"............"
This was the only punctuation mark Mo Fan could use to express his feelings at this very moment.
The bleak autumn wind blew across the bare, absolute summit of Hundred Forging Peak.
Old man Lin Dong, standing on the large bluestone, clearly had a completely different interpretation of this half-minute-long dead silence.
He still maintained that peerless pose of waving his sleeve to point at the sky and looking down upon the mountains.
He closed his eyes and remained intoxicated for a full dozen seconds before finally, with deep satisfaction, retracting his withered arm and slowly turning his head.
When he saw the "son of the Purple Mountain True Lord" behind him—eyes wide, jaw slightly dropped, standing rigidly in place as if struck by lightning...
The wrinkles on Lin Dong's face instantly bloomed into a brilliant chrysanthemum smile.
In the eyes of this eccentric man, Mo Fan's dumbfounded, worldview-shattered expression was interpreted by him—extremely naturally and without any sense of incongruity—as being deeply shaken by his heaven-shocking, ghost-weeping, peerless masterpiece!
This was an epiphany! This was the fanaticism and awe of a resonating Dao Heart!
"How is it, little friend?"
Old man Lin Dong stroked the few sparse, grayish-white hairs on his chin. Every pore on his face practically screamed the words Fishing for Compliments.
He smilingly took a step closer, the light of anticipation flashing in his deep-set eye sockets.
His tone carried a bit of feigned modest pride:
"This proud work of mine, which I poured my heart and blood into, is it worthy to enter your discerning eyes?"
"Do not be constrained! We are both refined men of letters; please, offer a critique or two!"
Gulp.
Mo Fan swallowed a massive mouthful of saliva with great difficulty, his Adam's apple bobbing violently.
Before his jaw could even fully retract, his heart suffered a violent spasm.
A critique?!
Right now, he felt that even if he were immediately sent back to the underground kingdom to let that unknown abyssal monster give him another terrifying mental strangulation...
It would be ten thousand times more merciful than this current trial!
Since transmigrating to this man-eating cultivation world, he had faced demon wolves, schemed against deacons, and even gone head-to-head in a melee brawl with a Foundation Establishment Eldest Senior Brother.
But he swore he had never felt as helpless, suffocated, and despairing as he did in this very moment.
"This is a fucking threat to my life!"
In this instant, Mo Fan's brain began to overclock to the absolute limit, spinning frantically.
How do I critique it?
Say it's "utter dog shit"?
Stop joking! This crazy old man before him could effortlessly crush him into ash!
If he dared to say half a "No," this old man would definitely think he was insulting his "comprehension of the Great Dao" and slap him—System and all—straight back to Earth!
Then say it has "gorgeous diction" and "meticulous classical allusions"?
Do those eight words have even half a cent of relation to the line "From afar, the mountain peak is high, up close, the large tree is low"?!
"Hooo..."
In a flash of lightning, Mo Fan viciously bit down on his own back molars.
Mo Fan's originally sluggish eyes suddenly erupted with a burst of extreme fanaticism, even carrying the bright glint of a religious zealot!
He abruptly took a half-step back, cupped his hands together, and gave Lin Dong a deep, prolonged bow.
Then he raised his head, forcibly squeezing out an expression of breathtaking shock.
"Good poem! This is truly a... masterpiece for the ages!"
Mo Fan's voice trembled slightly, as if he were still immersed in that "Dao Rhythm" and unable to extricate himself.
Going completely against his conscience, he spat out a few phrases with sonorous force:
"The Great Dao is exceedingly simple! Returning to original purity!"
Seeing old man Lin Dong's eyes gradually brighten, Mo Fan began his frenzied verbal DPS:
"Senior, in this entire poem of yours, you did not use any gorgeous diction, nor did you pile up those obscure and difficult-to-understand ancient allusions!"
"Senior, you merely used the most common high mountains and large trees to extremely precisely sketch out the supreme laws governing all things in heaven and earth!"
"Especially that last line, 'Turns out, it is I who stand highest'!"
Mo Fan spoke with deep emotion, even forcibly squeezing out a tear to swirl in his eye sockets.
"How is this writing about a mountain? This is clearly Senior's absolute state of mind of 'jumping beyond the Three Realms, not within the Five Elements'!"
"It is the supreme arrogance of refusing to yield to the Heavenly Dao and looking down upon the firmament!"
"To tell you the truth..."
Mo Fan put on an expression of looking up at a high mountain, delivering the ultimate critical hit:
"The spirit of the old gentleman's poem is already comparable to the peak literary talent of my father, the Purple Mountain True Lord! For this junior to have the fortune to listen to it today, I am truly... thoroughly prostrated in admiration!"
