Deep within the cave residence, Xu Ziqing sat cross-legged.
His eyes were open, and a cluster of green light glowed within each. Pure wood qi surged around him, as though gathering the essence of every tree and plant between heaven and earth and filling the space with boundless life force.
Five spheres of water floated before him, arranged in a five-pointed pattern.
These were the five kinds of Yang-Extreme Divine Water, corresponding to metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.
Xu Ziqing chanted an incantation and raised two joined fingers before his lips.
Green radiance gathered ceaselessly at his fingertips, faint at first, then increasingly concentrated, until it became a peculiar brilliance filled with the limitless mysteries of wood.
Pure and condensed, it shone with such fervor that it almost seemed to burn.
Then he pointed and shouted, “Go!”
The green radiance erupted, dividing into five fine threads that extended one by one into the five spheres of water.
The spheres immediately began drawing one another together, moving constantly toward the center. Yet they also seemed to repel each other fiercely, struggling against the pull.
Gradually, tiny beads of sweat appeared across Xu Ziqing’s brow.
He did not stop. The light at his fingertips grew brighter, and the slender green threads grew tougher, as though several times their previous power had erupted at once and forcibly dragged the five spheres together!
“Bang! Bang!”
With explosive sounds, the spheres collided and spun rapidly around one another.
Suddenly they became a single perfectly round ball of water.
Xu Ziqing’s expression turned grave. This was the most critical moment, and it demanded even greater concentration. He could not afford the slightest carelessness.
He spread all five fingers and took hold of the threads, then flexed and flicked them in a peculiar rhythm.
Slowly, the water ball seemed to undergo violent collisions within. After ceaseless rumbling, something burst open with a sharp “Pop!”
At last it stabilized.
What floated before Xu Ziqing now was a water ball the size of a fist.
It was transparent, yet a glance revealed myriad flowing colors and countless gleams of light.
Only when he saw that the sphere was stable did Xu Ziqing breathe a sigh of relief.
The True-One Divine Water had finally been successfully fused.
He brought his hands together again. In the hollow between his palms appeared something resembling an extremely tiny seed.
It was almost invisible to the naked eye, dull in color and withered in appearance, clearly lacking vitality. If Xu Ziqing had not been nourishing it constantly, it might not even have retained this form.
Without question, this was the Sumeru Mustard Seed.
Xu Ziqing had waited bitterly for many years. Now that he had finally gathered the divine waters, he was about to remove this bottleneck.
He summoned the Sumeru Mustard Seed and drew his fingers toward himself!
In an instant, the True-One Divine Water flew forward and struck the seed directly!
The seed was immediately enveloped within the divine water and could no longer escape. Brilliant light erupted across the water’s surface.
Xu Ziqing recited another series of incantations, and the divine water began contracting and expanding violently. He could perceive the seed greedily drinking it in, while the ball of water shrank little by little.
Meanwhile, he still had other things to do.
The Sumeru Mustard Seed was an ancient divine object, utterly unlike ordinary heavenly treasures. Merging it with his dantian would naturally be no easy task.
Xu Ziqing bit his fingertip and quickly forced out three drops of blood essence from his heart. His face immediately turned deathly pale.
Cultivators possessed very little blood essence to begin with. Blood from the heart in particular was the very essence of that essence, and a person had only a dozen or so drops in all. To subdue the Sumeru Mustard Seed and open the embryonic Purple Palace Minor Cosmos, Xu Ziqing had to forge the deepest possible bond. Without a sufficiently strong connection to the seed, all his efforts might ultimately fail.
The three drops of heart’s blood shot forth like pellets, plunged into the water, and struck the Sumeru Mustard Seed.
The seed had been absorbing the divine water and swallowed the blood essence along with it. Meanwhile, Xu Ziqing continued chanting without pause, sending countless incantations into the seed!
The next moment, a red glow spread across its surface. An instant later, an elusive bond seemed to form between it and him.
Xu Ziqing was delighted. It had worked!
With a turn of his thoughts, the seed began absorbing the divine water even faster. After only a few breaths, it had swallowed every last drop!
The instant the divine water vanished, the Sumeru Mustard Seed sprang back into his palm.
Xu Ziqing opened his hand and examined it. The seed was now a pale yellow throughout, its color rich and full. It looked unadorned, but anyone who examined it carefully would sense an indescribable mystery within, so captivating that they might be unable to look away, as if their soul itself were being drawn inside.
He took a deep breath and pressed his palm against his dantian.
Pain. Excruciating pain!
The Sumeru Mustard Seed drove itself into his dantian like a steel spike.
Countless seeds and impressions of consciousness already resided there, but when they collided with the Sumeru Mustard Seed, none could withstand it. All were forced into retreat.
Only Rong Jin, whose roots reached deepest, abruptly surged to the fore!
The consciousness within the Sumeru Mustard Seed collided with Rong Jin’s!
One was an ancient savage entity, the other comparable to a divine object. One was steeped in murderous baleful qi and had slaughtered without end; the other was nurtured by laws and capable of evolving space.
Their consciousnesses tangled together, fighting fiercely, neither willing to yield.
At that moment, Xu Ziqing’s own consciousness joined them.
He soothed them both, drawing close to Rong Jin and gently persuading it, while guiding the Sumeru Mustard Seed. Under the patient influence of Xu Ziqing’s consciousness, their two wills gradually compromised with one another.
Finally, Xu Ziqing formed another hand seal, placed a finger against his dantian, and drew it upward.
The Sumeru Mustard Seed rushed straight into his Purple Palace, where it abruptly expanded within his sea of consciousness, then contracted again!
Fierce baleful qi surged out and became countless sharp steel blades, rushing into the Purple Palace alongside the seed.
