Chapter 21 - Mysterious Origin
Xu Ying silently praised the great bell’s open-mindedness. Nice tactical retreat, Master Zhong[1]! As expected of someone who’s been around for thousands of years. You really understand the ways of the world!
Then he thought, The female ghost knows the master of Qin Yan Cave? So, she didn’t come here to kill us, but to pay respects to an old friend.
He blinked. She called this a place of ascension. What does that mean? And what about the Abyss of Cangwu and the Ageless Immortal?
From inside the palace, the girl’s voice rang out, ethereal as if drifting from the clouds. “Are you alive or dead? If you’re alive, where did you go? I’ve searched the Divine Land. Why can’t I find any trace of you?”
She stepped into the black coffin. The lid shut. With a sharp whoosh, the coffin shot out of the white jade palace, chains trailing behind as it sped toward the exit of Qin Yan Cave. Only her eerie, sorrowful voice remained, echoing in the grotto residence.
“Did you ascend, or did you pass away? Why am I the only one left in this world after awakening three thousand years later...”
Xu Ying sighed in relief. If the coffin girl had been a little more observant, she would have noticed the great bell submerged in water. In a fit of anger, she could have wiped out Demon King Xu and Demon King Niu together.
Remembering the great bell, he hurried to fish it out.
However, the bell seemed to have gotten angry. He sank with a gurgle, refusing to surface.
Xu Ying tried to fish out the bell several times without success. He grew frustrated and said angrily, “If you’re so capable, go fight that female ghost. Why are you taking it out on me?”
The great bell was a wimp and didn’t dare to fight the coffin girl to the death. He burst out of the water and dumped everything it had stored over Xu Ying in a single splash.
This act seemed to have drained all the strength he had accumulated. The bell dropped back down and followed behind Xu Ying, clanging weakly.
Xu Ying didn’t bother arguing with him. He channeled his vital energy to steam his clothes dry, then followed Yuanqi toward the white jade palace.
He stopped before the palace and looked up.
Carved onto the doorhead of the palace were characters unlike any from the current era. The strokes resembled tadpole trails in mud or bird claw marks left on snow.
Yuanqi said, “Don’t bother looking. My family has studied it for three generations. None of us can read those characters. I don’t know what this place is called either.”
Xu Ying’s expression turned strange, “It says Mud-Pill Palace Grotto Heaven.”
Yuanqi asked, confused, “You recognize the characters?”
He was utterly astonished. His family was well-read and knowledgeable, yet none of them could decipher it. Xu Ying was a mere peasant; how could he recognize it?
With a strange gaze, Xu Ying replied, “I’ve never seen such a script before, but... The moment I saw it, I understood what it meant, how to read it, and even how to pronounce it. It’s as if...”
He furrowed his brow. It felt like the script had been engraved into his mind long ago. He searched his memory but found nothing. He had never learned or seen it before.
Yuanqi was baffled. Recalling Xu Ying’s strange behaviors, he asked, “Ah Ying, have you ever lost your memories?”
Xu Ying laughed involuntarily. “No. Never! How could I? I’ve been sharp since I was young, and my memory is crystal clear. I can even recall events from when I was ten months old!”
His heart ached faintly. He remembered everything about the fire in Xujiaping Village: every detail, down to the moment the flames swallowed his parents.
He wanted to forget those memories, but couldn’t, no matter what.
Blinking his eyes, Yuanqi thought, You can’t even remember your parents’ names right. It goes to show that your memories are unreliable. Did someone hit your head in the past?
The great bell rolled on the ground, as if it too doubted Xu Ying’s memories.
Looking up at the strange characters on the doorhead, Xu Ying had a thought. He retrieved the Mud Pill Radiant Vestige Cultivation Method, then looked up at the characters again.
He muttered in confusion, “Mud-Pill Palace Grotto Heaven, and Mud-Pill Radiant Vestige Cultivation Method. Both their names contain ‘mud pill.’ Is there a connection?”
