There is a beast in the bright morning.

Chapter 118 The Prodigal Son Returns Home

After Qiongqi ate the mute pill from the Sky-Supporting Tree, he was indeed unable to speak. You could only see Qiongqi opening his mouth, but you couldn't hear his voice. Haochen and the others immediately felt that their ears were much quieter.

Seeing the Sky Tree feeding Qiongqi, Taotie, who was standing nearby, also wanted to eat something good, so it hopped over to the Sky Tree and took a bite out of its root.

"Eeya eeya. (It's delicious, I want to eat it too.)"

Although the Taotie had good teeth, it was still too young. Therefore, its bite not only failed to harm the Sky Tree, but also made the Sky Tree's feet feel a little itchy.

The towering tree looked down and saw that it was Taotie, a red furry ball, gnawing at its roots. So it stretched out a branch and grabbed Taotie.

However, the Sky Tree then noticed that Taotie had no facial features and sighed, "Alas, you poor thing, you don't even have eyes. Come here, let me draw you some big eyes."

As he spoke, Qingtianshu took out a branch, scratched it on his body, and set it on fire, burning it into charcoal. Then he applied makeup to Taotie's face.

"It's all set, how about it, do you like it?!"

"Eeya eeya! (Beautiful!)"

After finishing the makeup on the Taotie, the Sky-Supporting Tree looked at the other beasts. But as soon as it saw them, the Sky-Supporting Tree immediately recognized the wicked Qilin Four-Unlikes among them. It was so frightened that it pulled out its roots and ran away.

"You wicked Qilin is hurting the lovely Shushu again."

Hearing the words of the Sky-Supporting Tree, the Four-Faced Beast just wanted to shout, "Slander! A tree is slandering him, this cute and sensible Qilin!"

Before the Four-Faced Beast could utter its true thoughts, the Taotie, who was already getting impatient, shouted, "Enough!"

Taotie's cry immediately gave Qiongqi a glimmer of hope. Qiongqi glared angrily at the Sky-Supporting Tree: "Waaaaah... (How about that? Scared now? My brother has a bad temper. I advise you to surrender obediently and heal me, maybe I, your humble servant Qiongqi, can put in a good word for you.)"

Qiongqi originally thought that Taotie had come to stand up for him, but to his surprise, Taotie obediently lay down in front of the Sky-Supporting Tree and said, "It's my turn."

"Waaaaah~ (Bro, what are you doing? Weren't you going to help me get revenge?)"

Comparing Taotie and Qiongqi, Qingtianshu suddenly found the little Taotie much more pleasing to the eye.

So the Sky Tree conjured up a wooden comb and began to groom the Taotie's fur: "Look at your fur, it's all tangled up like thorns. Your mother probably doesn't have time to take care of you. Poor thing, let me comb your fur."

The Sky Tree was exhausted after doing all this, but unexpectedly, Tianlu stepped forward and looked at the Sky Tree with a pleading look in his eyes.

"Old tree spirit, where am I? Do you still have any precious jade?"

The Sky-Supporting Tree stared at Tianlu for a moment, then suddenly realized and said, "Who do we have here? It's you, you glutton! Here you go."

Tianlu took the blue gem handed to him by the Sky-Supporting Tree and ate it without thinking. As soon as he finished eating, he let out a burp.

"Burp~ I'm so full."

"How about that, Shushu? My 'One-Piece Jade' is amazing, isn't it? Just one piece is enough to fill your stomach immediately."

At this moment, Hao Chen also walked up to the Sky Tree. Before he could speak, the Sky Tree was surprised.

"Hey, you little guy, you seem really strange. I can't see through you at all. You seem to have no past and no future!"

Qingtianshu considered himself to be very knowledgeable, but this was the first time he had ever seen Haochen's destiny, and there were only two possibilities for having such a destiny.

The first type is a dead person, and one whose true spirit has dissipated. Only in this way can the past and future not be displayed. But Hao Chen is standing here perfectly fine, so this is obviously not the case.

That leaves only the second possibility: Hao Chen was an unparalleled ruler in the past, or he will become an unparalleled ruler in the future. In that case, he can escape the river of fate and prove himself forever, thus eliminating the so-called past and future.

Hao Chen also sensed something unusual about himself, but he assumed that the reason the Sky Tree couldn't see through him was because he came from the future.

"Alright, old tree spirit, let me ask you something. I've heard that you're called the Sky-Supporting Tree and possess heaven-reaching power. Is that true?"

"Another impolite little guy." The Sky Tree muttered under its breath, then stretched out a branch and patted its trunk, saying proudly, "You're right, I am the Sky Tree. When I grow to my complete form, I can communicate with all the worlds, just like my father."

Hao Chen: "???"

