At the same time, a bird’s cry rang through the skies above. A vicious blade of wind slammed into the room, cutting half the men apart and slightly injuring the rest.
“The cavalry has arrived!” a small voice yipped.
A two-tailed fox, a small bird, and a tiny mouse appeared where the blade of wind had landed. The mighty Silverwing directed his attention to the large wood devil while the weaker two-tailed fox and Lei Jiang jointly attacked the gold devil in a burst of light, shadow, and iridescent lightning.
Feng Ming quickly joined them and ignored the small fries escaping the shock waves of their battle. Someone else would handle them.
Cha Ming woke with a splitting headache. He winced as he moved the various muscles in his body. Torn ligaments rapidly regenerated around his unharmed bones.
“I never would have thought they’d have three core-formation cultivators in the same place,” he muttered. He’d only seen a few dozen core-formation cultivators to date, and their increasing numbers made him realize he was just a frog in a well.
Thirty-six green sigils appeared around Cha Ming. The combat formation solidified around him, causing his wounds to heal even faster. Meanwhile, he sent out his resplendent force and located twenty smaller targets. Thirty-six sigils formed a cloud around his feet while the thirty-six remaining Dao sigils glowed golden and formed a long needle. It quickly shot through a nearby cultivator, leaving only a tiny hole behind as evidence.
Cha Ming slapped another three Myriad Ice Shield Talismans on his robe and followed up with a Sharp Talisman and a Quickening Talisman, which drastically increased his speed for thirty breaths. He rushed from room to room, swinging his Clear Sky Staff in a wide arc. It grew to twenty feet in length as Cha Ming struck out with all his strength. Plumes of fire and ice rained down on him, burning the exposed skin on his arms and face. The Clear Sky Staff, whose offensive powers were greatly boosted by the Sharp Talisman, cut through five men before returning to its normal length.
The floors creaked as Cha Ming rushed toward his next target. He reduced his weight and jumped at another group of three. Dozens of blades shot up toward him. He quickly manipulated the gold needle to deflect them and swung out toward a body-cultivating devil. The large abomination grasped his Clear Sky Staff while the others closed in on him. Cha Ming swiftly increased his weight and smashed both his feet down onto the two other devilish cultivators, shattering their ribcages. The golden needle finished them before taking care of the one holding his staff.
Seeing that he was fully healed, he retrieved his thirty-six Dao sigils and cast out a Mid-Grade Conflagration Combat Formation, which exploded around the next three targets and caused massive collateral damage to the building. He also threw out one Mid-Grade Conflagration Talisman after another, each of which struck supporting pillars in the building and caused it to collapse. The ceiling crushed down on the remaining cultivators in all three floors, leaving only the core-formation cultivators fighting in midair.
The battle above was progressing smoothly, so he summoned thirty-six of his Dao sigils into an icy shield. Then he cleared away rubble using his Clear Sky Staff and exposed a camouflaged stairwell. At the bottom of the stairwell was a small wooden door covered in mysterious devilish runes he couldn’t understand. After a moment of hesitation, he pushed it open. It slammed shut behind him as he entered the basement, where dozens of cultivators were trapped. Their souls and vital energies were being syphoned off into strange devices.
His blood boiled when he saw these humans being treated like cattle. In his rage, he walked forward and tripped a silver thread that lay across the entrance. A small click sounded, barely discernable, and a feeling of panic flared in him.
“Quick, we need to use our consumption ability before it’s too late,” a wood devil roared as the devouring pool beside him expanded by ten times.
Feng Ming didn’t panic. Huxian’s devouring ability quickly grew to the same size and counterdevoured it, leaving the strengthened but still-pitiable devil to fight against the early-core-formation falcon. His entire body was covered in lacerations despite his insane regenerative abilities.
While the others were fighting, Feng Ming sent his lucky aura out to support them. His spear strikes focused on defense and entanglement while Huxian’s impressive physical strength and Lei Jiang’s terrifying lightning strikes whittled down the gold devil’s body. Black runes lit up on the thinner devil, and as they appeared, a frightening power surged out from his body.