Xu Ziqing felt as though his head were splitting apart. It was as if sharp instruments were slicing and gouging into his sea of consciousness, forcibly carving out an entire space!
He did not know how long he endured. The Sumeru Mustard Seed expanded and contracted ceaselessly, growing larger with each cycle. Like something being inflated again and again, it seemed to be nearing a limit, after which an earthshaking transformation would occur.
At the same time, the boundless baleful qi released by Rong Jin became a surging flood, battering the inside of his Purple Palace without cease.
Xu Ziqing endured bitterly, as though suffering death by a thousand cuts.
It seemed he was on the verge of being unable to bear it any longer…
Just then, scenes from his past flashed across his mind, passing one after another like frames of a moving picture.
His previous life. This life. Family and friends… his senior brother.
The person he loved most, his Dao companion on the same path, the one to whom his soul was bound.
Someone was still waiting to walk the immortal path alongside him. How could he possibly give up here?
Stifling anguish welled up within Xu Ziqing’s chest. Suddenly he opened his mouth and let out a clear, piercing cry.
As the pent-up feelings burst forth, the Sumeru Mustard Seed in his sea of consciousness swelled to its limit and finally exploded!
The sound was like a clap of thunder.
At last, the Sumeru Mustard Seed transformed into a space, forcibly opening his Purple Palace.
More baleful qi poured into this newfound destination, filling the space and driving it to grow wider and vaster.
The entire space was saturated with baleful qi.
More than half of Xu Ziqing’s pain subsided. Gritting his teeth against what remained, he touched the place where Rong Jin dwelled and continued drawing upward.
Rong Jin obediently followed the rising baleful qi and rushed into the Purple Palace. There it immediately set down roots within the embryo of the Minor Cosmos.
As though drawn after the Bloodthirsty Demon Vine, all the seeds of his secondary and subordinate woods rose as well, entering the Purple Palace together.
Many other seeds Xu Ziqing had not yet merged into his dantian also sprang forth on their own. Under the operation of his legendary cultivation art, they all entered the embryonic Purple Palace Minor Cosmos and became countless secondary woods!
Xu Ziqing had spent years accumulating no fewer than ten thousand kinds of seeds. Now they were all absorbed into the Purple Palace, taking root inside the embryo of the Minor Cosmos.
Not only were they more closely bound to him, but their future power would be limitless.
At the same time, however, his dantian was emptied, and his Golden Core began spinning with increasing speed.
Xu Ziqing took out a bottle of pills, poured several into his mouth, and swallowed. With another sweep of his hand, he released a first-grade spiritual vein and drew it straight into the embryonic Minor Cosmos!
Then he closed his eyes.
The next moment, his entire inner world was laid bare to his spiritual sense.
Xu Ziqing could clearly “see” that every revolution of the Golden Core inside his dantian made it swell another measure.
Originally, his Golden Core had been no larger than a pearl. By the time he advanced to the peak of late Golden Core cultivation, it had grown to the size of a plum.
Now it was growing more rapidly still, constantly absorbing true essence and increasing in size.
Inside the embryonic Minor Cosmos, the spiritual energy of the first-grade spiritual vein was extraordinarily dense. It rendered all the spiritual energy within as thick as milk, forming snowy white, cottony strands that resembled thin wisps of smoke curling everywhere.
The ten thousand kinds of wood seeds frantically drank in spiritual energy. They sprouted, broke through the soil, and grew, spreading abundant branches and leaves and overflowing with vitality.
At that moment, an elusive and unfathomable conception appeared in the air. It seemed to extend into limitless depths and breadths, as though holding mysteries beyond all description.
It had appeared: the world laws within the Sumeru Mustard Seed!
These laws were the power to contain the great within the small, transforming a mustard seed into a vast space. If the space possessed spiritual awareness, its laws could unite with a cultivator’s own Dao and form an enormous world.
Such an evolution would produce a true cosmos, a world inhabited by living spirits.
For Xu Ziqing’s cultivation path, in which ten thousand woods transformed into ten thousand living beings, this was undoubtedly possible…
He drew a deep breath, feeling as though he were immersed in spiritual water.
The place where Xu Ziqing sat lay at the meeting point of this mountain’s spiritual veins. The embryonic Purple Palace Minor Cosmos had its own first-grade spiritual vein to sustain the ten thousand woods. But the advancement of his personal cultivation drew on the spiritual energy all around him with savage force.
Countless streams of spiritual energy converged, concentrating until they were almost viscous. They poured into the crown of his head and traveled directly into his dantian. Meanwhile, the embryonic Minor Cosmos was evolving like a separate space and was not affected.
The Golden Core swelled further. Inside Xu Ziqing’s sea of consciousness, his three hun souls and seven po souls had already become a primordial spirit. Now that primordial spirit glowed faintly green, casting down a threadlike beam of light from his sea of consciousness onto the Golden Core.
At that moment, Xu Ziqing experienced an exceptionally mysterious sensation.
The Golden Core was alive. His primordial spirit and Golden Core seemed like two separate selves, yet because their awareness had the same source, they were also one person.
Under the primordial spirit’s constant guidance, the Golden Core continued to grow until it was the size of a fist.
Then it grew increasingly dense and, after a while, seemed to begin contracting and expanding.
It felt as though a life were gestating inside it. Like a beating heart, it sounded “Thump! Thump!”
Xu Ziqing understood: his Golden Core was about to crack.
And when the Golden Core broke open, that would be the moment his Nascent Soul formed.
This final step, however, was far from easy.
If his accumulated foundations were insufficient, the Golden Core might be unable to break. Once that opportunity passed, his attempt to form a Nascent Soul would inevitably fail.
He needed still more spiritual energy, and he had to bring his condition to its absolute peak. All that remained was to wait for the core flames to emerge and the Golden Core to split open!