The moment Taiqing, clad in blue robes, stepped into the Universe World Chaos, what he trod upon was not soil, but array patterns.
The array patterns were terrifyingly dense, each line flowing with independent chains of laws, with even finer branches hanging from these chains, and capillary array lines hanging from those branches, layer upon layer, like a giant tree growing from the earth's core to the heavens, every branch a killing array, every leaf a trapping array. Taiqing, in his blue robe, squatted down and examined the array pattern on the sole of his foot, poking at it with the tip of his bamboo cane, releasing a wisp of grayish-white spark. The spark didn't extinguish upon landing; instead, it took root and sprouted, growing a new array pattern that wrapped around his ankle.
"It will grow on its own." Taiqing, dressed in blue, slammed his bamboo cane on the ground, shattering the array patterns on his ankle into powder. "Interesting."
He took three steps forward, each step shattering a piece of the array pattern, but the shattered patterns regenerated in the blink of an eye, thicker and tougher than before. On his fourth step, a muffled sound came from the plain ahead, the ground rose three zhang high, and a crack appeared, from which emerged a huge stone ball. The surface of the stone ball was covered with array patterns, which unfolded on their own as it rolled over, like a net covering his head. Taiqing, in his blue robe, did not dodge. He pointed his bamboo staff at the stone ball, the tip of the staff hitting the node where the array patterns intersected, and the stone ball split in two. But two smaller stone balls rolled out from the split stone ball, also covered with array patterns, and also covered him.
"Mother-Child Formation." Taiqing, dressed in a blue robe, Taiqing, holding his bamboo staff horizontally in front of his chest. "Break one, and two will grow; break two, and four will grow. The faster you break them, the faster they will grow."
An aged voice echoed from the edge of the plain, "You've seen it. All formations originate from one, and all formations reappear. I stand on the formation platform at the center of this world. As long as the platform remains unbroken, however many stone spheres you shatter, that many more can be carved into the platform. You shatter for three hundred years, I carve for three hundred years. You shatter for three thousand years, I carve for three thousand years. You may be tired of shattering, but I am not yet tired of carving."
Taiqing, dressed in a blue robe, looked up in the direction of the sound. At the end of the plain stood a gray-white stone platform, upon which sat a gaunt old man, cross-legged. Before him was a nine-inch square array plate, densely covered with countless points of light, each a miniature of a stone sphere. With a flick of the old man's thin fingers, ten more stone spheres rolled out onto the plain. He flicked them so fast his fingers were almost invisible, and the stone spheres rolled out faster and faster, converging on Taiqing from all directions.
Taiqing, dressed in blue, planted his bamboo staff in the ground, causing it to grow to three zhang tall. He sat cross-legged atop the staff, looking down at the ever-growing number of stone spheres around him. He stopped striking them, simply observing. After about the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea, he suddenly pulled up the staff and took seven steps to the west. After taking seven steps, the array patterns beneath his feet suddenly became chaotic. The chains of law that had been flowing eastward began to swirl, with the center of the vortex right where he was standing. He then took nine steps to the north, and the array patterns reversed their flow, colliding with the flowing patterns and producing a crackling sound. He then took six steps to the south, and four steps eastward, adding a horizontal line at the joints of the array patterns with each step. When he reached the seventeenth step, the array patterns in the southeast corner of the entire plain suddenly dimmed simultaneously.
The old man's expression changed. "You're altering my formation?"
"I used to play with arrays when I was young," Taiqing, dressed in blue, said as he walked, adding horizontal lines. "I stopped playing later; it's too mentally taxing. But I remember one thing: before all arrays can be unified, they must first be unified. You connect all the array patterns to the array platform, and the platform absorbs the energy from the entire array to repair the shattered stone balls. The faster it repairs, the more energy it absorbs. But your array platform draws energy from the array patterns, and the array patterns draw energy from the earth's veins. The more you draw, the faster the earth's veins supply energy. If I add a few broken lines at the joints of the array patterns, the energy you draw will leak back halfway, and your array platform will have to use twice the effort to repair a single stone ball. The more frequently you repair, the more energy leaks out, and the little bit of energy stored on the array platform will eventually run out."
