“Your majesty, you are…?” Meng Hao said.

“Hmph! I’m Meng Hao!” said the young man. “The number one ruler in South Heaven!” His aura scintillated prismatically, and his words caused everything to shake.

“Number one ruler! Do you know what that means!? It means that in all the lands of South Heaven, n.o.body dares to provoke me!” The young man lifted his chin, and an arrogant expression covered his face.

“Quick, give him some compensation,” said the ‘Zhixiang.’ “My husband is the number one most powerful expert in the lands of South Heaven, with the exception of some of those old-timers. He’s at the peak of all South Heaven, and even ended the great continental war.”

“Shut your trap!” said the young man, glaring and swis.h.i.+ng his sleeve. “When men talk, the women should stand quietly off to the side!” He glared coldly at Meng Hao.

“Meng Hao says what he means and means what he says! Considering that this is your first offense, I’ll let you off with your life, just this one time!”

Meng Hao wore an odd expression as he looked at this copy of himself talking. Then he looked over at ‘Zhixiang,’ and smiled. He really couldn’t think of anyone other than the parrot and the meat jelly who could pull off such a mistake-ridden scam.

“Presumably, you’ve heard of my ill.u.s.trious name,” the young man continued coldly. “Alright, forget it. I’m not going to make things any harder for you. Just hand over your bag of holding, and I’ll allow you to use material goods as your form of apology!

“If you dare to resist, then you will be buried here this very day!” Once again, his aura burst out explosively, transforming into a tempest that swept across the land. Anyone who sensed such an aura would immediately feel incredible distress. It was as if some amorphous volcano were rumbling, and if one attempted to fight back against it, it would erupt, and one would instantly be killed.

The remnants of the spell formations outside of the Immortal’s cave were now completely destroyed. Sand and pebbles raged into a sandstorm; mountains collapsed and fissures covered the surface of the land. The intense aura caused a riot of colors to flash through the sky. Even Meng Hao couldn’t stop his eyes from widening.

If he wasn’t absolutely sure that the two fellows in front of him were the meat jelly and the parrot, if he wasn’t completely familiar with the two dunces, then he would surely be thoroughly intimidated.

“Hey, how do you know this is my first offense?” said Meng Hao with an enigmatic smile.

The young man gaped, as did ‘Zhixiang.’

“Dammit!” roared the young man. “Don’t tell me this ISN’T your first offense!? This is ridiculous!!” He waved his sleeve once again, causing the ground to quake and mountains to collapse as his aura surged up. He looked as if he was just about to smash Meng Hao into oblivion, but then forcibly restrained himself.

Meng Hao’s current manner caused the bird-like man’s heart to begin to pound. Suddenly, he had a bad feeling. After exchanging a glance with the ‘Zhixiang,’ he snorted coldly.

“Apparently, you still don’t understand Meng Hao! Do you know who my dad is? He’s Fang Xiufeng!” Inwardly, the bird-like man was quite pleased with himself for a.s.suming a role that was essentially the most powerful in all of South Heaven. In recent days, after a.s.suming the visage of Meng Hao, he had learned about Fang Xiufeng from some other members of the Fang Clan.

“Scared yet?” he said.

Meng Hao cleared his throat, then blinked somewhat bashfully. “Are you really Meng Hao?”

“I, Meng Hao, would never change my surname OR my given name!” the young man said proudly. “Of course I’m Meng Hao!”

Meng Hao shook his head. “I heard that Meng Hao can stomp his foot down so hard that the ground shatters. Can you do that? I don’t really believe that you can.”

“You don’t believe!?” raged the young man, glaring at Meng Hao.

“I don’t!” replied Meng Hao decisively.

“Dammit! You actually don’t believe!” Howling, the young man stamped his foot onto the ground. Shockingly, the Immortal’s cave collapsed, the ground quaked and a huge fissure spread out.

“Well, what about that? Believe me now?!”

“That’s just one single fissure,” Meng Hao said with disdain. “I’m talking about shattering the earth and making a huge crater. Meng Hao can do that, what about you? Ah, forget about it. I know you can’t.”

“AGGGHHHH! You’re really p.i.s.sing me off! You really don’t believe!? Dammit! Alright, pay attention. Watch and see whether Lord Fif— er, Meng Hao can do it or not!!” The young man’s eyes were completely bloodshot. There was nothing he hated more than people disbelieving him, nothing dismayed him more than a provocation. He suddenly flew up into the air, then slammed back down into the ground, instantly causing a huge hole to appear.

Meng Hao’s eyes glittered as he looked at the ground in front of him, and then compared it to the vegetation off in the distance.

A moment later, the young man flew out pompously from within the hole.

“Believe me now?!”

“It’s not deep enough,” sighed Meng Hao.

The young man flew into a rage. His body flickered as he once again slammed down into the hole. A huge boom echoed out, and the land quaked. It almost seemed as if the hole would extend all the way down to the center of the planet; in fact, subterranean fire even shot up out of the hole, along with the young man. He glared at Meng Hao; from the look in his eye, if Meng Hao refused to believe him, he was willing to tear a hole all the way through the lands of South Heaven.

Meng Hao coughed lightly.

“Alright, fine, I’m scared. I have a total of ten bags of holding, how many do you want?”

“All ten!”

“Three! I want three!” cried ‘Zhixiang,’ whose eyes glittered brightly.

“Moron! We want ten!”

“You’re the moron!” the big man roared back. “Three is the biggest number! We want three!” It seemed like a fight was about to break out as ‘Zhixiang’ glared at the young man. “You idiot, three bags of holding is a lot! Y-y-you, you want ten? How many is ten? Is it bigger than three, huh?!?!”

