Slaying the "Flood Serpent"

Li Si was a roving soldier under Hu Wan, the military adjutant commanding the outer troops of Huaishuo Town—a mere rank-and-file man.

Because he was born among the Hu Yi, the lowest of the Eight Yi peoples, he was often ostracized.

Tonight, the others had arranged to go out seeking pleasure, so they found some flimsy excuse to send him to stand watch in a ruined temple out in the wilderness.

Boom!

A thunderclap exploded overhead.

Li Si looked up at the sky. At some point, a fine drizzle had begun to fall, and now it was growing heavier, the rain streaking down thick as hemp fibers.

"Just my rotten luck."

Muttering to himself, he gathered some dry grass and dead branches, carried them into the ruined temple, and lit them with his fire striker to ward off the cold.

He lay down fully clothed and dozed fitfully for a while, until he vaguely heard the patter of water again.

Opening his eyes, he saw that the wind had torn away the roof tiles above him, and rain was slanting in.

Before he could get up to move the fire, a strange insect suddenly caught his eye.

It was barely a finger long, yet it broke through a thumb-sized stone from beneath the ground and took wobbling flight.

"Huh? Is that... a flying earthworm?"

Curious, Li Si rose and leaned closer for a look. The hem of his clothes stirred up two or three sparks, which drifted into the little hole the flying insect had emerged from. Splashes of rain dripped into it as well.

He watched the creature get scorched by the sparks, then submerged beneath the water droplets. After a while, it actually took flight again, wobbling toward the temple door.

Li Si stepped forward and caught it between his fingers. Looking down, he saw that it resembled an earthworm, but four small lumps faintly bulged beneath its body, and a wooden thorn as fine as a hair jutted from its forehead. It was a truly bizarre sight.

Li Si clicked his tongue in wonder. "What a marvel of Transformation. Every manner of demon and monster really is coming out in these times. Even earthworms have grown horns."

With that remark, he casually tossed the strange creature outside.

At that very instant, the firelight dimmed, and an icy chill shot up his spine without warning.

Li Si instinctively turned and jerked his head up,

"Ah!"

He cried out and fell backward onto the ground, his legs already gone weak.

In a corner of the ruined temple that had been empty moments before, three prone figures had appeared out of thin air.

All three were drenched in blood, with torn strips of cloth wound haphazardly around them. The dressings were crude, and crimson blood trickled down the cloth.

Looking closely in the flickering firelight, he saw that they were wearing the regulation leather armor of the Huaishuo frontier garrison.

Behind him, three rays of radiance suddenly flew out in succession from that inconspicuous little hole, lighting up all four walls of the ruined temple.

The creature was about to fly out of the ruined temple and vanish into the curtain of rain.

The Illuminating Light plunged straight into Li Si's body.

The terror in Li Si's eyes instantly vanished. His pupils turned gray-black, and a cold, vicious air flashed through them.

"Forgive the intrusion."

The spiritual consciousness possessing Li Si spoke through his body. Though the voice was still Li Si's, the manner of speaking belonged to someone else entirely.

Li Fuchan reached out and caught the creature in his palm just as it reached the doorway.

The flying earthworm continued to writhe and struggle, curling its body again and again, plainly unwilling to submit.

Li Fuchan looked down at the tiny flying earthworm struggling in his hand and clicked his tongue in admiration. "What wondrous Daoist arts. Mount Sumeru within a mustard seed, carving out heaven and earth—this is no less marvelous. I thought you were some mighty demon lord born of an earthworm, but to think you were only a little creature like this. This time, I proved one move ahead."

With that, brilliant Illuminating Light suddenly blazed from between his brows, radiant as the sun. The moment it shone upon the flying earthworm in his palm, the creature stiffened and stopped moving, its life visibly extinguished.

Still uneasy, Li Fuchan reached out, seized the Golden Light hovering in midair, and ground it against the flying earthworm.

In moments, its tiny body turned into a pinch of ash, leaving not the slightest trace behind.

