The Celestial Worthy Expounds the Ultimate Dao of the Electromagnetic Thunder Cannon

"I've looked through all of them. Hardly any of them suit the cultivation I'm doing now..." Liu Xiu said, rising from the stone bench. He returned to the bedroom and took out two books and three sheets of paper. One was the Yin-Soul Locking Dream Art, whose origin was absurdly impressive. It was the art Madam Liu had used to draw him into a dream. This art sold itself on being uncanny and hidden. It belonged to the yin... catching a foe unprepared and striking where least expected. It suited Liu Xiu's thinking very well. The other was the Kun-Earth Elixir-Bearing Transformation Method, which helped the body absorb medicinal power. It was plainly a method meant to accompany the immortal-aspect cultivation arts. The three sheets held three methods of cultivating immortal aspects, together with the matching elixir formulas. These two books and three sheets were the methods Liu Xiu could cultivate at present. Of course, that was not to say Daoist Wang and Madam Liu had left few methods. Quite the opposite. They had left rather a lot. The minor arts alone came to more than a dozen. But in the study at the Yizhuang, Liu Xiu had seen arts of the same kind whose transmission was more orderly, and which were more powerful and safer. So Liu Xiu ignored those arts! Aside from the minor arts, there were also several heterodox methods of tremendous power that Liu Xiu could cultivate. But would Liu Xiu dare? Honestly, Liu Xiu felt the reason Shi Jian had not put those powerful heterodox arts away was that he meant to see whether Liu Xiu would secretly cultivate them out of greed for their power. In a word, Liu Xiu suspected Shi Jian was setting a trap to catch him in the act! "You're really planning to cultivate these three immortal aspects?" Shi Jian sat beside the table, brows faintly knit, looking at the two books and three sheets Liu Xiu had handed him. He did not intend to interfere in Liu Xiu's choice. But as a master, he was still like most parents. Not interfering did not mean he supported Liu Xiu in doing this. In Shi Jian's view, immortal-aspect methods were still no match for the thunder arts in the end, even if accomplishing them brought all sorts of divine marvels that looked formidable. Yet to Shi Jian those marvels were only an outer path. He did not stop him, though. After all, he could not tell whether Liu Xiu's talent in the thunder arts was good or bad! At the very least, he still had not figured out how Liu Xiu had used outer thunder to cultivate a thunder seed of inner thunder! This was not the immortal Dao! Nor was it thunder arts! "I'm planning to give it a try!" Liu Xiu answered as he came over and sat on the stone bench opposite Shi Jian. Shi Jian gave a slight nod, raised his right hand, formed a sword finger, and tapped Liu Xiu between the brows. Liu Xiu only felt a dense mass of characters appear in his mind. Shi Jian drew his fingers back and explained, "This is the Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula, which can resolve elixir toxin..." "...This method takes the cultivator's lower dantian as the furnace and the Yellow Court as the cauldron. The true fire of Heart-Li serves as the calcining flame, the true water of Kidney-Kan as the bathing liquid, and the breath of the bellows as the wind, driving the medicinal power of metals and minerals through the whole body to circulate, cook, refine, and resolve the elixir toxin of the metal-and-mineral pills one has taken..." Shi Jian introduced it, mentioned in passing the points to watch during cultivation and a few knacks, then instructed Liu Xiu. "If you run into anything you don't understand while cultivating, remember to come ask your master before you go on!" Shi Jian spoke very solemnly. He had not known Liu Xiu long, but after this stretch of contact he had already begun to regard Liu Xiu as a disciple. He did not want Liu Xiu to die an untimely death midway through cultivation. "This disciple understands!" Liu Xiu nodded solemnly. He heard the concern in Shi Jian's words, though he felt this method for resolving elixir toxin should not be difficult. Hearing it once, he thought he roughly understood the principle of the Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula. The method was nothing more than taking one's own body as the elixir furnace and heart fire as the furnace flame, using kidney water to harmonize, and using the mouth, nose, and dantian as a bellows to refine away the elixir toxin. "But this business of taking one's own body as the furnace..." Liu Xiu turned it over in his mind. He kept feeling it could be expanded much further. Shi Jian did not know what