Chapter 545: Just As It Once Was!

Ning Fei chatted casually with the viewers in his live stream.

"I've been quite free lately, and I want to thank everyone for your support."

"I plan to do some carving and hold a raffle as a way to give back,"

Ning Fei said with a smile.

Hearing his words, the netizens were a bit stunned.

[What? Did I hear that right? Ning Guan master is holding a raffle!]

[And he's giving away things he carved himself!]

[Is this for real? He isn't just using factory molds, is he!]

[Is Ning Guan master that kind of person?]

[Whoever doesn't believe it, just don't participate. You'll only lower my chances of winning!]

The bullet comments immediately surged across the screen.

Ning Fei rarely did things like raffles. Generally speaking, streamers held raffles every day, and major streamers would run them several times a night.

This helped increase fan loyalty and engagement.

However, Ning Fei did not need any of that.

When Ning Fei took Little Dog to participate in the competition, he noticed how much everyone liked him, and it had touched him a little.

The next day, Ning Fei contacted Yong Tao to bring him some wood.

This was all top-quality wood.

"Temple Master Ning, I heard you're making wood carvings. Save one for me when the time comes,"

Yong Tao said with a smile as he drove the truck over.

"Yeah, no problem."

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

"There's no rush for that,"

Ning Fei replied with a smile.

Afterward, Ning Fei gathered a set of woodworking tools and turned on his live stream.

The broadcast displayed a long-unseen scene.

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

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

Little Fox and the Three Black Chirps stayed near Ning Fei, keeping him company.

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

"I'll do a bit of wood carving today, and I'll raffle them off to everyone later."

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

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

Ning Fei said with a smile.

[Ning Guan master, are you doing a bit, or a hundred million bits!]

[Ning Guan master is going to make a hundred million wood carvings, enough for everyone.]

[Are you guys trying to exhaust Ning Guan master to death!]

The netizens could not help but tease him.

At this time, Ning Fei cut the wood into sections.

He picked up a palm-sized piece of wood and first used a tool to polish out a rough shape. The viewers saw that this outline looked like a bird.

Then, Ning Fei used a file to trace out the details little by little.

His knife moved quickly; with every cut, the block became a bit clearer.

By now, the netizens could all tell that Ning Fei was carving Little falcon!

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

"His carvings have true spirit. That is incredibly rare!"

At the Huaxia Arts Association, two old men muttered to themselves as they watched the live stream.

"The young people nowadays really are getting more and more outstanding. It's time for us old waves to take a rest,"

The other old man sighed in admiration.

The netizens in the live stream were also discussing it excitedly.

Ning Fei carved incredibly fast.

With every cut and stroke, Little falcon's expression and movements were clearly brought to life.

Although Ning Fei had not painted the sculpture, the viewers looking at the carving in his hands felt as if Little falcon was staring right at them.

When Ning Fei finished the carving completely, he set it aside. The three Xiao Heijiu were startled by the sculpture; they ran over, sniffed it curiously, and batted at it a few times with their paws.

Ning Fei was far too familiar with Little falcon.

Therefore, the carved Little falcon was almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

At this moment, the real Little falcon also flew down.

It landed next to the sculpture and tilted its head, looking a bit confused itself.

Little falcon thought to itself, 'Why does this thing look so familiar?'

Finding it amusing, Ning Fei smiled and then began carving the next sculpture.

His carving speed was astonishing, leaving people in awe.

[Ning Guan master is awesome!]

[Are these really going to be given away in a raffle?]

[I definitely have to win one!]

[Ahem, I'm from Yiwu. To tell the truth, we've already drafted a plan to mass-produce these sculptures...]

[Good lord, even wood carvings can be mass-produced!]

As the netizens watched his broadcast, they grew more and more excited.

Ning Fei's second carving was of Little Dog.

Little Dog was a stubborn goofball who loved to stir up trouble.

The pose Ning Fei carved for Little Dog was a running stance.

Perhaps Ning Fei felt this pose left the deepest impression, since Little Dog went on morning runs with him every day.

Little Dog's likeness was equally vivid and lifelike.

The netizens were entirely dumbfounded.

[Incredible, simply incredible. This is too awesome!]

[Ning Guan master's sculptures are truly perfect!]

[Wow, it's obviously a wood carving, but it looks exactly like Little Dog.]

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

[Ning Guan master, please accept my worship.]

The viewers buzzed with chatter.

Before long, the Little Dog carving was complete. Ning Fei placed it next to the Little falcon carving.

The three Xiao Heijiu once again batted at the Little Dog 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 Ning Guan master. It seems he's carving them one by one based on the chronological order he met his pets.]

[It looks like it!]

[I was wondering why Ning Guan master would smile from time to time while carving.]

[He must be recalling certain memories.]

[This is just too heartwarming.]

[Ning Guan master is such a gentle person!]

Everyone then realized that Ning Fei would occasionally give a gentle smile while carving, clearly reminiscing.

The scene was incredibly heartwarming and comforting to watch.

Ning Fei continued to carve.

Little Fei, Xiao Feng, Xiao Heijiu.

Once he finished carving 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 deep in the Qinshan Mountain...

The magnificent horse Heishuai from the Grassland, the snow leopards of the Kunlun Mountains, the dolphins and whales of the deep sea...

It took Ning Fei two full days to completely finish his carving project.

When he had carved all the little animals and laid them out on the table, he looked at all these lifelike little guys and suddenly did not want to raffle them away anymore.

However, it was only a passing thought. Since he had already promised everyone, he would naturally keep his word.

