Within the Bear Shaggy Mountains now. The area where the many palaces stood was a wreck. The prior battle between Teng Qingshan and Huang Tianqin had left quite a few structures damaged.
Huang Tianqin, Yu Feng, and Liu Xia surveyed their surroundings.
“All Guardians, lead your disciples to inspect the palaces for any damage,” Yu Feng commanded loudly from the steps of the Sacred Hall. Immediately, over a dozen figures, some middle-aged and others elderly, bowed in acknowledgment. They then led away the elite disciples, who were visibly agitated and scattered throughout the grounds.
“Let’s go in,” Huang Tianqin sighed.
“I truly have no idea where such a freak materialized from,” Liu Xia also shook his head, speaking with bitter resentment.
Yu Feng remained silent, following Huang Tianqin and Liu Xia as they proceeded into the Sacred Hall.
Inside the main hall of the Sacred Hall.
Teng Qingshan and the Undying Phoenix, ‘Xiao Qing,’ were standing in the center of the vast chamber, looking around, but they could not spot the Venerable One.
“Venerable One, why not show yourself?” Teng Qingshan called out loudly.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
At that moment, the three Grand Elders of the Yu Emperor Sect ascended the steps and entered the main hall. Simultaneously, Yu Feng personally moved to close the main doors of the hall.
Kacha~~~ With a booming sound, the massive bronze doors shut.
The entire hall instantly plunged into darkness.
“Teng Qingshan, there is no need to rush to see the Venerable One,” Liu Xia said calmly. He then walked to the edge of the hall and lit two large lamps on either side. For a time, the cavernous hall was illuminated only by the flickering light of these two lamps, creating shifting patterns of shadow and light.
“So mysterious?” Teng Qingshan grinned, glancing around.
Huang Tianqin, Yu Feng, and Liu Xia stood respectfully to one side.
The Undying Phoenix, ‘Xiao Qing,’ beside Teng Qingshan, also stirred restlessly, shaking its wings. The flames that had been suppressed moments before coiled out again, momentarily shining brighter than the light from the two lamps.
Where exactly is the Venerable One? Teng Qingshan wondered internally.
“Hmm?”
Teng Qingshan clearly felt an extremely profound, dark aura surge rapidly toward him from the rear mountain. In less than an instant, this aura shot through a window on the seventh level of the Sacred Hall and plummeted straight down, landing directly within the hall. Teng Qingshan had sensed this dark, powerful aura before.
That’s not right. This aura, along with the aura of the Ripping Wind Dragon Falcon—they are both extremely powerful. They should belong to Void Realm demonic beasts, Teng Qingshan observed intently. How could it be the Venerable One?
In the dim hall.
A tall, indistinct figure was standing there. He was completely covered in dark gold armor that stood out conspicuously in the dimness of the hall. However, his height was astonishing—fully two zhang (five meters) tall—and he wore a ferocious dark gold helmet that completely obscured his face, not even revealing his eyes.
“Greetings to the Venerable One,” Huang Tianqin, Yu Feng, and Liu Xia said respectfully.
“What massive fists,” Teng Qingshan’s gaze fell upon the giant’s hands.
With a height of two zhang, the proportion of his fists was even more startling—they resembled two colossal boulders. These fists were encased in gigantic dark gold gauntlets, which were adorned with a fearsome row of spikes. Teng Qingshan believed that one punch from those hands could smash a hole through a small mountain.
“Young man, you wanted to see me. Why are you silent now?”
“Are you the Venerable One?”
Teng Qingshan stared at the figure completely encased in armor, where even the face was hidden. At first glance… he looked exactly like a mecha monster from a sci-fi film in his previous life. What puzzled Teng Qingshan most was that Huang Tianqin was currently in the Void Penetration Realm, yet the aura of the ‘Venerable One’ before him was clearly that of the Void Realm.
Huang Tianqin, upon seeing the Venerable One, bowed and respectfully called out, ‘Greetings to the Venerable One.’ This was truly strange.
“If I am not the Venerable One, then who is?” the deep voice sounded again.
“I wonder, Venerable One, if you could remove your helmet and mask?” Teng Qingshan asked.
“You may.”
The Venerable One’s voice sounded, and with his massive right hand, clad in the gigantic gauntlet, he simply grabbed the helmet and easily pulled it off, revealing his true face. The ‘Venerable One’ stared at Teng Qingshan, baring teeth that were stark white.
“Impossible!”
“How could you be…”
Teng Qingshan was completely stunned.
The Venerable One before him, after removing the helmet, revealed nothing less than a gigantic bear’s head! Yes, a bear! This massive ursine head had a pair of small eyes that held a faint glint of gold.
No wonder his hands are so big, and his arms and legs are so thick. Teng Qingshan had previously felt that the proportions of the Venerable One’s body were unnatural, not quite human. Seeing the massive bear head now, he completely understood. This was, in fact, a bear-type demonic beast that had reached the Great Accomplishment stage of the Void Realm!
“Surprised?” the deep voice sounded again; the Bear Venerable One had not opened his mouth at all.
“You… how can you speak?”
Teng Qingshan shook his head. “Demonic beasts cannot speak.”
“Why not?” Huang Tianqin sneered from the side. “Teng Qingshan, your ignorance is showing! I ask you, how do Void Realm experts transmit their voice, and how can they hear conversations twenty or thirty li away?”