he was thinking. He only pointed at the Yin-Soul Locking Dream Art on the table and said, "Your master has never practiced this art. But if you truly want to cultivate this method, you might read more of Free and Easy Wandering—the second book in the back row of the third bookshelf in the study. It may be of help in your cultivation..." Shi Jian had said before that the origin of this method was Free and Easy Wandering, so looking at Free and Easy Wandering could never be wrong. Shi Jian had actually wanted to mention that incomplete Xiyi Hibernating Dragon True Scripture, but the degree of its incompleteness seemed rather formidable, so he simply did not bring it up. Liu Xiu nodded to show he understood. Of course, he also knew that the Free and Easy Wandering in Shi Jian's study was only an ordinary text of the Daoist canon. It was not that Free and Easy Wandering which contained the Dao of Zhuang Zhou dreaming of a butterfly. If it really were that book, his master would not be Lightning Dharma King Shi Jian, but the Celestial Worthy of the Nine Empyreans Who Rides Thunder, Quells the Underworld, and Refines Corpses. As his thoughts wandered, the voice of the narration cheat rang out! 【Keh heh heh. You think of that scroll of Free and Easy Wandering in the study. In a daze, you feel the Yin-Soul Locking Dream Art is not simple. Yet no matter how you rack your brains, you can never grasp the hidden crux within it. You only recall that line of Zhuang Zhou's from some game: the butterfly is me, and I am the butterfly... You suddenly feel there must still be something missing!】 "???" Then say what's missing! Liu Xiu muttered inwardly. Unfortunately the cheat was too much of an idiot and said nothing more, only leaving him with the feeling that this Yin-Soul Locking Dream Art was not simple. He still could not figure out exactly what about it was not simple. But it was no great problem. He simply would not think about the problem. "Still, your master feels that for now you should concentrate on cultivation above all..." Shi Jian said to Liu Xiu, who was thinking who knew what. Seeing doubt in Liu Xiu's eyes, he curled his lip and said, "You've already spent thirty-one days in Hundred-Day Foundation Building!" "Ah, well..." A trace of an awkward smile showed on Liu Xiu's face. What could he do? The original body's talent for cultivation could only be called average. Although the cultivation world also called Hundred-Day Foundation Building a realm, strictly speaking it was not actually a realm. Hundred-Day Foundation Building, as the name implied, was only a process for building a foundation and laying a base—a process that let a cultivator become more "in accord with the Dao" and cultivate spiritual power. In this process a cultivator would cultivate spiritual power, but not one strand of spiritual power. It was one wisp of spiritual power. Hundred-Day Foundation Building meant one hundred wisps of spiritual power. One hundred wisps condensed into one strand, and only then could one step into the realm of Refining Essence into Qi. Of course, these hundred days were not truly one hundred days. How long cultivation finally took depended on whether one's talent was good or bad. Take Liu Xiu's average talent of two wisps of spiritual power a day. He needed fifty days to complete Hundred-Day Foundation Building. Likewise, there were geniuses who finished Hundred-Day Foundation Building in a single day, or even a single breath. Unfortunately, he was no so-called genius. At any rate, when it came to cultivating spiritual power, he was not a genius! "Cultivate properly. Your master will stay a few more days at the Yizhuang..." Seeing Liu Xiu's awkward look, Shi Jian spoke mildly. A trace of a smile flashed at the corner of his mouth, and then he left the stone table. Liu Xiu began clearing away the bowls and chopsticks. Once he had washed them, he told Shi Shaojian that the food was in the pot, then returned to the bedroom and resumed his journey of cultivating the thunder arts, left neutral and right live. After cultivating the thunder arts for a while, Liu Xiu looked out the window at the sky, where the sun blazed high. He rose from the meditation cushion, picked up the book on the table—the one he had only finished after writing for most of the night—and walked toward Shi Jian's bedroom. One minute later, in Shi Jian's bedroom. Shi Jian, seated cross-legged on a meditation cushion, twitched an eyelid and turned his head toward Liu Xiu beside him. Then he looked again at the portraits of immortals and gods enshrined on the altar table, among them the Celestial Worthy of the Ninth Heaven Who Responds to the Origin and Universally Transforms with the Sound