"April 25, 2018, on the lunar calendar, at Yellow Goat Mountain's Three Goat Temple..."
"Above, they worshipped the Three Goat Temple's Founding Ancestor, Chong Yunzi, the Profoundly Numinous Qinghua Perfected Being; below, they worshipped..."
Amid a piece of classical ritual music, the ceremony presided over by the Abbot finally began. There were more than a hundred Taoists conducting the ritual, and there was no need to mention those maintaining order. Besides Three Goat Temple, many people had also been transferred from other Taoist temples.
The whole of Yellow Goat Mountain was packed with people. The temple was filled with spectators who had come to watch the ceremony and curious onlookers who had come because of its fame. From the mountaintop to the foot of the mountain, there were people everywhere. Even in secluded places, members of the Abnormal Affairs Investigation Team could be seen lying low among the crowd, observing their surroundings and waiting expectantly for the scene they had anticipated to appear.
All the Taoists of Three Goat Temple were extremely excited as well. Amid coils of incense smoke, everyone knelt prostrate on the ground and invited a several-meter-tall divine statue onto the Divine Platform in the main hall.
It was a Taoist dressed in white, a long sword strapped to his back and a spirit tree clutched in his hand. He gazed down at the platform with an indifferent expression, vividly recreating the bearing of the immortal who had once stood atop the clouds.
The Abbot of Three Goat Temple, Lin Housheng, was now over sixty. At that age, he had reached the closing stage of his life. The closer he came to the end, the more intense his longing became for the legends of Taoism and the immortals—especially after he had witnessed with his own eyes such a legendary, mythical existence appear before him.
Decades of devotion, faith, and doubt, all intertwined, settled in an instant and transformed into complete belief.
He looked at the statue of the Founding Ancestor on the platform, his face filled with fervor. Kneeling prostrate, he reverently cried out the Founding Ancestor's name.
The ceremony lasted three days and three nights. At such an advanced age, the Abbot of Three Goat Temple, Lin Housheng, remained kneeling prostrate beneath the Founding Ancestor's statue and prayed devoutly from beginning to end. Even his apprentices and disciples could not endure such ascetic practice, but Lin Housheng gritted his teeth and held on.
On the first day of Three Goat Temple's ceremony to worship the Founding Ancestor, the foot of the mountain had been packed with people. Many had stood beneath the blazing sun for an entire day, yet still saw none of the so-called immortal miracles. By the second day, more than half of them had dispersed.
By the third day, only a sparse handful remained.
Inside the main hall, cloud patterns were carved into the red pillars, while dragons and phoenixes bringing auspiciousness adorned the wooden windows. The Founding Ancestor's statue stood alongside numerous immortals and Buddhas, even occupying the very center.
At night, the green lamps flickered uncertainly. Beneath the dim flames, the statue cast a blurred, elongated shadow. Lin Housheng led his disciples in wearing ornate Taoist robes entirely different from their usual plain garments.
Lin Housheng wore a ritual robe embroidered with various auspicious Taoist designs in gold and silver thread. The sun, moon, and stars, the Eight Trigrams, and Auspicious Clouds complemented one another. Together with his head of crane-white hair and long white beard, he looked suffused with an immortal aura.
But at that moment, the Abbot Lin Housheng's face was deathly pale. If not for his faith in and firm belief in the Founding Ancestor, he probably would have been unable to hold on long ago.
In his dazed state, ripples suddenly appeared before the Abbot Lin Housheng's eyes. All he could see was the Founding Ancestor's statue suddenly blazing with light. Its searing white radiance illuminated the entire hall until everything was white, like a sacred land in an immortal realm.
The glare stabbed so fiercely that the Abbot Lin Housheng could not even open his eyes. He desperately turned his head away and covered his eyes.
But when he opened his eyes again, he saw the heavens and earth spin. The entire world overturned and changed, while the sky and land shifted colors. It was as though he had fallen from the endless void. Clouds and fierce winds scraped past him, roaring in his ears.
"Ah!" The intense sensation of weightlessness frightened Lin Housheng into a scream. Even the Taoist crown on his head came loose, and his gray-white hair spilled down in disarray.
When he finally reached the bottom, he felt as though something had caught him. Dizzy and disoriented, he only managed to crawl up from the ground after quite some time.
Once he stood, he looked around and saw that he was no longer inside the Taoist temple. Instead, he was before a huge Immortal Mountain Palace. The enormous palace and the Immortal Mountain beneath his feet soared into the clouds, as though floating upon them.
In the distance stretched an endless ocean. He stood before a stairway that reached the heavens, gazing up at the immortal palace towers. Mist drifted beneath his feet, while the breeze beneath the cold moon swept across his face. Everything was so real. When the mist passed through his body, it felt as though it soothed his soul, leaving his entire spirit pure and translucent.
Shock and delight surged across his face. Trembling, he moved his feet. His whole body shook without cease, yet he disregarded everything and walked forward.
Step by step, he climbed the stairs and reached the immense plaza, gazing up at the enormous gate tower before the immortal palace.
"Qinghua Palace!"
