Nine-Breath Chaos

<>

Chapter 4: Nine-Breath Chaos

Chen Beiwu flipped the sign hanging on the cultivation room door to reveal the words "Cultivation in progress. Please do not disturb," then walked inside.

Click!

Seeing the door close, Iron Egg did not leave, but lay down nearby to stand guard.

Inside the cultivation room, Chen Beiwu sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, closed his eyes, held his breath, and concentrated, focusing his awareness on his heart.

Thump, thump, thump!

As his heartbeat gradually quickened, Chen Beiwu vanished from the cultivation room in an instant and entered an unknown space.

This was a land of chaos, unnamed in antiquity, a realm where heaven and earth had yet to divide and yin and yang had yet to separate. Above, there were no sun, moon, or stars; below, no vegetation or solid ground. In every direction, all things remained unborn.

This was not Chen Beiwu's first visit, yet the sight of this chaos never failed to fill him with awe.

Perhaps Mom hadn't been boasting after all. The Huang Household's roots stretch far back into history. In ancient times, it might really have produced a towering cultivator who dominated Heavenly Abyss Star! Chen Beiwu thought.

This realm was called Nine-Breath Chaos, a supreme treasure passed down through generations of the Huang Household. It could reveal the fortune of everything in heaven and earth.

As for how it had ended up in his hands, that was a long story.

Ten years earlier, Chen Beiwu had gained an understanding of heaven and earth, sensed qi, and entered the first level of Qi Refining. But after sitting cross-legged in cultivation for too long, his legs had buckled when he stood, and he accidentally knocked over the Maitreya Supreme Truth South God Statue that his mother's family had worshipped for generations.

Afraid the statue would shatter, Chen Beiwu immediately reached out with both hands to catch it.

The statue tilted and fell heavily into his arms, and its hands, forming the Maitreya Supreme Truth mudra, stabbed straight into his heart.

Fortunately, Chen Beiwu had successfully begun Qi Refining. In that critical instant, he protected his heart with spiritual qi and escaped injury. The statue was completely undamaged as well.

But from that day onward, Chen Beiwu dreamed of the Maitreya Supreme Truth South God Statue every night. In his dreams, the statue kept teaching him a Divine Ability called Nine-Breath Qi Ingestion.

Nine-Breath Qi Ingestion: with just nine breaths of inhalation and exhalation, one could seize the creative power of heaven and earth and nurture one's own fortune. With the power of Nine-Breath Chaos, one could even turn that fortune into fortuitous encounters.

Knowing how formidable this Divine Ability was, Chen Beiwu never considered giving up on cultivating it, even after realizing it was a dream. After all, who had not dreamed in their youth of becoming a child of fortune?

However, Nine-Breath Qi Ingestion was extraordinarily difficult to cultivate. Chen Beiwu spent a full five hundred years in the dream-one month in reality-before successfully mastering its basics.

At the very instant he succeeded, his body automatically shifted into the realm of Nine-Breath Chaos, earning this supreme treasure's initial recognition.

"I wonder how high my cultivation has to be before I can fully unleash this treasure's power," Chen Beiwu murmured inwardly as he looked up at Nine-Breath Chaos towering within the chaotic realm.

Hum!

As though answering him, a streak of radiance suddenly swept through the chaos, which had neither sun nor moon nor stars, and landed in his palm, emitting a faint seven-colored glow.

At the sight, Chen Beiwu drew a deep breath, suppressing his shock and delight.

Previously, he had not thought Nine-Breath Chaos was a legendary Immortal Artifact. After all, this supreme treasure did not even possess an artifact spirit's consciousness. It was most likely a Profound Artifact that only a Nascent Soul True Lord could wield, or a damaged Spirit-Transformation Origin Artifact.

But today's upheaval in the sun had made one thing clear to Chen Beiwu: Nine-Breath Chaos was far more extraordinary than he had imagined.

Wherever the sun and moon shone, wherever rivers flowed, all belonged to the Immortal Alliance!

The unknown being cultivating upon the sun was certainly beyond Spirit Transformation. Nine-Breath Chaos had managed to obtain a thread of fortune from such a being. Even if it was not an Immortal Artifact, it was a mighty treasure that surpassed Spirit-Transformation Origin Artifacts.

