Three days later, Guanshan Dojo.
Called a dojo, it was actually a secluded refuge hewn straight out of the mountain rock.
A century ago an ancestor of the Chen family selected this spot, carving the mountain interior with a flying sword, then carving out three tiers of corridors, three hundred meditation chambers, and three main halls. The hall roofs were bored through to admit daylight, and when rainwater ran down the inner channels along the four walls it gathered into a thin indoor waterfall at the corridor’s end. The sound of water murmured constantly, year-round.
Chen family disciples and cultivators invited from Guanshan Island usually cultivated here in this place that stayed warm in winter and cool in summer, like a small world apart, with little contact with the outside. It was the quietest dojo among the Eighteen Islands of Zhan County.
Chen Yu’s sitting place now was even deeper inside the dojo.
Past the rear corridor behind the main hall, through a stone gate, and down thirty-six narrow steps carved into the cliff face, there was a square sealed chamber.
The chamber was fairly wide; all four walls were rough, unpolished rock, coarse to the touch, but densely incised with protective formation arrays.
In the center of the chamber sat a natural raised stone platform about three feet high; its surface was polished smooth like a mirror, and faint dark-golden veins shimmered through the stone grain.
This was the Golden Pointing Platform used by Golden Core cultivators of Guanshan Dojo for generations. It was said that no fewer than five predecessors had broken through their Golden Core here, and the golden veins in the stone were stains left behind by their residual core qi when they made breakthroughs.
After that conversation, the Guanshan Dao Master personally assigned the deepest Golden Pointing Platform in the dojo for his use and arranged twelve Chen family elders to serve as protectors.
These twelve elders were the Chen family’s most senior practitioners, their cultivation in late Foundation Establishment. Though none had truly set foot in the Golden Core stage, they had seasoned experience and seamless coordination. The protective formations the twelve elders set up together would be difficult for an ordinary Golden Core cultivator to break.
They sat cross-legged, stationed at nodes along the upper corridor of the chamber, each with a bronze formation plate suspended before them, the runes on the plates resonating with the formation patterns on the chamber walls.
Inside the chamber, a white-bearded elder withdrew the jade talisman from his palm and cupped his hands toward Chen Yu. “Honored one, the family head has gone out and has not yet returned. A moment ago the message came that he found a lead on the South Sea Legacy Pearl and is tracking it in the southern reef cluster. It looks like he will not make your breakthrough hour.”
“Do not worry about your breakthrough. The twelve of us are guarding outside. We have sealed all entrances to the dojo. Unless a Golden Core cultivator personally arrives, no one can step in here even half a pace.”
Chen Yu nodded. After the elder left the chamber, he formed hand seals to activate the formation. The massive stone slab embedded above the doorway slowly fell with a dull grinding noise, sealing the chamber’s entrance tight.
He used divine sense to sweep the stone chamber carefully.
After confirming there were no oversights, he reached out and took several small saplings from the Royal Treasury.
The saplings were only finger-length, their roots still caked with black mud from the royal reservoir, tender green leaves showing an incongruous vibrancy under the chamber’s dim rune glow.
Hixiulong Part One
Promote Growth
All Plants as Soldiers
The saplings rolled from his palm; the instant their roots touched the ground they began to grow frenziedly.
Roots dug into rock fissures, trunks shot up and thickened at a visible rate, branches twisted together to form a dense wooden barricade, enclosing Chen Yu and the Golden Pointing Platform layer by layer at the center.
Satisfied everything was secure, Chen Yu sat cross-legged again and closed his eyes.
Breaking through to Golden Core was neither the hardest nor the easiest thing.
The Primordial Beginning Sword Guidance, the Primordial Chaos Qi Absorption True Explanation, and the Kunyuan Foundation Establishment Chapter I cultivated had all reached level five. I could already sense a sliver of Golden Core; my divine sense had long since detached from the mundane. The trickiest step for abnormal cultivators—the “perceive the minor path” step—I had already found the entry to it.
Under ordinary circumstances, my breakthrough should occur smoothly.