From the moment jealousy and hatred toward the flying earthworm arose within him, the two had become mortal enemies, bound to fight until one of them died.

Only the living deserved to inherit the Flood Serpent's destined fate.

Confident that his fatal tribulation had yet to manifest, Li Fuchan acted without fear. Without hesitation, he fed his flesh to the Three Lights Divine Radiance, battering the flying earthworm into a desperate retreat. Only then did he glimpse the truth.

All that talk of "before growing horns, hiding in Jie Mountain; secretly dwelling in the flying earthworm's cave" amounted to nothing more than an earthworm burrow beneath a little stone, with tunnels running in every direction.

The heavenly water and heavenly fire were merely those few splashes of rain and scattered sparks from earlier.

Truly, Transformation toyed with people, leaving them clicking their tongues in wonder.

Li Fuchan turned to look at He Liuhun and the other two lying unconscious on the ground. "My flesh is destroyed now. Though I still have my Yang Vessel and can use the Treasure Light to return to life and regrow my flesh, who knows how many years that will take? I have no time left to look after you. If fate permits, we shall meet again out in the world."

He feared that if his Illuminating Light remained too long in Li Si's spiritual seat, it would inevitably crush and extinguish the man's Spiritual Nature, so he dared not delay.

He immediately retrieved the Yang Vessel he had stored in advance and the dozen or so ancient books he had entrusted to Qifu Zhen, gathering everything together.

Then he called, "Go!" The Treasure Light swept everything up, the Illuminating Light abruptly left the body, and all three rays plunged into the vast curtain of rain outside, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

The ruined temple sank back into darkness, with only the remnants of the fire crackling.

Li Si stood woodenly in place, his eyes hollow and vacant, as though he had lost his soul.

Only after an unknown stretch of time did some light gradually return to his eyes, as if he had just awakened from a great dream.

"Ah..."

He lowered his head blankly to look at his left hand. At some point, a burn had appeared on his palm, red and searingly painful.

Forgetting all about the three blood-soaked, half-dead men who had appeared out of nowhere, he hurriedly dug out the medicine he carried and smeared it over his hand, grimacing all the while.

Li Fuchan wrapped up the Yang Vessel and the cultivation techniques and charged onward without daring to pause for an instant. He feared the rain would stop, the clouds would disperse, and the revealed daylight would extinguish his Three Lights.

Fortunately, the rain poured down in torrents, escorting him all the way into a vast, dark mountain.

Black Mountain's terrain was remarkably auspicious, faintly conforming to a configuration that "closed the earth's gates and gathered yang energy." It was truly a place that sheltered wind and amassed energy.

Now that he had only his yang root to sustain the Three Lights, he needed precisely such a place to lock in yang and gather energy for his refuge.

Without another word, he used the Golden Light to clear a path and plunged straight into the depths of the mountain.

"Now I need only hide here and let the Treasure Light wash over my yang root day and night, and I can regrow my flesh. But this slow work of water wearing down stone will take some thirty years."

Li Fuchan made his calculations, then shook his head. "Too long. My consciousness and soul have nowhere to rest, drifting without roots. I must find a way to hasten the process."

As for how to hasten it, he already knew what to do.

The Flood Serpent was a beast of utmost yang and utmost venom. Now that his flesh was utterly destroyed and only this imposing Yang Vessel remained, he was all the more aligned with that destined fate.

To swiftly rebuild his flesh, he would have to seize the yang essence within the mountain to nourish his foundation, then take the essence of spiritually endowed things to replenish his vital energy.

But this method offended the harmony of heaven. Unless there was absolutely no alternative, he was unwilling to resort to it.

"Since I've wrested a life out of certain death, I had best abandon any womanish mercy."

Li Fuchan murmured to himself.

He lingered there, recuperating in this fashion for several days.

Then the Illuminating Light suddenly leaped free of the Treasure Light's control and slowly drifted outward in every direction, gliding along the mountain walls as it began using its Spiritual Nature to lure the mountain's spiritually potent creatures.