"So, what do you people call your own planet?" Lu Zheng asked.

"We don't have a name for it." Si Lingxi shook her head. "When did you people start calling it Blue Star?"

"I really haven't paid attention." Lu Zheng blinked and said, "It should be… at least from when people knew this was a planet."

"Exactly. Ordinary people don't even know where they are. Those of us who do know don't really have much use for that name either, so we still just use terms like Central Plains, Southern Border, and so on." Si Lingxi explained.

"Then are there any other continents over there?" Lu Zheng asked.

Si Lingxi shook her head. "No, only one continent. The fertile lands in the middle are the Central Plains. South of the Hundred Thousand Mountains is the Southern Border, north of the endless snowfields is the Northern Domain, west of the desert oases is the west. Beyond that it's all everlasting night on icefields or boundless ocean. There are indeed some islands of various sizes on the sea, but all of them are far inferior to the Central Plains."

"Then isn't everything connected to the East Sea?"

Si Lingxi nodded. "Yes, it's all connected to the East Sea. There are some top Great Demons hiding there cultivating as well, but the environment is harsh, few people go there. Aside from people taking a lap around when searching for Heavenly and Earthly Treasures, even cultivators or the Demon Race rarely show up there on normal days."

Lu Zheng understood. Places like that—harsh environment was one thing, but the fact that no Human Race lived there was the more important reason.

Because just like on Blue Star, only humans gain intelligence from childhood, providing basic fireworks of daily life and the need for communication. Aside from those who honestly want nothing but cultivation and don't care about anything else, most of the Demon Race and even beings from the Ghost Realm actually lived around the Central Plains.

Look at the Northern Domain Demon Race and the Eastern Sea Dragon Race—there are humans living under their rule as well.

"More importantly, Grotto Heaven Blessed Lands, the Netherworld Ghost Realm, these small worlds attached to the mortal world, most of their entrances and exits are also near the land."

"So that's how it is." Lu Zheng nodded, then suddenly reacted. "Right, does Phoenix Mountain have a Grotto Heaven Blessed Land?"

Si Lingxi's lips curved. "You only just thought to ask? Of course it does. It's right under the crater of Phoenix Mountain, a Flame World. Aside from abundant Fire Spiritual Power, there's nothing else there and nothing much to see, so I never mentioned it."

"Of course, now that you have Phoenix Origin, if you go cultivate Phoenix Divine Fire in the Flame World, it should give you twice the result with half the effort."

"Got it!" Lu Zheng was not polite about it either. "Next time I go to Phoenix Mountain I'll go have a look."

...

From the topic of aliens they drifted to the planet where Great Jing was, then to Grotto Heaven Blessed Lands and the Flame World under Phoenix Mountain, going wildly off topic to something like a hundred and eight thousand miles away.

Not until they walked out of Warner Bros. Movie World did that topic finally end, and they returned to their Australia trip.

"Let's go! To Moreton Island!"

Lin Wan had applied for a few extra days of annual leave, so no one was in a hurry. They took their time playing for a few days, then could still go to Moreton Island for two days of sunshine, beaches, and fresh seafood.

Going out to sea and scuba diving were off the table. They'd seen more than enough of the boundless ocean. As for diving, going underwater in full gear with a diving coach's help was just way too lame, okay!

...

They bought ferry tickets and took the boat to Moreton Island. After booking a family suite at the island resort, they changed clothes and headed for the beach.

Lu Zheng wore a sky-blue T-shirt and shorts, flip-flops on his feet, looking utterly relaxed.

Lin Wan in hot pants and a tank top looked fit and smoking hot.

Si Lingxi and the other girls weren't used to revealing too much, but even in calf-length dresses with light gauze scarves, they were still dazzlingly beautiful.

They stayed on Moreton Island for two days. Sometimes they strolled through the island's forests and along the beaches, sometimes they took a yacht around the island, sometimes they used a Blinding Technique to go into the water themselves, and sometimes they stood near the pier feeding the wild dolphins that came up on their own.

On the morning of the third day, with nothing to do, they lounged on beach chairs by the shore, resting.

"We leave the island this afternoon, flight tonight—first to Sydney, then transfer in Hong Kong, then back to Hai City." Lu Zheng took a sip of his drink.

Liu Qingyan nodded. "We've pretty much done everything we could do. Time to head back."

Shen Ying was next to her, huddled with Lin Wan looking at her Moments, pointing at the comments and whispering about them.

