Chapter 26: Showing Off, Getting Struck by Lightning

As the only Crown Prince of Prince Jing's Residence—or rather, the only Crown Prince in all of Jing Country who was even more favored than a regular Prince—Su Han had made a request that even the Princess Consort couldn't bear to refuse.

At his pleading, she tirelessly cast the Rain of Fire over and over beneath the large tree he had pointed out. She cast it once, twice, three times, five times, ten times, twenty times.

By the time the Princess Consort cast the Rain of Fire for the thirtieth time, Prince Jing—who had come over out of curiosity after hearing his son wanted to practice magic—could no longer stand by and watch. He pulled back his wife, who was about to continue her demonstration. With a dangerous glint hidden in his eyes, he scowled at the son who had exhausted his beloved wife.

"Han, your mother is tired. If you want to learn the Rain of Fire, how about I demonstrate it for you?"

Su Han naturally noticed the heartache in his father's eyes when looking at his mother. However, who knew how capricious this Skill Tree thing could be? What if someone else demonstrated the spell and the tree started recording all over again? Wouldn't all thirty of his mother's previous casts be for naught?

So, after a moment of hesitation, Su Han shook his head at his father.

"There's no need. My eyes are already blurring from watching, so seeing it again won't do much good.

"I'd better go back and study it for the night. I'll come ask Mother for guidance again tomorrow."

Rejected so righteously by his son, Prince Jing felt he had lost face. He shot Su Han a glare and dragged his wife away.

Su Han shook his head in amusement. He circled the old tree a few times and couldn't resist patting its trunk. "Old tree, oh old tree, when will you become a Skill Tree?"

The wind blew past, and the leaves rustled—RUSTLE RUSTLE—leaving him to wonder if the tree was answering him in its own way.

He had spent the entire morning "learning" the Rain of Fire. After lunch, Su Han didn't carefully study the Rain of Fire Secret Manual as he had claimed. In fact, after tossing the Secret Manual into his Storage Ring, he hadn't touched it once. He relied entirely on starting fires to learn skills. Studying a Secret Manual to teach himself? Not a chance!

Having decided to wipe out the Skill Tree reserves of the major families in a few days, Su Han stopped doing laps around their courtyard walls. Hoping to stumble upon a hidden gem, he brought Su Xiao'Er along and headed toward the civilian district where the commoners lived.

After wandering the civilian district for a while, Su Han was surprised to find crowds of people gathered in concentric circles beneath a large weeping willow up ahead. He approached out of curiosity and asked around. It turned out that over the past few days, a young man had been setting up a square table under this willow tree at the crack of dawn. On the table sat two jars of black and white Go pieces, with a chessboard set up in the middle.

In front of the young man was something that looked like a coin pouch, but any discerning eye could immediately tell it was a storage bag. While not as precious as a Storage Ring, it was still a storage item holding at least ten cubic meters of space. And resting on top of this storage bag was a single Spirit Stone.

According to the young man, the chessboard in front of him was his weapon. If anyone in all of Lingzhou City could defeat him on the board, they would be rewarded. Winning one game earned one Spirit Stone, winning two earned a hundred, and for a three-game winning streak, he would give away the entire bag of Spirit Stones.

No one knew if he was just blowing hot air, nor did anyone know if his storage bag actually contained that many Spirit Stones. What they did know was that on the very first day he set up his stall, a gang of thugs with cultivation bases targeted him, hoping to extort some benefits.

The result? Faced with over a dozen hooligans who had been in the Foundation Establishment stage for decades, the young man didn't even lift his backside off his stool. He simply raised a hand and swept it over the jars in front of him, sending black and white pieces flying. Each piece struck a person, crashing into them as if carrying the weight of a mountain. Pinned down, the thugs struggled endlessly but couldn't peel themselves off the ground.

After that incident, many people realized that this young man was a cultivator with considerable prowess. Even more people came to understand the true meaning behind his claim: "My chessboard is my weapon." The board and pieces weren't just his weapons for a game; they were his actual weapons against enemies.

