The Great Desert

Just as He Heng turned his sword and thrust fiercely at Wu Hua, Wu Hua's body, which should already have been dead, suddenly moved. His eyes were ice-cold, gleaming with a chilling light. He sprang up and struck with Shaolin's Prajna Palm. The blow came down with tremendous force, its roaring palm wind sending bursts of explosions through the air as it slammed toward He Heng's chest.

"I knew you'd try that." He Heng gave a cold laugh. His sword flashed and swept out, striking Wu Hua's right hand.

"Ah!!"

The sword's flash tore through the Dark Night. Wu Hua screamed in agony as He Heng's blade severed his right wrist. His hand fell to the ground, blood pouring from the wound.

"This..." Chu Liuxiang stared, stunned. How had Wu Hua come back to life? No, that was it—he had been pretending to be dead!

As Wu Hua screamed and Chu Liuxiang stood dazed, the Longevity Sword in He Heng's hand moved again. It was as if the wind and clouds had shifted and the heavens rumbled. Sword qi surged like the Yangtze River, extending a full zhang in an instant as it drove into Wu Hua's chest.

"Thump! Thump!"

This time, Wu Hua didn't have a chance to dodge. The sword qi pierced straight through his chest, rupturing his internal organs. Blood dripped down, soaking the earth beneath his feet.

"You... I'm not willing to accept this!" Wu Hua's face twisted grotesquely. With great effort, he raised his left hand and pointed at He Heng, his expression savage.

He couldn't accept it! After his crimes had been exposed and Chu Liuxiang had discovered the truth, he'd planned to exploit Chu Liuxiang's trust in him, fake his death, escape, and make new plans. But he'd never imagined that He Heng would appear and ruin everything.

He Heng gave a cold laugh and spun the Longevity Sword. Surging sword qi tore Wu Hua's internal organs to pieces. Then He Heng sheathed the sword, and Wu Hua fell to the ground, his eyes still wide open.

"What did you have to go and do that for?" Chu Liuxiang walked over, looking somewhat sorrowful. He gently closed Wu Hua's eyes and sighed, his heart heavy with grief.

He Heng glanced at Chu Liuxiang without a word. He didn't even look at Wu Hua again. To him, someone like Wu Hua was no more than a passing cloud. If he hadn't needed to make Chu Liuxiang more wary of him, he wouldn't have bothered coming to kill the man.

The night was dark, still, and cold. Heavy clouds blanketed the low sky, and a light rain began to fall, washing over the earth.

Chu Liuxiang buried Wu Hua, then stood staring blankly at the sky and the rain, lost in thought.

Blazing sun, windblown sand, and yellow earth. The air was unbearably dry, and the heat was so intense it felt as if it could peel the skin from your body.

This was an immense desert, filled with yellow sand as far as the eye could see. Scorching winds swept through from time to time, and the air was parched beyond belief.

This was a forbidden land of life, a place of unimaginable danger. In the desert, the lives of mortals were utterly insignificant.

By day, the heat could make you wish you could peel off your own skin. At night, the cold could freeze the blood in your veins. A hill could become flat land in the blink of an eye, and flat land could become a hill just as quickly. When a storm rose, it could bury an entire city beneath the sand. And with water almost nowhere to be found, at least ten people died of thirst every hour. Here, a pot of clean water could be worth ten lives.

No matter how skilled you were in martial arts, unless you had reached the Transcendent Saint domain of the Dao Embryo Realm in the Great Heaven World, even a Yang God martial artist might perish in the desert.

How could mortals stand against the might of Heaven and Earth? In Martial Dao Cultivation, anyone who hadn't formed a Dao Embryo was still a mere mortal. They couldn't defy the heavens and still needed food and water. Complete Bigu was something only those in the Dao Embryo Realm could achieve.

Before reaching that realm, even if some powerful practitioners could go without food for days or weeks, they were only abstaining from eating. They still needed to drink water.

Only those above the Dao Embryo Realm could feast on the wind and drink the dew, absorbing the essence of Heaven and Earth. Only they could become divine and immortal by consuming qi, truly freeing themselves from dependence on external things and sustaining themselves. They had gained the first real possibility of standing against the might of Heaven and Earth.

At that moment, He Heng was riding a camel, slowly making his way across the boundless desert.

"The desert! It's been a long time since I've been somewhere like this." He Heng looked around at the endless yellow sand, feeling somewhat nostalgic.

He'd been to a desert before, back in the Dragon Snake World. While traveling from place to place to break through to Dan Force and understand the natural world, he had once crossed a desert.

That time, he'd been unlucky and had nearly died there. Now, though he was far stronger than before, he was still nowhere near the Dao Embryo Realm and naturally couldn't contend with Heaven and Earth's Power. Still, he wasn't worried about being trapped here until he died. He had that much confidence in himself.

After all, this desert wasn't especially vast. It stretched only a few thousand li from end to end, and at He Heng's speed, he could cross it in just a few days. There was no reason to fear.

Wang Chao had managed to achieve a preliminary state of Bigu in the Dragon Snake World. How could He Heng be worse off than Wang Chao had been back then?