The old man gritted his teeth and slammed his hands onto the array plate. All the light spots on the plate exploded simultaneously, and all the stone spheres on the plain shattered into dust. The dust condensed in the air into a gray-white array pillar, containing all the array cultivation accumulated by the old man over Eon. The old man jumped off the array platform and merged into the array pillar. The pillar swelled to a hundred feet tall, and three thousand Dao Master array patterns, thirty thousand branch array patterns, and three hundred thousand capillary array patterns appeared on its body. All the array patterns pointed at Taiqing, who was dressed in blue.
"If you leak my array, I'll shrink it into a pillar." The old man's voice came from within the pillar, deep and resonant. "The pillar doesn't supply energy; it only kills. You can't leak my nourishment. I'll use all my cultivation to condense this pillar. If you can handle it, great; if not, you'll stay here as fertilizer for my array patterns."
Taiqing, dressed in blue, slung his bamboo staff over his shoulder and looked up at the hundred-zhang-tall array pillar. The pillar Support Heaven and Stand Upon Earth, its intricate patterns resembling raindrops in a downpour. Every zhang (approximately 3.3 meters) along its shaft was embedded a fragment of a broken stone sphere, still carrying lingering traces of the array's laws. He stared at it for a moment, then suddenly laughed, "This pillar is indeed difficult to withstand. But you made a mistake—you've condensed the array into a pillar; the pillar is inanimate, but the person is alive. Before, when you hid behind the array platform, I couldn't find you. Now that you're standing inside the pillar, I don't need to look for you anymore."
He took the bamboo staff from his shoulder, aimed the tip at the base of the array pillar, and thrust it in. The staff tip penetrated three inches, and the array patterns on the pillar immediately rebounded, causing the blue-robed Taiqing's hands to go numb. He didn't let go; instead, he pushed the bamboo staff another three inches into the pillar, then flicked the end of the staff to the left, deflecting two of the array patterns at the base of the pillar. The pillar swayed, and the old man let out a muffled groan from within. Taiqing flicked the bamboo staff to the right, deflecting three more array patterns. The pillar swayed again, more violently than before. He flicked it seventeen times, each flick hitting the most strained joint of the pillar. The pillar began to tilt from the bottom, and when it reached halfway, it creaked and cracked.
"You can't move it!" the old man roared from inside the pillar. The pillar suddenly shrank to ten zhang in diameter, and the density of the array patterns tripled. The patterns that Taiqing in the blue robe had deflected were all pushed back into place. However, after the pillar shrank, it became shorter, shrinking from a hundred zhang to fifty zhang. The old man's aura inside the pillar was noticeably weaker. Taiqing the blue robe raised an eyebrow, withdrew his bamboo staff, took three steps back, and suddenly thrust the staff into the ground. He formed a very simple hand seal, and nine gray-white horizontal lines appeared behind him as he completed the seal. Each line represented a complete law. He pushed the nine lines onto the pillar, and the lines wrapped around the pillar like nine hoops binding it. When the pillar tried to shrink, the hoops shrank; when the pillar tried to expand, the hoops expanded. The old man urged all the array patterns inside the pillar to push outward. When he reached the eighth hoop, the ninth hoop suddenly tightened, leaving a deep mark in the middle of the pillar.
"You've lost." Taiqing blue robe, took a step forward. "When I'm binding you, you have to hold on. The more you hold on, the tighter I'll bind you. If you don't hold on, my binding will loosen on its own. But if you don't hold on, the array pillars will collapse, and you'll fall out of them. If you fall out, we'll fight again, but without the array platform to power you, you won't last three moves."
There was a moment of silence within the array pillars, then the old man suddenly laughed, a dry and hoarse laugh, "I concede. The array platform is yours, the stone sphere is yours, this world is yours. But I have one condition."
"Explain."
"What you just said, 'Formations are for people to use, not just for show,' is that right?"
"Right."
