Chapter 19 Return

After a while, Shao Qiming woke up.

And the first sound he heard after waking up was his friend's slightly amused voice.

"Good grief, you're finally awake."

He could see Su Zhou's figure silhouetted against the moonlight—he handed over his phone, reminding him, "Your parents called you earlier, couldn't get through, so they called me."

"Even though I said you were fine, you should probably let them know you're okay yourself."

"I'll call them later… Are you alright?"

Shao Qiming's mind was working quickly. As soon as he woke up, he understood where he was and what the situation was—Su Zhou, after recovering, must have brought him, unconscious, out of that crypt full of corpses. Now, they were in the small tourist town where they had started at noon.

"No problem… That's good."

Looking directly at Su Zhou's left ear and left hand, Shao Qiming was relieved to find that they were both fine. He got up from the table and stood unsteadily on the ground. He was very perceptive, knowing that he shouldn't say too much at this time, so he just smiled and said, "You have to tell me all the details later."

"Don't worry, how could I keep it from you?"

Su Zhou laughed, originally wanting to pat the other's shoulder, but stopped halfway—his strength was greater than before, and Shao Qiming clearly looked like he was in bad shape. If he patted him, he might fall apart. So he withdrew his hand, "I'll tell you all about it when we get back to the country, but for now, I'll take you to get some dinner. You can barely stand."

Through the words of the Snake Spirit, Su Zhou knew how he had survived—just as he had ignored the danger of the Lian Dao Hui (Prayer Gathering) to save Shao Qiming, Shao Qiming had also unhesitatingly ignored the danger of the mysterious existence and recited the holy words to save him.

It could only be said that if either side had hesitated even slightly, or had even a little doubt, both would have died. After all, Su Zhou, who already knew what the 'Secret Snake' was that the Lian Dao Hui (Prayer Gathering) spoke of, understood very well that he could not have escaped the search of that imp-like secret snake soul.

Going to the cave to save people was also saving himself.

It was difficult for a person to find a friend in a lifetime who could honestly share all secrets, all hobbies, and sincerely support each other. It was their luck that he could meet Shao Qiming, and Shao Qiming could meet him.

After Shao Qiming reported his safety to his parents, he went to the restaurant with Su Zhou. There was nothing much to say about the eating process. Perhaps because it had been coordinated in advance, the restaurant was not closed and had prepared a lot of food.

The food of Shan State had a very Zheng Southern style, with various meats and pastas paired with dried chili peppers, plus sour seasonings, which might not be something they were used to, but at least it wasn't bland.

Especially since Su Zhou and Shao Qiming were both from Hong Province and liked spicy food, Su Zhou had clearly already eaten dinner, but he ate another meal, a veritable eating machine. On the other hand, Shao Qiming said he was full after eating just a little.

Next, the two didn't say much. After all, most of the other tourists who had been kidnapped and disappeared were still asleep, and although the search was still going on in the distant forest, it had nothing to do with ordinary people, so the two of them picked up their phones and started to pass the time.

"Wow, I didn't get anything again!"

Su Zhou's face was very bad. He didn't play many mobile games, mainly because he was unlucky. He usually only played Azure Rainbow Fantasy and Old Day Ark. Just now, he had done a ten-pull in each game, intending to celebrate surviving the crisis yesterday, but he got nothing, only blues and whites.

As for Shao Qiming, he was a good student and never played mobile games, only occasionally playing puzzle games on the Steam platform. He was still reviewing important points.

Just as Su Zhou was thinking about whether to spend money to recharge—hadn't he just been 'chopped' once not long ago—he suddenly heard Mandarin with a bit of a southern accent ringing out in the center of the tourist town.

"Zheng Country tourists, gather!"

After realizing that this incident was far from an ordinary mysterious organization's small-scale trouble, the Zheng Country Embassy arranged a series of procedures to send away as many tourists as possible from the northern part of Shan State—the reason used was that the internal opposition armed forces in Shan State had made unusual moves, and even planned to kidnap tourists and negotiate with the government. In short, the situation was very dangerous, so it was better to leave first.

Faced with this reason, no tourist would complain. Even if they did, they would only complain verbally, and all the people who woke up from their dreams muttered to hurry up, while Su Zhou and Shao Qiming mixed in with the crowd, boarded a bus, and came to the nearest airport in the bumpy ride, where there were several large civil aviation planes from Zheng Country Airlines.

