When the Snipe and the Clam Fight, the Fisherman Profits
Cultivators often called the place where their Divine Sense resided the "Sea of Consciousness." It was originally a figurative expression.
The Sea of Consciousness was boundless, unfathomably deep, and filled with chaos and hidden currents.
At that moment, the Mystic Mirror in Li Zhengjun's Sea of Consciousness was trembling incessantly.
His mind and spirit were linked to it, and he could actually sense its desire to transform itself into something a thousand, ten thousand times its size.
The thought came in waves like the tide, growing ever stronger, yet it did not know where to go.
A thought sprang into Li Zhengjun's mind: the scene when his grandfather had examined him with the Divine Ability Entering the Bright Hall.
That magnificent golden hall, rising from the earth to lean against the heavens, had been seared into his heart, never to be forgotten.
The instant the thought arose, the Mystic Mirror began to revolve. The light that had been darting wildly in all directions seemed to find a path at last, gathering and piling up. Layer upon layer of golden radiance climbed upward, gradually outlining the framework of a palace.
In no time at all, the magnificent, solemn gilded hall from his imagination actually appeared in the center of his Sea of Consciousness!
Li Zhengjun looked at it. The golden hall's form was exactly the same as the one his grandfather's Divine Ability had created that day!
Above the hall, the Mystic Mirror slowly rose into the air, climbing higher and higher and growing ever larger, until it became a brilliant sun hanging high above the golden hall.
Countless rays of golden light poured down, illuminating the entire chaotic Sea of Consciousness as brightly as day.
Wherever the golden light reached, the endlessly surging tides of chaos gradually subsided, finally becoming a vast, placid sea.
Li Zhengjun raised an eyebrow, his surprise beyond words.
This scene is exactly like the Mystic Platform Spirit-Suppressing Divine-Binding Instruction I just practiced! Both dispel chaos, and both suppress the spirit platform.
But the Divine-Binding Instruction is cast on Demon Beasts. Has the target of the technique become me this time?
Li Zhengjun examined it again. With the golden hall there, his Sea of Consciousness had become completely stable.
The golden hall seemed to be suppressing his spirit platform, but on second thought, was this not also a form of protection, guarding against others' prying?
I wonder if this change in the Mystic Mirror has any other powers besides stabilizing the spirit platform.
Now that the Mystic Mirror had displayed its power, Li Zhengjun could not help reconsidering his present situation.
The Mystic Mirror was called the Great Sun Golden Crow Nine Luminaries Mystic Heaven Treasure Mirror. At a glance, it was clearly connected to the Three Yang Dao Lineage, and Bright Yang was precisely what Li Zhengjun cultivated.
Moreover, the treasure mirror had the ability to carry members of his clan across realms, and he, Li Zhengjun, just happened to have been born into a Purple Mansion immortal clan.
Everything seemed predestined in the Unseen.
Li Zhengjun suddenly thought of the Yuyu Realm's present circumstances. The Three Yang were declining, the Rainbow Glow was rising, and the Three Yin had revealed themselves. The Mystic Mirror had appeared under precisely such circumstances.
What did it all mean?
He was merely a low-level cultivator now, utterly unable to see through the matters behind it.
Alas, I still need to cultivate as quickly as possible. Without reaching the Purple Mansion, I'll remain a mere chess piece.
Just then, a familiar figure appeared at the door of the quiet room in a great hurry.
Li Zhengjun had released his Divine Sense while still in meditation and had sensed Fang Qing as soon as she stepped onto the stone steps before the corridor.
He suppressed the strange phenomenon in his Sea of Consciousness, rose to his full height, and pushed open the quiet room's wooden door.
"Qing'er, what happened?"
Fang Qing was taken aback, sensing that her husband's spiritual pressure was more overbearing than before. But she had no time to dwell on it and hurriedly said:
"Husband, Dongping sent me with a message. Ye Xiufan is making a move."
Li Zhengjun's eyes narrowed at once. He asked no further questions and had no time to explain things to Fang Qing. His figure flickered, and he rode the wind out of the city.
Fang Qing knew nothing about Ye Xiufan's situation, but she was clever enough to know there had to be a secret behind it. She promptly went to find Li Yuankai.
After hearing her out, Li Yuankai immediately rose and took Fang Qing outside the city, where he found an excuse to send the nearby Spirit Root children away.
Outside the city.
On an extremely remote, barren hill.
Ye Xiufan looked around, his expression rather tense.
A bird stood on his shoulder.
It was none other than the Owl Li Zhengjun had detected that day!
At that moment, the Owl stood motionless with its eyes tightly shut.
If a high-level cultivator had been present and examined it closely with Divine Sense, they would have discovered that an invisible hand was reaching out from inside Ye Xiufan's body, its five fingers closed around the Owl, holding it whole in its palm.
"Elder Jiang, did you discover something?" Ye Xiufan asked in a low voice, his lips barely moving.
Jiang Liuyang's voice came from within him:
"The Li Household is exceedingly cautious. These past few days, I've used the Owl as my eyes to survey their entire layout in the capital. Those formations are linked one to the next and activate on their own at the slightest disturbance. It's difficult to pry into the secrets of their Cultivation Method from outside."
As it turned out, the two spirit beasts lurking outside the capital that day had not both come from the Sun Household.
