For a moment.
Everyone was speechless.
You could do that?
Besides.
The sound of it hitting the ground made everyone suck in a breath.
They even found themselves wondering:
What if it hit them?
It must hurt like hell, right?
Yang Mei was the most qualified to answer that.
Hearing the sound, he felt as though some part of his body had started hurting again.
Even though he was no longer in the form of a Dao Body.
After his true form manifested,
there were still obvious marks where he had been struck...
He had not fully recovered.
Yet even a stone this hard could not leave so much as a dent or a trace when it hit the courtyard floor!
"No wonder this place was built from the Great Dao!"
"It really is extraordinary!"
"Compared to it, my true form is simply no match!"
Yang Mei, the only one who had been struck by the stone,
could not help thinking this.
He felt it more deeply than anyone.
The other cultivators,
though they had never experienced it themselves, could still sense just how hard the stone was.
And...
Its reverence for Lei Jun was practically exaggerated.
However.
The most outrageous part was yet to come.
A voice rang out.
"Celestial Venerable, above!"
"I can't kowtow to you ten thousand times like that stone, but I can bow to you!"
"Hmm, that's not much..."
"Let's make it a hundred million times!"
"No, wait! I should do this every so often, to express my gratitude and admiration for you, Celestial Venerable!"
As soon as the words fell,
the voice's owner did exactly as it had said.
It began bowing and making deep bows.
It moved so fast that it was impossible to see clearly without using Divine Sense.
Look again,
and it seemed like streaks of Sword Light, sharp beyond compare,
stabbing painfully into one's eyes.
But the problem was,
the one bowing as if it were swinging a sword was a blade of grass!
And it was only ankle-high!
It was simply absurd.
How would the Celestial Venerable react to this?
For a moment,
the cultivators' attention shifted back to Lei Jun.
Clearly,
they planned to judge their next move by his reaction.
If Lei Jun liked it,
then there was nothing more to say. They would imitate it.
Time to "suck up" to him!
The next moment,
Lei Jun gave a slight shake of his head and smiled.
"Stop. I'm not falling for that."
"Besides, you might fool everyone else, but do you think you can fool me?"
"The kowtowing and bowing are a pretext. What you really want is for me to give you two pointers on your cultivation, isn't it?"
At these words,
the stone and the Sword Grass stopped at the same time.
Their tones carried a hint of awkwardness,
but their styles remained unchanged.
The stone spoke first. "The Celestial Venerable's eyes are as bright as a torch. You saw right through my little scheme!"
The Sword Grass immediately retorted, "You stinking rock, are you insulting the Celestial Venerable? Did he need a single glance to see through your little scheme? One thought was enough!"
Hearing this, the stone did not argue. Instead, it pondered the words.
"That makes sense!"
Then,
the two turned their attention back to Lei Jun and said nothing more.
But their expectations were plain to see.
Clearly,
they hoped to receive Lei Jun's guidance.
Whether it was the stone repeatedly jumping up, or the Sword Grass's "Bowing Sword Technique," that had been their aim all along.
Seeing this,
Lei Jun neither agreed nor refused.
He said,
"Others haven't even thought to ask me for guidance, yet the two of you have already schemed for it. I'll give you credit for being clever!"
"Unfortunately, you've put your wits to the wrong use. That's merely petty cleverness, a minor path!"
"If you focused that same effort on cultivating the Dao, why would you need my guidance?"
"Single-minded focus is the way to attain the Great Dao!"
"If you two refuse to accept that, why not think back to when you were still in the Primordial Wilderness? How did you meet your ends? And why did you leave not even your names behind in the Primordial Wilderness?"
As soon as he finished speaking,
not only the stone and the Sword Grass, but all the other cultivators as well, felt their hearts jolt!
That was Dao Sound!
There was no time to think. They had to write it down at once.
The Celestial Venerable's words were simple, but that did not make them any less profound.
As the saying went, the Great Dao was simplicity itself.
The true Dao could be explained in just a few words, or even a single one.
It was only that the listeners lacked the insight to understand it.
That was why it needed to be interpreted.
And now,
that was precisely what Lei Jun's words were like.
They seemed so simple,
yet they left the cultivators entranced. Every word, every sound, contained supreme Daoist Rhyme!
There was so much one could comprehend from them.
Of course,
different people comprehended them to different degrees.
How much they could grasp
depended on their insight.
For a moment,
Lei Jun had merely said a few casual words, yet it was as if he were lecturing on the Dao!
More importantly,
every cultivator present would have been a peerless expert in the Primordial Wilderness!
Almost none had been their equal.
They had all touched upon Hunyuan!
Yet even so,
after hearing just a few words from Lei Jun, they were still able to comprehend so much!
No one knew how much time had passed.
The cultivators came back to themselves.
As before,
they spoke in unison.
"We thank the Celestial Venerable for granting us this opportunity!"