The Mud-Pill Secret Trove was one of six Secret Troves in the human body. Unlocking any one allowed one to become an Exorcist. The Zhou clan, a lineage of Exorcists, had mastered the Mud-Pill Secret Trove.
The Mud-Pill Secret Trove was too attractive to Xu Ying. It was close to becoming an obsession.
Ahead, Yuanqi beckoned him to enter the palace. Xu Ying collected his thoughts and stepped inside. Bookshelves filled the white jade palace, with rows upon rows of books neatly lined up.
Yuanqi had claimed that he was from a family of scholars and possessed a profound heritage. He wasn’t lying.
Yuanqi said proudly, “My family has lived here for three generations, more than three hundred years. We have collected countless ancient texts. Everything available in Lingling County is here. I’ve read them all.”
Xu Ying felt both admiration and shame. Compared to this snake demon, he truly was uneducated.
Just then, Yuanqi’s expression changed drastically, and he cried out, “Ah Ying, my vital energy is suddenly turning into metamorphic energy. I’m probably about to take human form!”
His vision blurred. A layer of dead skin clung to his eyes, turning them cloudy. He was about to molt.
Yuanqi hurriedly made his way into a room in the white jade palace. He cried out, “Don’t wander around during my seclusion. Mount Wu Wang has changed. Even I am unfamiliar with its current geography!”
He needed to find somewhere safe to shed his old skin before he could transform. If he delayed, he could suffocate inside it!
Xu Ying walked to the jade wall and looked up.
The coffin girl had stood here, facing the jade wall to reminisce about her old friend.
Carved on the jade wall was a wondrous mountain, steep and towering. It pierced through the clouds, its presence grand as if it towered above the world itself.
As a snake catcher, Xu Ying had spent his days on the move to catch strange snakes. What mountain had he not seen? Yet, none resembled this.
This mountain was too tall and precipitous, piercing the clouds. Such a mountain didn’t exist in Lingling County. Let alone Lingling County, such a magnificent, wondrous mountain didn’t exist anywhere on the Divine Land!
Xu Ying stirred slightly inside. He muttered, “South of Xiao and Xiang rivers, the Abyss of Cangwu. Beneath the Jiuyi Mountain Range, the Ageless Immortal. Could the mountain depicted here be Mount Jiuyi?”
“But Mount Jiuyi is not that tall!”
Doubts lingered in his mind. He had been to Mount Jiuyi several times. Although it was beautiful as a picture, its peak wasn’t that high. It could not be the mountain depicted here!
Then again, Mt. Wu Wang had changed. Could Mt. Jiuyi’s true form be this?
“It’s too bad Yuanqi went into seclusion; otherwise, we could’ve gone there to take a look.”
Anyway, Xu Ying was feeling tired. He chose a room and settled in. He had been on the run for days, fatigue piling up, yet his mind remained excited. He couldn’t fall asleep, so he took a book from the shelf and read.
After reading two or three pages, Xu Ying’s head slumped. He fell asleep, snoring away.
Xu Ying slept for a long time. When he woke in a haze, his vital energy surged. The Qin Yan Cave was brimming with strange vital reactivity, making his cultivation rise continuously. After a single night, his cultivation had already improved significantly.
“This is truly a spiritual sanctuary!”
A strange odor rose from him, likely the rot he had picked up while passing through the underworld.
Yuanqi was still in seclusion and hadn’t awoken.
Xu Ying went outside the palace, stripped naked, and jumped into the pond.
He looked down and felt a little perplexed. He murmured, “Eh? A few hairs here... strange. It’s growing everywhere. I’ll pluck them.”
He scrubbed off the grime, pressing over old wounds. Then he noticed a spirit grass on the shore and froze.
After a moment, he muttered, “No, no! Is Qin Yan Cave’s vitality healing me, or is my vitality healing me? Is the strange energy in Qin Yan Cave really vitality?”
He had seen plants growing wildly under the influence of vital reactivity, but the spirit grass on the shore wasn’t showing such growth.
