Realms In The Firmament

After a while, the ten words were turning smaller and smaller and shrank into the sphere. What terrified Ye Xiao was that his soul followed the shrinking and also drew into the sphere!

“The sphere is obviously inside my body. How could it draw me in? What is going on?” When the confusion had just aroused in Ye Xiao’s mind - woosh! his consciousness fell into a curious space.

After being blank for a short time, Ye Xiao quickly regained his composure. He looked around and saw a huge palace standing like mountains with clouds curling around!

Right below the palace there were two giant doors made of two huge white jades. The surface of the doors was smooth like a mirror - there was nothing on it!

When Ye Xiao was checking carefully, he heard a sound - whoosh! A character was like a meteor flew from beyond the horizon and crashed on the blank doorframe of the left door!

天 - Tian!

And then another character fell.

Ye Xiao was already prepared to see them. He looked at those characters flying down and embedding themselves on the doorframe of both sides. They were exactly the ten words he just saw - 天地无双主、混沌第一灵 (Peerless lord in the world, and the foremost spirit in chaos)!

After that, more words started showing up one by one on the white-jade doors.

“From heaven to hell, there is only one absolute ruler. But who is he?”

“When the universe was just born, the sphere showed up. It took all efforts of creating and energy of the whole space to create such things. It brought about all livings beings - the sun, moon and stars in the sky, and the mountains and rivers on the earth…”

It was such a long text.

Ye Xiao read it and felt confused, “The words inside the sphere are really overstated, are they not? The sun, the moon and the stars could be all created by you huh?

That… is impossible…

Who do you think you are, a god? A sage? Or a sovereign being?”

The next moment, the closed doors suddenly opened!

An extremely dense fog flooded out!

And beyond the fog was a long tunnel.

As Ye Xiao was about to enter,golden flashing lights suddenly appeared in front of his face showing a line of words.

“欲入此门, 生死一念 (Enter, gain absolute power or face total annihilation)!”

Ye Xiao stopped walking and looked at them attentively.

After the eight words, there came another twelve flashing like they were directly carved in his mind.

“不成天地主宰，便化宇宙尘埃 (Either become the absolute ruler of the universe or yet another insignificant speck of dust in the world!)!”

Ye Xiao felt shocked deep inside his heart!

It was a clear statement: If you get in here, you have decided to accept this legacy, and you will only have a single way out - by becoming the absolute ruler of the universe.

If he couldn’t succeed, he would become a speck of dust!

Withering away!

In simpler terms: If he failed, he would die!

The condition was really taking it to the extreme.

Live or die!

There was no other option to consider.

Ye Xiao stood silently for a while and said with a low voice, “A single man in the world should have dominated everything! Even if I fail, at least I would have fought once. I may die, but with no regrets! A speck of dust, so what? A deadwood, so what? Life is inherently like a leaf living through autumn!”

“If I succeed, I will be the absolute ruler!”

He leisurely walked through the doorway with his hand folded behind his back.

He actually disdained looking at those warnings flashing around him.

Success would let him look down upon the universe while failure would lead him to annihilation!

He felt as if his blood was boiling and he was filled with an indescribable desire!

“There it is, a method, a way back into the Qing-Yun realm. The three factions, wait and see! I, the Xiao Monarch, will return soon!”

A place filled with warnings like these were just a perfect fit for his personality! — Succeed or die!

That was actually what he had done in his previous life!

However, the present Xiao Monarch was perhaps even more resolute than he’d ever been!

“Here it is!” Above the empty main hall, there was a strange zone. The Pure Heavenly Crystal was right at its center and was slowly spreading wave after wave of heavy fog. This heavy fog was filling the main hall and the purple qi from the hall was slowly entering the Pure Heavenly Crystal.

“I was right! They are connecting with each other, stimulating each other, and then building up a regular cycling pattern.” Ye Xiao pondered. Although he didn’t understand what was really going on, he could see that inside the sphere, the Pure Heavenly Crystal was actually the catalyst for the sphere…

Ye Xiao tried to take the Pure Heavenly Crystal but found himself unable to reach it.

“What the hell is this?! I had battered my brains to obtain that thing and now I can’t even touch it?” Ye Xiao was a bit pissed.

After finding the Pure Heavenly Crystal inside the sphere, Ye Xiao started to look at his surroundings. He realized that even though he had entered a huge palace, he had actually only explored a very small part of it. The rest of the buildings behind were still shrouded by the heavy fog. One couldn’t even see his fingers clearly, let alone tell directions.

DAANGG! Suddenly, a ringing sound filled the air, like the melodious sound of an evening drum or a morning bell…

Ye Xiao felt his mind go blank after hearing this ring. He attained a shocking enlightenment which had truly appeared from nowhere. He could clearly feel that the bell’s ring was leading him through thousands of his past lives!

At that moment, the thousands of lifetimes turned into a ray of light that rapidly flew through Ye Xiao’s sight!

It seemed both real and dreamlike at the same time; seemingly existing in front of him, yet impossible to reach…

The purple qi continued to expand till the ringing sound died out. A wave of the purple qi thrust up from the central grounds and formed ten words!

“天地初始，唯有紫气东来 (At the very beginning of the universe, only the purple qi from the east was in existance)！”

An extreme dense purple qi suddenly rose with splendid lights surrounding it. As sudden as lightning, it thrust forward and landed in between Ye Xiao’s eyes!

