Becoming an immortal and ancestor begins with the golden toad spitting out money.

Chapter 179 Evolutionary Branches
From the moment Su Ji arrived at the ruins inside the mountain, he guessed that there might be some opportunity here.

Unexpectedly, although he didn't gain anything along the way, when he did, he was pleasantly surprised.

The six White Tiger Divine Pillars are all divine artifacts. Even if they are the worst low-grade divine artifacts, the combined power of the six of them is stronger than the Linglong Immortal Furnace that Mo Linglong forged.

Afterwards, Su Ji felt a glimmer of hope.

The Panlong Divine Pillar of the Taibai Dragon Clan was refined through countless years of incense offerings and prayers before it became a divine artifact.

Judging from the condition of the ruins, this place may have been uninhabited for tens of thousands of years.

However, the six white tiger pillars in front of us still retain the aura of incense and prayers, which is a pleasant surprise.

The gilded bronze bull head that Su Ji once discovered was also a sacrificial object from ancient times, but it has lost all its power due to the long passage of time.

The fact that the six dragon-shaped pillars still possess divine power must mean that someone has been constantly refining and polishing them. This shows that when the evil spirits of ancient times invaded this place, humanity was not without any ability to resist, and even survived generation after generation.

"I should have noticed that earlier!"

Su Ji couldn't help but chuckle. If he carefully examined the tombstones at the foot of the mountain, he would most likely discover people buried in modern times or even recently...

However, there was still one thing that puzzled Su Ji: if those people survived, why didn't he see them nearby?
Golden Wind Canyon is unsuitable for human habitation; the lake called the East Sea has no islands; the Frosty Snow Hills are devoid of life; and the snow-capped mountains are occupied by the Bear Clan…

Just as Su Ji was pondering, Yan Tianchou offered some guesses.

"In ancient times, apart from a small number of cultivators, most of those who entered this blessed land were ordinary people. They were bound to be unable to withstand the Yin energy permeating the southern part of the fairyland, and perhaps they crossed the snow-capped mountains and migrated to places more suitable for living..."

"Even if people are forced to leave their hometowns in this world, it will not affect their worship of ancestral tablets. Migrating people can still worship the White Tiger Divine Pillar from afar, so that the incense and prayers on the White Tiger Divine Pillar here will never cease."

“Cultivators can also use their spirit form to travel tens or even hundreds of miles to come here to refine divine artifacts…”

Su Ji was somewhat puzzled by this.

If the six White Tiger Divine Pillars are so important, they should at least be guarded by cultivators. Yet, he has not encountered a single living being along the way.

Fortunately, it wasn't difficult for Su Ji to verify this. He only needed to carefully examine the group of stone tablets at the foot of the mountain to obtain some important information.

Thinking of this, Su Ji flew towards the outside of the cave, since the six White Tiger Divine Pillars were not going to escape anyway.

However, just as Su Jifei reached the middle of the corridor, two strange figures suddenly appeared in the activity area inside the mountain.

They had large mouths and round eyes, small ears and small noses, like a person with fish-like features. Their thick necks and seemingly normal human bodies were covered with a layer of fine golden scales.

"A fish demon?"

For ordinary demonic beasts to transform their souls into human form, they must overcome the challenge of self-awareness. Only through gradual and subtle cultivation, even akin to self-hypnosis, can they transform their souls into human form.

Like the Ox-Headed Demon King of Caijia Village, he was a demon who had become a demon, only manifesting a part of human form.

Su Ji, however, was a transmigrator who possessed memories of his past life. This allowed him to transform into a human form as a spirit even after becoming a toad, and thus he was regarded as a reincarnated cultivator.

However, the two figures in front of him seemed to be fish demons trying to cultivate into human form, but Su Ji noticed something was off about the details.

For example, both of them wore fishbone necklaces around their necks, their private parts were covered by clothes woven from seaweed, and even the wary yet curious look in their eyes seemed extremely human.

"Could it be—that they are all human beings?!"

Yan Tianchou speculated that those humans left this place and migrated over the snow-capped mountains to places suitable for people to live in.

However, with the appearance of two half-human, half-fish spirits, Su Ji had another possibility.

Perhaps those ancient cultivators and common people did not leave, but rather, to escape the attacks of evil spirits, they voluntarily entered the lake known as the East Sea...

At this moment, Yan Tianchou had already gathered some information and immediately reminded them: "These two are 70% human cultivators who have fused together special rare and precious materials. Their auras are close to that of immortals, and they are at least top experts!"

Although cultivation level is not the standard for judging combat strength, most cultivators who can cultivate to the point of near-immortality can at least master some high-grade perfect spells, not to mention that the two people in front of them should have also fused some kind of rare and precious materials and obtained special spiritual bodies.

