Chapter Ninety-Three: The Divine Burial

Xu Zhong and Shiyue staggered to their feet from within the half-collapsed body of the Thunder Ancestor and made their way outward, passing through scattered vital essence and blood, through collapsing, distorted fragments of indestructible spiritual light, through broken shards of the Golden Core.

Across the cracked sealing ground lay a web of fissures, and in this instant the dantian had fallen into complete ruin.

Everywhere were broken walls, shattered remains, and splintered space.

Those fractured spaces were linked by a thread of white radiance, flickering with faint glimmers.

Xu Zhong emerged dazedly from the Thunder Ancestor’s human hide. Tiny tribulation-thunder sparks stirred by his movements followed his breathing into his mouth and nose and down into his lungs, making him cough violently, until blood began to spurt from the pores all over his body.

He hurriedly sealed his mouth and nose, and with full force activated the Water Star Hidden Treasury, placing himself in a state of perfect leakage-free purity. Thus shielded, he could both preserve his body from leakage and bar the erosion of the outer thunder tribulation.

The place was now empty, without a single figure.

The moment the Thunder Ancestor appeared, the others, led by Bao Yi, had already rushed out of the palace. Within the entire seal, apart from Xu Zhong and Shiyue, only the dragon turtle that had returned from death remained.

“How are we supposed to get out?” Xu Zhong looked around, utterly at a loss. He could not fathom how to leave this place.

These shattered spaces lay one upon another, interconnected, yet that connection could not be sustained.

“I’ll lead the way.” The dragon turtle shook itself and reverted to its true form, becoming thousands of feet in size. It carried Xu Zhong and Shiyue on its back.

At that very moment, the entire seal began to tremble violently. Countless streams of magma transformed into long whips that reached out from the abyss below and bound Wei Yan’s body.

Then Xu Zhong saw a scene that made his heart quake.

Beneath their feet appeared a road paved with white bones. Cold winds moaned as a black pennant floated of its own accord. Behind the banner surged a dense, deathly fog, within which countless lonely spirits and vengeful ghosts clawed and gnashed their teeth, in every shape and form, human and beast alike.

Yet the one thing they all shared was their clothing.

They wore the garb of ghost envoys.

Clearly, this was a well-disciplined troop of underworld officers.

A black coffin, borne by those ghost envoys, hovered in the air. A chilly wind swept past, causing the black pennant to flutter.

At this moment, the Night-Wandering God, the Day-Wandering God, and the judges of Fengdu emerged from the road of bones.

They were chanting some ancient and strange hymn.

But when it reached the ears, the hymn became a series of ghostly cries, in a language and meaning no one could understand.

And yet those cries of the dead somehow made Xu Zhong’s soul tremble faintly.

It was the sensation of the soul trying to leave the flesh. Alarmed, Xu Zhong hastily transformed his human soul into a yellow dragon, suppressing the niwan palace and all the other souls.

The underworld army passed through, shaking the black banner.

Meanwhile, the road of bones kept extending forward into the distance, and the ghosts walked upon it.

The coffin finally came to rest before the seal of the dantian, before Xu Zhong’s eyes.

The black banner swayed ceaselessly, and from the void, countless drifting strands of indestructible spiritual light entered the coffin.

In an instant, Xu Zhong clearly felt the coffin’s body give a single tremor, as though something had been placed inside, though the movement lasted only a moment.

Then it returned to normal.

In that instant, Xu Zhong’s heart leaped into his throat.

“The underworld soldiers are calling Wei Yan’s soul back!” the dragon turtle said.

What had been placed in the coffin, naturally, was Wei Yan’s soul.

A person has three souls.

The heavenly soul bears karma and, after death, returns to the Dao of Heaven.

The earthly soul bears life and death and, after death, returns to Fengdu.

The human soul bears memory and belongs truly and solely to the individual.

Wei Yan was dead, and so Fengdu had come to summon his soul back, to summon his earthly soul.

Little by little, the drifting indestructible spiritual light in the void continued to pour into the coffin.

After a short while, a corpse lay within it.

The judge swept his brush and wrote a talisman, sealing the coffin in place.

Then he led that host of underworld soldiers back to Fengdu.

“This is a divine treasury beyond the ordinary,” the dragon turtle murmured. “It looks like the Lord of Mount Tai in Fengdu means to draft Wei Yan into ghost service.”

Yet in the next instant, as if remembering something, it suddenly flew outward in a frenzy.

Within this sealing ground, where countless shards of broken space crisscrossed like a spiderweb, it moved at high speed, completely unfazed by collapsing space or shattered Golden Core fragments.

Its speed was astonishing, almost faster than the dark cloud that was gradually forming behind them.

“Wei Yan is dead, and the indestructible spiritual light has dispersed. The parasites living inside him have suddenly been granted fortune and come alive.” The dragon turtle glanced back over its shoulder.

It saw that in that roiling mass of black cloud there were countless pest-demons and parasites writhing and surging, in numbers beyond all reckoning, so numerous they might be said to cover the entire sky. Wherever one looked, there was only an endless black cloud formed by these beings.

They pursued every morsel of flesh and every wisp of vital essence.

From far away, merely drawing in one breath of vital essence caused the dragon turtle’s own vital essence to diminish by a fraction, an inconceivable thing.

A mournful, whistling wind swept across the sealing ground, bringing with it countless pest-demon parasites, so many that they nearly reduced its own vital essence by a fraction.

At the same time, booming thunder sounded, causing all things to lie dormant. In the cloud behind them, the dead pest-demon parasites rained down one after another, like a torrential downpour, like cascading waterfalls.

