C35. The Enlightened Tianyan
In the first month of the year, any temple or abbey would be full of people making incense offerings.
The tales told by storytellers, of underworld denizens seeking revenge on rainy nights in abandoned temples, would never happen within the city.
As Chen He chased after the Daoist monk, he could tell from the latter’s escape route that he was trying to leave the city—this was bad! Even if Shi Feng had not instructed Chen He to stay at home at all costs, Chen He knew very clearly that he could go out for walks, but he could get in trouble and expose his whereabouts if he left the city.
“You stay here!”
He made a strike with his open palm, which blew away even the snowflakes falling from the sky.
Contrary to his expectations, the monk bent over nimbly and rolled forward when he jumped over the roofs, making the roof tiles creak. When the monk bounced back up, he had already escaped the palm strike’s effective range.
“Mm?” Now Chen He’s interest had been piqued.
There were few cultivators who had gained insight into the Dao through martial arts. Once a bottleneck was reached, everyone turned to magic and spells. However, Chen He could not possibly care less about those. Before they formed their Golden Cores, cultivators’s bodies were not immune to physical damage. No matter what magic or spells they knew, nothing could ever be faster than throwing a punch at the opponent.
Senior Brother had told him before that magic was a profound art, but the one casting it had to be at least Nascent Soul-level.
Anything cast by cultivators below that level would be nothing more than sideshow tricks.
Since it was akin to sideshow tricks, it would not be any different from showing off with martial arts—Chen He would only begin learning magic arts at the later part of the Golden Core stage, and it was still far too early for him.
He thought this Daoist monk was going to perform something like the Seven-Star Steps[1], but the guy rolled forward so decisively, and he was quite agile.
The last time they met, Chen He had the dummies knock this monk unconscious in order to cover his tracks.
Now, his Senior Brother was out on business and the Great Snowy Mountain was spreading rumours of the Blood Demon fighting Grandmaster Huanjian for the Secret Beixuan Treasure. How could Chen He ignore this monk who could potentially expose their secret?
He had to settle this!
The monk suddenly sensed a change in the flow of Qi. He quickly jumped off the roof, holding his head between his hands.
Though he had avoided it in time, his right shoulder still suffered a heavy blow, causing the banner to fall out of his hand.
“The Primordial State Palm[2]! You devil!”
The monk was immediately unable to lift his right arm. He was enraged, but he ran fast, and he did not even look at the banner he had dropped.
“We have no grudges in the near or far future, yet you used the Primordial State Palm?”
Chen He: …
He looked at his palm, feeling somewhat disappointed.
So this method of gathering spiritual energy and using the force generated from the vibrating spiritual energy to strike was called the Primordial State Palm! A while back, he heard the storyteller in the teahouse tell fantastical stories of people striking things on the next mountain over, and he figured this out after thinking about it at home. Did such a move already exist in the cultivation world?
“It’s not my fault Daozhang hated me at first sight, what’s wrong with letting me try my new skills on you!”
“Devil! You’re a natural-born devil!” the monk cursed.
A few days ago, Chen He would still have been unhappy about being called a devil, but things were different now! Since his senior brother was already planning to strip a demonic grandmaster of their influence, Chen He had learned to let go of things.
If he was a ‘devil’, so be it. As long as he could ascend, nothing they said would matter to him.
After running for a while, the monk did not see any dummies around, and he was nearing the city gates. He was just about to celebrate when he saw an elderly manservant standing at the end of the alley.
The man was dressed in grey clothing and hunched over with a broom in his hands. No passerby would have spared him a second glance, for every alley was flanked by large courtyards, and servants sweeping snow were a common sight.
But the Daoist monk was so startled that all his hairs stood on end!
—even if he had been reborn and had his cultivation base reset, the divine sense he had honed until the Immortalisation stage was still present, no matter how weak!
And what had he just seen, a Nascent Soul-level dummy?!
Without thinking, the monk made a sharp turn to avoid the alley as he continued to dash forward.
At the same time, doubts began to form in his mind: if Chen He had not been reborn, where had these dummies come from? Come to think of it, the Stone-borne Flame had not burned Yunzhou City down this time. There had to be something which had been changed.