Clearly, the six White Tiger Divine Pillars were not unattended; perhaps they were discovered by the guardians when Su Ji went out and saw the tombstones.

However, even the guardians probably didn't figure out where Su Ji, this living person, came from or how he suddenly appeared here.

Su Ji used his small telescope to spot two cultivators who were half-human and half-fish. As Su Ji flew out of the corridor, his figure was also spotted by them.

"It really wasn't an illusion!" The ruins inside the mountain only had one exit, but Su Ji came out of the cave, which really puzzled the guardians, who all thought they were seeing things.

"The outsider cultivators have indeed discovered this place!" Now, Su Ji's figure has reappeared, confirming that what they just saw was not a falsehood, which made these fishman cultivators feel a bit complicated.

In ordinary language conversation, there might be a barrier between humans and demons. Fortunately, spiritual communication is a communication of consciousness, which allowed Su Ji to sense the other party's conversation.

"They really are cultivators who have inherited their skills from ancient times!"

From the moment they entered the ruined fairyland, everyone hoped to encounter members of the Golden Cave Sect, not only to obtain more secret information about the place from them, but also to ensure that the flame of the Golden Cave Sect could be passed down and never die.

However, more than five months have passed since the discovery of the ruined fairyland, and the cultivators have not only failed to find any survivors of the Golden Cave Sect, but have not even seen any living beings with flesh and blood.

Although the southern part of the ruined fairyland was polluted by Yin Sha, the cultivators had at least subdued the horned spirit inside the spirit vein monster, but they still hadn't heard of any human cultivators.

As a result, many people believed that humanity in the ruined fairyland had long since perished.

Of course, the visiting monks still held out hope.

Perhaps the horned elves were too inexperienced to have encountered humans; or perhaps the humans lived on the other side of the ruined fairyland and did not participate in the Snow Mountain Festival...

Only now has Su Ji figured out the reason: human cultivators are no longer like humans. How could the goat-headed elf recognize that these half-human, half-fish cultivators are human?

Although the other party referred to Su Ji as an outsider cultivator, they showed little malice beyond a degree of wariness, which gave Su Ji hope.

So Su Ji stopped a dozen feet away, then bowed respectfully and said, "I am the Supervisor of the Sun Spirit of the City God Temple in Jinfeng County. May I ask if you two are disciples of the ancient Jinku Sect?"

This action avoided entering a dangerous distance while also showing sufficient respect to the other party.

However, the two guardians fell silent for a moment. The invading cultivators' bold and unrestrained exploration had naturally been observed by them, and it would be a lie to say they weren't excited.

However, they had already changed their appearance, and they were afraid that if they showed themselves, they would be mistaken for monsters, which would lead to conflict.

It is important to know that in their ancient legends, the Heavenly Emperor takes turns in power, and each emperor has different ideologies.

Some people have a favorable impression of the demon race, some treat the demon race equally, some suppress the demon race... and some want to get rid of the demon race as soon as possible.

They are currently in a state of being half-human and half-demon, and they cannot tell which emperor is currently in power. How could they dare to gamble with their lives and fortunes?
Thus, caught in this contradiction between their desire to be accepted and their fear of being exterminated as monsters, they chose a strategy of not actively making contact.

No one expected that someone would discover the ruins inside the mountain today, which changed the situation.

So the two half-human, half-fish cultivators exchanged a glance and finally reached a consensus.

"Indeed, we are disciples of the Golden Cave Sect, currently living in seclusion beneath the East Sea..."

"Jin Fengxian's Sun-Watching Spirit General... could you please tell me what year it is tonight, and which Heavenly Emperor is currently in power?"

When the other party acknowledged his identity as a disciple of the Golden Cave Sect, even though Su Ji was not from this world, he was still moved by the great inheritance of life.

As for the other party's question, Su Ji had no problem answering it: "More than 16,000 years have passed since the ancient immortal demon lord was suppressed, and it is now the 352nd year of the Yellow Emperor's calendar..."

Su Ji told them everything he knew, which made the two guardians' eyes light up.

Judging from the legends, although the Yellow Emperor's philosophy was not close to the demon race, he did not have much malice towards them either... This gave them more motivation to come into contact with human cultivators.

The half-human, half-fish guardian sighed, "So more than 16,000 years have passed... Not only have the seas changed, but we are no longer what we used to be."

Having confirmed the identity of the current Heavenly Emperor, the guardians began to consider making contact with the visiting cultivators.

After all, the other party didn't seem to be a bad person, and even claimed to be the City God Temple's Supervisor of the Day, which was enough to reveal some seemingly unimportant secrets that were related to the current changes in the situation.

