The Yongcui Sacred Tree towers to the sky, and its thick root system is as huge as the hills, and the goddess walks barefoot in it, and the chant of the shrine and witch is faintly heard in the distance—

"There are trees that are auspicious and multiply, and the fragrant leaves carry the wind and veins. The reason of the dissection shows the people, and the peace is to tell the king. The harvest year has been repeated to respond to the map, and the eternal green is not reciprocated......"

The ancient and distant eulogy echoes among the branches and leaves, and the pure faith condenses into a little bit of light visible to the naked eye, constantly nourishing the eternal green sacred tree.

The unprovoked wind rose from all sides, blowing the branches and leaves, and the goddess sensed that the sacred tree was connected with the qi of heaven and earth, and the infinite opportunities for change gathered here. is so vast and mysterious, even the immortal family who has been long-sighted for a long time does not dare to boast that they can take it all at a glance.

The goddess stopped, instinctively raised her hand and made a false move, and a leaf fell from thousands of branches into her palm.

Looking at the veins of the leaves, the goddess was silent for a long time, and then jumped towards the periphery, her movements were vigorous and light, leaving a little emerald green light under her feet and behind her, like a grass and trees channeling into a graceful woman.

The goddess came all the way to the outer thatched huts, and there were no towering and luxurious buildings in the Yongcui Temple, even if they were man-made, they were all perfectly integrated with the surrounding mountains and forests.

"Great Wu Zhu, the high priest has just sent a message, saying that there is an important matter to discuss." A shrine witch said respectfully.

After the marriage between Shengyu Valley and Yongcui Temple, the goddess also added the title of Great Witch Zhu to show that she was on an equal footing with the high priest, and the couple jointly ruled the Jiuli Kingdom. Now the high priest Li Chun is in charge of the army outside, and the goddess is responsible for presiding over the affairs of the country.

The folk customs of Kunlun South are very different, and many tribes are in power by the female master, only to see whether they are worthy of the great responsibility, so the high priest and the goddess share the power, and no one in Jiuli finds it difficult to accept.

"I see." The goddess waved her hand and asked the other witches to retreat, and she came to the depths of the Yongcui Temple, and found a few copies of bark and wooden boards, on which were engraved with various strange patterns, and the goddess compared the leaves in her hand with them, and it took a while to decipher some meanings.

"Strange." The goddess was slightly puzzled, and then flicked her fingers at a night owl wood sculpture next to her, and asked, "Are you listening?" ”

The vividly carved night owl came out of Li Chun's voice, with a unique echo: "I'm here, isn't there another warning from the sacred tree?" ”

The goddess laughed, "How did you guess?" ”

"Only the warning of the divine tree can keep you from replying for a long time." Li Chun replied.

"Indeed." The goddess looked at the veins of the leaves in her hand seriously: "Do you guess what warning the divine tree issued this time?" ”

"Could it be that Zhao Huang is going to come to the front line to fight with me?" Li Chun smiled in his words, but also secretly wanted to try.

"The Divine Tree's warning won't be so clear." The goddess explained, "But the Sacred Tree does mention that you are going to face danger. ”

"You don't need to say this to the Divine Tree, anyone knows it." Li Chunyan said: "I am on the front line at the moment, and the soldiers and horses of the two sides have already clashed many times. How can there be no danger on the battlefield? ”

"If it's well-known nonsense, the Divine Tree won't warn for no reason." The goddess also said, "The warning leaf book also proposes that you return to the Yongcui Temple, so that you can be saved. ”

"Return to the Eternal Temple?" Li Chun was puzzled: "At this time, let me leave the front line, there is no one in the center to dispatch the army, I am afraid that the front line will collapse immediately." ”

"Of course I know!" The goddess was a little annoyed: "I'm worried that someone will deal with the sacred tree!" ”

"Who?" Li Chun was immediately vigilant.

"I don't know, and the Divine Tree doesn't have a clear warning." The goddess said.

