“Crash!”
Five tentacles churned up violent undercurrents and dense clouds of bubbles as they lashed towards Desolation’s true body.
Desolation was like a nimble, coquettish fish, swimming at a slant, rolling sideways, twisting its thick waist, easily avoiding the tentacles’ entangling coils and smashing blows.
And throughout the whole process, it never woke up, as though the currents themselves were controlling this colossal body and making it perform all sorts of difficult evasive movements.
Rumble…
The seabed shook violently. Whatever lay in the abyss seemed to have been enraged. One by one, sinister and terrifying tentacles shot out from the pitch-black sea chasm, like blooming feelers, stirring up huge amounts of silt that spread like smoke.
They flailed with bared fangs and brandished claws, as if trying to sweep away every creature that passed over the abyss.
The surfaces of those tentacles were covered in incomplete and damaged patterns, as though part of a whole picture had been crudely scrubbed away. Huge suckers were studded with fleshy spines that wriggled faintly.
“It looks like something not weaker than you. A pity its spiritual essence has been nearly destroyed.”
The Jianzheng judged the monster in the abyss’s level from the incomplete patterns on the surfaces of the tentacles.
“Worthy of a Master of Heaven’s Mandate…” Desolation said flatly. With a graceful drift, it avoided three tentacles that came smashing straight at it.
The tentacles slammed into the seabed, producing an earthquake-like effect. Silt and sediment billowed up like smoke, turning the once-clear seawater into rolling murk.
“Any power in the world has its own unique arrangement and combination. Different substances have different patterns. The essence of a Master of Formations lies in reading those patterns. Left, left, mind the dodge…
“When one fully understands yin and yang, the five elements, earth, wind, water and fire, one can control all the powers in the world… Here it comes again, quickly, dodge right, now back.”
The Jianzheng spoke as he guided it.
… Desolation stressed each word, a little angry as it said:
“I am not your disciple!”
After expressing its displeasure, it continued:
“So I’ve always believed Arcanists are the most special of all systems. A fourth rank Master of Formations can already control most of the powers in the world, and a being like you can pry into Heaven’s secrets and observe fate.
“And yet, even beings like the Gu God and the Warlock God, though the former has Heaven Gu arts and the latter divination arts, can only occasionally glimpse a corner of fate. But you, a mere Master of Heaven’s Mandate, accomplished what even Beyond-rank beings can’t.
“But if the Arcanist system exists for the sake of producing Gatekeepers, then everything can be reasonably explained.”
Smack!
At last, with the help of its “companions” hemming it in from all sides, one tentacle successfully lashed the sheep-bodied, human-faced monster across the belly. The blow split skin and flesh at once, and great surges of blood seeped out, staining the seawater a lurid crimson.
The Jianzheng clicked his tongue in praise.
“Impressive. The force of that lash must at least be at the upper levels of a first rank martial artist.”
Desolation said in a low voice:
“Brute strength is one of its innate divine abilities. At its peak, its tentacles could easily tear apart my flesh body. Of course, the flesh body isn’t my speciality.
“In ancient times, it fought ‘Loong’ to the death in the deep sea. The tsunami they raised nearly drowned half the Jiuzhou continent. It was precisely that battle that broke the balance between gods and demons, and began the prelude to their end.
“After that battle, only one overlord remained in the deep sea. Sadly, it wasn’t this one. It was Loong.”
The Jianzheng gave an “oh”.
“No wonder I can’t sense any primordial spirit fluctuations from it.”
Desolation said with a chuckle, “Though the tentacles died, they refuse to stiffen. They carry its will, and through endless ages have remained on this battlefield.”
“A terrifying obsession,” the Jianzheng commented.
As they spoke, the Desolation was about to pass through this region.
The tentacles’ assault grew ever more frenzied, smashing the seabed until it cracked apart. Fortunately, there were no undersea volcanoes in this region, or they would’ve erupted long ago.
“Loong killed it, but its spiritual essence was damaged and its combat power no longer remained at its peak. That’s why later the three-eyed giant tore out Loong’s sinews and cut off Loong’s head. A pity, its spiritual essence is incomplete, so I can’t absorb it. I don’t know who’ll benefit from that power in future.”
Desolation probed:
“How about this, help me absorb its spiritual essence, and I’ll agree to do one thing for you.”
If it could absorb the remnant spiritual essence left in the tentacles, its flesh body would touch the level of beyond-mortal.
As Gatekeeper, the Jianzheng was proficient in formations and alchemy. Perhaps he could extract the spiritual essence from within the tentacles.
The Jianzheng ignored it.
Desolation could only move on regretfully. After taking three lashes, it finally left this “battlefield” behind and vanished into the endless deep sea.
…
The Southern Marches.
In the Strength Gu tribe, inside a brick-and-tile house, Lina was sleeping sprawled across the bed in a thin little top and a pair of very short shorts that left her thighs exposed.
