Chapter Ninety-Seven: Legend and Truth

Many years later, a legend spread through the world of cultivation about the Sea of Barriers: within it, demonic beasts ran wild, turning a once-rich land of spiritual energy into a place thick with miasma and demonic qi, until at last heaven’s wrath descended.

One noon, deep in the third layer of the Sea of Barriers, a red mushroom cloud rose into the sky, so lurid it was terrifying. It stretched for thousands of miles, heavy as a mountain, and did not disperse for an entire day and night.

Some said it was because many human cultivators had been training there at the time. Heaven, compassionate toward life, had used such a method to warn them.

Alas, seeking opportunity in danger was the creed of cultivators. Greed and curiosity drove them to recklessness, and more than a few even wanted to fly toward the crimson cloud to see what lay beneath it.

But the beasts were far more alert than human cultivators. In the third layer, and even among many high-level beast cultivators in the second layer, there were those who sensed the coming end and fled in panic, forming an unprecedented stampede in the history of the Sea of Barriers.

Heaven would naturally not spare them. In the end, the heavenly punishment came.

Layer upon layer of multicolored auspicious light burst forth, illuminating the entire sky over the Sea of Barriers, more dazzling than lightning. They surged like tidal waves, overwhelming all in their path and swallowing everything… Altogether, heaven sent down ten waves of such light, each more terrible than the last. The final, tenth wave spread across more than one hundred thousand miles, covering a full quarter of the Sea of Barriers.

For the Sea of Barriers, this heavenly punishment was an unprecedented catastrophe. The disaster was so severe that it even alarmed the secluded Beast King.

After reaching perfection at the seventh rank, the Beast King had begun to cultivate in seclusion. For five hundred years, countless so-called masters had intruded into his territory, that is, the first layer of the Sea of Barriers, the legendary Tomb of the True Immortals. Before entering seclusion, the Beast King had laid down nine layers of restrictions over his domain. He had cultivated for thirty thousand years and collected innumerable treasures. When ascending to immortality, how could he take all that with him? Apart from a few top-tier, truly vital treasures, most of the rest had become little more than dead weight. Being generous, he had hidden them within the various layers of restriction. Fine, he admitted it: he did have a wicked sense of humor.

Yet those human cultivators were hopelessly weak. Most could only pass the first layer; a few managed the second; only the rarest stumbled through the third. For five hundred years, no one had ever broken the fourth restriction. Of course, some people knew when to quit. After passing the first layer, they would leave with one or two randomly bestowed treasures. But such people were too few, scarcely more than a tenth. They became the lucky survivors, and it was they who carried out the tale of the Beast King’s hidden trove. Thus more and more visitors were drawn there.

Because these visitors were in truth quite harmless, the Beast King paid them little mind. On the contrary, in the gaps between cultivation, he found them rather amusing.

But one day, his heart gave a violent tremor, and at once a suffocating terror rose within him. That eerie sense of danger nearly threw his true energy into chaos.

He held his breath and focused, releasing his divine sense to search his territory. Once fully extended, his divine sense could span one hundred thousand miles, completely covering the heart of the Sea of Barriers.

Very quickly, the Beast King realized that the source of danger lay outside his territory.

He drew his divine sense into a single thread and expanded his search to the whole Sea of Barriers. His divine sense shot out like a searchlight. Soon, he encountered that crimson cloud of extreme brilliance.

The scent of danger came from that region.

And yet, despite clearly sensing the threat, when the Beast King swept his divine sense over the area within dozens of miles in every direction, not missing a single crease or hollow, he found nothing at all.

How could that be? The Beast King’s true form was a nine-tailed silver fox. Silver foxes took greatest pride in their razor-sharp intuition. He had never doubted his own instincts. Yet this time, even he was uncertain.

Search again! Gathering all his divine sense, the Beast King struck out.

At that very moment, the first wave of multicolored auspicious light burst forth.

The Beast King swore that in all his life he had never seen such brilliant, blinding radiance… Fortunately, he had moved quickly; only the halo of light grazed his divine sense.

His vision went black, his sea of consciousness suffered a devastating blow, and with a choke the Beast King spat out a mouthful of black blood and immediately lost consciousness.

