Inside the cave.
Iron Ox and Xiangcao continued their dance, as if performing some mysterious ritual.
Watching Iron Ox's burly body strike one stiff pose after another, Zhou Hao's lips curled into a smile as he shook his head slightly.
Xiangcao, on the other hand, seemed to capture a hint of ancient grace, and her movements were more precise.
Soon, the two reached the final pose.
Iron Ox and Xiangcao sat down on their knees, holding their hands out in front of them as if each were supporting a star—one the Taiyin, the other the Taiyang.
The cave fell silent. Ren Liang, standing nearby, hardly dared to breathe too loudly.
Would they successfully sense the two Supreme Stars, the Taiyin and the Taiyang?
Zhou Hao waited as well.
After learning that he was now in the world of Desolate Era, the things he had read in the book gave him a much better understanding of this world.
It was a vast and magnificent world where gods and demons appeared, with endless reaches of space and time. It was divided into the Three Realms of Heaven, Earth, and Man.
Heaven was the Heavenly Realm, where celestials and asuras lived.
The myths and legends passed down from Zhou Hao's previous life—things like the heavenly soldiers and generals and the High Heaven Palace—were said to exist in the Heavenly Realm.
But when Zhou Hao had read the book in his previous life, it had still been serialized, and the Heavenly Realm had yet to appear in the story. So he had no idea what it was really like.
Earth was the Underworld, the netherworld of the dead. It had ghostly constables, King Yama, and Judges, as well as the Six Paths of Reincarnation, which governed the merits and punishments of countless deceased creatures and their rebirths.
The protagonist of the original story, Ji Ning, had arrived in this world by reincarnating through the Six Paths after his death.
Zhou Hao also remembered that when Ji Ning was reincarnated, a mysterious force had attacked the Six Paths of Reincarnation. He had no idea what had happened after that.
Man was the Human Realm, divided into three thousand major worlds and countless minor worlds.
Zhou Hao guessed that he and his master were in one of those minor worlds. The path to immortality had been severed there, so they had turned to developing technology instead.
"It's working! It's working!"
Ren Liang's exclamation, deliberately kept low, brought Zhou Hao's attention back to the present.
Faint flecks of starlight gathered around Xiangcao.
The light was mainly gold and silver. As it accumulated, it gradually formed two exceedingly fine threads of starlight that flowed into Xiangcao's body.
As for Iron Ox, he had sat there holding his hands out for quite a while without the slightest response. Hearing Ren Liang's voice, he simply stood up and gave up practicing.
"I'm done practicing," Iron Ox said with a laugh. "I've been trying to sense it for ages. I was about to fall asleep, and I still felt nothing."
"Mm. If you can't get started, don't force it." Zhou Hao smiled too.
If Iron Ox didn't want to practice, so be it. Better that than making himself miserable while he practiced and everyone else miserable watching him.
After seeing the two threads of starlight flow into Xiangcao's body, Zhou Hao noticed that her complexion seemed a little more radiant. He nodded to himself.
"To get started on your first try is impressive. Once your divine power has nourished your soul and made it stronger, you'll absorb even more Power of Taiyin and Power of Taiyang. If your progress is too slow, you can always switch to another technique later."
Iron Ox walked over and said to Zhou Hao, "Little Brother Zhou, you should practice too. Ren Liang and I will guard you."
"Alright." Zhou Hao didn't want to wait any longer. He rose and went to the spot where Iron Ox had practiced, closing his eyes and regulating his breathing first.
Since Zhou Hao had practiced the Daoist Visualization Technique from childhood and had even cultivated divine sense, he entered the proper state almost instantly.
Over the past three days, he had pored over the book several times and had already memorized every last detail.
Now he recalled it once more in his mind, making sure he hadn't forgotten anything.
Whoosh!
Zhou Hao moved, flowing through the poses of the nine diagrams in the first stage as smoothly as running water.
"So smooth. It's as if Young Master has done it countless times before. There's even an indescribable grace to it," Ren Liang praised softly.
Iron Ox's movements had looked awkward and painful to watch. Seeing Zhou Hao now was a completely different experience—almost a pleasure.
By then, Xiangcao had refined all the Power of Taiyin and Power of Taiyang she had absorbed into her body. She opened her eyes and saw that Zhou Hao had already begun practicing. Rising to her feet, she moved aside and silently watched him.
"He's so capable. He'll definitely succeed."
Whoosh!
As Zhou Hao completed the final pose, he felt a mysterious force envelop his consciousness. It guided him through layer upon layer of barriers between worlds and into a boundless, endless void.
At the deepest reaches of that endless void were two unimaginably enormous stars.
"The Lunar Star and the Solar Star," Zhou Hao exclaimed as he 'looked' at them.
These weren't the sun and moon of some minor world. They were Supreme Stars whose radiance covered the endless reaches of space and time throughout the Three Realms.
As Zhou Hao 'looked' at the boundless flames blazing around the Solar Star and the towering Osmanthus Tree amid the endless, icy moonlight of the Lunar Star, his mind was shaken.
"They're so beautiful!"
Xiangcao, Iron Ox, and Ren Liang stared at the scene before them in astonishment.
