Chapter 9: Panpan Appears
Panpan Appears
"I'm going out this time to find something, something very important to me."
"Is it necessary to go to another Great Heaven to find something? Can you still come back?"
"Don't be afraid, Wang Panpan will take care of you."
"Wang Panpan... Who is Wang Panpan?"
Ruan Ci rubbed her eyes and propped herself up, first reaching out to touch her chest—the first thing the people of Song Guo did every morning upon waking was to check their wooden talismans. For a moment, she hadn't recalled that the so-called power of the fire miasma was merely a baleful energy born from the water Qi being isolated and the circulation of heaven and earth being obstructed. Now that the great array had been broken and the five elements were flowing, the fire miasma had naturally dissipated and vanished.
Thinking of this, Ruan Ci couldn't help but smile, but immediately felt a little surprised: no one had ever explained the principle of this to her, but she didn't know how she could guess it, and she was so sure. It seemed that after a dream, there was something more in her heart.
She had had a rough life since she was a child, and she had also developed an open mind. Ruan Ci thought carefully for a while, found no clues, and put the matter aside. She tore off the wooden talisman, but did not throw it away, but kept it well together with the wooden plaques in her arms. Most of the Ruan family members had no remains, so this was the only thought left by her relatives.
"Where is this..."
This was the most urgent problem at the moment, and the second one was also extremely realistic: "How should I take this Yin coffin away."
Ruan Ci looked around and saw that the place was uneven, full of strange stones, and there were towering mountains in the distance, with no human habitation. She couldn't help but mutter, "Where is this? Am I... have I already arrived outside Song Guo? Hmm, no, this should still be within the three countries of South Zhuzhou."
She said this because she had seen what other countries looked like beside Xie Xie Yan Huan last night. Because Song Guo had no water, there was no grass growing outdoors, and the towering mountains were all bare stone mountains. But the other countries in South Zhuzhou were all lush and green, which was very different from the terrain here.
The East Flower Sword was lying not far from her. Ruan Ci picked it up and tried to draw it, but the scabbard didn't move. Ruan Ci was not discouraged. She first tore her skirt into a rope and tied the East Flower Sword to her back. Suddenly, she thought, "This sword is bare, with no sword tassel or sword rope. I don't know how Sister Xie carried it on her back. Could it be... that she used her power to suck it onto her body?"
Thinking of this, she couldn't help but laugh out loud, but the clinking of the wooden talisman in her arms made Ruan Ci's smile fade. She tied the long sword and tried to walk a few steps. This sword was almost taller than half of her, but it was as light as nothing. Ruan Ci carried it quite conveniently, but she thought to herself that it was definitely not as free and good-looking as Xie Xie Yan Huan carrying the sword.
"I can still grow taller." She said to herself, "At least grow a few more inches, and it will match this sword. When carrying the sword, the tip of the sword won't hang below my butt, otherwise it's very inconvenient to sit down, and the hilt won't be taller than my head. It looks too ridiculous and ugly now."
Just as she said this, her back felt lighter, and the hilt that had been bumping against her hair bun seemed to suddenly become shorter. Ruan Ci reached out and touched it, and sure enough, the East Flower Sword seemed to have become much shorter and smaller, no longer as difficult to carry as before. She couldn't help but be overjoyed and sighed, "So this is the magic treasure of the immortal family."
With the example of the East Flower Sword, Ruan Ci felt that the child coffin, which was about the size of a child's coffin, could also be handled in the same way. She climbed to the side of the child coffin, stroked the white jade coffin wall, and chanted, "Become smaller, become smaller, I will put you in my sleeve and take you away."
The child coffin didn't move. Ruan Ci chanted more than ten times, but it was to no avail. She patted the child coffin in frustration and said angrily, "Cumbersome thing."
As she stroked it, the coffin lid trembled, and a loud 'meow' came from inside, somewhat exasperated, like a civet cat complaining that its owner didn't feed it enough. A childish voice sounded from the coffin, "Cumbersome thing? Ruan Ci, you have no conscience at all. If it weren't for me last night, who would have brought you here?"
Ruan Ci's eyes lit up. In this wilderness, being able to hear a second voice made her feel much more at ease. She knocked on the coffin and asked, "Is it Wang Panpan? Wang Panpan... are you the big civet cat I raised?"
Wang Panpan yawned loudly in the coffin and said lazily, "Hmph, I'm not anyone's servant, and I'm not the little cat you raised. Let me sleep a little longer, saving you really exhausted me..."
