White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill

The White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill was a precious treasure that could help Three Yins cultivators break through to Foundation Establishment. It used either Plain Shadow Osmanthus Blossoms or Dark Osmanthus Toad Saliva as its principal ingredient, with Lunar Soul Spiritual Light to harmonize it with the other supplementary ingredients.

Of these, Lunar Soul Spiritual Light was said to be something only a cultivator with a Grand Yin Purple Mansion Divine Ability could condense: a wisp of spiritual light produced by a Divine Ability.

Although the White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill was taken by Qi Refining Stage cultivators, its quality far surpassed that of many Foundation Establishment pills. At present, there were only four sources for it in Qinghuan: Qingdu, Jixia, Vast Cold Heaven, and Jielin Hall.

The pill Teaching Assistant Lin had helped him apply for most likely came from Jixia!

The "clear water" in the glass cup was no ordinary substance either. It was Five Radiances Colored Lotus Water, a spiritual substance of the Clear Qi path that was rare in the present day. Only by being nurtured in this water could the White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill retain its medicinal properties!

In the near-ancient era, a White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill had been only slightly less valuable than a Purple Mansion spiritual aptitude, and Three Yins cultivators had flocked to it like ducks.

Jiang Wangxuan was naturally infinitely grateful that Luyu University had managed to obtain a pill of such quality for him. He could never repay Lüyu's kindness.

For three days straight, Jiang Wangxuan sat quietly in the pavilion, regulating his breathing and putting his cultivation in order. Then, on the moonlit night of the fifth day, a bright crescent moon hung in the sky, its radiance washing over everything!

Holding the glass cup, Jiang Wangxuan sat on the bluestone foundation beneath the Plain Shadow Cold Moon Osmanthus. The night breeze brushed past him, carrying the heady fragrance of osmanthus, and his heart and mind were both intoxicated!

Such a fine time and beautiful scenery called for a good deed! He ought to seek his Immortal Foundation!

What was an Immortal Foundation?

A Spirit Aperture absorbed the essence of heaven and earth, refining the six wheels to produce Law Power, then refining the Spiritual Qi of heaven and earth into true essence. The six wheels underwent Liberation by Violence, and the true essence embraced the spiritual essence of heaven and earth. The two merged together, transforming into an Immortal Foundation.

Once an Immortal Foundation was forged, strange phenomena arose of their own accord. Wood Virtue cultivators often saw plants spring to life anew, while Water Virtue cultivators saw clouds, rain, water, and mist mingle. Those who achieved Foundation Establishment were no longer human.

The essence and Spiritual Qi of heaven and earth mingled and gathered within one body, shedding the mortal and casting off the mundane. Sinews, bones, blood, and flesh were likewise assimilated by the spiritual workings of heaven and earth. From this, one or two of heaven and earth's mysteries were obtained and settled within the Immortal Foundation. This was Foundation Establishment!

At that thought, Jiang Wangxuan hesitated no longer. He wrapped the White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill in the Lunar Essence within his body and swallowed it beneath the bright moon.

Six wheels emerged from his sea of Qi and Rising Yang Mansion. As his Method Formula circulated, the six Embryonic Breathing wheels underwent Liberation by Violence on their own, turning into six brilliant streams of spiritual light.

The Law Power within him changed drastically at once. A dizzying sense of weightlessness welled up in Jiang Wangxuan's mind, as though his entire being had been drawn out of his physical body.

Just then, the White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill dissolved with a boom, transforming into streams of pure lunar essence Spiritual Qi that filled his limbs and bones. The floating, uncomfortable sensation vanished in an instant.

According to the various records left by his predecessors, the true essence in his sea of Qi should now be surging, mingling with the spiritual light of the six wheels and merging into an Immortal Foundation.

But at present, a silver-white lunar disk occupied his sea of Qi, its surface engraved with all manner of wondrous patterns.

