At the Qingchi Sect.
Azure peaks loomed high, enshrouded in swirling clouds and mist. Beside them, the grand hall shone with brilliant spiritual light. Its vermilion doors had soaring eaves, flanked by layered walkways and winding corridors, with three tiers of eaves and clustered brackets, where drifting plumes of incense curled in the air—truly the magnificent aura of an immortal sect.
A streak of clear light raced through the sky and halted before the steps, resolving into a man wearing a magnificent crest. Taking two brisk steps, he crossed the immortal threshold and strode into the hall, where the middle-aged man seated at the head was currently holding a brush, absorbed in painting.
The crested man looked somewhat anxious, but the middle-aged man cut him off before he could speak, pulling him over to look. Depicted upon the paper was a towering peach tree with a lush canopy, upon which three flood dragons clung, baring their claws and fangs.
The one on the right was corpulent and bloated in shape, but the venomous stinger on its tail gleamed sharply. The one on the left was small, thin, and frail, though its eyes were dotted with gold lacquer and clouds painted around it in cinnabar. The one in the center was imposing and majestic, yet showed distinct signs of age.
The middle-aged man smiled and said, "Fellow Daoist Tantai, what do you think of this painting...?"
The crested man had no choice but to pause and study the painting. After glancing at it briefly, he said in a mild voice, "The Sect Master's brushwork is exquisite... wonderful... only, the space beneath the tree is rather empty. Adding a deep pool would make it far more intriguing."
"Hahahahaha!" Si Yuanli laughed aloud and patted his shoulder. "Brother, what keen insight!"
The crested man bowed in return and murmured, "My spirit falcon has returned from the north. At the hour of the rat, day broke over Lake Wangyue, and towering purple flames surged over Mount Wu amidst billowing iridescent clouds, displaying the true phenomenon of Mingyang. I fear the repercussions will spread further in the future, encompassing at least the entirety of Lake Wangyue."
"Oh?"
Si Yuanli looked up abruptly, his piercing gaze flashing. Shaking his head, he sighed, "Alas! Li Ximing has fallen!"
The crested man frowned and paused, saying quietly, "According to my prior deduction, his seclusion began twelve to fourteen years ago. To achieve the Violet Palace now would indeed be far too brief a time."
"Far too brief is an understatement!" Si Yuanli shook his head and said, "Pushing an immortal foundation into the Shengyang takes around ten years. Even if he used the elixirs given by the Xiao family and prepared numerous precious herbs of his own, it would still take five years! The Li family is hardly a clan with deep foundations, nor is Li Ximing any Tu Longjian.
"Manifesting a divine ability is even more perilous, taking six years. I have never debated the Dao with him, so I do not know how profound his understanding of the Mingyang Dao is. Even supposing he took the Mingfang Sky Stone, struck great fortune, and passed that hurdle...
"After that comes the trial of obscurity, which easily lasts over a decade!"
He sighed leisurely, grinding the azure spiritual ink, and answered, "For an anomaly to appear at this time means he has certainly perished!"
Seeing him add more ink to the paper and begin painting a pond, the crested man said quietly, "Yet this phenomenon is tremendously grand, quite out of the ordinary."
"Because he consumed the Mingfang Sky Stone!" Si Yuanli shook his head and replied, "That is a Violet Palace-grade treasure after all. Having consumed such a thing, how could the phenomenon not be grand? The sky stone aligns directly with the Huangyuan Pass; even you, Tantai Jin, might not have had such ideal conditions. He is of the Wei Li bloodline to begin with, cultivates Mingyang, and consumed a Violet Palace treasure—so such a spectacle is only natural."
The crested man frowned. "Could he truly not have succeeded in reaching the Violet Palace?"
Si Yuanli pondered for a moment and answered, "Originally it might have been possible. He is a Wei Li, after all, and perhaps his family passed down some secret technique that grants a unique advantage in proving the Mingyang Dao, which was why he dared to use the Mingfang Sky Stone... But how could the venerated lords fail to anticipate that?
"As long as he used it, there was no need to worry about him. A single bout of obscurity takes several decades. Even if he succeeded, so what? Long before then, Li Zhouwei would already have been dealt with... If he had lived up to expectations and become a Mingyang Violet Palace master, that wouldn't have been bad either; situated in the north, he would serve nicely to block the Buddhist cultivators... Alas... now he has fallen.