"Eh? This must be the celebrity friend Lu Lang mentioned, right? I think I've seen her dramas and commercials." Shen Ying said.

"Her name is Zhao Xiaodao. She happened to see me and Lu Zheng play the role of Martial Arts Masters once."

Then Lin Wan told Shen Ying how the two of them got to know Zhao Xiaodao, and how Lu Zheng had given her a Beauty Pill. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"Lu Lang, you're really stingy. She's a celebrity at least—what would it hurt to just give her a Youthful Appearance Pill directly?" Shen Ying laughed.

Lu Zheng shrugged. "Then I wouldn't be a Martial Arts Master; I'd be an Immortal walking the mortal world. That doesn't fit my persona!"

The girls all laughed when they heard that.

After having lunch on Moreton Island, they returned to Brisbane and got on their flight home.

...

Back in Hai City, Lin Wan and Liu Qingyan each went back to work, and Shen Ying returned to Peach Blossom Plain to sort out the accumulated Incense and Candle Qi.

Only Si Lingxi curled up in a corner of the sofa again, found a comfortable position, reading The Investiture of the Gods for a while, then Life's Long Regrets Flow Eastward, then Journey to the West, then Wukong's Story.

Lu Zheng had no idea what it felt like for Si Lingxi to read all four books at the same time. He was sure he'd suffer a mental breakdown if it were him.

"I remember Great Jing has the inheritance of the True Monarch of Pure Origin and Mysterious Dao." Si Lingxi said. "Yuan Mountain Temple, the leading line of Body Refinement in the Daoist Sect. A few Daoists there have fairly decent cultivation."

Lu Zheng bared his teeth in a wry grin.

He knew of Yuan Mountain Temple; he'd seen it in the information on Great Jing's various powers at White Cloud Temple. It was located in Huo Mountain Dao, near the Northern Domain, and often clashed with the man-eating Great Demons of the north—it could really fight.

Although its foundations weren't as deep as White Cloud Temple's and it had no absolute top-tier experts due to the difficulty of the Body Refinement path, it was still a force not to be underestimated.

Yet in Si Lingxi's mouth, it got dismissed with a single "cultivation's not bad."

That's terrifying, terrifying!

...

Just then, the front door opened and Lu Zheng saw Lin Wan walk in with an ugly expression on her face.

"What's wrong?" Lu Zheng hurried over to greet her.

Lin Wan shook her head. After a moment of silence, she finally said, "Nothing much. It's just… a colleague I knew died in the line of duty."

Lu Zheng nodded in understanding. "Interpol, or a colleague from the Municipal Bureau?"

"Neither. A colleague from the Southwest."

Lin Wan shook her head. "He'd been undercover with a powder merchant. I was investigating another trafficker. I met him once in Northern Myanmar—he gave me a very important lead. He was such a sunny young guy."

"My condolences." Lu Zheng nodded. The fight against powder merchants was a long-term struggle; Hua Country lost anti-drug officers every year.

What was even more tragic was, after they died, sometimes their own names couldn't even be carved on their tombstones, for fear those powder traffickers would take revenge on their families.

Last time, he and Lin Wan had taken out many large-scale powder merchants and, for a short time, cut off their routes into Hua Country from other channels. But the small and medium operations smuggling over land through the Southwest weren't affected much.

These scattered little businesses were like playing whack-a-mole—no matter how much you hit them, they never truly stop.

...

Lu Zheng shook his head and sighed.

The local governments were inept, Hua Country couldn't cross the border and intervene, and behind the various forces were other nations or top-level powers offering support. The relationships were extremely tangled, so for decades the Northern Myanmar triangle had been stuck in this stalemate.

Unless Lu Zheng directly went up the mountain to proclaim himself king, rebuilding order with unstoppable iron-fisted methods, he was just as powerless.

But Lu Zheng had a feeling that even if he revealed his identity as an Immortal and cowed all sides to do something, he would still encounter countless constraints.

Every kind of opportunist, schemer, and vested interest would watch him through a magnifying glass, hunting for anything they could question, sitting behind the scenes stirring up public opinion and pointing fingers from the moral high ground.

Unless he killed until heads rolled in rivers of blood, the troubles that followed would be endless.

This was the price of trying to shoulder responsibility.

And that was certainly not what Lu Zheng wanted. He wasn't Luo Ji; it's not like he hadn't read Three-Body and The Wandering Earth!