Following that day, anyone harboring ill intentions toward the young man's wealth completely dropped the idea. However, eager to win some money off him, even more people chose to sit across from the youth and become his opponent on the board.

However... Over the next four or five days, the young man faced over a hundred opponents, yet not a single one managed to last an entire game against his formidable skills. Most surrendered before even reaching the mid-game. After a few days of this, the area around his chess stall didn't quiet down. Instead, the news drew even larger crowds to watch the spectacle. The throngs of people Su Han saw, packed three layers deep, were all here for the show, waiting to see if anyone could finally beat this young man at a single game.

Just as Su Xiao'Er was asking around for the full story, an old man sat down opposite the youth. The elder's hair was already gray; judging by his appearance, he had to be in his late seventies, if not eighties. Sitting across from the young man, neither said a word. Each grabbed a handful of pieces to guess the color for the opening move. After the guessing, the old man took the white pieces and made the first move, which the young man calmly countered.

A hundred moves later, the old man licked his dry lips and reached out with a trembling hand to pinch a white piece. Holding the stone, he stared at the board in front of him, but for the longest time, he couldn't bring himself to place it.

After a long while, a soft CLACK rang out as the white piece fell powerlessly onto the board.

"Never mind. My skills are inferior." The old man stood up and cupped his fists in a salute to the young man, who accepted it with composure.

At the moment the old man stood up to concede, Su Han, who had been watching silently from the sidelines, narrowed his eyes at the two players.

"Crown Prince, this guy seems really good at chess. But isn't his attitude a bit too... what was the word? I remember you mentioning it before." Disliking the young man's calm and collected demeanor, Su Xiao'Er racked his brains. "Oh, right! Isn't he showing off a bit too much?"

Hearing the phrase "showing off" come out of Su Xiao'Er's mouth, Su Han couldn't help but laugh. "So you actually know the phrase 'showing off', Su Xiao'Er."

Su Xiao'Er nodded repeatedly. "I engrave every word you say in my heart, Crown Prince. I wouldn't dare forget your earnest teachings for even a moment."

Amused, Su Han patted the flatterer. "Since you remember the phrase 'showing off', Su Xiao'Er, have you ever heard of a certain saying?"

Su Xiao'Er shook his head. "Which saying?"

Su Han glanced at him before shifting his gaze to the young man in front of the chessboard. "The saying goes—show-offs get struck by lightning!"

"Show-offs get struck by lightning?" Su Xiao'Er repeated softly, instinctively looking up at the sky.

At that moment, the azure sky was crystal clear and cloudless for miles.

"You must be joking, Crown Prince. It's a sunny day. Where would lightning even..."

Before he could finish his sentence, a sudden flash of purple light blinded them. RUMBLE! The purple light pierced through the canopy of the large willow tree, swallowing the young man sitting beneath it. Only after the light dissipated did the deafening roar of thunder reach the crowd's ears.

Terrified, the crowd nearly fell flat on their backs. They instinctively looked toward the stool where the young man had been sitting. But now, the chess-playing youth was completely gone. Instead, a single chess piece, forged from some unknown material, lay quietly in his place.

Su Xiao'Er was speechless. Looking at the bizarre chess piece on the stool and then back at his Crown Prince, his eyes inevitably filled with the same reverence he showed when praying to the gods in a temple.

Su Han was equally speechless. He thought, "What's with that look? Why are you staring at me like I'm a god? I know they say show-offs get struck by lightning, but I was literally just making a casual joke!"

In truth, thanks to his Celestial Dao Foundation Establishment, his eyes were no longer those of an ordinary mortal. When he saw a streak of gray mist fly out from the top of the old man's head and enter the young man's body at the moment of concession, he had already been preparing to send Su Xiao'Er back home to fetch reinforcements. Never in his wildest dreams did he expect that a casual joke made to Su Xiao'Er would actually come true. He didn't even remember when he had unlocked the Divine Technique called Come True!

While these thoughts raced through his mind, Su Han's gaze unconsciously drifted to the stool where the young man had vanished... and then to the large tree right behind it.

In Su Han's eyes, this tree... seemed to be glowing.