"Besides... I hear he was soft-hearted. Even if he passed the hurdle of the divine ability, how could he possibly cross the boundless illusions? In the end, it was all for naught."
The crested man, Tantai Jin, was finally at a loss for words, waiting silently by his side. Si Yuanli put away the painting, handed it to him, and strode out.
Tantai Jin unrolled it to look: sure enough, a small pond had been added beneath the peach tree, and more than half the body of the dragon on the left was submerged beneath the pond's edge, making it appear even smaller and more frail.
***
Meanwhile, Si Yuanli left the main peak, riding the clouds toward another peak. On this peak stood a lone pavilion, seemingly suspended amidst the clouds and mist. Numerous jade talismans hung upon it, swaying and chiming in the breeze.
"Fellow Daoist Xizhi!"
Si Yuanli stepped into the pavilion, finding Li Xizhi holding a jade slip, engrossed in reading. He had taken on somewhat of a middle-aged appearance, yet remained elegant, poised, and dignified. Years of serving as pavilion master had clearly endowed him with an even greater scholarly air.
"Greetings, Sect Master!"
Li Xizhi hurriedly rose to greet him. Si Yuanli did not dare act casually and quickly supported him, harboring an unspeakable wariness in his heart.
*So many years have passed; who knows what height his spellcraft has reached!*
In the entire Qingchi Sect, the only person capable of inspiring wariness in Si Yuanli was the man before him...
In Si Yuanli's eyes, Li Xizhi's depth of scheming was unfathomable. Clearly a rare prodigy in the art of spellcraft, yet from the moment he entered the sect in his teens, he had never gained any reputation for spells; even Yuan Tuan had likely been deceived by him!
*Even when Tuoba Chongyuan hunted him down back then, when his life hung by a thread, he never revealed it!*
Only after the battle of the Reef Sea became widely known did Si Yuanli realize that this man was the most formidable genius of the Li family's Xi-Yue generation, possessing a talent in spellcraft that even surpassed Yu Muxian, who had been hailed as a spellcraft prodigy back then!
*If not for the fact that his wife is of the Yang family... I would surely have formed marriage ties with him to bring him under my wing... Ah well, things aren't bad as they are now!*
Though his heart was heavy, a look of concern appeared on his face, and he murmured, "Xizhi, trouble has arisen at Lake Wangyue!"
Li Xizhi's expression indeed shifted, his brow furrowing. Si Yuanli recounted the events from start to finish. Naturally, his phrasing was entirely different from before; when mentioning Li Ximing, his words were tactful and indirect.
Li Xizhi knew quite a bit about matters of the Violet Palace himself. Hearing Si Yuanli speak like this, his heart sank instantly into an empty void. He slowly closed his eyes, exhaled, and said in a low voice, "What the Sect Master means is... my younger brother... has likely failed his breakthrough and fallen!"
Si Yuanli hesitated and nodded, answering, "Not necessarily... perhaps he broke through successfully..."
Li Xizhi knew these were merely polite words. He stood quietly for several breaths before speaking respectfully, "Thank you for informing me, Sect Master. Forgive me for not entertaining you further."
Si Yuanli repeatedly expressed understanding and rode the wind away. Li Xizhi saw him off, then forced himself to return to the pavilion before closing his eyes as tears fell. Glistening tears shone on the man's face, and he choked out only a few words:
'Ming'er had it hard...'
Li Xizhi narrowed his eyes, using his magical power to dry his tears. Drawing a letter from the desk, he dipped his brush in ink and began to write, his heart growing steadily colder:
'Now that Ming'er has failed and fallen, Grandfather must be heartbroken... I am the only one left of the Xi-Yue generation. Everyone is scheming against the heir of our clan. Even if it costs me all my cultivation and my very life, I must protect Zhouwei...'
***
Dawn broke. The purple flames atop Mount Wu soared into the sky. Clusters of white gardenia flowers rolled along the crest of the flames, while pale golden sand and gravel swirled in eddies.
Mount Wu had originally consisted mainly of basalt with reddish-brown soil. Now, the brown earth throughout the entire mountain had turned pitch-black, and the stones had fractured and shattered, entirely transformed into the color of Mingfang. It had become a domain purely of the Mingyang nature; the spiritual mechanism of the grand formation had shifted abruptly, its power sharply diminished.
With spiritual sand rolling beneath his feet and gardenias blooming, Li Ximing became accustomed to his new physical body. Within his Qihai, cinnabar clouds rose fourfold, and the Juque Court was brilliantly illuminated. The snow from before had long since melted, and the celestial light had transmuted into Mingyang purple flames, coursing everywhere throughout the court.
