Green Lotus

Rooted on a fragment of the Immortal Ascension Cauldron, the Green Lotus Immortal Medicine swayed its crystal-clear, emerald green lotus.

Sensing a Great Emperor's personal arrival, the green lotus instinctively showed goodwill, its petals blooming with divine splendor, opening to the utmost limit and manifesting an illusory colored rainbow bridge.

It has not yet opened its spiritual wisdom, merely giving birth to a trace of spiritual light, obscure and difficult to comprehend.

Zhang Huan inspected the origin of the green lotus, finding only a few spots of spiritual light flickering.

It would take a much more distant future for this immortal medicine to produce an independent consciousness.

It seems I arrived too early; the Green Emperor's consciousness has not yet been born.

Failing to catch a glimpse of the Green Emperor's true form, Zhang Huan felt quite regretful.

He communicated with the immortal medicine and plucked the fully bloomed lotus.

A refreshing fragrance assailed his senses, exhilarating and heart-pleasing. More than a dozen crystal-clear lotus seeds upon it displayed multicolored brilliance, forming the essence of the entire immortal medicine, nurtured for goodness knows how many years.

A single lotus flower could not harm its foundation, no different from plucking a fruit.

Without the petals pressing down, the stalk straightened, its top reconverging its essence to form another flower bud after a millennium or two, blooming brilliantly.

When the Green Emperor later severed his immortal medicine body to transform into a living being, there would no longer be any Green Lotus Immortal Medicine in the world.

The lotus in Zhang Huan's hand would be a swan song, the only one of its kind between heaven and earth, preciously rare.

The Green Emperor, the first Great Emperor of the Later Desolate Ancient Era, possessed stunning talent and brilliance, wishing to transform from the Immortal Domain into the Desolate Pagoda, surviving until Ye Fan became an Emperor.

Later, he joined hands with Ye Fan to open an Immortal Path, entering it and leaving no further news.

The immortal medicine instinctively felt close to the Great Emperor, without any fear, and shook its stem after offering a brilliant lotus flower.

It was very special among immortal medicines; although other immortal medicines were restricted by heaven and earth, they still possessed the intelligence of three- or four-year-old children.

Yet it merely possessed some instincts, lacking divine intelligence, showing an obvious gap compared to other immortal medicines.

Perhaps some drastic changes in the distant past caused it to become this way.

Or perhaps because it wished to shed its immortal medicine body and truly become a living being, it chose to break and then stand, still in the process of giving birth to spiritual wisdom.

It instinctively signaled, though it was unclear what it wished to express. Seeing this, Zhang Huan touched it with his hand, sending his spiritual sense into its origin.

By searching out the fragments of memory it had not forgotten and integrating the information, he sought to understand its demands.

Perhaps he could uncover the origin of its past life and learn certain things.

His divine soul passed through the darkness, surrounded by pieces of mirror-like surfaces, so white not a trace of an image remained.

Its memories had been almost completely severed. Exploring deeper, there were scenes of the Immortal Transformation Pond; it had fallen here long ago, rooting on a piece of bronze.

The Green Lotus Immortal Medicine muttered that it no longer wanted to live in a daze.

At some point, an obsession had begun driving it to act this way, to once again become a cultivator, cultivate to a certain realm, and repay a certain karma.

The entire memory contained only these images, very simple, failing to show what Zhang Huan wished to see.

Coupled with the extraordinary nature of the Green Emperor and its possible past life, perhaps the obsession within the Green Emperor's memories and that unknown karma were both related to this.

After a moment, Zhang Huan opened his eyes and pondered.

I shall grant you some fortune; you must repay me in later generations.

He pointed a finger, helping it condense its spiritual wisdom, and wrote down several targeted scriptures on the ground.

Although they were not peerless scriptures like Emperor Scriptures, they suited it perfectly and were the most effective.

Zhang Huan did not shy away from it; helping it was precisely to incur its favor with a deliberate purpose, demanding a more profound reward from the Green Emperor in future generations.

Otherwise, he could have simply taken this immortal medicine away. What did the Green Emperor have to do with him?

He stepped into the Immortal Transformation Pond to salvage immortal materials from this place.