When he awoke, ten days had already passed. The eerie sense of danger was gone.

But when the Beast King opened his eyes, everything he saw was colored in five hues and doubled by triple afterimages. This lasted for more than half a month.

And the mysterious blow had severely damaged his vitality. After taking no fewer than ten vitality-restoring pills, he remained shut in his dwelling for a full year before he recovered.

How could he accept it? Once he had healed, the Beast King could no longer remain calm. In his own territory, he had been kicked into such a state, yet he had not even seen his opponent’s face! If he did not avenge this, what was the point of cultivating, of seeking immortality?

Thus the astral wind rose in sudden fury. For the first time in five hundred years, the Beast King left the heart of the Sea of Barriers.

When he reached the air above the second layer, he nearly fell from the sky in shock. By the Great God Pangu, was he seeing things? Before him stretched a vast, barren wasteland. From the middle of the second layer of the eastern Sea of Barriers onward, there was no barrier mist, no familiar forest, no birds or beasts, no signs of human life… nothing at all. Only endless yellow sand, exuding a deep and deathly stillness.

Though he had not come here for many years, his memory told him this place had always been veiled in barrier mist like a white gauze curtain, with forests luxuriant and thriving, full of life.

Releasing his divine sense, the Beast King discovered that this barren land actually extended one hundred thousand miles into the distance, occupying a full quarter of the Sea of Barriers.

Multicolored auspicious light—yes, it was the multicolored auspicious light that turned this place into a dead sea! The Beast King quickened his pace and, like wind and lightning, rushed to the memory of the region from which the multicolored light had erupted.

Three years passed. The Beast King dug down a hundred meters and overturned every inch of that place, yet in the end found nothing.

There should have been survivors.

The bewildered Beast King turned his gaze beyond the Sea of Barriers and set out in search of the truth.

That journey lasted many years…

When the tiger is absent from the mountain, the monkeys take over as kings. Within the Sea of Barriers, the beast cultivators of each rank lived in layered districts, a division established by the first Beast King and maintained by every successor through force. After the Beast King departed, the surviving sixth-rank beast cultivators in the depths of the second layer grew restless.

First, they had never stopped coveting the Beast King’s treasure. While he was present, they did not dare cross even a hair’s breadth beyond the line. But now that it was certain he had left, who would not want to seize a share?

Second, what had caused the Beast King to abandon the Sea of Barriers and travel far away? Had he perhaps found some great opportunity in that sea of sand? If not, why would weeds and the like have gradually begun sprouting from that barren land after his departure? Indeed, some even said they could once again smell the unique fragrance of spiritual energy in the air there.

In any case, the Beast King’s departure was equivalent to sending all the beast cultivators a signal that the danger had passed. One by one, the beast cultivators emerged from their dwellings. Their aims differed, so they split broadly into two groups. One went to the heart of the Sea of Barriers to hunt for treasures; the other went to the site of the disaster to seek the truth.

In truth, the desertification in the barren land was only a little over a meter deep. Beneath the sand there was abundant moisture. The Beast King’s digging had been akin to turning the earth. The sand went down, the moisture came up. After several rains, the circulation of spiritual energy gradually recovered, and life slowly began to return to the barren land. The beast cultivators who came afterward searched for treasure and opportunities here, and their activity sped the gathering and circulation of spiritual energy… Ten years, twenty years… fifty years… one hundred years… two hundred years passed, and the land once again regained its abundant vitality. But that was a story for later.

As for those beast cultivators who went to the heart of the Sea of Barriers in search of treasure, their luck was no better than that of human cultivators. A very small number carried away the treasures they obtained and returned to the second layer to cultivate in seclusion once more. The vast majority either perished beneath the restrictions or became trapped within them; in short, they went and never returned.

Steady as iron was the Sea of Barriers, fleeting as water were beasts and cultivators alike. The events of that year thus became yet another unsolved mystery in the cultivation world. Those ten rings of magnificent multicolored auspicious light, meanwhile, became known as the light of heavenly punishment that turned all who heard of it pale with fear.

So where, in the end, was the instigator, Wind Child, hiding?