Teng Qingshan’s mind stirred.
Voice transmission involved simulating the exact sound vibrations generated by one’s own speech directly into the listener’s ear, thereby naturally producing the same sentence.
Hearing speech from twenty or thirty li away operated on the same principle. It involved capturing the vibrations caused by the speaker twenty or thirty li away and simulating those same vibrations near one’s own ear, thus naturally hearing the sound.
“Void Realm experts can easily control the generation of various sound vibrations,” Huang Tianqin smiled lightly. “Through meticulous control of sound. Therefore, any human Void Realm expert, if they wished to learn the Beast Tongue, could certainly master it with some time and effort.”
Teng Qingshan nodded; he understood this principle.
“If a Void Realm demonic beast is taught—if they are told which human phrase corresponds to their Beast Tongue—they too can understand human language,” Huang Tianqin explained. “Although very few human experts are willing to take the reverse effort to teach demonic beasts, it is entirely possible.”
Teng Qingshan paused, right. The wisdom of Void Realm demonic beasts was no less than that of humans.
Like Li Jun, he could fully teach a demonic beast in reverse so the beast understood human speech.
“Huang Tianqin, understanding is one thing. But demonic beasts cannot produce human voices,” Teng Qingshan argued, citing the limitation of the vocal cords. Human vocal cords could produce many sounds, but demonic beasts had severe limitations, preventing them from uttering the complex languages of humans.
“They might not be able to articulate it, but Void Realm demonic beasts can control sound vibrations to produce sounds,” Huang Tianqin countered.
“This…”
A monumental wave surged in Teng Qingshan’s heart. He stared at the tall Bear Venerable One beside him in disbelief.
Producing sound by controlling air vibrations—Teng Qingshan understood that! But… when human Void Realm experts use this for ‘voice transmission,’ it is pure replication! They simply duplicate the vibrations caused by their own speech! Hearing sounds twenty or thirty li away is also a process of replication.
The sound vibration ripples in the air are incredibly complex.
Simple replication is easy.
But—
To memorize the sound vibration of every single word, and then assemble them into sentences. For the Bear Venerable One, not to speak, but to control sound waves to generate full sentences… this difficulty was immense.
“Young man, I know what surprises you,” this tall Bear Venerable One slightly lowered his head, looking down with a gentle smile at Teng Qingshan. “Indeed, merely relying on controlling air vibrations to ‘speak’ sentences is hundreds, even thousands of times more difficult than learning the Beast Tongue to learn human speech! Back then, Da Yu and I spent ten years learning human language. But for me to learn to ‘speak’ the words myself took over a thousand years of effort before I finally mastered it and could do it.”
“Over a thousand years?” Teng Qingshan gasped, then looked at the Bear Venerable One before him with a touch of admiration.
If taught, a Void Realm demonic beast could master human language in ten years.
But to produce all those words through sound vibrations, this Bear Venerable One spent over a millennium. That demonstrated the sheer difficulty!
In the dim hall, Teng Qingshan stood opposite the massive Bear Venerable One.
“She must be the child of that phoenix,” the Bear Venerable One chuckled, glancing at the Undying Phoenix, ‘Xiao Qing.’ “I still remember the time I fought that phoenix… in the blink of an eye, thousands of years have passed.”
“Venerable One, you fought Yu Huang back then—”
Teng Qingshan’s eyes widened in shock. Memories from historical records about Yu Huang suddenly flooded his mind.
In the historical accounts.
Yu Huang’s legendary flood control efforts were most famous for having a Void Realm Black Bear assisting him in carving paths through mountains. Folk tales even suggested that Yu Huang transformed into a black bear, cleaving open one mountain after another.
Could this Bear Venerable One be that Void Realm bear beast from that era? Teng Qingshan was inwardly startled.
Huang Tianqin beside him said confidently, “Yes. When our ancestor, the founder of the Yu Emperor Sect, managed the world’s waterways, various great mountains obstructed the path. Besides the Ancestor using his Mountain-Splitting Divine Axe to carve open mountains, it was the Venerable One who smashed open passages for the Ancestor. Looking across the world… among Void Realm demonic beasts, none was stronger than the Venerable One.”
Teng Qingshan’s heart clenched.
“No—” the Bear Venerable One shook his head with a faint smile. “The Phoenix Mother back then, although slightly weaker than me, had not reached her limit. With her talent… her potential was limitless. And if she chose to flee, I could not have caught her.”
Teng Qingshan could tell that the Phoenix Mother had likely been defeated by the Bear Venerable One in the past. It was no wonder the Phoenix Mother held some apprehension toward the Nine Provinces. However, the strength of the Phoenix Mother then and the Phoenix Mother now were different.
“For example, the reason I can suppress that Demonic Dragon in Mount Dayan is partly due to this set of armor that Da Yu refined for me back then,” the Bear Venerable One clenched his fist slightly, and Teng Qingshan felt as if the very air had cracked. He then smiled at Teng Qingshan. “I know your name… Teng Qingshan. The young man who opened the Heavenly Flood Palace, correct?”
“Yes,” Teng Qingshan nodded slightly.
“I believe the Venerable One also knows why I have come,” Teng Qingshan cut straight to the chase.
The Bear Venerable One glanced toward Huang Tianqin and the other two beside him: “You tell me, what is going on?”