"If one hears the Dao in the morning, one can die content in the evening!"
God be his witness.
Mo Fan swore to the heavens in his heart that this was absolutely the most against-his-conscience, most disgusting lie he had ever told in his combined two lifetimes.
However, the effect was outstanding.
"Good! Good! Good! What a 'Great Dao is exceedingly simple'! What a 'Returning to original purity'!"
Upon hearing this critique, old man Lin Dong was so excited his entire body trembled.
He said "Good" four times in a row, his shriveled face glowing with radiance, looking as if he had instantly aged backwards by ten years.
"The one who understands this old man is you, my little friend!"
However, before Mo Fan could even breathe a sigh of relief.
What happened next profoundly taught him the meaning of shooting oneself in the foot.
"Oh?!"
Lin Dong's head snapped up. An eerie green light, like a starving wolf, abruptly erupted from those deep-set eye sockets.
He lunged forward in a single stride, and a pair of withered hands—clamping like iron pincers—locked dead onto Mo Fan's shoulders.
"Purple Mountain True Lord?!"
Old man Lin Dong was so excited his spit flew everywhere. "Your dad actually possesses such world-shocking talent too?! He can also write poetry with such spirit?!"
"Hahahaha! If the Heavens had not birthed me, Lin Dong, the Dao of Poetry would be like an eternal long night!"
"I never expected that in this foul-smelling cultivation world, a soulmate of this old man was actually hiding!"
The old man grabbed Mo Fan's arm with astonishing strength, pulling him toward the path down the mountain:
"Let's go! Quickly! There's no time like the present! Hurry and take this old man to the Main Peak for an introduction! This old man must go meet your dad today!"
"I want to battle him for three hundred rounds atop the sea of clouds, discussing the Dao through poetry! Let's see exactly whose poetry is superior!"
"..."
Mo Fan was yanked so hard he stumbled. In that instant, he truly wanted to die.
Cold sweat instantly soaked through his freshly changed, dry cyan shirt with a whoosh. He felt his heart was about to jump right out of his throat.
"I fucking..."
Mo Fan let out a wail of despair in his heart.
Where was his cleverness? Where was the tactical genius he was so proud of?! Why did everything turn into a fucking mess the moment he faced this dead old man!
What the hell is a Purple Mountain True Lord? That's a dad I literally just fabricated out of thin air in my brain to flex on him!
If he really let this crazy old man drag him to the Main Peak to "discuss the Dao through poetry" and he couldn't produce a dad...
Once the crime of deceiving an elder was established, even a hundred heads wouldn't be enough to chop off!
"C... Calm down! I must salvage this!"
"S... Senior! Senior Lin, please hold your steps!"
Mo Fan forcibly steadied his frantically trembling legs, his feet gripping the ground dead tight.
He shouted stutteringly, trying to break free from Lin Dong's iron pincers.
"Hmm? What else is the matter, little friend?" Lin Dong turned his head, his face full of impatience.
"My... My father..."
The gears in Mo Fan's brain were almost sparking from friction. He swallowed hard, a desperate plan forming in his mind to salvage the situation.
"My father is truly inconvenienced to receive guests today! The old gentleman is extremely busy with affairs!"
"At this very moment, he is inside the Main Peak's Great Hall, having a closed-door Dao discussion with my Martial Uncle, the Sect Master, deliberating on the sect's grand century-long plans!"
Mo Fan lowered his voice to the extreme, putting on an incredibly classified expression:
"For a closed-door secret talk of this magnitude, an inescapable soundproof array has long been set up around them."
"Idle personnel... even if you go, Elder, you won't be able to see him. If you rashly interrupt, I fear it will incur the Sect Master's displeasure."
"Senior, if there is destiny, you and my father will naturally meet; it doesn't have to be right at this moment!"
"A closed-door Dao discussion?"
Hearing this, Lin Dong's brows furrowed slightly. Although he was a madman, he also knew that the Sect Master's deliberations couldn't be barged into casually.
The fanaticism in his eyes faded slightly, but he was still somewhat unwilling, smacking his lips. "Aiya, what a pity! This old man has a chest full of poetic inspiration and nowhere to vent it!"
Seeing Lin Dong still hesitating, Mo Fan knew he had one shot at this.
Striking while the iron was hot, he immediately put on an expression that was even more eager and fanatical than Lin Dong's, speaking loudly:
"Senior, do not rush!"
