Cold Dipper True Qi

"Can you truly bring yourself to do it?"

By now, daylight blazed, and the clouds a hundred zhang overhead had taken on a dazzling array of colors. The sun hung high, shining in all its splendor.

Yin Gonghao gazed impassively at the sky for a while, watching golden waves ripple and the sparrows of dawn pierce the darkness. Only after some time did he lower his eyes to Zhou Chuyu, who lay prostrate on the ground:

"That man rescued you from fire and flood. Without him, you would still be on that little hill, being humiliated and toyed with. If I demand that you kill him with your own hands, can you bear to do it? Would you resent me?"

"Teacher, how do you know all this?"

"The gulf between one cultivator and another is greater than the difference between a man and a dog. I don't even need to probe those petty thoughts of yours. One glance tells me everything. How could you hide them from me, Yin Gonghao?"

"He... did save me from the sea of suffering, but he came too late. Now that he's come, what did all those days before him amount to?"

Zhou Chuyu avoided Yin Gonghao's gaze and unconsciously scooped up a handful of wet black earth. Her fingers clenched, her nails digging deep into her palms as she murmured:

"The more I think of how he saved me, the more I seem to hate him. He's as clean as the clouds in the sky, while I'm filthy and foul, like rotting muck buried underground for fertilizer... when I look at him, I can't help wanting to drag him down from the sky and make him stay with me. I want to hold him, entwine myself around him, stain every inch of him with my scent until no amount of washing can ever get him clean. Then we could die with our necks entwined, our bodies rotting together..."

Yin Gonghao was delighted.

"Ungrateful though it is, it comes straight from the heart. Every word is sincere," he said.

"So I would never dare resent you, Teacher. You've given me a golden road. Only by standing on this road that leads to heaven can I reach out and drag Chen Heng from the sky into the mud."

Yin Gonghao narrowed his eyes slightly.

"Would never dare resent," rather than "would never resent"?

That single difference in wording had laid this woman's thoughts bare.

But Yin Gonghao paid it little mind. He had seen far too many people who thought themselves extraordinary, yet how many of them could condense a Golden Core and enter the Primordial Spirit realm?

Even if this woman truly had such tremendous fortune and came to kill him after attaining the Dao, Yin Gonghao would only clap his hands in delight! It would mean he had taught her well!

"If you really can kill him, not only may you enter my tutelage, but if you cultivate a Golden Core within fifty years, I can also point you toward a tremendous opportunity."

Yin Gonghao's long eyebrows twitched. "Countless True Disciples and Dao scions throughout the Eight Sects and Six Schools are waiting for it with their necks craned. If you can reap its benefits, you will face no further obstacles in cultivation before the Three Calamities!"

Zhou Chuyu raised her head and broke into a charming smile, her eyes and brows suddenly brimming with allure.

"But all that is for later. I'm giving you only one month. If you haven't finished the task within a month, I'll take back your Qi Refining cultivation and reduce you to a Beast Body."

"The mortal world is so vast. What if your disciple cannot find any trace of Chen Heng? Or if disaster befalls him and someone else kills him first?" Zhou Chuyu asked. "How would that count?"

"It would still count as your loss."

Yin Gonghao clasped his hands behind his back, a hint of a smile on his face, and said flatly:

"Be content. This test of mine is already an easy one. Back then, to test whether I had the destined affinity to become his disciple, my honored teacher deliberately assumed my appearance and slaughtered half the cultivation sects in a realm-space. Then he threw me into that realm-space and told me that only if I survived a month would I pass."

"By the end of that month, my bones had been gouged out and my skin flayed off. Even my soul was burning like a sky lantern in a yin-fire furnace. Luckily, those fools wanted to torture me and didn't destroy my Origin Spirit, so I managed to scrape through on a technicality."

Zhou Chuyu drew a deep breath and silently rose from the ground.

"You've only received a single Qi Cultivation Art from me. With so little time, even if I gave you a Dao Art, you wouldn't cultivate anything worthwhile. Better not to learn one at all."