Suddenly, she woke from sharp pain. Opening her eyes and turning her head, she saw the chubby Little Pea hugging her arm and gnawing on it.
Hiss. Lina sucked in a breath from the pain and slapped her disciple awake.
Little Pea drowsily opened her eyes, rubbed them, swallowed, and said:
“Master, I dreamt about something tasty, but no matter how I bit it, I just couldn’t bite through.”
As she spoke, she frowned lightly, her face full of distress.
Expressionless, Lina pointed at her own arm.
“Ah, Master got bitten.”
Seeing the bite marks, Xu Lingyin cried out in exaggerated shock.
“You were the one who bit me,” Lina said loudly.
“Wasn’t me.”
Xu Lingyin hurriedly denied it. She didn’t remember doing any such thing. Master must be trying to use this as an excuse to seize tomorrow’s meat.
“It was you.”
“Wasn’t me.”
Master and disciple started quarrelling, launching soundwave attacks at each other until Xu Lingyin’s stomach gave a loud growl.
Lina said irritably:
“The amount of meat you eat is nearly catching up to mine. I’m not even hungry, so what right have you got to be hungry?”
In the Strength Gu tribe, appetite represented talent, and to a certain extent cultivation too. Of course, someone like Xu Lingyin, who ran wild all over the mountains all day and, under the encouragement of several elders, chased after the Strength Gu tribe’s children and beat them up, was bound to eat more than most.
But in Lina’s view, this was still somewhat unusual.
“I’m just hungry,” Xu Lingyin said aggrievedly.
“Have you secretly given your meat to someone else?”
Lina guessed, then immediately rejected the idea. How could this silly disciple possibly share food with anyone?
“Have you hidden it away?”
Something occurred to Lina. Xu Lingyin did hoard food. She liked to hide drumsticks in shoes she didn’t wear, then when the drumsticks went off and she no longer wanted to eat them, yet couldn’t bear to throw them away, she’d try to feed them to her family.
“I haven’t.”
Xu Lingyin was startled, her face full of vigilance. Master actually knew about her secret operation. Master was getting smarter and smarter.
“Why are you hiding things?” Lina said crossly. “Relax, I won’t eat them.”
The climate in the Southern Marches was hot. Meat couldn’t possibly be kept, it had most likely already gone bad.
Xu Lingyin immediately relaxed. Though Master often fought her for food, when Master said something, she meant it.
So she solemnly announced:
“I’m saving it for Big Brother to eat.”
You really do think about Xu Ningyan… Lina asked, “How much have you hidden?”
“Loads and loads!” Xu Lingyin spread her arms to demonstrate, then added:
“But I’m not telling you.
“The masters said there’s no food left where my family is, and people are starving to death every day. If Big Brother can’t let everyone eat their fill, then everyone will join the bad people and beat him. If I give them food, then they won’t beat up my Big Brother.”
In the darkness, Lina froze. She looked at the seven-year-old child in front of her and said nothing for a long time.
“Are you missing home?”
After a long while, Lina asked in a low voice.
“Mm!”
Xu Lingyin nodded hard.
“Then after a while, we’ll go to the Central Plains,” Lina said.
“No!”
Xu Lingyin’s answer was beyond her expectations.
“Why?” Lina asked, baffled.
“Because I still need to play with the big bug. It said it’d teach me how to fight.” Xu Lingyin rolled over on the bed and said in an exaggerated tone, “It’s really amazing. Even I can’t beat it.”
“What nonsense are you talking now? Where did this big bug come from?” Lina asked blankly.
“It’s real, it’s real.” After rolling over, Xu Lingyin sat up, her little face serious.
“It said its name is the Gu God.”
Lina’s scalp went numb instantly, and every hair on her body stood on end.
…
After supper, Xu Qi’an sat cross-legged in his room, breathing in and out as he circulated his qi.
Half an hour later, he opened his eyes and ended the breathing exercise.
I can drain all the spiritual energy nearby in one breath, but aside from nourishing my body, spiritual energy is of no real use to me, and even its effect on nourishing the body is extremely limited. Breathing exercises aren’t much use to me any more.
After stepping into first rank, he had finally encountered a bottleneck.
Other systems aside, in the martial artist system, the true bottlenecks actually came when breaking through ranks. For example, when advancing from ninth rank to eighth rank, one needed someone to help open the Heaven Gate and guide the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into the body, generating qi.
From eighth rank to seventh rank, one had to work oneself to the bone and stay awake for several days.
The higher the rank, the harder it was to cross into the next one. Kou Yangzhou was the best example of that.
But once one had advanced successfully, there were in fact no bottlenecks from the initial stage to perfection. Those with better talent would go faster, those with poorer talent would simply be slower.
Logically speaking, so long as one successfully advanced to first rank, then going from the initial stage to half-step Martial God ought to be something that happened naturally.
