Chapter 544: Just As It Once Was!

Ning Fei chatted casually with the netizens in the live stream.

"I have some free time lately, and I want to thank everyone for your support."

"I plan to do some woodcarving and hold a raffle as a way to give back."

Ning Fei said with a smile.

Hearing Ning Fei's words, the viewers were a bit stunned.

"What? Did I hear that right? Temple Master Ning is holding a raffle!"

"And he's giving away things he carved himself!"

"Is this for real! He's not just using a factory mold, is he?"

"Is Temple Master Ning that kind of person?"

"If you don't believe him, then don't participate! You'll just lower my chances of winning!"

Bullet comments instantly flooded the screen.

Ning Fei rarely bothered with raffles. Generally, streamers held them every day, and major streamers would even run several a night.

It was a way to boost viewer loyalty and engagement.

But Ning Fei didn't need any of that.

When Ning Fei took Little Dog to the competition, he saw how much everyone loved the puppy, and it had genuinely touched him.

The next day, Ning Fei contacted Yong Tao to have some wood delivered.

It was all top-quality timber.

"Great Temple Master Ning, I heard the news about you making woodcarvings. Save one for me when they're done,"

Yong Tao said with a smile from his truck.

"Sure, no problem."

"Also, my kid is almost a year old now. When are you going to hurry up and settle down yourself?"

"There's no rush for that."

Ning Fei replied with a laugh.

Later, Ning Fei gathered a set of woodworking tools and turned on the live stream.

A long-lost, familiar scene appeared on the broadcast.

Ning Fei worked meticulously just outside the courtyard wall while the little guys of Baiyun Guan ran and jumped around in chaotic harmony.

Little Dog and Little Fei had run off somewhere to play.

Little Fox and the three little Heijiu kept him company nearby.

Little Falcon soared through the sky, continuing his reign as the king of the skies over this mountain range.

"I'm going to do a little woodcarving today, and I'll hold a raffle for them later."

"The carvings will be of the little animals from Qingfeng Temple."

"They might not be very big, so I hope you don't mind."

Ning Fei said with a smile.

"Temple Master Ning, are you going to make a little bit or a billion bits!"

"Temple Master Ning is going to make a billion woodcarvings so everyone gets one."

"Are you trying to work Temple Master Ning to death?!"

The viewers teased him in the chat.

Meanwhile, Ning Fei cut the wood into several smaller blocks.

He picked up a palm-sized block and first used a carving knife to shape a rough outline. The viewers saw that this outline looked like a bird.

Then, Ning Fei used a rasp to carve out the details, bit by bit.

His blade moved quickly. With every cut, the wooden figure became clearer.

By now, all the viewers could tell that Ning Fei was carving Little Falcon!

Ning Fei's carving skills were incredible. At that very moment, many well-known woodworkers across Huaxia were watching the broadcast.

"His carvings possess a living spirit. That is truly rare!"

At the Huaxia Arts Association, two elderly men muttered in awe as they watched the live stream.

"The youth of today are becoming more and more exceptional. It's time for us old waves to rest."

The other elder sighed in admiration.

In the live stream, the viewers were discussing it excitedly.

Ning Fei's carving speed was staggering.

Stroke by stroke, Little Falcon's demeanor and posture were clearly brought to life.

Even though Ning Fei hadn't painted the sculpture, the viewers looking at the wooden carving felt as if Little Falcon were staring right back at them.

When Ning Fei finished and set the carving aside, the three little Heijiu were startled by it. They ran over, sniffed the sculpture curiously, and batted at it back and forth with their cat paws.

Ning Fei was entirely too familiar with Little Falcon.

As a result, the carved Little Falcon looked practically indistinguishable from the real thing.

Just then, the real Little Falcon flew down.

He landed next to the sculpture and tilted his head, looking a little bewildered.

'Why does this thing look so familiar?' Little Falcon wondered.

Finding this amusing, Ning Fei smiled and began working on the next sculpture.

His carving speed was breathtakingly fast.

"Temple Master Ning is insane!"

"Is he really giving these away in a raffle?"

"I have to win one!"

"Ahem, I'm a manufacturer from Yiwu. To be honest, we've already drawn up a plan to mass-produce these sculptures..."

"Good lord, you can mass-produce woodcarvings too!"

The longer the viewers watched his stream, the more excited they became.

Ning Fei's second carving was of Little Dog.

Little Dog was a stubborn goofball who loved stirring up trouble.

