"You've grasped the word 'steadfast.' Even if you fail to contend for the Dragon's throne, you can still safeguard the foundations of our lineage!" Seeing this, Qingxu was greatly comforted. Smiling, he spoke. He was entrusting the sect's foundations to Yuheng, making him the chosen successor to lead White Cloud Temple.
"This disciple will not disappoint Master!" Chosen as the next sect leader, Yuheng was naturally dazed, as if lost in a fog. But he had a solid foundation, and quickly recovered. He bowed deeply and spoke.
"Very good!" Qingxu nodded and said, "I came here mainly because of the Hidden Dragon. I'm passing through Wenchang and thought I'd visit you as well. We've received reports about the Land God, but they weren't very clear. Tell me everything in detail."
"Yes, Master. It all began when I first arrived in Anchang..." Yuheng collected himself and recounted everything concerning the Land God in detail.
After listening, Qingxu closed his eyes for a long while. Only then did he open them and murmur, "Strange! Even I can't divine this god's origins. According to what you've said, this god is a rank below me. Even if the fortune and incense of the common people conceal his presence, there should still be some trace of him!"
"Master?" Yuheng asked with some concern.
"Heh... It's nothing! Even if this god is somewhat unusual, he's caught up in the Hidden Dragon's rising tide and can't act freely. He's no threat!"
"This disciple is ignorant. Please enlighten me, Master!"
"This god appeared in Wu Nan, in Wenchang Prefecture, and possesses unusual powers. Whatever came before, his appearance is the will of Heaven. Think about it: Wenchang borders Linjiang. Once Wu Qi stabilizes Linjiang Prefecture, he'll have to pass through Wenchang Prefecture to expand. The two sides are bound to clash and become entangled, giving the Hidden Dragon time and opportunity to grow."
"Couldn't the two sides collude?"
"Have you forgotten Wu Qi's alliance with Li Black Leopard? Since this Land God protects one side, he's naturally at odds with Ferocious Ghosts and Evil Ghosts. Besides, what ruler would want someone he can't control standing over his head, with close ties to the people under his rule? That's a source of chaos! Our Daoist Sect is treated with suspicion for the same reason!" His words cut to the heart of the matter, but they were true.
"Furthermore, this Land God has one great weakness! His Divine Power relies largely on the people. He has gathered the fortune and incense of the common people, so when he acts, he carries their power with him. Naturally, you're no match for him. But that very strength will become his downfall. Once the Hidden Dragon takes power, you should persuade him to forbid worship of this god and kill all the temple attendants. Use the royal law to suppress him. Without worshippers and incense, his power will naturally diminish. Then killing or imprisoning him will be as easy as turning over your hand!"
Qingxu truly lived up to his reputation as a True Person. With only the information he'd received, he'd seen straight through Fang Ming's greatest weakness. Fang Ming had reached this point by secretly spreading his faith while Lingzhu was away and the county authorities weren't paying attention. Later, he relied on the Four Great Houses to spread the faith and had never directly opposed the government. That was what he feared. Wei Zhun had also been cowed by the momentum Fang Ming and the Four Great Houses had built together, and, more than anything, he didn't want both sides to suffer mutual destruction. Otherwise, if the authorities issued an order, how many people would abandon their faith? That was a question Fang Ming did not want to face.
Even if some followers were devout, this was ancient times, an era of great upheaval. Cities were massacred. Was killing a few people really out of the question?
It could be said that as long as the authorities were willing to act, they could first issue a notice forbidding worship of the City God. Then they could behead any followers who refused to repent and display their heads to the public. Fang Ming might save one person, but he couldn't save ten thousand. He would become water without a source. His only option would be to flee into the mountains with a few devout temple attendants, lie low until the storm passed, and then change his name and identity. There was no other way out.
"Master's plan is brilliant!" Yuheng's eyes lit up. "But for now, we still need him to keep Linjiang Prefecture in check. Should we really leave him alone?"
"Of course not! His fortune is too strong right now. We need to suppress it a little." Qingxu said, "According to you, this god can't leave the area of his worship. Is that true?"
"This disciple doesn't know, but it's very likely!" This was false information Fang Ming had put out. Combined with his recent low profile and lack of interest in neighboring counties, it had fooled Yuheng.
"True or not, order our disciples in the neighboring counties to forbid worship of this god. It would be best if they could denounce him as an illicit cult."
"This Land God is rather unusual. His powers seem to be of some benefit to ghost cultivators like me. Choose a few more outer sect disciples and have them join the City God's ranks to gather information. The City God is recruiting troops right now, so it should be quite easy."
This was a way of planting spies. As for using outer sect disciples, it meant that success would be ideal, but failure wouldn't cost them much. Naturally, how to turn the outer sect disciples into ghosts and then have them join the City God's ranks went without saying.
"Yuheng, send an invitation as well. Arrange a meeting between me and this City God!" Qingxu's face wore a smile as he spoke, yet an air of authority slipped out despite himself.
"This disciple obeys!" Yuheng understood that this was a display of strength, meant to establish an understanding. Of course, if the god was willing to submit, the sect wouldn't mind granting him a position as a protector or something similar. He could then become another piece on the board amid the Hidden Dragon's rising tide.
"Hm? It seems someone is scheming against me?" At the same time, Fang Ming sensed something. It was a deity's instinct, combined with Mu Qing's experience, and it resembled a cultivator's sudden premonition.
If he'd been a cultivator, after such a premonition, he would have had to investigate its source and avert the calamity. But Fang Ming had the Qi-Reading Divine Art, so he didn't need to go through all that. One glance was enough to see that White Cloud Temple had made another move. He immediately understood: reinforcements had arrived.
