The complete restoration of his dantian should have been cause for joy, yet the sudden leap in his cultivation instead left Xu Ziqing uneasy.
Xu Ziqing remained in meditation for a long time, repeatedly examining the inside of his body. At last, he discovered a red speck deep within his dantian, much like the one he had seen before losing consciousness. When he touched it with spiritual power, he could sense a feeling of closeness from it. Yet the thing itself gave off an extremely vicious, baleful aura that made it difficult for him to feel at ease.
The next moment, several passages of text once again resounded within his sea of consciousness, each one exceedingly clear. Xu Ziqing tried to read them closely, only to find every line profound and rich with meaning.
It was indeed a cultivation formula, called the Great Art of Myriad Woods Heart-Planting. Its first five chapters were unexpectedly identical to the Herb Transformation Art. Yet when Xu Ziqing heard the sixth chapter, inspiration suddenly seemed to descend upon him, and for reasons he could not explain, understanding arose in his heart.
It turned out that this cultivation art had been created by a mighty cultivator. Once mastered, its power was extraordinary, almost enough to overturn heaven and earth. A special art of this kind lay outside the ordinary grading system and bore an elegant designation: a “Legendary Cultivation Art.” Whenever one appeared in the world, it would stir up a bloody storm throughout the Nine Thousand Worlds.
Later, that mighty cultivator suffered because of the art. Betrayed by someone close to him, he fled with severe injuries and ultimately could not survive. In his fury, he spent the strength of his remaining life and exhausted his blood essence to disguise the cultivation art completely and conceal it within an unranked method: the Herb Transformation Art.
Yet this was, after all, the culmination of his life’s work. Naturally, the mighty cultivator had left behind a means of inheritance. He established a rule: the first five levels were merely the foundation of the foundation, and only upon reaching the sixth could one truly touch the profundities of the art.
The requirements for practicing this cultivation art, however, were exceedingly difficult to meet.
First, one had to cultivate the Herb Transformation Art to completion without touching any other cultivation art in the meantime. Otherwise, one’s power would become impure and the opportunity would be lost.
Second, one had to carefully choose a seed and fuse it into the dantian as the foundation.
This requirement was tied directly to the nature of the Great Art of Myriad Woods Heart-Planting.
The art fused the seeds of myriad woods into the dantian, absorbed the qi of myriad woods, brought forth the forms of myriad woods, and turned them all to one’s own use. The deeper one’s cultivation became, the more seeds one could contain; and the more seeds one tamed, the faster one could cultivate. Each benefited the other.
Yet humans were humans and wood was wood. Even with this cultivation art, uniting the two was no easy matter. One therefore had to choose a single wood as the foundation, making it the leader of the myriad woods and using it to command the rest. Without this one wood to assist, humans would remain human and wood would remain wood, and cultivating this art would be utterly impossible.
The final requirement was also the most difficult.
The practitioner had to possess a single Wood spiritual root so that the spiritual energy absorbed from heaven and earth would remain unmixed. Otherwise, if spiritual energy of another attribute entered the body, it would be rejected by the myriad woods. One day, the cultivator would inevitably suffer qi deviation and explode to death!
Thus, anyone without a single Wood spiritual root could not obtain the latter portion of the formula.
But since the Herb Transformation Art had been classified as an unranked method, why would an unrivaled genius with a single Wood spiritual root ever practice it?
With these three restrictions in place, success was naturally extraordinarily difficult. Although the Herb Transformation Art had circulated widely for many years, not a single person had discovered its true secret.
For Xu Ziqing to encounter this opportunity was extraordinarily rare.
Only now did Xu Ziqing understand that his aptitude must have been misjudged as having the lowest-grade aptitude. He truly did possess a single Wood spiritual root, but because the root was extremely fine, the formation’s response had been weak at the time, leading to the mistaken assessment. His cultivation in the Hundred Herbs Garden had progressed so quickly for the same reason: he possessed a single spiritual root.
After sorting through each of these thoughts, Xu Ziqing let out a breath, caught between laughter and exasperation.
