He was, after all, an old monster who had lived for a million years. He quickly composed his startled expression, though ripples still stirred in his eyes, refusing to settle.
He took the precious bone engraved with the Kun Peng Precious Technique without asking where it had come from. None of that mattered.
"Little Xi, you really are full of surprises..." Seventh Great-Grandfather was at a loss for words. After fumbling for a while, that was all he managed to say.
"Great-Grandfather, remember to place restrictions on it. We absolutely cannot let this spread outside the family," Xi Yue reminded him.
Generally, great clans and noble families placed restrictions within their disciples' primordial spirits to prevent their divine abilities and Precious Arts from leaking out.
Seventh Great-Grandfather nodded without saying more. He would hardly make a mistake like that.
"Little Xi, you came for the ancestral technique this time too, didn't you?" Seventh Great-Grandfather looked at Xi Yue, his tone quite certain.
Xi Yue nodded. "That's right. I want to see whether I can master it."
With her talent and world-shaking wisdom, what could she possibly fail to learn?
Then she thought of those people from the Wang Family. They possessed the Chaos-Quelling Art, yet thirteen whole generations had failed to master it. What an impressive bunch of talents.
Only in this generation had Wang Xi finally mastered it, and she alone. The rest might as well dash their heads against a wall and be done with it.
She really wanted to shout, "Put down the Chaos-Quelling Art and let me have a go!"
Unfortunately, that was impossible. Even setting aside the blood feud between the Wang Family and the Xu Family, Wang Changsheng was a creature of darkness. That alone meant he would never let the Chaos-Quelling Art spread beyond his family.
"Here. This is the ancestral technique passed down in our Xu Family, the Heavenly Secrets Evolution Art." Seventh Great-Grandfather handed her a lustrous white piece of bone and sighed softly. "Ah, if you can master it, that would be a blessing for our Xu Family."
Clearly, even Seventh Great-Grandfather held little hope. He had never mastered it himself, after all. Otherwise, he would not have ended up guarding the ancestral temple.
Had Xi Yue's cultivation been higher, he would have thought she had some hope. As she was now... it was hard to say.
Xi Yue accepted the bone. It felt icy to the touch, gleaming with a soft luster, as translucent as an ice crystal. An indescribable resonance of the Dao spread from it, drawing her in.
Seventh Great-Grandfather had already left, rushing off to study the Kunpeng Method.
She sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion woven from kun wood, its value beyond measure.
Kun wood was wood from the branches of the World Tree and contained the mysteries of heaven and earth. A single leaf could clear the mind and body, draw one into a state of Dao enlightenment, and accelerate cultivation. It was a supreme treasure.
Unfortunately, the World Tree had been felled in the previous era. This divine wood had all but vanished and was nearly impossible to find, appearing only in certain surviving lands of the Immortal Ancient Era.
Seated upon it, Xi Yue soon emptied her mind. Her body and spirit became utterly clear, and she sank into Dao enlightenment.
The lustrous white bone in her hand began to glow. Swathes of runes flew out of it and assembled in the air, forming an ancient scripture.
Buzzz-
A grand chorus of scripture recitation rang beside her ears, like the resounding divine voice of the Great Dao. Every word carried a strange resonance of the Dao, ancient and weathered, as though it had traveled from ages past.
In a haze, her consciousness seemed to enter a strange space. There, she saw a group of people.
Their clothing differed from that of the present age. They wore the garb of the Immortal Ancient Era and brandished weapons, locked in a desperate battle against countless creatures of darkness.
Battle cries shook heaven and earth, nearly tearing one's soul apart. The entire world was an eerie blood-red.
Bloody rain and gore-laden winds swept unchecked through heaven and earth. Purple lightning tore across the sky like horned dragons, its thunder unceasing, as though all the heavens were falling silent in annihilation and the world had entered the age of Dharma's end!
Everything was hurtling toward destruction!
A man waved a great iron-blooded banner, his figure towering straight as a mountain. His golden battle armor was already shattered and stained with dark-red blood, yet it blazed with immortal radiance.
