Chapter 220 — Laying the Foundation

But Yunxia saw that the Sacred Wisdom Wolf's coat of silver fur was martial and handsome, and moreover the little fox and Zhou Chen both had mounts of their own, so she wished for one herself. She told Liao Yanqiao to grind away the wolf's temper and bloodlust, so that when Zhou Xuan returned he might use mighty power to bind him and make him her mount; thereafter, when flying, it would save no small effort.

With Yunxia's present strength, she could only hold the Sacred Wisdom Wolf by the power of the demon-locking array. Once away from it, the Sacred Wisdom Wolf would burst the seals within his body—a great nuisance. The gulf in strength between them was too vast; even if Yunxia planted the mother-child golden talisman within his primordial spirit, it would be of no use.

One day, her lessons done, Liao Yanqiao came again before the Sacred Wisdom Wolf and, without a word, raised the dragon-tiger treasure seal: bang! bang! bang!—like a pile driver, hundreds of blows upon his head, until the wolf foamed at the mouth, eyes staring wide, limbs twitching. Each day she tormented him once; after some hours, when he had recovered a little, she came again to strike, until the Sacred Wisdom Wolf's mind grew clouded, and he wished only to die—yet could neither seek life nor find death.

When Liao Yanqiao had finished beating him, she produced a long banner made of human skin painted with bloom upon bloom of blood-flame, meaning to scorch him with demon fire again. At last the Sacred Wisdom Wolf could endure no more and yielded in a faint voice, speaking the incantation for refining the treasure. Liao Yanqiao had a disciple of the sect test it and found it genuine, and only then let him be, merely setting disciples to watch him daily while she went off to refine her treasure.

The fierce-beast spirit-souls within the Myriad Beast Four Saints Spirit Heaven Tablet were of uncommon quality, excellent whether for guarding oneself or for attack. A treasure the Sacred Wisdom Wolf had spent a thousand years refining after attaining demon immortality was, of course, no small matter.

Each day, when his cultivation was done, Yunxiu Zi observed the state of the North Sea Eye. Another six or seven months passed with not a stir, all peaceful. Wen Yanlan's Shushuo Sect, which she presided over at Kunlun, grew ever more prosperous, and the little fox and Zhou Chen managed affairs well in the two poles.

Apart from Zhou Xuan and Yunxia, the Shushuo Sect's second generation now comprised Liao Yanqiao, the two foxes, Wen Yanlan, and Blue God—five in all. Blue God shut himself away with all his strength in the Jade Void Palace of Kunlun, seeking to break through to the rank of heaven immortal. Earth Spirit Zi handled affairs capably, with nearly twenty thousand Daoist disciples under him scattered through the great grotto-heavens of the Central Land and dozens of water mansions overseas, of one heart and no factions, cultivating in peace, advancing with extraordinary speed.

Wen Yanlan skimmed off from Earth Spirit Zi's following the young disciples of good bone and root; in this way the Shushuo Sect came to have more than two thousand disciples of its own, over a hundred of them at the Spirit Transformation stage as third-generation disciples, and below them all the fourth-generation disciples and miscellaneous serving lads.

Leaving aside the peace of the mortal world, Zhou Xuan had no troubles either in the region of Black Wind Mountain at the Two Realms Pass of the earthly immortal realm. He kept to his seclusion, and Poison Dragon of course dared not disturb him, drilling thirty thousand strong demon soldiers on the one hand and on the other directing the remaining demon soldiers and demon kings in building palaces and mountain gates across several peaks.

Over these six months and more, with such labor at hand, the five peaks around Black Wind Mountain were made entirely new: pavilions and terraces, great halls in rows, bracket and flying eave, exquisite beyond compare. No end to the splendor, no limit to the grandeur.

The five peaks took the meaning of the Five Elements, with Black Wind Mountain at the center where Zhou Xuan kept seclusion—signifying that which lies beyond the Five Elements.

Throughout these six months Zhou Xuan had sat within the mountain. When his golden body first took shape he had already cast off his mortal flesh, but he had set up arrays to gather formless primal power and the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to temper the bamboo staff; what was left over was surplus, so he took his mortal flesh and tempered that as well.

The Eight-Nine Mystic Art wholly discards the flesh, using the source of consciousness to form the relic golden body; the Primordial Ancestral Shaman is just the opposite, each following its own path. The scriptures of every sect and school, too, never depart from this principle. The records in the Gochen Heavenly Book, though exquisite, do not exceed it—only some of its spells, its flight and transformation, are rather more numerous, and their power immense: to move mountains and fill seas, to grasp stars and shoulder the moon is no exaggeration. Yet the immortal arts recorded at the end of the Shangqing Purple Mansion Immortal Formula are no less than the Gochen Heavenly Book, and the two share much that corresponds, plainly evolved from the methods of a single school. Zhou Xuan could only take them as reference.

Zhou Xuan's golden body had congealed karmic force and later altered of itself, mingled with the ancestral shaman's structure; formidable though it was, it was after all a hodgepodge, not perfect, and Zhou Xuan did not intend to pass it to his disciples. The Eight-Nine Mystic Art tempers consciousness and has a systematic method—that is not difficult. But the ancestral shamans were mighty by nature; only their structure and primal spirit can be comprehended, for they had no method of practice. For Zhou Xuan to create a method of cultivating the flesh to match the ancestral shamans' strength would take considerable effort.

Zhou Xuan divided off a thread of his primordial spirit and attached it to the mortal flesh, cultivating and remodeling it after the ancestral shamans' bodies. With practice before him, it was far easier than empty speculation.

The vast spiritual energy and Five Elements primal power of the earthly immortal realm came swarming into the flesh. For a time the flesh swelled, covered in scales, like a demon god; then again five-colored radiance blazed forth, the whole body smooth and glossy as an ancient Buddha of glazed glass, solemn beyond measure. Over this half year Zhou Xuan had at last roughly groped out a method of cultivation—the tempering of the flesh. Though it was not the ancestral shamans' invincibility, cultivated to its limit it could well rival Bai Qi's undying body. Given time, Zhou Xuan would bring it to perfection, and once his disciples cultivated it, surpassing Bai Qi would not be impossible.

The Eight-Nine Mystic Art first tempers consciousness and advances with great speed; it is the finest formula for laying the foundation, swiftly congealing the primordial spirit and bringing disciples to the Spirit Transformation stage. But its next stage, the congealing of the golden body, Zhou Xuan set aside—and the method he had groped out from the ancestral shamans could just make up for the flesh's weakness. The two complemented each other perfectly. Referring to the orthodox methods of Kunlun's Gochen, Zhou Xuan wrote out a volume of heavenly book titled the Way of Heaven Scroll, which became the Shushuo Sect's orthodox formula of cultivation.

The Way of Heaven Scroll still follows the Daoist path of cultivation step by step, but its foundation is extraordinarily swift, and once one has success in it, both flesh and primordial spirit are far stronger than those of ordinary cultivators—especially the flesh, which is truly terrifying.