At the East Sea, Jijue waited until night fell. Seeing no sign of Xu Ying, he had no choice but to step into the waters.
"Patron Ah Ying will surely have heaven's blessing," he thought silently. "The Buddhist dharma I bestowed upon him will hold against the Imperial Monarch's seal for ten days without issue. But past ten days, it will become unstable. I hope he can reach the Ancestral Court in ten days' time."
When Xu Ying awoke, he found himself lying on the ground. The Nine Heavens Ten Earths Extermination Immortal Array floated above his head, and the broken half of the Purple Nether Saber hung suspended there as well.
He struggled to sit up. His body was covered in various Dao injuries inflicted by the Extermination Immortal Array, along with blade wounds from the Purple Nether Saber.
These were Dao injuries cut into his flesh; even with his six great cave-heavens opened, they were difficult to heal.
Although the World of Ultimate Bliss had shielded him and the one who activated the Extermination Immortal Array and the Purple Nether Saber was not the Imperial Monarch himself, the wounds Bai Yuchuan inflicted using the two treasures were, ultimately, wounds inflicted by the Imperial Monarch.
Such Dao injuries harbored the Imperial Monarch's own comprehension of the Dao.
Xu Ying sat there motionless, observing his inner self to examine each Dao injury, discerning its principles and refining it away.
Behind him, the six great cave-heavens spun, endlessly pouring forth the six immortal medicines: primordial qi, divine consciousness, vitality, soul power, yin-yang, and heart power.
Having been reforged by the Returning Dao Jade Platter, his physical body was far stronger than before, radiating brilliant light from within.
Two days passed. Most of the Dao injuries in his flesh were healed, but a portion remained that he could not cure. Although he possessed the Imperial Monarch's true transmission, he did not know all of the Imperial Monarch's Dao methods and divine abilities; to resolve the majority was already an incredible feat.
Xu Ying did not rise. The divine light within him grew brighter and brighter, faintly casting behind him the projection of a hundred-zhang-tall Twelve-Storyed Mansions. Resplendent light shone from within the towers, and in each story sat a figure of Xu Ying, cross-legged.
On the highest floor, another Xu Ying threw open the doors and windows, poised to ascend!
That Twelve-Storyed Mansions was a reflection of his physical body—more precisely, a phantom projection cast by his throat.
And the Xu Ying on each floor was one proof of his Primordial Spirit.
Without realizing it, he had completed the twelve proofs of the Primordial Spirit; his cultivation of the Twelve-Storyed Mansions stage had reached perfection.
The Xu Ying poised to ascend on the very top floor was the shadow cast by his Primordial Spirit.
In his Realm of Xiyi, his Primordial Spirit currently stood upon the twelfth story of the mansions, gazing up into the heights of the vault above where an expanse of immortal light shone in the distance.
That was the Jade Pool.
The throat bones possessed twelve segments, which manifested in the Realm of Xiyi as the Twelve-Storyed Mansions. Here, the Golden Core transformed into the Primordial Spirit; with each floor it climbed, it grew a measure, and upon reaching the twelfth floor, it could leap out and ascend to the Jade Pool.
Radiant divine light gleamed within Xu Ying's body, and the phantom image of the Twelve-Storyed Mansions behind him became increasingly distinct. Suddenly, the Xu Ying on the twelfth story sprang into the air. A beam of rosy dawn light pierced down from the void above, bathing him in radiance!
Sleeves fluttering, he ascended toward the glowing light.
It felt like ages had passed, yet also like a mere instant. His Primordial Spirit completed its ascent and plunged into the Jade Pool. The pool's jade nectar surged around him, nourishing his Primordial Spirit as though remaking him down to the marrow.
Xu Ying's Jade Pool had absorbed the immortal waters of the Kunlun Jade Pool. Now, soaked in these immortal waters, his Primordial Spirit grew at astonishing speed, swiftly swelling from sixteen feet to eighteen feet, resembling an ancient deity.
*Something feels off.*
Xu Ying was puzzled. He clearly remembered sweeping away most of the immortal water accumulated in the Jade Pool over forty to fifty thousand years, the bulk of which had been absorbed into his own Jade Pool. Why had his Primordial Spirit grown by only two feet?
*Perhaps it's because my foundation in the Jade Pool stage is unimaginably solid,* he mused.
Yet a single ladle of Jade Pool water was enough to revive beings like Dongyue and the Northern Emperor, and the water absorbed into his Jade Pool was not just a ladle or two, but more than a dozen buckets!