But even so, one must be extremely careful. The next step is dangerous; a single misstep could cause all the cultivation I painstakingly accumulated in a short time to be utterly lost.
What is Chen Yu?
Cultivators of Xu Xuan Heaven each had their own answers to that question, but when you traced them back they all returned to a core idea, an old saying repeated for years.
“Chen Yu is a synthesis of essence, qi, and spirit.”
The inner-scape small world inside a practitioner’s body is the embodiment of essence, qi, and spirit. Mountains and rivers, plants and trees are the manifestation of essence; the circulation of spiritual energy is the manifestation of qi; the projection of sun, moon, stars, and heavenly laws is the manifestation of spirit.
To breakthrough to Golden Core is to transform this perceptual “illusory image” into a real, tangible “substance.”
Xu Xuan Heaven cultivators called this process “congealing truth.”
Congealing truth emphasizes three returns; the Golden Core classics clearly record: “Three returns through day and night, use the master’s method for doubling.”
The three returns mean that essence, qi, and spirit each return to their source under the guidance of the Dao’s resonance, then fuse and become one, condensing into a round Golden Core capable of carrying a cultivator’s lifetime of cultivation.
The Dao provides direction, the Dao’s resonance is the guiding rope. Without direction and guidance, essence, qi, and spirit would stray during their returns; at best the congealing would fail and the cultivator would fall in rank, at worst the inner-scape would collapse and the body perish along with the Dao.
Therefore, without comprehending the Dao, it is almost impossible to reach Golden Core.
Conversely, if one truly congeals into a core, the enlightenment at that moment is enough for the cultivator to truly touch the Dao they pursue.
As the saying goes, “When the Dao pivot shines, the universe is illuminated; entering the Golden Core, a thousand ages of radiance.”
Once one enters the Dao, one becomes part of the laws of the world; every movement resonates with law, and with a thought one can overturn clouds and cover the rain.
“Only Golden Core then, today this Slime True Immortal will enter the Dao here.”
Chen Yu’s divine voice fell inside his inner-scape, and at the same instant of invoking the Dao art, the inner-scape shook violently; the sky cracked, the earth trembled, mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas all emitted a low rumble as if nearing collapse.
First return, refine essence and return to origin.
The Golden Core Transmission states: “Essence is the form of the inner-scape.”
Every perceivable “form” in the inner-scape—clay, verdant wood, mountains, flowing water, clouds drifting in the sky, each plant rooted in the earth—are essentially manifestations of essence.
Chen Yu activated the Kunyuan Foundation Establishment Chapter. Under the Dao art’s operation, a strand of the dark-golden Kunyuan Dao resonance rose from the depths of the inner-scape earth.
That resonance looked fine and faint, like a pale golden mist seeping from the subterranean depths. The instant it touched the inner-scape’s tangible forms, the earth began to crumble and the verdant wood began to dissolve.
Mountains in the distance collapsed from their peaks downward like sand blown by wind; the layers of vegetation on the land turned into pale green motes of light, and finally the piece of ground beneath his feet itself shattered into countless tiny grains.
But guided by the Dao resonance, they gathered toward the center on their own.
As if poured into an invisible bowl, mountains, rivers, plants, and soil gradually rotated under the Dao resonance’s stirring, finally fusing into a hovering mass of primordial core mud at the inner-scape’s center.
Second return, refine qi and return to truth.
The Treatise on Enlightenment states: “Qi is the movement of the inner-scape.”
Qi is the energy network of the inner-scape: the flow of spiritual energy through meridians, the cycles of growth and decay in plants, water flowing from heights then evaporating back to the sky—all are the movement of qi.
The Primordial Chaos Qi Absorption True Explanation operated, and the Dao art immediately drew away all moving qi inside the inner-scape.
The qi that had flowed through mountains and vegetation was ripped into silver-white filaments, thousands upon thousands of silver threads drawing toward the core mud from every direction of the inner-scape.
