"Check-in requirements met. You have reached the check-in location beneath the Willow Deity Tree in Stone Village. Please remain here for at least three minutes during check-in."
The system's mechanical voice rang out again, audible only to Xiao Tian.
Willow Deity looked just as she always had. A single tender green twig had sprouted from her charred stump, swaying in the breeze and naturally radiating a green halo that enveloped all of Stone Village.
Sitting cross-legged beneath the willow, Xiao Tian's mind was serene and empty as he patiently waited for the three minutes to pass.
"Ding! Check-in successful. Obtained Sixth Calabash Brother's talent panel from Calabash Brothers. Fuse now?"
Sixth Calabash Brother's ability was invisibility. Agile and nimble, he moved unseen.
Before he had even been born, Fairy and Seventh Brother had plucked him from Gourd Vine, intending to take him back to the Monster Cave to raise him and turn him evil.
Because Sixth Calabash Brother was nearly mature, he had landed on the ground and emerged directly, narrowly escaping disaster.
He was the one Snake Demon could do the least about. He had stolen the magical treasure Ruyi from the monsters, rescued the other Calabash Brothers in one stroke, and stormed the Monster Cave.
Sixth Calabash Brother's invisibility traits:
Invisibility 1: Become completely invisible, preventing opponents from seeing or harming you.
Invisibility 2: Phase into a starlight body, gaining the ability to ignore matter.
Xiao Tian felt that Sixth Calabash Brother's innate divine ability leaned toward space, allowing him to walk through nothingness and render his body intangible.
"Fuse."
There was nothing to hesitate over. Hadn't he endured countless hardships and crossed a million li of the Great Wilderness to reach Stone Village precisely for this moment?
An invisible power seemed to awaken deep within Xiao Tian's soul and bloodline, merging with him little by little.
This period of secluded cultivation lasted a full six months.
Little One had already turned four, yet Xiao Tian still had not awakened.
If not for the surging vital essence they could sense within him, they would almost have thought something had happened to him.
Meanwhile, in the Primordial Savage Forest, the battle from two years ago continued. Little Red Bird was fighting Zhu Yan, a massive beast with huge golden claws.
Then, one day!
Rumble!
Brilliant divine light like eternal blue gold flowed over Xiao Tian's fleshly body. The Great Dao thundered, invisible and intangible, yet its sound echoed in the hearts of every cultivator across heaven and earth.
At that moment, whether in the prison of the Lower Realm or the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths of the Upper Realm, every cultivator felt as though they had heard something, yet also as though they had heard nothing at all. The sense of having lost something left them deeply unsettled.
Shi Hao, who was beside Xiao Tian watching him cultivate, saw it too. His large eyes grew hazy, as though he was about to grasp something but remained just a little short.
Just then!
The old willow, charred black from top to bottom, stirred. Her sole willow branch resembled a pale golden chain of order, yet also the willow sprig in Guanyin Bodhisattva's pure jade vase. Wreathed in ten-colored radiance, it gently brushed the top of Shi Hao's head.
After the willow branch brushed him, Shi Hao's entire body glowed like translucent crystal. His chest in particular seemed to contain a small universe, with ten thousand rays of rosy light and a thousand streams of auspicious colors. Luminous mist swirled, hazy and ethereal, as though heaven and earth were being created. A great fortune had appeared there, crystalline and dazzling.
At that moment, Shi Hao gained an enormous benefit. Willow Deity had caught a few opportunities within the Great Dao and, in passing, bestowed some of that fortune upon the pitiful child.
She was an Immortal King, and her arrival here had been deliberate in the first place. Compared with those Immortal Kings from other worlds, she had peered into the river of time and seen far more.
Some of the surplus rain of light and radiant mist enveloped Green-Scaled Eagle, granting the eagle unexpected benefits.
Willow Deity was surprised by Xiao Tian. Even to her, he had seemed an entirely normal, ordinary little fellow, yet not long ago, while still in the blood moving realm, he had killed an old Wolf-Companion Beast sacrificial spirit that had opened three heavenly grottos.
