The black mist entered Xiang Yuan's body, and he immediately grew drowsy. In a daze, he came to a vast black sea.
The sea had not been black to begin with. It had been polluted by an outsider.
Weak and helpless, he was stranded in a corner, watching from afar as a three-headed, six-armed demon god wreaked havoc. The sky stretched boundlessly, and so did the earth. As he drifted in a daze, the tiny spark of light that belonged to him was about to scatter.
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
Beneath the black sea, a small Bagua Heart-Protecting Mirror emerged.
A divine treasure hid its true nature, appearing ordinary. Now, divine light bloomed, revealing its true form.
It was shaped like a full moon, its surface smooth as autumn water. Mysterious runes were carved into its back, as if they contained the laws of heaven and earth.
Layer upon layer of light gathered, casting black-and-white beams over the black sea. The yin-yang fish lay at the center, surrounded by the eight trigrams—Qian, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Li, Gen, and Dui. Every stroke held endless mysteries.
The moment the mirror appeared, its righteous aura endured, capable of resisting all evil. In an instant, it swept away the black sea and its darkness, leaving calm waters behind. Its divine light also shone through heaven and earth, exposing the three-headed, six-armed demon god, who had nowhere to hide and no way to escape.
"H-How could this object be here?"
Beneath the divine light, Spiritual Light Old Devil was surrounded by black mist. Horrified, he could scarcely believe that Old Daoist Quexin had schemed against him. But the truth was right before his eyes, and he had no choice but to believe it.
With his life on the line, he fought desperately, unleashing one demonic art after another in hopes of opening a path out and escaping the mirror's power for good.
After the time it took to drink a cup of tea.
Spiritual Light Old Devil sighed. "Master, you were right about him..."
As soon as he finished speaking, his three-headed, six-armed body crumbled to dust. Flecks of golden light fell into the sea of consciousness, and he vanished from the world.
The mirror seemed unsatisfied. The twin yin-yang fish swam, while the trigrams opened one void illusion after another, tracing other worlds and severing every possibility of Spiritual Light Old Devil's return.
From then on, there was no more Spiritual Light Old Devil. Across the myriad heavens, there would be no more Spiritual Light Imperial Preceptor, Spiritual Light Buddha, Spiritual Light Grandmaster, or Spiritual Light Young Hero...
As for Xiang Yuan, he heard the sound of a mirror shattering, sneezed, and woke up.
He touched his chest and took out the damaged Bagua Heart-Protecting Mirror, then recalled what had just happened in disbelief. "I was possessed by the Left Envoy of the Yellow Springs Dao. I nearly died..."
"Wait. How did I know who he was?"
Xiang Yuan's head throbbed as fragments of scenes came to him, all of them connected to Spiritual Light Old Devil.
His mind churned, memories surging like a tide.
Scenes from the past drifted through his mind like smoke and mist, then rushed into his sea of consciousness like a mighty river.
There was the innocence of childhood, playing and bickering; the diligence of youth, studying tirelessly; the freedom of wandering the martial world, settling scores and repaying kindness; the insights of cultivation, piercing the deepest truths...
First, he had rooted out evil and upheld justice. Later, he had fallen into demonic ways and committed countless crimes. The transformation of his heart was heartrending.
There had been joy and sorrow, gains and losses.
The fragments of memory were a tangled mess, some bright, some dark, some near, some far, some clear, others hazy. Impossible to sort through, they wove together into a complicated, intricate tapestry.
When Spiritual Light Old Devil died, fewer than one in a thousand of his memories remained. Yet even one ten-thousandth was too much for Xiang Yuan to bear. He did not dare browse through them and hurriedly withdrew from that river of memories.
"So this is what an opportunity looks like..."
Xiang Yuan stroked the Bagua Heart-Protecting Mirror, excited yet deeply regretful. What a fine treasure it had been. How had it ended up cracked?
Thinking of Old Daoist Quexin, he couldn't help but marvel at his unfathomable foresight. His master hadn't been putting on a show—he really had something special.
He closed his eyes and sensed the edge of the river of memories. Dipping a foot into the water, he found that his head hurt less. Only then did he cautiously reach in and stir the river.
There were too many fragments from Spiritual Light Old Devil's memories for him to absorb all at once. He would have to leave them buried deep in his mind and search them when needed.
Uh, by using keywords.
This time, he searched for keywords like cultivation arts, divine arts, and martial techniques.
More than a hundred memory fragments surged toward him. Most of the cultivation arts were incomplete or too profound for him to practice at his current level. After sifting through them, only a handful were suitable.