*Could my Primordial Spirit be like a seed buried in the soil that stayed dormant too long and choked to death?* he wondered.
What he failed to notice was that as his Primordial Spirit grew, his Indestructible True Spirit grew alongside it, always matching the Primordial Spirit's height.
When he had reshaped his Primordial Spirit inside the Returning Dao Jade Platter, even absorbing the power of the jade platter's Qi of Creation had only brought it to sixteen feet.
To now reach eighteen feet through the waters of the Jade Pool was already a phenomenal achievement!
No longer tempering his Primordial Spirit, Xu Ying opened his eyes. Over a dozen Dao injuries still marred his body, hindering his movement and leaving him with a limp.
He snapped off a bamboo branch, treated it as a sword, and began slowly guiding sword qi according to Sword Lord Jinhe's teachings.
Gradually, the surrounding sword qi surged and opened, sweeping back and forth. At times it was like a white rainbow piercing the sun, at times like celestial fury reaching the constellations; sometimes it hung in the sky like a ribbon of rosy twilight, and sometimes it leaped from the water like a blazing sun.
After a long while, his sword qi reached the pinnacle of intensity. Countless strands of sword qi gradually converged behind him to form a towering phantom figure.
This was none other than his Sword Dao Primordial Spirit.
The Sword Dao Primordial Spirit was not an actual Primordial Spirit. Rather, Sword Lord Jinhe cultivated the sword much as a Qi Refiner cultivated, treating the Sword Dao like a Qi Refiner progressing through realms such as Gathering Qi, Knocking on the Pass, and Blended Refining, elevating himself step by step.
His Sword Dao Primordial Spirit was, in truth, an embodiment of the Sword Dao.
Xu Ying stirred his sword intent to shatter the Dao injuries upon his body, neutralizing the damage embedded in several more wounds. Eight or nine Dao injuries still remained, leaving walking quite difficult.
He drove the bamboo branch into the ground and began practicing the martial dao.
Drawing parallels across disciplines, he took the Nine Essentials of the Sword Lord taught by Sword Lord Jinhe to re-cultivate the martial dao, pursuing it along the path of a Martial Dao Primordial Spirit.
Fingers, palms, fists, hooks, elbows, shoulders, knees, feet—every part of his body was his weapon. Every punch, kick, palm, and finger-strike erupted with immense power.
These were humanity's most primal weapons, yet also the most practical and effective!
Xu Ying unleashed every technique he had learned on the Other Shore of the Martial Dao. The maneuvers of Wu Xian, Emperor Wu, Wu Tianzun, and the others were displayed near flawlessly in his hands.
Eventually, Xu Ying stopped executing other people's techniques. Giving free rein to his impulses, he moved his body at will, like a master calligrapher using fist, foot, muscle, and bone as brush and ink, and the natural world as paper. Every manner of strike flowed effortlessly, composing its own essay, weaving its own form.
His martial attainment had reached the point where no fixed forms lingered in his heart, yet forms arose spontaneously.
After a long time, his surging blood and qi abruptly condensed, manifesting behind him a towering, imposing Martial Dao Primordial Spirit—mighty, formidable, its sinews fierce and coiled!
With his blood and qi churning endlessly, Xu Ying dismantled several more Dao injuries.
Yet four Dao injuries still remained upon him, stubbornly refusing to fade.
"The Imperial Monarch's attainment is still greater than mine after all. Only if I break these last four Dao injuries can I truly claim to stand as his equal."
Xu Ying paid no more heed to the four wounds. He reached up, took down the Imperial Monarch's Nine Heavens Ten Earths Extermination Immortal Array diagram, rolled it up, and cautiously applied the sixteen-character seal that the Imperial Monarch had once used to seal him, placing a complete seal over the array chart.
He then took down the Purple Nether Saber and did the same, sealing the broken blade as well.
"As long as the Imperial Monarch cannot sense these two treasures, he won't be able to control them to kill me. Once I find Chanchan, I'll have her help me fence the stolen goods."
Xu Ying stowed the two precious treasures into his Realm of Xiyi and set off eastward toward the rising sun, though his left foot still dragged with a slight limp.
In this life, he was twenty-nine years old.
This had been his first head-on confrontation and contest against an entity like the Imperial Monarch.
Fifteen years had passed since he slaughtered the god at Jiang Family Fields and took his leave. Although he had recovered memories of many past lives, each recovered life felt more like extra reminiscences added to his mind.