“It won’t last long,” Feng Ming said to the others. “The black runes are shrinking.”
Feng Ming observed the gold devil carefully as Huxian and Lei Jiang continued their assault. He popped a pill that rapidly regenerated his depleted qi as he waited for the right moment. Under the pressure of the strong, half-step core-formation demon beasts, the gold devil unwillingly twitched its hand in an involuntary tell.
Now! Feng Ming shouted mentally.
The gold devil, who had been biding its time earlier, burnt a quarter of its body as it struggled to escape its encirclement. Under Feng Ming’s direction, Huxian’s devouring and purifying power retreated and formed a bagua symbol around the golden man. Time stood still within the eight trigrams. Lei Jiang, who had been waiting for this very moment, unleashed nine-colored lightning from the exposed sky while Feng Ming struck out with yet another Ash Annihilation. Huxian’s spacetime trap broke down as the two techniques struck the golden devil within. It burst into gold dust as it was overwhelmed by their dual attack and its own self-ignition.
The wood devil let out an angry roar as it transformed into a bundle of vines. “You think you can escape after the trouble you’ve caused?” it said. “You’re all doomed to die!”
The vines wrapped around the three small animals and Feng Ming, who didn’t panic in the slightest.
“It’ll be all right, guys,” he said to the struggling demons. The earth shook as a large explosion came from beneath the building, sending large chunks of rock up toward their small group. “Just relax and move around a little,” Feng Ming said. Boulders and shrapnel that should have struck them bounced off each other. The three panicking demon beasts looked on in awe as every last piece of rock that could have damaged them struck the large vines instead. After being propelled upward by the shock wave, they fell onto unusually soft ground that cushioned their fall.
Powerful cultivators swarmed around them as they found their footing. Feng Ming spotted several generals and his father approaching from the surrounding alleyways.
“You are under arrest for causing havoc in the city of Songjing,” a nervous-looking captain yelled through a voice-amplifying device. “Stand down and surrender yourself for investigation, or we will be forced to use lethal countermeasures.”
Feng Ming calmly stowed his spear and put his hands behind his head. He knew the drill. Meanwhile, the three beasts ignored the forces surrounding them. They began digging like their life depended on it.
“Just a second,” Huxian yelled. “My boss is down there. I need to dig him up!”
Feng Ming rolled his eyes as a large crater rapidly formed beneath the building’s remnants. Soon, it uncovered a thirty-foot, three-colored dome. The lights comprising the dome faded, revealing Cha Ming and eighty people who were little more than skin and bones.
A half hour later, Cha Ming and his three companions lay shackled in four separate cells. They were to remain captive until the city guards completed their investigation and determined their level of responsibility in the entire debacle. Fortunately, half of the rescued captives were able to testify against their jailors. Regrettably, the other half had already lost significant portions of their souls and would remain in comas indefinitely.
“How nice. You even have your own personal cell,” Cha Ming said as he looked to Feng Ming’s velvet-draped accommodations.
Feng Ming, who was sitting cross-legged, ignored him. Seeing that his friend’s aura was unstable, Cha Ming felt around with his resplend
ent force before his jaw slacked. After all they’d been through, Feng Ming was finally breaking through.
As Feng Ming sat in meditation, he noticed a new rune in his spiritual sea. Like the other eight, it hummed with one of the runes on his qi pillars and caused them to grow while his qi sea thickened. The process was smooth and effortless. Meanwhile, the nine golden runes scrunched together like a crumpled sheet of golden paper.
Feng Ming braced himself for his imminent breakthrough. The crumpled runes morphed and transformed before condensing into an entirely new rune. It was a jade rune, and it was the first of nine steps in cultivating the second volume of the Good Fortune Scripture, Lucky General.
