"This is what you wanted."
Patriarch Tongxuan handed him a jade slip.
Cheng Xinzhan took it and looked closely. Written on the jade slip were the words:
"Nine Yang Eye Refining."
"By practicing this method, you can draw Yang Qi straight into your eyes to help open the Yang Palace of your Eye Aperture. This method also records an ocular art called the Nine Yang Returning-Form Golden-Pill Eyes, which can see through obscuring illusions and has a suppressive effect on demons.
"Once you have opened your Yang Palace, the ocular art will naturally be mastered. Come find me again when you are ready to draw Yang Gang into your body.
"The Yang Palace opens quickly, but better slow than hasty. Haste can easily injure the eyes, and eye injuries are difficult to treat. You must take care."
Cheng Xinzhan had lacked a method for opening the Yang Palace. When he asked the patriarch whether he could refine an artifact within an aperture, he had also requested a method for opening it.
He had not expected to gain an ocular art as well. After thanking him repeatedly, he left thoroughly satisfied.
When he reached Carefree Cave, the cat and Gouer bounded toward him. Both had now made some headway in Qi Refining and were exceptionally intelligent. Third Younger Sister was no different from a child of ten or so, while Dengge'er was clever and steady, almost like an ordinary person.
His fleshly body was still seated cross-legged, but it was merely meditating and consuming Qi. The True Baleful Intent within it had long since dissolved, and it could already walk normally.
Just over ten days ago, on the day before Wen Sukong went away to undergo her tribulation, all the True Baleful Intent clogging this body's hundred celestial-circuit apertures and network