The instant the spiritual light formed by the six Embryonic Breathing wheels' Liberation by Violence burst forth, the silver-white lunar disk blazed with radiance. The six streams of spiritual light drifted involuntarily toward it, mingling and entwining with its moonlight.

Silver-white light twisted together with the six streams of spiritual light, fine as threads, until he could no longer tell which was moonlight and which was spiritual light.

The patterns on the lunar disk lit up inch by inch. Each time one shone, the disk trembled slightly, as though something that had slept for a long time was slowly awakening.

Jiang Wangxuan's mind sank into that radiance. In a daze, he saw that something seemed to be taking shape upon the lunar disk.

The six streams of spiritual light wound ever tighter and denser, until they gradually burrowed into the lunar disk like six spirit serpents, disappearing into its engraved patterns.

With each one that entered, the lunar disk grew rounder and brighter. By the time all six streams had vanished into it, the whole disk was like a full moon in the sky, its radiance so dazzling that it could not be looked at directly.

An understanding seemed to dawn on Jiang Wangxuan. This lunar disk would undergo another transformation and become a true Immortal Foundation, one that would surely be very different from the Immortal Foundation "Autumn Moon Osmanthus."

Autumn Moon Osmanthus could form a silver-white frost moon embracing an osmanthus tree in the sea of Qi, with a faint golden shimmer within it. What kind of wonder, then, would this silver-white lunar disk develop into?

What this jade disk became would then be both his Immortal Foundation and the foundation of his Great Dao. Jiang Wangxuan looked forward to it immensely!

As he waited for the silver-white lunar disk's next change, the sky suddenly turned red!

Jiang Wangxuan's Spiritual Sense withdrew from the silver-white lunar disk in bewilderment. "Looking up," he saw that a Waxing Crescent Moon, scarlet as blood, had descended into his Rising Yang Mansion at some unknown point!

The lunar essence Spiritual Qi formed from the White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill within him suddenly ran rampant as well. The once mysterious and limpid lunar essence Qi had already turned into a bizarre, alluring scarlet Spiritual Qi!

There was something wrong with the White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill!

"Jiang Wangxuan, would you like to return to Jixia with me?"

"Brother Jiang, do you know that Yuanhuai Heaven has never been particularly peaceful for the past thousand years?"

"Let me say something truthful that will offend Lüyu: you really aren't suited to staying in Lüyu."

"Fang Lin, take care!"

What exactly had Fang Lin "seen"? Why had he kept warning him to be careful of the struggle between the two factions in Yuanhuai Heaven? Why had he kept inviting him to Jixia?

In an instant, Jiang Wangxuan connected the sudden change before him with Fang Lin's untimely persuasion back then. Someone at Luyu University really does want to harm me.

No, it might not be Lüyu. The problem is with this pill.

He and Teaching Assistant Lin could be said to have come "on the sly" to Clear Frost Osmanthus Garden to seek a breakthrough. He had thought no one else would notice in the short term, but they had been waiting for him here!

Who would have had the chance to tamper with the White Hair Moon-Illuminating Pill?

Before Jiang Wangxuan could think further, his entire sea of Qi had been turned upside down. Guided by the red moon in the Rising Yang Mansion, the scarlet Spiritual Qi had already invaded his sea of Qi.

The radiance produced by the silver-white lunar disk was entangling itself with the bizarre scarlet Spiritual Qi. To his sorrow, Jiang Wangxuan discovered that the scarlet Spiritual Qi shared the same root and origin as lunar essence Qi!

In other words, this scarlet Spiritual Qi had been formed from tainted lunar essence Spiritual Qi. That was why it had swiftly invaded the sea of Qi, which the silver-white lunar disk should have been guarding, and why even the lunar disk could not drive it out!

Outside his sea of Qi, Jiang Wangxuan watched the changes in his body and laughed in anger. Flesh and blood were growing wildly over his sinews and bones, and his flesh and blood had gained Dao wisdom of their own, just like Big Fat Fish!

