Chapter 299: The Shrine
The shrine of Prince Kang’s estate stood outside the rear garden, not part of the inner residence. People came to worship there at New Year and other festivals, but otherwise it was rather deserted. Aside from the servants who swept the place and the clan elders who added oil to the hearth fire, almost no one came by.
No treasures or secrets were hidden there, and no important person lived there. It was a place long ignored, so it was assigned to guards who weren’t of the estate’s direct line, mainly to deter petty thieves. If the Fire God’s offerings were stolen and eaten, or the statue lost some of its gold leaves, it would be a laughingstock.
At 11 pm, Li Baima and the others took over the shrine’s defense. One person watched the main door, two stood by the windows on the left and right, and one patrolled the interior.
Beside the main door, Ding Songyan held Frostshade and turned sideways to study the statue inside the shrine.
It was nearly seven meters tall, with a beast’s body and a human face, decorated with gold leaves, its feet resting on two lifelike fire dragons, its eyes seeming to hold a blazing summer. In its hands it cradled a small bronze cauldron, inside which a faintly flickering crimson flame burned. This was the hearth fire.
Every time the hearth fire was refueled, a special long-handled tool had to be used.
In front of the Zhurong statue stood an offering table laid with all kinds of tribute and five crimson candles. Together with the rows of glazed lamps on either side of the shrine, they lit the night in a reddish-yellow glow.
Ding Songyan hesitated over whether to use the Candle-Star Pupils on the statue to see if he could find any hidden secrets, but in the end he didn’t, afraid of triggering unexpected changes.
This was an orthodox god of the dynasty, ranked, at the annual grand sacrifice, only behind the Five Directional Emperors and Nüwa. Great Zhao’s dynasty had not yet lasted a thousand years, but people had been worshipping the Fire God Zhurong generation after generation since ancient times, without a break. Who knew whether an incense deity had already been born.
Don’t look at what you shouldn’t.
Winter nights were very quiet, and even the people of the Flame Capital, who loved bustle and excitement, were less active. Standing guard at the door with nothing to do, Ding Songyan’s thoughts naturally drifted to his own affairs.
There’s still a lot to do on the martial arts front.
Even setting aside the most troublesome one, the Unified Way Sword, there’s also folding the Scripture of Utmost Sincerity into the Chaos Scripture, improving the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years, and absorbing the Dimmed Heaven and Earth Chapter, the Seven Methods of Spitting Sand, and the Soul-Startling Pierce…
The burden is heavy and the road is long!
Since I’ve decided to become a Heaven-Man through the Unified Way Method, folding in the Four Seasons and Six Directions as techniques, there’s even less urgency to exchange views with Hero Ou about the Mirage Dragon Hidden True Art. I have to tell what’s primary from what’s secondary, what’s urgent from what’s not.
The framework, goals, and steps of the Unified Way Method are fairly clear now. What remains is actually doing it. But on how to hone my mindset and reach Arcane Accord with my own Way, I’m still clueless.
I’ve never seen the Brightnight Sect’s Candlelight Method, but combined with the notes of those before me, I can roughly guess how to practice it, how to make some everyday things fit it to hone the mind: to be bright oneself, illuminate others, aid those in danger, resist the abyss, pass on the flame…
But the Unified Way Method is easy to practice in martial arts, but has no common ground with daily matters or my own state of mind…
Becoming a Heaven-Man doesn’t require a complete Unified Way Method, only getting all things down to ’three’… Do I have to split my mind into three?
Use ’everything comes in threes’ as a way to see things? But how do I practice that…
The more Ding Songyan thought, the more muddled he got. He could only set the thinking aside for the time being and planned to fill in the Unified Way Sword in its early form first, then look for inspiration in it.
“So warm.” Fan Chunlin, patrolling the shrine’s interior, passed by the door and remarked with a smile.
The shrine had copper pipes laid through it with hot water flowing, making it quite warm.
Ding Songyan pulled his thoughts back and said, clicking his tongue, “As expected of a prince’s estate. Big household, big resources.”
The shrine was tall and empty, yet could still be made as cozy as a heated chamber.
Fan Chunlin stopped and lowered his voice.”I heard it’s done on purpose.
“Isn’t the Kitchen King also the god of fire and summer? In winter, it would be embarrassing for His shrine to be freezing cold.
“As descendants, never mind big household and big resources, they’d sell even the pots and pans to keep the shrine warm and comfortable.”
Among common folk and in the jianghu, most people preferred to call the Fire God Zhurong the Kitchen King.
“Right, you can lose anything but face in front of the ancestors,” Ding Songyan agreed with a smile.
After a while, the four rotated, and Ding Songyan patrolled the shrine’s interior.
He followed the route Fan Chunlin had taken, walking slowly, sometimes glancing at the statue, sometimes listening to the scattered sounds outside the estate.
As he passed the Zhurong statue, Ding Songyan was suddenly startled.
It was warm here.
That in itself was nothing surprising, with multiple copper pipes laid under the floor tiles. What surprised Ding Songyan was that the Chaos Four Wings, hidden in the void within him, had stirred slightly.
The part that stirred was the Red Summer wing, still carrying flowing fire, crimson and scorching.
This… Zhurong is a summer god… Ding Songyan instinctively stopped and began carefully sensing.
Near that statue, it wasn’t only as warm as spring. There also seemed to be a restless, searing heat hidden there, which struck up an indescribable, subtle resonance with Ding Songyan’s “Red Summer.”
Before Ding Songyan could work out what was happening, something suddenly changed before his eyes.