"After you take over this world, let the people inside continue playing with the array. Don't dismantle my array patterns; let them modify them themselves. If they mess it up, it's on me; if they fix it well, it's yours."
Taiqing, dressed in blue, pulled up his bamboo cane and slung it over his shoulder. "Deal. But there's one condition: you have to add a line of words to your battle platform."
What word?
"Someone talked about how to modify the formation today, it's free, and it comes with stone balls."
The array pillar split open in the middle, and the old man tumbled out and sat on the ground, wiping the dust off his face. "Why are you like a pancake seller, always saying 'I bring it all for free'?"
Taiqing, dressed in blue robes, ignored him and walked deeper into the world, carrying his bamboo staff. "Mark all the array patterns in this world for me. I'll mark which ones connect to the earth's veins and which ones don't. After you're done, I'll move the shell. After you bring it back, go find a man surnamed Yin in City of Ten Thousand Crafts. He has ten thousand barriers there. Start from the first barrier and slowly break through them. Once you break through the ten thousandth barrier, you'll know how to modify the array to be both tight and leak-proof."
When Taiqing, dressed in a grey-white Daoist robe, stepped into the Universe World of Western Chaos, he was met head-on by a sword light.
The sword light arrived with incredible speed, without any initial stance, charging, or warning. It slashed down directly from the clouds. Taiqing, dressed in a grey-white Taiqing robe, tilted his head to dodge. The sword light grazed his ear and struck the ground, leaving a deep, bottomless sword mark. The mark's surface was smooth as a mirror, reflecting Taiqing's face. He looked down at the sword mark, then reached out and touched it, cutting his fingertip. A drop of blood dripped into the mark, and suddenly a row of grey-white spikes sprouted from it, piercing towards the soles of his feet.
"Extinction Sword Intent." Taiqing, in his grey-white Taiqing robe, spun around, leaping three zhang off the ground, the sharp spikes grazing the soles of his shoes. "You've already slashed the spot, so you slash again, and after that, you grow more spikes. Your swordsmanship is truly ruthless."
A cold, hard voice echoed from the clouds, "The Way of Annihilation: Cut the weeds and eradicate the roots. Nothing is allowed to grow where you've cut. If anything does grow, cut it again until nothing grows. You've entered my world, so I'll cut you down until you leave. If you don't leave, I'll cut you down until you die."
Taiqing, clad in a grey-white Daoist robe, landed back on the ground, removed the black and white jade pendant from his waist, and held it in his palm. The Yin-Yang Qi on the pendant slowly rotated. He shouted into the clouds, "You struck me with your sword, and I will return the favor. My sword will not strike the person, but your swordsmanship."
He tossed the jade pendant into the sky, and it transformed into a Taiji Diagram that hovered above his head. The Taiji Diagram rotated extremely slowly, with the Yin Fish and Yang Fish linked head to tail. A gray-white beam of light shot out from the diagram, shooting straight into the clouds. From within the clouds, a second sword beam emerged, three times thicker than the first. The sword beam struck the beam of light, but instead of shattering, it enveloped the sword beam. The Yin and Yang Yin-Yang Qi enveloped the sword beam, causing it to swirl around. Half of the annihilating sword intent within the beam was worn away, and the remainder was swallowed by the Yin Fish and then spat out from the Yang Fish's mouth. The spat-out sword beam turned around and slashed back into the clouds.
A startled cry came from the clouds, followed by a third sword light. This sword light was thicker than the previous two combined, containing nine sword threads, each a complete law of annihilation. These laws were interconnected, impossible to sever or break. Taiqing, in his grey-white Daoist robe, pressed the Taiji Diagram down, its surface pressed against the sword light. Yin-Yang Qi seeped into the gaps between the sword threads, but instead of forcibly breaking them, they followed their direction. If the threads went east, he went east; if they went west, he went west. After following them for half a circle, he suddenly twisted in the opposite direction, and all nine sword threads simultaneously knotted into a tight knot. The sword light shattered at the knot, turning into countless sword fragments.
The clouds dispersed, and the middle-aged man stood in mid-air, clutching the last strand of sword silk in his hand. His face showed three parts anger and seven parts shock. "What kind of fighting style is this? You followed my sword, and before you knew it, you'd led it into a ditch."