The Dao resonance of the Primordial Chaos pathway tempered these chaotic qi into the purest true qi, each strand returning to the core mud, weaving a complex, orderly vascular net inside the mud ball—like innate, nurtured core veins beginning to circulate without end.
What normally would take a cultivator several days of tribulation Chen Yu completed in a single hour.
Only the final step remained.
Third return, refine spirit and return to void.
The Golden Core Treatise states: “Spirit is the imagery of the inner-scape.”
Spirit is the projection of all inner-scape imagery—the swordlight sharpness of the Celestial Element, the weight of mountains in the Terrestrial Element, the harmonious flow of spiritual energy in the Human Element—these projected laws within the inner-scape are essentially the casting of spirit.
The Primordial Beginning Sword Guidance operated, and the Dao resonance of the primordial sword path became a blade of bright swordlight cleaving through the chaotic inner-scape sky. Where the swordlight passed, the inner-scape’s sun, moon, stars, clouds, mist, and seasonal shadows were all dissected by sword intent, peeling away the purest origins of spirit.
These spirit origins turned into golden showers of light falling from the heavens, merging into the rotating core mud.
At the very moment these three returns of essence, qi, and spirit fully fused under Dao resonance, the previously dim and lifeless mud ball at the inner-scape center lit from within as if by a cluster of flames.
Like the dawn’s first white, a strand of gold light appeared.
Golden light surged from the mud ball, rendering it like a crystalline bead forged in heavenly fire.
Dazzling light poured forth; impurities on the mud ball’s surface were stripped away layer by layer by the golden glow, revealing an increasingly round, increasingly plump pill body.
It began to spin within the inner-scape, gradually coating itself in a layer of pure golden luster.
At the instant this Golden Core fully formed, a vast column of golden light pierced the inner-scape, penetrating the thick mountain of the dojo, turning the entire Guanshan Dojo from the mountain belly outward into a shining golden mountain.
“What’s happening?!”
“Is someone breaking through?”
Cultivators on the mountain were all astonished by the sudden change.
The twelve white-haired Chen elders guarding the corridors rose at once, their aged faces lit by the golden light as they all turned toward the chamber.
Golden light gushed from the main hall’s skylight and shot into the sky, hanging in the air above Guanshan Island.
Cultivators near Guanshan Island all looked up.
“Could it be...another Chen family Golden Core?!”
“Hurry, go congratulate the honored one!”
Island cultivators spread the news and surged toward the dojo, but were halted by the mountain-protecting formation at the gate.
No one complained; all stood with heads raised, watching that continuous golden light gradually ebb.
At that moment, heaven and earth changed.
Black clouds spun together and gathered over Guanshan Island, growing thicker. The bright morning sky was pressed into a dim yellow in just a few breaths.
Deep within the clouds came a low thunder, like a gigantic drum being struck by thunderous mallets, beat after beat.
When did it happen, a white-robed figure already stood in the sky.
He emerged from the mountain chamber without passing through any door, without disturbing any formation or barrier, and simply appeared in the thick of the thunderclouds.
The white robe shone snowy bright under incandescence from lightning; the sea wind blew his wide sleeves back so they rustled.
He had no floating treasures around him, no hovering talismans. He merely stood within the thundercloud shadows and the last threads of sky glow, gazing up at the increasingly dense vortex of thunder overhead.
In front of the Guanshan Dojo main hall, the Chen elders flew up and stopped in the air about a hundred zhang from the white-robed figure.
The lead elder scanned the sky with divine sense; his aged voice echoed in everyone’s minds, trembling with suppressed agitation.
“The Golden Core position has matured; the Dao will come on its own. Heaven and earth are testing the Dao he cultivated.”
Another elder hesitated, “An ordinary Golden Core cultivator’s heavenly response is a brief thunderclap circling the island three times and then dissipating. It should never form such a heavy calamity cloud from nothing.”
“Honored one—”
They exchanged glances, alarmed. Could this honored one be cultivating more than one Dao?
Before the others could speak, Chen Yu in the sky moved.
He lifted his right hand with a casual motion, like catching a leaf drifting from a tree.