Yin Gonghao considered for a moment. A pitch-black ring of light sprang from the crown of his head, and a great skeletal hand reached out from within it. With a sweep through the void, it seized several Qi Refining cultivators in apricot-yellow Daoist robes, both men and women. Their fluctuating auras made it clear that they were all at the seventh layer of Qi Refining or above.

"S-Senior..."

Among those in apricot-yellow robes, their leader forced down his terror and spoke in a trembling voice.

They had been diligently cultivating in their cave abodes when a great skeletal hand suddenly appeared from nowhere and effortlessly crushed their sect-protecting formation. Several elders had tried to stop it, but before they could even get close, their bodies were shattered outright, reduced to heaps of mangled flesh in midair.

"We are all disciples of Refined Rock Mountain. My father was once acquainted with True Person Zhang of the Luofu Sect. M-May I ask-"

He never finished speaking.

Yin Gonghao had already lost patience. The five fingers of the great skeletal hand clenched viciously, crushing them all to death in a spray of blood.

"What bullshit Refined Rock Mountain? Never heard of it. Does a mere Luofu Sect think it can hold sway over me? My Corpse Summoning Banner is still short a few banner spirits. Sooner or later, I'll invite them all to take up residence!"

Utterly dismissive, Yin Gonghao pointed at the heap of fresh bloody pulp and said to Zhou Chuyu:

"Go on. Pick out a few Talisman Artifacts you like. Your cultivation at the Third Layer of Qi Refining is enough to wield them."

Once Zhou Chuyu had carefully finished picking through the bloody pulp, Yin Gonghao said nothing more and waved her away.

Zhou Chuyu prostrated herself respectfully and earnestly knocked her forehead against the ground three times before turning to leave the valley.

"I've obtained the method. At last, I've obtained the method..."

A streak of gray-blue flight light shot into the clouds, only barely coming to a stop after soaring a hundred zhang into the sky.

Flying with her body wrapped in Embryonic Breathing, Zhou Chuyu cupped her face in her hands, crying and laughing:

"Mother, can you see me from beneath the earth? Your Yu'er has found her chance at immortality today, too."

Within the One True Dharma Realm.

Chen Heng's breathing came in fits and starts. Suddenly, pain tore through his throat as a surge of cold blasted it open, and all his internal organs froze rigid. Even the blood flowing out was now a ghostly blue.

Wrong again. I should have slowed down just then.

The thought flashed through Chen Heng's mind as he lay dying.

Once this Mind Image ceased breathing, light and shadow shimmered on the spot, condensing into a new Chen Heng.

Refining Cold Dipper True Qi was indeed no easy task.

Even when it lay still and silent, it had once tormented Chen Heng until he could not even find release in death. After he attained Qi Refining, the Embryonic Breathing within his body had grown immeasurably stronger, enough to protect his internal organs and spare him that freezing agony.

But refining it was still beset with a thousand hardships and ten thousand difficulties...

Cultivation in the Qi Refining realm involved constantly strengthening the innate Embryonic Breathing within the body, building it up layer by layer until it finally met the requirements for condensing true qi.

During this process, differences in the Qi-Refining Method would also cause the Embryonic Breathing within the body to undergo various changes.

For example, as someone cultivating Ingot-Gold True Qi gradually advanced in Qi Refining, their Embryonic Breathing would steadily manifest the nature of Ingot-Gold True Qi, taking on the attributes of "metal" and "sharpness."

It was precisely because Chen Heng relied on Primordial Beginning True Origin's attribute of "dragon-heaven illumination, encompassing all true essences," and because his own Embryonic Breathing had been imbued with some measure of this nature, that he dared attempt to refine Cold Dipper True Qi.

But true qi was, after all, of a higher order than Embryonic Breathing. Even though the attributes of his Embryonic Breathing were extraordinary, fully refining it was still far from easy.

One more try.

Chen Heng steadied his mind and sat down on the ground again.