Divine Fire Tempers the Bones, Peak of Spirit Refining! An Opportunity on Mount Hua?

As he watched the lines of text appear, the fire in Jiang Zhe's eyes grew ever more subdued.

Time to analyze, starting with the most important things.

How to obtain merit, and how to grow stronger.

Protect the human race from the standpoint of the human race! That was simple enough!

Especially in a mythological world.

Just four words!

Slay demons, exterminate devils!

There might not have been much else in the world of Journey to the West, but there were plenty of demons, especially at the foot of Spirit Mountain.

How could those demons and devils possibly have regarded humans as people? They plainly treated them like leeks, penned up to be harvested crop after crop!

Besides that, there was the lottery in the system shop.

Just completing the beginner mission would give him a free top-tier draw.

At that thought, Jiang Zhe's eyes involuntarily flickered.

He didn't dare imagine what might be lying in the furnace! What if he drew a wisp of Solar True Fire?

The beginner mission itself wasn't all that difficult.

Stop Old Yellow Ox's scheme! That whole business of getting Cowherd to steal Weaver Girl's clothes and force the fairy to descend to the mortal world.

Say what you would, these so-called fairies really were naive.

Come to think of it, that made sense.

One day in heaven was a year on earth, so a fairy was still a loli!

Heaven's rules were strict. Ever since her birth, the faces Weaver Girl had seen had always been those same cold divine faces. When had she ever seen a mortal man?

When had she ever heard a tender word spoken from the heart?

Poor, resilient, scholarly-and Cowherd wasn't bad-looking, either.

Put all that together, and on top of it, Old Yellow Ox's Joyful Buddha method was secretly at work.

Winning Weaver Girl over? It really wasn't a problem.

A girl who had never seen the light would think a lamp someone handed her was the whole Great Yang.

But now!

Jiang Zhe's gaze passed through the night toward the thatched hut next door, and he recalled the naked lust in Old Yellow Ox's eyes just now.

A cold gleam flashed in his eyes.

There was one thing Old Yellow Ox had miscalculated.

He thought he was the hunter, crouching beside a trap and waiting for a rabbit.

He didn't know that a dragon lay buried beneath the place where he crouched.

Jiang Zhe slowly raised his hand and spread his five fingers.

Whoosh! A flame sprang from his palm, winding through his fingers like a little snake. Its heat was frighteningly contained: the air was visibly warping from the burning, yet it didn't singe a single hair on his palm.

This was Samadhi True Fire.

The Daoist scriptures said that samadhi was formed from essence, Qi, and spirit.

When mortals cultivated, they first practiced Essence Refining, then transformed it into Qi, and finally practiced Spirit Refining. They advanced step by painstaking step, moving mountains inch by inch.

The four Daoist steps! Refining Essence into Qi, Refining Qi into Spirit, Refining Spirit to Return to Emptiness, and Returning to Emptiness to Merge with the Dao!

Only then could one set foot on the immortal path!

Ordinary cultivators needed at least a hundred years of arduous work to complete the first three steps.

And Jiang Zhe had transmigrated less than a day ago.

During that clash of golden light and flame, the Samadhi True Fire had burned through his entire body, inside and out!

His innate foundation had been scoured by divine fire, and his essence, Qi, and spirit had been forcibly tempered to their limits.

In a single night, he had leaped two realms and reached the Peak of Spirit Refining!

All he lacked was a cultivation method that could take him into Emptiness Refining. Then he could take that final step and have hope of Return to Void.

If word got out, even the Jade Emperor would probably turn green with envy.

But it wasn't time to reveal this trump card yet.

Jiang Zhe looked at the flame in his palm, which obeyed him as readily as his own arm, and suddenly frowned.

Not enough.

He controlled fire so easily now because of his innate talent and instinct. But in a real fight, fire was dead, while people were alive!

No matter how overbearing Samadhi True Fire was, it was useless if he couldn't hit his enemy with it.

