Chapter Forty-Nine: A Terrifying Truth

“You mean to say that the place where the Yellow Emperor and Chiyou fought in ancient myth isn’t the much-publicized Zhuolu County in Shanxi Province, but Mount Everest?” Du Gu Ming stared in disbelief. He had been overwhelmed with shocks today.

Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world—Du Gu Ming, even with his fourth-level abilities, wouldn’t dare claim he could scale it at will. Even those ancient freaks, the immortal elders, couldn’t easily defy nature; compared to the vastness of the world, humanity was truly insignificant.

And now you’re telling me the Emperor and Chiyou fought on Mount Everest as if it were nothing? Du Gu Ming couldn’t believe it. He voiced his doubts to Li Yunren.

“Who told you Mount Everest was as tall as it is now back then?” Li Yunren sneered, his gaze fixed on Du Gu Ming. “According to my research, the Everest we know today was shaped by that very battle.”

Impossible. Upon hearing this, Du Gu Ming was convinced Li Yunren was insane—a complete madman. Was he saying Mount Everest’s height was entirely man-made? How could that be? As a cultivator, Du Gu Ming had heard that modern practitioners were far weaker than their predecessors, but the notion that someone could raise a mountain to such heights was beyond absurd—even gods couldn’t do that.

Gods? Wait, do gods truly exist in this world? Du Gu Ming touched his chest, where a fragment of jade had merged with his body—the Pisces Jade, his deepest secret and greatest astonishment. The jade could merge into flesh, something utterly supernatural.

Du Gu Ming wanted nothing more than to leave this place immediately—to get away from this madman. He grabbed Xuanyuan Lin Wen’s hand and headed for the door.

As he reached the doorway, Li Yunren’s voice drifted to his ears: “You’ll come back to find me.”

“Lunatic,” Du Gu Ming muttered, dragging Xuanyuan Lin Wen out with him.

“My dear, what’s wrong? Why are you so upset?” Xuanyuan Lin Wen asked gently as they left Li Yunren’s office. Though he didn’t believe Li Yunren’s story either, his reaction was nowhere near as irate as Du Gu Ming’s—almost furious.

Du Gu Ming shook his head, unsure himself why he’d been so incensed. He slapped his own forehead; perhaps Li Yunren’s words were simply too outlandish.

“It’s nothing, I just got a bit worked up,” Du Gu Ming said, smoothing Xuanyuan Lin Wen’s hair with a smile.

Du Gu Ming’s anger was understandable—a very human response. This, too, was an inherent flaw: when confronted with something utterly contrary to one’s beliefs, people instinctively resist, even if it’s true. And for someone who thinks highly of himself, if told he’s not even worth another’s pinky finger, he’d react hysterically. That’s perfectly normal—Du Gu Ming was still human, not a god.

His mind was a mess. After exchanging a few words with Xuanyuan Lin Wen, they parted and Du Gu Ming returned to his dormitory.

“Bro, where’ve you been? Why are you back so late?” his roommates asked. Even Bai Hanwen, who was in the midst of a heated gaming battle, took off his headset to inquire.

“Oh, nothing. You guys just play, rest if you want. I’m fine.” Seeing his brothers’ concern, Du Gu Ming was touched.

He climbed into bed, lying under the covers and pondering every word Li Yunren had said. The more he thought, the more uneasy he felt. Why would Li Yunren tell him such things? If everything Li Yunren claimed was true, what was he trying to convey?

Du Gu Ming hopped out of bed and booted up his custom-modified computer.

“Okay,” he muttered. In just three seconds, he hacked into the Pentagon’s intelligence system. Unlike most people, who used Baidu or Google, Du Gu Ming preferred the American intelligence network—it offered not only comprehensive searches but also access to secrets the average person could never imagine.

He typed in “Chiyou.” Honestly, he didn’t expect much; Chiyou was a figure from Chinese mythology, and hoping to find anything useful in American databases sounded absurd. He searched mostly to calm himself—Du Gu Ming had a bit of obsessive compulsion.

But as soon as he saw the search results, his heart nearly leapt out of his chest. Later, he admitted, it was the most shocking moment of his life.

“Chiyou, the ancient Chinese demon god, is not a myth.”
“Demon god Chiyou really existed.”
“Chiyou—the ancient enemy of all humanity.”
“Chiyou and Egypt.”
“Chiyou and Ancient Rome.”
...
If he hadn’t seen it himself, Du Gu Ming wouldn’t have believed it. He rubbed his eyes fiercely—no, he wasn’t hallucinating. These results weren’t from ordinary search engines, but from the US National Security Intelligence database.

He clicked on one result.

“Chiyou, the ancient Chinese demon god, is not a myth. In 1988, a team of explorers climbing Mount McKinley at 5,800 meters accidentally fell into a cave. This cave was not naturally formed; it bore clear signs of artificial excavation. After countless hardships and twists, the team finally emerged from a maze of branches into a vast chamber.

This space was obviously man-made, with an internal area of several thousand square meters. In other words, the upper part of Mount McKinley is essentially hollow.

But that wasn’t the most shocking part. Inside this enormous chamber, the explorers saw a gigantic arm floating in midair, estimated to be several hundred meters long. The arm was surrounded by intricate, indecipherable glyphs. They even saw it tremble slightly. The team leader hurried to snap a photo, but something strange happened.

The moment he pressed the shutter, a mysterious force pushed him out of the chamber. When he regained his senses, he was standing atop Mount McKinley, with no memory of what had just occurred.

Yet when the team leader returned home and happened to review his camera, seeing the photo he had taken, everything came back to him.”

Normally, Du Gu Ming would have scoffed at such a tale—childish nonsense. But this was from the US National Security Intelligence Agency; there was no possibility of fabrication.

Attached below the search result was the explorer's photograph. Du Gu Ming opened and enlarged it. To his astonishment, on the arm itself, in ancient Chinese script, were two characters: “Chiyou.”

He couldn’t be mistaken. Due to his cultivation practice, Du Gu Ming had studied ancient Chinese characters extensively—from pictographs on turtle shells to large and small seal script on bamboo slips, and even modern square script. He was certain this was a unique script between pictographs and seal script.

The literary world hadn’t discovered this script yet; Du Gu Ming had learned it from an ancient tome. This meant the inscription on the photo was genuine. He examined the glyphs around the arm again and was shocked to see they resembled long-lost Chinese magic formations.

According to legend, ancient cultivators not only practiced techniques for strengthening the body, but also learned various formations. Some could summon thunder, others call forth earth fire, create bewildering mists, or enchant the mind. Yet at some point, these wonderful formations vanished—now practitioners could only read about them in old texts.

Du Gu Ming closed the webpage and opened another search result. When he finished reading them all, cold sweat trickled from his brow. The other results were similar, only differing in location—almost every continent had reports of strange caves containing these mysterious dismembered limbs.

But since most were mere written accounts without photographs, Du Gu Ming only skimmed them. Some mentioned many explorers mysteriously disappearing atop Mount Everest, others described people dreaming of entering a strange space.

Du Gu Ming shut down the computer and slumped heavily into his chair, exhaling a long breath. The results were astonishing, but he had no choice but to believe; the evidence was overwhelming.

He closed his eyes and replayed everything he’d just seen in his mind. Suddenly, he noticed a detail: almost everyone who encountered these severed limbs reported that they seemed to tremble ever so slightly.

At this realization, Du Gu Ming’s heart began to race, his eyes widened in alarm.

How could this be? Could it mean—Chiyou is not dead?