“You IDIOT!” howled the young man. “Of course ten is more than three! Three is nothing! We want ten!!”

The big man stared in shock.

Meng Hao sighed, and decided to switch conversation partners.

“Ai, Miss Fellow Daoist, for some reason, I get the feeling that this husband of yours is acting a bit too much like a bully. No matter how you look at him, he definitely seems to be a bully. Bullies like that should really be converted. I really feel sorry for you.” To any other cultivator, these words would be incredibly childish and essentially wouldn’t have convinced anyone. It was so obvious that he wanted to stir up dissension that he might as well just have told them to fight each other directly.

Of course, the big man and the young man didn’t pick up on anything strange at all….

That was especially true of the big man. Once he heard Meng Hao say the word “bully” a few times, his eyes went wide and filled with a vicious gleam.

“Bully? Dammit! That’s exactly what you are! You can’t do this! You’re immoral! You are far too shameless! I’m… I’m going to convert you!” Howling, the big man pounded toward the young man.

The young man nervously shot backward, letting out an equally enraged shout. However… he was slightly quicker on the pickup, and suddenly turned to look at Meng Hao.

“Hold on! Ol’ Third, wait! Something seems off here…. We can’t start fighting amongst ourselves. Something fishy is going on. Something’s not right. This guy just said a few random sentences, and suddenly we’re fighting!” Murmuring to himself, the young man looked closely at Meng Hao, and only seemed to grow more surprised.

Meng Hao was smiling the same as before as he stood there. He looked at the expression on the young man’s face, and couldn’t help but muse that the parrot actually wasn’t that stupid after all, and had finally picked up on the clues.

It was at this point that the young man suddenly cried out, “I’ve figured out his ident.i.ty!! He saw through the flaws in our scam! He used only a few words to get us to fight each other. He’s obviously… Patriarch Reliance!!”

The young man let out a roar of rage, and the big man began to tremble. A popping sound could be heard as Zhixiang disappeared, and the big man reappeared. He gasped, and staggered backward several paces.

“You’re Patriarch Reliance!?!?” blubbered the big man. “You can’t blame me! He forced me to change forms! He’s the one who changed into Meng Hao!”

Meng Hao’s face darkened. No longer in the mood for fooling around, he gave a cold snort and then removed the bamboo hat.

“You two morons open your eyes wide and see exactly who I am!”

The instant the bamboo hat left his head, his aura changed completely, and his appearance became clear to the young man and the big man. When they saw Meng Hao’s face, the big man let out a shriek, and a pop could be heard as he transformed into the meat jelly.

“It’s him!” he cried, flying away at top speed. “It’s Meng Hao! He’s caught up to us! Finished! We’re finished! We’re dead for sure. DEAD! It’s all your fault! YOUR fault!”

The young man s.h.i.+vered and let out a piercing shriek. A pop could be heard as he transformed back into a colorful parrot, within whose claws was gripped a black feather. His wings began to flap furiously as he apparently prepared to use all the power he had left in his body to make his getaway.

“Dammit! How could you possibly show up here!? This is impossible! How could we run into YOU!?!?”

Everything was in complete chaos. The parrot and the meat jelly shrieked and tried to flee at top speed. As soon as they attempted to make their escape, the land in the area distorted and returned to how it looked before. There was no fissure in the ground, no hole, no Immortal’s cave, not even any fearsome restrictive spells.

There had never been an Immortal’s cave in the area, only a valley. Everything had been an illusion, a very realistic illusion.

The source of the entire illusion was the black feather that the parrot gripped in its talons. The feather gave off a bizarre, flickering glow, a power that would influence the area around it and create illusions.

Meng Hao watched as the parrot and meat jelly attempted to flee. He made no move to pursue them, but instead stood there and coldly said. “I’ll give you three breaths of time to get back here. Whoever returns first will be exempt from punishment. The other will receive double punishment for abandoning me in my moment of crisis that year.”

As soon as his voice rang out, the meat jelly and the parrot came to a stop in midair.

“Dammit,” thought the parrot, “that meat jelly has a completely one-track mind. That idiot will definitely be fooled by this. That means that the safest thing is for Lord Fifth to be fooled first!” Immediately, he turned around and shot toward Meng Hao as fast as he could.

The meat jelly trembled.

“That parrot is completely crafty. He was the cause of all of this! He was the one who incited me to flee in the first place. There’s no way I’ll take his punishment for him!” Almost in the same instant that the parrot turned around, the air surrounding the meat jelly began to crackle with lightning. He employed all the power he could muster to shoot back toward Meng Hao.

“I surrender!!”

“Fudge! I also surrender!”

The parrot and the meat jelly shot back toward Meng Hao urgently. Meng Hao gave a cold snort and suddenly lifted his right hand up into the air, within which appeared the copper mirror. The parrot squawked, transforming into a beam of light that shot into the mirror.

As for the black feather, it floated down into Meng Hao’s hand. The meat jelly was trembling as it began to cry out.

“Master, Lord Third has missed you to death! It was that d.a.m.ned parrot who dragged me with him when he left that year! It’s his fault, master! Let’s convert him together!”

Meng Hao slapped out with his right hand, hitting the top of the meat jelly’s head. A boom could be heard as it shrank down into a tiny ball that Meng Hao grabbed in his hand then tossed down toward the ground. The ground trembled as a huge crater appeared. The meat jelly let out a miserable shriek as it bounced up and Meng Hao grabbed it again. As he proceeded forward, he bounced the meat jelly down again and again, causing it to let out continuous screeches.

“Quit faking,” said Meng Hao, causing the meat jelly’s screams to instantly turn into entreaties.