I've struck it rich!

Chen Beiwu exhaled a breath of stale air, holding back his excitement.

He could not rush. With his current strength, he could not unleash this supreme treasure's power at all. For now, he still needed to grow steadily and figure out what the seven-colored fortune could do.

In the ten years since obtaining the treasure, Chen Beiwu had used it and his Divine Ability to nurture dozens of strands of white fortune-tier zero-three strands of green fortune-tier one-two strands of blue fortune-tier two-and one strand of orange fortune-tier three?

To determine exactly what level of fortuitous encounter each kind of fortune could bring about, Chen Beiwu had used Nine-Breath Chaos to trigger them several times.

He discovered that white encounters were the most ordinary. At best, he would find a spirit stone on the road or pick up a discarded magical artifact. Even his best white encounter had only given him the opportunity to transfer to Shouhe Elementary School.

Green encounters were slightly better than white ones. One had let Chen Beiwu fish up a bottle of tier-one unusual pills, which significantly increased his Qi Refining cultivation after he took them.

Blue encounters had only been triggered twice. One had increased the purity of Chen Beiwu's water and wood spiritual roots; the other had led him to find Iron Egg, allowing his father to avoid certain death. He tentatively classified them as Foundation Establishment encounters.

As for the orange fortune he had saved up over many years, he had used it a week earlier.

Then, during today's exam, he had run into the upheaval in the sun and nearly perished. Fortunately, Nine-Breath Chaos had protected his mind.

For that very reason, he had decided to provisionally classify orange fortune as a possible tier three, comparable to a Golden Core encounter. Its exact rank would have to wait until his next test.

At that thought, Chen Beiwu instinctively looked

at the seven-colored fortune in his palm and swallowed.

If his guess was right, this thread of seven-colored fortune was ranked far above orange fortune. It might have resulted from Nine-Breath Chaos itself taking the initiative to intercept a trace of the sun's aura.

There was precious little of it, only a single thread, but its quality was extraordinarily high.

His intuition told him that seven-colored fortune surpassed orange fortune by more than a little. The encounter it triggered might be something that came along only once in a thousand years.

Should I use it? Chen Beiwu's brows furrowed slightly.

Fortune did not have to be gathered from threads into a cluster before it could be used. A cluster merely maximized the rank of the resulting encounter.

He hesitated briefly, then decided to use it.

There was no point worrying about wasting it. The college entrance exam was still over three years away. Even if he saved up for another few years, he was unlikely to stumble upon enough incredible luck to gather another thread of seven-colored fortune.

A compatible co-cultivation beast was the foundation of a cultivator's path to attainment, capable of opening a road to immortality that reached the heavens.

Even setting everything else aside, if the special encounter created by this thread of seven-colored fortune let him pick up a suitable co-cultivation beast and successfully gain admission to the Thirteen Immortal Sects through the college entrance exam, then this fortune would not have been wasted. He would have profited handsomely.

Gathering his wandering thoughts, Chen Beiwu willed his Divine Ability into action, connecting his awareness to Nine-Breath Chaos and swiftly forming a miniature Fortune Golden Bell before him.

Hum!

As though sensing danger, the seven-colored light in Chen Beiwu's palm trembled slightly, then blazed brightly.

Seeing this, Chen Beiwu flicked his hand. The seven-colored light immediately sank into the Fortune Golden Bell and became a brilliantly colored spirit fish.

Bang, bang, bang!

The panicked spirit fish darted everywhere, but no matter what it tried, it could not escape the Fortune Golden Bell's confines.

Such remarkable intelligence! Delight spread across Chen Beiwu's face.

The orange spirit fish he had previously summoned had been dull and stiff, nowhere near this intelligent. It had not even known how to flee.

Excellent. The more intelligent the spirit fish, the better the encounter it triggers will surely be! Chen Beiwu extended a finger and tapped the Fortune Golden Bell.

Clang...!

As the mighty, resonant bell rang out, the brilliantly colored spirit fish inside the Fortune Golden Bell transformed into an unknown fortuitous encounter and vanished.

At the same time, Chen Beiwu's face turned pale. The spiritual power within him was drained in an instant, and his body withdrew from this realm.

(End of chapter)