"Evil sword immortal? Using immortal spirit sparks to refine Ten Thousand Spirit Pills?"
Xu Ying's mind buzzed. He looked up—the four-armed statue was gazing down at the pearl. But this deity was also dead, a mere shell without a soul.
Its skull hadn't burst open. Within its head, light flickered—the soul-summoning inscriptions Xu Ying had seen earlier!
Those inscriptions were glowing, clearly active!
The Great Bell explained: "Those two stone dragons were ensnared by the statue's incense energy. What they chanted was the soul-summoning inscription! The two dragons chanted themselves to death! After they died, the spirit pearl absorbed their souls, shattered them, and retained only the immortal spirit spark!"
This technique was utterly diabolical. The statue's skull was inscribed with soul-summoning runes, and its body was wrapped in overwhelmingly powerful incense energy. When activated, the inscriptions attracted any soul-bearing life form nearby. Once close, they would be ensnared by the incense energy, becoming devoutly faithful.
Once faithful, they would kowtow to the statue, compelled to chant the soul-summoning inscription. As they chanted, their own skulls would explode, their souls bursting forth.
But it didn't end there. After chanting themselves to death and their souls rising, the altar's inscription would shatter the souls completely—soul and spirit dispersing—leaving only the tiniest immortal spirit spark to become part of the Ten Thousand Spirit Pill!
The Great Bell continued: "A soul is composed of Three Souls and Seven Spirits. The immortal spirit spark is the soul's root, not part of the Three Souls and Seven Spirits—it's infinitesimally small. Only by completely destroying the Three Souls and Seven Spirits can you extract a tiny spark. To refine a single Ten Thousand Spirit Pill, you need at least ten thousand ordinary souls. In the primordial age, virtuous cultivators would slay evil ghosts and malevolent spirits to gather these sparks."
The altar's master clearly wasn't hunting evil spirits—instead, he used soul-summoning inscriptions to lure victims, kill them for their souls, shatter those souls, and extract the sparks!
This was absolutely the work of heterodox practitioners!
Xu Ying gazed up at the temple floating between the five immortal mountains and murmured: "Yuan Qi is still inside that temple..."
The Great Bell sighed: "He died so miserably."
Xu Ying asked: "Yuan Qi should still be alive, right?"
"Just assume he's dead. We can't save him anyway."
Xu Ying fell silent. When he had been riding the bell through the sky, he had seen altars scattered across these mountains like stars.
If the Great Bell was right—if this evil sword immortal was shattering souls to extract immortal spirit sparks for Ten Thousand Spirit Pills—how many people would need to be killed, how many souls harvested, to produce so many pills?
"Strange—why didn't those soul-summoning inscriptions look quite right?" the Great Bell wondered. "This evil sword immortal, given the scale of his operation, must be a formidable figure from the primordial age. Such a being—how could he make errors in the soul-summoning inscriptions?"
Xu Ying paused. It was indeed strange.
Could an immortal make such elementary mistakes?
Then a strange fragrance wafted from the altar—the scent of a maturing Ten Thousand Spirit Pill.
It was a marvelous aroma. Ordinary scents affected only the nostrils, but this pill's fragrance targeted the soul itself—one sniff and one's soul grew ravenous, desperate to consume the thing!
The two remaining stone dragons of the Wen Temple were worshipper-deities without true physical forms. Incense energy was filled with mortal desire, and as spiritual beings, they found this fragrance almost unbearable.
Though they had been immersed in grief over their brothers' deaths, they now both lunged toward the altar, crying: "That pill is mine!"
The dragon behind Xu Ying reverted to its true stone dragon form mid-charge, leaping between clouds, incense energy transforming into flying swords aimed at the other dragon.
The other dragon held the aerial advantage, its swords striking from above.
Swords whistled through the air, striking their bodies in bursts of sparks.
The two stone dragons clashed in midair, their fury obliterating any brotherly bond—each determined to kill the other and claim the Ten Thousand Spirit Pill.
Then one dragon pinned the other and crashed onto the altar, extending its claws toward the central pearl: "I sense that consuming this pill will make me an immortal!"
*BOOM!*
Its skull burst open, its soul drifting upward, ethereal. Then another explosion—the dragon below also had its skull shattered. Two dragon souls floated in the air, still fighting, still screaming: "The pill is mine!"
But their souls didn't fly toward the Ten Thousand Spirit Pill. Instead, drawn by the soul-summoning inscriptions in the four-armed statue's skull, they were pulled toward the statue.