"A True Person?" Fang Ming smiled faintly, looking forward to it.
The black aura this time was dense, but it didn't have the imposing presence of a true disciple. Still, it gave him the feeling of thunder rumbling loudly but rain falling lightly. They were probably just testing him. With his current fortune, he no longer had to fear them.
Ordinary qi-reading arts couldn't be this precise. Only Fang Ming's Qi-Reading Divine Art could tease apart and refine fortune, distinguish its different strands, and trace them back to their source. It greatly benefited Fang Ming in his dealings.
Fang Ming was currently in an unknown region. The space here was immense, stretching over a hundred miles in both width and breadth. Beyond it lay a hazy gray expanse that he couldn't see through.
"Is this my Grotto-Heaven? It truly is extraordinary!" Fang Ming sighed.
This was the Divine Art "Opening a Grotto-Heaven," which Fang Ming had obtained when he advanced to Subordinate Seventh Rank last time. It could open a Grotto-Heaven belonging exclusively to Fang Ming. The Grotto-Heaven was almost a world unto itself, though it still relied on the Great Qian Empire's world. In terms of their scale, however, they were as different as an ant and an elephant.
The Divine Art could only be used once, and it consumed an enormous amount of power. Only now had Fang Ming accumulated enough Divine Power to open a Grotto-Heaven. It was much like a demiplane, with Fang Ming himself as its sole point of connection to the Great Qian Empire's world. It was both an upgraded blessed land and somewhat like a Western divine kingdom.
From then on, Fang Ming could open this Grotto-Heaven anywhere. But the force separating the worlds seemed to impose limitations. He had tested it: souls and objects could pass through, but living creatures could not.
Fang Ming hadn't come here to play. In fact, he had explored it constantly over the past few days and had already made some discoveries.
In essence, this Grotto-Heaven shared similarities with the Great Qian Empire's world, and to a certain extent, it could reveal the rules governing that world.
Ever since it had been opened, Fang Ming's Grotto-Heaven had continuously drawn some sort of power from the black void at its edges—or perhaps the better word was "chaos"—while maintaining itself and striving to expand.
Of course, the expansion was slight. Based on Fang Ming's observations and calculations, it grew by less than a few miles a year. It would take at least hundreds of millions of years to become a mature world like Great Qian. And there were no signs of life.
Those observations were minor, but Fang Ming's next experiment gave him a deeper understanding of the Heavenly Dao governing Great Qian's world.
Fang Ming had once brought several souls on the verge of dissipating here, only to find that they vanished just the same. But now that he was the master of the Grotto-Heaven, he could perceive its space with extraordinary precision. At last, he discovered that it had only erased more than 99 percent of each soul's substance. After the soul vanished, something profound yet undeniably real remained. Fang Ming named it the "True Spirit." It was then drawn into the void and disappeared.
Fang Ming ran the experiment several more times, and the result was always the same. Moreover, the soul energy left behind after a soul dissipated seemed to turn into some kind of power and scatter across the world. That power seemed exactly the same as the power that drove the Grotto-Heaven's evolution.
"So this is the truth behind the dissipation of souls? That 99 percent includes all the soul's memories and soul power, leaving behind only a True Spirit that enters the void. Could it be..."
Fang Ming thought of a possibility and decided to test it.
His expression turned solemn. He silently recited a divine incantation, then said, "Open!" It was the Divine Art of Opening Reincarnation that he had obtained when he advanced last time!
The Divine Power in his body rapidly drained away. In the blink of an eye, dozens of strands of Red Divine Power vanished, but Fang Ming didn't even look.
A colossal rift had appeared in the void before him.
Looking through the rift, he saw a "black hole"—no, it was more like the funnel-shaped vortex at the top of a tornado, only billions of times larger.
The black vortex howled and churned, drawing vast amounts of blackness toward its center and revealing a faint suction, as if it could devour everything. Yet, strangely, Fang Ming couldn't feel any pull at all. When he looked again, his vision spun, and even his divine body grew unsteady.
Realizing something was wrong, he quickly dispelled the Divine Art. Just before the rift closed, Fang Ming finally saw them: specks of True Spirits, like fireflies, flickering in the black current as they surged into reincarnation and vanished.
"Is this this world's reincarnation?" In his previous life, there had been legends of the six realms, but those had only appeared after Buddhism was introduced. Besides, these were two different worlds, so of course they would be different. This world had only one great cycle of reincarnation.
"But the process seems rather complicated..." Fang Ming already had a rough idea of how reincarnation worked, yet he felt there was something strange about it. It was like a factory in his previous life recycling and remaking products—not by simply modifying them, but by destroying them entirely and turning them directly into raw materials, then separating those materials, making the various parts, and finally assembling them into new products. It wasted a great deal of power. It was very unwise.
The problem seemed to lie in the soul's memories and reincarnation.
However, washing away memories was only a minor technique. Fang Ming had a Divine Art that could do it, so there was no need for the process to be so complicated.
The main problem, then, lay with reincarnation! This world was still too young, and the power of reincarnation was too weak to draw in whole souls. The excess parts of each soul had to be removed, leaving only the pure True Spirit, before it could be drawn into reincarnation and reborn. Moreover, reincarnation wasn't complete. It seemed to rely entirely on luck: any living being with a soul might be reborn.
The more Fang Ming thought about it, the more certain his guess seemed. He couldn't help getting excited, and a plan began to take shape in his mind.
Before you continue