The instant his palm extended, a bolt of lightning struck down from the vortex center.
A thick cylindrical pillar of thunder, carrying a pressure that could shake the soul of a Foundation Establishment cultivator, struck straight for his head.
Chen Yu closed his fingers and actually grasped the lightning.
The thunder struggled fiercely in his hand; countless arcs leapt and shot from between his fingers, exploding into dense little sparks in the air.
Under the dim light, the arcs made his white robe flash on and off.
He held the lightning and casually flicked it forward.
That bolt of lightning he had gripped became, the moment he threw it, a streak of swordlight spanning the sky.
It cleaved into the cloud layer; where the swordlight passed, the black clouds parted and rolled back from the rupture.
The swordlight split the heavy clouds in two.
Sunlight poured through the fissure, golden beams striking the sea around Guanshan Island.
Half the sea remained shrouded in cloud shadow, the other half bathed in morning gold; glittering fragments stretched to the horizon, dancing on the wave crests.
None of the elders spoke.
Such sharp sword Dao turning heaven-sent thunder into a swordlight slicing the firmament—this level of sword intent they’d only heard about in rumors, the kind only seen in the hands of those Three Origins Sect Dao Masters who wield the Primordial Sword path.
Sword Immortal—an apt title.
Yet Chen Yu showed no sign of easing his posture.
After cleaving the clouds, he remained where he was. Though the swordlight dissipated, his aura continued climbing, as if digesting a deeper layer of insight wrought by the breakthrough.
The first to sense the abnormality was the white-bearded elder. He suddenly pressed down on the formation plate; the ground underfoot trembled.
No, this was not a small quake—the entire Guanshan Island was shaking.
Unnamed hills scattered between the coast and the mountain foot began to move.
Nearby peaks rose one after another from their spots and floated slowly into the air, arranging themselves in an almost circular array around the white-robed figure and turning slowly.
“Another Dao?!”
A cultivator who did not know the facts shouted.
The cry exploded in everyone’s minds, but no one blamed him; everyone shared the same thought.
Ordinary Golden Core cultivators who comprehend one Dao are already able to found sects; those who grasp two Daos among peers are extremely rare.
This man, from the Golden Core omen to now—less than the time of an incense stick—had already manifested sword Dao and the Earth-walking Dao.
“Could it be the path of merging Daos?” an elder whispered through transmission, his tone disbelieving.
The lead elder frowned and pondered, his beard fluttering in the sea breeze. He stared at the white-robed figure wrapped by floating peaks and slowly shook his head. “The sword Dao belongs to metal; its nature is lone and sharp, intolerant of impurity. The dark-golden Dao of earth belongs to the terrestrial; its nature is heavy, meant to bear all things.”
“Metal and earth aren’t wholly incompatible, but forcibly combining Daos will only make the Golden Core rupture from within. In history, I’ve never seen—nor heard of—an old cultivator successfully walking the metal-earth combined Dao.”
Before he finished, the sky’s movements continued.
The sea spirit vein beneath Guanshan Island awakened from dormancy, giving out a low, lengthy rumble.
Since the Eighteen Islands of Zhan County’s array was built, that spirit vein had not shown a trace of change through centuries of storms and lightning.
Now it was resonating, actively responding to the cultivator in the sky whose third Dao metamorphosis had not yet completed.
Chen Yu raised his right hand, palm facing upward, fingers half-closed.
Across tens of li around Guanshan Island, the sea churned as if countless aquatic dragons rolled below.
The bay’s heaven-and-earth qi began to flow, converging toward the island as a center, coalescing into visible pale-golden filaments.
They were like thousands of golden rain strands flowing upstream, rising from earth and sea simultaneously, weaving in the air into a grand and silent golden river of stars.
Chen Yu stood at the river’s center; the spirit-energy filaments slowed automatically as they passed him, flowing around his body.
At last, they spread beneath his feet into a luminous avenue that crossed the sky, stretching from over Guanshan Island all the way to the remote depths of the sea where the horizon disappeared.
Thus, the three Daos were all revealed.