Taiqing, dressed in a grey-white Daoist robe, retrieved the Taiji Diagram and hung it on his waist. "Your sword path follows annihilation. The sword intent of annihilation has only one path—slash forward, slash to the very end, never look back. I follow the direction you slash, wherever you slash, I follow. You and your sword have been working together for tens of thousands of years, and you're used to the sword being faster than your brain. When I catch up with the speed of your sword, your sword thinks I'm still your sword. By the time your sword realizes something is wrong with me, it has already overused the moves and can't take them back."
The middle-aged man tucked the sword thread into his sleeve and landed ten paces away from Taiqing, who was dressed in a grey-white Daoist robe. Suddenly, he tucked both hands into his sleeves, his whole being resembling a sword sheathed. He stood there for a moment, and his aura suddenly changed, transforming from the violent and destructive energy of before into something extremely deep and still, so deep that the ground beneath Taiqing's feet began to sink, and so still that Taiqing could not even hear his own heartbeat.
"The Annihilation Sword Path has two levels." The middle-aged man drew his right hand from his sleeve, his index and middle fingers joined together, a gray-white sword light thinner than a hair condensing at the tip. "The first level is about cutting things. The second level is about whether to cut or not."
He drew two fingers towards Taiqing, who was dressed in a grey-white Taiqing robe. There was no sword light, no sword energy, no sword wind; only a very faint, thin line appeared in the air. Taiqing's pupils contracted, and he suddenly unfolded the Taiji Diagram in front of him. The Yin-Yang Qi in the diagram spun rapidly, but the thin line passed directly through the Taiji Diagram as if it were a piece of paper. The thin line cut half an inch into Taiqing 'Taiqing chest, where it was stopped by a grey-white medicinal force within his body. He looked down at the thin line on his chest. The line did not bleed or hurt, but it had severed the laws governing that area of his chest, preventing the flow of spiritual energy and divine sense.
"This sword strike is called 'Severing the Root'." The middle-aged man withdrew his two fingers. "I won't cut your physical body, I won't cut your soul, I'll cut the root of the laws within you. The root is severed, the flesh is still there, the soul is still there, but the flesh and soul can no longer connect, and the soul can no longer connect with the laws. You will slowly dissipate."
Taiqing, dressed in a greyish-white Daoist robe, looked down at his chest for a moment, then suddenly untied the medicine gourd from his waist, uncorked it, and poured a greyish-white liquid onto his chest. The liquid seeped into the gap cut by the fine thread, and new laws slowly grew from the edges of the gap. The new laws couldn't connect with the old ones, growing in sections and then breaking off, like two different ropes that couldn't be joined together. He frowned, put the medicine gourd back in, and looked up at the middle-aged man, saying, "Your sword is ruthless enough. Once the root is severed, it can't be reattached, leaving only death. But you have a weakness."
What flaw?
"You need two fingers together to make that sword strike, and you have to stay completely still while you're doing it. Before you can strike me, you have to find the root of the laws within me. Finding the root takes time, and after you find it, you have to concentrate your sword intent on your two fingers, which also takes time. You spent half a cup of tea searching for the root of my laws and a third of a breath concentrating your intent. In that time, I could run three zhang away from you, and your sword strike would only hit my shadow."
The middle-aged man was silent for a moment. Taiqing, in his grey-white Daoist robe, didn't give him another chance to speak. He pushed off with his foot, retreating three zhang (approximately 10 meters), and simultaneously planted the Taiji Diagram on the ground, its surface facing outwards, reversing the Yin-Yang Qi. The middle-aged man indeed caught up and slashed again, the thin line cutting into the eye of the Yang Fish in the Taiji Diagram. The Yang fish eye spun, deflecting the line to the Yin Fish eye, which swallowed it. The Yin Fish eye spun three times inside its stomach, and when it emerged from the Yang Fish's mouth, the line had transformed into a grey-white hair. The middle-aged man was stunned. Taiqing robe, had already circled to his side, his right hand drawing a grey-white chess piece from his sleeve and flicking it at his feet. The piece landed and transformed into a small Taiji Diagram. Within the diagram, the Yin Fish bit the middle-aged man's left foot, and the Yang Fish bit his right foot, freezing him in place.
