White Bone Grows Eye!
The sun and moon appeared every day, seemingly ordinary yet extraordinary.
The sun rose and the moon set, day and night alternated, and the four seasons revolved. This was the cyclical order of Heaven's laws.
The ancients worshiped the moon to pray for abundant harvests. Later, it became a vessel for the emotions of longing, carrying the yearning of humanity and expressing people's homesickness and their longing for family and friends.
In the eyes of modern people, the vast depths of the universe were filled with mystery. The moon was the celestial body closest to Earth, the outpost from which humanity advanced into deep space. Some had even proposed the idea of emigrating to the moon.
Compared with the sun's scorching heat, whose radiance kept everyone at bay, that gentle silver glow seemed much easier to accept.
Perhaps precisely because it appeared every day, everyone had grown accustomed to it—including Ye Qin. The moon he visualized hung above the firmament, its bright radiance never changing.
It was beautiful, certainly, but it lacked a certain soul.
Rather than call it a moon, it would be better described as an object that merely emitted light. It possessed none of Lunar Yin's divinity, like a soulless shell.
"Perhaps I'm still missing just a little. What exactly is it?"
Ye Qin gazed at the moon overhead and pondered with utmost seriousness.
People had their joys and sorrows, their meetings and partings; the moon waxed and waned, grew full and faded. The moon was not unchanging.
Just as when he had previously visualized white bones, flesh could grow from the bones, and flesh could transform back into bones. This followed the way of reincarnation, and the moon obeyed the same principle.
Ye Qin suddenly understood. As he figured this out, the moon he had visualized gradually faded, dissolving like flowers seen in a mirror or the moon reflected in water.
Heaven and earth once more returned to a state of chaos.
The long night stretched on, and boundless darkness shrouded all of heaven and earth. Not a trace of light remained. The entire sky was covered by a black curtain, pressing down until it was almost impossible to breathe.
No one knew how much time had passed. Amid the haze, stars appeared, countless points of light floating within it. A resplendent river of stars drifted before Ye Qin.
The stars in the heavens changed in myriad ways, yet each had its own fixed destiny, containing endless patterns and principles. But the very center remained empty, as though waiting for something to arrive.
The starry river surged. Silver light gathered together, raising monstrous waves. A colossal outline could faintly be seen, drawing the whole of heaven and earth into itself.
Silver gauze became water, and the countless rivers of stars stirred because of it. At last, the outline of this object became visible.
It was an enormous round disk, pouring down like a waterfall.
Silver light flickered, illuminating the past and present. Heaven and earth met, and the moon became the bridge.
Between heaven and earth, there was only this clear, transparent shadow.
The distance seemed close enough that one could reach out and pluck the stars and scoop up the moon, yet in truth it was incredibly far away. Its shape shifted endlessly, from a slender crescent to a full and rounded Jade Plate.
Ye Qin's entire snake body bathed in it.
Then a massive white skeleton slowly emerged behind him, gradually taking shape like a real object.
The faint silver radiance formed countless strands of gauze, wrapping around the white bones. Through this medium, the silver river in the heavens plunged downward, ceaselessly washing over the bones.
Black impurities were continuously scoured from the surface of the bones, then purified by the moonlight.
The originally sinister skeletal frame instead gained a touch of holiness and solemnity after being cleansed by the moonlight.
Immediately afterward, the Jade Plate high in the firmament began to rotate continuously, as though drawn by some inexplicable force.
The starry river began to ripple, forming a colossal vortex. Countless stars rose and fell, then gathered into a massive sphere of light that flew into the white skeleton's right eye socket.
An eye actually began to grow, slowly and surely!
The white skeleton's right eye remained an empty void, like a distant and profound universe.
But its other eye was brilliant with a river of stars, while the moon poured its radiance across ten thousand miles.
Bone Grows Eye!
Its lashes fluttered lightly, its gaze rippled—but apart from that eye, it was entirely bone!
This should have been an utterly bizarre sight, yet the grandeur within those two eyes added a magnificent and wondrous quality to it.
As the white bones, Ye Qin's origin visualization object, changed, Ye Qin himself emitted dazzling white light, even obscuring the original color of his snake body.