"The Spirit Watcher has also seen that our souls are no longer what they used to be... This is not what we wanted, but we had no choice but to do it!"

"When the demons invaded the Golden Cave Sect, many of our ancestors could only try their best to guide the people to the blessed land. However, the Undying Demon Lord was very capable. He not only wanted to refine the blessed land from the outside, but also sent a demon army to attack the inside."

"At that time, the blessed land was a mid-level immortal realm. The enemy's strongest demons were at the level of divine weapons. Although their individual combat strength was not lower than that of our sect's immortals, they swept through the entire immortal realm with their massive demon army."

"Therefore, our lineage could only hide inside the mountain and live there. Although we escaped the search of the evil spirits, we faced a great crisis as our food gradually ran out."

"Although our ancestors were able to catch seafood from the East China Sea, this was not only difficult to sustain so many people, but also risked being exposed when they went out to sea..."

"For the sake of the people's lives, a large number of cultivators were eventually sent out to sea. However, in less than three months, the demons discovered the cultivators' whereabouts and followed the clues to find the people's hiding place."

"Although we won a Pyrrhic victory in that battle, we knew that we could no longer stay in the space inside the mountain, so we had no choice but to take a risk and go underground to live."

"However, even though being underground could evade the demons' search, it still couldn't solve the problem of survival. So the monks and the common people had no choice but to enter the water from the caves to collect and catch aquatic products by diving..."

"If this continues, not only ordinary people, but also many cultivators will develop physical ailments due to living in water for a long time. Many people will even die before they reach the age of thirty."

"Fortunately, some people have also seized the opportunity and created a secret method to hold their breath underwater for a long time... Some people have cultivated a secret method that allows them to breathe underwater like fish..."

"Over time, people gradually became familiar with life in the sea, but also became more and more like a fish... Now, tens of thousands of years have passed, and this blessed land has finally welcomed you cultivators, but we dare not meet you because of our own mutations."

"Now that the Guardian Spirit has discovered us and brought good news, we have the idea of ​​contacting you all..."

For a moment, Su Ji was shocked by this news.

According to this world's narrative, humans evolved from ancient divine beasts created by heaven and earth, and the demon race is also a descendant of these divine beasts.

Similarly, humans can also "evolve" in the opposite direction and acquire some characteristics of mythical beasts.

Clearly, due to the influence of their living environment, these disciples of the Golden Cave Sect embarked on a path of mermaids that was completely different from the mainstream during their more than 16,000 years of evolution.

Perhaps these merfolk are not as powerful as ordinary cultivators on land, but in the water, most cultivators would certainly be no match for them...

"I see!"

Su Ji wasn't quite sure why the other party had contacted him, but that didn't affect his communication with the fish-men who were actually disciples of the ancient Golden Cave Sect.

"It is indeed wise for everyone to be cautious. Before we entered this blessed land, the Eyeless Demon Lord and the Insect Queen of the Demonic Sect may have already arrived here. Being careful will prevent us from being deceived by the Eyeless Demon Lord!"

Su Ji mentioned the Demonic Sect, and naturally wouldn't forget the demonic army under the command of the Undying Demon Lord.

"Gentlemen, now that we have entered this blessed land, apart from some divine beasts of the Metal element affected by Yin Sha, the Golden Fiend Cloud Spirits at the Immortal God level, the Spirit Vein Spirits of the Frost Hills, and the Snow Mountain Bear Clan, we have not encountered a single demon..."

"After more than 16,000 years, could it be that those evil spirits have already been completely purified by the will of the blessed land?"

Since the Undying Demon Lord was suppressed by the Heavenly Emperor at the time, the evil forces have lost their support. The will of this fairyland should also have the power to fight back and repel those evil forces.

However, this was only the best-case scenario, as the two mermaid guardians soon revealed the truth.

“General Jian Ri, the Golden Fiend Cloud Spirit you mentioned is actually an ancient demon in disguise.”

"The divine beasts of the [Sexual Metal] were originally on our side, but they were corrupted by evil spirits and became their claws."

"As for the Snow Mountain Bear Clan, they also opportunistically aligned themselves with the demons, but later, when the demons weakened, they became independent again..."

As the guardian recounts his tale, some of the ancient history of the ruined fairyland gradually becomes clear.

Although the demons are powerful, they are not an overwhelming force. If it weren't for the fact that some of the demon beast forces that originally belonged to the blessed lands had surrendered, the cultivators of the Golden Cave Sect would not have needed to hide in various places with such difficulty.

With the suppression of the Undying Demon Lord, the number of demons has decreased over time.

After all, even if demons alter the environment of blessed lands, they cannot cultivate many powerful new demons.

As batches of evil spirits died, the demonic beast forces that had surrendered gradually turned against them.

(End of this chapter)