The Hidden Snipe belonged to the Sun Household, while the Owl was controlled by Jiang Liuyang using a beast-taming Secret Method.
After all, the old monster had been a True Lord at the Nascent Soul Peak in life. Even though the Forget Life Incantation had sealed his Law Power and locked away his soul, there were some methods he could never forget.
Beast-taming Law Techniques came as easily to him as picking something up at hand. He simply dared not control a Demon Beast that was too strong, for fear that the fluctuations of spiritual power would be too obvious and expose him instead.
Ye Xiufan fell silent for a moment. When he spoke, there was a trace of anxiety in his voice:
"What should we do, then? I can't raise my cultivation quickly right now. At most, I can barely break through one more minor realm before going to Gold-Bearing Mountain. But once I get there, if I have to obtain the spiritual item from among the Li Household, the Sun Household, and that Ginseng-Cloud Tiger, I'm afraid it'll be very difficult with what little ability I have."
Jiang Liuyang pondered before saying:
"The plan has been thrown into disarray. We must prepare in advance now. Going up Gold-Bearing Mountain alone is out of the question. The Li Household or the Sun Household has probably already planted watchers on the mountain, and our identities will be impossible to conceal as soon as we make a move."
"Besides, I never expected there to be a Ginseng-Cloud Tiger on that mountain. That Demon Beast is extremely vicious, nourished by rosy light, and appears and disappears like a ghost. At your current realm, meeting it would mean certain death. So we have only one path left."
"When the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman profits."
"Find a chance to reveal your true realm to the Li Household. They're in need of people right now, and with your talent, eight or nine times out of ten they'll take you into the mountain with them. Once you're there, when the three forces become entangled in a fierce fight, slip away and act alone to retrieve the spiritual item."
The two had originally planned to accumulate resources slowly and take the Li Household's things bit by bit, but recently they had noticed that cultivators from another clan had come to the island.
After using the Owl to investigate, Jiang Liuyang discovered that these people were talking about the Ginseng-Cloud Tiger on Gold-Bearing Mountain.
That made him rather restless, for fear that someone else would take the spiritual item.
Hearing a note of gravity in Elder Jiang's voice, Ye Xiufan asked:
"Elder Jiang, I know the Li Household and the Sun Household are exceptionally strong, but is that Ginseng-Cloud Tiger as frightening as it sounds? Even you are wary of it?"
Jiang Liuyang gave a soft snort, seemingly displeased by the word "wary," but he did not deny it:
"Back when I was in my prime, a mere Ginseng-Cloud Tiger was no different from an ant to me. But now, although my Divine Sense can still leave my body, I can scarcely mobilize the slightest bit of Law Power. When I helped you turn the tables and kill that Devil Cultivator, it was only because he was careless, underestimated his enemy, and had a low cultivation. Even so, I nearly exhausted the little remaining strength I had painstakingly accumulated."
"But this Ginseng-Cloud Tiger is different. 'Ginseng-Cloud' is not the name of this demon's species. 'Ginseng' means to comprehend, and 'Cloud' refers to rosy light. This tiger demon received its name because it awakened a trace of an extremely ancient bloodline, allowing it to comprehend rosy light in its cultivation."
"The Dao of rosy light was a Dao Path of High Antiquity. That great Spirit Transformation battle back then severed the legacy of High Antiquity's rosy light lineage. Only a few exceptionally gifted demons can still rely on instincts passed down through their bloodlines to blindly carry on a few traces of its mysteries. Even if cultivators today occasionally use a few rosy light Law Techniques, they have barely scratched the surface. They're crude indeed, as far beneath the Ginseng-Cloud Tiger as mud beneath the clouds."
"This tiger has already begun cultivating, and the Dao of rosy light is unpredictable and exceptionally hard to catch. If you meet it, never mind fighting back—you might not even be able to see where its attack comes from. I'm not telling you this so you'll deal with it. I want you to remember to stay far away from it."
Ye Xiufan swallowed instinctively as he listened, unable to speak for a long while.
After all, they had nearly gone straight to Gold-Bearing Mountain before.
Seeing him like this, Jiang Liuyang laughed instead.
"I told you long ago that you're a child of destiny, boy. Think about it: if the Li Household's Cultivation Method hadn't caught our interest and made us want to save up more Contribution Points, we'd probably have plunged headfirst into Gold-Bearing Mountain long ago. By then, we wouldn't have obtained the spiritual item, and you would have become a fine meal in the Ginseng-Cloud Tiger's belly first."
Ye Xiufan scratched his head and gave a sheepish laugh.
"It's all thanks to your protection, Elder Jiang. If you hadn't constantly guided me, I don't know how many times I would have lost my life already."
Jiang Liuyang laughed and scolded him. "When did you learn to butter people up, boy? All right, all right. Cultivate diligently. The Li Household's Cultivation Method is vital to you, so practice it as much as you can. If you get a chance to meet that Li Zhengjun alone someday..."
His voice suddenly dropped a little, and he said with a laugh:
"Although my Nascent Soul Divine Sense is locked away by the Forget Life Incantation, if I expend most of my soul power to unleash it at full strength just once, I might well be able to search that boy's soul. Then we'd be able to get our hands on all the Li Household's Cultivation Methods."