The water shimmered with a deep, blue luster, flowing with rosy glow like a pool of nectar and liquid jade. The steam-wreathed radiance was dazzling, presenting a scene of utter peace.

He waded into the pool to grope about, fishing up some barely passable treasures.

The immortal treasures in the pool were not sufficiently astonishing, falling far short of the Immortal Transformation Pond's grand reputation.

There were no materials truly related to immortals, at best some fragments of ancient imperial weapons, materials capable of forging imperial weapons, and discarded sheds of immortal medicines. In terms of value, none could compare to the bronze block.

The Immortal Transformation Pond is said to contain immortal fate, but it seems to be an exaggeration, living up to its name in name only.

Zhang Huan sighed. It touched upon the word "immortal," yet bore no relation to immortals. It seemed to be merely an exaggeration passed by word of mouth among cultivators.

This place was indeed a treasured land for most cultivators, but its value had diminished somewhat for the Ancient Great Emperors.

Zhang Huan departed regretfully without the slightest lingering attachment, stepping once more into the Ancient Dragon Lair.

He took out the mysterious bird egg obtained from the Underworld, using the Qinling dragon veins to wash its foundation anew.

He poured Life Spring water over it, nourishing its body and soul, thus making up for its congenital deficiencies.

A single drop of an Ancient Great Emperor's Life Spring could revive the dead and regenerate flesh and bone, possessing supreme profundity.

Golden patterns gradually emerged on the mysterious bird's shell, climbing from bottom to top to all parts, evolving innate Dao laws and interpreting the profound meaning of its origin.

With a cry, the mysterious bird broke out of its shell, the size of a palm. From birth, it grew feathers that spread outward, transitioning from yellow to red.

It took the form of a divine bird, close to a phoenix, with a chicken-like beak, flapping wings, and a very long stretch of yellow-and-red intertwined feathers trailing from its tail.

Heaven and earth lowered auspicious signs, as if celebrating its birth, opening flowers of fortune that merged into its body.

Zhang Huan observed intently, seeing through the innate symbols the mysterious bird evolved within its origin from birth, closely related to fortune and extraordinarily profound.

Fortune—does it truly exist, or is it merely an illusory illusion?

Zhang Huan muttered. If it truly existed, was it a substance, or a rule?

If one could master it, would one not be inherently favored by the goddess of luck?

All bad luck in the world would not entangle one, and laws would fail before it, subverting the rules between heaven and earth.

Zhang Huan deduced with the mysterious bird's innate divine ability, attempting to probe the operational laws of fortune.

If it could truly ignore even rules and genuinely avert disaster to seek fortune, how could the mysterious bird, as the embodiment of fortune, have fallen into the hands of the Underworld and suffered such a checkered fate?

So that is how it is. Qi is the change, and fortune is the encounter.

The gathering of Qi, once accumulated to a certain quantity, could cause change, using the amount of fortune to offset things when encountering events—whether blessings or disasters—allowing one to take precautions in the dark.

Substantively speaking, it was a Dao encompassing arithmetic and divination, a method of cultivation.

Fortune had distinctions of high and low quality, following the same logic as a cultivator's strength; encountering irresistible disasters, one would still be like duckweed in water, unable to protect oneself.

Following the regular principles of the heavenly Dao, fortune was also merely a path of cultivation.

Zhang Huan intended to combine it with his own divination techniques in the future to create a spell.

Placing the small mysterious bird on his shoulder, Zhang Huan walked out of Qinling following the dragon veins, and sought out some medicinal herbs and divine materials in the Big Dipper.

His transformed appearance when visiting the Divine City had been sketched and posted on the city walls throughout the Eastern Wasteland with a bounty for his capture.

Without needing to think, he knew the people of the Ji Family were making trouble, so Zhang Huan went straight to find the Void Mirror.

The descendants of the Ji Family were so utterly worthless that it also felt ashamed, yet it and these old fossils all needed to slumber, leaving it truly willing but lacking the strength.

The Extreme Dao Family held high positions and great authority, and with their numerous and mixed members, it had anticipated the breeding of corruption. Long ago, it had already commanded a certain Holy Lord to issue decrees to counter this, but the results were meager, as there were all sorts of countermeasures below.