Ye Fan stared at the dozen or so white-haired elders for a long while, unable to speak. Those were unmistakably his familiar classmates — yet every one of them had ended up like this. It was truly frightening.

Pang Bo was equally dumbstruck. A lingering fear and unease settled over him — if he too had become like this, he felt he would want to die right now.

The two hurried over to examine everyone present, and were relieved to find that all were still breathing. No one’s life was in immediate danger.

“Huh!”

Pang Bo spotted Liu Yiyi in the grass. She showed no signs of aging — she remained as delicate and willowy as ever, her eyes shut, looking utterly fragile and pitiable.

This filled Ye Fan and Pang Bo with relief. They had been on good terms with Liu Yiyi since their school days, and now felt all the more sympathy for her. Naturally, they had no wish to see anything else bad happen to her.

Beneath an ancient tree, Ye Fan found Zhang Ziling — he now appeared to be around forty years old. While it seemed as though a stretch of his life had been stripped away, he had not aged as drastically as Zhou Yi and the others.

“Handsome Ziling has turned into a middle-aged man.”

“Still better than turning into Elder Ziling, isn’t it?”

Ye Fan and Pang Bo muttered to each other in low voices.

Before long, Liu Yiyi woke. When she saw the appearance of Ye Fan and Pang Bo, she instantly gaped in shock. Shortly after, Zhang Ziling came to as well. Once he grasped his own situation, he could not suppress a cry of anguish. To go from a young man in the prime of his life to a man of middle age with an earnest, plain face — that was something no one could easily accept.

“Ziling, don’t be upset — just take a look at them and you’ll feel a lot better.”

Zhang Ziling followed his gaze to look at Zhou Yi, Li Xiaoman, and the others, and immediately fell silent. He found that if he thought his situation was a tragedy, there was always something even worse.

“How could this happen…” He stared blankly, though he looked considerably better than he had in his moment of despair.

Among everyone present: Ye Fan and Pang Bo had reversed in age; Liu Yiyi had undergone no change whatsoever; Zhang Ziling had lost twenty years of his life; and all the others had become old men and old women, their bodies frail and deteriorated.

Ye Fan and Pang Bo exchanged a glance, and in the same instant both thought of those crystalline, translucent red fruits. At the time, eating them had only seemed to fill their mouths with fragrance and swiftly restore their energy. In hindsight, those fruits were clearly no ordinary thing — to call them extraordinary would be an understatement.

For an unknown reason, everyone had aged — yet the ones who had eaten the fruit had withstood time’s assault.

“What force could have done this — stripping them of their youth and vitality?” Pang Bo was puzzled, and no matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t work it out.

“My guess would be the Ancient Forbidden Land.” Ye Fan offered this as his conclusion.

Just hearing the name “Ancient Forbidden Land” made the meaning clear — it was connected to the ancient past, or perhaps a forbidden zone that had existed since ancient times. Even birds, beasts, insects, and ants gave it a wide berth; inside it was Desolate and lifeless, utterly dead — without a doubt a place of great evil and great danger.

And yet they had walked out safely, with nothing untoward happening. That seemed to contradict the norm — it made the four characters “Ancient Forbidden Land” feel almost like an empty title.

“Right — it must be because of the Ancient Forbidden Land!” Pang Bo had also worked out the key point.

Based on their shared conclusion, some terrifying force within the Ancient Forbidden Land had stripped the others of their youth and vitality. But why had it only taken effect after they had walked out? That left the two of them somewhat puzzled.

“Perhaps it’s something like a curse — maybe the moment you step foot in the Ancient Forbidden Land, whether or not you make it out, wherever you happen to be, once the curse’s time comes, there’s no escaping it.”

Ye Fan and Pang Bo couldn’t help feeling grateful. If not for eating those strange fruits, they too would probably have been stooped with age by now.

After a while longer, the others began to awaken one by one. A chorus of anguished cries rang out from the mountaintop, raising the hair on one’s neck. After that came a tide of sobbing, rising and falling without end.

To age before one’s time — youth turned to white hair — this was surely among the most wretched things in the world. At twenty-some years old, in the very prime of their youth, they had woken to white hair and piled wrinkles in what felt like the blink of an eye. How could they possibly bear it? It was enough to make a person wish they were dead.