On the altar, the two stone dragons went rigid, motionless. Several stone fragments fell from their shattered skulls, clattering against the ground.
Xu Ying stood frozen, watching in stunned silence. In mere moments, four powerful enemies had perished. The youth was speechless.
"These Ten Thousand Spirit Pills are truly sinister."
He approached cautiously: "Old Bell, what benefits does consuming a Ten Thousand Spirit Pill provide?"
The Great Bell replied: "I've only heard that Ten Thousand Spirit Pills can heal Primordial Spirit injuries and supplement deficiencies in the soul. No other benefits have been recorded."
It paused: "My era already belonged to the twilight of the Qi-refiners. Many things had been lost. Even my master, with peerless genius, couldn't know everything—let alone me."
Its tone was somber. Its master, possessing unmatched talent, had vanished after suppressing the fox-woman. In three thousand years, there had been no word.
Xu Ying reached the altar. The moment he stepped forward, the chanting of ten thousand souls overwhelmed his spirit sense. In his ears surged waves of prayer, and he nearly dropped to his knees—about to become another follower of this four-armed deity!
"If I hadn't cultivated spirit sense, I would have ended up like the four stone dragons—dead here!"
Xu Ying steadied his spirit sense. No matter how overwhelming the chanting, his will remained immovable, fixed as stone, as he pressed forward!
The years spent cultivating the Primordial Unity Guiding Art paid off—this four-armed deity's incense energy was incredibly dense, yet it couldn't suppress his spirit sense!
Xu Ying reached the statue's base and looked up. The statue blazed with golden light, incense energy thick around it. He thought: "This deity must have at least five hundred years of accumulated power—perhaps eight hundred or even a thousand!"
Across the Divine Land, temples with five hundred years of unbroken worship could be found, but those with eight hundred or a thousand years were exceedingly rare.
Just now, from his vantage in the sky, he had glimpsed dozens of altars, each with its own statue—dozens of statues in all!
And that was only what he could see on this mountain. The other four immortal mountains likely held even more!
So where had all these deities come from?
Xu Ying lightly jumped onto the altar.
The chanting surged, becoming deafening, swelling Xu Ying's skull to the point of bursting!
*GONG!*
The bell rang, its tone resonant and clear, shielding Xu Ying's mind from external assault.
Xu Ying's throbbing skull subsided. He exhaled and stepped onto the altar, plucking the floating Ten Thousand Spirit Pill from its resting place: "Can ordinary people consume this pill?"
The Great Bell replied: "I don't know. A-Ying, I have a bad feeling about this. We should leave quickly."
Xu Ying felt he had overlooked something too. He swallowed the Ten Thousand Spirit Pill whole, before he could even taste it, when the four-armed statue's massive hands gripping the altar's edge twitched!
Xu Ying realized what he'd overlooked.
"The two dragon souls were absorbed into the four-armed statue!"
He launched himself skyward just as the statue's hands crashed together like enormous shutters—but he squeezed through the gap at the very instant they closed!
"The four-armed statue originally had no soul. Absorbing those two spirits gave it one!"
Xu Ying was airborne, but the statue's other two hands swung toward him like a man swatting a fly. With nothing to push off from—
He stepped on the Great Bell's surface, propelling himself higher to dodge.
The Great Bell plummeted, about to curse Xu Ying's betrayal, when it saw him plant both feet on the four-armed statue's face and launch himself headfirst like an arrow, diving toward the altar!
He landed on the altar just as the Great Bell arrived. Xu Ying grabbed the bell's nose, strode forward, and burst off the altar.
This sequence was fluid and precise. The four-armed deity's vision blurred—its four hands flew but failed to touch Xu Ying at all. The youth escaped the altar with the Great Bell.
Xu Ying activated the Elephant-Force Ox-Demon Fist. The Elephant-King Divine Form materialized behind him, his feet bearing the strength of ten-thousand-catty divine elephants. Each stride covered seven or eight zhang; each footfall cracked stone and ruptured earth as he sprinted forward.
Behind him, the four-armed deity roared. Its hands seized the massive altar and hefted it—spinning it once.
*WHOOSH!*
The altar whirled through the air, breaking the sound barrier with a thunderous boom, hurtling toward Xu Ying!
Xu Ying glanced back in terror and ran for his life. A deafening explosion thundered behind him as the enormous altar struck the ground, its shockwave launching him and the bell high into the air amid an avalanche of shattering boulders!