"I'll give one set away, and I'll carve another set for myself."

"I have enough wood anyway,"

Ning Fei thought to himself.

Afterward, Ning Fei set a time for the raffle. The giveaway would span the entire live stream platform, selecting a total of thirty lucky netizens.

That evening, all the major streaming channels were packed to the brim!

Netizens flooded into the broadcast. Many even registered multiple accounts just to snatch up one of Ning Fei's carvings.

Ning Fei was now a god-like figure. His creations definitely held more collection value than the works of grandmasters. Getting one was a huge profit!

Ning Fei had not expected that making a few handmade carvings simply as a perk would cause such a massive uproar.

That night, the raffle results were announced.

Wails of despair filled the live stream chat.

Of course, a number of lucky people successfully won the wood carvings crafted by Ning Fei's own hands.

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

What Ning Fei did not know, however, was that it was not long before replica wood carvings appeared on Taobao—and they were sold as complete sets.

Although the wood carvings lacked the vivid spirit of Ning Fei's original handiwork, they were about eighty or ninety percent similar.

This set of wood carvings sold exceptionally well, even providing a livelihood for many folk artisans.

Ning Fei was now considered a legendary figure.

As for his wood carvings being pirated, Ning Fei did not mind. Or rather, there was no point in minding.

On this day, Ning Fei ventured deep into the Qinshan Mountain once again.

Having visited so many mountains, he still liked Qinshan the most.

After all, the depths of Qinshan were home to golden snub-nosed monkeys, South China tigers, giant pandas, and crested ibises. Every single one was a delight to watch.

Right now, it was late autumn.

Captured through the drone's lens, the blend of yellow and red leaves looked exceptionally beautiful.

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

It did not take long for him to find Da Qun's family.

The young South China tiger had grown quite a bit. Looking robust and sturdy, it now possessed a bit of the imposing aura of the king of the forest.

Ning Fei played with Little Qun for a while, feeling that this kind of life was quite nice.

In the days that followed, Ning Fei settled into a life of leisure, spending his time at South Lake, the Daoist temple, the Deer Sanctuary, and the back mountain.

It had been a long time since he last paid attention to the System.

It seemed his life no longer needed the System.

Sometime later, Ning Fei and Jiang Xue got married, and Jiang Xue gave birth to a pair of boy-girl twins.

Very few people were invited to the wedding. They only invited his master's family, the village chief, a few employees from the Deer Sanctuary, and Ning Fei's classmates. It was a small-scale affair, and no news of it spread on the internet.

Even so, everyone was incredibly happy.

His romantic life was free of turbulent waves; he simply 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 around all the time. The kids were quite rowdy, leaving him feeling somewhat helpless at times.

However, since the birth of the two children, Little Dog had become much more well-behaved.

In the past, Little Dog used to run wild outside every day, playing to his heart's content.

Ning Fei told Little Dog that if he interacted with other local dogs outside, he had to take a bath before he could touch the children.

Little Dog simply stopped going out altogether.

He lay in the house all day, watching the children grow up.

The story that followed was also very heartwarming. By the time Ning Fei's children started school, Little Dog would always wait at the mountain pass. Whenever he saw his little masters returning, he would run over and carry their backpacks in his mouth.

The other little animals also remained by their side.

Their life afterward continued to be happy and joyful.

...

Countless years ago, in a certain era.

The time since the appearance of modern humans, or rather the time of recorded memory, was no more than ten thousand years.

But tracing back further, the Earth had existed for as long as 4.5 billion years.

Equivalent to 450,000 times the duration of human existence.

In the past, many civilizations had also been born, but as the Earth shifted, these civilizations completely vanished into the long river of history.

At that time, the end of the world arrived. The Earth underwent a magnetic pole reversal, the sun grew increasingly dazzling, and countless volcanoes erupted.

Somewhere on the land of Huaxia, the Divine Official and a varied group of divine beasts waited quietly in a valley blooming with flowers.

The changes to the Earth were irreversible; destruction had become inevitable.

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

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

These sealed pet eggs acted like the stasis pods in sci-fi blockbuster movies, maintaining the state of the lives inside until the moment they were awakened.

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

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

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

And then there was a white nine-tailed demon fox.

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

Legends said that nine-tailed foxes ate people, but the Western Jin literary scholar Guo Pu annotated the nine-tailed fox as: "It emerges in times of peace as an auspicious omen."

This meant that the nine-tailed fox would only appear during prosperous and peaceful eras, serving as a symbol of good fortune.

The nine-tailed white fox was also one of the few divine beasts naturally endowed with divine power.

Later, the will of the Divine Official and the will of the divine beasts merged to become the System, waiting for the appearance of someone exactly like the Divine Official.

That person was Ning Fei.

And throughout the long river of history, many divine beasts absorbed the Spiritual Energy of heaven and earth and hatched on their own, such as the Tengshe.

The nine-tailed fox hatched in the same way.

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

In the forest, she was terrified of everything in this world.

One night, the little white fox saw the familiar figure of a Daoist priest.

She wept tears of joy, but accidentally injured herself while running toward him.

Under the moonlight, she whined softly, looking exceptionally aggrieved.

That Daoist priest saw her.

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

The white fox cried out twice more.

The Daoist priest crouched down and extended a hand toward her.

"From now on, you will stay with me,"

The Daoist priest said softly to the white fox.

The white fox remembered everything. She remembered that this very person in front of her was the Divine Official from all those years ago.

She cried out softly once more, then gently nudged the priest's palm with her forehead.

Just as it once was.