of Thunder. Brows knitted, he looked at Liu Xiu and said, "You're certain that last night you dreamed the Celestial Worthy of the Ninth Heaven Who Responds to the Origin and Universally Transforms with the Sound of Thunder transmitted a method to you?" You're certain it was transmitting a method? And not taking you to the Thunder Bureau Great Prison to be punished! Shi Jian's gaze was odd. Set aside how Liu Xiu had condensed a thunder seed of inner thunder through outer thunder—something Shi Jian still had not figured out to this day. Just from Liu Xiu's earlier heretical talk, and from that business of Sheling thunder defying the laws of the Thunder Bureau, he felt Liu Xiu would only be punished, not have an orthodox god of the Thunder Bureau transmit a method to him in a dream! "It was suspected to be the Celestial Worthy of the Ninth Heaven Who Responds to the Origin and Universally Transforms with the Sound of Thunder!" "..." If you say suspected, then suspected it is! Shi Jian could not be bothered to argue. He simply took it that Liu Xiu had unexpectedly obtained some thunder-arts inheritance he could not state plainly, and so had seized on an immortal transmitting a method as an excuse. He did not press the question of suspected or not. He only reached out, took the notebook Liu Xiu handed him, and opened it. The moment it met his eyes, Shi Jian's gaze went blank! Written there was: "At that time, the Celestial Worthy of the Ninth Heaven Who Responds to the Origin and Universally Transforms with the Sound of Thunder was in the Shenxiao Jade Prefecture, upon the Thunder Jasper Terrace. He quietly spread a cloud seat and let fall his light to expound the Dao. Marshals of the thunder prefectures of the ten directions, Heavenly Lords of the Five Thunders, clerks of yin and yang lightning, soldiers of fierce wind and thunder, the Great Gods of the Ninth Heaven Who Oversee Birth, generals and officers of the Thunder Directorate, and boundless hosts of true sovereigns and spirits all came before the seat, kowtowed nine times, and stood with hands clasped to hear the teaching..." At the start everything was still quite normal. Shi Jian even thought Liu Xiu had copied the Jade Pivot Precious Scripture of the Celestial Worthy of Universal Transformation by the Sound of Thunder from the Unified Origins of Daoist Methods to show him, and thereby ask him questions about cultivating the thunder arts. To be fair, he felt there was really no need! Liu Xiu could have asked him directly! Though he was usually stern and unsmiling, when it came to matters of cultivation he was still very willing to clear up Liu Xiu's doubts. Only when he read on did Shi Jian find something amiss. A trace of bewilderment began to show in his eyes. The book went on: "The Celestial Worthy declared: I command the thunder of the Ninth Heaven and hold in my charge the electrical qi of yin and yang. I judge the registers of good and evil in the Three Realms and preside over the pivot of heaven and earth's transformations. All the might of thunder, the ferocity of electric light, and the shock of the thunderbolt are transformations wrought when primordial ancestral qi divides the two mechanisms of yin and yang. One is flowing-lightning qi, yang in nature and stirring; one is the resonance of primordial magnetism, yin in nature and congealing. Primordial magnetism is the one innate qi concealed at the root of the myriad phenomena. At rest, it is the ballast of mountains and rivers; in motion, it is the first note that heralds thunder. Lightning and magnetism arise together from the one true qi of the primordial origin. It is as wind giving rise to water and water giving rise to the tide: wind and water never leave the Great Void. Lightning gives rise to magnetism, and magnetism produces thrust; lightning and magnetism are originally one qi. When yang reaches its limit, yin follows; when yin congeals, yang responds. The two rub and surge against each other, and not for a single moment do they part..." This thing was the Jade Pivot Precious Scripture?! Could this thing be the Jade Pivot Precious Scripture?! Blank-faced, Shi Jian knit his brows. He raised his head to look at Liu Xiu standing beside him, looked at the book again, then stared blankly at a line of very small characters written at the very top of the book. At the top, a line of small characters clearly read: The Celestial Worthy Expounds the Ultimate Dao of the Electromagnetic Thunder Cannon. "???" The Ultimate Dao of the Electromagnetic Thunder Cannon?! What on earth was this? Had the Celestial Worthy really transmitted a method?! Wait—had the Celestial Worthy descended to the mortal world to play with guns and cannons?