Li Chun's sigh came from the night owl wood withering: "You are concerned about chaos, as a great witch who enshrines the Yongcui Sacred Tree, responsible for interpreting the Divine Tree's warning leaf book, isn't it the most taboo to have selfish thoughts?" ”

"You think I'm misinterpreting?" The goddess asked.

"I'm not questioning you, but even if I return to the Yongcui Temple right now, it won't be helpful at all." Li Chunyan said: "In the current Jiuli Kingdom, besides me, who else can command this army? If I'm not on the front line, I can't control the situation. Returning to the Yongcui Temple may really be preserved as the Divine Tree said, but once the front line is defeated, in the face of the huge army of the Bear Country, what is the use of me sticking to the Yongcui Temple? ”

The goddess said, "You should know that now your mana is all thanks to the gift of the Eternal Emerald Divine Tree, and if the Divine Tree is harmful, you will be beaten back to its original form immediately. ”

"Isn't there still a mountain ghost and a wood guest who has lived in seclusion for many years in Yongcui Temple? They never show up in normal times, and once a foreign enemy invades and intends to harm the sacred tree, they will go to great lengths to kill the invading enemy. Li Chun was quite confident: "If the Yongcui Divine Tree really relies only on the ability to predict good luck and evil, it will not stand for a long time. ”

"I'm just a little uneasy." The goddess couldn't convince Li Chun, maybe it was just an occasional whim.

"The war has started, you, me, the Yongcui Divine Tree, and even the Jiuli Kingdom are sharing weal and woe, and whoever it is will be uncertain, this is not to blame." Li Chun said.

The goddess sighed silently, looking at a warning leaf book in her hand, in fact, in the long history of the past, there were many cases of unpredictable warnings of the divine tree and the people involved in a deep dilemma.

Just like when the Tianxia Dynasty vigorously opened up the southern land, what Yongcui Temple could do was to stay out of the matter in order to protect itself.

But now that the Shengyu Valley and the Yongcui Temple are married, in the face of the Xiong Kingdom's large-scale tart felling, the Yongcui Temple cannot be avoided, once the Jiuli Kingdom is defeated, the Yongcui Temple and the Divine Tree will be implicated.

"How's the battle on the front lines now?" The goddess asked, trying to ease her anxiety.

"Youxiong Country is worthy of being the strongest of the five Kunlun countries." Li Chun's tone was a little heavy: "The three-way soldiers and horses are advancing by land and water, with a total of more than 100,000 people, so it is difficult for my side to relax for a moment." This is still the result of Xiong Guo's abolition of the Thousand Machine Pavilion and the abandonment of those ingenious creations, terracotta figurines and iron figurines. ”

"Didn't you send an envoy to the Yaochi Kingdom before and make an appointment with the King of Baixiang to send troops together?" The goddess was puzzled: "Didn't he fulfill his promise?" ”

"It's a private covenant, and if he doesn't fulfill it, I can't force it." Li Chunyan said: "I just hope that the King of Baixiang will not be too stupid, once my Jiuli Kingdom falls, it will be his turn next!" There is a Xiong country sent a Zhao Huang to collude with Chiyundu, and he will stir up Huaxu Kingdom with five labors and seven injuries, and the country will be ruined one day! They must be going to attack the Quartet in a big way. ”

"I really didn't expect Zhao Xiao to come back from the dead." The goddess secretly pondered, the Yongcui Divine Tree didn't even discover this secret, could it be that he was beyond the limits of qi?

