After returning the Three Cities’ Daoists they had captured and exchanging for their own clansmen, the Guo Clan Daoists temporarily withdrew to the outskirts.
Xie Xianqing did not pursue, only watching them leave. If she wasn’t mistaken, these people would come again. Whether they came here, or to Langya City, or Cangwu City—who knew? Xie Xianqing mused, a playful smile curving her lips.
The Daoists returned to the Three Cities had been held only a short while; they looked dusty and disheveled but bore no injuries. The Guo Clan likely hadn’t yet started driving people to build the platform. Xie Xianqing asked a few questions, but unfortunately, could extract no concrete details about the Qilin Platform.
On the other side, the Guo Clan Daoists had retrieved their Golden Core clansmen and pretended to withdraw. But in truth, they lingered outside the Three Cities: two Nascent Souls, six Golden Cores—not only enough to sweep a fourth-rate clan, but even to fight a third-rate power. Any obstacle to them must not be left alive!
After resting only one night, the Guo Daoists struck. Under Guo Yuanying’s orders, the six Golden Cores split toward Cangwu City and Langya City. As for the two Nascent Souls, after careful deliberation, they decided to move together to Xingyang City and capture that Nascent Soul.
They sensed the ambient spiritual energy. By all reason, after the clans were destroyed, there should be no place left to connect false veins. Yet on all sides, spiritual energy stirred, without any sign of turning barren. The two were puzzled, but didn’t dwell on it—by their senses, the spiritual energy wasn’t very strong, about yellow tier. A Nascent Soul Daoist could, with some effort, simulate something similar. And yellow-tier spiritual energy also indirectly proved that there was only one Nascent Soul here. A yellow-tier vein could barely sustain one, let alone more.
Back in Chongyuan Sect, they had guessed the Guo Clan wouldn’t swallow this. Cangwu City was protected by the great array, so the Guo Daoists couldn’t break through. As for the other two cities, Wu Chongyun brought Wei Mingyi to Xingyang City for observation, while Su Xuanjing, Hua Xiaozhu, and Qi Wugua of Spirit Heart Sect remained in Langya City. Feng Cangcang was still in seclusion striving for Golden Core; otherwise, they’d have another helper.
In Xingyang City, Wei Mingyi’s heart was light.
She had seen Shizun kill people like slaughtering chickens on Supreme Peak. The Guo Clan was a third-rate clan—in terms of techniques, surely they weren’t worse than those fools on Supreme Peak, right? Wei Mingyi thought a moment, searched the System Shop for the “Transformation Book,” and glanced at it. She found that several families cultivated this scripture, and one of them was indeed the Lin Prefecture Guo Clan. What surprised her more was that the “Transformation Book” was also stored in the Earth-tier library—an earth-tier cultivation method.
“Shizun, does the Lin Prefecture Guo Clan really have the strength to advance to the second rank?” Wei Mingyi blinked.
“I don’t know the matters of the Cloud Realm,” Wu Chongyun said, lowering her eyes. “The ‘Transformation Book’ is a superior merit law, a visualization method—either a dragon aspect or a qilin aspect. If cultivated to Grotto-Heaven, one fully transforms and gains all related divine abilities.”
Wei Mingyi was instantly interested. Transforming into a dragon sounded incredible—she yearned for divine dragons! She was a wealthy household now, with a hundred Talent Points! She asked, “Can I learn it?”
Even Xie Xianqing glanced at Wei Mingyi. An earth-tier Dao scripture carried great power, but it was also hard to master. Some scriptures were mutually exclusive; most people used one scripture as their foundation, supplemented by various divine abilities. Cultivating the “Transformation Book” would impose even more constraints.
“No,” Wu Chongyun said. She clearly understood Wei Mingyi’s cultivation method, which moved toward yin, yang, the five elements, the eight trigrams, and the nine palaces—a superior Law Dao. How could she step back and learn the Transformation Book instead? After a pause, she added, “The ‘Transformation Book’ fixes only one transformation, and it’s external to the self. You can practice visualization, but you must take your images from heaven, earth, sun, and moon. Step further, take your image from the Dao’s origin, visualizing one breath transforming into the Three Purities, the Dao birthing the myriad things.”
Wei Mingyi’s mind emptied.
Right, she knew she couldn’t learn it.
As they spoke, a flash of gold streaked across the sky, immediately followed by a heaven-shaking thunderclap—like a great mass of fire gathering and crashing down at terrifying speed. The wind suddenly howled. Amidst the enormous explosion, the formation covering Xingyang City trembled on the verge of collapse.
Xie Xianqing’s expression grew stern. She raised a hand, and her magical power surged into the formation, dissipating the force. With a leap, a canopy of stellar clouds appeared beneath her feet, carrying her straight into the nine heavens. The Guo Clan’s Nascent Soul Daoists, seeing this, also sped in the direction Xie Xianqing had fled. At the Nascent Soul level, a fight would be devastating—if magical power went out of control, it could destroy all of Xingyang City, whether Daoist homes or commoner households, leaving nothing. But in the nine heavens, they could fight without restraint.
“I can’t see anymore,” Wei Mingyi said, blinking. She didn’t need to hide her aura; a tiny Foundation Establishment cultivator wouldn’t draw a Nascent Soul’s notice. It was her Shizun who had yet to act. If they revealed her presence too early, the Guo Daoists might simply turn and flee. After a moment’s silence, she asked, “Shizun, when you killed those people on Supreme Peak, it was also very simple, wasn’t it? This Guo Clan Daoist is only Stage 1—you could also sweep your sleeve and erase him, right?”