The monk racked his brains, but even though he knew from the previous life that Chen He practiced the Beixuan Sect’s cultivation techniques, the Beixuan Sect’s foundation techniques were everywhere in the cultivation world. He did not know a thing about the relationship between Shi Feng and Chen He in the previous life.
According to the rest of the cultivation world, the Beixuan Sect had already been decimated more than twenty years ago, and the last survivor had fallen to the demonic Dao. No one had heard anything about him after he entered Black Depths Valley. Even if the demonic grandmasters were to bastardise the Beixuan techniques to hell and back, no one would come after them.
Sensing Chen He hot on his heels, the Daoist monk silently expressed his scorn. All the streets in Yuzhou City led to the city gates, and he need only change his course if the current course would not work. He feared nothing!
The two silhouettes passed by at dizzying speeds as if in flight. Passersby could only see brief flashes, and to them, it only seemed as if the winds were picking up.
Chen He grew more curious as he gave chase. This monk had not gained insight into the Dao through martial arts, and he was not using qinggong either. He was just incredibly skilled at using the Feather-Steps Technique[3], with impeccable direction control, and not a single bit of spiritual energy was wasted.
Indeed, the cultivation world was full of hidden masters everywhere, and even a Daoist monk who could not afford food or amulets had such an amazing skill!
—perchance, it had been developed through escaping from people he had swindled and tricked!
Luckily, the monk had no clue what Chen He was thinking, or he would have been furious—“I have led an honest, upright life, what do you mean ‘swindled and tricked’, this skill is something I was forced to have after getting into so many fights with you in the previous life” “I’m only skilled in divination but I have to face off against the leader of the demonic cultivators who is skilled in martial arts, no one understands my pain”, so on, so forth.
The southern city gates were right before him!
The monk stepped over the top of a roadside stall and flew past, about to reach the city gates!
The three passersby in front of the gate turned their heads at the same time, looking straight at him—
“Dear gods above! Golden Core-level dummies!”
The monk almost lost his footing, but he felt a powerful force sucking him back from behind. Shocked by this, he grabbed the top of the stall in an attempt to get away from one of the devil’s tricks, the ‘Ruyi Hand’. It was hard to defend oneself against this skill, where the user scattered spiritual energy around and sucked it back towards themselves abruptly. In the previous life, countless unlucky saps had been drawn into Grandmaster Liyan’s flames and burned to ashes this way.
However, Chen He had not even formed a Golden Core at the moment, and the power of his Ruyi Hand was limited. Clinging to something to endure the suction would be enough.
The monk was quick-witted and had made the right choice.
Unfortunately, the stall was a simple construct, and it had only ever been a rest stop where people could wait for the tea shop to open. The tea shop had been closed since last month, and it had been snowing these few days, and this stall could only withstand so much. It collapsed with a great crash.
“…”
Chen He stopped on a nearby roof, watching speechlessly as the monk fell into the stall with the wooden sticks and hay.
“What’s the matter?” shouted one of the guards at the city gates.
“A stall collapsed, probably got squashed by the snow!”
The snow was getting heavy, and there were already few soldiers still at their posts on the first day of the New Year. None of them could be bothered to come over and take a look.
Chen He crouched down and looked around. He saw the monk’s left hand struggle as it stuck out of the hay.
He appeared to have fallen quite badly. Chen He vaguely remembered that the fellow had landed head-first, followed by the shoulder—poor thing, he had already taken a blow from the Primordial State Palm, and before he even had a chance to recover, he sustained even more injuries.
Truth be told, Chen He was quite perplexed by how the monk had laid down and grabbed the top of that battered old stall, instead of taking the chance to jump onto another roof.
Most cultivators would grab something and throw it to reduce the force of suction when they felt themselves being sucked away by something, right? Why did this person grab onto something instead?
Chen He had no idea that ‘Grandmaster Liyan’ would have been able to instantly burn down anything people threw at him. Throwing things would be a waste of time; it would be more helpful to grab onto something and steady yourself before doing anything else.
—such were the tragic results of bringing combat experience from the previous life into this life.
The stall had not been very tall, but the Daoist monk had been aiming to go over the top of the city gates, for which he had exerted a lot of force. It made him fall even harder, and his chest was struck by a broken stick from the stall roof, which almost made him spew blood.
Only his left hand, which stuck out of the whole mess, was still mobile. Even his internal flow of spiritual energy had been impeded.
