Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 102

“Humph!” The Grand Elder of Fenglin let out a snort. His robe started flapping even though there was no wind, and the illusion of a giant dragon flying into the sky appeared behind his flying gray hair. The dragon gleamed with a golden glow, lighting up the darkness with a beautiful brilliance.

The wave of soil and rocks that were threatening to hit them like a meteorite were all quietly stopped by this golden glow even though it looked so gentle and fragile. There was a crisp pitter-pattering as the soil and rocks hit the glow, making it flicker and ripple. Yet, the wavering golden glow managed to keep out the soil and rocks.

A full hour later, everyone saw a ray of sunshine come through, and the wave of soil and rocks had slowly disappeared. But the oncoming gray skies still reminded them of the danger they were in earlier.

“Let’s go,” said the Grand Elder of Fenglin with a huff at the frightened cultivators of martial arts. He made a hand seal, broke the thin protective formation around the flying ship, and leaped off the ship.

“Let’s go.” You Hantian was expressionless as he let all the disciples in his sleeve out and quickly followed the Grand Elder off the ship as well.

“Straighten yourselves out, and don’t embarrass the Seven Kill Sect.” A sect elder waved the dust in the air away and frowned deeply at the slightly disheveled disciples in front of him. He was clearly displeased with the way they looked.

After some time, the frown on his face eased, and he looked more pleased with the disciples now. He flew up into the air and led the way.

“It’s about to begin. Do you still stand a chance?” Gu Suihan seemed a little excited, and he scanned the other disciples silently with his indifferent gaze. His thin lips moved slightly as he spoke to Disciplinarian Zhang via telepathy.

“You’re doomed!” Disciplinarian Zhang suddenly stopped mid-air and turned to glare nastily at Gu Suihan, who was grinning back at the older man. He clenched the hands in his sleeve instinctively, and his veins bulged. The aggressive look on his face made those closest to him get a fright.

“You’re a wily old fox!” Gu Suihan narrowed his eyes as he muttered those words to himself. If this old man didn’t do anything and waited until Gu Suihan entered the secret realm, then it would only be too late. Gu Suihan had purposely agitated Disciplinarian Zhang since You Hantian wasn’t around. The best would be to make their disagreement public, which would make the old man warier of the consequences if he tried to attack Gu Suihan. Gu Suihan was surprised that the old man had managed to hold his temper back.

A cold wind blew through the forest covered in dead branches, fallen leaves, and snow. The grayish-white snow fell like ocean waves, roaring and crashing. The occasional resilient green trees that were still standing gave this solemn winter a rare sign of life.

You Hantian and the leaders from the other sects were probably gathered somewhere to quarrel with one another over the details of what was to happen next. Small fries like Gu Suihan were not qualified to watch these elderly people shear each other until nothing but their ugly sides remained.

Everyone quietly walked through the forest, and they soon came to a vast area covered in countless tents and huts. There was an odd aura in this place. Several cultivators were moving around, and it looked rather chaotic. But perhaps they still had some respect for one another, and the sects on opposing sides had gathered in a distinct area a distance from each other.

The sects that had formed an alliance with the Ethereal Court stopped trying to hide this fact and put up all their tents across from the Seven Kill Sect and their allies. There was another area that was filled with disciples from other smaller sects.

“We’ll go over there.” Disciplinarian Zhang scoured the entire place quickly. Once he found where the War Demon Sect was, he waved his sleeve and flew toward them.

Before landing, everyone could hear the melodious and charming chatter of women, accompanied by a faint fragrance in their nostrils.

“The Yin Principle Sect.” Some of the more senior disciples snickered with a slightly wary look in their eyes.

There was an empty area that had clearly been reserved for the Seven Kill Sect disciples, but the disciples had to rely on themselves to put some sort of accommodation together. If they were able, they could use their skills and spells to make a hut. If not, they had to sit in a hole in a tree to cultivate.

Gu Suihan walked by himself to a more secluded area near the border with the War Demon Sect. A stream wasn’t too far away, and the space around him was empty. This wasn’t too bad of a place.

He threw out several soil and rock talismans, controlling them with almost robotic precision to make a little rock hut that measured less than 20 square meters in floorspace, all within an hour. After he entered the hut, he took out a sitting mound from his storage ring, set up some formations, then proceeded to cultivate. They were going to enter the secret realm soon, so there was no need to make this place too fancy.