"If you are not a civet cat, then where did the civet cat go?" Ruan Ci asked incessantly outside the coffin. She gasped, "Ah! You wouldn't have eaten it!"
She covered her mouth again and said, "Ah! Or, you ate its soul and possessed its body—"
Ruan Ci had always had the most questions. Wang Panpan didn't reply, and she could perform a play by herself, being startled and surprised beside the coffin wall. Wang Panpan was exasperated by her questions and shouted a 'meow', "So noisy! Wait a moment!"
The coffin suddenly became quiet. After a while, the small coffin gradually lit up, and a small civet shadow appeared inside, which indeed looked much smaller than Ruan Ci's civet cat. Ruan Ci watched intently, and just as she was curious, her eyes blurred, only to see a civet cat running from somewhere at the foot of the mountain, its feet producing wind, brushing past her, and rushing straight into the coffin.
Ruan Ci felt a chill all over her body. She looked at Wang Panpan carefully. Its figure solidified by a fraction that was almost imperceptible. If Ruan Ci hadn't already opened her heavenly eyes, she almost wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. Just as she was looking closely, dozens of civet cats ran over from somewhere, of different colors and sizes, all jumping into the Yin coffin and merging into Wang Panpan's figure. Ruan Ci gasped, surprised, "Wang Panpan, could, could it be that all the civet cats in Song Guo are your incarnations?"
Wang Panpan didn't reply, its figure flickering. After a while, the brilliance in the coffin shone brightly, and then dimmed again. The coffin lid sprang into the sky, and a small white cat jumped out of the coffin, 'meowed' at Ruan Ci, raised its tail spiritedly, shook its fur, and jumped onto Ruan Ci's shoulder. It spat out a white light, and the child coffin spun and became smaller and smaller in the white light, and was swallowed into the belly by the small white cat in one bite. Wang Panpan licked its paws and said proudly, "Although not all of them, at least eighty percent. Otherwise, the master slept for seven hundred years and practiced her Formless Great Art, who would explore the information in Song Guo? It could only be Panpan going out!"
Ruan Ci asked curiously, "Is Sister Xie your master? But why is your surname Wang?"
Wang Panpan's fur stood on end, "So what if she is my master? I was called Wang Panpan since I was born. It doesn't mean that just because she subdued me, I have to change my name to Xie Panpan. Xie Xie Yan Huan never asked me such a boring question, and didn't even mention letting me change my surname. Sigh, you are really not as good as her. Qingjun, oh Qingjun, changing from Xie Xie Yan Huan to such a little girl, I really feel sorry for you."
Ruan Ci didn't mind at all and laughed, "I'm naturally not as good as Sister Xie, so Sister Xie asked you to take care of me—could you talk before she subdued you? Also, is Qingjun this sword? Can it talk too?"
"Hmph, it's just that little girls like you haven't seen the world, that's why you ask such ridiculous questions. Think back to before I was accepted by the master, I was a famous big demon in North Youzhou, and my name could stop children from crying at night. From Shanyang to Lingbei, who hasn't heard of Wang Panpan's prestige?"
Wang Panpan sat on Ruan Ci's shoulder and pointed in a direction for her to walk, blowing its own trumpet incessantly. But it was small, and not as majestic as the incarnation of the civet cat. The more it said this, the more Ruan Ci couldn't help but laugh. Wang Panpan was so angry that it shouted, "Don't laugh! Everything I say is true! I am the most powerful big demon in Youzhou! You should all be afraid of me!"
Ruan Ci held back her laughter, "Yes, yes, yes, I'm so afraid of you. If it weren't for Sister Xie asking you to take care of me, you would have eaten me in one bite."
"You know it!" Wang Panpan was satisfied, jumped to the ground to lead the way for Ruan Ci, and complained 'meow meow' in its mouth, "It's all because you urged me, causing me to be anxious and make such a big noise. You have to listen to me more in the future. If I want you to wait, you just wait obediently. Look, originally if we went out from the south and took a few more turns, we would be at the capital of Song Guo. But so many cats running here at the same time, any cultivator would know something is wrong. Although most of them don't dare to chase after you, they will definitely try every means to find out your whereabouts. We have to be careful, we can't go to the capital, we have to go north, it's best to leave Song Guo for a while and come back in a few years."
Ruan Ci's heart stirred, and she reached back to touch the East Flower Sword. Wang Panpan laughed, "You still have some brains. You understand now, you are just a mortal, and no matter how powerful I, the big demon, am, I can't fight four hands with two fists. If those Grotto-Heavens and Nascent Souls in South Zhuzhou swarm up, both of us will fold here."