“Help…help me!”
This weak cry for help made Chen He somewhat bemused.
Although his opponent made the wrong choice and suffered a nasty fall, it was also his fault for pursuing the man to this extent. Perhaps they really would have a lifetime of enmity—why was the other person suffering such nasty falls even though he himself had no plans for such things?
Chen He pondered it silently.
He stayed where he was until a Golden Core-level dummy snuck over to help clear the mess.
After Chen He jumped down through the large hole in the stall roof, he saw the Daoist monk lying on a pile of hay, his face pale, unable to move his right shoulder. He could only use his left hand to form hand seals for Qi circulation.
“Daozhang, do you need a physician?” Chen He asked, looking down towards him.
The person being asked was choked up by his own breath, which nearly caused him to lose spiritual energy. He opened his eyes in anger.
—he should have known that nothing good would come out of running into this devil!! The first time, Chen He had him see a physician, and this time, he might as well have someone carry him down to the clinic.
“You Daoist monks are so weak, didn’t you just fall off a roof and get hit once…”
Chen He shrugged. He had been jumping and playing around the wild pear trees next to the lake in Black Depths Valley since young. As for whether or not he had ever fallen off, ahem, it never happened if he had no memory of it.
“Chen He, we’re not yet at the point where we have any grudges! I’ve no time to bother with you, now scram if you’re done here!”
“Very energetic, that’s good, no need to pay for your medicine!” Chen He watched with great interest as the other fellow shook with anger.
A Daoist monk from the Heluo Sect, a disciple related to Elder Long-Brows.
Ah, no, not yet. He had not formed his Golden Core. Those not in the inner circle were not considered proper disciples of the Heluo Sect yet.
“Daozhang, hurry up and form your Golden Core! We’re going to have a lot of grudges to settle!”
Chen He felt that beating up the Heluo Sect’s disciples, from the lowest generation to Elder Long-Brows’ disciples, sounded like quite a lot of work.
The monk frowned cautiously, no longer asking any questions this time.
He really wondered if Chen He had been reborn like himself! Previously he said that had no been the case, but now this was looking like it.
There was something off about Grandmaster Liyan in this life! Had the leader of the demonic faction ever been this cunning and vile?
Grandmaster Liyan had been famous for being taciturn and temperamental. Many demonic cultivators who incurred his wrath had been burned to ashes; those were the ones who had been plotting things, or trying to frame others, or even the ones who tried to gain favour with him. This had cleared out the upper echelons of the whole demonic cultivator population, and from then on, no one dared to mess around in front of the demonic grandmasters.
After Chen He had eliminated the third leader of the orthodox faction, that elder from the Hanming Sect who always gave boring talks before each battle, he became the fourth leader, and he was probably the orthodox leader who lived the longest.
The monk became more mournful as he thought about it.
He had been the Enlightened Tianyan, formerly the leader of the Heluo Sect, the greatest orthodox cultivator who was respected by everyone! He had only been concerned about how to lead the orthodox cultivators and fight the war against the demonic cultivators that had lasted nearly four hundred years. Yet one day, he had suddenly been greatly shaken while performing a divination and spewed huge amounts of blood. When he stumbled out of the room, he saw a gigantic black vortex in the western skies.
The black vortex expanded infinitely, nearly engulfing the entire sky.
Purple lightning flashed through the skies. Countless arcs of lightning filled the clouds, threatening to destroy the earthly world.
Ignoring his injuries, he shakily performed another divination, and he learned something that made him want to spew blood again—Grandmaster Liyan of the demonic Dao was about to ascend to immortality.
How could this be!!
Was it not a fact that demonic cultivators were unable to ascend? The Enlightened Tianyan had already prepared to fight until he either ascended to immortality or died in battle. What was with Chen He suddenly breaking the divine order’s rules and ascending to immortality?
As the dark clouds dispersed, revealing the results of the tribulations, the Enlightened Tianyan blacked out. When he came to, he was lying in the dirt with smallish limbs, and a chipped bowl sat before him. This was clearly four hundred years ago, when he had still been a young man begging on the streets of Yuzhou.
Had the divine order given him a chance by allowing him to live once more?
—had he spewed too much blood and died of anger in his previous life?
The Enlightened Tianyan was so miffed, he almost smashed the bowl before him.
