September thirtieth, the last day of golden autumn.
Yunqi bid everyone farewell.
Everyone came to see him off at the village gate.
A little white dog wagged its tail at Yunqi's feet, hopping about and trying to bite the seal, utterly oblivious to the sorrow of parting.
The Red-Crowned General also alighted on the holly by the village gate. Yunqi felt that this fellow was not far from becoming a demon.
Waving goodbye to everyone, Yunqi slipped into the mountains.
The deeper he went into the mountains, the fewer people he encountered. Another two or three hundred li southwest lay primeval forest, without a single village.
After another five hundred li, there was still no sign of human habitation, but demons gradually became more numerous.
Enormous snakes wound around mountains, breathing out poisonous fumes that formed green clouds and shrouded entire tracts of land. Winged black tigers tore through the sky, the hurricanes raised by their wings uprooting ancient trees. Strange fish leaped from vast marshes to prey on great birds overhead.
Yunqi concealed his presence all along the way, avoiding these great demons. Thanks to White Dragon's keen senses, he could always steer clear of some of the more powerful beings as he traveled through the mountains.
As Yunqi walked, snow unexpectedly began falling from the sky. He counted the days and realized it was already early December.
He had heard, however, that the Southern Wastes were warm and rarely saw snow in winter. Yet today's snowfall was truly heavy, with flakes as large as goose feathers. It was quite a coincidence that he had encountered it.
"Whee-"
Yunqi whistled.
A white streak darted back from ahead and stopped before Yunqi. It was a white dog without a single patch of another color on its body. Only the tip of its nose, the tips of its ears, and its mouth had thinner fur, revealing tender pink flesh.
It was White Dragon, the dog the Miao village had given him. It had grown quite tall now, its back reaching Yunqi's knees. White Dragon sat before him with its tongue out, its tail whirling.
Yunqi stroked the dog's head. "Good dog. Find us somewhere to stay."
The white dog understood and shot off again.
Before long, the dog returned, wagging its tail to signal Yunqi to follow.
The dog had found a cave sheltered from the wind. Trees stood before its entrance, leaving it reasonably well concealed.
Yunqi knew there would be nothing inside a cave the dog had chosen, but he still followed the habit he had developed over the past few months. Curling a finger, he flicked a spark into the cave and intoned:
"Burning Purification!"
Inside the cave, the spark burst into roaring flames. The transparent fire carried a warm, turmeric-yellow tint-it was the three-flavored true fire he had recently refined.
Once the true fire had burned away the dampness and any evil presences that might have lurked within, it automatically contracted into a point of light. It hung in the air, illuminating the cave with a warm glow that did not hurt the eyes.
Yunqi and the dog went inside.
Yunqi found a rock to sit on, then took a piece of cloth from the Cave Stone and handed it to the dog.
The dog took it in its mouth, went near the cave entrance, and spread the cloth on the ground before settling comfortably onto it. The true fire had warmed the cave by now. The dog splayed all four legs, pressing its fully exposed belly against the cloth and grunting with pleasure.
Judging by the cloth's size and color, it was clearly the bundle cloth Yunqi had brought from the sect. He had truly taken the reuse of discarded things to its utmost.
Outside, the snow began falling harder, its swirling flurries obscuring the view in a white haze.
Yunqi took a leather wineskin from the Cave Stone, pulled out the stopper, and drank a mouthful.
When he left the Miao village, he had refused everything else the villagers offered, but had accepted a considerable amount of White Knife. The old village chief had laughed and said they would have to brew more this year, or they would have no good wine to serve Daoist Yun on his next visit.
"Gulp-"
His twelve-storied tower trembled as a great mouthful of cold wine went down. Once it reached his stomach, a fiery heat spread outward, warming his entire body at once.
"Ha-"
Yunqi belched, feeling refreshed from head to toe.
The wind sent the heavy snow swirling in confusion, yet Yunqi's heart was perfectly clear.
He knew exactly what he should do next.
Now that the spirit of his heart mansion had formed, his visualization method had not only absorbed the fierce solar bing fire; through Yunqi's ingenuity, it had also drawn in three-flavored true fire. Opening his heart mansion would simply be a matter of water flowing into its waiting channel. Yunqi judged that it would take a year at the shortest, three years at the longest, with little chance of falling outside that range.
