He was invincible from the beginning of the Heaven-Covering Era.

The middle-aged man sneered, believing that Zhou Qing was talking nonsense.

Zhou Qing did not answer. He was just a fortune teller. Fate had already told the Han man. Since the Han man himself did not believe it, Zhou Qing would not say anything more.

However, the old man in the Taoist robe beside him had a solemn look in his eyes. He could vaguely tell that Zhou Qing's method of interpreting the divination was extraordinary and seemed to be much more sophisticated than theirs.

For the next four days, Zhou Qing's stall remained deserted. However, on this very day, a piece of news spread throughout the city.

"Have you heard? A cultivator at the Other Shore Realm was fishing in the Spirit Lake when he was suddenly attacked by a strange beast and poisoned. He then lost all his magical power and his muscles were weak, and he ended up drowning in the water."

Chapter 41 The White-Haired Old Scholar

This other-shore cultivator was the middle-aged man who had his fortune told by Zhou Qing before.

The vast Linghu Lake shimmers with light, dotted with countless ripples. Many fishermen roam the lake, yet it is rare to see any strange beasts attacking people. These beasts have long since developed sentience and know how to avoid danger and seek good fortune. They generally do not attack people on their own initiative, but instead hide in the depths of the lake.

No one knows why a strange beast attacked the middle-aged man.

No one knows why the Great Han was unable to use his magic.

The beast itself was not poisonous and its cultivation level was not high; it only managed to destroy the man's ship by surprise.

When the giant sank, people thought he was angry and wanted to go down into the lake to catch the strange beast.

But to his surprise, when he surfaced again, he was already a corpse.

However, none of this concerned Zhou Qing. On the contrary, this incident spread Zhou Qing's reputation for interpreting divination slips.

Now everyone in Linghu City has heard that Zhou Qing once interpreted a life-or-death fortune for that big man and mentioned this matter, but the big man did not believe it and thus perished in the lake.

Gradually, many people would come to Zhou Qing to interpret a life-or-death fortune slip before going out to do dangerous things.

No one knows that on the day the big man died, Zhou Qing carved the first mysterious and profound pattern on that empty bamboo stick.

The fate of that great man is woven into these patterns.

Two months passed in a blink of an eye.

In the past two months, Zhou Qing has interpreted more than 400 divination slips. Now, Zhou Qing no longer simply talks about life or death, but tells people how they will die if they die, and why they will be born if they are alive.

Of the more than four hundred divination slips, every single one that Zhou Qing predicted would come true. Countless people have thus avoided certain death and moved towards the path of life in their destiny.

However, not everyone will do as Zhou Qing says. Some people will be forced to do something for various reasons, which will lead them to their death.

However, Zhou Qing didn't care whether they could escape their predicament, because that depended on the interpreter's own situation, and Zhou Qing didn't want to meddle.

He would simply draw a mysterious and profound pattern for each fortune stick he interpreted.

Each of these lines represents Zhou Qing's understanding of fate.

This insight came from the person who interpreted the divination slip.

When Zhou Qing spoke of destiny, it meant that he had already plucked the strings of fate, and all the actions of the interpreter afterward were manifestations of the strings vibrating.

The patterns on the bamboo skewer were Zhou Qing's analysis of the fluctuations.

Meanwhile, within two months of Zhou Qing's interpretation of the divination, the shackles weakened more and more, and half of them had already been worn away.

Time flies like water, and two months have passed in the blink of an eye.

The patterns Zhou Qing was carving became increasingly complex, and he gained more and more insights from these fluctuations.

The Daoist aura around him grew stronger and stronger, and the shackles were almost completely broken, yet even that slight barrier was proving difficult for Zhou Qing to overcome.

In the end, Zhou Qing took down his stall; interpreting the divination slips could no longer bring him any enlightenment.

Zhou Qing returned to his residence in the outer city with the nearly one thousand bamboo sticks.

He began to organize his findings from the past four months. In the process, he felt as if he could reach out and touch the four cardinal directions, yet...

There was always a thin film blocking him.

He didn't understand why. With his physique, there shouldn't have been any obstacles at this stage, yet they did exist.

During these four months, Linghu City was no longer peaceful; there was a sense that a storm was brewing.

More and more people are drowning on Linghu Lake, and they are all from this city.

Linghu Lake is vast, stretching as far as the eye can see, where the water meets the sky. As a result, dozens of cities of varying sizes surround Linghu Lake.

The fishermen on Linghu Lake were also people from these dozens of cities, but the only ones who drowned were from the city where Zhou Qing lived.

The city guards had already been mobilized. Several cultivators from the Four Extremes Realm, along with dozens of cultivators from the Dao Palace Realm, carefully examined the corpses. Although they discovered that the corpses had all been poisoned by a kind of poison that prevented them from using their magic power, they could not find the source of the poison.

However, this only happened to cultivators; the ordinary people in the city were not affected and continued to live as before.

Although these mortals cannot escape the sea of ​​suffering, mortals have their own way of living and their own pursuits.

During the month that Zhou Qing was in seclusion organizing the bamboo slips, a group of people passed by his house. The leader was an old scholar with white hair who had been studying diligently for decades. In an oasis near Zhou's house, in a mortal country, this old scholar had done many things that caused a sensation in that country.

He knew he would never become a cultivator in this lifetime, but he still did his own way of helping the world and saving people in his mortal way.

He had personally met the emperor, remonstrated with him even at the cost of his life, and was once bestowed with an imperial sword, which he used to execute ten treacherous officials.

