Chapter 988: Chapter Twenty-Five

Is the primeval world not simply Kun's world? In this era no one has attained the Dao yet; everyone grows wildly.

Bai Lang has been eating since childhood; he just keeps eating and grows, but he must be careful not to be polluted, lest he turn into a monstrous shape and cause trouble.

Achieving the White Tiger is far easier than imagined; after devouring seven or eight completely different bizarre beasts—from the Classic of Mountains and Seas—the Geng Metal qi becomes abundant.

Then, naturally absorbing killing qi, he knows in his heart that he has become the White Tiger Star Lord.

But now the constellations have not yet taken their places, and the White Tiger Star Lord is still a weakling—this era is a chaos of gods and demons, and stability will only come when the Three Thousand Guests are in the Purple Void Palace, allowing heaven and earth to settle.

And Bai Lang wouldn't dare attend lectures; per the orders of the two big bosses who helped him, he must hide and cultivate in silence, preferably without being caught by that old man.

They won't deliberately seize you, because there is still incense devotion, but if you jump up yourself, they can't be blamed.

So practice patiently and don't wander out unless necessary.

Bai Lang recalled a great Dream‑Entering technique, but he needs to find a suitable cave dwelling—not those paradisiacal realms, too flashy.

So he chose an unremarkable mountain range, found an equally unremarkable cave deep within, entered it, and immediately fell asleep.

That deep sleep spanned ages—he slept through the Dragon‑Phoenix Initial Tribulation, the Lich War, the Primordial Shattering, and even the transition from Shang to Zhou…

The Four Saints are a concept, yet few have truly seen them, and none have ever witnessed all four gathered together.

This does not affect the Four Saints' duties; their mere existence suffices as proof.

Spiritual qi between heaven and earth has been waning, and Bai Lang was not asleep the whole time; his first awakening occurred when Wang Mang declared himself emperor.

By then, the celestial qi was nearly exhausted; only a handful of gifted prodigies could still cultivate, and even they could only reach the level of Earth Immortal.

The legends of immortals effectively ended by early Tang—Bai Lang knew this upon awakening, as the harvest was nearly complete, and thereafter they served only to evolve history and act as a backup.

The old man will gradually let go, allowing him to become a member of countless material reality worlds, strengthening the parallel‑world theory.

All this was whispered to him by the big boss; he only needs to endure until the old man lets go, then he can leave on his own—though he may still need someone's aid, otherwise if the whole world collapses, the old man will have to intervene.

There's no choice; the old man is indeed powerful, and only the big boss can converse with him on equal terms.

Without that monkey, without Mount Wuzhi, the emerged Bai Lang gestured at his own size—about six zhang from head to toe, standing with a shoulder height of roughly one and a half zhang.

He went out for a stroll; he's already slain enough—beasts like the Zhen, Zhu Yan, Gu Diao and the like have been cut down in abundance.

He is the fiercest, most vicious beast of the West—at least before he sneaks off to find a place to sleep.

However, he hid too early, so among the Four Beasts he remained nameless, and no one realized that Bai Lang was actually the White Tiger.

After the constellations take their places, he naturally receives star‑force, and the soul of the White Tiger Star Lord merges completely with Bai Lang's soul—after a further transcendence, he will become a conceptual deity‑demon of all heavens and realms, the White Tiger Star Lord, Overseer of Armies and Divine Sovereign.

When that moment arrives, Bai Lang will finally have the nerve to stand shoulder‑to‑shoulder with his own low‑cost master—otherwise on a wanted notice he would be nothing but a sidekick.

This opens his ceiling and raises his floor.

Bai Lang's tiger aura unintentionally shakes a hundred li, causing the mountains and forests to quiet as beasts lower their heads.

His luck wasn't great this outing; he was spotted, and Bai Lang was too lazy to chase them, since after a brief activity he would return to sleep—there are still monsters in this era, so it's not a big issue.

What he didn't know is that this place is what later generations call the Yan–Taihang Mountains, and the people who saw him reported back—so Bai Lang became the Taihang‑Yan Mountain God…

Because people truly discovered a massive tiger‑claw imprint…

It was taken as an immortal trace.

Spiritual qi gradually fades, and the world becomes increasingly materialistic—if the White Tiger weren't a conceptual spirit that sustains itself without incense, weaker beings would have long failed to support it.

This is a materialist world where only the strong can remain.

Time passes, and in the blink of an eye a thousand years have gone by.

"Is there truly not a single trace of spiritual qi left? What a pity." Bai Lang's massive skull protruded from the cave, sighing as he gazed at the Taoist temple on the distant cliff.

The cave entrance had long been hidden by vines, and this is deep within the Yan Mountains, where only a handful of people have set foot in a thousand years.

Bai Lang cannot shapeshift, because any movement would be too conspicuous—this era lacks spiritual qi, the land is a dead zone.

If he attempts to shapeshift, he might lose face irreparably; death is unlikely, but who knows how many troubles would follow.

All this came from the big boss's occasional quartz‑plate messages, and of course Bai Lang obeys.

As the spiritual qi dissipates, Bai Lang finds it increasingly hard to remain in prolonged meditation sleep—his sleep cycles have shrunk from tens of thousands of years to several thousand, then a thousand, now merely a few hundred or even a hundred years per awakening.

This awakening occurs during the Southern Song, and the Jin Kingdom and the Mongols have begun fighting not far from his slumber.

The place where Bai Lang slept has no name, and he doesn't know what the nearby hill is called, but he clearly sees the tens of thousands of armies entangled in battle.

The rising murderous aura greatly augments Bai Lang's power—so long as the war endures, the White Tiger will never lose strength.

Among the world's Four Extremes, the Western Geng‑Metal White Tiger and the Southern Li‑Fire Vermilion Bird relish war and slaughter; the White Tiger wages killing, the Vermilion Bird burns the lands, far more ferocious than the Eastern Yi‑Wood Azure Dragon or the Northern Kan‑Water Black Tortoise.

The battle before him is puzzling; the troop deployments appear to him as pointless as taking off one's pants and farting.

"Just charge straight in and finish it—why bother with all that?" Bai Lang couldn't understand; in his mind it's simple: mount a warhorse, wield a lance like autumn water, cut through the waves, slay generals, seize banners, and wipe out the hundreds of thousands of troops.

That is the only tactic the unrivaled generals of the age could devise…

He isn't scared at all; clearly the smaller side is pressing the larger side—"Is this the Mongols fighting the Jin? Let me think, I've read about a battle of this scale… Ah, the Battle of Wild Fox Ridge!" Bai Lang lay on the ground, watching the battlefield from afar.

He was quite pleased with the Mongol tactics—concentrating forces to crush the Jin front directly; Bai Lang's heart itched to rush out and slay both sides in one go.