The loft looked unassuming from the outside, but inside it radiated brilliant light.
The space wasn’t large — enough for five or six people standing shoulder to shoulder.
On both sides, red-wood shelves held neatly arranged jade slips in various sizes, and the light was spilling out from the slips themselves.
The divine spirit, arms around his skeleton, stood behind Shen Yi and explained, “The ones on the right are the Golden Body methods. Everything on the left concerns Mixed Origin cultivators.”
This was clearly where Great Qian kept all of its high-realm techniques.
Not only were there few of them.
They’d gone and stored the Mixed Origin techniques in the same place as the Golden Body methods, which belonged to the Spirit-Transformation realm above them… what Jiang Qiulan had said at the time might well have been true — the War Temple genuinely didn’t have a mastered path for the path infant’s route to Spirit-Transformation.
Shen Yi glanced across the shelves.
The right side held exactly twenty-three jade slips, no more and no less — but quite a few of them were damaged, the smooth jade surfaces mottled with what looked disturbingly like old bloodstains.
“They were brought back from outside by Spirit-Transformation cultivators across the generations. A bit of damage is perfectly normal.”
Senior Brother Zhu carefully set the skeleton aside in a corner, adjusted the skull so it sat straight, then turned and picked up one of the slips, holding it out to Shen Yi. “Twenty-three Golden Body methods in total. Only thirteen are complete.”
“Twelve of them can condense a three-zhang golden dharma form.”
“Only the Arhat Golden Body Method produces a six-zhang golden form.”
Shen Yi took the slip and pressed his spiritual sense into it.
A new line appeared on his panel at once.
【Spirit-Transformation · Red-Faced Lion-Camel Dharma Form: Not Yet Begun】
Without rushing to draw on any lifespan, Shen Yi closed the panel and asked sincerely, “The larger the form, the stronger?”
He’d been through enough battles by now to notice that the most powerful demons weren’t necessarily the biggest — Lady Qinghua’s true form, for instance, had only been about thirty zhang in length, which was tiny compared to the old flood dragon in the Yangchun River, which had stretched two or three hundred zhang. But the difference in their actual strength was the complete inverse of the size comparison.
Lady Qinghua could probably have stepped on that old Core-Nurturing-at-Perfection flood dragon without breaking stride.
“A golden dharma form is condensed from accumulated faith, so in most cases, a larger form does reflect a deeper foundation.”
Senior Brother Zhu showed none of the condescension one might expect from a senior. He didn’t find the question foolish either.
Through the grinding of long years, he’d arrived at a clear-eyed recognition of something.
Before a true Spirit-Transformation cultivator, all other cultivators were alike — like people crossing a suspension bridge above a cliff. Some stepped quickly and steadily, leaving the others far behind.
But…
If the bridge had no end.
Whether you walked fast or slow ceased to matter at all.
“I’d like to see the Arhat Golden Body Method.” Shen Yi glanced toward the shelves.
“Of course.”
Senior Brother Zhu found nothing strange in the request. Every upper-tier Martial Immortal who came through here wanted to see this method first, without exception.
He floated upward, lifted the slip resting on the highest shelf, and placed it in Shen Yi’s palm, then offered a gentle word before stepping back. “Of course, when it comes to Golden Body methods, one doesn’t necessarily have to cultivate the most powerful one. What matters more is finding the one that suits you.”
“Suits me?”
Shen Yi pressed his spiritual sense into the second slip.
【Spirit-Transformation · Arhat Golden Dharma Form: Not Yet Begun】
“The single most important threshold for a divine-spirit cultivator breaking through to Spirit-Transformation is understanding what that white mist you scatter so casually when you’re a Martial Immortal actually is.”
Senior Brother Zhu reached out and plucked a thread of white mist from the air, turning it between his fingertips. “Want to try?”
This small an amount of accumulated faith wouldn’t even catch the eye of a Core-Nurturing Demon Suppression General.
Shen Yi arched an eyebrow and reached out to touch it.
The instant his fingertip made contact with the white mist, a cacophony erupted in his ears — like a swarm of flies droning all at once.
“…”
Shen Yi closed his eyes on reflex. Even with the formidable spiritual sense he had now, it took him quite a while to make out what the sound actually was.
It was hundreds upon hundreds of people whispering at the same time, each one speaking of something different, pouring out wholly contradictory emotions.
Greed, spite, malice. Joy, anger, grief.
“Every sword-light we throw out without thinking, every palm-wind we push out — it’s all condensed from their wills.”
“Using accumulated faith as though it were the qi of heaven and earth, reinforcing yourself with it, having an endless supply available just by sitting at home — naturally it feels comfortable and easy. The martial world calls it a shortcut, and not without reason.”
Senior Brother Zhu spoke in a quiet voice. “But every shortcut carries a cost. Now you want to use this — to condense a new body out of it. And that means all these voices become your voices.”
“The first threshold of a Golden Body method is choosing a way to digest these wandering wills — to keep them from turning into your inner demon.”
He pointed to the slip in Shen Yi’s left hand. “The Lion-Camel method’s answer is to guard. Guard the homeland, guard the nation’s gate, guard the lives of all the people — to make that a vow.”
Then he pointed to the slip in Shen Yi’s right hand. “The Arhat Golden Body Method’s answer is to suppress. What exactly it suppresses — I’m not entirely certain. What the Ancestor chose to suppress was the lives and sufferings of all the people under heaven… and so, when his divine spirit was injured, the backlash came for him.”
“Hah.”
Shen Yi finally finished processing that single thread of white mist, his mind feeling faintly drained.
Listening to what this senior had just explained, he finally understood why the War Temple’s Ancestor had seemed so addled, like an elderly man with a failing mind, when he’d seen him on the altar. Being assailed by that kind of clamor day after day — how could anyone remain clear-headed.
“I have studied all twenty-three methods, and found that not one of them suits my path.”
Senior Brother Zhu drifted along the shelves, touching each slip as he passed.
A strange smile spread across his face. “I thought about it for a very long time before I understood — it turns out my talent was simply too high. I walked this road quickly and steadily, never encountering so much as a stumbling block, with everyone praising me and every demon fearing me — and so… I could never truly understand the wandering wills within the accumulated faith.”
“My heart held only one thing: my great path to Spirit-Transformation.”
“And now, having reached the end of the road, I find that of these twenty-three doors, not one will open for me.”
“I’ve traveled the world trying to recapture the feeling of an ordinary person’s life — but I’ve long since become Great Qian’s highest-cultivation Martial Immortal. How was I supposed to recover that kind of heart?”
“I drove myself to exhaustion, lay awake at night, told myself I wanted to protect Great Qian and prove myself worthy of the Lion-Camel golden body… I could deceive everyone else. I couldn’t deceive myself. And I couldn’t deceive all that accumulated faith filling the sky.”
He had been a prodigy who reached upper-tier Martial Immortal at forty.
The common people of the mortal world were ants in holes to him, utterly unable to touch his heart. Whether it was guarding or suppressing — he could say the words a million times in his head, but they’d always be nothing but empty lies.
“Junior Brother.”
Senior Brother Zhu paused in his slow circuit, and looked back, a note of bitterness threading through his smile. “Just now I thought I caught something they said — that you’re also a prodigy?”
“…”
Shen Yi considered for a moment, then shook his head slightly. “Not especially.”
Back when he’d been in Qingzhou’s Demon Suppression Division.
A strong, stocky young man had once blocked the doorway and asked: “If you’re not a genius, why do you lack arrogance?”
And his answer then had been… of course I’m not.
(End of Chapter 233)