He had once believed himself fated never to cultivate immortality, yet Heaven had played another trick on him. Again and again, it made him believe one thing, then another. Could it truly be testing his resolve to pursue immortal cultivation?
Thinking about it briefly, that was not impossible.
Xu Ziqing was easygoing by nature. If he had been an ordinary mortal, there would have been nothing wrong with that. But once he stepped onto the immortal path, his excessive calm could become a weakness. He lacked the sharp drive of youth and yielded too readily to the natural course of things. Left was acceptable, right was acceptable; precisely because everything seemed acceptable, his resolve could waver. After all these upheavals, however, his heart had been tempered and was far firmer than before.
After brushing past death several times, Xu Ziqing now saw two broad roads before him. If he wished to remain mortal, he would have to destroy his own spiritual root, cut off his retreat, and spend his life in the mundane world, seeking a place of ease for himself among its countless realms. If he wished to become an immortal and gain eternal freedom, then the road ahead would be long and filled with countless dangers. From this day onward, he would have to cast away every wavering thought, temper his resolve until it was unyielding, and remain without regret even through a hundred deaths!
Both roads appealed to Xu Ziqing, leaving him uncertain which to choose.
Xu Ziqing closed his eyes and entered meditation, turning his awareness inward toward his dantian. It was filled with vigorous life. Vitality welled forth without end, making his meridians flow like streams, his pulse thunder, his five organs stand like mountains, and his essence-qi fall like rain. Together they formed a bright little world within him, as though every change in his own body rested in the palm of his hand, something no ordinary mortal could ever touch.
After a long period of silent contemplation, his eyes suddenly opened. Two masses of green light gathered within them, and his entire body felt wonderfully at ease.
Cultivate immortality!
Even in a desperate dead end, he had found a path to survival. Clearly, Heaven had given its permission and encouragement. Since that was so, he, Xu Ziqing, was a man of firm spirit as well. He ought to follow the Heavenly Dao, cultivate the truth, and advance along the immortal path. What was there to fear?
His mind made up, he was no longer as he had been before, merely “letting nature take its course.” Xu Ziqing had made his choice. From this day forward, there would be no more Xu Ziqing the ordinary mortal, only Xu Ziqing the cultivator.
Other than cultivating immortality, there would be no second road.
After this questioning of his own heart, a trace of ethereal transcendence suddenly arose around Xu Ziqing. Looking at him now, every hint of mundane dust seemed to have vanished.
He turned his head and saw the fledgling standing guard beside him. Smiling, he beckoned. “Chonghua, come here.”
A trace of grievance flashed through the fledgling’s black, bean-like eyes. It tilted its head and chirped jiu, jiu without stopping.
Xu Ziqing knew that he had frightened it just now. Seeing that it had remained faithfully beside him and had not disturbed him during meditation only made him fonder of it. He held out a hand, waited for the fledgling to hop onto his palm, then stroked the top of its head with a finger and said softly, “Chonghua, don’t be upset. I’ve returned to the immortal path now. You should be happy for me.”
Perhaps soothed by the reassurance in Xu Ziqing’s voice, the fledgling stamped its claws twice, and the agitation around it gradually subsided.
Xu Ziqing continued, “Since fortune has given me this opportunity, I can no longer be lax. I must cultivate diligently without cease. When you’re hungry, go find food and amuse yourself as you please, but don’t disturb me.”
The fledgling looked at him affectionately and lightly pecked the back of his hand in agreement.
In truth, Xu Ziqing had another thought as well. Chonghua’s parents were both demon beasts, and its father, the golden eagle, was even rumored to carry the faintest trace of Dapeng blood. Chonghua ought to be capable of cultivation too. Yet although it was already far more intelligent than an ordinary bird, Xu Ziqing did not know whether its spiritual intelligence had truly awakened. Beasts also found the path of cultivation far more difficult than human cultivators, and obtaining a bloodline inheritance was harder still.
Xu Ziqing was fond of the fledgling and naturally wanted it to cultivate alongside him. Unfortunately, they were not of the same kind, so he could not teach it. He could only hope to raise his own cultivation as soon as possible, find a way out of the Linyuan Secret Realm, and seek a suitable cultivation method for the fledgling.