C35. The Enlightened Tianyan
In the first month of the year, any temple or abbey would be full of people making incense offerings.
The tales told by storytellers, of underworld denizens seeking revenge on rainy nights in abandoned temples, would never happen within the city.
As Chen He chased after the Daoist monk, he could tell from the latter’s escape route that he was trying to leave the city—this was bad! Even if Shi Feng had not instructed Chen He to stay at home at all costs, Chen He knew very clearly that he could go out for walks, but he could get in trouble and expose his whereabouts if he left the city.
“You stay here!”
He made a strike with his open palm, which blew away even the snowflakes falling from the sky.
Contrary to his expectations, the monk bent over nimbly and rolled forward when he jumped over the roofs, making the roof tiles creak. When the monk bounced back up, he had already escaped the palm strike’s effective range.
“Mm?” Now Chen He’s interest had been piqued.
There were few cultivators who had gained insight into the Dao through martial arts. Once a bottleneck was reached, everyone turned to magic and spells. However, Chen He could not possibly care less about those. Before they formed their Golden Cores, cultivators’s bodies were not immune to physical damage. No matter what magic or spells they knew, nothing could ever be faster than throwing a punch at the opponent.
Senior Brother had told him before that magic was a profound art, but the one casting it had to be at least Nascent Soul-level.
Anything cast by cultivators below that level would be nothing more than sideshow tricks.
Since it was akin to sideshow tricks, it would not be any different from showing off with martial arts—Chen He would only begin learning magic arts at the later part of the Golden Core stage, and it was still far too early for him.
He thought this Daoist monk was going to perform something like the Seven-Star Steps[1], but the guy rolled forward so decisively, and he was quite agile.
The last time they met, Chen He had the dummies knock this monk unconscious in order to cover his tracks.
Now, his Senior Brother was out on business and the Great Snowy Mountain was spreading rumours of the Blood Demon fighting Grandmaster Huanjian for the Secret Beixuan Treasure. How could Chen He ignore this monk who could potentially expose their secret?
He had to settle this!
The monk suddenly sensed a change in the flow of Qi. He quickly jumped off the roof, holding his head between his hands.
Though he had avoided it in time, his right shoulder still suffered a heavy blow, causing the banner to fall out of his hand.
“The Primordial State Palm[2]! You devil!”
The monk was immediately unable to lift his right arm. He was enraged, but he ran fast, and he did not even look at the banner he had dropped.
“We have no grudges in the near or far future, yet you used the Primordial State Palm?”
Chen He: …
He looked at his palm, feeling somewhat disappointed.
So this method of gathering spiritual energy and using the force generated from the vibrating spiritual energy to strike was called the Primordial State Palm! A while back, he heard the storyteller in the teahouse tell fantastical stories of people striking things on the next mountain over, and he figured this out after thinking about it at home. Did such a move already exist in the cultivation world?
“It’s not my fault Daozhang hated me at first sight, what’s wrong with letting me try my new skills on you!”
“Devil! You’re a natural-born devil!” the monk cursed.
A few days ago, Chen He would still have been unhappy about being called a devil, but things were different now! Since his senior brother was already planning to strip a demonic grandmaster of their influence, Chen He had learned to let go of things.
If he was a ‘devil’, so be it. As long as he could ascend, nothing they said would matter to him.
After running for a while, the monk did not see any dummies around, and he was nearing the city gates. He was just about to celebrate when he saw an elderly manservant standing at the end of the alley.
The man was dressed in grey clothing and hunched over with a broom in his hands. No passerby would have spared him a second glance, for every alley was flanked by large courtyards, and servants sweeping snow were a common sight.
But the Daoist monk was so startled that all his hairs stood on end!
—even if he had been reborn and had his cultivation base reset, the divine sense he had honed until the Immortalisation stage was still present, no matter how weak!
And what had he just seen, a Nascent Soul-level dummy?!
Without thinking, the monk made a sharp turn to avoid the alley as he continued to dash forward.
At the same time, doubts began to form in his mind: if Chen He had not been reborn, where had these dummies come from? Come to think of it, the Stone-borne Flame had not burned Yunzhou City down this time. There had to be something which had been changed.
