After a thousand years of cultivation, he returns at the pinnacle!

Jiang Chen had a headache.

The Twelfth Apostle's Hall was not particularly difficult to fight, and the journey was smooth. I even got to see a long-lost old friend.

In a sense, I'm in a pretty good mood.

but...

Jiang Chen didn't want anyone to know about the world of cultivation, except for that guy Wang Kai.

But now, thanks to the guide to the Twelfth Apostle's Temple and the global live broadcast, this thing has inevitably become known to the world.

However, after the collapse of the Twelfth Apostle's Temple, looking at the commotion behind him, he chose to go straight home.

Jiang Chen stood downstairs at his own building.

The crooked locust tree in the flower bed is still there, the old lady walking her dog is still there, and the smell of cooking oil and sandalwood in the air is still there. Everything is exactly the same as when he left a week ago, but the few interview vehicles that haven't left yet at the entrance of the community and the few self-media bloggers squatting by the flower bed eating boxed lunches are all reminding him that some things are different now.

As he walked past the flowerbed, the old lady who always walked her Teddy Bear dog was bending down to pick up its poop. She straightened up, saw Jiang Chen, and rubbed her eyes. This time, instead of muttering, "My presbyopia is getting worse again," she stared at Jiang Chen for three seconds, then said in a tone of sudden realization, "Oh my, aren't you that guy on TV?" Jiang Chen nodded at her, not stopping. "I knew it!" the old lady's voice came from behind him, "My grandson talks about you all the time, saying you're even more powerful than Ultraman!"

Jiang Chen didn't turn around, but the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.

The stairwell still smelled familiar. Chicken soup was simmering on the first floor, the aroma of braised fish wafted down from the third, and the sandalwood incense on the fifth was stronger than usual—Aunt Li burned incense for important occasions, and today she burned an unusually large amount. Jiang Chen climbed four floors and stopped in front of his own door. The door was still the same old-fashioned security door, its paint peeling, the doorknob worn smooth. The faded "Fu" (good fortune) character on the door was the same one his mother had bought from the market last Spring Festival for one yuan; it had been there for over half a year without being removed. A corner of the transparent tape beneath the "Fu" character was peeling off, trembling slightly in the wind of the stairwell.

He raised his hand and knocked on the door.

There were no familiar footsteps coming from inside. No sound of his mother running to open the door in an apron, spatula in hand, no clatter of the spatula falling to the floor, no barrage of questions like, "You're back? Are you hurt?" The room was as quiet as an empty house. But Jiang Chen's senses told him that two people were standing behind the door. His father and mother, standing side-by-side in the entryway, motionless.

Jiang Xueqin's hand was already on the doorknob, but she didn't turn it. Jiang Tianyi stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, the other clutching the empty cigarette box—the one Jiang Chen had crushed a week ago when he went to the Apostle's Hall, which he hadn't thrown away.

Jiang Chen waited for a moment, then pushed open the door himself.

The door wasn't locked. The entryway light was on, casting a dim, yellowish glow on the old rug, used for over a decade, on the indelible soy sauce stain, and on the pencil mark on the wall that stretched from knee-high to the top of the doorframe. Jiang Xueqin stood before him, her eyes red-rimmed. Today, she wasn't wearing an apron, wasn't carrying a spatula, and didn't rush over to pat him down from head to toe as usual. She just stood there, her hands hanging at her sides, looking at him with an expression Jiang Chen had never seen before.

There was worry, heartache, and all the things that had been building up over the past seven days, things he wanted to say but didn't know how to say. But more than anything, there was bewilderment—the kind of bewilderment that comes when you face your child and realize that the child has far exceeded your understanding.

Jiang Tianyi stood behind her. He wasn't wearing a coat; the cuffs of his white shirt were rolled up twice, revealing old scars on his forearms from cuts made by steel bars at the construction site. His lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he only gripped the empty cigarette pack in his hand tighter. The cigarette pack made a very faint sound of plastic deforming in his palm.

"Dad, Mom," Jiang Chen said first, "I'm back."

Jiang Xueqin's eyes reddened again. She opened her mouth, letting out a very soft sound, as if squeezed from her throat. Then she raised her hand and patted Jiang Chen's shoulder. The slap was very light, as light as brushing off dust. Then she patted him again, this time a little harder. Then another, and another, and another.

"You child!" Her voice finally burst from her throat, trembling from seven days of suppressed emotions. "What you said on TV, about millennia and cultivating immortality, is it all true? Cultivating immortality? What is cultivating immortality? How is it done? Where is it done? Why don't we know anything about it?"

Her questions exploded like a machine gun. Each one was louder, tighter, and closer to the brink of tears than the last.