Hao Chen's head was spinning from the words of the Sky-Supporting Tree. Could it be that there was more than just this one Sky-Supporting Tree?

Hao Chen voiced his question, and after listening, the Sky-Supporting Tree was silent for a moment, then said sadly, "You must be talking about my father, the previous Sky-Supporting Tree, also known as Jianmu."

"Legend has it that the tree is called Jianmu, which grows between heaven and earth, reaching a height of a hundred ren, and the gods ascend to heaven through it. This is referring to my father, and all the heavens and worlds are connected through my father."

"Back then, a brick flew in from somewhere and broke my father's body. Before he died, my father exhausted all his energy to give birth to me—the second generation of Sky Tower."

"Please accept my condolences!" Hao Chen comforted her, then asked, "So you probably can't communicate with the heavens yet, which means the heavens are currently independent, right?"

"That's not necessarily true. Powerful clans always have hidden resources that can open up space-time gaps and cross worlds."

"By the way," said the Sky Tree, seemingly remembering something, "a while ago a golden monkey came to me and asked me to help send him to a chaotic universe."

"It's the Holy Ape!" Hao Chen knew the answer as soon as he heard the name of the golden monkey, and then asked, "And what about him now?"

"Of course I sent it there. Although I can't communicate with all the heavens yet, sending a monkey is no problem."

Then, before Hao Chen could ask any more questions, Qingtian Tree seemed tired and took the initiative to dismiss him: "Alright, Tree Tree is tired. Turn left 500 meters ahead of the exit. Goodbye."

Hao Chen had many more questions he wanted to ask, but seeing that Qingtian Tree seemed unwilling to talk anymore, he had no choice but to give up and leave the canyon with Chaos and Bixie.

After exiting the canyon, Bixie found the scenery before him somewhat familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before.

After looking around, Si Bu Xiang happily pointed to the small hill in front of him and said, "Isn't this near my home? Look, this is my cave."

Tianlu had somehow climbed onto the back of the Four-Unlikes. Following the direction the Four-Unlikes' claws were pointing, he realized it really was the Four-Unlikes' home. He immediately became excited and climbed onto the Four-Unlikes' head, covering its eyes with his claws.

"The home of the Four-Unlikes? Wouldn't that mean I could see my father and mother? Wouldn't that mean I could eat lots of golden balls?"

Sibuxiangjian Tianlu called his own father and mother more naturally than he did himself, and quickly reminded him, "Little Blue Circle, those are my parents, what are you so happy about?"

Hao Chen interrupted, "Alright, enough nonsense. Let's go to the Si Bu Xiang family's place to rest first, and we'll go find Di Jiang tomorrow."

Soon, the Four-Faced Beast arrived at its doorstep with a large group of beasts: "I'm back."

Upon hearing the voice of the Four-Faced Beast inside the cave, the First Qilin and the Jade Qilin exclaimed excitedly, "Our son has returned! Let's go out and see!"

But when the First Qilin went out, it was startled to see a large group of beasts, especially since there were adult beasts like Chaos and War Tiger among them.

Fortunately, the four-legged creature stepped forward in time and said, "Father and Mother, these are my friends who have come to visit us."

Yu Qilin scolded, "You child, why didn't you tell us before you brought your friend home? We didn't even have time to prepare anything to eat."

The Four-Faced Beast was scolded by the Jade Qilin and felt a little embarrassed. He had forgotten that Qilins only ate cloud dew and did not eat meat, and there was no meat prepared at home.

Seeing his chance, Hao Chen quickly stepped forward and grabbed the Qilin's paw, saying, "No need for all that trouble, we can hunt for ourselves."

Suddenly, Yu Qilin hugged the Four-Faced Beast, looked it over from head to toe, and asked with concern, "Did you go hungry outside? Did you miss us?"

"You've been away from home for so long, and you didn't even send a message back." Although Shi Qilin looked a little angry, he couldn't hide the concern in his eyes.

Si Bu Xiang blushed slightly and said somewhat shyly, "Father and Mother, I've grown up and can take care of myself."

Looking at the happy family of three, Hao Chen began to think about what to do tonight to avoid Yu Qilin and sleep alone with Shi Qilin, to test whether Shi Qilin's Daoist techniques could be imprinted on the World Tree.

Meanwhile, in the modern timeline, Hao Chen and Little Fire Dragon arrived at Nanshan.

Hao Chen glanced at the little fire dragon beside him and asked, "Are you sure the Copy Demon God is hiding around here?"

The little fire dragon nodded: "Big brother, I searched the entire Rainbow Cloud Mountain Range according to the aura you gave me, and it turned out that the aura of the cloned demon god was the strongest here."

"Is that so? This guy has caused me so much trouble. Today I'll eliminate this threat early and kill him in the future, thus settling my score from the past."