The monk racked his brains, but even though he knew from the previous life that Chen He practiced the Beixuan Sect’s cultivation techniques, the Beixuan Sect’s foundation techniques were everywhere in the cultivation world. He did not know a thing about the relationship between Shi Feng and Chen He in the previous life.
According to the rest of the cultivation world, the Beixuan Sect had already been decimated more than twenty years ago, and the last survivor had fallen to the demonic Dao. No one had heard anything about him after he entered Black Depths Valley. Even if the demonic grandmasters were to bastardise the Beixuan techniques to hell and back, no one would come after them.
Sensing Chen He hot on his heels, the Daoist monk silently expressed his scorn. All the streets in Yuzhou City led to the city gates, and he need only change his course if the current course would not work. He feared nothing!
The two silhouettes passed by at dizzying speeds as if in flight. Passersby could only see brief flashes, and to them, it only seemed as if the winds were picking up.
Chen He grew more curious as he gave chase. This monk had not gained insight into the Dao through martial arts, and he was not using qinggong either. He was just incredibly skilled at using the Feather-Steps Technique[3], with impeccable direction control, and not a single bit of spiritual energy was wasted.
Indeed, the cultivation world was full of hidden masters everywhere, and even a Daoist monk who could not afford food or amulets had such an amazing skill!
—perchance, it had been developed through escaping from people he had swindled and tricked!
Luckily, the monk had no clue what Chen He was thinking, or he would have been furious—“I have led an honest, upright life, what do you mean ‘swindled and tricked’, this skill is something I was forced to have after getting into so many fights with you in the previous life” “I’m only skilled in divination but I have to face off against the leader of the demonic cultivators who is skilled in martial arts, no one understands my pain”, so on, so forth.
The southern city gates were right before him!
The monk stepped over the top of a roadside stall and flew past, about to reach the city gates!
The three passersby in front of the gate turned their heads at the same time, looking straight at him—
“Dear gods above! Golden Core-level dummies!”
The monk almost lost his footing, but he felt a powerful force sucking him back from behind. Shocked by this, he grabbed the top of the stall in an attempt to get away from one of the devil’s tricks, the ‘Ruyi Hand’. It was hard to defend oneself against this skill, where the user scattered spiritual energy around and sucked it back towards themselves abruptly. In the previous life, countless unlucky saps had been drawn into Grandmaster Liyan’s flames and burned to ashes this way.
However, Chen He had not even formed a Golden Core at the moment, and the power of his Ruyi Hand was limited. Clinging to something to endure the suction would be enough.
The monk was quick-witted and had made the right choice.
Unfortunately, the stall was a simple construct, and it had only ever been a rest stop where people could wait for the tea shop to open. The tea shop had been closed since last month, and it had been snowing these few days, and this stall could only withstand so much. It collapsed with a great crash.
“…”
Chen He stopped on a nearby roof, watching speechlessly as the monk fell into the stall with the wooden sticks and hay.
“What’s the matter?” shouted one of the guards at the city gates.
“A stall collapsed, probably got squashed by the snow!”
The snow was getting heavy, and there were already few soldiers still at their posts on the first day of the New Year. None of them could be bothered to come over and take a look.
Chen He crouched down and looked around. He saw the monk’s left hand struggle as it stuck out of the hay.
He appeared to have fallen quite badly. Chen He vaguely remembered that the fellow had landed head-first, followed by the shoulder—poor thing, he had already taken a blow from the Primordial State Palm, and before he even had a chance to recover, he sustained even more injuries.
Truth be told, Chen He was quite perplexed by how the monk had laid down and grabbed the top of that battered old stall, instead of taking the chance to jump onto another roof.
Most cultivators would grab something and throw it to reduce the force of suction when they felt themselves being sucked away by something, right? Why did this person grab onto something instead?
Chen He had no idea that ‘Grandmaster Liyan’ would have been able to instantly burn down anything people threw at him. Throwing things would be a waste of time; it would be more helpful to grab onto something and steady yourself before doing anything else.
—such were the tragic results of bringing combat experience from the previous life into this life.
The stall had not been very tall, but the Daoist monk had been aiming to go over the top of the city gates, for which he had exerted a lot of force. It made him fall even harder, and his chest was struck by a broken stick from the stall roof, which almost made him spew blood.
Only his left hand, which stuck out of the whole mess, was still mobile. Even his internal flow of spiritual energy had been impeded.
