Washing the Body with Sunlight, Refining the Form with Moonlight

The man who warned him reeked of blood and made no attempt to hide his killing intent. Tang Changsheng knew at once: these men were outlaws! Back when he could still command the Guardian Divine Generals, would he ever have stood on ceremony with people like them?

Under cover of night, he would have ordered the Guardian Divine Generals to strike each of them once with a whip, smashing every outlaw's head into a rotten watermelon.

Or Tang Changsheng would not have needed to lift a finger. Any one of the Three Families of Xiajiang could have given these powerful outsiders a fine chance to cool off at sea...

Not with an ordinary swim, of course. Each man would have a heavy stone tied to him before being tossed from a speedboat into international waters!

But now, after something this serious had happened, the three families had not so much as asked about it. The warning in their silence was clear...

They had grave doubts about Tang Changsheng!

And who could blame them? Even now, Tang Changsheng had never managed to take the first step in cultivation. He could not perceive his Taiguang soul or wield the slightest divine ability or magical power.

The Three Families of Xiajiang had been watching coldly from the sidelines. They had probably suspected as much for some time!

Without those powers, what good was being head of the General's Temple? Someone could put a bullet in him from nowhere...

And the General's Temple, passed down for hundreds of years through thirteen generations of disciples, would lose its lineage. Like so many other schools of cultivation, it would vanish altogether!

He opened the box and took out a little Bagua Mirror, no larger than his palm. There could be no doubt: this was the so-called key the General's Temple had guarded so carefully.

This key was meant to unlock the greatest secret hidden by the General's Temple!

The General's Temple had fallen into utter decline. Tang Changsheng had not even kindled his Heavenly Heart or entered the true path of cultivation.

If he was driven off Yin-Yang Mountain and lost the ancestral property as well, the General's Temple would likely never be passed down again!

Tang Changsheng could only hope his sect's legends were true. This key had to conceal some earth-shaking secret—one worth the lives of three masters at the Celestial Realm who had fought to seize it...

And perhaps, through this key, Tang Changsheng could carry the General's Temple through the greatest calamity in its five-hundred-year history!

Yet Tang Changsheng could not shake his unease. Why, after seizing the key, had they hidden it away for two or three hundred years without daring to use it?

Curiosity surged through him, but he would not open it in the temple's main hall. Instead, he returned to the meditation chamber where he practiced in seclusion, the safest room in the temple.

This chamber was also one of the greatest inheritances the General's Temple's past masters had left their disciples...

Set into the wall opposite him was a pearl that shed a dim, uncertain light, barely illuminating the chamber's seven or eight square meters.

According to sect legend, the moment that pearl went dark, the General's Temple would suffer a catastrophe that swallowed it whole!

Fortunately, although the pearl was dim, it showed no sign of going out.

Beneath its light was a line of sacred words left by a master of an earlier generation. It was also the guiding principle of all cultivation in the General's Temple.

Tang Changsheng stared at it, then recited softly, word by word: "I wash my body with the sun and refine my form with the moon. Immortals raise me up, jade maidens walk beside me. The twenty-eight mansions merge their forms with mine. A thousand evils and ten thousand impurities are washed away with water. A thousand sages and ten thousand ancestors bring peace to my body. May this disciple's souls and spirits, five organs and hidden depths be at rest. Green Dragon and White Tiger stand in ranks, their spirits imposing. Vermilion Bird and Black Tortoise guard my body. Let it be done with the urgency of the law!"

As he finished the incantation, a complicated look passed through his eyes.

It was a Daoist purification spell, but to the General's Temple, it contained the whole of its cultivation.

Within it lay five profound arts: the Sun Body-Washing Method, the Lunar Form-Refining Method, the Four Spirits Life-Guarding Method, the Five Gods Returning to the Origin Method, and the Nine Luminaries Heavenly Heart Method.

Cultivating any one of them could take a practitioner to lofty heights and grant magical power and divine abilities.

The other disciples could cultivate only the first four arts. Only the head of the temple was qualified to cultivate the last one, the General's Temple's most closely guarded treasure:

the Nine Luminaries Heavenly Heart Method, said to let one transcend the mortal and enter the sacred when cultivated to its utmost! Of course, the head could also cultivate all five arts...

Unfortunately, although all five arts were in the hands of Tang Changsheng, the General's Temple's sole successor and current head, he had not succeeded in cultivating a single one...

Otherwise, he would not have found himself in this predicament!

Tang Changsheng took out the little Bagua Mirror. It looked utterly unremarkable, mottled with green, no different from the imitations sold at street stalls.

"So this is the so-called key!" An indescribable mixture of strangeness and fervor filled Tang Changsheng's eyes.

The mirror's appearance did not disappoint him in the least. A divine object hid its own brilliance; that was only natural!

But activating—or opening—this key was no simple matter. It required magical power.

In this world, technology flourished and civilization prospered. Yet the ancient arts of cultivation seemed to be approaching a dead end.

Even Tang Changsheng, a Daoist who had trained diligently since childhood for more than ten years, had never managed to take the crucial step onto the path.

His resolve was iron, and his determination to seek the Dao was firm. Even so, he could not help losing heart at times...

"Maybe they're right. This is the age of declining magic, when the Dao no longer reveals itself. It's become terribly hard to enter the path through orthodox methods..."

Tang Changsheng murmured to himself, but his eyes flashed. "Luckily, I also learned an unorthodox method for refining Yin Soldiers... With the Human-Ghost Form-Merging Art, I can still wield power..."

It was a lowly Outer Dao method. In the past, no disciple of the General's Temple would have given such an art a second glance.

But matters had come to this. Even Tang Changsheng, head of the General's Temple, could only stake everything on a dangerous gamble!

As he spoke, he took out a piece of Soul-Nourishing Jade. A faint chill radiated from it.

For the past forty-nine days, he had nourished the jade pendant each day with incense offerings and blood from his fingertip.

Tang Changsheng could feel the yang energy he had cultivated so painstakingly steadily weakening. His face had grown pale, and his body frail.

A creeping cold surrounded him, and at times he seemed to brush against a vast, seething resentment.

Tang Changsheng did not need a mirror to know that his face had turned deathly white, with a faint blue cast. He looked dreadful—anyone might have taken him for a consumptive ghost!

"This Human-Ghost Form-Merging Art really is a deadly, wicked technique... If I had a choice, I would never take this path... But..."

Tang Changsheng murmured as he bit into his finger without hesitation. A drop of fresh blood fell onto the Soul-Nourishing Jade.

"...Spirit of the yin form, enter my body at once. Follow my form at once. Open my spiritual apertures, and make all responses clear..."