Inside the meditation chamber.
You Xuexin kept her lovely eyes tightly shut. As if avoiding a venomous serpent or scorpion, she flung the Five Thieves Heaven-Stealing Myriad Transformations Divine Talisman far into the distance, then sat cross-legged directly on the floor.
At some point, a red-skinned gourd had appeared in her hand.
Her primary path of cultivation was swordsmanship, and she excelled at wielding flying swords. As lethal instruments of slaughter, her flying swords were normally kept and nourished inside a sword scabbard.
This gourd was her scabbard.
At this moment, as she circulated her dharmic power and her surging spiritual sense poured into the red-skinned gourd, the once quiet gourd gradually began to emit the roaring cries of dragons and tigers.
"Treasure, show yourself!"
You Xuexin pinched an incantation seal and chanted a mantra, then pried open the mouth of the gourd without hesitation. Rolling sword qi surged out instantly like floodwaters bursting through a breached dam.
Clang, clang!
The ringing of a sword resonated through the meditation chamber, as though an invisible flying sword were shuttling through the air, before coming to a steady halt above You Xuexin's head and lightly spinning around.
In an instant, as if an invisible connection had been severed by the flying sword, clarity returned to You Xuexin's lovely eyes. Exhaling a long breath, she cupped her hands toward the flying sword. The sword emitted a ringing hum in response, then circled back into the gourd, subduing all supernatural phenomena.
"Thank goodness, thank goodness..."
You Xuexin patted her heaving chest, then glanced with lingering dread at the jade slip she had thrown with all her might into the corner of the meditation chamber.
In throwing it, she had even used a spell.
It was the very same Scene Shifting she had used earlier to capture Wang Ping. As the name implied, it could shift the external scenery and manipulate space, creating a state where what seemed right before one's eyes was actually separated by an unfathomable distance.
For instance, right now, the jade slip seemed to sit just across the room, but if one actually wanted to retrieve it, they would have to travel at least a hundred kilometers before they could touch it.
Yet against such an evil object, no precaution was excessive. Out of caution, You Xuexin dared not retrieve it immediately, thinking it better to wait until her dharmic power and spiritual sense returned to their peak, fully prepared before picking it back up.
At this thought, You Xuexin examined her sea of consciousness.
Looking inward, upon the vast ocean formed of her memories, a small area had been visibly distorted, with a massive amount of cultivation memories faintly coalescing into a talisman.
"Hiss...!"
You Xuexin sucked in a breath of cold air. "Fortunately, I severed the relevant memories in time. If I had let the talisman take shape, I would never have been able to forget it."
Such was the insidious nature of the Five Thieves Heaven-Stealing Myriad Transformations Divine Talisman.
Once a cultivator was bewitched by it and laid eyes on the technique's contents, a resonance would immediately arise within their sea of consciousness, and their memories of the cultivation art would manifest a talisman out of thin air.
Engraved in the depths of the sea of consciousness, this talisman allowed a cultivator to skip the arduous cultivation stage entirely and master all the experience of this supreme immortal art instantly. Read it one moment, wield it the next—a speed of mastery unparalleled in the Immortal Sect. Yet correspondingly, it had a fatal flaw.
Namely, being targeted by the Heaven-Stealing Thief.
"The Heaven-Stealing Thief spreads this method essentially to raise gu. Any cultivator who stands out from the rest will ultimately end up as nourishment for his immortal path."
With such a defect, no matter how great the benefits, You Xuexin would never be tempted.
...
Inside the Six Desires Heavenly Demon Flag.
With his eyes tightly closed, Wang Ping was likewise examining himself. He gazed upon a newly appeared talisman hovering above his sea of consciousness, thumb-sized and currently radiating endless brilliance.
In the next second, the true name of the talisman surfaced in Wang Ping's mind.
Life-Stealing Thief.
"The Life-Stealing Thief can usurp vital essence. This talisman allows me to steal the essence, qi, and spirit tied to another person's life the instant I make physical contact with them."
It did not sound like much at first glance.
In truth, however, this method of stealing vital essence was extraordinarily domineering. If cultivated to the highest realm, it could steal a person's very life in the split second of contact.
Whoever he touched would drop dead on the spot!
Furthermore, the stolen vital essence would not dissipate; instead, it would completely assimilate into his own body to replenish his physique, with an effect superior to any miraculous elixir!
At this thought, Wang Ping's gaze deepened. He stared fixatedly at the Life-Stealing Thief talisman in his sea of consciousness, inspecting it up and down, carefully savoring and digesting the knowledge and experience transmitted from it, until he finally discerned two words written between the lines:
Devouring people!
"How come every cultivation art in the Immortal Sect follows the demonic path!" Wang Ping felt his scalp tingle with dread. "What Life-Stealing Thief? Plainly put, isn't it just devouring people!"