"At that time, when Sister Xie broke through the air, they were all looking at us," Ruan Ci hesitated, "Then at this moment..."
"No, the East Flower Sword will stabilize the fortune, making your whereabouts difficult to calculate. Besides, the master used the spiritual energy storm and the power of two major spiritual treasures to break the Zhou Tian barrier, which also made the water spirit storm here stronger, and the spiritual energy is unstable, with turbulence everywhere. Even a Grotto-Heaven Ancestor would find it difficult to track our whereabouts in such chaotic spiritual energy." Wang Panpan sighed, "You don't know anything, you just rolled your eyes and fainted. You don't know how high a cultivation base is needed to safely protect a mortal in a spiritual energy storm."
"Is that so? But I think Sister Xie was very relaxed." Ruan Ci counted with her fingers, "Hmm, she is at the Nascent Soul Great Perfection, and hasn't taken that step to achieve Grotto-Heaven. Compared to a real Grotto-Heaven Ancestor, there should still be a deficiency. Your cultivation should be inferior to Sister Xie's, so you wouldn't be higher than Nascent Soul Great Perfection."
She asked in confusion, "Is North Youzhou a more remote place than South Zhuzhou? Even South Zhuzhou has 'several' Grotto-Heaven Ancestors, but the most powerful big demon in North Youzhou is only a Nascent Soul cultivator?"
Wang Panpan stopped talking, jumped off Ruan Ci's shoulder, walked to the side of the road, and squatted with its back to her, its ears pressed against its face, its tail swinging back and forth. Ruan Ci held back her laughter, coaxed it, "Ah, sorry, I was wrong. North Youzhou is a place of outstanding people and spirits, and there must be many powerful big cultivators, but they are all inferior to our Panpan big demon. Although the realm is low, the cultivation is not weak at all, steadily covering them all."
She said a lot of nice things, and Wang Panpan finally forgave Ruan Ci, jumped into Ruan Ci's arms, looked up, and said, "You must remember, I am the most powerful big demon in North Youzhou!"
Ruan Ci couldn't help but scratch its chin like she used to scratch the civet cat. Wang Panpan was scratched until it narrowed its eyes, twisting in Ruan Ci's arms, its tail wrapping around Ruan Ci's arm, and soon it calmed down, narrowed its eyes and said, "You little girl are quite good at serving cats, quite clever."
It was like a master when it squatted on Ruan Ci's shoulder, but now that it fell into her arms, it finally had the appearance of a pet. Ruan Ci smiled and didn't speak. After a while, she asked, "Where are we going? —Since we have left Song Guo, why do we have to come back?"
"Go north, we can go to Liang Guo, find a mountain to live in, I will teach you some breathing methods, and catch some spiritual beasts to nourish your body. In a few years, Song Guo will have water, trees will grow, living things will return, and spiritual energy will be stable. At that time, we will come back here."
"After a few years, you will have grown up a lot, and the cultivators of Song Guo will also return. They have left Song Guo for seven hundred years, and they will definitely be very chaotic when they move back. We will mix in during the chaos. Who would know that such a small girl, carrying a small dagger on her back, is the East Flower Sword?"
Although Wang Panpan seemed to have a strange temper, she considered it very carefully. Ruan Ci only understood after she said it that the situation in Song Guo was indeed not as easy to hide as Liang Guo. However, she still had questions, "In order to hunt down Sister Xie, the three sects blocked Song Guo for seven hundred years. Now the East Flower Sword is in South Zhuzhou, and they all saw that I am a girl, then—"
"You mean, will the three sects continue to block Song Guo, issue wanted documents, and track your whereabouts?" Wang Panpan asked. She sneered and said, "You are very clever, but you are still too inexperienced."
"Then it's up to Panpan the old demon to teach me."
Ruan Ci smoothed its fur well, and Wang Panpan beamed with joy. Just as she was about to speak, her cat ears trembled, and her pink nose twitched a few times, "Why do I smell a floral scent?"
Ruan Ci also smelled a fragrant scent, which was pleasant, but if Wang Panpan hadn't broken it, she wouldn't have known it was called floral scent. She couldn't help but increase her vigilance, "There have never been flowers in Song Guo."
"I know, did I calculate the direction wrong and fall to the border of Song and Liang?"