This had to be a kind of "activation," Jiang Wangxuan silently concluded as he watched scarlet shoots grow from his eye sockets!

In only a few breaths, his body had already lost its human shape.

Blood-filled swellings bulged beneath his skin, rising and falling as though living things were struggling and battering against it, trying to burst out.

Pieces of his split flesh peeled away from his skeleton and floated around him. In the scarlet moonlight, they looked as though they were dancing.

Chilling bone spurs tore out from both ends of his shoulder blades, then grew wildly into branches. From the branches sprouted deathly pale shoots that slowly crept up the Plain Shadow Cold Moon Osmanthus on the raised platform.

"A monster!"

His body had now been activated into a mass of flesh and blood, a monster, yet Jiang Wangxuan examined everything happening inside and outside it like a stranger.

For his anger, resentment, irritability, and all such negative emotions had already been "activated" by the Waxing Crescent Moon in his Rising Yang Mansion into various abstract monsters.

My anger burned into a lava skull with empty eyes. My resentment spread two tattered wings and thrust out three snake heads, hissing in the Rising Yang Mansion.

My greed grew countless branches, only to become a hollow in a tree trunk. My entanglements of love spawned a sky-covering swarm of insects and ants that devoured and coupled with one another.

At this moment, his sea of Qi, Rising Yang Mansion, and physical body were all dominated by that scarlet Waxing Crescent Moon.

With nothing left, Jiang Wangxuan entrusted the last of his Spiritual Sense to the silver-white lunar disk in his sea of Qi. He did nothing, merely gazing in that empty, ethereal state at the red crescent moon hanging in the sky of his Rising Yang Mansion!

The blood moon hung overhead like a crimson eye cut open, drawing the seven emotions and six desires remaining within Jiang Wangxuan out of him one by one.

Those boiling, searing things that belonged to a "person"-sorrow and joy, love and hate, greed and anger, obsession and fear-were all activated and stripped away by the Crimson Moon. They rose into the Rising Yang Mansion at the dome of the sky, becoming fodder for those indescribable things.

The monsters in the Rising Yang Mansion caught his scent through the blood-colored sky.

They raced to extend their twisted tendrils, eager to devour that last trace of his Spiritual Sense, the final proof that "Jiang Wangxuan" was Jiang Wangxuan.

By swallowing it, they could use him as a vessel to bring themselves into being, growing out of the twisted chaos into a brand-new "Jiang Wangxuan" wearing his skin.

Yet Jiang Wangxuan was lighter now than he had ever been.

He stood beneath the blood moon's crimson light, in the void where everything had been hollowed out, yet found that he was not in the unbearable agony he had imagined.

Those stripped-away emotions lay on the ground like shed cicada skins. He looked down at them, but could no longer resonate with them.

For he had gained something else: an "indifference" that resonated with heaven and earth.

The moon rose and fell, and he remained unmoved. Blood-red light filled the sky, and he felt no alarm. Even the roars of the monsters in the Rising Yang Mansion reached his ears as nothing more than an ordinary gust of wind between heaven and earth.

He had lost everything, yet had gained "emptiness" because of it, and so he simply existed. I have nothing left. How can you devour me when all I have is emptiness?

In this wondrous state, Jiang Wangxuan realized that he was now infinitely close to the state of "comprehending the Dao" spoken of by countless predecessors.

Crimson crescent moon!

Perhaps I should call you a Grand Yin lunar phase that has strayed down the wrong path?

Jiang Wangxuan, in his state of "comprehending the Dao," began instead to analyze the Crimson Moon's true nature! Did this Crimson Moon want him dead, or did it want to live and become "him"?

A melodious, ethereal song came from somewhere unknown, then rang out through Jiang Wangxuan's Rising Yang Mansion.

It was a language that did not belong to this world: "Oh, let me go, let me go!"

Big Fat Fish, who had been shut down alone after eating something that upset her stomach, finally made her dazzling entrance. Singing her own song of slacking off, she roared at the Crimson Moon, "Get out of my home, now!"