Chapter 461: I Will Take Action!
Chapter 461: I Will Take Action!
When Shen Peng finally saw Jiang Chen in person, the thousand words he had prepared vanished the moment he opened his mouth, leaving him utterly speechless.
Seeing her husband frozen, Lei Yunna glanced at their daughter, mustered her courage, and forced a welcoming smile. “Fellow Daoist Cai, you should have sent word that you were coming so we could have prepared a proper reception.”
Jiang Chen had no patience for pleasantries. He cut straight to the point. “Is that Shangxiang?”
Four years had passed. The girl now looked slightly older than his own Linglong.
Her frame retained the soft, delicate curves of early childhood, yet she carried herself with a poise befitting a descendant of a Cultivation clan.
Her skin was as fair as it had been in infancy, with a faint, healthy flush at the tips of her ears and nose.
Her baby fat had receded somewhat, revealing the gentle curve of her jawline, no longer as round and chubby as before.
She possessed a beautiful pair of almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with lively intelligence.
Lei Yunna quickly waved her daughter over. “Shangxiang, come here! Look who has come to visit!”Sun Shangxiang, who had been chasing butterflies, paused and walked over with a puzzled expression.
She had never met Jiang Chen before, so naturally, she did not recognize him.
No matter how often her parents had described him to her, it was difficult to connect those words to the stranger standing before her.
Lei Yunna awkwardly reminded her, “This is the man your father and I often speak of.”
“Oh!”
Realization dawned on Sun Shangxiang’s face. “Are you the Uncle Cai my parents always tell me to remember?”
Jiang Chen’s mouth twitched. *’This is the price of wearing a disguise,’* he thought.
Lei Yunna gently patted her daughter’s head. “Silly child, you should call him… call him…”
She trailed off, suddenly unsure of how to address him.
Call him Master? She hadn’t formally become his disciple yet!
Call him Immortal Master? That felt too distant, perhaps even diminishing their own standing.
Seeing the couple’s awkwardness, Jiang Chen simply reached out and patted Sun Shangxiang’s head before producing a pile of snacks. “Be a good girl, Shangxiang. Take these and go eat.”
The moment she saw the food, Sun Shangxiang’s eyes lit up. “So many snacks!”
However, she didn’t hoard them all for herself. After sharing a few pieces with her mother and father, she walked over to the other side of the pavilion to eat quietly on her own.
Jiang Chen nodded slightly. “She is quite sensible.”
Growing anxious, Lei Yunna shot a sharp glare at her silent husband.
Shen Peng finally managed to speak, though his voice was inexplicably hoarse. “Fellow Daoist Cai, I… I…”
Jiang Chen smiled, asking a question to which he already knew the answer. “Lin An mentioned that you wanted to see me. What is the matter?”
Shen Peng coughed dryly a few times to clear his throat before explaining. “It is like this. A short while ago, a man arrived claiming to be the current Sect Leader of the Spirit Grain Sect. He stated that Shangxiang’s physique and Spirit Root are both highly unusual, and he wishes to take her as his direct disciple.”
Jiang Chen raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t the Spirit Grain Sect fall?”
Upon hearing this, Shen Peng and Lei Yunna’s expressions drastically changed. “It fell?”
Jiang Chen looked mildly surprised. “You didn’t know?”
Shen Peng shook his head. “We only knew that a major incident occurred in the Canglan Sea and that the Long Clan fled. We remain completely ignorant of the rest of the situation.”
Jiang Chen gave them a brief rundown. “As you know, a disaster struck the Canglan Sea. As a result, countless Cultivation Sects and clans were either wiped out or forced to scatter.
“Only a dozen or so members of the Spirit Grain Sect survived. Their Sect Leader has been dead for a long time.”
Shen Peng and Lei Yunna listened with a growing sense of dread, a cold chill running down their spines. A wave of profound relief washed over them. “Thank the heavens we decided to seek you out first rather than handing her over to a complete stranger. If we had given Shangxiang to him, I fear she would have…”
Though he did not finish the sentence, the implication was clear.
The man’s identity was built on lies. If they had allowed him to take her, they likely would have never seen their daughter again.
Curious, Jiang Chen asked, “Just how special are her physique and Spirit Root?”