Wang Panpan looked into the air a few times, jumped from Ruan Ci's arms to the ground, sniffed along the ground for a while, her ears suddenly pressed against her skull, and she rushed back into Ruan Ci's arms, saying in a fine voice, "Bad luck, bad luck, why did we fall here?"
"Where is this?"
Wang Panpan swung her tail, seemingly hesitant, and said, "You look up at that beautiful jade cliff top. This is the place where Xie Xie Yan Huan and you waited for the time. The master killed a Nascent Soul cultivator named Liu Yin here. After the cultivator died, the spiritual energy returned to heaven and earth, and there must be strange phenomena. Liu Yin died here, and after his death, his inner scene leaked. This should be the floral scent of his sea of consciousness inner scene."
"What is the sea of consciousness, what is the inner scene?" Ruan Ci asked two questions first, and also knew it was not the time to talk about these. "Is there any danger? Should we turn back?"
"There is no danger, it's just that we might run into people coming to collect his corpse." Wang Panpan seemed to dislike this floral scent, buried her face in Ruan Ci's lapel and still felt it wasn't enough, her claws tore open a small hole, and she burrowed into Ruan Ci's clothes, saying muffledly, "Now the spiritual energy is chaotic, mortals don't feel much, but cultivators operating magic techniques are different. There are many obstacles and stagnation. Maybe the people looking for him won't arrive so quickly. Let's pass through quickly. There will be some strange phenomena, but it's not too dangerous. Just don't take anything, it will be troublesome if you are stained with cause and effect."
She muttered, and without knowing it, said her true thoughts, "What if he follows us? I'm most afraid of ghosts."
Ruan Ci didn't laugh at Wang Panpan this time. She wasn't very brave either, but it was obviously more risky to turn back at this time. Following the floral scent, she walked through the cliff bottom, bypassed a corner, and saw a bright light in front of her. Only in a cold forest, white mist was like practice, strange flowers were blooming everywhere, and there were stars and moons in the forest. The strange scenery was definitely not something in the human world, and it was even harder to imagine that it was transformed by the consciousness of a cultivator.
Ruan Ci tucked the bulging Wang Panpan in her arms, and amidst its light 'meow' sound, she gathered her courage and walked into the mist.
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Updated, sorry for the long wait, everyone. I'll send out red envelopes for the previous chapter in this chapter, and this chapter will also be sent~
By the way, why do immortal cultivators usually raise a 'grandfather' or an encyclopedia pet? In fact, it's a simple reason. It's convenient to explain the worldview, or to externalize the protagonist's psychological activities. Otherwise, on the road of cultivating immortality, the protagonist doesn't know anything at the beginning, and then is alone for a long time. If there is no character to hold the stage, the article will be very boring.
Panpan is currently a white cat! There will be other colors later!
Q&A time: Will Wang Panpan's Song Guo incarnations trigger the great array? No, because before the array was broken, the incarnations lived the lives of ordinary civet cats.
I had fish head tofu soup for lunch today, and bread for breakfast, but I think many breads are too sweet now, and sugar-free and oil-free bread makes people very depressed. In fact, bread is not an ideal food, alas.
Thanks to the little angels who cast overlord votes or irrigated nutrient solution for me during the period 2020-06-29 12:06:25~2020-06-30 12:02:09~
Thanks to the little angel who cast a rocket launcher: Guo Guozi (2); Shi Mei, freesia77 (1);
Thanks to the little angel who cast a grenade: Yu Yu Wan Yao (1);
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Thank you all very much for your support, I will continue to work hard!
Thank you to the little angel who threw a grenade: Yu Yu Wan Yao x1;
Thank you to the little angels who threw landmines: 45626963, Chen Sang, Little Peach Bilibeng, Lalala, Qi Ran, Li Li He Ping, Zhou Zhou x1;
Thank you to the little angels who irrigated with nutrient solution: oliverfi x60 bottles; Jun Youyixi x50 bottles; Ji Shan x30 bottles; Reimen x25 bottles; fengyuanwe x20 bottles; Nini x17 bottles; Momo, Sundance, Zhuang Sheng Xiaomeng, xiaoxiao, mayying6993, Kuai Zai Feng x10 bottles; Kuang Xiao Er Wang, Make Ni Yixia, Xiaoxiang, sidewalker x5 bottles; Taili Sha Xiong Xiong, Zhaohai x3 bottles; 39991360, Rosie, 18205385, Spadezc, Emilyloveread x1 bottle;
Thank you all very much for your support; I will continue to work hard!
End of Chapter