"I glanced at you three times when you were looking for my root." Taiqing, in his grey-white Daoist robe, walked up to him. "The first glance was at your fingers, the second at your eyes, and the third at your feet. Your eyelid twitched once before you put your fingers together, and after the twitch, your toes gripped the ground. Your gripping toes meant you found my root. You searched for half a cup of tea, and your eyelid twitched seventeen times. On the seventeenth twitch, I moved the root, and the sword strike you made hit the fake root that I had deliberately left in place."
The middle-aged man looked down at the Taiji Diagram on his feet, then suddenly withdrew his two fingers, his sword intent dissipating, and he transformed from a sword back into a human. "I can't beat you. It's not that the sword isn't fast enough, it's that you're too fast. In the time it takes me to strike once, you've moved three times. By the time I found you, you were already gone. You're taking this world, and I'll follow, but you have to promise me one thing."
"Explain."
"The Yin-Yang Qi in your Taiji Diagram can hone your sword intent. I'll go with you; lend me the Taiji Diagram to practice. My Extinction Sword Dao, when practiced to the point where it can cut through the world, will eventually kill me. Your Taiji Diagram can wear away the annihilation aspect of your sword intent, leaving only the pure sword Dao aspect. Lend me the diagram, and I'll help you collect the shell."
Taiqing, dressed in a grey-white Daoist robe, picked up the chess pieces from the ground and tossed them to him along with the Taiji Diagram: "You can borrow the diagram. You can keep the shell. Anything inside the shell that contains sword principles can be used for sword practice. After you're done, extract the sword principles and send them back to the Primordial Wilderness. By the way, find a man surnamed Yin in City of Ten Thousand Crafts. He has ten thousand levels there. The ten thousandth level is called the 'Naturalness Pass.' When you can cut through the level with a single sword strike and still not be able to, you've mastered it."
When Taiqing, dressed in earthen yellow and short brown, stepped into the Universe World directly below, his feet were treading on blood and mud.
The blood-soaked mud wasn't deep, just above his ankles, but it was filled with countless fragments of bone, black energy seeping from between them. Taiqing, in his khaki-colored short-haired robe, pulled his hoe from his waist and plunged it into the mud. The hoe went in three inches, and three bubbles rose from the mud, bursting and releasing three wisps of black energy that condensed into three ghostly faces baring their teeth at him. Taiqing ignored the faces, lifting the hoe and pulling out a clump of black mud containing a fragment of bone, its surface engraved with extremely fine killing runes. He brought the bone to his nose and smelled it, detecting a musty, aged blood odor mixed with the sour, stale smell of Devil Dao.
"The path of killing, the path of Devil Dao, and even the path of killing formations." He threw the bone fragment back into the blood mud and shouted into its depths, "Stop hiding, come out. You three spread blood mud all over the world, just waiting for me to step in? If you don't come out after I step in, I'll refine all the blood mud into ointment and take it back to the people of Cold-Engineering City to treat their frostbite."
Three auras emanated from the depths of the bloody mud: one violent, one chilling, and one slippery. The three auras rose simultaneously, the bloody mud exploded, and three figures leaped out of the mud, landing on Taiqing in earthen yellow and short brown robes. The bare-chested strong man carried a serrated machete, the tall, thin man in black had his hands wrapped with Causality threads, and the veiled woman had nine black snakes flicking their tongues around her waist.
The shirtless, burly man spoke first, his voice booming like a broken gong. "The Way of Slaughter, the Slaughter of Ten Thousand Souls. Every inch of bloody mud you step on is the remains of the creatures I've killed. With each cut I make, the mud deepens by an inch. I've made thirty-seven cuts where you stand; three thousand dead ghosts lie buried beneath. Those bones beneath your feet belong to the last master of this continent; I slaughtered his entire family before this layer of mud was laid."