The grand gates of the immortal palace swung open. A gale swept over his body and dragged him across the white-jade-paved plaza, sent him spinning past the resplendent golden-jade hall, carried him across the ancient, fragrant corridors, and swept layers upon layers of painted paper doors past his side, finally delivering him to the cliffside behind the palace.
Beneath a divine tree with white leaves and branches laden with immortal fruit, two figures sat cross-legged. The immortal fruit gave off spiritual radiance; merely inhaling once made one's soul feel as though it were floating. Within each fruit, a spirit infant sat in solemn majesty. The divine tree laden with immortal fruit shone with ten thousand zhang of divine light.
The cold moon hung in the sky above Sword Peak's immortal mountain.
At the cliffside wreathed in mist, two immortals played chess beneath the immortal tree. The tree radiated spiritual light, which flowed and swirled around it like a river of phosphorescence. The two immortals sat beneath the tree as though seated atop the Milky Way.
One had silver hair and a youthful face. He wore a moon-white robe and was none other than Three Goat Temple's Founding Ancestor, Chong Yunzi, as Lin Housheng believed.
The other looked like an eight- or nine-year-old girl, but her expression was calm and cold, aloof like a Female Immortal amid the clouds. She wore a gorgeous Rainbow Feather Dress. The fabric was thin as a cicada's wing, layered over itself so many times that the number could not be counted, and it moved of its own accord beneath the moon, though there was no wind.
The two merely sat there, yet their bodies unconsciously radiated faint light. Compared to the mountains and seas, they were like dazzling stars dancing with the Silver Moon.
The board was sharply divided between black and white, but on closer inspection, it seemed to contain a galaxy. Every chess piece that fell was like a star swaying and plummeting from the heavens.
The instant Lin Housheng saw the Founding Ancestor, his eyes filled with excited tears, and the veins on his neck bulged, as though decades of faith had finally received acknowledgment.
He dropped to his knees before the two of them. "Disciple Qing Yun, seventy-second-generation Abbot of Three Goat Temple, worldly name Lin Housheng, pays respects to Founding Ancestor Chong Yunzi!"
But when he raised his head, he saw that the two seemed to look straight through him, continuing their game beneath the moon. Lin Housheng bowed again, performing three kneelings and nine prostrations.
"Disciple Qing Yun, seventy-second-generation Abbot of Three Goat Temple, worldly name Lin Housheng, pays respects to Founding Ancestor Chong Yunzi!"
He still received no response. The two immortals seemed completely lost in their game of chess. How could they spare any attention for the words and pleas of a mortal like him?
Lin Housheng crawled forward step by step, kneeling with every step, until he lay at the feet of Founding Ancestor Chong Yunzi beneath the immortal tree.
"Founding Ancestor! Founding Ancestor! This disciple has come in sincerity, seeking the Way with all his heart!" Lin Housheng advanced another step. The more excited he became, the harder his body shook, trembling like a sieve, his voice hoarse and quivering.
"Please... please... Founding Ancestor, reopen the immortal gate and guide us into the path of immortality!" Lin Housheng lay prostrate beneath the immortal tree, tears streaming down his face as he repeatedly knocked his head against the stones beneath him, his voice breaking into sobs.
"This disciple... has devoted himself to the Way for more than sixty years. I entered the Way in my youth and sincerely pursued the path to longevity. I have crossed thousands of mountains and rivers seeking it, yet never found it. Today, I sincerely beg the Founding Ancestor to impart the teachings and bestow upon me the Great Longevity Method!" As Lin Housheng lay on the ground, his words seemed to carry blood, so shrill that saliva kept spraying from between his teeth.
No matter how he poured out his heart and shouted, Founding Ancestor Chong Yunzi did not move his gaze or spare him a glance. His eyes held the stars and sun and moon, the heavens and the Great Dao—but they did not hold him.
When he raised his head again, he saw that the two immortals beneath the tree had dispersed with the wind, transforming into smoke that vanished into the air.
The chessboard turned like a galaxy, swallowing every chess piece until only three white pieces remained. They transformed into three azure pills.
"Founding Ancestor! Founding Ancestor!" Lin Housheng rose excitedly and looked around in every direction, searching for Founding Ancestor Chong Yunzi's figure, but he still received no response.
The scene just now was like an illusory, beautiful dream born from his imagination. With the slightest poke, it instantly burst like a bubble and vanished!
"How could this happen? How could this happen?" Lin Housheng shouted helplessly, standing beneath the immortal tree that radiated spiritual light and speaking in desolation.
Only after a long while, when his soul had left his body, did he notice the chessboard.
He gently picked up the three azure pills left on the chessboard. The pills gave off a faint spiritual radiance. They did not look like pills, but rather like three beautiful pieces of jade.
When he picked up the pills, he saw a line of vertical writing appear on the chessboard, flowing like dew and condensing like mist.
"The time is not yet ripe!"
The heavens and earth spun, and the sea of clouds changed color. In an instant, Lin Housheng opened his eyes. Only then did he discover that he was still sitting in the main hall of Three Goat Temple. Everything that had just happened seemed like an illusory, ethereal dream—a fantasy born from longing and exhaustion.
But when he opened his hand, he saw three azure pills resting in his aged palm.