Chapter 434 - 227: Crowned King

Chapter 434: Chapter 227: Crowned King

That orange cat!

Zheng Xiu and Feng Bei, a man and a woman alone in a room, managed to fill in most of the blanks on the "Path Map." They drew upon Feng Bei’s decade of experience in Ye Weiyang, combined it with what they’d witnessed in Gongsun Mo’s Cannibal Painting, and factored in everything they had encountered on their journey.

Deductions and conjectures slowly filled the page. The Upper, Middle, and Lower Nine Professions were all human aspirations. But the blank space between "Prisoner" and "Human"—a Path not meant for Humans—left only one possibility.

Zheng Xiu and Feng Bei thought of the orange cat at the same time.

That strange orange cat.

The orange cat they had raised for ten years in the World in the Painting.

Zheng Xiu had asked Qing Shisan about it. Ever since the cat arrived at the Zheng Family estate, it had never left, just squatted there day after day.

Qing Shisan had also noticed that after Master Zheng returned, the orange cat seemed to have become much more aloof and had started ignoring people.

Previously, if a maid in the manor tossed it a tasty morsel, the cat would come scampering over. Now, when they tossed food in front of it, all it did was roll its eyes and yawn, showing none of its former fawning behavior.

It had changed!

Zheng Xiu tentatively wrote a few words in the blank space.

"Cat"—the orange cat.

"Bird"—the Crow Fosterer.

After a moment’s thought, he added "Insect." He recalled the end of the Ghostly Realm at the Immortal Maiden Temple, and the giant Insect Scythe from beyond the mirror surface in the Darkness Passage that had nearly broken through into the Common World.

Maybe fish, too?

"Birds, beasts, fish, and insects... mountains, rivers, grass, and trees?" Zheng Xiu let his imagination run wild, taking a shot in the dark. "And above that? The sun, moon, and stars? Wind, flowers, snow, and moon?"

Listening to Zheng Xiu’s wild speculations, Feng Bei couldn’t help but smile. The corners of her lips curled up slightly; she clearly found his theories interesting, but... obviously not very plausible.

They were too bizarre for her to believe.

Zheng Xiu ignored the playful mockery in Feng Bei’s eyes. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he felt he was onto something.

Paths that Humans could not walk... the things that came to mind were animals, natural disasters, and idealistic or metaphysical concepts.

"Zhu tried to create the ’Crow Fosterer’ two hundred years ago."

"He made the Crow Fosterer learn the habits of birds and live among them until he eventually became a bird."

"A non-Human Path is not something an ordinary person can walk! Whether it was the Crow Fosterer who died on Sunset Mountain or the one we met, they all ended up as ghastly half-human, half-bird creatures!"

"This is a non-Human Path!"

"A Path that the living cannot walk!"

"But once a person masters these Paths, they will give birth to terrifying Miracle Techniques!"

"This is the price!"

"Or rather... a Restriction!"

"To become strong, you first have to stop being Human!"

Zheng Xiu sighed with emotion, gradually understanding the reasoning behind it all.

Feng Bei didn’t refute Zheng Xiu’s analysis. She silently pointed to "Prisoner" at the very top, looking at him with a faint, unreadable smile.

It was as if she were asking: ’What about you?’

Zheng Xiu understood the look in her eyes and gave a wry smile. "It’s not that I’m intentionally hiding anything. There have long been no secrets between us. It’s just that I don’t know why it is this way, either, and I know even less about where ’Prisoner’ comes from."

In truth, during their ten years of married life, Zheng Xiu had vaguely expressed to Feng Bei that he was from another world. But Feng Bei hadn’t believed him, laughing and saying he was talking nonsense.

Back then, Zheng Xiu had still thought Feng Bei was Xie Luohe, so he didn’t press the issue.

Explaining it again now would be superfluous. So to say he wasn’t hiding anything wasn’t wrong.

’I confessed. Whether you believe me or not is your business.’

Returning to the main topic, Zheng Xiu folded the "Path Map" and hid it on a bookshelf.

Only then did Feng Bei recall the topic they had started with: "gathering Mystics." After Zheng Xiu’s digression, she wanted to return to it and asked, "You mean, you want to find the Mystics on the map and recruit them for your own use?"

Zheng Xiu smiled and nodded. "None knows me better than you, Madam." He first deliberately—yet seemingly carelessly—prodded at their relationship, reminding Feng Bei that they were, in effect, a "dream couple" in all but name. Feng Bei remained silent, not denying it. Zheng Xiu continued, "To this day, Zhu still doesn’t know that we’ve learned of his origins through Gongsun Mo’s memories. He is even more unaware that we know his true identity and objective. With this foresight, we can deduce his next likely arrangements by working backward from his goal."

Upon hearing this, Feng Bei showed no surprise. A wave of killing intent surged in her eyes before vanishing in an instant. She said coolly, "He wants to recreate what happened in Baili Village twenty years ago!"

"Yes!" Zheng Xiu knew that Feng Bei must be thinking of her father, who had been tragically taken from Baili Village twenty years ago. There was one conjecture Zheng Xiu hadn’t voiced: twenty years ago, Feng Nantian was likely not a Mystic, but a "sacrifice" used to open the way to the Darkness.

A sacrifice was very unlikely to survive.

After Feng Bei underwent her transformation, she truly became a Mystic. She is one of the three "Human Pillars."

If Feng Bei still clung to the hope of retrieving Feng Nantian from the Darkness, she would likely end up with nothing.

As for the other two, Treasure King Cangyun and Wei Chen... he could find a way to confirm Wei Chen’s status later, but as for the Treasure King, who had been taken by the Darkness, they would likely never see him again in this lifetime.

The Treasure King had been struck from the official registers twenty years ago and had no descendants. To find out today, twenty years later, whether the Treasure King was an Innate Mystic, one would have to go ask Zhu—the mastermind himself.

"We know now that Zhu’s goal is to complete the centennial ’Ceremony.’ His Ceremony twenty years ago was not fully completed, and his attempt on you failed. Now that he has gone into hiding, if you remain in the Imperial City, he will most likely not return due to his fear of the ’entrance’ beneath the Imperial Palace. I’ve been thinking it over, and his most likely next move is to find new Mystics, set up Ghostly Realms, and arrange a layout to lure those Mystics into the ’locations’ he has prepared."