"Waaah... Senior Brother, our Western Lands are barren! We went through a thousand hardships to hear the Dao, and now we don't even have seats. What's the point of living? We might as well smash our heads against a pillar in the Violet Firmament Palace and die!"
Amid those anguished cries, two ragged Daoists with careworn faces stumbled into the Violet Firmament Palace.
They were Jieyin and Zhunti, newly arrived from the Western Lands.
As Zhunti wept, he secretly glanced out of the corner of his eye at the six cushions in the front row.
When he saw Ancestor Hong Yun sitting on the fifth cushion, a sharp gleam flashed through his eyes. He cried even louder and made as if to throw himself against a nearby pillar.
Ancestor Hong Yun was kind by nature and could not bear to see others suffer. His heart softened, and he rose. "Fellow Daoist, don't take your own life. You may have my seat."
"Thank you, fellow Daoist! Thank you!"
Overjoyed, Zhunti promptly plopped down on the fifth cushion without a trace of hesitation.
Then he turned to Ancestor Kunpeng on the sixth cushion, and his expression instantly turned cold.
"You fur-covered, horn-bearing creature, born of damp and hatched from an egg! What right do you have to sit alongside us? Get up and give your seat to my senior brother!"
Ancestor Kunpeng flew into a rage. "Who do you think you are, trying to steal my seat?!"
The two were on the verge of coming to blows.
Yuanshi Tianzun, seated on the second cushion, cast Kunpeng a cold glance. "Fellow Daoist Zhunti is right. A creature born of damp and hatched from an egg has no place sitting alongside us of the Pangu Orthodox Lineage."
Laozi said nothing, but his indifferent gaze plainly showed that he agreed with Yuanshi.
Ancestor Kunpeng trembled with fury. But he stood alone against the combined pressure of the Three Pure Ones and the Two Sages of the West. In the end, he could only rise in humiliation and surrender his seat to Jieyin.
"Hong Yun!
"Zhunti!
"Yuanshi! I'll remember the humiliation you dealt me today!"
Ancestor Kunpeng retreated to the back, his eyes brimming with venom.
Just as the six cushions' occupants were finally settled—
Dong—
A clear bell rang through the Violet Firmament Palace.
Old Ancestor Hongjun appeared without warning on the purple cushion at the very front.
His gaze swept over the Three Thousand Guests below. When he saw the figures on the six golden cushions, he gave a slight nod.
But then his eyes searched the palace once more, and his brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.
The Twelve Ancestral Witches... Not one of them came?
Hongjun's heart sank. A shadow, almost impossible to detect, crossed his face, which had remained as still as an ancient well for ten thousand years.
He had ostensibly opened this sermon to enlighten all living beings. In truth, he meant to gather the Fortune of the Primordial World and prepare to merge with Heaven's Way, becoming its representative.
The Three Thousand Guests in the Violet Firmament Palace were all innate divinities favored by the Fortune of the Primordial World.
Once they heard his teachings, they would owe Hongjun a karmic debt, and the Fortune they carried would naturally flow toward him.
And among the Three Thousand Guests, none held Fortune greater or more central than the Pangu Orthodox Lineage!
The Three Pure Ones had come. That was good.
But the Twelve Ancestral Witches, who likewise bore the Fortune of Pangu's creation of heaven and earth, were absent to the last!
Those twelve wild cards...
Hongjun could not help recalling the scene beneath Mount Sumeru years ago: Dijiang and the others had swept up every precious treasure like orioles waiting behind the mantis, then strode away.
They were twelve Primordial Origin Golden Immortals!
And each of them controlled a complete Dao law!
Not only was their strength terrifying, but more importantly, they bore Pangu's Legacy and the vast Fortune of the Primordial World.
With them absent from his sermon, a huge gap had opened in Hongjun's plan to gather Fortune—one too large for him to ignore.
So be it.
Hongjun sighed inwardly.
Though he was a Sage, even he could not drag the Twelve Ancestral Witches here to hear his teachings against the overarching course of Heaven's Way.
Besides, the grudge forged during the Dao-Devil War remained. Confident in their strength and sheltered by Pangu Hall, the Twelve Ancestral Witches had every reason not to come.
Once I merge with the Dao, I'll settle accounts with you slowly.
Hongjun gathered his thoughts, put the Twelve Ancestral Witches from his mind, and spoke.
"Silence."
A Sage's words became law the moment they were spoken.
The Violet Firmament Palace, still somewhat noisy a moment before, fell so quiet that a dropping needle could have been heard.
"I am Hongjun, and I have now attained the Dao. I shall preach three times, for three thousand years each. This sermon concerns the path of the Daluo Golden Immortal."
Hongjun's voice was ethereal, as though it came from beyond the Nine Heavens, carrying a profundity that reached straight to the source.
As he spoke, celestial flowers rained down and Golden Lotuses Sprang from the Earth within the Violet Firmament Palace. Boundless Dao resonance took the form of tangible runes that danced through the air.
The Three Thousand Guests below listened, utterly entranced. At times their brows knitted tight; at others, their faces lit with wild delight. They were wholly immersed in the supreme Dao.
Meanwhile, at the foot of Mount Buzhou on the Primordial Wilderness Continent.
Unlike the lofty sermon at the Violet Firmament Palace, whose threshold was so hard to cross, the preaching at Mount Buzhou was far more down-to-earth—and far livelier.
Within the Spirit-Gathering Formation, ten million living beings had gathered in a vast, dark mass that stretched beyond sight.
They included not only the beings who already lived inside the formation, but also low-level itinerant cultivators and lesser demons from around Mount Buzhou who could not cross Primordial Chaos to hear the sermon at the Violet Firmament Palace. When they heard that the Ancestor Witches would preach the Dao, they came with their families in tow.
Dijiang sat cross-legged on an auspicious cloud in midair. No terrifying pressure radiated from him. Instead, he gave off the calm of one who had returned to simplicity.
"The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name."
"All things in heaven and earth have their principles. What we cultivate is the principle of heaven and earth, the source of its laws."
Dijiang's voice was not loud, yet it reached every living being clearly.
He did not expound on the abstruse Primordial Origin Great Dao. Instead, he began with the most basic methods of breathing and absorption, explaining the workings of spiritual energy in heaven and earth in simple terms, along with how to steady the primordial spirit and temper the body.
The ten million living beings below listened in rapt attention.
Most were humble beings with no teachings to inherit. For them, the foundational Dao Dijiang taught was like sweet rain after a long drought!
As Dijiang preached, he swept his divine sense over the living beings below.
Suddenly, his gaze paused at a corner on the outer edge of the crowd.
There crouched an unremarkable little monkey, its whole body caked in mud.
Its cultivation was extremely low. It had only just awakened its intelligence and could not even take human form.
Yet it listened with extraordinary care. Wisdom gleamed in its lively eyes, and now and then it even waved its arms and legs in time with Dijiang's teaching.
The Six-Eared Macaque?
Something stirred in Dijiang's heart.
He saw through the little monkey's origins at a glance.
One of the Four Monkeys of Chaos, it could hear with uncanny acuity, discern principles, know what came before and after, and understand all things.
In the Primordial World's original course, the Six-Eared Macaque had eavesdropped on Hongjun's sermon. Hongjun had cut off his path to the Dao with a single sentence: "The teachings shall not pass to Six Ears." Thereafter, the macaque had wandered the Primordial World, only to meet a tragic end beneath a single blow from Sun Wukong's staff.
Who would have thought that in this life, he would come to Mount Buzhou to hear the Dao?
Before you continue