Shen Peng quickly answered, “Her Spirit Root is the Green Wood Spirit Root.”
Jiang Chen was intimately familiar with that. “Indeed, it is a rare, mutated Wood Spirit Root that grants an exceptional affinity with spirit plants. This child has the potential to become an outstanding… spirit farmer.”
Shen Peng continued, “As for her physique, it was the first time I had ever heard of it. He called it the Thunder-Skin Physique.”
Jiang Chen froze for a second before asking for confirmation. “Wait, what physique did you say?”
Shen Peng hesitated slightly before repeating, “The Thunder-Skin Physique.”
Jiang Chen’s expression instantly turned strange. “With such a phenomenal Spirit Root, how could she be cursed with such a bizarre physique?”
Shen Peng and Lei Yunna exchanged a worried glance, their hearts sinking simultaneously. “Fellow Daoist Cai, is there a problem with this physique?”
Jiang Chen spoke with utter seriousness. “With her Green Wood Spirit Root, she is practically born to be a spirit farmer. But this specific physique actively suppresses Wood Spirit Roots and repels spirit plants.
“To put it bluntly, everything she tries to plant will die.”
“Ah?”
Shen Peng and Lei Yunna were completely dumbfounded.
They had always assumed that the combination of their traits would result in a ‘Wood generates Thunder’ synergy, granting their daughter a limitless future.
They never imagined that while Wood indeed generated Thunder, the resulting manifestation would be so terribly skewed.
No wonder every flower and blade of grass she tried to nurture withered within three days. The cause had been her physique all along.
Jiang Chen looked across the pavilion at little Shangxiang, who was still quietly eating her snacks, and sighed. “Her path is destined to be even more arduous than yours.”
For a long moment, the couple was at a loss for words.
Shen Peng’s eyes turned red.
Lei Yunna went completely weak, collapsing into her seat before she began to softly sob.
“Father!”
“Mother!”
“Why are you crying?”
Hearing the sound of weeping, Sun Shangxiang quickly put down her food and trotted over to them.
She looked deeply worried and anxious, yet she didn’t know how to comfort them.
Even less did she realize that her parents’ tears were falling because of her.
After a while, Shen Peng took a deep breath to steady himself. “Fellow Daoist Cai, what should I do?”
Jiang Chen countered with a question of his own. “Where is this man claiming to be the Sect Leader of the Spirit Grain Sect right now?”
Shen Peng’s expression turned complicated. “His name is Qiao Baiyang. After he found us and explained Shangxiang’s condition, he mentioned that he needed to travel to another location to collect a second disciple he had taken an interest in. He said he would return to take them both back to the Spirit Grain Sect.”
Jiang Chen pressed, “How many days ago was this?”
“Three days,” Shen Peng answered immediately.
Jiang Chen stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Three days. Regardless of whether he relies on a flying artifact or not, he could easily cover thousands, if not tens of thousands, of miles in that time. I suspect he will be arriving very soon.”
Shen Peng and Lei Yunna instinctively looked at their daughter, their faces etched with deep concern.
Sensing that the situation was not as simple as it seemed, Jiang Chen narrowed his eyes. “What is this man’s Cultivation realm?”
Shen Peng replied gravely, “To convince us to let Shangxiang go, he released his Golden Core aura.”
“What grade was the Core?”
“Human-Grade.”
“And his specific stage?”
“His aura felt aged and heavy. It likely wasn’t the early stage.”
“So, mid or late stage, then!”
Having gathered the necessary intelligence, Jiang Chen felt even more at ease.
In a minor city like this, populated almost entirely by Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment cultivators, a Golden Core Perfected Master exerted an overwhelming, terrifying pressure.
One only needed to look at Green City; Perfected Master Wang alone was enough to keep all the Cultivation clans, factions, and Rogue Cultivators in absolute submission.
However, to the current Jiang Chen, a mere Human-Grade Golden Core—and an aging one at that—was practically insignificant.
He truly did not view the man as a threat.
“Do not worry,” Jiang Chen declared confidently. “I did not come here alone today. There is a Golden Core Perfected Master from an Immortal Sect nearby. When the time comes, he will take action!”