Eagle and Serpent

Spring passed and autumn came; cold and heat took turns.

Another full year slipped quietly by in the secret chamber of Tiger Hill Cave Abode.

Over the course of that year, he swallowed huge quantities of Qi-Gathering Pills as if they were roasted beans.

The Mysterious Yin Mana in Xia Dong's dantian grew ever deeper and more solid, and he broke through to the Qi Refining Third Layer as naturally as water flowing into a channel.

What stirred his heart even more was that, after being washed by innate qi day after day, the foundational chapter of the Evergreen Qi-Circulation Art, which pointed directly to the source of life, had finally touched the "perfection" barrier—one step away from completion.

Xia Dong knew that crossing this threshold would be a heaven-defying transformation, turning an ordinary root into a Spirit Root. He could not afford the slightest carelessness.

He did not rush to force his way through. Instead, he stopped all his cultivation and spent three full days bathing, changing his clothes, and clearing his mind of desire, bringing his body, mind, qi, and blood into peak condition.

Yet when he truly began striving for perfection in the foundational chapter of the Evergreen Qi-Circulation Art, he discovered that this hurdle was far more difficult than he had imagined.

This was no threshold that could be forcibly breached by swallowing pills or frantically absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. The jade slip containing the cultivation method had made it clear: to reshape one's innate constitution, one had to thoroughly refine and elevate the body's three treasures—"essence," "qi," and "spirit."

Xia Dong sat cross-legged with his eyes shut, using his spiritual sense to guide these three forces together within him again and again.

But no matter what he tried, a barrier remained between essence, qi, and spirit. They simply would not truly blend together like water and milk, becoming one seamless whole.

"Where did I go wrong?"

Xia Dong's brows drew tighter and tighter as countless cultivation mantras collided chaotically in his mind. As time passed, an intense agitation began to rise uncontrollably from the depths of his heart.

Gradually, his qi and blood began to flow backward. His once-docile Mysterious Yin Mana writhed through his meridians like a startled venomous snake, while waves of stabbing pain surged through his sea of consciousness.

"Not good!"

Xia Dong snapped his eyes open, his face deathly pale. A mouthful of blood nearly surged up his throat.

Breaking out in a cold sweat, he immediately forced the cultivation method to stop.

"I was too impatient... A transformation involving the very source of the Great Dao cannot be forced." Xia Dong drew a long, ragged breath.

He stood up, deciding to put off his attempt to break through. Following the underground passage, he swam out of the secret chamber and made for the Hidden Valley beyond Tiger Hill Mountain, hoping to get some fresh air and calm his severely unsettled mind.

Splash!

Xia Dong burst out of the water. He had barely reached the pond's edge when, before he could take more than a few breaths of fresh air, his keen spiritual sense caught the sound of air tearing with tremendous force.

Screee!

A piercing eagle's cry, sharp enough to split metal and stone, rang through the sky.

Xia Dong's heart stirred. He immediately reined in his qi and blood and used the Crane Shadow Step to leap soundlessly into the crown of a towering old tree. He cautiously spread out his spiritual sense, now at the Fifth Layer of Qi Refining, like ripples across water, and looked in the direction of the sound.

Below a sheer cliff, a brutal fight to the death was unfolding.

One combatant was the blue-black Great Serpent outside the cave abode; the other was a gigantic Black Eagle, its wings spanning more than two zhang and its feathers gleaming coldly like steel!

Birds of prey were natural enemies of snakes, and this Black Eagle was clearly no ordinary creature. Its iron talons were sharp as knives, and its dive was as swift as a bolt of black lightning.

Clang!

The Black Eagle plunged from the sky and drove its iron talons into the Great Serpent's back. The shrill clang of metal striking stone rang out as it tore away several blue-black scales, spraying blood into the air.

Wounded, the Great Serpent let out an angry hiss and sprang up, jaws gaping wide as it snapped at the Black Eagle. But the eagle beat its wings and nimbly dodged away.

At first, the Great Serpent was utterly outmatched. Before long, the Black Eagle's terrifying speed and iron talons had ripped open wounds all over its body.

Watching from above, Xia Dong had thought the cave's guardian serpent was sure to die that day. But gradually, he sensed something profoundly strange.

Though the Great Serpent seemed to be taking a merciless beating, its movements were not the least bit frantic. As it dodged and coiled again and again, its massive body seemed to follow a peculiar rhythm.