“On Supreme Peak, they were caught off guard,” Wu Chongyun said. The Daoists who acted did so merely as a show before the aristocratic clans, maintaining some pretense of the alliance’s “authority.” As for anyone daring to kill on Supreme Peak—such a thought never crossed their minds. As she finished speaking, Wu Chongyun swept a hand, and before them appeared a water mirror showing Xie Xianqing and the two Guo Clan Daoists. “What you don’t understand now, you’ll naturally come to know in the future. Don’t force it now.” She gave the instruction. She was always serious about Wei Mingyi’s cultivation, wanting to plan the best path for her. Speaking these words, she couldn’t help recalling Wu Weiheng’s earnest instructions in the past. She could have advanced faster, yet Wu Weiheng, despite desperately wanting her to reach Grotto-Heaven, had never pushed her forward when it was merely “barely enough.” Instead, she constrained her, not letting her achieve too quickly. In the end, “Wither and Flourish” had been administered by Wu Weiheng. And the reason she could cling to life after being poisoned was also because of what Wu Weiheng had taught her back then.
Wei Mingyi saw Wu Chongyun’s mind drift and her heart tightened. This was a formidable enemy—well, not that formidable—but still no time for wandering thoughts. She called out, “Shizun?”
“It’s nothing,” Wu Chongyun quickly answered. Her attention hadn’t left the present; she’d been monitoring the fight above all along.
She hadn’t often recalled old matters before, but since telling Wei Mingyi of her past, those long-sealed things were beginning to surface one by one.
In the nine heavens, Xie Xianqing, with her green snake, maneuvered between Guo Yuanying and Guo Yuanhui.
Her “Hundred Gu Classic” was, in reckoning, a beast-taming method—though it leaned somewhat toward the heterodox.
The Guo Clan Daoists visualized the qilin, and the qilin was inherently righteous, so they didn’t fear poison from gu insects.
Seeing her methods, they only thought: by the Zheng Clan’s means, finding an earth-tier technique and pushing a single Daoist to Nascent Soul was already quite impressive. But a fourth-rate clan was still a fourth-rate; compared to a clan with proper inheritance like theirs, they were utterly different. Radiant light scattered the dense cloud of insects. Guo Yuanhui sneered, “Is Fellow Daoist down to only these lowly insect and snake tricks? It’s a good thing you refused to join our Guo Clan—otherwise, spreading word would disgrace my Guo family’s name.”
Xie Xianqing ignored their taunts. She knew the “Hundred Gu Classic” was a fragmentary scripture, full of flaws. Though she was a Nascent Soul, she wasn’t among the best of them. These two saw her using poison, but that was only the surface; her real intent lay elsewhere. When her green snake was once again knocked back by a full-force qilin fist, Xie Xianqing reached out, and the snake shot back to her arm like a streak of jade light. Her golden eyes gleamed with merciless light, and the patterns on her face deepened—look closely, and they seemed to writhe inch by inch.
“Net, close!”
The instant her voice fell, the invisible spider web that had quietly descended suddenly materialized, trapping the two Guo Nascent Souls in a small patch of heaven and earth.
“You think this can hold us?” Guo Yuanhui gave a cold laugh. A qilin phantom, like a striking fist, slammed into the spider web. But layer after layer of illusory force failed to break free. Guo Yuanhui’s face darkened. He didn’t attack again—if it didn’t work once, it wouldn’t work the next either; no point wasting magical power. He glanced at Guo Yuanying and said, “We withdraw the net, too.”
The two’s auras surged, and their bodies vanished in an instant. In their place materialized a purple qilin, shifting from illusion toward reality. Every Guo cultivator practiced the same “Transformation Book,” visualizing the qilin auspicious beast, but not all could fully manifest it. Any imperfection meant exposing their weakness.
The Guo family had once produced a genius—quickly taken away by the higher-ups—who never ultimately returned to the Guo Clan. But she hadn’t forgotten the Guo family; she sent back a Combination Art. This technique allowed Daoists who visualized the qilin to merge into one, fully transforming into a qilin and unleashing far greater battle power. If one person couldn’t fully manifest the qilin, then two—or three, or more—would join. The qilin formed from the union of Guo Yuanying and Guo Yuanhui still wasn’t flawless, but combining their strength was still enough to deal with a Nascent Soul Stage 1 Daoist.
Xie Xianqing’s eyes sharpened; she sensed danger from the qilin before her. Astral winds howled, an invisible pressure bearing down like a colossal mountain. But she did not retreat a single step. Her magical power pulled at the web in the air, and with a flick of her finger, a cluster of emerald ghostly fire raced along the threads, trapping the qilin within the flames.
The qilin did not fear the ghostly fire; beneath its hooves surged purple wind, and above its head gathered a dense mountain of clouds, within which lightning and thunderbolts freely danced and leaped. The thunder brewing within those clouds carried enormous power. But what came before the thunder was the sound of a zither.
Not only the qilin body, but even the coalescing magical power seemed fettered for that fleeting instant. The qilin instinctively turned its head and found, at some unknown moment, an additional figure behind it—a figure in dark robes, cradling a zither, borne on the wind, dancing like a solitary crane.
The sound of the wind. The sound of the sea tide.
The zither’s music surged and crashed, as if they had left the nine heavens and were now amidst a boiling sea of towering waves.
Wu Chongyun’s expression was utterly still.
With a strum, the unbroken zither notes transformed into churning giant waves, smashing relentlessly onto the qilin.
Water droplets flew, scattering like pelting rain—not a single drop out of control.
Under the zither music, they shifted and surged wildly. After the great waves struck the qilin, the water flogged it mercilessly, separating it back into two bedraggled figures.
