Jinping
A beam of brilliant moonlight blossomed before the awakening "giant tree"-no, it should be called a demonic tree!
Countless "human faces" emerged on the newly regrown crown of the "demonic tree," every one of them being painfully squeezed.
A sorrow rising from the depths of his bloodline welled up in his heart. "They" had all been Spirit Aperture descendants of the Jiang clan. Then several furious crescents of Sword Qi slashed toward the crown!
But the moment the silvery-white Sword Qi touched the "demonic tree's" trunk, it vanished like a stone sinking into the sea, without so much as a ripple!
The ground of the secret realm heaved like waves, and fissures spread across it like black lightning. The valley began to rise abruptly, and countless roots shot into the sky!
The third-grade technique, "Moon Laurel Condenses Frost Soul," appeared beneath Jiang Wangxuan's feet, then became a formation that froze every demonic branch trying to drag him underground into a moon sculpture.
Jiang Wangxuan floated in midair. Before him, "Jinping" Mountain was awakening. The mountain had always been formed from that mysterious "giant tree," and now, as the "giant tree" awakened, the mountain was returning to its original form.
The secret realm around him was now growing "spacious." The mountain was forcing heaven and earth farther apart. The "demonic tree" was breaking out of prison!
"This is a cage. This secret realm is the cage True Person Shouhui used to imprison the 'demonic tree.'"
Big Fat Fish's excited voice rang out in his mind, and several PowerPoint slides appeared in the Rising Yang Mansion in quick succession.
"Why was Jinping Mountain able to change from a dead zone into the hidden blessed land it is today? It was because True Person Shouhui separated this dead zone, placed the withered tree's body within the mountain, and sealed the evil creature that the demonic tree became after its death within this secret realm!"
Big Fat Fish used a pointer to rap hard on two pictures of Jinping Mountain that showed different before-and-after views.
"True Person Shouhui switched to cultivating the Great Dao of Incense Fire not simply to revive the 'giant tree,' but to let Jinping Mountain use the 'giant tree's' body, supplemented by the wish power of all living beings, to give birth to a new 'spirit,' then use that newborn 'spirit' to suppress the present 'demonic tree'!"
Big Fat Fish had just finished his masterful analysis when a beam of silvery-white radiance descended from the heavens into the crumbling secret realm.
At the spot where the "demonic tree's" heart had originally been, a beam of mysterious frost soul light exploded at its center, and a clear cicada cry rang loudly through the secret realm!
The silvery-white radiance finally came to rest above Jiang Wangxuan. Two pairs of cicada wings lazily spread open within it, and then frost froze heaven and earth into a single color, while a curved cold moon hung high in the sky!
"Master, why put yourself through this!" A phantom of a frost cicada descended upon the place!
The "demonic tree's" newly grown trunk was blasted to pieces by the mysterious frost soul light, and the entire mountain was frozen into ice crystal along with it.
Black sap seeped ceaselessly from the shattered body of the "demonic tree," bubbling with black foam. Then every branch, root and scrap was swallowed up by the black liquid!
The Black Tide in Jiang Wangxuan's Rising Yang Mansion stirred in response, spreading across the entire "sky" amid Big Fat Fish's noisy shouting.
The black liquid spread along the "demonic tree's" body, swallowing everything in its path.
The viscous dark current swept everything along as it slowly gathered into a black pool. Its surface was eerily calm, like a waxed black mirror, but thick, turbid slime churned ceaselessly at the bottom.
Then the black slime began to move.
It crawled out of the pool, slow and heavy, wriggling across the ground like a giant boneless beast.
"Jinping Mountain," already frozen into ice crystal, stood before it. The slime climbed the icy wall, wrapping the ice crystal and the mountain beneath it into its belly inch by inch.
Enveloped by the slime, the ice crystal gave one last crisp crack before melting away completely. Even the meltwater was swallowed clean by the black, turbid current.
In just a few breaths, the whole of Jinping Mountain vanished. The secret realm's mountains and rivers, its violent thunder and gray flames were all swept away by the black slime. Like the maw of a taotie, it spared nothing it touched.
The vast secret realm became empty in the blink of an eye, leaving only a flat black expanse of ground, silent and still. High in the western sky of the secret realm, a cold moon hung alone, its chilly light falling on the dead-silent earth.
The moonlight poured down like liquid silver, illuminating every detail of the empty secret realm. It also revealed the "black sun" slowly rising over the eastern horizon.
It rose from the horizon, its edges blurred and thick, like a drop of ink falling into water. As it climbed, the light of the sky around it seemed to be drawn away, darkening inch by inch.
Jiang Wangxuan floated in the air, dumbstruck. Inside his Rising Yang Mansion, the Black Tide had also become a black sun, while the silvery-white moon disk in his Qi sea burst forth with brilliant moonlight that shone into the mansion.
Big Fat Fish held a large broom and carried a trash can, staring at the black garbage with an unhappy face!
Just then, the frost cicada moved.
It perched beneath the cold moon in the western sky, its entire body transparent as ice, frost-white radiance flowing over its thin wings.
Its wings trembled slightly, and an exceedingly faint, clear cicada cry escaped from between them. The sound was as fine as gossamer, yet it pierced the entire deathly silent secret realm.
The cold moon suddenly blazed brighter.
Its chilly radiance abruptly spun, like a giant wheel of ice beginning to grind across the heavens. Frost soul ice crystals poured down from the moonlight, spreading through the secret realm along invisible paths.