The pose Ning Fei chose for Little Dog was one of him running in mid-stride.

Perhaps because Little Dog joined him for his morning run every day, this pose had left the deepest impression on him.

Little Dog's likeness was just as lifelike.

The viewers were dumbfounded.

"Godly! This is godly! So freaking awesome!"

"Temple Master Ning's sculpture is absolutely perfect!"

"Wow, it's just a woodcarving, but it looks exactly like Little Dog."

"Yeah, it's like someone used magic to turn Little Dog into wood and shrink him down."

"Temple Master Ning, I bow to you."

The chat buzzed with conversation.

It didn't take long to finish Little Dog. Ning Fei placed the new carving next to Little Falcon's.

Once again, the three little Heijiu batted at Little Dog's carving with their front paws.

Then, Ning Fei continued carving.

This time, it was Little Fox.

Some viewers noticed a pattern.

"I'm an old fan of Temple Master Ning. It looks like he's carving them one by one in the order he met them."

"Oh, you're right!"

"No wonder Temple Master Ning smiles every now and then while carving."

"He must be remembering things."

"That's so heartwarming."

"Temple Master Ning is such a gentle person!"

Everyone realized that Ning Fei's occasional, gentle smiles as he carved were indeed the look of someone reminiscing.

It was a heartwarming sight that brought comfort to everyone watching.

Ning Fei continued to carve.

Little Fei, Xiao Feng, Xiao Heijiu...

Once he finished carving all the little guys of Qingfeng Temple, he began carving the animals he had encountered in the past.

Dark Circles from the back mountain, Little Black Bear and the electric eel from South Lake, the South China tiger family from deep within the Qinshan Mountains...

The fine steed Heishuai from the grassland, the snow leopards of the Kunlun Mountains, the dolphins and whales from the deep sea...

It took Ning Fei two full days to completely finish his collection of carvings.

When he set all the sculpted little animals out on the table...

He looked at the array of lifelike little creatures and suddenly felt reluctant to give them away in a raffle.

But it was only a fleeting thought. Since he had already promised to do it, he would naturally keep his word.

'I'll give this set away and just carve another set for myself.'

'I have enough wood for it, anyway.'

Ning Fei thought to himself.

Ning Fei then set a time for the raffle. It would be held across the entire live-streaming platform, drawing thirty lucky winners in total.

That evening, his stream was packed to the brim!

Viewers flooded in, and many had even registered multiple accounts just to increase their chances of snagging one of Ning Fei's carvings.

Ning Fei was a god-like figure now. His works were absolutely more collectible than those of supposed master artisans—winning one meant striking gold!

Ning Fei hadn't expected that carving a few pieces by hand as a simple giveaway would trigger such a massive reaction.

The raffle results were announced that night.

Wails of despair filled the chat.

Of course, there were also the lucky few who won the woodcarvings crafted by Ning Fei's own hands.

Ning Fei kept a giant panda sculpture aside for Yong Tao. Since Yong Tao worked for the Forestry Bureau in the Qinshan Mountain range, the giant panda held a special symbolic meaning for him.

What Ning Fei didn't know, however, was that it wouldn't be long before exact replicas of his woodcarvings—an entire set of them—appeared on online shopping platforms.

Although they lacked the living spirit of Ning Fei's personal work, they still shared an eighty or ninety percent resemblance.

The replica set sold like crazy, even generating enough income to sustain quite a few folk artisans.

After all, Ning Fei was now considered a legendary figure.

As for his carvings being bootlegged, Ning Fei didn't mind—or rather, there was nothing he could do to stop it anyway.

One day, Ning Fei ventured deep into the Qinshan Mountains again.

Even after traveling to so many different peaks, Qinshan remained his favorite.

After all, the depths of Qinshan were home to golden snub-nosed monkeys, South China tigers, giant pandas, and crested ibises—every one of them a joy to watch.

It was currently late autumn.

The drone's camera panned down to capture the breathtaking sight of vibrant yellow and red leaves mixing together.

Ning Fei sent Little Falcon into the sky to locate Da Qun and Little Qun, then headed straight for their area.

Before long, he found Da Qun's family.

The young South China tiger had grown quite a bit. With his sturdy build and spirited demeanor, he was already showing a bit of the presence expected of the king of the forest.

Ning Fei played with Little Qun for a while, feeling that this kind of life wasn't bad at all.

In the days that followed, Ning Fei settled into a leisurely routine between South Lake, the Daoist temple, the Deer Sanctuary, and the back mountain.