"The resurrection from the dead is fake, in the final analysis, it was a master who intervened and rescued him from the Lung Mountain." Li Chun immediately made a judgment: "I have been in retreat for more than ten years, and I will only get out of the customs when I have grown in the realm of cultivation, and this intention is very clear, and Shangjing Sect must have been mixed in it." ”

The goddess was puzzled: "What is the purpose of Shangjingzong to rescue Zhao Huang?" ”

"What other purpose could there be? It is nothing more than to use him to restore the inheritance of the Tianxia Dynasty Praise Official. Li Chun sneered a few times: "The people I sent to the emperor's capital reported that almost all the teachings and teachings of the Zanli Division were streamlined rituals and rituals. Later, he made a big deal to cultivate praise officials and appoint various places, and the intention could not be more obvious, and some Xiong Guo believed that he was continuing the orthodoxy of the Tianxia Dynasty, and everything had to be imitated. ”

The goddess said: "If you talk about the inheritance of the authentic official of the ceremony, you will not lose to Zhao Xiao, right?" I remember that your ancestors were the first people in the southern region to follow the Zanli official to study the rituals and rituals, and then guarded the Holy Valley Fire Virtue Temple for generations. ”

"That's why I decided that the Bear Country would definitely send Zhao Huang to compete with me, and only Zhao Huang could be my opponent." Li Chun is very confident: "Zhao Huang and his people are indeed proficient in scientific rituals and rituals, but they are far from being comparable to me now. The infinite souls of the netherworld are all soldiers and horses under my command, even the Tianxia Dynasty Praise Officer who holds the Twelve Earth Branch Orders is just a chicken and a dog in front of me. ”

"Don't forget, this is the work of the Divine Tree!" The goddess reminded with a smile.

"Of course I won't forget." Li Chun also laughed loudly: "I promised you that in the future, you and my heir will be the lord of Kunlun!" ”

While the goddess was in reverie about the future, she said: "It's a pity that the thirty-six God Killing Nails were all used to deal with Liang Tao back then, and if some of them can still be left, it may be a sharp weapon to break Zhao Xiao's magic." ”

"It doesn't matter, the evil soldiers refined from the remains of several demon gods also have similar uses." Li Chunyan said: "In addition, you will personally remind the remaining demon gods that if you still want to keep the remaining blood and food offerings, you will obediently assist us in fighting the enemy on the front line." ”

"I see, I'll leave later." The goddess replied.

……

Zhao Xiao slowly opened his eyes, and at this moment he was sitting still in the wilderness, surrounded by vines and pothos like houses, isolating a downpour.

Looking at the pools of water not far away due to the heavy rain, Zhao Xiao concentrated and stood up quietly, surrounded by dense jungles that are rarely visited, and the ground is either the roots of the big trees competing for the soil, or the fallen leaves and humus that have been piled up for many years, and there is almost no flat foothold.

At this moment, Zhao Huang was dressed in an old kudzu hemp short brown, with mango shoes on his feet, a wooden staff in his hand, and a rattan basket on his back.

After secretly discussing with Han Yuanzi and He Qingchen before, Zhao Huang made a slight arrangement and went to Jiuli Kingdom alone without taking anyone with him.

Although there are now nearly 300,000 soldiers on the border between Xiong Jiuli and Xiong, and there are battles of all sizes on the battlefield front line that stretches for hundreds of miles, and scouts and scouts come and go frequently, this cannot hinder Zhao Xiao's footsteps southward in the slightest, and no one can even detect Zhao Xiao's quiet passing.

Considering that the Yongcui Divine Tree is likely to be connected to the earth's veins and branches to the sky, Zhao Xiao did not dare to fly into the sky, but just relied on his legs all the way to measure the earth, just like ordinary people, without showing the mountain dew.

Although he did not fly into the sky, with Zhao Xiao's cultivation, he was still able to run day and night without drinking or eating. Without the burden of the army, Zhao Xiao marched quickly alone, and came to the depths of the southern soil in ten days.

Going south this way, Zhao Xiao can be regarded as having seen the customs and customs of Jiuli with his own eyes. Even if Li Chun picked up the old Tianxia system again and planned to set up counties in the Jiuli Kingdom, when it was implemented, the biggest constraint was the lack of sufficient officials to appoint.

