One step nearer the Spirit-Transformation realm.
The pressure that had weighed on Shen Yi’s heart earlier finally eased somewhat. So long as he could break through to Spirit-Transformation, with the golden body besides, he alone could command two battlefields at once; the two converged, he could even challenge demons of higher cultivation.
“Congratulations to my lord on a great advance in cultivation! The day of overawing the four directions is close at hand!” Lady Qinghua offered her felicitations right on cue.
“…”
Shen Yi shot her a look, at a loss for words. He’d figured it out. Every time he grew a little full of himself, this woman would leap out and pour a basin of cold water. A cultivation like mid-tier Mixed Origin would certainly make one a domineering overlord swaggering about anywhere else, but where powers like Wutong Mountain and the Thousand Demon Den were concerned, it wasn’t worth a look at all.
He mused an instant, then took out a golden booklet — the token of a Temple Custodian’s identity. “Take this. Go back to Great Qian and repair the golden body.”
“Qinghua…”
Lady Qinghua blanked for a moment, her face full of dread, not knowing where she’d misspoken to be transferred from her master’s side. His lord had, after all, only just slain a White-Feather Demon Emperor — this was precisely the time to be swapping people in. But she had no intention of arguing, and lowered her head obediently. “Qinghua will go back at once… does my lord need Qinghua to guard Great Qian?”
At this, Shen Yi was silent a moment. Then he said softly, “No need. Go quickly and return quickly.”
Somehow, without his knowing when, he’d become a figure much like those War Temple disciples — the greater good above all, a temporary setback… Shen Yi didn’t believe in any “greater good above all.” He knew only that were he dragged by the Thousand Demon Den into a situation of slow death, then Great Qian would become a ruin strewn with corpses, the Nine Provinces occupied by demons. And by then, going to take revenge or whatever… was in truth quite meaningless.
Using the golden body to develop himself swiftly, striving to break through Spirit-Transformation in the shortest time, then raiding into the Thousand Demon Den — defense through offense — was the only path of survival.
Condensing the golden body earlier, plus repairing the golden body this time, would likely use up eighty or ninety percent of Senior Brother Wu’s share of faith. Of the remaining shares, Senior Brother Zhu himself still needed faith to condense a golden body, and the other three shares mightn’t be willingly handed over to him. Not everyone dared, like Senior Brother Wu, stake all of Great Qian’s foundation on a single reckless gamble.
Accumulated faith needed time to replenish. Great Qian had once had thirteen Spirit-Transformation cultivators — that didn’t mean the thirteen had broken through simultaneously. By present estimates, all the War Temple’s foundation was only enough to sustain disciples in condensing five or six three-zhang golden dharma forms. And that didn’t even include reshaping a golden body after injury.
In other words, Shen Yi reckoned that if he brute-forced things every time the way he had against the White-Feather Demon Emperor, a dozen-odd strikes at most would drain the War Temple’s savings dry. Nothing else needed saying — without accumulated faith, they couldn’t even control those few Spirit-Transformation golden-body corpses; the whole of Great Qian would fall into a state utterly without defense.
As for seizing it by force. Setting aside whether Shen Yi could bring himself to do such a thing, that Ancestor in the War Temple was merely senile, not dead — forcibly seizing the War Temple’s faith right before a six-zhang golden body…
To want more faith, he’d inevitably have to do something people found convincing — to lend Senior Brother Wu some measure of standing when he raised the proposal. Such as sending Great Qian’s crowd of Mixed Origin Grandmasters back home? This alliance had been laboring for Wutong Mountain to begin with, and even Perfected Master Qingfeng had made his stance clear, telling Chen Zhong to hurry back — so it wasn’t as though these people were being forced to leave Great Qian. He need only deal with Xuanguang Cave.
“Qinghua takes her leave.”
Lady Qinghua saluted respectfully, then entered into the divine spirit and departed with the golden bead toward the direction of Great Qian.