He hadn't paid any attention to the System in a long time.

It seemed his life simply didn't need the System anymore.

After some more time passed, Ning Fei and Jiang Xue got married, and Jiang Xue gave birth to a pair of boy-girl twins for him.

The wedding guest list was small. They only invited his master's family, the village chief, some employees from the Deer Sanctuary, and a few of Ning Fei's classmates. It was a private affair with no news of it surfacing on the internet.

Still, everyone was overjoyed.

His romantic life hadn't been filled with dramatic waves; he just wanted a peaceful, ordinary existence. Jiang Xue rarely interacted with others, making her a perfect match for him.

After having children, Ning Fei could no longer travel constantly. The kids could be quite a handful, leaving him feeling somewhat helpless at times.

Interestingly, after the twins were born, Little Dog became much better behaved.

In the past, Little Dog had run wild outside every single day, having the time of his life.

Ning Fei told Little Dog that if he mingled with the other village dogs outside, he would have to take a bath before he could touch the babies.

So Little Dog simply stopped going out.

He spent all day resting in the house, watching the little children grow.

The story of their later years was just as warm. When Ning Fei's children started going to school, Little Dog would always wait at the intersection of the mountain road. The moment he saw his little masters returning, he would run over and carry their schoolbags in his mouth.

The other small animals accompanied them constantly as well.

Their lives moving forward remained happy and full of joy.

Eons ago, in an ancient era.

Modern humanity had existed—or rather, held recorded memory—for a mere ten thousand years.

Tracing back further, the Earth had existed for 4.5 billion years.

That was equivalent to 450,000 times the span of human existence.

In the distant past, many civilizations had risen, but as the Earth changed, they were entirely swallowed up by the long river of history.

Back then, the apocalypse descended. A magnetic pole reversal struck the Earth, the sun blazed blindingly bright, and countless volcanoes erupted.

Somewhere in the lands of Huaxia, a Divine Official sat in a valley brimming with blooming flowers, quietly waiting alongside a diverse gathering of mythical beasts.

The Earth's transformation was irreversible. Extinction was inevitable.

He looked at these rare and wondrous creatures, then exhausted his life force to seal away a select few spirit beasts, allowing them to cross the river of time and awaken in a future era.

The Divine Official died, but his will survived in another form.

These sealed pet eggs were much like the stasis pods in sci-fi movies, preserving the life within them until the exact moment they were awakened.

At the time, because the Divine Official's power was insufficient, many mythical beasts chose to burn away their own fires of life, leaving the hope of survival for the other animals.

The Phoenix, the Qilin, the Zouwu, and the Bai Ze all chose to exhaust their lives.

The Fuzhu, the Zheng, and the Qiongqi had just been born, so they were sealed inside the pet eggs.

There was also a white nine-tailed demon fox.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas recorded, "There is a beast on Qingqiu Mountain, resembling a fox with nine tails, and its voice sounds like a human infant."

Legends claimed that nine-tailed foxes ate humans, but the Western Jin scholar Guo Pu had annotated that the nine-tailed fox "appears in times of peace and serves as an auspicious sign."

This meant that the nine-tailed fox would only emerge during a prosperous era of peace, making it a symbol of good fortune.

The nine-tailed white fox was also one of the rare few mythical beasts born with innate divine power.

Later on, the Divine Official's will fused with the will of the beasts to become the System, waiting for someone to appear who was exactly like the Divine Official.

That person was Ning Fei.

Down the long river of history, many mythical beasts had absorbed the Spiritual Energy of heaven and earth and hatched on their own, such as the Tengshe.

The nine-tailed fox had also hatched on her own.

She was very small. She no longer had nine tails; she only had a single white one.

She wandered the forest, terrified of everything in this new world.

Then, one night, the little white fox saw the familiar silhouette of a Daoist priest.

Weeping tears of joy, she ran toward him, accidentally injuring herself along the way.

Under the moonlight, she let out soft whimpers, looking exceptionally aggrieved.

The Daoist priest noticed her.

The priest remained as gentle and pure as ever. He looked upon every animal with absolute equality and kindness.

The white fox cried out twice more.

The priest knelt down and reached out his hand to her.

"You can follow me from now on."

The priest said softly to the white fox.

The white fox remembered everything. She remembered that the man before her was the Divine Official from long ago.

She gave another soft cry, then gently pressed her forehead against the palm of the priest's hand.

Just as it once was.