Countless rays of starlight gathered around Zhou Hao. The blazing golden light and the icy silver light kept multiplying, even slowly spreading toward the three of them.
"Get out, quickly!" Xiangcao cried. "This is the essence of the two Supreme Stars, the Taiyin and the Taiyang. If we absorb it and can't refine it, we'll explode and die."
Neither the power of Heaven and Earth's vital energy nor the essence of the stars was something you could absorb without limit.
You could only eat as much as your stomach could hold.
Eat too much and your stomach would bloat—you could even burst. The same went for absorbing too much star essence.
And this was the power of the two Supreme Stars, the Taiyin and the Taiyang, which was even more overbearing than that of other stars.
Standing outside the cave, the three of them peered through the countless rays of starlight. They could just make out countless strands of the Power of Taiyin and Power of Taiyang gathering in Zhou Hao's outstretched hands, eventually forming two miniature stars.
A silver star hovered above his left hand, with an Osmanthus Tree growing on its surface.
Above his outstretched right hand hovered a fiery star, with Golden Crows faintly circling it.
"W-what is this?" Ren Liang stared at Zhou Hao, who held the stars in his hands and was surrounded by countless rays of starlight. He didn't know what the phenomenon meant, but compared with what he had seen when Xiangcao practiced, it was undoubtedly far more incredible.
He didn't know what this phenomenon was. Xiangcao and Iron Ox, who had read the detailed contents of the Redbright Nine Heavens Diagram, knew what the scene before them meant.
"One hand holding the Taiyin and the other the Taiyang, as in the legend?" Xiangcao murmured. "Even the Osmanthus Tree and Golden Crows have appeared..."
She had always had great faith in Zhou Hao, but seeing the greatest initiation phenomenon described in the Redbright Nine Heavens Diagram—the stuff of legend—still left Xiangcao utterly stunned.
"One hand holding the Taiyin, the other the Taiyang! And there's an Osmanthus Tree growing, with Golden Crows circling it!" Iron Ox exclaimed. "Little Brother Zhou really is no ordinary man."
The Redbright Nine Heavens Diagram was incredibly difficult to cultivate. Even getting started was a huge challenge.
And those who did manage to begin could display several different phenomena.
The first was 'Starlight Like Silk.'
That was what Xiangcao had displayed earlier: just two threads of starlight slowly flowing into her body. It was the weakest kind of initiation, and meant that her cultivation would inevitably progress very slowly.
The second was 'Starlight Like Clouds.'
That was when large amounts of starlight wrapped around the body like clouds and mist. It signified excellent aptitude and the potential to cultivate to the Purple Mansion realm or even higher.
The third was 'Starlight Like a Vortex, One Hand Holding the Taiyin and the Other the Taiyang.'
When this happened, countless rays of starlight swirled around the body like a vortex, and miniature phantom stars—the Taiyin and the Taiyang—appeared above the hands held out to either side.
This was the mark of the highest level of aptitude. Among countless cultivators, it was rare to encounter even one with such talent in many years.
But according to legend, if the two miniature stars could condense into solid form, with the Osmanthus Tree and circling Golden Crows appearing as well, then it was the very greatest phenomenon of all. Such a person had the hope of becoming an immortal or a saint.
"Whoosh~~"
A layer of frost suddenly spread outward from inside Zhou Hao's animal-hide clothes.
Right after that came a series of "hiss, hiss, hiss~~" sounds, as if flames were burning inside his body.
The freezing and burning were normal phenomena. After cultivating the Redbright Nine Heavens Diagram, the Power of Taiyin and Power of Taiyang absorbed by the body naturally condensed into Divine Patterns on its surface.
Ordinary cultivators with average aptitude drew in and absorbed so little of the Power of Taiyin and Power of Taiyang that it could take decades for them to condense Divine Patterns. But Zhou Hao possessed the greatest aptitude of legend, and his Divine Patterns began to condense naturally during his very first practice.
Once the Divine Patterns of the first stage had finished condensing, that would mean he had mastered the first stage of the Redbright Nine Heavens Diagram.
"With all that star essence Little Brother Zhou has drawn in, just absorbing it will probably take ten days to half a month," Iron Ox said. "Ren Liang, come with me. Let's cover up the traces we left behind earlier. Hopefully the Black Hand Tribe won't find this place in the next few days."
"Alright." Ren Liang nodded quickly.
With Motai Jie dead, he had no way back. Naturally, he didn't want to be captured by the Black Hand Tribe either.
Iron Ox and Ren Liang left. Worried about Zhou Hao, Xiangcao stayed in the passage outside the cave to keep watch.
...Time passed.
Hidden beneath the now-patched animal-hide clothes on Zhou Hao, golden and silver light flickered on either side of his back.
On the left, the icy silver light flowed continuously, gradually forming the image of a rabbit.
On the right, the blazing golden light flowed as well, gradually forming the image of a bird.
They were the two great Divine Patterns of the Lunar Moon Rabbit and the Solar Golden Crow.
Everything had been going exceptionally smoothly. But as Zhou Hao absorbed more and more Power of Taiyin and Power of Taiyang into his body, the nine faint, almost invisible Cloud Seal patterns on his left arm began to grow increasingly vivid, though no one knew when the change had begun...
That's the first update!
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