Innate Grandmaster

The next day.

Heavenly Prison.

Zhou Yi carried the last meal and arrived at Cell Block Nine.

Dressed all in white, four sons and three daughters lay neatly on the ground, already without breath. Beside them, the woman in mourning clothes had collapsed to the floor, her eyes staring blankly and hollowly ahead.

Li Xiong stood in the cell, watching Zhou Yi approach with cold eyes.

"Remember this well. My wife, children, and I will all be waiting here. Tell Li Wu when he comes in!"

Seeing the tragedy of a father killing his own children in the cell, Zhou Yi's brow furrowed slightly. Looking around the prison, he saw no guards on duty and immediately understood.

The court did not intend to execute them publicly. They had signaled for Li Xiong to commit suicide in the Heavenly Prison out of fear of punishment.

"The general has served honestly and impartially, with illustrious merits. In the future, he may be worthy of being honored in the Imperial Ancestral Temple and leaving his name in the annals of history." Yesterday, when Zhou Yi had spoken with Li Xiong, his outrage at the slaughter of the common people had made him somewhat overstep his bounds.

Today, how could he possibly make reckless remarks about Li Wu and the court? Even if all the officials wished to exterminate the Li Lineage to the ninth degree, outwardly, they still had to praise their loyalty to the sovereign and devotion to the state.

"He will come. I'll wait for him!"

After speaking, Li Xiong struck the woman's forehead with his palm, then swung his hand toward his own head.

Husband and wife both died with shattered skulls.

"If you knew it would come to this, why do it in the first place!"

Zhou Yi feigned panic as he went out to summon the guards. They carried Li Xiong's family out of the cell. Members of the Li Lineage would naturally come to collect the bodies, though whether they could be buried in the ancestral graves was another matter.

"I'm in a bad mood today. I'll pick an unlucky bastard to try out my demon art on!"

Carrying fine wine and good food, Zhou Yi swayed his way to Cell A-Twelve.

The prisoner was built like a bear, standing half a head taller than even the twelve-foot torture rack. Several saber scars crisscrossed his gleaming bald head. He was the sort who would have commoners reporting that bandits had entered the city the moment he walked down a street.

The prisoner glanced at the wine and meat, then licked his lips. "Is it this lord's turn today?"

"You really know the ropes."

Zhou Yi laid out the food and wine, picked up a piece of meat with his chopsticks, and brought it to the prisoner's mouth.

The prisoner did not stand on ceremony. He heartily ate and drank, then let out a full belch. "This lord heard outside that there's a prison guard in the Heavenly Prison who loves tormenting martial world experts. No one has ever endured his torture."

"I actually have a reputation in the martial world?"

This was the first Zhou Yi had heard of it. Every day, he traveled only between two points and never concerned himself with either the martial world or the imperial court.

The prisoner said, "The martial world calls you the Blood Prison Old Demon. Rumor has it that your whole family died at the hands of martial world experts, which is why you became so vicious and ruthless."

"Old Demon?"

Zhou Yi looked at his grizzled hair and nodded faintly. "Not a bad nickname. It has quite the presence. My fellow martial artists flatter me!"

The prisoner said coldly, "You bastard are like a turtle, hiding in Shenjing and never going out. Otherwise, someone would have beaten you to death long ago!"

"Perhaps they came to Shenjing. It's just that no one knew."

Zhou Yi's small courtyard in Shenjing had been quite lively these past two years. The jujube tree in the yard had flourished, and his colleagues all praised its fruit as fragrant, sweet, and delicious.

Perhaps martial world experts who had tempered their bodies to completion had some special energy in their flesh and blood, making even the jujubes they fertilized extraordinary.

Zhou Yi planned to plant another grapevine and let his colleagues have a taste.

"This lord refuses to believe it. Today, I'll test your tortures myself."

The prisoner said smugly, "Back when this lord broke the precept against killing at the temple, eighteen martial monks broke all their punishment staffs on me, yet this lord still endured!"

"So you are an eminent disciple of the Buddhist school. My respects, my respects."

Zhou Yi put away the bowls and chopsticks, pressed his palm against the prisoner's Dantian, and activated the Heaven Devouring Demon Art.

The thick inner force poured from the prisoner's body like floodwaters released from a sluice gate. In mere moments, Zhou Yi devoured all the inner force in the prisoner's Dantian.

"You..."

Veins bulged on the prisoner's bald head. His eyes widened in disbelief. "Heaven Devouring... Demon Art?"