His earthen-fire foundation seas surged into his nine qi pillars, providing them with a final nourishment before their combination into a core. They grew unstable as they drank in the liquid qi, but with this instability came an opportunity for change.
The nine pillars floated to the middle of his Dantian and aligned themselves perpendicularly to the center. Little by little, they melted into a reddish-brown substance that pooled into the singular point. Drop by drop, it accumulated in the center like a mass of molten lava. The nine runes which were previously imprinted on his pillars floated together and merged into the same jade symbol he had just condensed in his mental space.
The rune’s appearance was followed by the appearance of a jade runic line. They covered the surface of the spherical blob and tightened around it like a net. Feng Ming shuddered as the lines compressed and condensed the liquid, causing it to shrink to one tenth of its original size. Then, it shrank once more for good measure. The only thing that remained was a tiny reddish-brown core that contained the entirety of the qi he’d accumulated in his lifetime. It was made of a solid that was much harder and more stable than his foundation pillars.
He felt the qi of heaven and earth rush into the small core in his Dantian, nourishing it until it was filled with a thick mist. It was purer and more condensed than the viscous liquid that had previously occupied his qi seas. Feng Ming finally opened his eyes and gazed around they jail where he’d begun his cultivation. He unintentionally released his core-formation pressure, causing the many soldiers in their prison to collapse. He looked around to his devastated surroundings—the furniture in the prison had clearly not been built to withstand the might of a formation cultivator.
“Sergeant Zhou?” Feng Ming said to one of the few remaining officers. The middle-foundation-establishment cultivator was shaking uncontrollably. “Please send a message to my father and inform him that I’ve broken through.”
Interlude: Ten Thousand and Eighty
Gong Lan ascended the steps to the monastery with a calm and steady poise. She did not see visions, nor did she misjudge the number of steps. She saw things exactly as they were, a stark contrast to years ago when she had first arrived.
Monks went about their daily chores in their orange kasayas. They dutifully fulfilled their mundane tasks like sweeping and fetching water. In the distance, she saw the Bodhi Tree. Dozens of cultivators, animals, and monks sat in meditation beneath its enormous branches. All creatures in the world could find peace within its shadow. Even an evil spirit could find enlightenment and reenter samsara.
Many monks greeted her as she walked to the temple. She entered her teacher’s sanctum, where the man sat in meditation like he always did; she joined him in reciting mantras. The mantra of peace flowed naturally, calming her weary body and soul. They spoke this mantra 108 times before changing to a complementary mantra, which they recited with alternating rhythms. It was the mantra of cooperation.
As they chanted, Gong Lan imagined the monks in the World Tree Monastery as they performed chores hand in hand and provided for everyone to the best of their ability. She then imagined the city life, where everyone did their own thing but somehow ended up serving others in some way or another. This too was cooperation, unintentional as it might be. However, within this fragile peace was competition.
A merchant sold rice for a cheaper price than the others, angering the neighboring businessmen. They argued and fought until one of them was run out of town. Elsewhere, a person with better skills was hired while another was fired. To feed his family, the older man became a beggar and eventually resorted to theft.
Theft ran rampant throughout the city, and before long, the thefts turned to robberies. Murders followed. The family members of the victims, in their mourning, took up arms against the perpetrators and hunted them down. The images disappeared, and Gong Lan was shocked to discover that they were now reciting the Mantra of Retribution. It reminded her of the concept of righteous indignation, which fueled her Buddhist powers and strengthened them in her fight against evil spirits. It was at odds with the Buddhist path yet somehow existed within it. It was a point that confused her and caused her much anguish.
The chanting stopped, and the older monk sighed. “My time in this world is drawing to a close, Gong Lan,” he said softly. “Today, my body will die, and my soul will move on.”
The news was shocking and unexpected. “Surely you jest, Master Zhen,” she said. “Don’t core-formation cultivators live for five hundred years? You are barely three hundred and have two centuries of life ahead of you.”