This was no mere brute force, the way wild beasts fought. It was a flowing, unbroken pattern! At times, the Great Serpent's body drew taut like a fully stretched bow; at others, it softened like flowing water, yielding to the force. With each twist, it deftly deflected the Black Eagle's deadliest strikes.

"This rhythm..." Xia Dong's pupils contracted, and his heart jolted.

He suddenly realized that the Great Serpent's desperate dodges and coils at the edge of life and death faintly echoed the profound insight of the Profound Yin Scripture: "extreme yin gives birth to yang; seek life in death."

Even the curves traced by its undulating body seemed to accord with the natural workings of the Great Dao.

Just then, the battle took a sudden turn.

The Black Eagle seemed to have lost patience. It let out a sharp cry and drove its speed to the limit, plunging at the Great Serpent's most vital weak point—the "seven inches"—like a black meteor, intent on killing it with one blow.

Faced with this deadly strike, the Great Serpent did not dodge.

Thwack!

The Black Eagle's iron talons plunged deep into the Great Serpent's vital point, and blood gushed out. But at that critical moment, the Great Serpent's once-soft body erupted with unimaginable strength. Enduring the fatal pain, it suddenly coiled around the Black Eagle like a blue-black iron chain, binding it fast.

The Black Eagle panicked. It pecked furiously at the Great Serpent's head and beat its iron wings with all its might.

But the Great Serpent's crushing coil had already locked into place.

Its muscles did not tense up rigidly to exert force. Instead, they tightened in waves like the sea, following the Black Eagle's struggles.

The harder the Black Eagle fought, the tighter the Great Serpent coiled. This constriction, imbued with the laws of nature, squeezed the life from the Black Eagle bit by bit.

Crack... crack...

The stomach-turning sound of bones breaking echoed through the Hidden Valley. The Black Eagle's struggles grew weaker and weaker until, with one final, shrill cry, its wings drooped limply and it fell silent.

Against all odds, the Great Serpent had killed its natural enemy.

Watching from the treetop, Xia Dong held his breath. The brutal battle left him reeling.

The Great Serpent released the Black Eagle's mangled corpse, but it too was at the end of its strength. Dragging its blood-soaked body, it clamped its jaws around the eagle's head. Its lower jaw opened at an impossible angle as it labored to swallow the enormous predator, inch by inch.

After finishing its meal, the Great Serpent did not even have the strength to crawl back into its cave. It simply coiled up beneath the cliff.

Xia Dong studied it intently. With his spiritual sense, now at the Fifth Layer of Qi Refining, he could clearly see that the Great Serpent's massive coiled body formed a ring, its head meeting its tail. From above, it seemed to trace the faint outline of an ancient, profound "Dao" character.

Hoo... hiss...

With the enormous Black Eagle swallowed inside it, the Great Serpent's body began to rise and fall, ever so slowly and in a measured rhythm, with each breath.

At that moment, it was as if lightning had split through Xia Dong's mind.

He stared fixedly at the Great Serpent's rising and falling body. The scene before his eyes gradually blurred, replaced by a miniature vision of the Great Dao in motion.

"The battle between life and death is the utmost expression of 'essence'; the head and tail joined, the body coiled into one, is the harmony of 'spirit'; and that endless, almost imperceptible rhythm, absorbing and digesting what lies beyond itself to nourish its own body, is the circulation of 'qi'..."

Xia Dong murmured to himself.

At the brink of life and death, the Great Serpent had not divided its strength into three to fight its natural enemy. Instead, it had bound its will to survive—its spirit—to the instincts of its flesh—its essence—and the rhythm of heaven and earth—its qi—until all three became one. That was how it had turned the tables in its desperate plight and devoured its powerful foe.

So refining the three treasures did not mean forcibly kneading them together. Rather, like the Great Serpent, they had to form a perfect, endless loop through the natural alternation of "life and death" and "motion and stillness."

Crack.

As this glimmer of insight passed through Xia Dong's mind, he clearly heard the bottleneck that had troubled him for so long break open with a thunderous crack.

The agitation and turmoil that had clouded his mind vanished. In that instant, it became as clear as a polished mirror.

A smile touched Xia Dong's lips. He tossed some rare medicinal herbs with healing properties downwind from where he had left them last time. Then, spreading his arms, he swept away like a white crane returning to its nest and plunged without hesitation back into the underground passage beneath the pond.

Back in the secret chamber.

He resumed his closed-door cultivation and began his final push for perfection.