"You actually know it?"

Without waiting for the prisoner to speak again, Zhou Yi slapped his head. Inner force burst through his body and churned his brain into tofu pudding.

"The more you know, the greater your curiosity, and the more dangerous it becomes!"

Early in the twelfth year of Hongchang.

At Serpent Coil Mountain, Grand General Li Wu utterly defeated the enemy's main force, beheaded two hundred thousand, and captured the third prince of the Great Yong Dynasty alive.

He then pursued the routed troops for twelve hundred li, completely recovering Fengyang Kingdom's lost lands.

When the victory report reached Shenjing, the common people cheered in jubilation, while the court officials remained silent.

Autumn of the same year.

Li Wu led his army into Great Yong territory, breaking through twelve cities in succession and advancing all the way to Soul Suppression Pass, the natural stronghold of Great Yong's Southern Frontier.

No matter how Li Wu challenged them, the commander defending Soul Suppression Pass shrank back like a turtle and refused to emerge. The Great Yong court sent envoys to sue for peace.

The storms and upheavals outside had nothing to do with Zhou Yi.

In the courtyard.

Zhou Yi sat cross-legged beneath the grapevine trellis, silently circulating the Heaven Devouring Demon Art.

Inner force as surging as rivers flowed through his meridians, faintly carrying the roar of crashing waves against a shore.

"Seven years. I devoured the inner force of more than ninety martial world experts... and now, I have finally reached the five-hundred-year threshold!"

Zhou Yi took leave from the prison warden and focused wholeheartedly on secluded cultivation at home, determined not to emerge until he had broken through to the Innate realm.

"According to the demon art's description, once inner force reaches five hundred years, one need only circulate it without cease until one uses oneself to pry open the power of heaven and earth. Then one can naturally comprehend the realm of an Innate Grandmaster!"

His inner force continuously circulated through his meridians, completing more than a dozen Greater Celestial Circuits in succession.

Zhou Yi only felt that his meridians had reached their limit. Some of the finer meridians had already developed cracks, yet he still could not sense the Innate realm.

"Humph!"

Zhou Yi could not help letting out a pained groan. The agony of cracked meridians was no less than the torture of a thousand cuts.

At this point, continuing to circulate the demon art might allow him to break through to Innate, but it might also sever all his meridians and turn him into a cripple. In the worst case, he could die on the spot and vanish from the world.

"Ordinary people might grit their teeth and persevere, risking their lives to break through to Innate. As for me... I'll try again tomorrow!"

Thus.

Zhou Yi stopped circulating his power, rose to brew a pot of fine tea, and held a Daoist scripture as he recited it.

He calmed his mind and spirit, soothing the agitation within.

The next day.

Zhou Yi circulated the demon art again. Compared with yesterday, he completed several more cycles before once again reaching the limit of what his meridians could bear.

"It seems my talent truly is rather poor."

"Those with ordinary and mediocre talent watch year after year slip away. Either they lose heart and fade into the masses, or they risk their lives in a desperate attempt to gamble on a breakthrough. After all, lifespan waits for no one."

"Fortunately, I have the Longevity Dao Fruit. No bottleneck or shackle can withstand the grinding of time."

"Only I, even should seas turn to mulberry fields and heaven and earth change places, will remain unchanged!"

Zhou Yi stopped circulating his power and took out a Buddhist scripture to recite.

Apart from teachings about enduring suffering, Zhou Yi greatly agreed with the Buddhist scriptures' explanations of karma and karmic force.

Autumn passed and spring came; time flew by.

In the blink of an eye, more than half a year had passed.

At first, people in the Heavenly Prison still asked why Old Zhou had not returned. Later, they grew accustomed to it.

That day.

Zhou Yi was burning incense and reciting scriptures when a profound feeling suddenly arose in his heart. The Heaven Devouring Demon Art began circulating on its own within his body.

It circulated for dozens of cycles, yet his meridians still felt no swelling pain.

At that moment, wisps of cool energy flowed in from the outside world and entered Zhou Yi's body, like icy threads, like a fine rain that nourished all things without a sound.

"This is heaven and earth spiritual energy?"

Zhou Yi closed his eyes to sense it. Between heaven and earth, there seemed to be a mysterious energy divided into five colors, faint and nearly nonexistent, so sparse it was almost imperceptible.

As his vast inner force circulated, it drew the five-colored spiritual energy into his body and merged it with his inner force. His inner force, loose as clouds and mist, gradually condensed into substance after the spiritual energy entered it.