"The quatrain the old gentleman just recited—although this junior is dull, I have already memorized it word for word, taking it to heart!"
Mo Fan patted his chest, his eyes incomparably resolute:
"How about this! This junior will take my leave first right now, rush down the mountain at top speed, find a top-quality jade slip, and extremely solemnly transcribe Senior's masterpiece for the ages!"
"Then, once his affairs are concluded, I will solemnly deliver it to my father!"
"Once my father has respectfully read your world-shocking work and has a reply or a matching poem, this junior guarantees to contact you immediately!"
"I absolutely will not let Senior wait a moment longer! What do you think?"
This proposal scratched Lin Dong's itch in exactly the right place.
Having one's finest work presented to a peer of equal standing for admiration—the particular satisfaction of that vanity was something Lin Dong found deeply, deeply agreeable.
"Good! Excellent!"
Lin Dong was already too far gone in his own literary self-satisfaction to examine the proposal for flaws.
The flattery of "presenting the poem to a great lord" went straight to his head, and he actually completely failed to scrutinize the glaring plot holes in Mo Fan's words.
He released the hand gripping Mo Fan, stroked his beard with satisfaction, and leisurely walked back to sit on that large bluestone.
He adopted the unfathomable posture of an otherworldly sage who had risen above worldly concerns.
"Since that is the case, this old man will not force it."
Lin Dong closed his eyes slightly, displaying the demeanor of a grandmaster.
"This old man shall remain atop this mountain peak, watching the clouds roll and unfurl, quietly awaiting the good news from the Purple Mountain True Lord at any time."
Pardoned. He'd been pardoned.
Mo Fan felt like a man who had just crawled out of the underworld on his hands and knees. Every bone in his body had gone soft with relief.
"This junior... takes his leave! Senior, please stay!"
He suppressed every screaming instinct to turn and sprint down the mountain immediately.
He knew—knew—that this was precisely the moment to maintain the bearing of a well-bred young lord.
He cupped his hands with rigid formality, turned around.
One step. Two steps. Three steps.
Slow. Back straight. Stride measured and unhurried—the picture of an elegant young master enjoying a pleasant mountain stroll.
But beneath the cyan changshan, cold sweat was running in rivulets, soaking through to his skin.
He walked like that—leisurely, composed, under Lin Dong's "appreciative" gaze—all the way down the ridge path.
Until—
He rounded a massive outcrop of rock.
Until the boulder—and the gray-robed old man sitting on it—passed completely out of his line of sight, swallowed by the thick mountain stone.
BOOM——!!
The "refined young gentleman" facade shattered in zero-point-zero-one seconds. Gone without a trace.
The composure on his face collapsed instantly into wide-eyed, twitching, barely-contained panic.
"RUN!!!"
Mo Fan threw everything he had into his legs.
No thought of concealing his abilities—the Qi and blood of the Body Forging Record surged through him like boiling magma at full output.
[ Bone Armament ] snapped into place across both leg joints in an instant.
He became a streak of cyan across the ruined mountainside—a runaway horse, a cannonball out of a barrel, a blur that barely touched the ground.
Thorns in his path? Smashed through.
Loose-stone traps at the edges of abandoned mine pits? Cleared in a single bound.
His mind held exactly one thought: Get away from that lunatic. As far as possible. As fast as possible.
Hah—hah—hah——
The wind screamed past his ears. Mo Fan moved at the absolute limit of his speed, practically flying sideways across the cliff face.
In less than a quarter-hour, he covered a stretch of mountain road that normally took half an hour of walking, and came crashing back into the hidden canyon at the deepest end of Hundred Forging Peak.
BANG.
He threw himself through the gate of his stone courtyard like a gale-force wind and blew straight into the stone dwelling.
CLANG.
The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind him, bolted by both hands.
And then Mo Fan simply... slid.
Back against the door, legs giving out entirely, he melted down the wood like a man made of water and collapsed onto the floor in a heap.
Huff... huff... haah...
He heaved for breath, chest pumping like a bellows, each inhale carrying the raw, metallic taste of a man who had narrowly escaped something terrible.
His face was ashen. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. He was, by any measure, a complete and utter wreck.
He thought back to the summit. The "poetry duel." The razor's edge he'd balanced on for every single second of it.
Mo Fan buried his face in both hands, grabbed fistfuls of his own hair, and let out a howl of pure, anguished soul-pain into the empty stone room:
"Touching grass?!"
"TOUCH WHAT FUCKING GRASS!!!"
"In this broken cultivation world—from now on, I am NEVER, EVER, EVER going outside again!!!"