Parasites and pest-demons die once they leave their host.

They desperately needed new hosts. Xu Zhong and Shiyue were too weak to matter to such demons and ghosts, so the one they chose as their new host was the dragon turtle.

And the dragon turtle, in this strange chase, erupted with all the strength within its body and fled.

Within this sealed land they were like a vast bolt of lightning, stringing together innumerable shattered fragments of space. But once they moved on, they were gnawed at by the parasite swarm like a locust plague. Their teeth were sharp enough to bite and devour even the fragments of space. Those broken shards were bits of spiritual light, like dust kicked up from the ground.

The dragon turtle ran while glancing back.

It cursed under its breath, “Unlucky, unlucky, truly unlucky.”

These demons and ghosts were alarmingly powerful.

Just after reviving once from within inner vision, it had only a fraction of its strength left and could only flee under pressure. Had it been at full power, it might have been able to test its mettle against these monsters.

But now it could only run, not even hesitating to burn through all the qi within its body.

After burning its vital essence, indestructible spiritual light, and dragon pearl, its flight speed had already exceeded the limit this sealing ground could bear. Thus, in a certain instant, the sealing ground was like a thin membrane, and the dragon turtle’s charge tore a huge fissure through it.

In an instant, it flew out through that crack.

The palace formed from Wei Yan’s corpse had by then become a small island, suspended alone in the void. Endless tribulation fortune was ignited at this moment, blazing like a great fire, banners fluttering like ribbons.

And those demons and ghosts actually followed Xu Zhong and the others out through that opening as well.

“You vile thing!” A tremendously vast aura burst forth ahead, and then a colossal golden body appeared before them.

The monk had had his past severed and his foundation for enlightenment cut away, but there was no doubt that he remained formidable.

He stood in the void, his gaze turning into gale winds that blocked the advance of those demons and ghosts. One breath became thunder, appearing amid the gale and hidden within white clouds; one exhalation turned into a chill, carrying clouds and thunder alike forward, until the whole sky seemed frozen solid.

Seeing this, the dragon turtle opened its mouth slightly, and a blade of utterly pure yang qi took form as sword light, cleaving a path through the ice.

Behind it, the demons and ghosts were frozen in place.

The great monk raised a bowl and covered them with it. In an instant, those demons and ghosts were taken into the bowl.

He spat out samadhi true fire, intending to refine them into elixirs.

Then he looked at the dragon turtle again, weighing the monk’s staff in his hand.

The dragon turtle was startled and hurriedly spat Xu Zhong out.

“Monk, long time no see,” Xu Zhong said with clasped fists.

“Hm?” True Illumination Monk was somewhat surprised. “You’re still alive?”

In his eyes, Xu Zhong should have died at the hands of the Ghost Mother. “Not only are you still alive, you’ve even cultivated to the Guarding-One realm, and it’s only been three years.”

His eyes rolled thoughtfully, then he said, “Benefactor, you have profound affinity with the Buddha. Since you are fated for my faith, why not leave the secular world and take me as your master?”

With a sweeping gesture, True Illumination Monk sent a razor flying from his sleeve, intending to tonsure Xu Zhong.

Xu Zhong channeled his power and knocked the razor aside.

“Of course I’m still alive,” Xu Zhong said with a faint smile. “But I survived not because of the Buddha, but because of the Thunder Ancestor.”

At this, True Illumination Monk grew wary of Xu Zhong and looked at him with clear apprehension.

After all, he had just had the foundation of his Dao severed by Wei Yan, and Wei Yan in turn had become the Thunder Ancestor’s meal.

“After all, you and I are both Thunder Ancestors,” Xu Zhong said. His words were nothing if not earthshaking, though True Illumination Monk was left completely baffled.

So Xu Zhong explained everything about his experiences, recounting in detail the Thunder Ancestor’s yin and yang aspects.

“Now I understand why, back then, the very first thing the Yang Crown Prince did when he led the cultivators of the nine heavens and ten lands into the Yu Kingdom was to teach the art of cultivating the soul,” True Illumination Monk said, reminiscing.

Back when the Sage Sovereign of Canglang and the Yang Crown Prince entered the Yu Kingdom, the first technique they taught was a method for cultivating the soul. Perhaps they too had discovered this trait.

“That technique is profound. Since you were not in the Yu Kingdom, you likely never learned it. Shall I teach it to you?” True Illumination Monk asked.

Xu Zhong shook his head. “I’ve learned something better.”

And so Xu Zhong also passed on to True Illumination Monk the method by which he cultivated yin and yang.

“This technique is indeed exquisite, but not everyone is like you, able to refine the primal Dao rhythms of the Four Symbols divine beasts,” True Illumination Monk said after reviewing it once, shaking his head. “If one’s talent is insufficient, this art may well cripple its practitioner through cultivation alone. Even if the talent is enough, without that kind of fortune one would need ten years, even a hundred, just to cultivate the yin aspect.”

When Xu Zhong created that Dao art, he refined the primal Dao rhythms of three divine beasts: the Vermilion Bird, the White Tiger, and the Yellow Dragon. Later he completed it with the Azure Dragon and the Black Tortoise, gradually perfecting the art.

To him it seemed simple, but for others it was exceedingly difficult.

“Benefactor, your gifts are extraordinary, and your wisdom no less so. You are fated for my Buddha.” After reciting the name of the Boundless Buddha, he added, “Are you certain you will not join the Buddhist path?”

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Chapter Ninety-Three: Divine Burial, free to read.