Lifting his gaze, Wang Ping looked outside the banner once more.
As the radiance of the Life-Stealing Thief faintly flickered, he instantly perceived the unfathomable, terrifying vital essence inside You Xuexin's body.
Gulp...
In an instant, Wang Ping's mouth watered. It took considerable effort just to swallow. An indescribable, terrifying pang of hunger swept over his entire being!
So hungry! So hungry! So hungry!
Want to eat! Want to eat! Want to eat!
'Wait... is this thing controlling me?'
Wang Ping abruptly held his breath. All of his spiritual sense surged madly into the Life-Stealing Thief talisman, barely suppressing the ravenous hunger and keeping his sanity intact.
'What immense demonic malice.'
'This can't go on. I have to find a way to take complete control of this hunger, or sooner or later it'll drive me to qi deviation.'
Would suicide work?
Wang Ping pondered for a moment, then shook his head. Intuition told him it probably would not, because the existence of the Life-Stealing Thief was not rooted in his physical body.
It was rooted in his consciousness and memories.
'To rid myself of its influence, unless I sever all memories associated with it, this thing will probably still follow me even if I start over after dying.'
For now, the only viable course of action was a two-pronged approach: suppress it with spiritual sense while appropriately stealing small amounts of vital essence to sate the hunger. Though this only treated the symptoms and not the root cause, it would buy him plenty of time—enough for his cultivation to advance further so he could seek out a better solution.
...
Only after three full two-hour periods did You Xuexin finish regulating her breath and recover. Reaching out with a beckoning motion, she retrieved the jade slip lying in the corner of the meditation chamber.
Next, she brought out a jade box, tossed the jade slip inside, sealed it, and pressed her fingers together like a sword, continuously engraving seal scripts and secret talismans onto it. Only when the entire surface of the box could hold no more did she take out an even larger jade box and repeat the process...
After repeating this several times, she finally let out a sigh of relief.
"No time to lose. Better to escort this object over as soon as possible and let Master deal with it. Keeping it in my hands might lead to trouble."
With that thought, You Xuexin dared not delay.
In the next second, she formed an incantation seal, muttering incantations under her breath, and finally pointed her finger. A dazzling burst of golden radiance instantly erupted where she stood.
From within the Six Desires Heavenly Demon Flag, Wang Ping had been quietly observing the outside world. His vision blurred for a moment, and when he came to his senses, the scenery had completely changed.
The various sights of the Daoist monastery were gone, replaced by a magnificent deck. Before his eyes stood splendid, golden pavilions and towers, with blue skies and white clouds drifting around them. It was actually an enormous ship suspended in the sky, with rows of seal scripts and secret talismans lighting up one after another along its hull.
'What an incredible flying vessel!'
Wang Ping was inwardly awed. Then he saw You Xuexin channel her dharmic power, and the flying ship stirred into motion, swiftly pulling away from the earth amidst the embracing golden light.
The speed was beyond Wang Ping's imagination.
In a single blink, the Daoist monastery shrank to an imperceptible black dot in his field of view; he had not even had the chance to clearly see its surrounding environment.
All he could see were the mountains and rivers dwindling into insignificance, and even those gradually turned into an abstract painting as time slipped by.
All of a sudden, an epiphany struck Wang Ping.
'Don't look down anymore.'
Only a soul bound by gravity would fixate on the ground beneath. What one should do now is look up and gaze at the vaster, boundless firmament.
And so, Wang Ping looked up.
In an instant, as the flying vessel broke through the sea of astral-wind clouds across the thirty-three heavens and dispersed the mist to reveal the sun, a sight both familiar and alien greeted Wang Ping's eyes.
It was an abyss of deepest darkness, as though the celestial dome had been drenched in splashed ink. Yet compared to the minuscule earth below, this darkness was so vast and profound. As the flying ship drew closer, silver-white starlight gradually began to shimmer from the depths of the void.
Outer space.
Wang Ping was one hundred percent certain that what lay before his eyes right now was the cosmos. At this very moment, the flying ship was hurtling straight toward outer space.
What was this?
A solo breakthrough of the atmosphere?
Wang Ping shifted his gaze, observing the boundless expanse of stars that speckled the darkness and flowed with light, almost unconsciously studying them.
He tried to identify any familiar constellations in the star-studded sky... yet to his disappointment, every single celestial pattern was foreign to him.
The Big Dipper, the twelve zodiac signs, the Twenty-Eight Mansions... he saw not a single one.
"...Heh."
Suddenly, Wang Ping chuckled.
Never had he realized so clearly as in this moment that he truly had transmigrated. Yet precisely because of this, a momentary doubt arose within him:
'Something's not quite right.'
Though the stellar patterns were completely unfamiliar, upon closer inspection, he felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity, as if he had seen them somewhere before.