“Help…help me!”
This weak cry for help made Chen He somewhat bemused.
Although his opponent made the wrong choice and suffered a nasty fall, it was also his fault for pursuing the man to this extent. Perhaps they really would have a lifetime of enmity—why was the other person suffering such nasty falls even though he himself had no plans for such things?
Chen He pondered it silently.
He stayed where he was until a Golden Core-level dummy snuck over to help clear the mess.
After Chen He jumped down through the large hole in the stall roof, he saw the Daoist monk lying on a pile of hay, his face pale, unable to move his right shoulder. He could only use his left hand to form hand seals for Qi circulation.
“Daozhang, do you need a physician?” Chen He asked, looking down towards him.
The person being asked was choked up by his own breath, which nearly caused him to lose spiritual energy. He opened his eyes in anger.
—he should have known that nothing good would come out of running into this devil!! The first time, Chen He had him see a physician, and this time, he might as well have someone carry him down to the clinic.
“You Daoist monks are so weak, didn’t you just fall off a roof and get hit once…”
Chen He shrugged. He had been jumping and playing around the wild pear trees next to the lake in Black Depths Valley since young. As for whether or not he had ever fallen off, ahem, it never happened if he had no memory of it.
“Chen He, we’re not yet at the point where we have any grudges! I’ve no time to bother with you, now scram if you’re done here!”
“Very energetic, that’s good, no need to pay for your medicine!” Chen He watched with great interest as the other fellow shook with anger.
A Daoist monk from the Heluo Sect, a disciple related to Elder Long-Brows.
Ah, no, not yet. He had not formed his Golden Core. Those not in the inner circle were not considered proper disciples of the Heluo Sect yet.
“Daozhang, hurry up and form your Golden Core! We’re going to have a lot of grudges to settle!”
Chen He felt that beating up the Heluo Sect’s disciples, from the lowest generation to Elder Long-Brows’ disciples, sounded like quite a lot of work.
The monk frowned cautiously, no longer asking any questions this time.
He really wondered if Chen He had been reborn like himself! Previously he said that had no been the case, but now this was looking like it.
There was something off about Grandmaster Liyan in this life! Had the leader of the demonic faction ever been this cunning and vile?
Grandmaster Liyan had been famous for being taciturn and temperamental. Many demonic cultivators who incurred his wrath had been burned to ashes; those were the ones who had been plotting things, or trying to frame others, or even the ones who tried to gain favour with him. This had cleared out the upper echelons of the whole demonic cultivator population, and from then on, no one dared to mess around in front of the demonic grandmasters.
After Chen He had eliminated the third leader of the orthodox faction, that elder from the Hanming Sect who always gave boring talks before each battle, he became the fourth leader, and he was probably the orthodox leader who lived the longest.
The monk became more mournful as he thought about it.
He had been the Enlightened Tianyan, formerly the leader of the Heluo Sect, the greatest orthodox cultivator who was respected by everyone! He had only been concerned about how to lead the orthodox cultivators and fight the war against the demonic cultivators that had lasted nearly four hundred years. Yet one day, he had suddenly been greatly shaken while performing a divination and spewed huge amounts of blood. When he stumbled out of the room, he saw a gigantic black vortex in the western skies.
The black vortex expanded infinitely, nearly engulfing the entire sky.
Purple lightning flashed through the skies. Countless arcs of lightning filled the clouds, threatening to destroy the earthly world.
Ignoring his injuries, he shakily performed another divination, and he learned something that made him want to spew blood again—Grandmaster Liyan of the demonic Dao was about to ascend to immortality.
How could this be!!
Was it not a fact that demonic cultivators were unable to ascend? The Enlightened Tianyan had already prepared to fight until he either ascended to immortality or died in battle. What was with Chen He suddenly breaking the divine order’s rules and ascending to immortality?
As the dark clouds dispersed, revealing the results of the tribulations, the Enlightened Tianyan blacked out. When he came to, he was lying in the dirt with smallish limbs, and a chipped bowl sat before him. This was clearly four hundred years ago, when he had still been a young man begging on the streets of Yuzhou.
Had the divine order given him a chance by allowing him to live once more?
—had he spewed too much blood and died of anger in his previous life?
The Enlightened Tianyan was so miffed, he almost smashed the bowl before him.
