Chapter 1171: Chapter 1171: Tell A Story
'Seriously? Ask around? A condition?'
Zen was about to put away the Roaring Token when he heard the girl's words. A glimmer of hope then appeared in his eyes and his whole body turned frigid without warning.
He ended up grabbing the Roaring Token and activated it!
“So, you're going to lend me a hand?” Zen asked, feeling a bit enthusiastic.
“Yes, but the best I can do is to ask around for you. There's no telling whether I'll actually be able to find Yan or not,” the peculiar girl replied.
“You mentioned something about having one condition. What is the condition?” Zen asked again, with his stomach about to be tied into knots.
Right now, lots of things were running through his head as he tried to weigh things out. What kind of demands could this mysterious girl ask for?
He would do what he could. The thing was, at the moment, he couldn't really leave this fairy palace. If this mysterious girl would require him to take care of a few things, he might end up failing to complete his mission, which could be quite problematic for him. But he would try to come up with something. This was about Yan. There was no way he would give up that easily.
After a period of silence, the mysterious girl let out a soft chuckle, “There is only one condition. I want you to tell me a story. I'll die of boredom staying here!”
Plop!
The second he heard her request, Zen quickly planted his forehead into the ground.
Slowly lifting his head up from the floor, he was at sixes and sevens whether he should laugh or cry.
With another shrug of her shoulders, Lavender flatly remarked, “As I've said before, this woman is stupid.”
But it wasn't just Zen who had no idea if he should laugh or cry. Apart from him, there were also over a hundred Supreme Lords, several hundred thousand world lords, and the trillions of living and breathing beings within this universe.
“A little storytelling with the Roaring Token. Could there possibly be anything more luxurious than that in the entire universe?”
“Zen may be the only person who can pull that off. As a rule of thumb, a Supreme Lord would usually have just a little over a hundred Roaring Tokens. Without a shadow of doubt, they would have probably used up all of their Roaring Tokens already before they could wrap up a single story.”
“That should go without question. She happens to find the perfect person to do something like that. Still though, how bored could this woman really be for her to come up with such a request?”
Both large and small races alike had been taken by surprise by this woman's bizarre request!
Little did Zen know that this mysterious girl was just genuinely getting bored to death from staying in this universe.
Massaging his forehead, Zen stopped for a second and took a deep breath. This request might have really been so preposterous beyond belief, but he still managed to pull through in the end.
Setting aside the identity of this woman, given the fact that she would ask around for Yan's current whereabouts, he was willing to throw caution to the wind and do whatever she said, let alone tell her a story.
To other people, this might seem like such a challenging request to fulfill. All things considered, Roaring Tokens were as rare as hen's teeth. But that was not the case for Zen, however.
No matter what, this story needed to be told.
Lightly breathing in, he paused for a while to prepare himself.
Zen had started reading at such a young age. And as a matter of fact, he had actually read a substantial amount of good books such as “The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants” and “The Legend of Ghosts and Demons.” And in spite of the fact that it had been such a long time since he read those books, he still remembered how the story went a little bit. ṞÄΝ𝙤฿Ё§
Just as he was about to start, his eyebrows became deeply knit. Even though he still had the gist of how the story should go, he would still have a bit of a hard time recounting the tale from the very beginning. Because after all, he had ventured into the road of martial arts at such a young age. And as soon as that happened, he just didn't have the time to read these works of fiction anymore.
'Wait a second!'
Zen's face seemed to have lightened up.
He might not be able to depend on his memories, but he remembered that he still possessed the memories of the great world.
That orb of memories consisted of all the memories of the entire great world. Using these memories, he would be able to easily search for some good stories.
As soon as this thought popped up in his mind, memories of these stories began surging toward him like a tidal wave. With the size of the great world he had come from, it was a given that there were a great many stories which even Zen had never read or heard of.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the story that was being passed on the most from generation to generation in the great world he was from was also the most well-known.
The story was entitled “The Heroic Wife.” He ultimately decided to pick that one.
Upon activating the Roaring Token, Zen stated, “If you can really help me find a way to get to Yan, then I'd gladly tell you a great story!”
“Of course,” the mysterious girl softly responded.
“A long time ago, there was a mountain known by all as the Mountain of Lady Yue. At the very foot of the mountain...”
This story “The Heroic Wife” in particular took place around a millennia ago. It had been widely spread all throughout the four divine kingdoms. Zen had never actually read it before in his life, and now, he was reading it word for word as he perceived in from the memories in his head. His faint voice could be heard resounding in every part of the vast universe.