The first cultivation art, the Three Yin Book of Life and Death, came from the Yellow Springs Dao in the Southern Border, one of the world's foremost powers and one of the Eight Demonic Beings.
The Three Yin Book of Life and Death was the secret art passed down to the Yellow Springs Dao's Left Envoy. Only one person in each generation could practice it, and it could serve as a martial artist's foundational art. At Great Accomplishment, its practitioner would resemble Yama, the Lord of Life and Death, wielding immense divine powers.
Because it was incomplete, the art stopped at the Innate Realm, with the later methods of circulating energy missing.
Even so, the Three Yin Book of Life and Death was still an invaluable treasure to Xiang Yuan. The later portions were missing, but he could worry about that later. For now, he needed to establish himself.
How many people would kneel and beg for an art like this, only to be turned away?
Xiang Yuan gazed at the art with delight. It could be practiced at Foundation Establishment, and came with a palm technique and a light-footed movement technique.
Blood Transforming Divine Palm.
Thirteen Transformations of Yin Wind and Ghost Mist.
The second cultivation art, the Formless Seal Method, came from the True Heart Dao of Northern Qi. It was a secret art passed down through the sect, containing endless mysteries and boundless profundities. It seized the workings of heaven and earth and pointed straight toward immortality.
Spiritual Light Old Devil remembered this art well, so the record was intact, without a single missing part.
The Formless Seal Method could serve as a martial artist's foundational art. It focused on support and had no offensive power of its own. Xiang Yuan struggled to describe it, but if he had to, he would call it an upgraded fusion of the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Scripture and the Lesser Formless Art.
The art had no realm requirements. Anyone at any cultivation level could practice it. It strengthened the spirit within and the divine power without, washed the marrow and reshaped the bones, and reversed the meridians and altered the acupoints. It was one of the world's finest divine arts.
The Formless Seal Method's general outline had two parts: Candle Yin Casting God and Myriad Forms Body Tempering. Together, they cultivated both nature and life.
Candle Yin Casting God strengthened the spirit. Myriad Forms Body Tempering emphasized that "the body has no form, and qi has no appearance." No form meant ten thousand forms; no appearance meant ten thousand appearances.
When the body had no fixed form, the meridians could be altered at will, the acupoints could shift and change, and the flow of qi could continue without end, allowing one to avoid death and prolong life.
Once one cultivated Formless True Qi, it could take on any form, imitate any kind of true qi, and control any cultivation art. That was what it meant for qi to have no appearance.
Those who mastered Myriad Forms Body Tempering could control every detail of their true qi and body far better than others at the same level. As long as they had the relevant manual for reference, they could alter their true qi and imitate special properties, achieving an effect indistinguishable from the real thing.
Ordinary imitation naturally could not match the original. If the original achieved ten parts, an imitation might manage eight, or perhaps not even six.
The heaven-defying aspect of the Formless Seal Method was that it could raise the grade of a cultivation art. An ordinary imitation might achieve eight parts, but this method could reach ten, or even twelve.
The other memory fragments were incomplete, leaving only a few usable moves: the common martial-world technique Thousand-Kilogram Drop; the Heavenly Saber Sect's Lone Star Chasing Moon; the Blood Sea Dao's Everlasting Killing Intent; the Unrivaled Palace's body-tempering method, Blazing Fire Tempers True Gold; and incomplete moves from Shaolin's Flower-Picking Finger and other supreme arts.
Spiritual Light Old Devil truly was a treasure trove. Who knew how many gold coins he'd dropped?
For a while, Xiang Yuan no longer had to worry about lacking cultivation arts. He hurried to the corner, knelt behind the altar table, first thanking his master, then thanking the Venerable Lord of Morality, the master of this place. Only then did he begin cultivating the Formless Seal Method.
Formless is the void; all beings take ten thousand forms.
All that has form was formless from the beginning.
The form of formlessness encompasses every form.
Formlessness is the essence; all forms are sealed within me.
Outside, the rain fell without end. Inside, Xiang Yuan began to glimpse the threshold of the Formless Seal Method. It strengthened the spirit within and the divine power without, washed the marrow and reshaped the bones, and reversed the meridians and altered the acupoints...
He circulated his qi through the Ren Meridian. The Shenque Acupoint, which had troubled him for so long, opened.
Only his head hurt a little. One moment it felt as if needles were stabbing him; the next, as if it were being scorched. He wanted nothing more than to draw his saber and split his spirit in three.
Before you continue