“Why did I end up like this?” Zhou Yi stretched out a trembling hand, feeling the wrinkles on his own skin, then pulled out a strand of withered white hair. His voice was infinitely aged as he roared, “Why?!”

Beside him, Wang Ziwen also trembled as he examined his own body. His eyes were dull and clouded, the bags beneath them as large as pigeon eggs. Wizened beyond measure, he said in a shaking voice, “I refuse to believe this…”

“Aaah…!” Lin Jia was on the verge of collapse. Her scream sent every bird in the surrounding forest scattering in flight.

A woman’s appearance is her first lifeline — and for a beautiful woman, it matters all the more. For a woman as naturally stunning and alluringly seductive as she was, suddenly discovering that her once-snow-white skin had lost its luster, grown coarse and rough, aged beyond measure — that was harder to bear than killing her.

Not far away, Li Xiaoman was the same. In her misery, she wished she could end it all. If she had once been a clear and ethereal lotus blossom, she could not even be called a dried lotus leaf now. Every strand of her once-dark hair had turned white — dim, lustreless, withered as weeds. Her skin was layered with wrinkles, slack and loose; her eyes were glazed; her face a map of deep creases.

When she saw Ye Fan approaching, Li Xiaoman immediately cried out, “Don’t come near me!” She covered her face with her hands, weeping without stop, then buried her head between her knees.

Ye Fan didn’t go to her — he didn’t want to distress her further — and instead called out words of comfort to everyone. “Don’t despair. In this world, where even gods exist, what is there that cannot happen? There will certainly be a way to fix this.”

The mountaintop was shrouded in misery. Many could barely see the point of living — especially when faced with Ye Fan and Pang Bo, two boys of eleven or twelve. That contrast was the cruelest kind of torment. The vast majority of the group had become decrepit and frail, while these two had been restored to youth — a contrast that made more than a few hearts bleed.

“Oh my God — God damn it!” Kai De was beside himself with rage, mixing Chinese and English to express his unbearable grief.

“Foreign friend, don’t get worked up.” Pang Bo walked over and, with considerably poor timing, patted him on the shoulder. “Growing old together with the one you love — that’s the most romantic thing in the world.”

Kai De burst into tears at that, bawling like a child. “My girlfriend… isn’t here. There’s nothing romantic about this at all.”

Pang Bo was briefly taken aback. He glanced at Li Xiaoman, then said nothing more and walked toward the others.

“Ye Fan, why haven’t the two of you aged?” Zhou Yi was the first to regain his composure. His eyes, clouded though they were, fixed sharply on Ye Fan and Pang Bo, and from those murky pupils shot two bright beams.

The others also temporarily set aside their grief and turned to look.

Pang Bo felt deeply uncomfortable hearing Zhou Yi’s words and, with no small amount of tactlessness, replied, “Now, Grandpa Zhou — surely you’re not suggesting the two of us had something to do with this? If we had powers that great, we’d just become gods outright. Why would we bother being mortals at all?”

Lin Jia stopped crying and looked at Ye Fan with earnest, almost pleading sincerity. “Ye Fan, tell me honestly — is there any way to restore youth? How did the two of you manage it?”

Ye Fan could only offer comfort and give her hope to hold onto. Those strange red fruits had been eaten long ago — there was no other solution to offer.

“Leave this place… and go to that celestial palace!” Zhou Yi rose to his feet, trembling, and pointed with one finger toward the distant peak. There, palace halls stretched on in unbroken succession, as if a heavenly palace had descended into the mortal world. Though his body had aged, his mind had not. He had clearly grasped the one remaining hope before them. If immortals dwelled there, all of this could be resolved.

Everyone supported one another and made their way down the mountain. Many were old and frail, their movements very slow. Ye Fan, Pang Bo, Liu Yiyi, and Zhang Ziling had no choice but to bustle back and forth, looking after them.

“Grandpa Zhou, Grandpa Wang — let me help you both walk.” Pang Bo walked in the middle, one on each arm, supporting Zhou Yi and Wang Ziwen. Wang Ziwen gave a bitter laugh at this, while Zhou Yi kept his face impassive.