Even though he was giving an account of this story directly to the mysterious girl, the living beings in the universe had no way to steer clear of the sound of the Roaring Token. For that reason, trillions of lives were forced to listen in on his story.
It was the first time that a man was heard telling a story to all living beings in the universe.
Zen read it aloud part by part based from his memory. In dribs and drabs, his attention became riveted on the story.
In all sincerity, this story was indeed truly captivating.
It was about the tale of a woman from the State of Yue whose husband had been falsely incriminated by a traitor. Because of that, she made an oath to make the culprit pay at all costs. The chain of events kept a lot of the listeners on the edge of their seat.
Zen had been at it for two hours already without stopping, yet he had barely even covered half of the overall story.
“The woman's sword attack brought about a series of events...”
At this point in the story, it had come to its most crucial juncture.
Every creature that could breathe in the universe were idly listening to Zen's supposedly gripping story. But because of the varying cultures and languages all over the universe, there were bound to be a few of those who might not have the faintest idea what he was blabbering about.
Be that as it might, a great deal of creatures had been listening to it attentively. And it wasn't just the ordinary mortals, but even Soul Sea Realm warriors, world lords, and even a number of Supreme Lords who had been pricking their ears, tuning in to Zen's story.
When he finally stopped talking, the entire universe felt as though it had reached a moment of tranquility.
One thing he had no way of knowing was that the moment he stopped, numerous creatures of the supreme worlds started uttering profanities left and right!
“Heck! That bonehead stopped right in the middle of the story. You've gotta be kidding me!”
“Either you never bothered starting it, or you continue it till the end! What is this?”
“I don't have any Roaring Tokens, but if I did, I would certainly call this guy some bad names!”
“It's just a false pretense of an otherwise legendary story. Is there a real need for you to get so worked up about it?”
The reason why Zen had stopped all of a sudden wasn't really because he could not continue anymore. It just so happened that Freya had left the library and was heading towards him to get some advice on a few things regarding cultivation.
Thank heavens, the mysterious girl was surprisingly very patient and didn't put the screws on him.
However, after a while, another voice from the universe resounded out of the blue. “What happened next? Tell me, what happened to the woman's sword?”
This voice belonged to a Supreme Lord.
They had barely heard about half of the story. Even so, this Supreme Lord became so engrossed in it that he resorted to using the Roaring Token just to ask Zen.
Any way you looked at it, a Supreme Lord was originally a mortal. They had not yet reached the True God level. Despite their mental states being much stronger as opposed to that of a normal martial artist's, the twists and turns of this story still somehow managed to tug at their heartstrings.
The minute he heard this Supreme Lord's query, Zen was left utterly dumbfounded. Only then did he finally realize that apart from the mysterious girl, there were countless others who had been listening to his story. As a smile crept onto his face, Zen simply replied, “Just wait a moment, I'll continue the story later.”
“Can't you do it sooner? Don't just stop at such a crucial part! You're leaving me hanging!” One more Supreme Lord used the Roaring Token to urge him to continue telling the story without delay.
“Why are you dawdling?” The voices of several Supreme Lords echoed all over the universe. They actually ended up taking turns trying to urge him to continue.
“Why are you pressing him? I'm the only one Zen's supposed to be telling the story to. As far as I'm concerned, he's free to continue any time he wants. Why are you kicking up a stink?” The mysterious girl, on the other hand, sounded off on Zen's behalf.
In truth, Zen couldn't care less about these Supreme Lords urging him to go on. He leisurely talked with Freya about a few things. And after about an hour, he raised the Roaring Token once again.
“Now I'm ready to continue where we left off. After that unforeseeable event which had befallen her husband, she didn't care about her own life anymore...”
The rest of the story was narrated for six hours straight. When it finally got to the exceedingly tragic but beautiful scene, even Zen himself couldn't help but feel touched deep inside. It was quite possible that the cultivation base and strength of the martial artists of the great world weren't strong enough, but whoever it was who managed to put out such a compelling story without a doubt possessed great talent.
By the time the story finally reached its conclusion, the mysterious girl could clearly be heard weeping. As it turned out, she was actually moved by the final plot of the story. And it should go without saying that she wasn't the only one who felt that way. Truth be told, a lot of creatures who had been paying close attention to the story felt so touched as well, but it was just that they didn't have a Roaring Token to cry their hearts out.