"Are you hurt? Are you hurt? Did that Morgana hurt you? We saw that girl named Su Wannian, and we also saw your master. Your eyes reddened when you saw your master. Your father said your eyes reddened. He said he saw it, he—"

Her voice suddenly stopped. Because she saw Jiang Chen's eyes. Those eyes weren't red.

He was simply listening. With an unprecedented patience, he listened as she finished speaking each and every word.

Jiang Xueqin stopped. She took a deep breath, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then looked up and said in a voice much calmer than before, yet more serious than ever, "Okay. I won't ask anymore. But you have to tell me—"

He went inside and sat down on the sofa. It was that old sofa, worn down by countless sitting, and he sat right in the deepest part of the indentation—he had sat in this spot every time he came home since he was a child, until the springs were loose, the fabric was pilled, and the indentation perfectly conformed to his body.

Jiang Xueqin sat down to his left. Jiang Tianyi sat down to his right, placed the crumpled empty cigarette pack on the coffee table, then picked up the remote and turned off the television. The screen was looping news footage of the collapse of the Twelfth Apostle's Temple; the instant the footage disappeared, it was as if something in the air vanished with it.

"Where to begin?" Jiang Chen asked.

"Let's start from the beginning," Jiang Xueqin said. "Let's begin from the beginning."

Jiang Chen was silent for a moment, then nodded.

"On the afternoon of Awakening Day, I was hit by a car," he said. "You remember. I was taken to the hospital, it was just minor injuries, I was observed overnight, and then I went home." Jiang Xueqin nodded. Of course she remembered.

"That night, my consciousness wasn't in this world." Jiang Chen's voice was very soft, as if he were recounting something that happened to someone else. "It went to another world. A place called the Cultivation Realm. There are no Awakened Ones, no Apostles, no spiritual power. There is only the Heavenly Dao, only True Essence, only cultivation. I entered the body of a boy named Jiang Chen—same name, same surname, looks very similar, but not me. He was ambushed and died in the back mountain of the Qingyun Sect. I took his place, starting from the lowest level of Qi Refining, cultivating step by step upwards."

"Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Deity Transformation, Body Integration, Mahayana, Tribulation Transcending." Each realm he spoke carried a strange weight, as if these words were carved with blood and life in another world.

"Finally, I cultivated myself to become an Immortal Emperor. I stood at the highest point of that world. Then I returned. A thousand years in that world, here, only one night has passed."

He stopped and looked at his parents. Jiang Xueqin's lips were pale, and Jiang Tianyi's breathing had become noticeably heavier, but neither of them spoke.

"That's all," Jiang Chen said.

The living room remained quiet for a long time. The second hand of the old-fashioned wall clock ticked back and forth several times.

"Who is Su Wanniang?" Jiang Xueqin asked the first question. Jiang Chen was slightly taken aback, then a very faint bitter smile appeared on his lips.

"The neighbor next door," he said. "Jiang Chen's neighbor from a thousand years ago. She was three years older than him and took care of him since he was a child. On the day he decided to cultivate immortality, she didn't say goodbye to him. She waited for him her whole life and never married."

Jiang Xueqin remained silent for a long time. Then she said softly, "You've fulfilled his wish."

"I guess so," Jiang Chen said.

"And that master," Jiang Tianyi finally spoke, "you saw him on TV, and your eyes turned red."

Jiang Chen did not deny it. "His name is Qingyunzi, his Daoist name is Qingxu Zhenren, and he is the peak master of the seventh peak of the Qingyun Sect. He took in a country boy who knew nothing as his disciple, personally taught him how to wield a sword, how to cultivate Qi, and the principles of being a good person. Later, he was possessed by a demon god. I saw it with my own eyes."

His voice was completely flat, but Jiang Xueqin noticed that he tapped his fingers lightly on his knee—a habit he had developed since childhood, a gesture he would make when he was nervous, thinking, or when his softest spot was touched.

"Did you suffer during those thousand years?" Jiang Xueqin asked. She had been holding this question in for seven days. She had wanted to ask it when she asked those "Were you hurt?" questions earlier, but she didn't dare.

Now she finally asked.

Jiang Chen looked at her. He looked at the woman whose apron was scallion-stained and whose hands still smelled of dish soap. She had never cultivated immortality, never fought an apostle, and never left Jiangzhou. But she knew what suffering was.

"It was tough at first," he said, "but it wasn't tough anymore. Because I got used to it."

Seeing Jiang Chen silently utter his indifferent words, Jiang Xueqin felt a pang of sadness. Even if he said that, a thousand years... how did a person survive all that time?

His memories of this world may have already faded somewhat.

Jiang Xueqin didn't ask any further questions. She reached out and took Jiang Chen's hand in her own. His hands were cold, and she cupped them in her own palm.

"The rice is in the pot," she said.

"The ribs have been stewed for two hours, and the cartilage is cooked until it's very tender, just the way you like it."

This is a warmth that Jiang Chen could never experience in the world of cultivation.