"Fire rises from the heart; yang brightness permeates within and without. The Minghuang divine ability is thereby forged, its radiance spanning over nine feet, purple flames bursting forth as iridescent clouds rise and dissolve..."
Li Ximing had not understood this passage in earlier days, but now it was clear as day. "Fire rises from the heart" naturally referred to the Juque Court situated at the heart, where the Mingyang purple flames accumulated, ready to burst forth at a mere thought.
"In golden armor and golden garments, they come across the heavens; the sun burns bright in the east, and earth baleful qi erupts in the south. Thereupon one roams the Great Void and tempers the golden lotus..."
The morning light on the horizon shone brightly, though there was no sight of any golden armor or golden garments—perhaps because his divine ability had not yet been outwardly manifested. Pausing briefly, he swept his spiritual sense across the southern slope of Mount Wu.
The Mingyang purple flames on the southern slope were particularly intense, scorching the earth so fiercely that the Mingfang stones fractured and shattered. Sure enough, plumes of reddish-black earth baleful qi were erupting, only to be suppressed by the purple flames and trapped within that small patch of land.
"This is what is meant by 'the sun burns bright in the east, and earth baleful qi erupts in the south'! My attainment of the divine ability has benefited this mountain tremendously... turning it into a Mingyang blessed land. This baleful qi is extraordinary; not only can it be used for alchemy and artifact crafting, but it might even allow for the extraction of certain types of Mingyang qi."
He sat for a few breaths when a hollow chime resonated through the Great Void, and two figures unexpectedly emerged at his side.
Li Ximing tilted his head slightly, his eyes returning to a pale gold color as the Heavenly Light divine ability flickered between his brows. The gray glow enveloping the two figures instantly receded, revealing their true forms.
One of them was short of stature, with two horns growing from his forehead, clad in coarse gray cloth tied around his neck. He had an unsightly visage; his two eyes were stretched almost to the sides of his face, so that from the front, one could only see half of each eye. His teeth were slender and long, his pupils a dark, jade-green, and he gripped a murky gray brush as long as a pestle.
The other was a head taller, draped in strings of copper coins. His face was broad and long, hanging all the way down to his chest, with the bridge of his nose splitting his face into two halves. His eyes were light pink, and he was struggling to hold a massive tome.
The horned man came to a halt, casually cupped his hands, and said in a shrill, piercing voice, "Greetings, Fellow Daoist! I am Wang Long, an emissary of the Netherworld Office. Joyous news... joyous news! Fellow Daoist has attained a divine ability, and I come on behalf of all the emissaries of the Netherworld Office to offer our congratulations! Congratulations, congratulations! May Fellow Daoist transcend life and death, attain the Dao of divine abilities, bring the five arts to perfection, avert the great tribulations, ascend first to the fruit of attainment, and ultimately attain true transcendence...!"
He rattled off a string of four-character congratulations in his shrill voice. Once he finished, the long-faced man beside him chimed in, "Congratulations likewise, congratulations likewise!"
Wang Long then bent slightly and made introductions, pointing at the long-faced man. "This is my partner, Zhang Gui."
"So you are esteemed emissaries of the Netherworld!"
No wonder they had arrived so quickly; they were from the Netherworld Office. Li Ximing returned the greeting first. Wang Long smiled and asked in his shrill voice, "Is it the 'Huangyuan Pass'?"
Beside him, Zhang Gui peered at him with two sidelong glances, his long face calm and unperturbed, and replied, "Indeed. The technique is archaic; it stems from the 'Yetian Gate' of the Wei Li back in the day. Fellow Daoist's lineage is not the orthodox line, but presumably the cultivation method practiced by the collateral royal descendants who guarded the north. It is much simpler, and is called the 'Huangyuan Pass'."
"Good, good, good."
Wang Long's voice was shrill to the extreme as he immediately chimed in. Turning around, he asked Li Ximing, "What is your surname and given name?"
Having just passed through the boundless illusions, the name had momentarily caught in Li Ximing's throat, and he had nearly been unable to utter it. Pausing briefly, he said in a calm voice, "A descendant of the Li clan, Ximing. 'Xi' as in heavenly dawn; 'Ming' as in the brightness of the sun and moon."