He knew those were all him, yet they always felt like past lives. In this life, he was still that snake-catching youth.
"If I recover the memories of my first life, will I be that me, or the me of today? Will it be me recalling the first life's memories, or the me of the first life remembering this chapter as a snake-catching youth?"
Walking across the sea surface, Xu Ying shook his head, tossing aside these vexing thoughts. He muttered to himself, "Jieputi is quite the teacher; Buddha Child Jijue's cultivation has indeed improved considerably. The Buddhist dharma he bestowed upon me has lasted over ten days and is still working, keeping the Imperial Monarch's six-character grand curse from affecting us."
"Yeah."
Xu Ying's voice turned timid and stuttering. "Buddha Child Jijue is formidable, but Jieputi is even more formidable. The best thing we did was surrender quickly. We're just monkeys in his palm!"
"Jieputi doesn't amount to shit," an irritable voice snapped from Xu Ying's mouth. "If I broke the seals on my first life, I'd have flattened him long ago."
"Quiet down. That sinister old bastard Jieputi is definitely still watching us in secret."
Xu Ying felt that despite his injuries, he was full of energy. His mind was so sharp it was as though many versions of himself were thinking together, which he attributed to the profound depth of Jijue's Buddhist dharma.
He was entirely oblivious to the fact that the Buddhist dharma ability Jijue had left on him had already shattered.
Jieputi was naturally watching Xu Ying's every move. Seeing this unfold, a hint of suspicion stirred in his mind: *Something seems off with this kid.*
Soon, however, Xu Ying stepped into the East Sea, found the Heavenly Sea, and drifted away across the expanse.
So Jieputi cast the matter from his mind.
***
Yuanzheng World. Tomb of Grand Marshal Tianpeng, Sovereign of Cangtian.
Fairy Qingbi had been living nearby all this time, observing the resurgence of the ancient era's Great Daos of Heaven and Earth. Over these days, she had cultivated the six secret depositories taught by Xu Ying and studied the Heavenly Dao flags he had left behind, living a quiet, peaceful, and comfortable life.
She was fond of solitude—perhaps because someone had hurt her in the past, so she preferred living alone. Though she passed the days by herself, her heart was filled with peace.
On this day, as she was cultivating, a deep, resonant voice suddenly echoed: "Girl, thank you for looking after me these days. I have awakened today and must depart for far away. I leave you a scroll of the Supreme Cave Abyss Sovereign Cang Heart Sutra. If fate allows, we shall meet again in the future!"
Fairy Qingbi was astonished. An earth-shattering tremor suddenly shook the immortal tomb of Grand Marshal Tianpeng, accompanied by a resounding crack like thunder from a clear sky. Qingbi rushed over, only to see that half of the immortal tomb had collapsed, and the stone statue of Grand Marshal Tianpeng had vanished without a trace!
Stepping closer, Fairy Qingbi saw that an ancient scripture had been left behind on the stone platform where the ancient immortal's statue had once stood. It was indeed the Supreme Cave Abyss Sovereign Cang Heart Sutra.
Fairy Qingbi stood dazed. "Has an ancient immortal revived, or has a stone statue come to life?" she murmured in bewilderment.
She could not fathom it.
The ancient Daos of the Yuanzheng World were reviving, and the stone statue had vanished. These upheavals made her realize that even if she wished to live out her days in quiet solitude, it was unlikely she would get her wish.
This world was destined to know no peace.
With a storm gathering, she too needed to prepare early.
Fairy Qingbi read the Sovereign Cang Heart Sutra carefully. After finishing the entire text, surprised, she promptly brought out the six ancestral method scriptures Xu Ying had given her and compared them side by side.
"The description of the Supreme Cave Abyss in the Sovereign Cang Scripture shares similarities and common points with the method for opening the other shore cave-heavens in the Xu family's ancestral method!"
She was deeply astonished. The Supreme Cave Abyss Sovereign Cang Heart Sutra was an ancient immortal's technique, but where did the Xu family's ancestral method come from? Could the source of Nuo methods be the immortal arts of ancient times?
*The answer to this question can probably only be answered by the Everlasting Immortal. But where is he now?*
Fairy Qingbi stored the stone platform into her Realm of Xiyi. There was still a line inscribed upon it:
*The green rock flies away, the other shore empty and void;*
*The dream of immortality broken, disaster wrought without end.*
"The Sovereign Cang stone statue left too quickly. I didn't get a chance to ask what this meant."
