Liu Dongqing returned to the courtyard.
After an entire night and morning of delays, his anticipation for the Demon Refining Mystic Sect's supreme mystic arts had reached its peak.
The moment he shut the door tight,
Liu Dongqing could no longer contain his excitement. Nearly beside himself with joy, he drew the red and green jade slips from his robe with slightly trembling hands.
Only after several deep breaths did he steady himself enough to press the jade slip inscribed with the Scarlet Crow Secret Seal Fire-Devouring Flame-Rising Spirit Incantation against his brow.
As he raised his arm,
three rings of azure light gathered once more between Liu Dongqing's brows.
The instant that solid azure light touched the jade slip,
the instant the power he had refined together with his life force connected with its crimson glow,
it was as though heavenly thunder had struck Earth Fire.
At once,
the jade slip in Liu Dongqing's hand erupted with a fiercer blaze than ever before, filling the small space around him.
Within the flames, a splendid image first appeared in illusory light and shadow—
It was a round furnace, its body seemingly bone-white and carved with rows of openwork patterns. Through those openings, the red-hot fire burning inside was plainly visible.
The crimson flames blazed like the true sun. At their heart, densely packed Daoist sigils resembling demon script gathered, carrying the firelight into the shape of a Crimson Crow.
At a glance, it looked almost like a golden crow within the flames.
No sooner had that splendid image appeared than it turned into a flash of spiritual light and sank between Liu Dongqing's brows.
And that was only the beginning.
Next,
all the fierce firelight spilling from the jade slip began to flow.
Traces of Sigils surfaced one after another within the streaming light.
First came the art itself, a passage of precious words written in large ancient sigils.
Then came page after page of notes in ordinary script, some profound, others elementary.
As soon as those words appeared, they joined the torrent of light and poured between Liu Dongqing's brows.
Exhale—inhale—exhale—
Time passed little by little.
A vast number of words drifted through the light and sank into his brow.
Around him, the firelight cast by the jade slip grew ever dimmer.
Finally,
at a certain moment,
the last passage of text carried away the last stream of light.
The bedroom went abruptly dark. Just when the darkness reached its deepest point, the jade slip—now much plainer, its former warm luster gone—suddenly burst forth with another fierce radiance.
But this time,
the radiance did not pour into Liu Dongqing's brow.
Instead, it spread in every direction.
Liu Dongqing stared at the light as it appeared and began to break apart.
Within it, faint, illusory figures emerged—
At first, they were spirited young people in much the same standard Daoist robes, each pressing a jade slip to their brow.
The figures that followed stood amid more dilapidated surroundings. Their young faces no longer held the high spirits of those before them.
After that came faces twisted with panic and helpless fear, appearing one after another in the light.
Liu Dongqing even saw the young shaman among them.
At last,
the scattered strands of light dissolved like smoke.
In the final strand, his own excited, joyful expression appeared, then faded with the light.
Crack—
A dull sound rang out.
Liu Dongqing looked down.
Under his gaze, the jade slip, now utterly without luster, slowly lost its crimson color. Then the slip itself crumbled into fine powder and vanished between his fingers.
It was as though he had watched the Demon Refining Mystic Sect's entire rise and fall.
He also understood, clearly and directly, that after passing through the hands of so many cultivators, this supreme mystic art's final chance at inheritance had fallen to him alone.
Before this, the Demon Refining Mystic Sect had been an unfamiliar name, something very, very distant from Liu Dongqing.
But at that moment,
after everything he had experienced and the scene he had just witnessed,
a lonely sense of duty inevitably took root in his heart.
It took a long while
before Liu Dongqing emerged from his silence and regained his composure.
Then he picked up the one remaining jade slip and pressed it to his brow.
The scenes he had witnessed before played out again as he received the Ghost Vine Blood-Draining Bone-Devouring Pill-Subduing Art.
There were only two differences. The first was the other image that appeared during the inheritance—not splendid, but deeply uncanny—
A sinister black vine rose from the ground in a dreadful, twisted shape. Its tendrils writhed wildly, coiling every which way until they formed a vine-like tree.
Small bone-white flowers bloomed among its sharp, savagely twisted branches.
Seen from afar, the interlaced vines resembled a human figure, the little white flowers adorning it like patterns on a robe. Taken as a whole, the image looked like a round fan in black and white.
The second difference came at the end. After the illusory figures of the disciples who had inherited the art faded one by one like images in a revolving lantern, this jade slip likewise crumbled to powder.
But amid the powder falling between Liu Dongqing's fingers, a seed lay quietly in his palm.
Standing where he was, Liu Dongqing turned his hand and put the seed away.
He raised a hand to rub his brow. It took another long while for him to recover from the torrent of words left by two successive supreme mystic inheritances.
His eyes shifted. After a moment's thought, his gaze settled on a cloth pouch on the table.
It held the fifty Shattered Spirit Stones Manager Hou had brought him.
Liu Dongqing slowly sorted through the immense flood of knowledge in his mind.
Then he reached out and picked up the pouch.
Even the cleverest cook cannot make a meal without rice.
It's time I visited the market inside Sunward Dao Academy.
Meanwhile, outside Glazed Mountain Temple in the Western Regions,
columns of rolling black smoke surged into the sky before the Mountain Gate of that renowned sacred sect. In the distance, they joined into a curtain that blotted out the sun and shrouded the entire temple.
Now and then, an eerie blood-red gleam flashed within the smoke.
Beneath the glow of that uncanny demonic light,
a gaunt figure in a loose monk's robe climbed the narrow mountain path toward Glazed Mountain Temple. With every step up the bluestone path, he bowed his head in devout worship toward the Mountain Gate.
Thus he went, until the thin monk took the final step before the gate.
When he lifted his head from his last bow, he revealed his true form: a demon ape with a hairy face and a jutting muzzle.
Then
the demon ape fixed his scarlet eyes on Glazed Mountain Temple's closed doors. When he opened his mouth, human speech came out.
"This humble monk is Monkey Mind. By the Ancient Chan Rite, I bow before your mountain and request an audience with the abbot of this generation's Glazed Mountain Temple!"
His words fell.
The temple's closed vermilion doors slowly opened a crack.
Under the demon monk Monkey Mind's gaze, a young novice timidly poked half his body out. He looked at the fearsome scene beneath the sky full of roiling demonic energy and said in a child's voice,
"My master says—monks do not tell lies. He isn't here, and he won't see anyone!"
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