With that thought, he simply sat down cross-legged and closed his eyes.

He compressed the flame in his palm bit by bit, and then compressed it further...

The flame struggled violently, like a wild horse being reined in, and a scorching backlash rushed back through his meridians toward his heart!

Hiss!

Jiang Zhe clenched his teeth, fine beads of cold sweat forming on his forehead, and forcibly pressed the backlash down through sheer will.

He compressed the flame into a fireball the size of an egg.

Then the fireball left his hand!

Whoosh!

A streak of red light skimmed through the night and vanished into a bluestone at the corner of the courtyard!

There was no explosion, no deafening boom!

All that appeared on the bluestone, which stood half as tall as a man, was a small, perfectly round, charred hole, as though something invisible had pierced straight through its center.

The edges of the hole were smooth as a mirror, and its depths could not be seen.

Jiang Zhe's breath caught slightly.

He silently picked up a fragment and rubbed it between his fingertips. Fine powder sifted down.

Only then did he end his practice, satisfied, and raise his eyes to check the sky.

The eastern horizon was already growing pale.

The next day, Great Yang had just risen.

Jiang Zhe had been too excited to sleep all night.

But with his current cultivation, going a night without sleep was no great matter.

After greeting Erlang of the Niu Family, who had risen early to gather firewood, Jiang Zhe sat cross-legged on his own roof and calmly fixed his gaze on Old Yellow Ox by the entrance.

He seemed to sense Jiang Zhe watching him.

The corners of Old Yellow Ox's mouth slowly curved upward.

Immediately afterward, light flashed around his body.

His ox body bulged and stretched like a clay sculpture, his bones lengthening inch by inch. In the blink of an eye, a man stood in his place.

A burly middle-aged man who looked very simple and honest.

Only the wickedness that could not be concealed in his eyes clashed with the smile plastered across his face, making him look wrong no matter how one looked at him.

"Brat, why don't you hurry over and pay your respects to your master?"

Old Yellow Ox-no, he ought to be called an old demon now!-spoke at his leisure.

A trace of coldness flitted through the depths of Jiang Zhe's eyes.

He seriously weighed the question in his mind: If I summon my armor right now and slit this demon's throat with a Flame Blade, how sure am I of success?

The old demon spoke first, however. "Tsk! You really are a good-looking lad, with quite a scholarly air about you. Your hair's just a little short."

"But that isn't a problem. Take me as your master, and I'll teach you cultivation and give you an opportunity. As long as you obediently do as you're told... heh heh, even the fairies in heaven won't be beyond your reach."

Fairies?

Jiang Zhe raised his brows, feigning confusion.

"What fairies? Didn't you send Erlang of the Niu Family?" As he spoke, he nimbly jumped down from the roof and landed steadily.

"Heh! Brat, how could you possibly know the power of my Buddha?"

As the middle-aged man spoke, he pressed his palms together and murmured a Buddha's name.

In an instant, a faint layer of golden light shone around him, lending his simple, aged face a genuine air of sacred solemnity.

"As long as you listen to me... six months from now, a heaven-sent opportunity on Mount Hua will be yours."

Old Yellow Ox spoke meaningfully, the golden light growing ever brighter.

Endless Buddhist words murmured and circled around Jiang Zhe's ears, boring into his skull!

Deep in his mind, one compassionate image of a Buddha after another began to appear!

In a daze, he seemed to hear a voice telling him, Kneel, take refuge, be devout... you were born to be the Buddhist Order's most loyal believer...

But then!

Heat roared through his body!

A surge of searing flame burst from his chest and rushed upward!

Wisps of fiery Qi shot out from all seven openings in his head-his eyes, mouth, nose, and ears-burning away every trace of the Buddha images clinging to his soul like maggots to bones!

Fortunately, Jiang Zhe had his head lowered at that moment, and the Samadhi True Fire was his innate divine ability, as easy to command as his own arm and to release or withdraw at will! The fiery Qi vanished as soon as it emerged, without a trace escaping.