An illusion? Déjà vu?
Before Wang Ping could sort out his thoughts, even the celestial constellations were lost to view—for the flying ship did not stop, speeding headlong toward one of the stars instead.
And in this process, the constellations gradually shifted, as if parting a curtain. From an entirely new angle, Wang Ping caught sight of another side to the celestial array—before him were twelve stellar bodies blazing like suns, mingled amidst the stars.
From a distance, they had seemed unremarkable.
Yet once the flying ship drew truly close, the fundamental divide between stars and planets immediately made the former blaze brightly, showcasing an absolute presence.
"One Palace, Three Academies, and Eight Immortal Peaks..."
Just then, You Xuexin's voice rang out, laden with emotion. "No matter how many times I behold this, I cannot help but marvel at the mighty power of the exalted immortals."
Wang Ping eavesdropped from within, committing it to memory.
One Palace, Three Academies, and Eight Immortal Peaks—was this the origin of the twelve stellar lights? Taken literally, it appeared to be the organizational structure of the Immortal Sect.
Wang Ping examined the twelve stars even more closely, only to discover something amiss.
Each of these twelve radiant stars guided a cluster of celestial bodies, and set against the boundless depths of the dark cosmos, they actually formed a pattern.
More precisely, a gate.
Eight of the relatively dimmer stellar lights framed the doorway, while three brighter stellar lights traced the outline of a plaque.
As for the most dazzling stellar light of all, it was firmly set right in the center of the plaque. Unlike the others, which guided planets along their orbits, this stellar light stood perfectly centered, completely motionless, as if proclaiming itself the center of it all.
What unfathomable power was this?
Wang Ping had no doubt that external forces had intervened; otherwise, how could the orbital paths of celestial bodies form a gate? The chances of it occurring naturally were far too low.
'Is this the Celestial Gate?'
The moment this thought crossed his mind, Wang Ping held his breath. The so-called "Immortal Sect" did not refer to a mere sect, but was the name for an entire star system?
Are you kidding me!
Compared to the abstract descriptions of cultivation worlds from his previous life—such as boundless realms or seas of light—the tangible, authentic cosmos before him left Wang Ping far more awestruck.
Because it subtly aligned with part of his worldview, and that overlap made him realize with utter clarity just what kind of colossal entity the so-called Immortal Sect truly was. Measured against the scale of the cosmos, its radiant immortal light shone all the more resplendent and dazzling.
"Well? Quite magnificent, isn't it?"
—a voice suddenly rang out.
A few simple words, yet like a basin of freezing water, they instantly extinguished all of Wang Ping's thoughts, freezing his consciousness in that very instant.
Soon, however, he realized something.
'She wasn't talking to me!'
Inside the Six Desires Heavenly Demon Flag, Wang Ping lowered his head, no longer paying attention to the boundless starry sky above, and instead looked down at the surface expanding beneath them.
This was one of the celestial bodies.
It was not one of the twelve luminous stars, but an insignificant speck among the sea of celestial bodies, serving as a waypoint on the flying ship's escort journey.
Yet at that very moment, the scenery abruptly changed.
The ground was peeled away like a curtain, crumpled and shattered in an instant, revealing an endless expanse of brilliance behind it that actually outshone the celestial stars of the cosmos!
"Magnificent indeed."
A cold, calm voice answered You Xuexin's query, echoing between heaven and earth: "Your spiritual sense is exceptional, Fellow Daoist. Unfortunately, you noticed a bit too late."
Stars fell; the heavens tore open.
Amidst the brilliant divine radiance, Wang Ping saw a towering figure standing amidst the cosmic void, his fingers—as massive as mountains and rivers—slowly forming a hand seal.
Compared to him, the flying ship seemed like nothing more than a fallen leaf in his palm.
Then, his ten fingers intertwined, forming a seal that looked at first glance like a treasure vase, its mouth aimed squarely at the flying ship.
"Divine Ability Manifestation—"
The majestic incantation echoed through the starry void as though issuing an imperial decree, and as the voice fell, the world genuinely began to shift according to his words.
Everything abruptly collapsed.
The flying ship, the figures, the starry sky—all things that had existed on a cosmic scale were falling, like birds with broken wings tumbling toward the surface of a vast lake.
Such a drastic shift in the surroundings left Wang Ping stunned for a good while before he grasped what had happened.
'No, it's not that exaggerated. It's not heaven and earth that are changing.'
'It's me... no, it's the flying ship that's changing—it's shrinking!'
'Someone laid a trap on the celestial body the ship was heading toward, using some method to shrink the flying vessel to send it into another world!'
Almost simultaneously, that majestic voice commanding the heavens and earth slowly uttered its final syllable:
"—Universe in a Pot."
Chapter 38