Willow Deity was certain that Xiao Tian's fleshly body power had reached the extreme threshold of one hundred thousand jin. Otherwise, he could not have unleashed such close-combat strength.
Glancing at Xiao Tian, who was still cultivating, Willow Deity brushed him with her branch as well.
The Great Dao had just thundered. Some unknown prodigy born between heaven and earth had even stirred the Great Dao itself.
With Willow Deity's help, Xiao Tian's fusion with Sixth Calabash Brother's talent panel suddenly accelerated, completing within a few breaths.
Hum!
Xiao Tian dimly sensed that he had succeeded, seemingly breaking free of the limit of 109,999 jin. In that instant, he himself had been like a universe, sustaining himself and striving without cease, his strength jumping straight to 119,999 jin.
Even without testing the increase in his strength, he simply had that feeling.
Immediately afterward!
He had wanted to borrow the Original True Explanation for a look, but instead, brilliant red and blue flames of light enveloped him. For an instant, although he was clearly sitting beneath the Willow Deity Tree, he seemed not to exist.
Then he appeared again. Xiao Tian's entire body seemed cast from eternal blue gold and phoenix blood red gold. Treasured light flowed over him, and immortal furnaces formed from runes emerged one after another within his flesh.
Boom!
Xiao Tian's body shuddered. The location of his yinqiao acupoint shone, and his first heavenly grotto actually opened right there.
The cave heaven realm required opening a primordial gateway inside or outside the human body. Like opening a gateway to the universe, it bore such mysterious names as a genetic lock or the Gate of God, connecting to an immortal passage, an unexplored pure land yet to be reached, or a world of mysteries within the human body.
The yinqiao acupoint occupied a vital position among the meridians.
It lay between the two lower orifices. In Chinese medicine, it was called the huiyin acupoint; in Daoist alchemical cultivation, it was known as the root of life and death, the xu wei acupoint, the root-returning aperture, and the life-restoring pass, for it was the point from which the Ren, Du, and Chong meridians originated.
The Du ran from the huiyin acupoint along the back, the Ren from the huiyin acupoint along the abdomen, and the Chong from the huiyin acupoint along the foot's lesser yin meridian. Once this aperture stirred, all three meridians opened.
It was also the common source of the eight extraordinary meridians. In An Examination of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, Li Shizhen wrote, "Ordinary people possess these eight meridians, all belonging to the yin spirit, closed and unopened. Only immortals force them open with yang energy and thus attain the Dao. The eight meridians are the root of the innate Great Dao, the ancestor of the one primordial breath. To gather it, one must begin with yin. Once this meridian stirs, all meridians open." Thus, it was called "the common source of the meridians' creation and transformation."
For it "connects upward to niwan and penetrates downward to yongquan. If one understands this and causes true qi to gather and disperse entirely through this pass and aperture, the heavenly gate will remain forever open and the earthly gate forever closed. The kao meridian circulates throughout the body, linking above and below. Harmonious qi rises in homage, yang waxes and yin wanes, fire springs from water, and flowers bloom amid snow. As the saying goes, freely journey between heaven's root and the moon's cavern, and all thirty-six palaces are filled with spring."
This location held tremendous significance in ancient Chinese medicine, Daoism, and Buddhism alike, and was known as the fourth dantian of the human body.
Even Willow Deity stared at this location in uncertainty and surprise. She could not fully fathom all the mysteries of the human body. Her true form was, after all, the first spiritually awakened willow born when heaven and earth came into being, not a human, making those mysteries even harder for her to comprehend.
This was the source of creation and transformation, the source of the kidneys, used to generate essence and gather the medicine-the place of "hidden dragon, do not use."
Xiao Tian had opened an internal heavenly grotto, not an external heavenly grotto like the one Shi Hao opened in the original story.
The heavenly grotto was a cultivation realm, a crystallization of the wisdom of those who came before. Opening a heavenly grotto and connecting to a mysterious passage yet to be reached allowed one to draw directly upon the essence of the greater world, refine a small world of one's own-a heavenly grotto world-and comprehend the true meaning of Dao runes. One could better understand this world's rules and changes in order, then truly participate in the evolution of a small world.