After giving the fledgling several instructions, Xu Ziqing once again sat down and entered meditation.
Since he already possessed the formula for the Great Art of Myriad Woods Heart-Planting, Xu Ziqing did not hesitate and immediately began cultivating it.
Once the sixth chapter was mastered, his cultivation would naturally rise to the sixth layer of Qi Refinement. Apart from opening acupoints, however, this art also required him to communicate with the seed fused into his dantian. Xu Ziqing therefore gathered his spiritual power into a single stream and slowly sent it deep into the vortex within his dantian, gently approaching the seed.
The moment he touched it, the seed did not reject him. Instead, it carried a faint sense of familiarity. Delighted, Xu Ziqing slowly merged his awareness into his spiritual power and reached out toward the seed’s consciousness.
But the instant he touched it, although the seed itself made no deliberate move, a tremendous force struck him like a massive boulder crashing head-on! Xu Ziqing’s head spun from the impact. In his daze, it seemed as though his soul had left his body, and in an instant he was drawn into an unknown darkness!
The moment he entered, Xu Ziqing felt a sense of familiarity. It was pitch-black in every direction, yet his body seemed both solid and illusory, exactly as it had during those dreamlike experiences before.
Although the seed’s vast consciousness had shaken him, it had not done so intentionally, so Xu Ziqing had not lost consciousness. He saw a pinpoint of light on his finger and immediately felt himself move along with it. Suddenly, he understood that those experiences of the past few days had not been dreams at all. For some unknown reason, whenever he fell asleep and his awareness grew hazy, he had been drawn into the storage ring.
As before, Xu Ziqing stumbled forward. This time, however, the distance seemed much shorter, and before long he saw the figure of the white-robed man.
The man remained like a mountain of ice and snow, or a sword submerged in a freezing pool, seated within this boundless void.
Xu Ziqing understood that he himself was currently in the form of a soul, and the white-robed man, whose aura was so incomparably cold, must likewise be in soul form. Yet Xu Ziqing still had a physical shell outside, while the man did not. If his guess was correct, then the man was a ghost, while Xu Ziqing was merely a soul temporarily outside his body.
Having realized this, Xu Ziqing felt even more grateful.
Even before he became a cultivator, Xu Ziqing had known that a person’s soul could not remain outside the body for long. Otherwise, the three hun and seven po would scatter, the physical body would become a corpse, and the soul itself would turn into a wandering spirit.
Elio’s Notes: Traditional Chinese conceptions of the soul often speak of the three hun and seven po (三魂七魄), complementary aspects of a person’s spiritual existence. Here the phrase emphasizes that prolonged separation of soul and body can be fatal.
The white-robed man was solitary and cold by nature and ought to have found Xu Ziqing troublesome, yet time and again he had driven Xu Ziqing’s soul out of the ring and returned it to his body. Such a favor went far beyond ordinary kindness. It was nothing less than the grace of having saved his life.
With that thought settled, Xu Ziqing quietly stopped one zhang away. Before the man could move to send him out, Xu Ziqing suddenly said, “Young Master, you have helped me time and again. Xu Ziqing is deeply grateful. I do not know how I might repay you.”
Perhaps the gratitude in his words was too sincere to ignore. The white-robed man finally lifted his eyes slightly and acknowledged him for once.
“No need.” The white-robed man’s voice was exceedingly cold, like ice striking jade, devoid of emotion or fluctuation. “Since you have resumed cultivation, stabilize your soul. Leave.” With that, he swept his sleeve once more.
Xu Ziqing felt his soul-body caught by a resilient force. Then his entire being seemed to soar through cloud and mist, retreating at tremendous speed. In the blink of an eye, he had been flung backward thousands upon tens of thousands of li. Light suddenly filled his vision, and he plunged back into his physical body!
His body grew heavy, and a moment later he woke.
Xu Ziqing was still sitting cross-legged. Before he could think further about what the white-robed man had said, his soul suddenly surged and trembled as countless fragments of consciousness from the demon-vine seed rushed toward him!