System Granted Me Immortality; I Outlived Everyone

Chapter 9: A Woman Three Years Older Brings Gold Bricks, Artificial Spirit Root

The moment he suspected Li Niansheng had taken a liking to Yixiu, the Linglong Sect Leader’s mind raced through a dozen different wedding arrangements.

“Yixiu, my good nephew!” Zhao Dezhu greeted warmly. “How is your master, Zen Master Huihai, faring these days?”

Yixiu blinked, entirely bewildered by the Sect Leader’s sudden, overwhelming hospitality.

He still couldn’t fathom why the famously icy Longevity Fairy would care about a mundane woodcarving. Worse, he could feel the crushing weight of a massive misunderstanding settling over the crowd.

“Greetings, Sect Leader,” Yixiu replied awkwardly. “My master is in perfect health.”

“He recently entered a period of closed-door enlightenment, which is why this humble monk was sent in his stead.”

“Neither servile nor overbearing! Truly, a master teacher produces a fine disciple!” Zhao Dezhu laughed heartily.

“Don’t worry, we old fossils won’t meddle in the affairs of the young.”

“Give it a century for your Cultivation base to stabilize, and then remember to officially bring your marriage proposal to the Linglong Sect!”

Yixiu: ???

“Sect Leader, you’ve completely misunderstood!” Yixiu panicked, waving his hands frantically. “I’m not–“

But Zhao Dezhu cut him off with a dismissive wave.

“Aiya!”

“Men shouldn’t be so wishy-washy! Don’t let a temporary gap in Cultivation make you feel inadequate.”

“As the mortal saying goes: A wife three years older brings bricks of gold, a wife thirty years older gifts an entire kingdom, and a wife three thousand years older ascends you straight to the immortal ranks!”

“My direct disciple is a mere fifty years older than you. To Cultivators like us, that’s practically the same age!”

“As for your master’s opinion? I, Zhao Dezhu, will personally handle him.”

“It’s not like the Heavenly Buddha Temple hasn’t had monks take Dao Companions before. I’ve known that old bald donkey for three hundred years; he’ll give me this much face.”

Realizing that opening his mouth was only digging his grave deeper, Yixiu wisely snapped his jaw shut.

His only hope for survival was to clear the air with the Longevity Fairy in private.

Unbothered by the murmurs, Li Niansheng serenely returned to her Elder’s seat, and the Linglong Sect’s ceremony resumed.

……

Linglong Town.

“Senior, I swear, that’s exactly what happened! This wooden carving isn’t mine!”

“This entire lot used to be a coffin shop. You have to believe me!”

Staring at the desolate, overgrown patch of dirt where the shop used to stand, Yixiu was practically on the verge of tears.

That bastard Chen Changsheng had pulled a vanishing act. Now, even if Yixiu had a hundred mouths, he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of this.

The moment the ceremony had ended, Yixiu had sprinted to Li Niansheng’s quarters to explain the origin of the gift.

Desperate to prove he wasn’t romantically pursuing her, he had spilled everything about his decades-long acquaintance with the strange coffin seller.

Yet, when he dragged her down the mountain to prove his innocence, the shop was gone.

Every single trace of Chen Changsheng’s existence had been meticulously erased, leaving behind an empty, vacant lot.

It was as if the man had never existed in the first place.

Faced with Yixiu’s frantic panic, Li Niansheng remained disturbingly calm.

After a suffocating silence, she finally spoke. “Yixiu. Do you have any desire to become my Dao Companion?”

The monk’s eyelids began to twitch violently.

“Absolutely not. Not now, not ever.”

“Excellent.” Li Niansheng nodded approvingly. “Because if you ever harbored such thoughts, I would physically rip your bald head from your shoulders.”

“From this day forward, no matter who interrogates you, you are forbidden from ever speaking the name ‘Chen Changsheng’.”

“If you leak even half a syllable of his identity, your life is forfeit.”

Feeling the suffocating wave of pure Killing Intent, Yixiu finally connected the dots.

She didn’t just know Chen Changsheng. Judging by her reaction, they shared a very long, very deep history.

“Senior, rest assured. This humble monk’s lips are sealed,” Yixiu promised quickly.

“However, I visited this town frequently. If someone decides to investigate my movements, they will inevitably find clues leading to this spot.”

“When they ask, how should I respond?”

Li Niansheng pondered for a moment. “You may recount your interactions with him truthfully, but you will completely conceal his physical appearance and his real name.”

“If anyone forcefully demands his title, tell them he calls himself The Undertaker.”

“Understood,” Yixiu bowed. Then, he hesitated. “Will… will I ever see him again?”

“You probably will. After all, he has a habit of clinging to the past.”

With that final remark, Li Niansheng turned and vanished into the wind.

Yixiu looked at the empty space where the fairy had stood, and then back at the barren dirt of the coffin shop.

A mountain of questions weighed on his heart, but there was no one left to answer them.

The only thing that could unravel this mystery now was time itself.

……

Somewhere in an unnamed wilderness.

“Azure Dragon to the left, White Tiger to the right, Vermilion Bird leading the front, and Black Tortoise guarding the rear.”

“What an immaculate, peak-tier geomantic treasure site.”

Staring at the wildly spinning needle of his geomantic compass, Chen Changsheng excitedly slapped his thigh.

The randomized teleportation array had successfully dumped him into the middle of nowhere.

The moment his boots hit the dirt, he had pulled out his tools to scout for premium feng shui.

He had spent eight years raising Niansheng, fifty years walking across the continent to the Linglong Sect, and another twenty years running a coffin shop at the base of her mountain.

His system-granted lifespan was eighty years. By his calculations, he only had two years of life left before the forced hibernation cycle began.

Since he was going to be unconscious for a very long time, he naturally needed to dig himself a proper grave.

Having locked onto the perfect coordinates, Chen Changsheng rolled up his sleeves and started digging.

The manual excavation took him an entire year.

……

“Tsk, tsk.”

“Flawless execution. Honestly, my architectural genius is frightening.”

Pacing through the damp, cavernous hollow he had manually carved into the belly of the mountain, Chen Changsheng beamed with professional pride.

To ensure absolutely zero interruptions during his vulnerable slumber, he had engineered a foolproof camouflage system for the entrance.

He had deliberately piled tons of loose, heavily seeded soil on the slope directly above the cave mouth.

The moment the monsoon season hit, the rain would trigger a localized mudslide, washing the seeded earth over the massive boulders sealing his door.

Give it a year or two of natural overgrowth, and the resulting vegetation would erase every single trace of human tampering.

After thoroughly admiring his own paranoia, Chen Changsheng tapped his inventory, summoning a massive jade coffin.

The coffin was brimming to the edge with a viscous, glowing liquid that radiated an overwhelming medicinal fragrance.

This was the culmination of his life’s work–Phase Two of his hibernation cycle: cultivating the Artificial Spirit Root.

“System, run the simulation again. Is this actually going to work?”

“Whether the theoretical methodology succeeds or fails, the Host will only know through practical application.”

“Furthermore, the penalty for failure is merely wasting time during a forced hibernation cycle, an asset the Host possesses in infinite supply.”

Chen Changsheng nodded thoughtfully. “Fair point. Even if I botch the chemistry, my net losses are zero.”

Stripping off his clothes, Chen Changsheng lowered his aging body into the freezing, medicinal slurry of the jade coffin. Closing his eyes, he surrendered to his eighty-year slumber.

Ever since he had looted the Blood Demon Ancestor’s memoir, the theory of the Artificial Spirit Root had consumed him.

After a decade of meticulous, risk-averse calculations, he had finally cracked the code to a perfectly safe, highly reliable biological upgrade.