Chapter 2610: Everything Has Changed

He had already expected as much when he emerged from the stratosphere, however. Flying upward should have led him into the Celestial Court, but it was nowhere to be found. All he encountered was boundless space.

Zu An fell silent.

Did the Celestial Court disappear altogether? Or does it not exist in the sky, unlike what everyone thought, and that there is some kind of teleportation formation in the sky that transports you to the Celestial Court? What kind of place is the Celestial Court?

He suddenly recalled the Celestial Court’s peculiar flow of time. A day in heaven equaled a year on earth.

It’s probably located near a black hole. Is there no way to access the Celestial Court in this era?

Maybe Zhuanxu’s severing of heaven and earth and the felling of the sacred tree Jianmu resulted in the beings on Earth ceasing to worship the Celestial Court. It’s probably tough for those legendary gods to appear in our world now too.

Zu An felt frustrated. His inability to access the Celestial Court meant that he couldn’t reunite with the Mermaid Queen. He had marked some of the Celestial Court’s coordinates back then, but he couldn’t sense them anymore. It could be because he was too far away, or that a formation had blocked them.

In the end, he descended from the moon and returned to Earth.

This Earth was much larger than the one he was on before his transmigration.

Did the later drying up of ki cause the planet to contract?

He had several conjectures, but there was no way to confirm them.

While descending from the sky, Zu An suddenly turned to a mountain range.

I might be unable to reach the Celestial Court now, but what about the surface? The Goddess of Wu Mountain is also waiting for me!

Countless years had passed since the era of the Celestial Court, so the world was bound to have changed in the meantime.

Zu An made his way to Wu Mountain based on the coordinates he remembered, but there was no mountain there when he arrived—in its place was a lake. He thoroughly searched the lake, but there wasn't the slightest trace of Wu Mountain.

“The coordinates must have changed due to the terraforming of the world,” he said to himself. He'd even constructed a teleportation formation on Wu Mountain, but so much time had passed that he could no longer sense it.

He searched based on his memories and grasp of space, and he also asked the locals about their regional myths and legends. Days later, he finally found Spirit Mountain.

This world’s Spirit Mountain was richer in ki than other places, but it was severely lacking compared to the Celestial World’s Spirit Mountain.

No wonder people seemed to get weaker with each passing generation in the cultivation stories I read in my previous world. Turns out it’s because of the change in environment.

He enveloped Spirit Mountain with his divine sense—its topography roughly lined up with the Celestial World’s Spirit Mountain.

Soon, he arrived before a beautiful mountain peak. Everything was different from how he remembered it to be, but as he made his way over, he felt an inexplicable sense of intimacy. He flew up to the peak. The ki waterfall and flower fields were nowhere to be found; the place was covered in weeds instead. Even so, he could still see through the weeds to recognize the original mountain peak.

He made his way to the cliff. He tried opening the cave using the method he remembered, though he didn’t bear much hope. Too much time had passed, so he felt the cave would have eroded over time as well.

Much to his delight, however, the cliff opened to reveal a familiar cave!

Zu An trembled.

Could Yaoji still be inside?

Yaoji, as the Goddess of Wu Mountain, was one with Wu Mountain. If Wu Mountain was still around, chances were that she was also around too.

“Yaoji?” Zu An gently called out. Despite his nervousness, his footsteps were slow. He was afraid that he would receive a disappointing answer.

The dark cave suddenly lit up, and a pleasant melody played. Flower petals fell from the sky. A beautiful figure slowly walked out, just as when they first met.

“Yaoji!” Overjoyed, Zu An rushed straight over to embrace her.

Little did he expect to pass right through her figure. His smile immediately froze in place. It turned out that was merely an illusion of the Goddess of Wu Mountain.

It should have been apparent to him, but he was so shaken up that he'd overlooked that.

“Big brother Zu, I have always been curious how you would react when you see me once more. Let me guess. You must have been very excited, only to be disappointed when you realized that I was an illusion.” The beautiful figure’s cold voice was tinged with a bit of mischief.

Her words slightly consoled Zu An’s heavy heart. He could tell this wasn’t a soul fragment but merely a recording, so conversation wasn’t possible between them.

“Actually, I have another guess—you might have tried to embrace me too.” She suddenly let out a sigh. “Maybe it’s one-sided, but I still remember our final embrace. It was so warm and comfortable, yet so sorrowful too.”

“Yaoji, I did try to embrace you earlier, and I'm still embracing you now.” Zu An walked up to the illusion and gently ‘held’ her despite knowing it was an illusion.

𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

The illusion spoke yet again. “I don’t know whether the first thing you did was to embrace me or not, but I bet you are embracing me now after hearing my words.”

Zu An quietly looked at her face. She was identical to the Yaoji he remembered. He hadn’t expected a cold beauty like her to be so meticulous.

“I want to embrace you too, but I can’t.” The Goddess of Wu Mountain also took an embracing posture, as if lying against his chest.

“You are the only one other than me who knows how to open this cave. If someone tries to open it by force, everything in this cave will be destroyed,” the Goddess of Wu Mountain continued. “I promised to wait for you. I waited for a thousand years, ten thousand years... I don’t know how many tens of thousands of years I have waited. You know me. I don’t have a sense of time.”

Her gentle words shook Zu An's heart. To him, it had only been half a day since they parted ways, but to her, it had already been tens of thousands of years. He couldn’t imagine how sorrowful it must have been for her to wait for him day after day with an expectant heart, only to be disappointed again and again.

“Yaoji...” Zu An’s voice became hoarse. Words fell short in the face of the harshness of time.

Worry brimmed in the Goddess of Wu Mountain’s eyes. “I know you wouldn’t forget me, big brother Zu. You promised to look for me, but you didn’t come after so long. I was worried that something had happened to you, so I went to look for little sister Chang’e...”