The cultivation method He Heng practiced was called the Valley Spirit Undying Technique. It was a divine technique that had broken free of the constraints of ordinary martial arts and could be called a Wonderful Law.

The Great Heaven World had countless divine techniques and secret manuals. To distinguish and classify them, their levels were generally divided according to the realms they could cultivate to.

A technique that could cultivate someone only to the Yang God Realm, without enabling them to form a Dao Embryo, was an ordinary, mundane cultivation method.

Techniques that could form a Dao Embryo belonged to another level, as did those that could form a Dharma Aspect.

Methods that contained the fundamental mysteries of Heaven and Earth, allowing one to comprehend reality and reach the Cave True Realm, were known as true scriptures. The He Family's Myriad Longevity Technique was one such scripture.

Techniques that could lead one to Attain Pure Yang belonged to yet another level. They were generally the foundational methods of Great Mystic Sects.

The techniques and Dao formulae of the next level were beyond He Heng's imagination. Even across the entire Great Heaven World, there were probably only a few. They existed only in legend.

Among them were the Daoist Sect's legendary Three Caverns Scriptures—the Cave True, Cave Spirit, and Cave Profound—as well as Buddhism's supreme scripture, the Supreme Enlightenment Worldly Understanding, the Demon Sect's Other Transformation Freedom Scripture, and other cultivation methods said to have belonged to the ancient Daoist Venerables and Buddhas. Their existence was almost impossible to verify.

The He Family's clan-protecting divine technique, the Myriad Longevity Technique, was only a method of the Cave True Realm. The Valley Spirit Undying Technique He Heng was now cultivating, by contrast, was a technique of the Dharma Aspect Realm. It drew on the true meaning of the undying Valley Spirit; cultivated to great depth, it could govern the changes of the seasons and the ebb and flow of yin and yang.

After He Heng had returned home for the New Year and demonstrated remarkable progress, his father had given him the technique. Of course, it was only the portion before the Dao Embryo Realm. He Heng wasn't yet qualified to receive what came after.

If the complete Valley Spirit Undying Technique were placed in Huang Yi's martial arts world, it could utterly outclass the so-called Four Great Divine Books. After all, those Four Great Divine Books supposedly reached their limit at Shattering the Void, which was only the Dao Embryo Realm. The complete Valley Spirit Undying Technique, on the other hand, contained a method of cultivation through the Dao Embryo Realm's eighteen stages of the turning years, as well as a way to form a Dharma Aspect. How could it compare to a few methods that only offered a path to forming a Dao Embryo?

Although He Heng was cultivating only the first part of the technique, its mysteries were already beginning to show.

The Valley Spirit Undying Technique drew on the true meaning of the undying Valley Spirit. It was the most orthodox Mystic Sect Cultivation Method, centered on cultivating the self and improving one's ability to survive, rather than pursuing destructive power.

Its most notable feature was that it allowed practitioners to absorb some of Heaven and Earth's essence before reaching the Dao Embryo Realm. Naturally, this was nothing compared to the terrifying power of a true Dao Embryo practitioner devouring the energy of Heaven and Earth. But a martial artist like He Heng, who hadn't even awakened his Yin God, also used far less energy than a true Dao Embryo practitioner. Through the Valley Spirit Undying Technique, he could achieve a preliminary state of self-sufficiency. He could go for months without food and more than ten days without water while still maintaining his peak condition.

It was precisely because of this technique that He Heng wasn't worried about being trapped in the desert. So he'd brought only a single pot of clean water before setting out.

For the past few days, he hadn't been in a hurry to leave the desert. Instead, he'd traveled at a leisurely pace, eating nothing and spending each day on the camel, breathing in Heaven and Earth's essence and contemplating nature.

It was as if he'd severed all ties with the mortal world, abstained from worldly food, and become a Banished Immortal on the verge of ascending.

Of course, that was just an expression. What He Heng was actually doing was cleansing himself and purging impurities.

From the day a person was born, they ate and drank every day. The things they consumed inevitably left impurities behind in the body. Over time, these built up, chiefly in three places—the so-called Three Corpse grounds.

To reach the Martial Dao Three Peng Realm, one had to cut away these impurities and attain an Immaculate Body. Only then could body and mind become clear, allowing one to reach Great Freedom, sense the presence of one's own Yin God, and awaken it to enter the Yin God Realm.

Practicing Bigu through the Valley Spirit Undying Technique, abstaining from worldly food, was a way to purge impurities. It was the beginning of entering the Martial Dao Three Peng Realm.

For the past few days, He Heng had eaten nothing and drunk only a few mouthfuls of clean water. Yet he felt more and more invigorated, his mind clear. His spiritual cultivation had reached a higher level, and he had faintly glimpsed the mysteries of the earthly laws.

On the tenth day of He Heng's journey through the desert, a patch of green appeared before him. It was utterly different from the vast desert around it, and he spotted it at once.

"So I've finally arrived?" He Heng smiled faintly and slowly made his way toward the oasis.