Check passports, check luggage, arrange seats, and then board the plane.

"Crap, there's still summer homework!"

Su Zhou sat in a window seat, and Shao Qiming had already taken out his paper and pen and started writing his summer test paper on the board—this immediately made Su Zhou, who had forgotten all about his summer homework, feel a splitting headache, but when he thought that Qiming probably wouldn't refuse to let him copy this time, he immediately felt much better.

Homework is not a big deal if you can copy it.

Buzz—

Not long after several roll calls, the plane began to accelerate and take off.

"We are now… in the high sky."

Su Zhou could feel the little snake on his left ear wriggling out of his hair. It and he simultaneously stared out the window, staring at the plane gradually rising, the wings passing over cities and peaks, and entering above the clouds.

—Every time he boarded a plane, Su Zhou would feel nervous and scared. This person who was not afraid of even ghosts and monsters was actually very afraid of heights and very afraid of flying on planes.

The reason was simple. He didn't know if the plane would have an accident this time, and if it did, how should he deal with it.

This kind of situation where he knew he might encounter danger, but had no means of resistance, was really hard not to make people nervous, not to make people afraid… and ghosts and monsters, he usually took the initiative to find them, and had already made all the preparations to deal with them. Even though both were unknown anomalies, and the probability of encountering them was the same small, just because of this point, he would have different feelings.

But now, he was very peaceful… he was no longer afraid.

Even now, right here above the clouds, in the high sky, if he were thrown out of the plane, Su Zhou knew that he would never die. The perfect body that the Snake Spirit had created for him could even fit the power of the wind to slow down the speed of his fall. This sense of security from the bottom of his heart, this wonderful and fearless heart, was perhaps the confidence brought by 'transcendence'.

"Hey, Yala." Staring at the mountains and rivers that flew by under the wing, Su Zhou couldn't help but say in his mind: "Do you think there will really be a lot of extraordinary people in the future, will it be very common?"

"'New Era' after the advent, indeed a lot, is very common."

Also watching the window, the sky and the earth, the Snake Spirit's voice, with a trace of nostalgia, for Su Zhou's question, it calmly replied: "The time of the righteous law, the opening of the heavens and the earth, the rise of the magic tide. Or the most common name in the epochs 'spiritual qi revival' - what you are about to encounter, is that kind of era."

"But Su Zhou, do you really look forward to that kind of era?"

Yala turned its neck, its blood-colored body crystal clear, its voice with a hint of profound meaning: "Everything in this world will be changed - thunder tribulations may appear in the high sky, violent winds will rise above the nine heavens, and the holy light of the blazing sun will illuminate the ten directions and eight extremes, and the world will change color for it."

"The planes we are riding on now may no longer be safe and need to be modified before they can be used, and everything that you children of humans are accustomed to using will change."

"Everything will be changed, in all aspects, inside and out - Su Zhou, are you still looking forward to such an era? Don't you feel afraid?"

To this, Su Zhou had only one answer.

"Isn't this a good thing? Compared to the stubborn and boring reality we have now."

Staring at the outside of the window at an altitude of ten thousand meters, in the young man's eyes, there was a flash of purple-green light, like a snake's pupil, like a phantom of a dragon's eye, but his spirit was still calm and powerful; "In the future, everything will change, we will swim in the changing and rapidly flowing river, and gallop in the direction we want."

"Extraordinary awakening is the carving knife that this world uses to change us, and extraordinary power and cultivation are the iron hammers for us to change the world."

"Why not look forward to it? Why be afraid? A normal world is a fish tank, and people are fish trapped in the tank, and the extraordinary is the sea outside the tank. I am a born sea fish, I want to break the tank and enter the sea - and the world has given me the iron hammer."

Thinking like this, Su Zhou closed his eyes, and he said calmly in his mind: "There is no doubt that this is the world I want."

Yala was entrenched on Su Zhou's ear, and it could clearly hear that this was the most real thought in the other's heart.

After a moment of silence, Yala laughed.

"What an interesting human being, what an interesting life."

Its voice, while joyful, carried a hint of nostalgia: "It is precisely because of this that for thousands of years, I have always been doing it because of you, and I am happy to do so."