Instantly, Ye Xiao felt his head becoming heavy as a martial arts method quickly took shape within his mind

“万物得造化，紫气东来功!” (The creation of the universe depends on the East-rising Purple Qi!)

“天地初始，紫气东来，是为万物之母，滋润苍穹⋯⋯此紫气提聚之法，正心正神，我心为天，阴阳转动，三光合一，灵台冰清，紫气东来。”(At the beginning of the universe, there was a purple qi rising from the east. It is the mother of the world and the benefactor of the firmament… The method of cultivating the purple qi strengthens the heart and refines the soul. My heart is the heaven; Yin and Yang are revolving; three lights are converging; my soul is crystal clear; the purple qi rises from the east.)

……

“The East-rising Purple Qi!”

Ye Xiao read this method word for word and sentence for sentence. Eventually, within his mind, he found enlightenment. It felt like finding a treasure!

The Xiao Monarch had earned such a great title in his prior life. While the strong basic cultivation of him was an ascent to transcendence, the method of martial arts he had been using was also something out of the ordinary. His discernment was also surely a transcendental skill. In Ye Xiao’s eyes, no matter if this East-rising Purple Qi was the first martial arts method in the universe or not, it was much better than the Pure Yang Martial Arts he had used in his prior life. The two methods were totally not in the same level; they were like cloud and soil. Even saying that the East-rising Purple Qi was in the sky and the Pure Yang Martial Arts was on the earth, was actually flattering the latter one. They absolutely belonged in different realms!

Just by reading the beginning of this method, it had made him feel its endless power.

He was sitting on the bed, wholeheartedly performing the new cultivating method again and again. He was transferring the poor small piece of spiritual qi into the route of the new method and began cultivating…

The scattered spiritual qi in the world converged towards his body, then gradually entered within him and flowed towards his dantian…

Inside the sphere, the Pure Heavenly Crystal was still persistently emitting the pure qi. The space materialized while the purple qi kept on spreading…

Ye Xiao sat on his bed the entire night!

Ye Xiao remembered clearly, when he was performing the new martial arts method for the 1999th time, suddenly, with a buzz, his soul seemed to shake and all his acupoints[1] opened at once! The qi from all over the world crazily rushed into his body.

His dantian was holding the scattered qi from this world and there was a wave of faintly discernible cool energy forming an extremely tenacious thread flowing into his Jing and Mai!

That was an energy created by the mixture of the sphere and the Pure Heavenly Crystal — the first piece of the saint spiritual power!

When the normal qi got into his dantian, they merged together. If both strings would be compared, then the normal string would be made of some normal silk, while this saint spiritual power would be a strand of superior silk that could hold a thousand kilograms.

That was like the absolute difference between a god and a mortal!

The difference between Heaven and hell!

While Ye Xiao was cultivating by absorbing the East-rising Purple Qi, his skin gradually excreted layers of sticky mucus which was black and smelly…

Ye Xiao didn’t move one bit, seemingly unaware of his body getting dirtier and dirtier. An inexplicable excitement was engulfing his mind!

His condition right now, was actually what most cultivators could only dream about — ablution of the muscles and bones!

This is the first step on the long journey of cultivation. If he had been using normal methods, he would need to reach an unimaginable high level before he would be able to enter the ablution stage in order to transform his mortal body into a saint-body.

Surprisingly the East-rising Purple Qi actually started the ablution right at the beginning!

He had really found an unimaginable treasure.

Maybe it was true that this method was the first martial arts method in the universe, like it was said in its description!

……

The next morning, when the sky was still dark, Ye Xiao hurried out from his room and jumped into the pond.

Splash!!!

In the pond, several big fish were scared by the unexpected visitor and walloped around.

Ye Xiao actually had no other choice. He had just woken up from cultivating and had found himself stinking like a shit hole!

God knows how much dirt was inside the body of this foppish playboy. This time all the filthy things had been exuded and formed a heavy layer on his body…

Ye Xiao even felt that his eyes were totally covered by filth…

He casually rubbed his body and removed a handful of dirt… and he rubbed again then got a miters long finger-width strip of them… People who didn’t know what was going on would think that Lord Ye was catching a catfish in the pond of his house…

The stinky smell was being spread out by the wind. Anyone who smelled it would definitely puke immediately!

The smell was just too strong! There was even a guard who, while covering his nose, had come to see what was going on, but he was berated away by Ye Xiao, “Don’t you see I am having a bath? What have you come for?”

The guard began to run away in an attempt to save his nose while scolding: “Shit! I know you are having a bath, but there are two questions ok? The first: Don’t you think it is too early to take a bath before sunrise? The second: I fxxking know you are taking a bath but it smells like somebody’s washing the toilet!!!”

The pond in the General Ye’s house was really big. It was enormous!

However, when Ye Xiao got out of the pond and looked back, all the fish in the pond were floating on the surface of the water, showing their white bellies and breathing the fresh air as if suffocating, with their mouths moving…

If those fish could talk, they would cry before talking, “What the fxxk?! This is some nasty shit… I-Is this the end?”

——————

[1] Acupoints: Acupoints are locations on the body that are the focus of acupuncture, acupressure, sonopuncture and laser acupuncture treatment. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, several hundred acupuncture points are claimed to be located along what practitioners call meridians.