The tall, thin man in black spoke in a voice as thin as a needle scraping porcelain, "The Way of the Killing Array severs Causality. My Causality threads are connected to every lifeline in your body. Raise your left hand and it will be severed; raise your right hand and it will be severed. If you don't raise it, I won't sever it. Try raising it."
The veiled woman remained silent. The nine black snakes around her waist opened their mouths simultaneously, spitting out nine black threads that wove into a soul net in the air. Hanging on the net were countless tiny orbs of light, each orb representing a soul that had been swallowed.
Taiqing, dressed in a short, dark Taiqing robe, planted his hoe on the ground, the blade sinking five inches into the mud. The surrounding blood-red mud churned and receded, clearing a three-foot square patch of dry ground. Standing in the center, he pulled a handful of Gray-White Vines seeds from his sleeve and scattered them around. The seeds took root and sprouted, the vines growing wildly along the surface of the blood-red mud. When they reached the three men's feet, they suddenly forked, one half wrapping around the burly man's leg, another around the thin man's wrist, and the third around the woman's ankle. The three men moved simultaneously, the burly man slashing off the vines at their feet with a single stroke. The vines, their severed ends spurting grayish-white sap, splashed onto his leg. The sap, upon landing, transformed into new vines, binding even more tightly. The skinny man flicked his fingers, the Causality threads severing the vines one by one. However, the sap spurting from the severed ends soaked Causality threads, making them slippery and soft, unable to bind anything tightly anymore. The woman's nine snakes simultaneously bit the vines, but the moment their fangs touched the vines, they were burned by the grayish-white flowers sprouting from them, causing them to retract. The pollen from the flowers stuck to the snake scales, and their bodies stiffened segment by segment.
The burly man roared, slashing his left arm with his cleaver. Blood splattered onto the vines, burning them to ashes. He broke free, his blade flashing again. This time, he didn't slash randomly; each strike aimed at the dreadful Taiqing, each slash imbued with the crimson laws of killing. Taiqing, wielding his hoe, parried seven blows, leaving seven notches on the handle, each oozing blood. He tossed the hoe to the ground, charging forward empty-handed. With his left hand, he gripped the burly man's wrist, while his right hand slapped the man's chest, sending a wisp of grayish-white medicinal vapor into his throat. The burly man's chest bulged, and he spat out a mouthful of black blood, mixed with fragments of the laws of killing. Taiqing pressed the man's wrist to the ground, half his body sinking into the bloody mud, unable to pull himself out.
Taking advantage of the lull, the skinny man rewrote his net, this time with extremely dense Causality threads. Each thread connected to a killing formation, concealing glints of blades. Taiqing, in his khaki-colored short-haired robe, glanced back at him, then pulled a grayish-white gourd from his sleeve and tossed it behind him. The gourd landed and transformed into a tall vine trellis, from which nine grayish-white vines hung, binding the skinny man and the net around his head. The skinny man struggled three times within the vines without breaking free; the vines only tightened further. Taiqing, in his khaki-colored short-haired robe, Taiqing back and added, "Your Causality threads are woven too densely; you can't even figure out which thread connects to which. Figure it out first before you come out to fight."
While the two men were entangling the tan-haired Taiqing, the woman secretly combined the nine snakes into a single black python, its body as thick as a water vat and its mouth large enough to swallow a person. The black python lunged at Taiqing from behind, its fangs about three inches from the back of his head, when Taiqing suddenly crouched down, pried a fragment of bone from the bloody mud at his feet, and flicked it backward. The bone fragment shot into the python's mouth and became lodged in its throat; the black python couldn't swallow or spit it out, and rolled around on the ground in agony. The woman jumped onto the python's back to try and pry the bone fragment out, but Taiqing had already turned around, clutching a handful of grayish-white powder, and sprinkled it onto the python. The powder took root and sprouted vines from the python's scales, weaving a net inside its belly, binding it from the inside out, rendering it immobile. The woman was thrown off the python's body, and when she landed, Taiqing was already standing in front of her, a medicinal hoe held against her neck.