“…”
Shen Yi watched the golden bead fly off into the distance, and felt, of all things, something odd in his heart. Then he gave a self-mocking smile. Hadn’t he been without anyone’s shelter before too, and pulled through in the end all the same? How was it that now, a Mixed Origin Grandmaster, he’d instead become like a nursing babe, unused even to the golden body leaving for a short while. Could it be the higher one’s cultivation, the smaller one’s nerve.
At the thought, Shen Yi took out the Parting-Flame Heart-Burning Palm from his storage treasure, along with that thick book the cave estate’s master had left of his derivations. He carefully leafed through it once more. Spirit-Transformation techniques were abstruse in the extreme; even the derivation-annotations left one’s head splitting to read, but this thick book couldn’t be taken into the panel, so he could only read it slowly himself.
Most of it was conjecture about the Heart-Burning volume. Only a very small passage was the estate master’s summation of the Parting-Flame volume. Shen Yi committed the whole of it to memory, and only then mobilized demon lifespan to begin deriving.
【Spirit-Transformation (Rare) · Parting-Flame Heart-Burning Palm, Upper Volume: Not Yet Begun】
【Year 1 — you already have some grasp of the Parting-Flame volume. The predecessor’s experience echoes in your mind. This is not a thing the Mixed Origin realm can master, but with a spiritual root now, you decide to try mastering this power.】
【By the annotations the cave estate’s master left, you gradually come to understand the difference between the Spirit-Transformation realm and the Mixed Origin realm.】
【The former has utterly cast off the mortal frame; he is himself the qi of heaven and earth made manifest, spiritual root merged with body, able to easily mobilize the qi of heaven and earth — a domain a Mixed Origin Grandmaster is wholly unable to comprehend.】
Demon lifespan drained swiftly away as Shen Yi closed his eyes and digested the insight. A Mixed Origin Grandmaster couldn’t mobilize the qi of heaven and earth — for instance, if he wanted to condense purple-gold flame, he certainly had to draw on the path infant’s foundation, then transform it through the spiritual root. The quantities the two could call upon were surely as different as clouds from mud.
But no matter. Shen Yi looked toward the storage treasure at his waist, where the demon cores he’d stored up all along the way were kept. Among them were even two extreme-peak demon kings’, and the White-Feather Demon Emperor’s. Add to that the Heaven-Devouring demon infant’s properties, and now, without needing to rely on an external pill, he could directly digest the cultivation within demon cores to replenish himself. His own cultivation foundation was no thing ordinary Mixed Origin could compare to.
“Just learn it slowly.”
Shen Yi waited patiently. With the classics the estate master had left, it was as good as gaining an extra Spirit-Transformation master; the annotations were in no way inferior to hands-on instruction. Even if his own comprehension fell short, with a clear road to guide and compare against, he need only walk straight ahead.
【Year 936 — you successfully transform the killing-force-filled True-Yang golden flame into the colorless, formless utmost-yang Parting-Flame, taking the single most important step.】
【Parting-Flame Heart-Burning Palm, Upper Volume: Begun.】
Shen Yi stood upon a high knoll, his palms like roaming dragons, coursing unfixed about his frame. Colorless, formless Parting-Flame wound about his fingertips. Having only just gained a spiritual root, the technique he now cultivated leapt straight past the Mixed Origin realm — even far surpassed the ordinary Spirit-Transformation technique. He’d at last had a taste of what a great sect’s true transmission was like.
As though he’d experienced enough, Shen Yi’s gentle movements abruptly turned hard and fierce; a palm struck out, the Parting-Flame breaking free of his hand, swelling against the wind, blazing at his side like a scorching sun. The ink-robed figure stood within that scorching sun. Like a golden crow beating its wings.
Nearly three thousand years of demon lifespan dispersed to nothing.
【Parting-Flame Heart-Burning Palm, Upper Volume: Minor Mastery.】
The lifespan went on decreasing, and the technique’s realm too climbed ceaselessly all the way up!
(End of Chapter 279)