Chong An had cultivated arduously in the temple. In the blink of an eye, more than three hundred years had passed, and he had successfully passed the first and second stages of the transformations of yin and yang, life and death.
It was hardly strange that he could pass the first two stages, for he had always possessed steadfast consciousness to support him. Moreover, though the pills he consumed each day appeared ordinary, they could in fact suppress the spirit and soul. Those past prostrated spirits had become nourishment for him instead.
Thus, the more smoothly things went, the more it showed that that wisp of soul was still safely persisting within him. When he encountered an obstacle, that would be the moment when the soul began to weaken.
After completing his daily cultivation one day, Chong An walked out of his quarters and came beneath a verdant pine tree. He had planted it in his third year on the mountain, and it had now grown tall and sturdy, its branches and leaves lush and green.
Standing there and looking down the mountain, he saw rolling green peaks and a long river winding through them. More than three hundred years had passed, and the temple was no longer what it had once been. Not only had it been rebuilt and renovated, but many more people now lived within it.
Although the Daoist temple itself stood in the wilderness, floods had repeatedly struck the upper reaches of Earth Continent over the years, forcing the river to change course and creating many new waterways. One of them happened to pass through the plain below the temple mountain, and a small market town had therefore sprung up there.
It was said that dynasties in the mortal world had risen and fallen. By the