He took out many Spiritual Stones and placed them on the floor. There was so much qi in the air that they turned into a thick fog inside the hut, but with the help of the qi gathering formation that he had set up earlier, he absorbed it all rapidly. The white, gleaming Spiritual Stones turned to powder in seconds. Once that happened, he would just take out more Spiritual Stones and absorb their qi.

The sword energy inside his body went through all his acupoints and spiritual meridians again and again. Each time it made one round, it would squeeze out impurities that could not be seen with the naked eye. At the same time, those bones of his that didn’t look like they belonged to a human would also slowly go from ivory white to a more transparent crystal color as it was quenched time and again by the sword energy.

“Ra-Asu Sword Bones. One of the top ten skeletons of sword cultivators from ancient times. It’s probably even more powerful than what the legends claim,” thought Gu Suihan as he looked at his gleaming bones.

He quietly undid the seal over Suihan’s spirit within his consciousness, and a bright glow filled the room as though a supreme-ruler had transcended from heaven. His spirit was still very frail and weak, but the innumerable cracks that made it look like a fractured piece of glass had decreased in number. A vast and authoritative aura filled his entire consciousness. Runes swirled around his spirit, and a glimmer would flicker brightly and disappear the next second.

“Spirit splitting is the only way I’ll be able to recover more quickly.” Gu Suihan had a grim look on his face. Spirit splitting wasn’t a stage in cultivation but a secret technique made to help a soul recover from its injuries. It would take you a long time to fill up one large pool with water, but if you split them into smaller pools and filled them all at the same time, you could save a lot of time.

It was the same with spirit splitting. A spirit was made from one’s core, nascent soul, and heart-soul, which resided in the upper, mid, and lower dantian of the body, respectively, before they merged to become one’s spirit.

The heart-soul was the amassing of qi. Cultivators had to rely on the qi inside here to cast spells and do supernatural things, like riding clouds, controlling mist, and piercing the sky with their sword qi and all that.

The core gathered the three po and was situated in the upper dantian, which was where the consciousness was. Spiritual sense and supreme sense were formed by the heaven hun, while the three po formed the core.

Nascent change or nascent soul resided in the middle dantian. It was in charge of the five major organs; it gathered the seven po and kept one’s libido in check. Some of the murderous qi and fiendish qi that the cultivators gathered and refined was controlled by this part.

When all three reached completion, the core would rest on the nascent, and the heart-soul would be its base. This formed a complete spirit. If you shifted the spiritual root to become the backbone of the spirit, then you were on your way to the immortal stage.

Splitting the spirit was the opposite. It was a process to split up the spirit and put them back into the dantians they came from to recuperate, then merge them together again once they had healed up separately.

One had to ensure that the spirit would not just fall apart when splitting before using this technique. Suihan’s spirit had been on the verge of falling apart before this, so there was no way he could split it and let them heal separately. But now, it was stable enough, and it was a good time to do so too.

“Before that, I need to take back my soul fire. With my weakness in their hands, doing anything like this would endanger my own life.” A bottomless whirlpool seemed to form within Gu Suihan’s bright eyes.

“All Souls Return to the Body!” Gu Suihan’s eyes suddenly widened as a mysterious spinning wheel seemed to appear above his head. Surreal dao runes ran across the wheel like tiny little snakes. Suddenly, a powerful but silent force rippled across the wheel, causing it to spin more and more quickly.

Gu Suihan slowly closed his eyes. His vast supreme sense seemed as heavy as the skies, yet as silent as spring rains and as gentle as the breeze as it swept across the entire universe in an instant. Gu Suihan could feel a very weak connection, a tiny firefly in the boundless darkness.

“Return to the body!” ordered Gu Suihan. The wavering and weak bit of soul fire suddenly became brighter, like it had found its way home. It crossed time and space and was swiftly absorbed by his spirit again.

“Spirit Splitting Secret Technique, keeping the top clear and bottom cloudy, return to where you once were.”

Without hesitation, Gu Suihan changed the position of his hands. Mysterious runes formed inside his consciousness and engraved themselves on the spirit with great force.

“Ahh!” Suihan’s spirit let out an ear-deafening scream. The badly cracked and injured heart-soul suddenly descended and landed quietly into where all his qi were, becoming one with the thick pool of sword energy inside. The chubby, cute, and childlike translucent blue nascent soul fell into the middle part of the body. The core was now like a pearl glowing in the middle of the ocean as it gave off a faint light in his consciousness.

“Scatter the Three Huas, break down the Five Qis!” Gu Suihan gritted his teeth as he forcibly broke apart the Three Huas and Five Qis inside his body. As it turned back into ordinary qi, he absorbed it into his body once more to repair his heart-soul.