The man chuckled. “Five hundred years is the maximum allowable by the heavens for a human body in a mortal realm. Unfortunately, my body and soul were both wounded many years ago. It is only with the Bodhi Tree’s help that I’ve managed to live until now.”
Gong Lan frowned but remained silent.
The older man sighed once more. “Before I pass on, however, I have some unfinished business I must leave to you.”
“Please instruct me, Master,” Gong Lan said respectfully.
“I once had a student named Sibi,” Master Zhen said. “He was my brightest student, the kind that only appeared every thousand years. His skill in mantras was unparalleled, and he had reached a higher realm in Buddhist techniques in ten years than I had in ninety. He was the perfect successor.
“One hundred and sixty years ago, we explored an emperor’s tomb to exorcise evil spirits. Together, we braved many dangers and eventually arrived at the Song Emperor’s Seal of Pure Jade, only to discover that it was too late. The corruption had seeped deep within the seal, and the nation’s destiny was almost entirely corrupted.
“I told Sibi that it was best to seek out the old master and have him unfetter the seal.” He shook his head. “The boy was young and brash. He decided to brave the corruption himself, and I couldn’t react in time to stop him. In the end, he failed. He became an evil spirit, and we fought. I managed to destroy his body but not his soul.
“What became of him?” Gong Lan asked. A mere evil spirit should have been easy to exterminate for a powerful Buddhist monk like Master Zhen.
“I couldn’t capture him due to my injuries,” Master Zhen said. “I hunted him across the continent and encountered him three times. He used his corrupted Buddhist methods to evade me time and time again. After fifty years, I could no longer find him. Yet I know that he still lurks in the shadows. Once he senses I have died, he will surely try to finish what he started. He will accelerate the corruption of the Song Empire and use this to achieve a higher realm. He must be stopped, but now that my time has come to an end, this duty falls to you.”
The old monk stood up. He didn’t seem feeble in the least, and his nimble movements made Gong Lan doubt his condition. He walked over to the golden statue of Buddha in the room, which held a large rosary in one hand. He lifted it off and reverently walked back to Gong Lan.
“This is the 10,080 rosary of our monastery,” Master Zhen said, emotion filling his eyes. “I had originally meant to pass it on to Sibi, but now I will pass it on to you. Should you accept this duty, you must remain leader of the convent until you find a successor. You must protect these lands against evil, and above all else, you must protect the Bodhi Tree from their influence.”
Gong Lan’s eyes teared up. S
he bowed deeply to her master, who had shown her nothing but kindness in her darkest days. “I accept. In this lifetime, I will bring Sibi to justice. I will protect the Bodhi Tree, and I will find a successor for the monastery.”
A warm sensation filled her as the rosary was placed around her neck. It was coiled multiple times—uncoiled, it would easily reach the floor and back several times. She looked up to see her master glowing with a golden light.
“The 10,080 rosary is blessed by all previous masters who have passed away in this mortal plane,” Master Zhen said with gentle smile on his face. “My teacher left a mark on this rosary, and I will now join him in helping you carry out your mission. Before I go, I only have one last word of advice: Trust and believe in yourself. The Bodhi Tree will guide you as he has guided me all this time.” He glanced at the small seed that floated above her shoulder and nodded.
Master Zhen’s golden glow intensified, and then his body disintegrated, leaving behind a white soul and 10,080 golden motes of light. Each golden speck floated to one of the 10,080 pearls of the golden rosary and merged with it. The golden sheen on it brightened ever so slightly. As Gong Lan grasped the rosary, she felt the warm presence of her master and the combined resolve of over five hundred senior monks. Her master’s white soul smiled and was quickly whisked away by the illusion of a yellow river.
Gong Lan wiped away her tears and turned to the bodhi seed with a determined expression. “Where do we go next?”
“To get reinforcements,” the seed said. “Our past failure has highlighted the futility of going to such a place alone. It is important to purify the corruption, but it is far more important to preserve your life. It is worth far more than you know.”
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