Becoming an immortal is meaningless, but returning home is very meaningful—this sentence did not seem to be the answer the State Preceptor wanted.

But to him, the answer no longer mattered.

Once he knew Hu Ma was looking for him, he came here, apparently very curious what Hu Ma wanted to ask him; yet when Hu Ma uttered the words "return home," it gave him an unexpected sense of satisfaction.

He was in no hurry to reply. The expression on his face grew even more indifferent and desolate: "Your Hu Family deceived me for twenty years, causing my entire scheme to come to nothing."

"The White Jade City plan was ruined overnight."

"The Daluo Dharma Sect has already expelled me from the sect."

"You destroyed my road toward returning home, and you should have been the only person I've wanted to kill with my own hands for the past twenty years. Yet you come to me now to ask about returning home?"

He raised his head slightly and stared fixedly into Hu Ma's eyes: "Give me a reason—one you believe would make me help answer your question!"

Hearing these words, the Calculation at his side couldn't help feeling a bit worried.

When the State Preceptor spoke those words, the killing intent in his eyes did not seem fake. The State Preceptor possessed great skill, yet he rarely killed.

He only killed at critical moments.

But once he decided to kill, few in this world could escape. To be sure, Hu Ma might indeed be someone he could not kill—but he, Calculation, was standing right here. If the two of them started fighting and he got caught in the crossfire...

Hu Ma, facing the State Preceptor's questioning, fell slightly silent instead, as if many answers flashed through his mind.

Perhaps he could reproach the State Preceptor for running away, say that he owed this world and therefore ought to answer his questions?

Or say that, as the previous generation's Main Sacrificial of the Daluo Dharma Sect, he had the responsibility to explain things to him?

But in the end, what Hu Ma thought of was the Impermanence Li Family, and the old man who guarded the ancestral hall in Shangjing back then—the way they'd spoken of the State Preceptor. Slowly, he lifted his head to look at the State Preceptor and said, "I'll see to it that in this lifetime, you won't end up... looking like a joke."

As soon as this answer came out, Calculation immediately shrank his neck and was about to run.

The expression on the State Preceptor's face suddenly vanished completely; in his somewhat desolate eyes, a cold, electric chill seemed to surge up.

A joke?

The one who had once single-handedly sent the Douyi Dynasty to its doom, and buried the first generation Reincarnator—only to end up with the word "joke" as his final verdict?

At the State Preceptor's level, perhaps no words could easily shake his heart.

Only those two words, "a joke," were like tearing off his face and hanging it out under the blazing sun.

After uttering those two words, Hu Ma had also prepared himself for the State Preceptor to lash out in fury. He knew those words would definitely stir something in the State Preceptor's heart; he just didn't know what the final result would be.

Under his gaze, he saw the State Preceptor's face sink, the mountain mists gathering and dispersing. But after a long, long time, he still did not make a move. Instead, he let out a self-mocking laugh.

Then he looked at Hu Ma coolly and said in a low voice, "Come find me at Da'ai Mountain."

Once he finished speaking, a thin mist suddenly rose all around, and everything turned hazy and indistinct.

In the next instant, the State Preceptor had already disappeared; the place where he had stood was still just an ancient pine tree.

"So was it a man, or a pine tree?"

Frowning, Hu Ma stepped forward and lightly touched the hard fissures in the pine's bark. A pensive expression appeared on his face.

His cultivation was now far from shallow; there were very few dharma methods left in this world that could deceive him or harm him.

Yet after seeing the State Preceptor's dharma method of incarnating as a pine, he still felt a sense of novelty.

This meant there were still many dharma methods in this world that he could not see through—countless unknowns.

The unknown was hope, and it proved that his own idea was not unworkable.

"Where is Da'ai Mountain?"

He stroked the ancient pine, pondered for a moment, then turned and asked Calculation.

"It's the mountain gate of our Daluo Dharma Sect..."

Only now did Calculation dare to breathe carefully. He hurriedly said, "Before the Douyi Dynasty, the Daluo Dharma Sect always had only one master, one disciple, and one incense burner, cultivating outside the mountain gate, observing Tai Sui and reading the celestial signs."

"Only after Douyi took the world and the ancestral master descended the mountain, bringing the World View Incense into the human world, did the mountain gate at Da'ai Mountain become more or less abandoned. I didn't expect the State Preceptor to have gone back there..."

He paused, then mulled it over and added, "But in theory, that place should still belong to the Daluo Dharma Sect. In every dynasty that knew of the Daluo Dharma Sect's existence—including the first Emperor of Douyi—that place was always granted to the Daluo Dharma Sect's Main Sacrificial."

"So in fact, it also counts as your turf. For the State Preceptor to go back there—that's actually a bit off..."

"..."

Hu Ma nodded and said, "Then let's go."

Calculation grew a little anxious. "To grab territory?"

Hu Ma nodded. "Not just to grab territory. Anything that might be of use, we go take a look. Since I'm going to be this Main Sacrificial, I should at least straighten out the accounts."

Now that Hu Ma had decided to go, Calculation naturally did not dare to stand in his way. In truth, he didn't quite understand what Hu Ma was trying to do; he subconsciously felt that Hu Ma leaving such a major situation to those people was a bit overconfident...

After all, those people were outsiders.

But seeing Hu Ma suddenly take an interest in the affairs of the Daluo Dharma Sect, he also felt it wasn't a bad thing. Under any circumstances, straightening out the accounts was something that ought to be done.

The preparations were extremely simple. All the Daluo Dharma Sect disciples, except for Hu Ma, carried the ancestral master's memorial tablet on their backs.

Right in front of Hu Ma, he kowtowed several times to the ancestral master's memorial tablet and lit One Incense.