Chapter 1432 The Mysterious Kunlun!

• Kunlun Mountain is the most important sacred peak in local myth. There are countless legends about it. In those tales, the Jade Void Palace, where the Primeval Lord of Heaven cultivated, is said to sit atop Kunlun, so Kunlun also goes by another name: Jade Capital Mountain. In the Five Elements and Eight Trigrams, Kunlun lies in the northwest, the Qian position, so people call it the Sky Pillar. And the mysterious rumors about Kunlun? Way too many to count. Some say it’s where the Queen Mother of the West lives... Others say it’s the gate of hell... the valley of death... or that nine heavens stack atop the peak... Some even claim they saw a real dragon appear over Kunlun with their own eyes. Kunlun is said to hide a ton of strange treasures. Jade trees, deathless trees, the langgan tree—bizarre trees of all kinds. They say phoenixes and luan birds nest there, too. Eat the fruit of the deathless tree and you won’t die. The flawless jade on the langgan tree? That’s phoenix food... But all that is just legend. No one can prove it for real. In Minister Xiao’s files, there are a few images of strange trees. Whether they’re those fabled sacred trees, no one knows. And the spots where those trees were found? Deep, deep in Kunlun. Trees are at least on camera—you can see them, even if you can’t judge what they really are. As for those weird birdsong clips in the files, there’s only audio. Is it the phoenix? No way to be sure. Still, it’s things like this that make Kunlun even more mysterious. ... Right now, on the Kunlun Plateau in the northwest, the sun is just climbing. Because the elevation is so high, puffs of white cloud hang close to the ground. From afar, sky and earth look stitched together, like a fairyland. In the distance, within the clouds, someone rides the mist toward them. That someone, of course, is Michael Shephard. After getting some intel on Kunlun from Minister Xiao, Michael headed straight there. From Carltown to Kunlun is almost half a country away. But for Michael, that’s nothing. He used to ride the wind; now that he’s stepped into the Returning-to-Void level of riding the wind, he’s basically flying. The sages said a true adept commands the six breaths and rides the wind. Only when you reach that state do you realize the ancients weren’t talking nonsense. It’s freedom like a bird’s—no, freer than a bird... It feels amazing... But Michael doesn’t have the heart to enjoy it. Did the Heavenly Gate open or not? Where is it? And Laura—was she taken to the immortal realm? Is she safe? Michael doesn’t dare waste a second. Find the Heavenly Gate a minute sooner, and maybe Laura will face a minute less danger. As he reaches Kunlun, the whole range fills his sight. This mountain chain starts in the Pamirs and runs more than 2,500 kilometers, vast as a coiled dragon. The place Michael wants is the deepest core of Kunlun, where all the mysteries gather—and where War God Xiao’s bloodstains were found. Even so, the inner Kunlun covers a huge area. From the sky, Michael studies the terrain below as he slowly descends. Sure enough, just like Minister Xiao said, the scenery in Kunlun’s depths keeps shifting as he drops. That is, every few meters down, the view below changes from what it was a moment ago. Is it just perspective—how a ridge looks different from different angles—or is there some weird formation hidden in Kunlun’s heart? One thing’s for sure: even before he truly enters the inner Kunlun, Michael has already tasted its mystery.