But now, he had run into a bottleneck. His cultivation had entered a state of complete stagnation.
So that’s why, although first rank martial artists are as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns, if you stretch the timespan to a thousand years, there are still a few of them. But half-step Martial Gods, throughout all of history, the only one I know of is Shenshu.
No wonder after stepping into first rank, I vaguely felt I’d reached the limit, reached the peak. This wasn’t something I’d felt after stepping into the beyond-mortal realm.
From this point on, every stage of first rank was a bottleneck.
Since Shenshu managed to advance to half-step Martial God, there must be a corresponding method. Before the wedding, I’ll find time to make a trip to the Hundred Thousand Mountains.
Besides that, Xu Qi’an had two more ideas:
First: flower arranging!
The Flower God was the reincarnation of the Immortal Tree and possessed the spiritual essence of gods and demons. If devouring spiritual energy was useless, then what about absorbing the Flower God’s spiritual essence? And even if the Flower God had no spiritual essence, the ancient dual cultivation art of Daoism itself was more effective than solitary cultivation.
It was secretly aligned with the Great Dao of the union of yin and yang.
Second: calm karmic fire!
Luo Yuheng had succeeded in transcending tribulation and advanced to Earthly Immortal, but that didn’t mean her karmic fire had vanished. Being scorched by karmic fire was an inherent flaw of the Human Sect’s cultivation method, and one that was hard to root out. It was only that after stepping into first rank, Luo Yuheng could now suppress the karmic fire by relying on her cultivation.
For her, the scorching of karmic fire was no longer a threat.
As a Daoist Earthly Immortal, Luo Yuheng ought to be the most perfect dual cultivation partner in the world.
Xu Qi’an slowly breathed out and shifted his attention to the current situation.
The Warlock God won’t be far from breaking free of the seal. The crack at the centre of the Confucian Sage statue’s brow has already spread to the lips and across the whole face. That’s even more exaggerated than the Confucian Sage statue in the abyss of the Southern Marches.
Hmm, that was more than a month ago. When I find time to see Shenshu, I’ll have to make another trip to the abyss too and see how much the seal has loosened.
One of his reasons for going to Mount Jing City to collect interest had been exactly that, but checking on the Warlock God’s condition had also been an urgent matter.
After seeing it, he gave up the idea of following Wei Yuan’s example and summoning the heroic soul of the Confucian Sage to repair the seal.
His reasons were:
First, the power of the Confucian Sage carving knife and the Confucian cap of the Lesser Sage had been too greatly depleted. It would be hard for them to bear the power of the Confucian Sage’s heroic soul again in a short time.
Back in Qingzhou, the Jianzheng had nearly exhausted the power in the two magical artefacts. After they recovered a little, Zhao Shou took them to the northern border, where they fought for thirteen days straight.
Second, the price of summoning the Confucian Sage’s heroic soul was too great.
Back then, Wei Yuan had summoned the Confucian Sage with the body of a second-rank cultivator, and his flesh collapsed. The price he paid was death.
Now Xu Qi’an was a first rank martial artist, far beyond what Wei Yuan had been, but he would certainly still have to pay a terrible price. And the Church of the Warlock God still had one Great Warlock, one Master of Rain, and two Master of Wisdoms.
If he followed Wei Yuan’s example, the result would very likely be the same as Wei Yuan’s, dying in Mount Jing City.
If two tigers fought, one would die and the other be wounded, and the Western Regions would be laughing their heads off.
So right now, the top priority is pushing my cultivation to the half-step Martial God level as soon as possible. For the sake of the common people of the Central Plains, Aunt Mu, don’t blame your nephew for being worse than a beast.
Xu Qi’an flicked a finger and snuffed out the candle, then opened the door and left.
The night was deep. Red lanterns hung one after another beneath the eaves, swaying in the chilly spring breeze.
The inner courtyard, the corridors, and the other places were silent and empty.
Xu Qi’an quietly edged towards Mu Nanzhi’s room and gently knocked twice.
Inside, the room was utterly silent. No one answered.
Pretending to be asleep… Xu Qi’an knocked again.
Mu Nanzhi’s wary voice came from inside:
“What is it?”
Good question, you really do understand me… Xu Qi’an used his qi to flick open the door bar and pushed the door open as he entered. The temperature in the room was just right, neither cold nor hot, and in the air lingered a familiar, enticing fragrance.
This was the unique scent she had after the Flower God’s spiritual essence awakened.
The room was pitch black, but that did not affect Xu Qi’an’s sight.
The bed curtains hung low, and on the brocade couch lay the graceful curve of a woman reclining on her side.
Mu Nanzhi raised her brows and said:
“Coming into an elder’s room in the dead of night, what kind of conduct is that? Get out.”
Xu Qi’an gave a cold laugh.
“Aunt Mu, your nephew was afraid you’d be lonely in the middle of the night, so I’ve come to warm your bed.”
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