Regardless of how that world ultimately evolved, it was an attempt to touch heaven's workings through human effort. The mysteries of this path were astonishing. What sort of person could have created such a breathtakingly brilliant method?
Within Xiao Tian's yinqiao aperture, heaven and earth seemed to be opening. It connected to an unknown world and linked to the root of the innate Great Dao.
Chaos energy seemed to emerge within, leaving everything hazy. During this process, it was also seizing the fortune of heaven and earth, continuously drawing their vital essence toward him.
Yet Xiao Tian could see crimson magma boiling inside, forming a spring of creation.
Willow Deity extended a branch. Li Fire Demon Bull, hidden in an underground cavern, and Demon Ape, hidden in an underwater heavenly grotto world, had their skulls pierced directly by the branch, which resembled Order Divine Chains, and were hauled over.
The two terrifying king-sealing-level primordial remnants turned to dust in an instant. Their hides, bones, flesh, and blood seemed to have endured ages of vicissitudes, decaying and wearing away.
Several drops of golden liquid appeared. Willow Deity dripped two directly onto Xiao Tian, and he absorbed them into his body in an instant.
The first heavenly grotto he had opened began to evolve, growing from its initial three cun to ten cun.
Willow Deity gave Xiao Tian another three drops of golden spirit dew and continued observing.
Xiao Tian's heavenly grotto instantly grew to twelve cun. Afterward, it remained hazy, shrouded in chaos energy, with no other changes visible.
Willow Deity simply gave Xiao Tian all five remaining drops of spirit dew at once.
Thirteen cun!
Fifteen cun!
That was roughly fifty centimeters.
The heavenly grotto stopped expanding again. Nothing else changed.
Willow Deity: "-"
During this process, Xiao Tian broke through to the cave heaven realm and naturally connected to the boundless void. He could also refine the divine marrow of heaven and earth in this way. In the process, the divine power of the runes he had cultivated surged, becoming more complete.
The cave heaven realm meant his body was no longer like rootless duckweed as it had been in the blood moving realm, exhausting its stamina and vital essence after fighting for a while.
Now, with his heavenly grotto plundering vital essence from heaven and earth, his endurance had greatly improved.
Not only that, the cave heaven realm could also empower the runes within his body, making them stronger than before.
Still, that old Wolf-Companion Beast had really been trash. Even with three heavenly grottos opened, he had been utterly mediocre.
Xiao Tian felt that, as he was now, he could blast him apart with a single punch without using Da Wa's divine ability from Calabash Brothers.
From that opened aperture, the resonance of the Dao flowed through his heart.
Xiao Tian understood in a flash. So that was it. This internal aperture already contained the talent of Size at Will. It truly was a genetic lock, a gateway to the universe within the human body.
His opening of this grotto had not been a coincidence. For others, opening it would be fraught with countless difficulties. Without the corresponding secret method and opportunity, it would be utterly impossible.
Before Xiao Tian could think further, his body trembled violently. The location of his zhongwan acupoint grew hot and burst open with a thunderous rumble. In an instant, ten thousand rays of rosy light and a thousand streams of auspicious colors erupted, as though heaven and earth were being created. This aperture within his body had opened as well, its rumbling deafening.
As this aperture opened, a three-cun world rapidly took shape within it. Vital essence boiled inside, rolling in golden waves like molten gold.
The zhongwan acupoint lay in the upper abdomen, on the anterior midline, four cun above the center of the navel.
It belonged to the Ren meridian of the eight extraordinary meridians and connected to the dantian.
This was a golden "heavenly grotto," dazzling like a halo of gold. It made his body shine like a golden body, with showers of light scattering like countless crystalline, holy petals dancing through the air. He seemed about to ascend on immortal wings and become a golden-bodied arhat.
Indeed, opening this aperture had begun to touch upon the innate divine ability of innate divine strength.
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