legend of the great sage
Li Qingshan seemed to fall into a bizarre dream. In a daze, he had the impression that everything he had experienced since transmigrating was fake, only a product of his daydreams as he waited for the bus on the side of the road. In contrast, everything before his eyes was the actual reality.
The middle-aged man with black-framed glasses approached him step by step, wanting to say something.
Whoosh! There was a blaring horn. A cement truck came hurtling over, slamming into the middle-aged man and flying past Li Qingshan.
Bang! The middle-aged man and the electric scooter were both thrown into the air. The parts of the electric scooter scattered on the ground.
Li Qingshan was dumbfounded.
There was the screeching sound of breaks. Soon, the cement truck came to a halt on the side of the road. The door swung open, and the driver scrambled out of the truck with wobbling knees, checking on the victim. Even when he knew that no one could survive something like that, he still clung onto a shred of hope.
Sure enough, the victim’s head had caved in deeply and his waist had almost snapped apart. He seemed like a bloody, fried dough twist that had just been wrung viciously.
Li Qingshan went up and stood beside the driver with furrowed brows. He gazed at the scene; the sense of eeriness in his heart grew stronger.
The driver was pale-white, explaining to Li Qingshan frantically, “I- it was an accident!”
At this moment, the middle-aged man on the ground let out a croak and coughed up a mouthful of blood before crawling towards Li Qingshan, leaving behind a long trail of blood on the asphalt road.
“Mother of god!” The driver was absolutely frightened out of his wits. His knees gave way, falling back on his bottom.
However, Li Qingshan beamed inside and strode over to welcome him, extending his hand to help up the middle-aged man.
The middle-aged man grabbed Li Qingshan’s hand and used his own blood to write a single word in Li Qingshan’s palm. Then his eyes rolled back as he keeled over on the spot, more dead than dead.
“Hey! Hey!”
Li Qingshan still had countless questions he wanted to ask, so how could he let him die? He immediately circulated the Qilin Transformation, channelling a tremendous amount of spiritual qi filled with vitality into his body.
It contained several innate abilities of the qilin, enough to revive the dead and cover a skeleton in flesh again. Let alone dying from a car crash, even if he had been grounded into minced meat and made into dumplings, he probably could be revived again, perhaps with much more than just one of him.
However, all of the spiritual qi merely vanished into his body. Nothing happened.
Li Qingshan was about to try something else when his vision suddenly clouded over. The bloody corpse in his hands actually turned into colourful haze, slipping between his fingers.
Li Qingshan looked up. The sky, cars, and advertisements in the distance all turned to mist, dispersing and vanishing.
Li Qingshan was stunned. Through the mist, he could vaguely see the Elder of Heavenly Tomes, the Spirit Reverend of Ocean Returnance, and Chao Tianjiao staring at him in surprise.
“Li Qingshan, what are you trying now?”
Chao Tianjiao’s voice rang out through the mist, becoming rather distorted. Towards the end, it had already become indiscernible.
The mist vanished again. Afterwards, Li Qingshan saw himself.
Learning from his lesson before, Li Qingshan immediately stepped forwards and spread his arms, trying to grab “himself”.
However, “he” also stepped forwards at the same time, spreading his arms as if he was trying to grab Li Qingshan.
Li Qingshan immediately realised that there was a mirror right before him. There was a strange crack that ran down its centre. Oh, it was an elevator door.
He looked around and discovered that he was probably in some kind of luxurious hotel right now.
The thrumming of the elevator rang out from behind the door.
Ding!
The elevator door opened slowly. A beautiful young lady dressed in gorgeous clothes stood in the elevator. Her face constantly twitched as her head trembled uncontrollably, giving off a sense of sickliness and strangeness, but her eyes were particularly clear, gazing at Li Qingshan hopefully.
Li Qingshan immediately confirmed that the young lady was the same person as the middle-aged man from before.
“Who are you? What is this place?”
The young lady was about to speak when the elevator cable abruptly snapped. None of the safety mechanisms were triggered. The lady fell to the depths of hell with the elevator, except her expression was strangely peaceful as if she had already known she would die.
With a boom, dust surged up through the elevator well, filling his face.
Li Qingshan was about to leap down when a hand grabbed his arm. Looking back, the dust had already turned to mist. The Elder of Heavenly Tomes asked from behind the mist, “Little bro, what’s wrong with you?”
Li Qingshan opened his mouth. The mist closed around his eyes again, turning into a seaside resort…
After who knew how long, the colourful cloud emerged from the glowing clouds in the air.
The sun set in the sea; the afterglow stopped burning. The curtain of night had already descended.
The Elder of Heavenly Tomes gathered his focus on Li Qingshan, but even he was unable to tell what was happening to him. Had his main body in the Demon domain suffered from cultivation deviation?
Li Qingshan seemed to jerk awake from the deepest of nightmares, gasping for air. He felt like several days had already passed.
During these “several days”, he had experienced thousands of scenarios and witnessed thousands of people die tragically through bizarre accidents.
There were both men and women, young and old, but Li Qingshan was very aware that they were all the same person, constantly experiencing death before constantly being reborn again.
Li Qingshan wanted to save “him” and get to the bottom of all of this, but he would also miss his chance narrowly. They were clearly extremely ordinary accidents. Only a hint of his abilities would be enough, or he did not even need to use his abilities at all. Simply a gentle push was enough.
However, he did not succeed a single time; it was as if “his” death was a form of certainty. Regardless of how powerful and wondrous his abilities were, he was unable to stop it or change it.
For the first few times, “he” had still tried to say something, but afterwards, “he” gave up, only gazing at Li Qingshan with eyes full of hope, accepting each death peacefully.
Li Qingshan gazed out. The night sky was clear, covered with stars.
For a moment, he had trouble discerning between reality and those illusions, feeling as if he did not truly exist here.
Was it an illusion?
Suddenly, he looked down at the palm of his hand. All he saw was a bloody “six” written there.
Even the bloody word faded rapidly, vanishing like it had evaporated away, but it had already become deeply engraved in his mind with absolute clarity.
“Six… six… six… sixth brother? The Soul-controlling Great Sage!”
Li Qingshan mulled over it for a while before suddenly shuddering and coming to a realisation.
After becoming a god, he had become capable of gazing into the heavenly secrets. He also possessed the complete bloodline of the spirit turtle, so he could deduce many pieces of information from nothing. Since he had already received such an obvious indication, he would never let the correct answer slip past him.
Without any doubt, the “person” who had been killed countless times by accidents was the sixth among the seven Great Sages, the Soul-controlling Great Sage!