At the age of eighty, he still refuses to succumb to fate and insists on doing something for ordinary people around the world.

However, he was too old, and with the pressure from both inside and outside the court, he had no choice but to retire. Now he has left that oasis and returned to the city where he was born.

Even though Zhou Qing wasn't particularly interested in what was happening outside, the commotion outside still piqued his interest, so he went outside to take a look.

Many mortals and cultivators stood by the roadside, but there was no one in the air, because the city lord had forbidden flying in the city, and a road was left empty in the middle of the road.

A large group of people followed behind the old man, consisting of dozens of riders. Among them were not only the old man's family members and servants, but also some guards. Surprisingly, Zhou Qing even saw cultivators among these guards.

It's hard to imagine that a mortal could have a cultivator as his bodyguard.

Moreover, the cultivator's eyes were filled with respect, which was even more unimaginable.

At this moment, Zhou Qing heard some cultivators talking nearby.

"This person is extraordinary. I heard that he is highly regarded by an elder of the Zhou family who is at the Dragon Transformation Realm, and they seem to have become close friends."

“I’ve heard about that too. It’s said that when that elder was passing through that country, he happened to see this old scholar being robbed by a group of bandits and helped him out.”

"After that, I don't know what happened, but the elder actually started discussing the Dao with this old Confucian scholar, not the Dao of cultivation, but the Dao of life."

"It is said that the elder sighed on the spot, 'I am far inferior to you,' and the two became close friends afterward. The elder once said, 'When your time comes, I will definitely come to see you off.'"

Zhou Qing then learned the whole story.

This matter came suddenly and went quickly. The next day, Zhou Qing continued to bury bamboo sticks, determined to break the last shackle.

Another month passed in the blink of an eye. Zhou Qing had been in this city for half a year, but he still hadn't made a breakthrough. He frowned, not understanding where he was lacking.

Chapter 42 Enlightenment and the Future

It was late autumn, early morning, and the air was still slightly chilly.

Zhou Qing stepped out of the house and stood in the courtyard.

His mind was in a mess; he was racking his brains but couldn't find a way out, and he was getting increasingly agitated. All he wanted right now was some peace and quiet.

In Zhou Qing's courtyard, there is a tall sycamore tree.

Suddenly, an autumn wind blew by, and several sycamore leaves immediately detached from the branches and slowly drifted down.

There are already many fallen leaves on the ground. In this late autumn, leaves fall with the wind every night.

Zhou Qing stared at the fallen leaves, his gaze gradually becoming blank.

Did these leaves fall voluntarily?

Amidst the falling leaves, Zhou Qing felt a sense of loneliness and desolation.

Perhaps it was voluntary, perhaps it wasn't, but so what?

When the autumn wind blows, no matter what the fallen leaves think, they have no choice but to fall and die.

This autumn wind is the end for those fallen leaves. Once the end is reached, even if the leaf can withstand the autumn wind once, how can it withstand it a second or a third time?

Just like the monks in this world, how many people have no regrets about dying?

Many old cult leaders and emperors, nearing the end of their lives, choose to venture into the Great Wilderness and forbidden zones in their later years, just to snatch their lives back from the heavens.

The wages of avarice is death.

Leaves fall with autumn, and life ends with death.

"When autumn commands leaves to fall, leaves have no choice but to fall; when commanded to die, cultivators have no choice but to die."

However, when spring comes next year and a new generation arrives, new green leaves will still appear, and a new generation of young people will still appear, one after another, and they will eventually follow in the footsteps of their predecessors and end up in the same way.

"Is this fate?"

Zhou Qing felt a sense of emptiness and touched upon an incomprehensible state of mind.

His eyes were sometimes hazy, sometimes empty, with a sycamore leaf fluttering in them, constantly disappearing and reborn in his vision.

Zhou Qingru stood in a vast emptiness, her heart growing increasingly tranquil, and an indescribable Daoist aura rose around her.

A fallen leaf drifted onto his shoulder, very light, yet carrying a sense of desolation.

The autumn wind brushed against his face; it was cool and he felt lonely.

Although it is the same wind, the feeling it brings to people is different because of the different seasons.

Although they are all human beings, their lives take different paths due to their different backgrounds.

The same Dao, yet because each person incorporates different thoughts, the Dao evolves in different ways.

At this moment, Zhou Qing sensed a strange Dao trace, his mind and body were extremely ethereal, as if he had transcended his physical body, and he was one with heaven and man. A wisp of thought transformed into a fallen leaf.

He entered a state of oneness with the Tao, a state where his true self is in harmony with the Tao. This state is far superior to enlightenment and is very difficult to achieve under normal circumstances.

Zhou Qing was immersed in this state, with thousands of destiny patterns in his mind intertwining and trying to merge together.

Gradually, Zhou Qing closed his eyes. He could no longer hear the wind, smell the fallen leaves, or feel the softness of the soil beneath his feet.

Two years ago, he obtained the complete Dao of Nature from Zhuofeng. Although he did not deliberately cultivate it, his attainments in the Dao of Nature were still very profound, and he had his own unique understanding of all things in nature.

solution.

Now, when he is lost on the path of destiny, the natural way has unexpectedly provided him with an opportunity for a breakthrough.

Within the Dao Palace, the sounds of the Great Dao resounded from the five palaces, as if someone were reciting a supreme scripture, expounding the profound principles of heaven and earth.