She studied the scriptures for a few days, and after a moment's hesitation, decisively set out on the journey to leave the Yuanzheng World.
*Chaos looms over the realm. Since this world is destined to hold no quiet haven where I can meditate in peace, I might as well step out into the mortal world ahead of time.*
Suddenly, a flutter of panic stirred in her heart.
*If I step into the world now... what if I run into him again?*
***
Upon the Heavenly Sea, Xu Ying's mind was clear. Chatting merrily with many versions of himself about everything under heaven and earth, he was radiant and increasingly high-spirited.
At last, he arrived at the Yuanchu Great World.
"The abnormalities in the Heavenly Dao here must be the handiwork of the Returning Dao Jade Platter. Who exactly is this top diviner of the Immortal Realm who controls the Returning Dao Jade Platter?"
He smiled. "Ningqing obtained the Returning Dao Jade Platter. Now that he's returned to the Immortal Realm, the Immortal Realm's foremost diviner has surely calculated all of this. I wonder how he'll deal with Ningqing?"
He was suddenly very eager to see how Young Master Ningqing would die.
An omniscient diviner whose cultivation and strength were overwhelmingly formidable would surely play Ningqing like a fiddle.
Suddenly, Xu Ying stopped in his tracks and looked into the distance. Diverse rays of Dao light converged in the sky, turning into thousands of swirling ribbons of rosy vapor that flowed toward a single destination.
The direction where the Dao light gathered was a mountain range in the Yuanchu Great World.
He flew toward it. Suddenly, an ancient, overbearing aura awakened and surged to life within those mountains. A ten-thousand-zhang Primordial Spirit rose slowly from the peaks, its hair swaying upward like weeds drifting in river water.
The Primordial Spirit possessed three heads and four arms. Seas floated around it, great rivers circled it, red light blazed beneath its feet, and purple qi wrapped around its form—ferocious and majestic.
*The resurgence of the ancient Great Daos has awakened the Primordial Spirit of an ancient immortal?*
Just as Xu Ying was about to hurry over, the Primordial Spirit suddenly soared into the sky. A beam of red light beneath its feet tore through the void, and it vanished without a trace!
"What speed!"
Xu Ying flew to the site of the Primordial Spirit's awakening. This too was the tomb of an ancient immortal. Half the mausoleum had collapsed in an explosion, and the tombstone had shattered. Piecing the fragments together with difficulty, the inscription read:
*Northern Arctic Tianyou Grand Marshal, Puhua Heavenly Emperor.*
*Enlightened Heavenly Venerable of Harmonious Equilibrium and Virtuous Response.*
*Tianyou Sovereign of Dantian.*
Xu Ying stepped into the ancient immortal's mausoleum and found a stone platform here as well. A stone statue had presumably once stood upon it, but it had vanished without a trace.
Words were carved along the edge of the stone platform. The earlier characters were fractured and incomplete, but the concluding sentence was still very clear:
*The dream of immortality broken, disaster wrought without end.*
Reading these words, Xu Ying paused in surprise. He had read this exact phrase before in the tomb of Grand Marshal Tianpeng, Sovereign of Cangtian.
"The first half of the line was: *The green rock flies away, the other shore empty and void.* Why did both Sovereign Dantian and Sovereign Cangtian leave these same words in their tombs?"
***
In the Yunkong World, the revival of the ancient Daos clashed with the Great Daos of Heaven and Earth of the Yunkong World, the conflict growing fiercer by the day.
Buddha Child Jijue arrived in this world. Finding the situation much as Xu Ying had described, he searched for nearly half a month, yet still failed to locate the Boundless Sea of Fire or the Ancestral Court.
Just as anxiety began to gnaw at him, an earth-shattering boom erupted. The ancient Great Daos gathered like brilliant rosy vapor toward a single point.
He hurried over, catching sight of an imposing Primordial Spirit taking to the sky and flying off, leaving behind a ruptured tomb amidst the mountains.
Jijue stepped forward to inspect the tombstone, which read:
*Northern Arctic Yousheng Zhenwu Grand Marshal.*
*Golden Palace Incarnation of the Profound Heavenly Primal Sage, Benevolent and Mighty Sovereign.*
*Enlightened Heavenly Venerable Who Ends Calamities and Delivers From Suffering.*
He entered the tomb and saw that the stone platform also bore an inscription:
*The green rock flies away, the other shore empty and void.*
*The dream of immortality broken, disaster wrought without end.*
Chapter 447