Chapter 137 – The Mountain God
Tu Ran turned on her flashlight, illuminating the area where they were.
Pangpang was shaking its head vigorously, flinging water droplets off its feathers.
Inevitably, some splashed onto Tu Ran.
Tu Ran didn’t mind; she was more concerned about the safety of the cave.
“What’s inside?”
Pangpang shook its head. “I don’t know. This is my first time coming in. I just passed by before and remembered there was a cave here.”
Tu Ran shone the flashlight deeper into the cave.
The walls, resembling dragon scales, surrounded them on all sides, uneven and winding into the depths where the flashlight’s beam couldn’t penetrate the darkness.
It was as if a giant, scaly dragon was coiled up here.
They were its meal.
Tu Ran’s hand holding the flashlight inevitably trembled.
“Have you seen a cave like this before?”
“No.” Pangpang shook its head. To be honest, it was a little scared. This place felt like a giant snake’s lair, and it was afraid of snakes.
Outside, the rain was pouring down harder, forming a dense curtain at the cave’s entrance.
They couldn’t find any other place to take shelter from the rain.
Tu Ran kept the flashlight on the ground to maintain some light, illuminating their small area. “Let’s rest here for now. We’ll leave when the rain lets up a bit.”
She found a spot near the entrance and sat against the wall. Pangpang immediately huddled next to her, curling into a small ball.
Pangpang was scared, so it stayed close to Tu Ran.
The waterproof combat uniform issued by the Federation kept Tu Ran dry, and her head was covered with a hood.
Pangpang wasn’t so lucky; it was soaked, a complete wet mess. The temperature dropped with the rain, and it shivered uncontrollably.
Pangpang was shaking so badly that Tu Ran wrapped her arms around it and rubbed it quickly to generate some heat and warm it up.
The cave echoed with the sound of rain striking the stone walls and the occasional rumble of thunder.
The rain was really heavy.
“The day the sun rose from the west for the first time this year, it rained just as heavily,” Pangpang recalled.
“How long did it last?”
“Two full days and nights.”
The days in the Threshold were much longer than in the human world.
Those two days and nights could be three or four days in the human world.
Such a long time made Tu Ran uneasy.
This fear of the unknown unsettled Tu Ran even more, and her thoughts always instinctively veered towards the worst-case scenario.
Tu Ran stood up, suddenly remembering her superpower [Memory Reading].
Tu Ran placed her palm on the scaly, uneven stone wall.
“Are you alive?” Tu Ran whispered, closing her eyes to feel any response from the wall.
Although it seemed silly, it could help her rule out some possibilities.
She received no response; the wall remained indifferent.
Tu Ran sighed with slight relief.
But before she could fully relax, a voice emerged from the darkness beyond the flashlight’s reach in the cave’s depths.
“It died a long time ago. Of course, you can’t read its memories.”
As the voice echoed, Tu Ran instinctively raised her machine gun towards the source of the sound.
At the same time, she used her foot to turn the flashlight towards the direction of the voice, but it illuminated nothing; the speaker hadn’t stepped into the light.
Pangpang was equally startled by the voice, its fur puffing up as it hid behind Tu Ran like a fluffy ball.
“Haha…” The thing inside suddenly laughed, a deep, resonant sound. “This little chicken is adorable.”
The voice was androgynous, but it spoke in the human language.
Tu Ran stared intently at the dark cave.
A pointed shoe appeared first in Tu Ran’s line of sight.
Then, an old man in a white robe, looking like an immortal sage, emerged.
After revealing his entire form, the old man stopped approaching.
“You must have heard that I, an old man, don’t like your guns and cannons. So pointing a gun at me is useless; you won’t be able to shoot,” he said.
Tu Ran didn’t believe him and pulled the trigger.
The bullets in the gun seemed to have run out, each shot producing only an empty click.
How was that possible?
Astonished, Tu Ran aimed at the ground and fired several rounds “bang bang bang,” then pointed the gun at the old man again, and it was empty once more.
Tu Ran recalled something Xie Xu had told her.
In the Threshold, there were not only visible anomalies but also higher-order supernatural beings.
Against them, firearms would be useless.
But didn’t Xie Xu say that the chances of encountering such beings were very low? And yet, she had run into one?!
However, another thought abruptly interrupted all her other chaotic thoughts.
“How did you know I had heard of this?”
“Hahaha,” its laugh was raspy. From its appearance, it seemed male, but the voice was androgynous. “Just because you can’t read my memory through the dragon on the wall doesn’t mean I can’t read yours through it.”
It was too eerie.
Tu Ran struggled to calm herself.
“We’re just here to take shelter from the rain. We mean no harm. If you don’t want us here, we can leave right now.”
As she spoke, Tu Ran pulled on Pangpang’s wing, ready to step into the rain curtain.
But the cave entrance suddenly slammed shut in front of her, blocking her path.
It was a massive stone dragon head.
Sealing the entrance completely.
Tu Ran turned back and stared at the old man.
“What do you want?”
It laughed, an exaggerated laugh. Tu Ran didn’t know how to describe its expression, but it wasn’t something a normal human could make. It was like… like an ancient turtle laughing!
Although Tu Ran had never seen an ancient turtle laugh, she felt it couldn’t be much different from this.
“I’ve been the mountain god of this hill for thousands of years, sleeping for millennia. Just today, you’ve woken me up three times, disturbing my sleep. Don’t you think I should have a talk with you?”
Tu Ran: She had indeed thrown three bombs on this mountain today.
But she hadn’t expected there to be a mountain god in this world.
“Sorry,” Tu Ran apologized sincerely.
“Chirp chirp chirp.”
Pangpang also bowed his little head in apology.
“This little chick is truly adorable.” The ancient turtle’s attention was entirely on Pangpang, eyes full of affection. “I haven’t opened my eyes in thousands of years, and now such cute creatures have evolved.”
Tu Ran: She is really sinful. He has been slumbering for thousands of years, how could she wake him up.
She nudged Pangpang. Since the old turtle clearly liked Pangpang, maybe Pangpang could say some nice things and act cute to get them out of this situation.
Pangpang understood her signal.
“Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp.”
Accompanied by head bobbing, this drew constant exclamations from the old turtle, who was surrounded by pink heart-shaped bubbles.
“This little guy is really cute. Which mountain are you from? I’ll bring you all over here to live on my mountain!” The old turtle smiled its peculiar smile.
Although still strange, Tu Ran wasn’t as scared anymore.
“Imagining myself waking up to these little cuties running around, I’d smile even in my dreams.”
**TN
Leave a rating here NU
lmao
is he an old cultivator or sm??