"The Way of Slaughter only knows how to kill, not how to stop." Taiqing, dressed in khaki and short brown, pushed the hoe forward half an inch. "I remember you slashing me once, but you keep slashing after that, and in the end you even kill your own people. Look at this layer of bloody mud you've laid down; there are three thousand dead ghosts buried underneath, their resentment rising up. Don't you feel your feet getting cold from walking on it every day?"
The burly man pulled half his body out of the mud. "What kind of path of slaughter doesn't involve killing?"
"Killing is not wrong. But after you kill someone, you have to clean up the blood and grime, dispel the resentment, and bury the broken bones. If you just kill without cleaning up, the blood and grime will only get thicker and thicker until you can't even step into it yourself; you'll sink up to your waist." Taiqing, in his khaki short-coated robe, put the hoe back on his waist, squatted down, and dug out the largest broken bone from the blood and grime. The name of the last dead ghost was engraved on the bone. "I've cleaned up the resentment on this bone for you. You'll have to clean up the three thousand pieces below yourself. After you're done, go out of the pass and find a man surnamed Gao in City of Ten Thousand Crafts. He has nine categories of case precedents. The first one is called 'What to do after killing someone.' Go and study them."
The skinny man freed one hand from the vines. "What about my Causality threads?"
"Straighten it out and start weaving again. Weave a net with half the threads missing, and hang a sign on the remaining threads indicating which ones it connects to and which ones it doesn't. Go to City of Ten Thousand Crafts and find the man surnamed Yin. He has ten thousand checkpoints there. The ten thousandth checkpoint is called 'Naturalness Pass.' You pass the checkpoint if you can weave a net that can trap people without relying on the array platform for power."
The woman got up from the ground, and the black python withdrew its nine smaller snakes, which slithered into her sleeve. "Where are my snakes?"
"I'll keep the snake for you. But you need to change your habit of swallowing souls. Change it to swallowing turbid air and exhaling pure air, specifically to purify the blood-muddy ground. Go find a monk named Ni in Medicine-Engineering City. He has a technique called 'Ni,' which teaches people how to spit out what they've swallowed."
The three looked at each other, and the burly man suddenly grinned. "You old man, you're not just collecting world treasures, you're also running a teaching class?"
Taiqing, dressed in a khaki-colored short-sleeved brown robe, slung his hoe over his shoulder and headed into the depths of the world. "I won't teach you. You'll learn on your own. Once you've mastered it, I'll come back to collect the shells, and we'll leave together then. By the way, the pancake maker in City of Ten Thousand Crafts has some new pancakes. When you go, each of you take two with you and say that Lord Taiqing sent you."
The three avatars emerged almost simultaneously from three Universe World. Taiqing, in a blue robe, carried a bamboo staff and headed towards Kunlun Mountain; Taiqing, in a grey-white robe, hung Taiji Diagram at his waist and followed behind; and Taiqing, in an earth-yellow short-sleeved robe, carried a medicine hoe and brought up the rear. When the three were halfway there, a deep, muffled sound came from the depths of Chaos, deeper than all the previous sounds combined. Taiqing in the blue robe listened intently. "Shangqing has broken through the hard shell."
Taiqing, dressed in a grey-white Daoist robe, glanced westward and said, "Does he also have Primordial Daluo Golden Immortal inside his shell? Why is there such a commotion?"
"I don't know. I'll ask when I get back."
The three quickened their pace towards the Primordial Wilderness. When they reached the Kunlun Mountain, Shangqing was already sitting in a Primordial Daluo Golden Immortal wielding double hammers. His hammer technique was extremely fierce. I clashed with him head-on for three days, and in the end, the handles of his hammers broke first."
The true form of Taiqing poked half its head out from halfway up the mountain. "Where's the shell?"
"It's been moved back. It's located in the northern part of the Eastern Victory Divine Continent; the Sea-Engineering City shipyard is expanding outwards."
Where's the hammer?
"I kept the hammer, but gave it to Duobao. Duobao said that hammer is easier to use for hitting people than the Heaven-Slaying Sword."