For some reason, Li Xiaoman chose to have Ye Fan help her along. But throughout the walk she said nothing, only wept in silence, until she nearly fainted from crying.

“What’s going on? Why are we still separated from it by a mountain?”

Ye Fan and the others all noticed something was wrong. Clearly there was only one mountain between them and the peak where the celestial palace stood — yet after laboriously climbing over it, there was still another mountain ahead. It was as if nothing had changed at all.

“From a short while ago, no matter how far we walk, the distance between us and that celestial palace never seems to change. What on earth is happening?”

They looked ahead again. They pressed forward again. They climbed over another mountain again. Yet the result was the same. By now, everyone understood — they simply could not get any closer.

“The time has come to make a choice. Perhaps we should stop moving in that direction. It seems to be a maze that can never truly be reached.”

Suddenly, a foul, rancid smell assaulted their nostrils. The trees shook. A black fearsome beast, a full five meters tall, reared up on its hind legs and lunged at the group — its claws gleaming with cold light. Dense black fur covered it from head to toe, each strand half a foot long and utterly terrifying. Its body was shaped somewhat like a great ape, yet its head was grotesque beyond imagination — a beak over a foot long jutted from it, like some kind of bird-spirit that had gained human form. No one had ever seen a beast like this.

Nearly everyone present was instantly seized with terror. Two people collapsed straight to the ground — the sight of such a monstrous, grotesque creature lunging at them, capable of tearing a person apart if it got hold of them.

“Ye Fan, watch out!” Pang Bo shouted, because Ye Fan was directly in its path. Pang Bo, in desperation, swung the bronze plaque of the Great Thunder Monastery and charged forward.

Ye Fan shoved aside the two people beside him with one hand. With his right hand, he gripped the Vajra Staff taken from Liu Yinzhi and swung it forward with full force.

Bang!

The Vajra Staff collided with one of those coldly gleaming claws, and it bent the black beast’s paw completely out of shape on the spot — clearly an outright fracture.

Everyone was stunned. They assumed it was the power of the Vajra Staff — only Ye Fan understood that the Staff’s last trace of divine power had already been consumed by Liu Yinzhi. The result of this strike came entirely from the sheer bodily force he possessed.

He was deeply astonished within himself. The former version of him could never have mustered such tremendous strength. But ever since his reverse aging a short while ago, he had felt energy surging through his entire body — seemingly possessing the godly power to rend tigers and hurl elephants!

The great beast let out a piercingly shrill cry. It opened its beak and stabbed it savagely toward Ye Fan, while at the same time its other coldly glinting massive claw came crashing down.

Ye Fan moved at incredible speed. With an impossible burst of motion, he dodged to the beast’s back, then swung the Vajra Staff with full force and brought it crashing down on the creature’s spine. The sound of shattering bone rang out immediately.

Bang!

It was difficult to imagine what force could accomplish this — the five-meter-tall black beast was sent flying like a puppet by the blow, launched eight or nine meters sideways, and crashed heavily to the ground. It convulsed twice, then could no longer move.

Everyone stood dumbfounded, barely able to believe what they had witnessed. The savage’s body had shrunk — looking like a boy of eleven or twelve, even more refined and quiet in appearance — yet his strength and speed had reached a level that was nothing short of hair-raising. It was utterly astonishing.

The group escaped without incident. They let out a collective breath and then broke into discussion, unable to understand why Ye Fan possessed such godly power. Their hearts burned with envy and jealousy alike.

The sky gradually darkened. The last sliver of sunset faded and disappeared. Unwilling to give up, the group climbed over one more mountain peak, only to find that the celestial palace was still separated from them by a mountain — the distance unchanged as always.

At this point, everyone’s hopes were completely dashed, and they decided not to press forward in that direction any longer.

But just at this moment, a streak of colorful light suddenly appeared at the horizon — like a great rainbow arc cutting across the sky — conspicuous against the darkening heavens.

“That is…”

Everyone was greatly startled. Within that streak of rainbow light was a human silhouette, moving freely through the heavens, traveling through the air. This was absolutely no mortal!

Whoosh!

The streak of rainbow brilliance suddenly changed direction and in an instant flew straight toward them — its speed enough to leave one speechless, like a rainbow shooting across the sky, arriving before them in the blink of an eye.