Most of the newly established county officials were either close associates of Li Chun himself, and most of them did not understand the local people's feelings, and after taking office, they often made a mess, and the tribal chiefs led the local people to cause chaos, and the local officials did not have strong soldiers to suppress the chaos.

If you directly appoint the local tribe Haoqiang as an official and act of restraint, it will be no different from the original, although it is called an official, but in fact the chieftain is barbaric, and there is no change.

In Zhao Xiao's opinion, even if the Xiong Kingdom attacked and destroyed the Jiuli Kingdom, it would still be very difficult to change the situation. Because of the terrain of mountains and rivers, the Nanban tribe was also a small country and a widow in the long past.

Moreover, trapped in poor agricultural work and lack of expensive products, there is no such thing as a good day when chickens and dogs smell each other, old and die do not get along, neighboring tribes attack each other, plunder land and water, mountains and forests, hunting grounds, and even take each other into slavery.

As for those humanoid barbarisms, they have been reduced to the level of ignorance that is almost unenlightened, and killing people and cannibalism is regarded as commonplace, no different from wild beasts.

As He Qingchen said, if it weren't for the Tianxia Dynasty in the past, which opened up the border on a large scale, incorporated the southern soil into the territory, and tried to implement all kinds of rules and regulations, Li Chun would not have been able to do it now.

Even if things are difficult to do, and even if there is only a little progress in hundreds of years, if you look at the long term, this progress is slowly advancing with an irreversible momentum.

Walking in the mountains, forests, lakes and lakes of the vast southern soil and almost uncut and uncultivated, Zhao Xiao felt the traces left by the creation of heaven and earth in the years, experienced the changes in the vicissitudes of the sea, and silently deduced in his heart.

Zhao Xiao found that the soil in the south of Kunlun was humid and warm, and the vegetation was naturally flourishing, and the biggest difficulty for the local civilians to farm was to compete for land with the growing grass and trees.

Most of the low-lying and flat places are contiguous lakes and marshes, which are not only almost no places to settle down, but also accumulate rotten gas for a long time, which is preferred by Gu worms and miasma, and it is difficult for humans and animals to live for a long time. Therefore, most of the people in the south live on the slopes between the mountains and lakes and marshes, which is equivalent to being trapped in a narrow boundary, and it is difficult to stretch up and down.

In fact, there are several southernmost counties in the Xiong Kingdom, and the situation is similar to that of the Jiuli Kingdom. As far as Zhao Xiao knew, He Qingchen ordered the local officials to teach the people to cultivate the water and rake by fire, enclose the lake to make fields, and also let the government prepare farm tools to cultivate cattle, which can be described as a lot of work.

Zhao Xiao did not underestimate He Qingchen's approach, but if the qi of heaven and earth did not change significantly, the situation of the southern soil could not be reversed by manpower and diligence alone.

It's just that for Zhao Xiao, who has personally reversed half of the heaven and earth qi in the eastern soil, it is not completely unimaginable to change the weather of the southern soil.

But before doing this kind of thing, Zhao Huang didn't dare to be negligent, he needed to have a sufficient understanding of the creation of heaven and earth such as the southern soil, mountains, rivers, water and soil, animals and plants, etc., and also consider the changes of this land throughout the ages, so as to deduce various possibilities from the future, rather than simply exhausting the nature of heaven and earth for human use.

Along the way, let the body and mind understand the creation of heaven and earth, deduce the changes of the past and the present, aimlessly under the feet, over the mountains, across the lakes, and finally through a mountain forest, the front suddenly opened up.

What Zhao Huang saw at this moment was a flat wilderness with no end in sight, the ground was overgrown with weeds, there were not too many tall trees, and a few streams meandered down from the mountains, which seemed to converge into lakes in the distance.

Suddenly there was a feeling in the dark, Zhao Xiao found that this place had a trace of fate with him, and he understood in a flash-of-thought-

"It turned out that the star of the year ended up here."