There was no need now to seek some other shortcut to reduce that time.
What he should consider now was the next palace aperture.
With the mountains sealed by heavy snow, Yunqi was in no hurry to travel. This gave him an excellent opportunity for deep reflection.
He had chosen to open his heart mansion first, defining its nature through solar bing fire. This was precisely "fire in the sky," in keeping with the principle of bringing something out of nothing and turning the intangible into the tangible.
The next step was to consider what he should bring forth from fire.
According to the basic cycles of generation and restraint among the five elements, fire generated earth. And although fire restrained metal, it could also refine metal.
As for water and wood, water and fire were incompatible; contact would injure both. The harmonization of water and fire, and the union of Kan and Li, likewise referred to the coexistence of two opposing natures, which then returned to original simplicity and truth, with yin and yang returning to primordial chaos. This was coexistence, never mutual generation.
When fire touched wood, it burned. When fire and wood met, wood qi went entirely toward feeding the flames, which was unfavorable to the growth of a wood palace.
After considering it from every angle, opening an earth palace or a metal palace after the fire mansion accorded with the essential principles of the five elements.
Fire generating earth was a foundation of the five elements, yet seemed rather ordinary. Metal within fire was more radical, but there was also the saying that fire refined true gold. Metal born within fire would be sharper and purer.
Moreover, the Essentials of the Golden Core stated:
The moon conceals the jade hare, the sun conceals the crow; the tortoise and serpent coil together of their own accord. Coiled together, nature and life stand firm, and a golden lotus may be planted in fire. Gather the five elements and wield them in reverse; when the work is complete, become a spirit or immortal.
The life forged by "planting a golden lotus in fire" was the most tenacious and steadfast of all. This was the fundamental nature required to seek immortality and inquire into the Dao, and it suited Yunqi's resolve to pursue the path of everlasting life even better!
Then he would have fire generate metal and open his lung palace!
Taking it further, from the perspective of yin and yang's rotation, the bing fire within his heart was yang, so the metal of his lungs should be yin. Of Geng and Xin, Xin belonged to yin; thus, he would pair xin metal with bing fire.
His lung palace should therefore feed on the qi of taiyin xin metal.
Yunqi exhaled slowly. Before he left the mountain, He Bingkun had said that by transforming celestial phenomena into the five elements, he had already fixed his Dao Path. Now, by determining the five elements through his heart's pursuit of the Dao, the tangible and intangible aspects of yin and yang, and the two natures of the heavenly stems, his great Dao had become broader still!
Yet just as certainty settled in Yunqi's heart, his whole body jolted!
Taiyin xin metal!
It was taiyin xin metal!
Yunqi slowly extended his left hand. Light flashed from the Cave Stone on his wrist, and an object fell into his palm.
It was a small basket woven from purple bamboo, only the size of a fist.
He lifted the basket and tipped out its contents.
It was a rhinoceros beetle, two inches long, with a body like black jade, wings like dark gold, and a long horn tilted slightly upward.
It was none other than the One-Horned Rhinoceros Golden Beetle, aligned with metal, adept at controlling corpses, and belonging to yin.
Precisely yin metal!
Looking at the insect's corpse, Yunqi recalled the repeated reminders Master Sukong had given him before he left the sect.
"The Dao of corpse nourishing must not be taken lightly..."
"The One-Horned Immortal rides a dragon corpse up to heaven..."
"Aligned with metal... an insect's corpse..."
Could it be that, back in the mountains, the moment my teacher saw the Bright Palace within my mind, he had already decided that I should open my lung palace next?!
Had he given me this yin corpse of a metal insect at our parting as a deliberate reminder?!
For now, Yunqi had no way of knowing.
Originally, he had merely set this matter aside, just as he had the arts of alchemy and artifact crafting. Now, however, it seemed he could not leave it aside for much longer.
Metal was the essence of earth, while a corpse within the earth was a thing of yin and death. If he truly wished to seek xin metal, nurturing an insect and seeking corpses might well prove a fine path.
When the time came, with the Hairy Head Lodge in his heart, there was no reason the Master of the Lung Palace could not be a golden corpse!
This chapter is short, but thinking it through really gave me a headache!
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