In truth, that poor child was not having an easy time either.

Everything has both advantage and disadvantage. Under the slaughter of the multicolored auspicious light, Wind Child’s cultivation shot up as if she had boarded a divine rocket. In less than two hours, she rose from the first level of core formation to the great perfection stage. Bathed in an ocean of spiritual energy, the thirty-six golden cores first grew robustly in fierce competition. Crunch, crunch, crunch—by the time she reached the fourth level of core formation, each of them had swollen to three times its original size! Every golden core was like a balloon blown to its limit, almost transparent, and the sight was as horrifying as it could be.

Heaven could bear witness: she had truly wanted to stop it.

But the multicolored auspicious light was part of the automatic package for advancement. Entirely self-directed, it was beyond her control. More than that, the power of this blessing increased geometrically, wave after wave growing stronger than the last. Wind Child had once carefully searched Pan Gu’s cultivation journal, and after the Great God Pan Gu successfully advanced, he had not received such a bizarre light. Perhaps everyone’s cultivation had its own little quirks. At the time, she had even felt a bit pleased with herself. Heh, free experience points—how convenient. Take them while you can.

Yet with more spiritual energy pouring in, the dantian area—no, it was no longer merely a dantian area. After entering the core-formation stage, her dantian had expanded wildly into a sea of cores. Inside that sea, things were exploding like roasted beans, crackling and popping.

Core-formation, fifth level: the golden cores divided in two;

Core-formation, sixth level: the golden cores divided in two again…

With every advancement, the golden cores split once. But under the impact of the continuously surging spiritual energy, they swiftly condensed into new golden cores. In the end, Wind Child swept her gaze over the sea of cores and found it glittering like the starry sky of a midsummer night. After a rough count, there were as many as one thousand, one hundred, and eighty-two of them!

Yet Wind Child could not feel the slightest joy.

Because these golden cores, never tempered, were terribly unstable. It seemed they might split again at any moment. However, with the final wave, the multicolored auspicious light had brought no fresh spiritual energy. Without new spiritual energy to sustain them, the golden core at the very center of the sea of cores was the first to strike. With a bang, it shattered into fragments. The spiritual energy that poured out became a band of unruly soldiers no longer under control, crashing into the neighboring golden cores…

Not good. At this rate, two more golden cores were about to explode!

Fortunately, at the fourth level, by a stroke of chance, Wind Child had exchanged with a great cultivator undergoing training for a recipe to refine a Core-Purifying Pill. That pill was meant for cultivators in the core-formation stage, with effects that tempered golden cores and improved cultivation. Over the following decades, she refined more than a hundred such pills according to the recipe.

Wind Child took the Core-Purifying Pills like candy. After she had swallowed twenty of them, the situation in the sea of cores finally steadied precariously.

Because the commotion she had caused earlier was so enormous, heaven knew what might be drawn here. Wind Child dared not delay. Once matters improved even slightly, she immediately fled toward the second layer of the Sea of Barriers. In her current condition, leaving the Sea of Barriers would be no different from courting death. Besides, with the breath-concealing talisman over her, she need not worry about being discovered by high-level beast cultivators.

Her realm was unstable, and Wind Child did not dare to use true energy continuously. So she traveled, then paused, and only after a month did she leave the desert she herself had created. After that, it took her another month to find a new place for secluded cultivation. That place lay deep within the second layer of the Sea of Barriers. After opening a dwelling there, when she could at last truly calm herself and enter seclusion, there were exactly one thousand golden cores left in the sea of cores.

The Grand Master of Heaven was still missing. No outside help!

Fortunately, practice makes the master. Along the way, Wind Child had painfully groped her own way to the method of tempering golden cores. She swallowed the last twenty Core-Purifying Pills in one breath, dissolved them, and used her divine sense to guide the spiritual energy, beginning the arduous path of tempering and stabilizing them.

In the blink of an eye, two hundred years had passed.

The violent spiritual energy was refined. All one thousand golden cores had been tempered. Within the sea of cores, starlight shone brilliantly, serene and peaceful. Wind Child exhaled a mouthful of impure breath and slowly opened her eyes.