He saw an ocean reflecting orange-red sunlight, as if endless flames were burning on the sea.
High in the sky hovered a beast-bodied, human-faced divine being, wearing only a leather wrap around the waist, its feet on two crimson fire dragons, both hands gripping a long spear seemingly forged from flame, with fire crows spewing black smoke flying around it.
Zhurong… Ding Songyan had barely had that thought when Zhurong’s blazing spear stabbed down at him from above.
Clang!
Frostshade left its sheath and cut sideways at the spear tip.
The blazing spear twisted and pulled Ding Songyan’s long sword aside.
In Ding Songyan’s eyes, countless flames fell, each one turning into a spear tip, making the heaven and earth scorching hot and the seawater evaporate rapidly.
Clang after clang, Ding Songyan used everything he had learned in his life. With Frostshade he drew a perfect arc that absorbed all the flaming spear tips and clashed with them one after another, and he also brought deep winter down, with white snow drifting to reduce the scorching heat and slow the burning.
Sword after sword, he didn’t know how many thrusts the opponent had made. He could only block frantically, completely forgetting everything else.
Suddenly, the snow melted and the ice cracked. That spear tip seemed to have merged all the flames of this heaven and earth, and burned anything that blocked it.
Ding Songyan’s Frostshade was knocked aside, leaving him wide open.
Ding Songyan was powerless to block this thrust. All he could do was take one step back to the side.
With that step back, the terrifying spear forged of flame, the burning sky and sea, and the dragon-treading divine being with the majestic face suddenly vanished, and everything he saw returned to normal in an instant.
It was still the gold-leaf-covered Zhurong statue, still the hearth fire quietly burning inside the cauldron.
Ding Songyan couldn’t help taking another step back, feeling drenched in sweat all over, even the hair hanging down soaked, though there were no burn marks.
An illusion? he muttered silently.
After making sure nothing else unusual appeared, Ding Songyan moved away from the Zhurong statue and began to ponder what had just happened.
An incense deity?
Even if Zhurong really had an incense deity, it shouldn’t be here…
It should obviously be in the Imperial Ancestral Temple or the Forbidden Palace, or at the Kitchen King Order’s headquarters.
Can Zhurong’s incense deity use every statue of itself that has received offerings for years to project a bit of divine consciousness and power from afar?
Did the Red Summer of my Chaos Four Wings resonate with its statue, letting it detect me from a distance and respond?
If that’s true, incense deities are far better than Heaven-Men and Sages in this regard. There’s no need to travel, just needing a suitable local statue. No wonder they’re called gods. But from what Twelfth Madam and Brother Ren Youyang have implied, they’re also heavily restricted, less free and unfettered than Heaven-Men and Sages…
No, if divine consciousness and power had descended just now, it should have attacked directly. Why only pull me into a clash of spirits?
A clash of spirits only isn’t impossible, but what about me escaping the predicament just by stepping back?
Mm, it didn’t say a word, as if it had no real intelligence and just kept attacking…
Back then, Zhurong followed the Celestial Thearch to the Heavenly Realm and descended from time to time. He didn’t die when his lifespan ran out after the heaven-earth severance, and only stopped appearing when Qi of Xia took the throne. So does his incense deity lack intelligence? And once I back off to a certain distance, it’s no longer hostile?
The Celestial Thearch’s statue at Ditai also seemed a bit lifeless…
Ding Songyan walked to the door and gazed and listened toward the Imperial Ancestral Temple, sensing no movement.
The Kitchen King Order’s headquarters was quiet too.
The night was still peaceful.
“Brother Ding, what’s wrong?” Wu Mo at the door asked in surprise.
He was pale, with sweat all over his forehead.
Ding Songyan smiled.
“It’s nothing. An old ailment flared up, but I’ve suppressed it.”
“Does your old ailment affect you much? You could ask the Prince to bring in a famous doctor,” Wu Mo asked with some concern.
“It’s fine.” Ding Songyan shook his head. “It’s already gradually improving. By the time it heals completely, I might have entered the Dharma Realm.”
Wu Mo believed the explanation and watched enviously as Ding Songyan turned to study the Zhurong statue.
For Brother Ding, the Dharma Realm really was as easy as eating and drinking.
Having confirmed that it hadn’t been an outside demon invading, Ding Songyan stared at the statue and suddenly thought of something.
Maybe the biggest backing of Prince Kang’s estate is none other than this Zhurong statue.
Since they’re all in the Flame Capital, whether Zhurong’s incense deity is in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, the Forbidden Palace, or the Kitchen King Order’s headquarters, it’s easy to remotely descend power, and there’s more to borrow. It should be able to bring some of a Heaven-Man’s might… But just now it was at most quasi-Heaven-Man at best. I don’t get it…
As for other provinces and prefectures, does it mean more power can descend with stronger incense? Is that one of the court’s pillars of support? Ding Songyan realized there were still many things he didn’t understand about incense deities.
He then remembered the Shamanism Order’s deity-invoking site he had found earlier.
What they invoked might be a ghost or deity, or an incense deity they themselves had worshipped for a thousand years, but the body prepared for the deity seemed unable to bear that power and had collapsed and died.
Starting to invoke deities two or three months before the consort selection? Isn’t that too early? Could the invoked deity stay that long? Or was it prepared for something they plan to do soon? Ding Songyan’s eyes narrowed slightly.
What would happen soon?
Ding Songyan collected his spirit and waited patiently for nearly two hours, but still saw no one come following the traces to check on the shrine’s anomaly.