The twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month.
Cheng Xinzhan set down his brush and blew the paper dry, completing another Daoist Yuandan Subduing Demons Painting.
He had promised to replace the door paintings at Chestnut Creek Stockade in the mountains of the Miao Borderlands every year. He had painted plenty there last year, enough for this year without making a special trip, but he still had to stockpile some for the years ahead.
Compared with last year, his painting skills had not improved much, but the sense of yang fire in his paintings had grown stronger.
The old stockade chief would surely be happier to see them.
Heavy snow fell outside the cave. He did not feel like going out for now, so this was a good opportunity to consider the road ahead.
Back when he was still far from opening his Fire Mansion, he had already been thinking about an Inner Landscape Deity for his Metal Palace. He had set his heart on a metal corpse early on, even planning to search for one in the northwest.
But human calculations could not match heaven's plans. A twist of fate had let him witness the golden Qilin Corpse Immortal's ascension in Qingzhou, and thus he had formed his Qilin Metal Corpse Inner Landscape Deity.
Yet without those early plans, he would not have paid such close attention upon seeing the Qilin corpse, much less asked the Corpse Immortal, "What is the nature of metal?"
Now that his Metal Palace Inner Landscape Deity had formed, he only needed the Thunder Pulp to dissolve the Metal Palace's True Baleful Intent before he could open it. It was time to plan for the next organ.
Fire arose in air, and metal was refined in fire. Only earth, wood, and water remained of