... it’s this one." Bob turned toward the river.
Youqi then asked, clearly in a foul mood because of the old bear trying to cause trouble, "Where exactly?"
"I don’t know, Lady Youqi. When I was rescued, I was already at my master’s ho."
Youqi then looked at the old bear, who was groaning while rubbing the wound on his chest as if it were rely an insect sting.
"Speak, old man. Where did you find him?" Youqi asked.
"I don’t know, girl... cough! Ahem... I’m not the one who fished him out of the water," the old bear obediently replied while still groaning and throwing in a few fake coughs.
"Then who fished him out?" she pressed.
"A fisherman. A mortal... already dead for a long ti," said the old bear.
"Do you rember his na?" Youqi asked once again, but all she received was a shake of the old bear’s head.
"Ugh... this might take so ti." Youqi groaned at the headache that was about to co.
As the Lord of Death’s secretary and wife, death held no secrets from her. But the problem was that the fisherman was a mortal and had most likely died more than a century ago.
And mortal souls usually did not linger long in the Underworld because of the policy to replenish the populations of the Mortal Realm and the Immortal Realm without resorting to creating new souls.
Speaking of creating new souls, that was another headache entirely, but that was not the point here.
The point was that the Underworld pushed mortal souls through the cycle of reincarnation much faster than cultivator souls. That was because mortals were easier to handle in terms of clearing their mories and allowing them to start fresh in their next lives.
The sa could not be said for cultivators. The stronger the cultivator, the trickier they were to deal with. They might have hidden techniques embedded within their souls or very existence to preserve their knowledge, or seal it away for use in their next life.
That was one of the reasons the Underworld recruited cultivators to work for them. They wanted to observe those cultivators, llow them out, and break their spirit, especially those with strong Dao Hearts.
Because those with strong Dao Hearts were the most likely to cause trouble within the cycle of reincarnation.
This was especially problematic because the Wheel of Samsara had been heavily damaged for a very long ti, and the Lord of Death’s repair and maintenance efforts were bogged down by the massive influx of dead souls.
They had no choice but to strip those cultivators of their cultivation, introduce a new system using Underworld Qi as currency and cultivation rewards for the next life, and make them as close to mortals as possible. They used the cruelty of mundane existence to grind them down to a mindset similar to that of ordinary mortals.
Only then would those cultivators be sent to reincarnate.
Youqi turned toward Wei Chen. "Mr. Wei, can you please call your n here to take over and guard the river around here? I need to go back and get our Lord’s authorization to move our forces here and investigate this fisherman. It might take a day to get approval."
"Okay, Ms. Youqi." Wei Chen said, making an okay sign with his hand.
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