Chapter 214 — Treading Auspicious Clouds Across the Four Seas, One Bamboo Staff Subdues Ten Thousand Demons (Part Two)

Thunder-Stack Mountain stretched more than nine hundred thousand li in every direction, and beyond it the ranges continued, one after another. Spirit herbs grew in abundance throughout that country. Hard by Thunder-Stack Mountain lay Medicine-King Mountain, a domain ten thousand li across, about the size of Black Wind Mountain, and within it were countless rare treasures of heaven and earth. True, the land belonged to the Jade-Faced Lady who ruled Thunder-Stack Mountain, but cultivators were not forbidden to come and gather from it—so long as it was not the Lonely Peak Sect turning out in force. A lone cultivator, or a demon or spirit coming to collect a little, would draw no notice from the herb-keeping youths.

The last time, the Xiuheng Sect of the Wild-Moor Mountains had sent over a thousand disciples at once to strip Medicine-King Mountain bare, and had even beaten the mountain-keeping youths. Only then had trouble broken out, and the Ox-Flame of Great Strength had fanned the very gate of their sect out to sea with his palm-leaf fan.

However small Medicine-King Mountain might be, it was still more than ten thousand li around; a single cultivator could gather from it forever and never exhaust it. Besides, most cultivators knew their limits. Those who went up Medicine-King Mountain went to brew elixirs; a pinch here, a stalk or two there—nothing that could do any real harm.

Zhou Xuan had spent some days in the Earthly Immortal Realm and had gradually settled into his surroundings, picking up a good deal of news along the way. Of the three great provinces—East Pervading Divine Province, West Ox-Feast Province, and North Lu-Ju Province—he had only the vaguest notions, but of South Jambu Province he had learned the particulars from Ao Luan's own lips. His journey to Thunder-Stack Mountain was twofold: to see how matters stood, and to gather herbs for elixirs to raise the strength of the disciples under his gate.

Yun Cen had left him a gourd of elixirs—only five or six pills—and Zhou Xuan had all but used them up. The herbs of the mortal world could brew only foundation-building pills; by the middle and late stages of Returning to Emptiness, they were of little use. Zhou Xuan felt keenly how lonely his strength was, how hard to stand alone. His strongest was Blue Divinity, but even she had only recovered her former power, far beneath the poisonous dragon; and of his disciples, there was no need to speak. In the mortal world they might pass, but come to this realm, any demon king at all could spit them through in a single thrust. To brew a furnace of elixirs that defied heaven and reversed the dao, to carry them through the heavenly tribulation—that would take at least the strength of a Withered-Bone Divine Lord before Zhou Xuan would dare let them come boldly into the Earthly Immortal Realm.

He had borrowed the Seven Treasures Wondrous Tree from the poisonous dragon in order to pacify Black Wind Mountain as quickly as possible, establish his own ground, and then slowly gnaw away at the Two-Realm Mountains and build up his power—to become a hegemon in his own right. And besides, Zhou Yan's identity was that of Gouchen the Great Emperor, one of the Four Emperors of the Heavenly Court. It was an empty title, but when the moment came, it would surely prove of great use.

"This outfit's far too flashy!" Zhou Xuan looked at his golden-crow robe of the sun and found it glaring, an offense to the eye. "I'm going to Thunder-Stack Mountain to gather herbs and take a look around—not to pick a fight. I'd best not dress so arrogantly. If some demon king takes a dislike to me, caught in a siege of a million demon soldiers, I'd be lucky to escape with only my skin peeled off!"

Zhou Xuan took his ease, in no hurry to travel. He went through the mountains by earth-soaring, watching for places where spirit energy gathered—mountain hollows, cliff faces—to see whether cultivators had planted spirit herbs there, and gathered whatever he found into his pouch. His harvest was fairly rich. The spirit herbs of the Earthly Immortal Realm were not of the same order as those of the mortal world: the same stalk of lingzhi grass was a full ten times stronger, smooth and round, purple light flowing across it, its fragrance carrying several li.

On a broken cliff above a mountain ravine, Zhou Xuan hid his traces and entered his mustard-seed space, where he changed into a Daoist robe, bound his hair with a one-character scarf of black gauze whose two ribbons fluttered like paired leaves behind his head, and took up a bamboo staff. He was every inch the hermit of the mountain forests, a few degrees less domineering than before.

Within the mustard-seed space, Zhou Zhan's share was mostly Daoist scriptures and records. The finest treasures he had seized from the Daoist sects of the mortal world he had given to Yun Xia; the rest he had handed to his disciples, to bestow on the worthy and loyal among their own students. Zhou Xuan's own ready treasures now were, apart from the six Heaven-Capital Banners, the bamboo staff in his hand, the Seven Treasures Wondrous Tree lent to the poisonous dragon, and a nine-toothed rake. The rake was no common thing, but its power was not great; it seemed its master had refined it with primal essence. For Zhou Xuan to force open its seals, he would have to refine a thread of that primal essence, and its master would inevitably sense it and make trouble. Zhou Xuan had no choice but to set it aside.

Soaring a while, resting a while, he spent a full day before he came at last to the southeast of South Jambu Province. Before him the great mountains rolled on, towering and vast, with peaks a thousand or ten thousand zhang high whose summits he could not see even looking up, as though they joined on to the heavens themselves. Dark springs and mountain brooks, pine forests and bamboo groves, birdsong and the fragrance of flowers—how different from the miasma and foul waters of Black Wind Mountain! Zhou Xuan climbed halfway up one high peak, and far off he saw cloud and mist wreathing, the air fresh, ancient trees dense and wild, stone terraces ranked in rows, green jade and verdant blue. There were even stone steps cut into the mountain, and among the green woods and emerald bamboo stood a Daoist temple with blue walls and glazed tiles, no bigger than a dot from that distance, and faintly he heard the sound of jade chimes. He did not know which Shuzhen Sect's place of practice this might be.

On the other faces of the mountain, too, there were dimly visible stone caves and ravines, and farther off the mountains were like a sea of cloud, tier upon tier, patch upon patch, so that he could not tell whether the mountains were in the clouds or the clouds in the mountains.

"What a vast place." Only when he came to these southeastern ranges did Zhou Xuan realize it was even larger than he had imagined. Medicine-King Mountain, beside Thunder-Stack Mountain, would be no easy thing to find. Zhou Xuan knew only its rough position; the exact address he would have to find himself. Nearly a million li of mountains, range after range, peak after peak—to search them one by one would kill a man. Yet these mountains were not lonely or empty; from time to time in the distance streaks of escape-light would pass, clearly cultivators on the move, or demons.

He hurried after one such streak—neither black nor grey—and cried out, "Fellow Daoist, hold a moment! This poor Daoist has a question!"

The demon-light took form, and it was a burly fellow a zhang tall, a seven-foot broadsword of banded pattern slung across his back, its colors purple and gold intermingled, a fine divine weapon in its own right. Zhou Xuan's cultivation was deep, and dimly he saw that what floated within this burly fellow's mud-pill palace was a tiny golden-spotted leopard; he knew the creature for a leopard spirit.