"Think nothing of it."
Lei Jun shook his head, unconcerned.
Because for him,
it cost nothing at all.
And it could even strengthen the Small Courtyard as a whole.
After all, these cultivators
had only touched upon Hunyuan. They still needed to improve further before they could truly become Hunyuan cultivators.
As for what benefit Lei Jun gained from doing this,
first,
teaching the Dao was itself a way of cultivating the Dao.
There was no need to say more.
Second,
these cultivators were also Lei Jun's "enforcers."
Perhaps they could provide some assistance when he contended with beings beyond the Primordial Wilderness, or even beyond Chaos.
In short,
the benefits might not be obvious, but there was no downside.
So,
offering a few words of guidance really was nothing.
At this time,
most of the cultivators once again went into seclusion, afraid they would miss the opportunity to gain insight from Lei Jun.
But the stone and the Sword Grass
did not leave.
They spoke up.
"Celestial Venerable, our intentions were impure. We clearly bowed to you, but we had an ulterior motive. We beg the Celestial Venerable to punish us!"
"We beg the Celestial Venerable to punish us!"
Punish them?
Lei Jun pondered for a while.
Then he said,
"Seeing how eager you two are to seek the Dao, I hadn't intended to punish you."
"But since you insist, then..."
"I'll punish you by having you guard the Courtyard Gate!"
"Until this Tribulation Period in the Primordial Wilderness comes to an end."
"How does that sound?"
Guard the Courtyard Gate?
Until the Tribulation Period ended?
The stone and the Sword Grass did not think much of it. Neither had any intention of refusing.
They even thanked him for it.
Their resolve was firm.
"Thank you, Celestial Venerable, for meting out this punishment!"
"We will do everything in our power to guard the Courtyard Gate!"
Lei Jun shook his head again.
He waved a hand.
"There's no need for that. When it's time to relax, you two can relax a little! Go on, now."
As he spoke,
the pebble and the Sword Grass found themselves somewhere else.
They were no longer in the courtyard,
but outside it.
And they weren't at the entrance.
They had appeared some distance away from the courtyard.
Besides,
unlike inside the courtyard,
the Small Courtyard
was formed from the Dao. No matter how profound these cultivators' true forms were, before the Dao, they were as ordinary as mortals.
So no matter how extraordinary the pebble was,
in the courtyard,
it really was just a pebble.
Nothing unusual.
But outside the courtyard, things were different.
As if some restriction had been lifted,
in an instant,
it expanded dramatically, transforming from a pebble into a majestic Immortal Mountain.
This was an Immortal Mountain forged by a cultivator
whose power rivaled Hunyuan!
The Small Courtyard stood at the very summit!
As for the Sword Grass,
for some reason, it was still just as ordinary.
It kept muttering,
its voice full of excitement.
"How is this a punishment? It's clearly a reward!"
At the same time,
far beyond this place, in the distant reaches of space and time, a young Daoist felt his primordial spirit tremble between his brows, as if he had sensed something.
"A fortuitous opportunity!"
"After countless years of divination, I finally have an answer!"
This person was none other
than Tongtian!
At that moment,
Tongtian could barely contain his excitement. He even let out a long breath.
As it happened,
he had been under tremendous pressure.
He had made a choice completely different from the ones his two elder brothers had made.
Anyone looking at that choice
would surely have thought it unwise.
He had actually abandoned the certain opportunity to hear a Sage preach in favor of seeking a chance that he might never find—and that, even if found, might lead to who knew what.
The difference between an opportunity and a chance was that
the former was more certain.
At the very least, he could be sure it was a good thing.
The latter was different.
In most cases, it required one to gain insight for oneself, and it was not necessarily a good thing. It might even turn out to be a bad thing.
So, generally speaking,
when these two options were put before a cultivator, there was little need to think it over.
The former was obviously better.
What's more...
this was the first Sage's sermon in the history of the Primordial Wilderness!
He absolutely couldn't afford to miss it.
Yet Tongtian's choice
was baffling.
In truth,
not only did others find it hard to believe—even Tongtian himself thought it a little incredible.
He couldn't help wondering:
What if this chance remained only a chance, and I never found the opportunity?
Or,
what if I found it, only to discover it wasn't worth much?
What would he do then?
By that point...
he would have no choice but to bear the consequences.
But Tongtian had no regrets.
And now,
there was no need to dwell on such thoughts.
He had already sensed the opportunity.
"It's definitely an opportunity!"
"There's no mistake!"
Tongtian was utterly certain.
Because the feeling rising in his heart now was exactly the same as the one he'd felt countless eons ago, when the Ziwei Star had lit up!
He had to remember:
the reason his cultivation had surpassed Taiqing's and Yuanshi's after taking form
was this very intuition.
Now,
that feeling had returned. Didn't that mean this wasn't merely an opportunity, but a tremendous one?
It was in the bag!
Before you continue