Five hundred years of vast inner force compressed and transformed, becoming a trickling stream.

"This is Innate True Essence? The quantity has fallen tenfold, but the quality has increased a hundredfold!"

Zhou Yi circulated his True Essence and sent it out through his fingertips, condensing it into a visible sword of energy. With a flick of his hand, he hurled it at the stone slabs on the ground.

Swish!

Without a sound, the energy sword sliced the stone slab into two.

"When inner force is used to wound people, its power drops sharply after three or four feet. Beyond one zhang, the inner force disperses on its own. True Essence is different. Even at two or three zhang, it can remain condensed without dispersing, and its power does not diminish."

"To ordinary mortals, such a method of killing is almost that of an immortal!"

"No wonder the martial world says that beneath Innate Grandmasters, all are ants!"

Zhou Yi circulated his Innate True Essence. After one cycle, the spiritual energy entering his body was almost too faint to detect.

"At this rate of cultivation, will it take several hundred years to reach Innate completion?"

"The reason for such slowness cannot be merely poor aptitude. Neither the Heaven Devouring Demon Art nor the Origin Returning Art contains a cultivation method beyond Innate."

"Second, heaven and earth spiritual energy in the mortal world is extremely sparse, so naturally absorption is slow. Third, I rely entirely on my own cultivation, without supplementary items like medicinal pills..."

After carefully pondering the matter, Zhou Yi listed several reasons for his slow cultivation.

"Still, I should cultivate quietly in the mortal world. Even if it takes several hundred years, I can wait until the day I truly make no further progress before going to the Cultivation World."

"The Cultivation World is unlike the mortal world. It is too difficult to hide there, and there are too many methods of harming others. It would be hard to cultivate peacefully as I do now."

Zhou Yi instead believed that the mortal world's extremely sparse spiritual energy was a form of protection for him.

"Besides, it is not as though I have no cultivation technique..."

Zhou Yi suddenly recalled the Nameless Incantation Wei Chang had taught him years ago. Its contents concerned sensing the energy of heaven and earth, then refining it into one's body through a technique to strengthen the flesh.

Back then, he had been unable to even begin. Now that Zhou Yi had advanced to Innate, he could already sense heaven and earth spiritual energy.

"...Calm the heart and follow nature, breathe slowly and evenly, gather the divine radiance, reach the heart of heaven..."

Zhou Yi silently recited the incantation. True Essence circulated through his body on its own, and heaven and earth spiritual energy gathered toward him several times faster than before.

The spiritual energy refined by the Nameless Incantation did not increase his Innate True Essence. Instead, it merged into his sinews, bones, organs, and every limb and bone. His martial body-tempering, originally only newly entered into the organ realm, visibly improved by a substantial degree.

"This incantation is not a cultivation method. It should be the legendary body-refining art!"

"With this, can I cultivate another Innate realm through external body refinement?"

A smile appeared on Zhou Yi's face. Whether practicing martial arts or cultivating immortality, it was all to protect the Longevity Dao Fruit. So long as it could increase his strength, he would spare no time in cultivation. A hundred years or a thousand years made no difference.

"I should return to duty tomorrow!"

Heavenly Prison.

Zhou Yi greeted Feng Qiao, who was on duty.

"Old Feng, long time no see."

"Huh?"

Feng Qiao was reminiscing about Miss Lianxiang of Spring Breeze Pavilion, the flower courtesan from eight years ago. Back then, wealthy merchants and great magnates could throw away a fortune and still fail to win her favor; now, five taels of silver were enough.

"Old Zhou, you're not dead?"

"..."

Zhou Yi asked, "Who said I was dead?"

"That's what everyone in the prison has been saying. They said you always liked torturing martial world experts and killed so many people. You had many enemies outside, and they took revenge by ambushing and killing you, leaving not even an intact corpse!"

Feng Qiao explained, "Zhu Xiaowei even sent people to your home. No one answered when they knocked, so everyone believed it."

"I hid outside for a while. It's fine now."

Before Zhou Yi entered secluded cultivation, he had prepared a great deal of food and locked the door tight. Every day, he drank tea, read books, and contemplated his state of mind. No matter who knocked, he could not be bothered to answer.

During that time, thieves had indeed entered the courtyard. Perhaps they were enemies, perhaps mere burglars. Not one had survived a single palm strike from Zhou Yi.

A single punch carried five hundred years of power. Who could withstand it!