Frost soul ice crystals covered the entire sky, turning it into a vast mirror of ice. The mirror reflected the black earth below, the cold moon in the west, and the black sun climbing in the east.
The "black sun" rising from the ground was immediately halted in place.
The black sun hung above the eastern horizon like a frozen pupil. In the ice mirror, it was reflected as a perfect black disk, facing the bright cold moon in the west across the great distance.
"Jiang descendant, lend me your strength!"
A pair of cicada wings had somehow attached themselves to Jiang Wangxuan's back, and the silvery-white moon disk in his Qi sea instantly ran wild.
The moon disk, which had been spinning calmly, suddenly accelerated. Silver light churned like boiling water, and fine cracks appeared across its surface, each one shooting out a dazzling white light.
The moon disk trembled violently, as though it meant to break free of the Qi sea and burst out of his body. Jiang Wangxuan felt a searing pain through his chest and abdomen, and a beam of moonlight shot into the sky.
The pillar of light was as thick as a tree one could barely wrap one's arms around. It gushed from the Baihui acupoint atop his head, fragments of frost soul ice crystal glittering amid its silvery-white radiance like a river of stars flowing backward, surging straight toward the western sky of the secret realm.
Wherever the pillar passed, the air rippled and shuddered. The instant the pillar of moonlight poured into the cold moon in the west, the moon abruptly changed.
The crescent, once curved like a silver hook, slowly and inexorably began to grow round. Inch by inch, it grew fuller: the crescent became a half moon, and the half moon became a gibbous moon.
Its light grew ever brighter and colder, and the moonlight reflected by the ice-crystal mirror interwove in the air into a silver net without a single gap.
At last, the cold moon grew into a full moon, round as a disk and blazing with boundless radiance.
Yet at the very last moment before it became full, it stopped.
The moon halted in the instant before completion, as though some force had forcibly strangled its progress toward wholeness. A small piece was missing from its lower right edge.
"This will suffice!"
The frost cicada danced slowly beneath the moon disk, all the moonlight shining into its body. Then seven-colored radiance burst from it. It slowly flew toward the highest point of the secret realm, its form gradually fading into nothingness, leaving only that rainbow light behind!
Suddenly, the seven-colored light burst apart.
A giant mountain abruptly descended from the sky. Its two highest peaks stood close together, like the ends of a scroll, towering in opposition between heaven and earth. Jinping Mountain-it was Jinping again!
But this time, it was different.
The mountain was translucent, like a landscape scroll soaked in moonlight and suspended in the void.
Jiang Wangxuan could see the shattered ice mirror behind it, the flowing seven-colored afterglow, and even the black sun gazing dimly from farther away.
It was like an enormous phantom, so light that a gust of wind seemed enough to scatter it.
Yet seven-colored light wound around every outline of the mountain, tracing every fold of its peaks and every curve of its ridges.
This mountain is false! Jiang Wangxuan stared at the giant mountain, half illusory and half real, his pupils contracting sharply.
It had no weight, no foundation, none of the mass and roughness that rock should possess. It was merely a vast phantom floating in the air, a mirage standing in the void.
Yet it was also real.
Every outline traced by the seven-colored light was real to the point of being almost overbearing. Every rise and fall of the mountain bore the posture unique to Jinping Mountain.
Refining the false into truth, illusion and reality intertwining. Only those words remained in Jiang Wangxuan's mind, but he had no time to think further.
Jinping Mountain descended from the sky.
The giant mountain sank slowly. Its two side-by-side peaks, like the ends of a scroll, turned with their tips pointing down, as though an invisible giant hand had picked it up and aimed it at the black sun gazing dimly from the eastern horizon.
The phantom mountain, trailing the afterglow of seven-colored light and carrying ice-crystal fragments falling across the sky, came down hard on the black sun like an enormous seal.
The thick blackness on the surface of the black sun surged violently, but the phantom of Jinping Mountain was already pressing down upon it. The narrow gap between the two peaks fit precisely over the center of the black sun.
An incomparably deep tremor came from where heaven and earth met. The instant the phantom of Jinping Mountain touched the black sun, the mountain shook violently, and seven-colored light and black, turbid currents madly annihilated each other at the point of contact.
The black sun was pinned firmly beneath the giant seal, unable to rise another inch. Its black edges twisted violently, splashing thick black mist in all directions like a pool of ink struck by a boulder.
But as soon as the black mist spread, it struck the frost soul ice crystals still lingering in the sky and froze into fine black ice dust that pattered down.
Beneath the giant seal, the black sun pulsed in defiance. Just then, a vivid green shoot quietly poked its head out from the very center of the black sun.
It was a tender shoot belonging to [Horn Wood]! Jiang Wangxuan's pupils quivered. It was Martial Uncle Yin, the Jiang descendant who had severed the century-long flow of the Jiang Household's bloodline. In an instant, the shoot drew away a portion of the black sun's presence!
As seven-colored light continued to pour into it, the outline of Jinping Mountain grew clearer and more solid. The standoff between the two sides finally underwent an earth-shaking change.
Under Jinping Mountain's "crushing weight," the black sun finally burst like a swollen bubble. Black slime added a splash of dazzling, multicolored black to the seven-colored Jinping!
Jinping landed!
Ice dust whirled through the secret realm like snow, and the seven-colored afterglow flowed without end. The incomplete full moon hung quietly in the western sky, casting moonlight over Jinping Mountain, poised between illusion and reality.