Cultivation of immortality begins with an eighty-year-old eunuch.

Chapter 678: Taking Action!

The entire room fell silent.

All eyes were on the person who made the move.

Chen Fan had somehow appeared in front of Batel, still with that calm and indifferent expression, wearing a sheepskin robe with worn-out cuffs, and his feet still covered in horse manure from brushing Greymane's fur.

But Batu's gaze towards him had completely changed.

The stranger with whom he had been drinking for almost a year revealed a chilling aura at that moment.

That wasn't murderous intent, but rather a bottomless sense of oppression.

The bearded man struggled to his feet, his left cheek swollen and blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

He stared intently at Chen Fan, the contempt in his eyes completely gone, replaced by a mixture of anger and terror: "You...who are you?"

Chen Fan did not answer.

He took a step, a step that was unremarkable, like a shepherd walking towards his flock on the grassland.

However, the bearded man felt an invisible mountain pressing down on him. The pressure did not come from his cultivation level, but from something deeper.

His Gu worms hissed wildly in the cage, curled up in a ball, trembling.

"You...you're a Nascent Soul cultivator...you, a Nascent Soul cultivator, are hiding in a mortal tribe. What are you trying to do?" The bearded man's voice trembled, and he immediately exclaimed in terror, "The Gu King has decreed that all able-bodied men of military age must join the army. I'm merely following orders. Do you dare disobey the Gu King's decree?"

Chen Fan took another step.

As this step was taken, the insect cage at the waist of the bearded man emitted several mournful hisses, and several Gu worms died on the spot, turning into a pool of black water that seeped out from the gaps in the insect cage.

Seeing this, the other two Gu cultivators dared not linger any longer, and with their bushy beards swaying, they ran towards the horses.

The three mounted their horses and fled into the depths of the grassland without looking back. The sound of hooves gradually faded into the distance and soon disappeared into the wind of the grassland.

The tribe was quiet. Everyone was looking at Chen Fan, their eyes filled with shock and a hint of unfamiliarity.

Batu got up from the ground, opened his mouth several times but couldn't say a word.

Batel stared blankly at Chen Fan, his unusually bright eyes filled with disbelief. Only Qiqige, in Batu's wife's arms, suddenly giggled and reached out a small hand to grab at Chen Fan.

Chen Fan turned around and walked back to Gray Mane's side, picking up the brush to continue brushing its fur. Gray Mane snorted and flicked its tail, seemingly unaware that anything significant had happened.

The cicada emitted a very faint buzzing sound from inside the sleeve. It had almost rushed out, but Chen Fan had stopped it with his divine sense.

The herders in the tribe remained silent for a long time before dispersing.

Some people were whispering among themselves, while others kept turning around to look at Chen Fan.

Batu stood there, staring blankly at Chen Fan's back for a long time before his wife pulled him back into the tent.

That night, Batu did not come to find Chen Fan with a wine jug.

Chen Fan sat on a wooden stake in front of the tent, gazing at the starry sky, holding a bowl of tea that had long since gone cold.

He knew why Batu was acting this way.

When mortals meet cultivators, even the closest ones, they feel awe and distance. This is not Batu's fault, nor is it his fault; it is simply an ordinary pattern in the universe.

He picked up the teacup, took a sip of the cool tea, gently put down this habitual distance, and got up to return to his tent.

Life returned to its usual routine.

Batu was somewhat reserved when he first met Chen Fan. He no longer patted Chen Fan's shoulder and shouted as he used to, but instead stood carefully a few steps away and even bowed when handing him a wine pot.

Chen Fan ignored it, continuing his daily routine of herding sheep, feeding horses, and carving stones, never mentioning what happened that day.

Gradually, Batu relaxed a bit. Although he was no longer as casual as before, he would occasionally come to sit in front of the tent with a wine jug, but he spoke much less than before.

Even more people came to Chen Fan for medical treatment.

Those herders who had only heard of his medical skills now trusted him even more after learning that he was no ordinary person, and came from even more distant tribes.

Chen Fan treated each patient without accepting any payment, and continued to use the most common herbal remedies.

The stonemason's skills were not neglected.

Morigen didn't mention a word about what happened that day, but instead taught him more of his most treasured skills.

The old man said that the stones on the grassland have seventy-two different textures, each with its own name.

He taught Chen Fan to identify bluestone, granite, basalt, and limestone, taught him to use different hammering techniques to deal with different stones, and taught him how to integrate the texture of the stone with the carved pattern when carving.

Chen Fan learned them one by one.

His technique became more steady this spring; the force of each chisel strike was just right, and the position of each strike was as precise as if measured with a ruler.

Sometimes, when Morigen watched from the side, a complex smile would appear in his cloudy old eyes.

Qiqige is growing up day by day.

She crawled out of her swaddling clothes and started crawling around the tent.

Batel sewed a small ball out of sheepskin, and she rolled around on the sheepskin blanket with the ball in her arms, giggling nonstop.

When Chen Fan occasionally passed by Batel's tent, he would stop and take a look. When Qiqige saw him, she would stretch out her two little hands and babble, as if she recognized the old man who had named her.

Spring gradually passed in these ordinary days, and summer came again.

The grass on the grassland is growing more lush than in previous years, and the sheep are plump and healthy. Batu says this is a gift from the grassland gods.

Chen Fan's life is quieter than last year.

Last year, Batu would occasionally drag him out for drinks. This year, although Batu still comes, he stays for shorter periods and talks less.

Chen Fan didn't care about this; he was used to this distance.

He was just a person.

That was true then, and it is true now.

That evening, Chen Fan sat alone on a wooden stake in front of his tent, holding a palm-sized piece of bluestone in his hand.

He was carving a new stone statue, which he had been working on for several days. He would examine it for a long time with each chisel stroke, making it slower than any of his previous works.

The outline of the stone statue is already faintly visible; it is a person sitting down, but it is still impossible to tell who it is.

A cicada flew out from his sleeve and landed on his shoulder, its dark golden compound eyes gleaming faintly in the setting sun.

It hadn't slept for a long time, and its aura had become increasingly restrained and profound. The layer of paper on the window was so thin that it was almost transparent, but like Chen Fan, it had never dared to break through it.

As darkness fell, dark clouds gathered on the northern horizon.

The dark clouds were thick and low, as if they were about to press down from the sky.

The wind on the grassland suddenly stopped, the sheep bleated restlessly, and Graymane scratched his hooves in the stable.

Chen Fan glanced at the sky, put the stone statue and chisel back into his storage bag, got up and led Gray Mane deep into the stable, and then covered the roof with two more layers of sheepskin.

The cicada flew off his shoulder, landed on the gray-maned bird's ear, rubbed against its earlobe, and then burrowed back into Chen Fan's sleeve.

As night fell, a torrential downpour began.