Chapter 80 — The Strange Monk and the Taoist

"Ha! Why would your master ever let those Taoists harm you? I hear the great ceremony of the Shuyue Zhi Sect is at hand—and I, for one, am a guest of honor at Mount Shu! This is the perfect occasion to proclaim the standing of the Yanfa Sect to every Taoist order under heaven!" Zhou Xuan patted the little fox on the head, and with his other hand he turned his palm over; the token that Xu Jiankong had given him appeared in his grasp.

He handed it to Liao Yanqiao, who had come flying up on his sword. Liao Yanqiao had been advancing at a prodigious rate of late—so swift was his cultivation that any genius of the Taoist world would blush for shame. Without the aid of a single spirit herb, he had climbed in little more than a month from the Qi-Introduction stage to its late phase; though much of this was owed to his own constitution, for the bloodline of an ancient demon god was no trifling thing.

What was more, with the aid of that peerless flying sword, Liao Yanqiao had drawn in the essence of the moon and actually succeeded in evolving himself to the duke stage. His strength had surged enormously; by sheer speed alone, he could hold his own against a mid-grade flying sword. By comparison, Zhou Chen fell far short. Hers was a demon's body, and there was no reason she could not cultivate sword formulas, yet her progress was sluggish, and the flying sword Zhou Xuan had bestowed on her was far inferior in quality to Liao Yanqiao's.

Liao Yanqiao took the token with a flick of his wrist, then, panting, dragged Zhou Chen up onto Zhou Yan's white cloud. "Master! We are bound for Mount Shu—you can carry us all there by yourself. I have only just reached the late Qi-Introduction stage and can barely manage sword-flight; if I had to carry two people, my true essence would be drained dry." He turned the iron plate over and over in his hands, and apart from noting that it was somewhat heavy, he could make nothing of it.

Zhou Chen, however, was startled. "This should be a token of a guest elder of Mount Shu. Master, how did you come by it? Surely you haven't killed another Mount Shu elder?" Zhou Chen knew that this cheap master of hers looked harmless to man and beast alike, but was in truth ruthless and merciless, concealing a dagger behind his smile, and could turn on you faster than a page turns. He was not to be judged by ordinary reasoning.

Zhou Suiran knew well what his fox disciple was thinking, and had just opened his mouth to offer some explanation when several sword-lights, each scores of zhang long, dazzling bright yet of wildly different hues, tore across the sky. Their shrill, fierce whistling pierced the clouds—arrogance itself. The air currents stirred up by their breakneck flight raised a gale that left all four of them gasping for breath and churned the white clouds of the heavens into chaos. The little fox, weakest of them all, had not even reached the mid Qi-Introduction stage; caught unawares, she was nearly blown off the cloud and dashed to flesh and bone.

Zhou Xuan waved a hand, and the Aurora Shield shifted into a five-colored canopy that enclosed the four of them. The five hues blazed forth, and however ferocious the gale, within the shield all was calm and still. This Aurora Shield had been refined from the aurora of the polar regions; the aurora rides high above the nine heavens, where the fierce gang-winds howl—yet even they cannot scatter it. Compared with the gang-winds of the nine heavens, the gale born of sword-qi cleaving the air was as heaven to earth, and could by no means shake that shield.

Liao Yanqiao, whose cultivation and power had lately advanced by leaps and bounds, was itching for a fight. Paying no mind whether those sword-riders had done it deliberately or not, he gave a cold snort, and his flying sword became a beam of purple-gold light thick as a water barrel, slashing at a passing azure sword-light. The speed of sword-flight could never match the speed of a blade made for killing; in an instant the purple-gold radiance overtook the azure beam.

"Qiankun in one breath, thunder of the nine heavens, break for me!" One of the golden sword-lights let out a thunderous shout. The azure sword-light, as though well accustomed to such encounters, showed not the slightest alarm and did not dodge; it simply came to a halt of its own accord. From high above, a thunderbolt fully twice as thick as Liao Yanqiao's sword-light came crashing down. The vital essence of heaven and earth within the surrounding quarter surged violently; the white clouds were swept clean away, revealing a sky of deep, deep blue, and the gentle sunlight shone down—a scene with a charm all its own.

Zhou Xuan knitted his brows slightly, set Zhou Can down, and crooked the little finger of his left hand. A stream of formless true-essence thought-force surged into Liao Yanqiao's body. Liao Yanqiao was hurling his whole strength into driving his flying sword against the thunderbolt; reinforced by that vast, mighty tide of true-essence thought-force, his divine consciousness swelled and his sword-light blazed. He saw with perfect clarity the weak point where the true essence had gathered the vital essence of heaven and earth into that thunderbolt. His sword-light, like a darting fish, followed the flaw in the huge thunderbolt and stabbed through, and in an instant, as if drawing the firewood from beneath a cauldron, stripped away the thread of true essence that had stirred the vital essence of heaven and earth. The thunderbolt collapsed like a pillar of water and dissolved into pure vital essence, scattering upon the air.

Overcoming force by skill! This was the way of unity between law and martial art that Zhou Xuan had grasped after his battle with that formidable ghost general in the Changping cavern, combining it with formation lore. Ever since he had condensed his dharma-body and achieved an undying form, Zhou Yan's Eight-Nine Mystic Art had reached its second stage, and he had naturally come to comprehend several attendant spells—this art of transmitting thought to the heart being one of them. It was much akin to the Buddha's supreme power of reading minds; it could not only convey one's consciousness to another, but carry true-essence thought-force as well. Truly a wondrous and peerless art.

"This spell is indeed useful! When I expand the sect and take in disciples far and wide, it will be just the thing for transmitting the teachings. A pity I have no cave abode—well, once this business is settled, I shall use the Water-Repelling Pearl to open a mountain gate beneath the sea!" As for the matter Bai Qi had entrusted to Zhou Yan, Zhou Xuan had not taken it to heart in the least; more vicious still, he could not let go of the Mountains and Rivers, State and Altars Diagram that had trapped Bai Qi. Yet this was hardly his fault: the fame of that diagram shook the three realms, standing even above the God-Beating Whip and the Heaven-Turning Seal. To possess it was to possess a world of one's own—no mortal or immortal could fail to be moved.

Zhou Yi harbored doubts about the origins of Bai Qi and Xu Fu as well; to use the Mountains and Rivers, State and Altars Diagram merely to trap a man was like firing a great siege cannon at a mosquito. Zhou Xuan had a vague sense that some monstrous conspiracy lay behind all this. His own strength had swelled greatly, it was true, but the gulf between him and those legendary immortals and gods was immeasurable. "Knowing too much is not always a good thing!" Curious though he was, Zhou Que was in no hurry to probe the truth of the matter.