The bones within him became as hard as jade, every piece radiating an inexplicable brilliance.
At a glance, he looked like a great white serpent.
At that moment, from the inside out, Ye Qin felt himself undergo sublimation. He even felt an urge to rush toward the moon.
In an instant, the faint green of his snake pupils was replaced by the Jade Plate. A slender crescent moon faintly appeared within his snake pupils, leaving behind an indelible imprint.
"My left eye has also received nourishment from the visualization object and absorbed Lunar Yin moonlight!"
At that moment, Ye Qin's left snake eye possessed a wonder akin to the white skeleton's eye. It had been nourished by the white skeleton, his origin visualization object!
The left eye became the moon, wrapped in silver gauze, with a vast river of stars pouring down. The wondrous sight of the bright moon slowly rising could be seen within.
At that moment, he seemed able to see all things. Everything in the world could not escape those discerning eyes, all of it within his grasp.
"Second Realm, Creation Body Tempering!"
"I used the white bones to visualize the bright moon of Lunar Yin as creation, tempering it within one eye, thereby allowing the white bones, my origin visualization object, to give birth to a left eye transformed from Lunar Yin."
"Thus, my primary serpent body was affected by the origin visualization object, and its left eye underwent a wondrous transformation as well."
"This is the original intent of the Contemplation Method."
Ye Qin could even see his own bones transforming into a jade-like structure, hard beyond belief.
Soon, the Jade Plate flew out once more and hung high in the firmament. Ye Qin's eyes also returned to normal, and the illusory imaginings dissipated with it.
The white bones' imaginings likewise transformed into specks of light, merging into Ye Qin's body.
After escaping the visualization's illusion, his real-world eyes remained those pale green pupils. Yet, upon closer inspection, one could faintly see the mark of a crescent moon, as though it were proof that Lunar Yin had once left its imprint there.
Though the fusion with the visualization lasted only an instant, Ye Qin's current cultivation was insufficient to completely merge Lunar Yin's power into his eyes. Even so, that brief contact alone brought him tremendous benefits.
In the real world, his entire snake body also emitted a faint radiance imperceptible to human eyes, as though moonlight flowed through it. Even the surrounding magnetic field seemed to be changing faintly.
Elsewhere, Xie Yixuan finally reached the vicinity of the Falling Thunder and stopped advancing.
Strangely, however, the sound of thunder gradually faded, and the weather actually began to clear.
Even so, he did not dare approach too closely, lest the sky turn cloudy and thunder strike again by accident. If he were even slightly careless, it would be no laughing matter.
He stopped a long distance away and squinted as he observed. Aside from the Falling Thunder, there did not seem to be anything different about this place. It looked ordinary and commonplace, and Xie Yixuan could not help feeling disappointed.
"I thought there would be something good. Turns out it's nothing special after all."
Xie Yixuan was just preparing to head back when he suddenly seemed to notice something and could not help crying out in surprise.
"Huh? Why is there a snake over there?"
Xie Yixuan rubbed his eyes. From far away, he could vaguely make out what seemed to be a creature coiled on the ground in the distance. Its body was slender and long, unmistakably resembling a snake.
"That snake hasn't moved at all. Could it have already been struck dead by lightning? It's too far away—I can't see clearly."
Under the Falling Thunder, logically speaking, there should not have been any living creatures on the ground.
The surrounding earth was charred black, while stones and branches had all been blasted apart. Everywhere bore the marks of lightning strikes, revealing just how formidable the thunder was.
The snake's body could be faintly seen. Although most of it was black, it did not look like it had been struck dead.
All living creatures possessed an instinct to seek benefit and avoid harm. Along the way, he had not seen a single creature. Now that he had suddenly spotted a snake here, he found it extremely strange.
"All snakes should be hibernating right now. How did one run out here?"
Xie Yixuan widened his eyes, trying to see more clearly.
Yet the distance remained hazy, as though covered by a thin veil. He felt as if he were trying to view flowers through mist.
The distant snake did not seem very long, perhaps a little over a meter. Its eyes were closed, but its body stood upright, maintaining a strange posture.
It was simply too strange.
This chapter is complete.