As soon as his words fell, the brush in Wang Long's hand flashed twice, ink welling forth from its tip. The horned man nudged the long-faced man holding the thick tome and shouted, "Have you found it yet?!"
Zhang Gui remained unhurried, scanning the pages and tracing along with his hand as he searched. He looked all the way down without uttering a sound. Wang Long was impatient; unwilling to look at him, he began grumbling to Li Ximing, "Tell me... they're figures at the level of True Monarchs; why must they fight over nothing? That battle tore a hole in the heavens, and several True Monarchs personally went to watch, throwing heaven and earth into turmoil.
"Fellow Daoist, just as I came out, I heard that a chunk of flesh fell from the sky over the State of Wu, as large as a city, rotting across four borders. Who knows which exalted figure was dissatisfied with things... sigh..."
He grumbled on and on, his half-human, half-ghost face revealing an expression of worry as he murmured, "I wonder if Fellow Daoist Si will be able to make a push for the Golden Core. If not... this century's golden nature won't be collected in full again!"
Li Ximing responded casually. Not knowing the rules of the people from the Netherworld Office, he did not speak carelessly. After waiting for a while, Wang Long grew increasingly displeased. Turning his head with a frown, he snapped shrilly at the long-faced Zhang Gui, "Old partner, what watch of the night is it now?! Dragging your feet like this—once those old fogies find out, they'll accuse us of neglecting the affairs of the nether dead again, and you'll be the one taking the blame!"
Zhang Gui looked left and right, slammed the book shut with a rustle, and knitted his faint, almost invisible eyebrows. His face looked even uglier as he answered slowly, "I can't find him."
Wang Long froze, gripped his hands, flipped open the cover of the book, and pushed hard with both hands. With a muffled grunt, he shoved the large tome to the ground. In an instant, it split into several volumes with a flurry of rustling pages, scattering across the ground. He cursed, "How could you bungle even this? You transcribed it for nothing!"
Time seemed of the utmost essence to these two Netherworld emissaries as they began searching in a frantic flurry. Li Ximing glanced briefly; the book consisted of numerous volumes of varying colors, yet beneath his spiritual sense, they appeared completely empty.
*I fear one cannot even lift these books with magical power, nor cast any spells upon them... Though I wonder if one could pick them up with a divine ability.*
The two of them were busy crouching down, one holding a volume and the other clutching another, flipping through them rapidly in search.
The books were originally a set of magical treasures and could not be probed with spiritual sense. For a time, the rustling of turning pages echoed all around.
*Rustle, rustle...*
Li Ximing took the opportunity to lower his gaze. The volume beneath his feet was bound in purple and gold, strung together with several pure white cords. It was the most noble and venerable among all the volumes, flipping its pages on its own with a soft rustle until, amidst the billowing purple flames, it reached the final page. Inscribed on the side of the page was:
"Record of Violet Palace Divine Abilities Observed by the Emissaries of the Five Directions of Jiao and Yang Provinces — Zhang Gui, Investigating and Recording Demon Scribe."
At the very top of this page was a line of golden writing inscribed in ancient seal script intaglio, which Li Ximing recognized at a glance:
"On the third day of the second month in the six hundred and ninety-seventh year of the Yin Earth Cycle, Yang Tianya, Master Guanxuan, native of the ancient Lishou Tribe of Yang Province and cultivator of the present Mount Qingchi territory, attained a divine ability."
Directly beneath this golden writing was another line:
"On the twenty-third day of the eleventh month in the six hundred and ninety-eighth year of the Yin Earth Cycle, Lin Wei, Master Houfu, native of the Wuzhong Tribe of Jiao Province and cultivator of the present Linhai Commandery territory, attained a divine ability."
Li Ximing's heart jolted violently.
He knew both of the people written on this page! Yang Tianya went without saying, while Master Houfu was none other than the master of the present Great Xiukui Temple! When Master Houfu broke through back then, his own clan had been caught in the midst of Xu Xiao's rebellion!
*Yang Tianya has attained a divine ability!*
*And he attained his divine ability even earlier than Houfu!*
***
Under a cloudless sky over Lake Wangyue, the water rippled gently. A dark cyan pavilion stood upon the lake's surface, linked to the Lake Central Islet by a long pathway, illuminated by the sparkling glow of several stone lotus-shaped lanterns.
The pavilion had eight corners, painted with eight kinds of runes and adorned with cinnabar reliefs. Directly facing Mount Xiping to the west, it bore a jade plaque inscribed with large characters:
...
Chapter 686