Behind him stood an army numbering in the millions, fighting bloody battles against other beings under the command of the iron-blooded banner.
Corpses kept falling from the sky. Mountains and rivers lay shattered, and endless bloody rain poured onto the earth, filling the land with grief and anguish.
As Xi Yue witnessed this scene, sorrow rose in her heart as well. This was the dirge of the Immortal Ancient Era.
In the next instant, the scene shattered. Everything dispersed into nothingness.
Xi Yue immersed herself in it, carefully comprehending each passage of runes, pondering their true meaning and engraving their divine essence within herself. Threads of Dao resonance emerged around her, resonating with the scripture.
In the air, ancient runes shone brilliantly, shifting and combining freely as they flowed. Their interwoven patterns evolved into countless divinatory images, intricate and unfathomable, as though deducing the Great Dao of heaven and earth, the past, the present, and the future!
Only after an unknown length of time did Xi Yue emerge from her state of enlightenment. The aura around her gradually faded, and the bone in her hand fell still.
"I've gained an initial grasp of it, at least. It is a method created by a true immortal, after all. Comprehending it at this cultivation realm is still too much of a stretch."
As she spoke, runes continually evolved in her hand, condensing in the air into an unfathomably profound array diagram of heavenly secrets. Its flowing lines glimmered with spiritual light.
The corners of her lips lifted into a faint smile. "I told you. With my world-shaking wisdom, comprehending it wouldn't be difficult."
She had to admit that this divine ability was extraordinary. It could divine heavenly secrets, and when cultivated to its pinnacle, it could even reveal a glimpse of the future.
Still, that required profound cultivation. She had no intention of divining a glimpse of the future only to divine herself out of existence, like a certain rhinoceros of the Celestial Clan.
Her current cultivation and insight were not yet sufficient to bring her to that level.
Even so, it remained useful to her now. At the very least, she could calculate her opponent's next move and seize the initiative.
Xi Yue swept her gaze around, then scanned the surroundings with her divine sense and immediately selected several Precious Arts.
Besides the Precious Arts of pure-blooded ferocious beasts such as the Heavenly Silkworm, Bi Fang, and Qiongqi, there were also a few individual moves from the Precious Arts of the Ten Fiends, including the True Dragon and True Phoenix.
Overall, it was a considerable haul. These Precious Arts should suffice for her present needs.
She continued sitting cross-legged, studying the evolution of these Precious Arts' runes and immersing herself in them for several days straight.
In addition, she continued working through the Kunpeng Method. It was simply too profound and required time to comprehend in detail.
On this day, Seventh Great-Grandfather came looking for her. Xi Yue had, after all, spent an entire month in the ancestral temple.
Although nothing should go wrong inside the ancestral temple, he still could not put his mind at ease and came to check on her.
"Child, you actually mastered it?!" Seventh Great-Grandfather was astonished. He noticed a faint resonance of the Dao lingering around Xi Yue, linking her to heaven and earth and uniting her with heaven's heart. This was unmistakably a sign that she had mastered the ancestral technique!
"Yes. I didn't let you down." Xi Yue would never say anything like "It was just luck." This was clearly the result of her world-shaking wisdom. What did luck have to do with it?
"Good, good, wonderful!" Seventh Great-Grandfather voiced his approval three times in succession
and was so exhilarated that he wanted to throw back his head and let out a long howl.
Of course, that was out of the question. As an elder, he still had some dignity to preserve.
Xi Yue shook her head with a soft laugh and said nothing.
Seventh Great-Grandfather must have assumed she had spent this entire month comprehending the ancestral technique. In truth, it had taken her only half a month.
If he learned that, she wondered whether he might faint from excitement. After all, he had spent his whole life studying it without ever succeeding.
On second thought, though, she decided not to deal the old man another blow. At his age, he could not withstand too much excitement.
"Seventh Great-Grandfather, I'll be going now." Xi Yue did not want to linger. After all, if they really settled accounts, she still owed him quite a few Eight Treasures, which left her feeling a little guilty.