Xu Ying's body convulsed. The Elephant-King Divine Form behind him wavered, his blood and qi scattering like dust.
The youth hit the ground, rolled, sprang to his feet, and continued running.
Behind him, the four-armed deity crouched and surged forward with a shriek. The Great Bell's toll had gone hoarse: "A-Ying, faster! Faster! It's gaining on you!"
Xu Ying sprinted wildly. From behind came whistling sounds—blades over a zhang long, slicing through the air with terrifying sword energy. Trees toppled wherever they passed; stone split silently apart.
Xu Ying dodged one blade. It grazed the ground, obliterating everything in its path, carving a trench in the earth!
The four-armed deity's incense-energy swords were terrifyingly powerful, unlike anything Xu Ying had ever seen. About to be trapped by the flying swords, with the deity closing in from behind, he spun mid-sprint, gathered energy into a sword, and unleashed a beam of sword light like a long rainbow streaked across the sky, slashing down at the four-armed deity!
The deity was caught off guard. It crossed both arms to block while channeling its incense energy, but Xu Ying's sword—this same strike that had slain Zhou Yihang—grew ferocious against resistance, nearly severing the deity's arms!
The four-armed deity's charge halted. It retreated swiftly, dodging the sword light.
Its incense energy immediately formed shields of cyan smoke, blocking front and back. The brief delay gave Xu Ying time to vanish completely.
The four-armed deity was furious. Clouds formed beneath its feet as it ascended and raced through the sky, searching for Xu Ying—finding nothing. Taking its rage out on others, it attacked the Governor's officials and Magistrate Ling's spirits with savage force.
After it departed, the ground rose slightly. Xu Ying emerged from the soil. He hadn't fled at all—when the deity recoiled, he had burrowed into the ground and buried himself, narrowly escaping.
"This deity is far too powerful!"
Xu Ying exhaled and looked up. In the sky, the floating boulders had come alive, slaughtering indiscriminately. The four-armed deity was also cutting down the Governor's and Magistrate Ling's forces, inflicting heavy casualties!
Xu Ying activated his Celestial Eye. The dead fell, their souls departing, drifting down into the five immortal mountains.
The Great Bell said: "So many have died, and all of them powerful. Their souls will mature many Ten Thousand Spirit Pills!"
Xu Ying frowned: "And they'll also revive many statues!"
The survivors plunged downward, hiding in the immortal mountains. Xu Ying grew uneasy: "Old Bell, we must reach the great temple quickly and rescue Yuan Qi."
The Great Bell sighed: "Yuan Qi died so miserably. A-Ying, let's leave. We can build him a golden statue in the village for people to worship—his body probably hasn't started to smell yet."
* * *
The great temple.
This temple floated among the five immortal mountains. Radiance burst from within, immortal light swirling. Arriving here refreshed the spirit—one could feel their cultivation slowly elevating with each breath.
Yuan Qi was coiled excitedly before the temple hall. Around him sat Nuo shamans, demons, spirits, and even a few nearby villagers.
Whether human, demon, or spirit, all sat quietly before the hall, listening in silence.
The hall was a majestic immortal palace, its radiance dazzling. A sun floated above the hall, illuminating the temple world with daylight-like brightness.
At the hall's front sat an immortal—clad in white, with white brows and beard. His robes and hair drifted without wind, radiating an immortal aura that inspired both reverence and awe.
The immortal light around him was like countless outward-pointing swords, revolving ceaselessly.
The immortal spoke: "One who received my Dao began by comprehending the flow of the celestial mechanism. When true essence flows with the current, it is smooth; against the current, it is uncomfortable. This person chose to follow the current. Years passed, yet his progress was negligible. His fellow students advanced rapidly. He asked me: 'If I follow the Way, why do I fall behind?'"
The immortal smiled: "To follow heaven's way is to be mortal. To defy heaven's way is to be immortal. This is the path of true cultivation!"
These words stirred the hall into excited murmuring. All were deeply impressed.
The white-robed immortal continued: "You who have entered my Immortal Realm are fated to be here. Today I shall bestow upon you the Immortal Art—the 'Detailed Explanation of the True Dao Mechanism.' How much you comprehend depends on your own fortune."
He closed his eyes and chanted the scripture. The audience hurried to memorize and contemplate it—indeed a profound and wondrous scripture. Some immediately began cultivating.
When they tested the technique, their primordial energy circulated according to the celestial mechanism. With the current, it was comfortable; against it, their bodies ached—just as the immortal master had described.