In other words, the vital reactivity permeating the Qin Yan Cave wasn’t truly vital reactivity. The energy that healed Xu Ying and Yuanqi’s scars had come from within!
“This mysterious energy inside Qin Yan Cave can stimulate our vitality and vigor!”
Xu Ying’s eyes flickered. And what was the source of vitality and vigor inside the human body?
He murmured, “The Mud-Pill Secret Trove.”
It contained the vigor of the human body, and this white jade palace was also called the Mud-Pill Palace. Before, he had only suspected a connection. Now he understood.
“The mysterious energy inside Qin Yan Cave can stimulate the Mud-Pill Secret Trove!”
Sitting in the pond, he continued murmuring, “Yes, it’s the Mud-Pill Secret Trove. If I trace its path after it enters me, I can locate the Mud-Pill Secret Trove! That’s equivalent to Dragon Tracking! But I’m not wounded...”
He raised his hand and drove a finger into his thigh.
Fresh blood flowed from his thigh. Enduring the pain, Xu Ying immediately focused his mind. Divine light swirled beneath his eyelids as his divine sense emerged.
He pushed through the door and entered the ethereal void.
Faint qi streams seeped into his inner world. These faint streams were the mysterious energy from the mud pool that had entered him.
They flowed toward a hidden place within him, all in the same direction.
As expected!
Xu Ying’s divine sense followed these streams as they rose into the air, wandering. They moved like lightning, whistling through the air. The qi streams climbed past the heart and lungs, where upside-down mountains stood, yet it did not stop.
He followed the streams, wandering and weaving through the ethereal void. He reached an uncharted region and uncovered deeper mysteries of the human body.
He looked up and saw what seemed like the interior of an incredibly massive treasure pagoda. Its levels rose in ordered layers, while on either side stood the towering mountains of his heart and lungs.
Whistling, his divine sense flew over the majestic mountains and through layer after layer of the towering treasure pagoda, tracking the streams. A bright light abruptly appeared ahead. As he drew closer, he saw a jasper pool vast as a sea.
A divine bridge hung in the air over the jasper pool.
The sight dazzled Xu Ying. Following those streams, he flew across the divine bridge. He looked up. An immense sun blazed overhead, flames roaring. Beside it hung an equally immense moon, its cold radiance shining in balance with the sun.
There are actually so many places within me that I’ve never been to!
Xu Ying’s divine sense passed between the sun and the moon, following the streams as they soared into the sky. He entered a boundless expanse within the ethereal void.
It was a chaotic region within his brain.
His divine sense hovered before the qi of primordial chaos in his mind. At its center floated a massive, round mass of chaos, like an enormous egg suspended within the chaos.
The mysterious energy from the mud pool entered the egg of primordial chaos and vanished without a trace. His vigor surged, and his wound healed.
This egg of primordial chaos is the Mud-Pill Secret Trove! One of the six secrets of the human body!
Xu Ying calmed his mind. The Mud-Pill Secret Trove was right before his eyes. He had found it without relying on a Great Exorcist’s Dragon Tracking.
Finding it is one thing, but unlocking it is another!
Just as he thought of this, this region of primordial chaos in his mind shook slightly, rippling.
He looked toward the source of the ripples and was dumbfounded. A great bell had barged in from nowhere, swaying like a drunk. The bell drifted above the chaos and stopped beside the egg. Then he tried to shove the egg, trying to push it aside. When he failed, it simply settled down.
On the bell’s surface was a deep palm imprint. It was precisely the great bell that was following Xu Ying.
Only then did the bell notice Xu Ying’s divine sense floating not far away. The bell and Xu Ying’s divine sense met gazes; for a moment, there was an awkward silence.
The bell rose silently and flew out of the brain region.
Xu Ying waited quietly for a while. After a while, the bell crept back in. He paused when he saw that Xu Ying was still there, as if confirming he hadn’t been mistaken.
With a resonant voice, the great bell said, “Young man, you’re here too?”
Xu Ying’s divine sense erupted into fury. “What do you mean, I’m here too? This is my brain, alright? How did you come in?”
The great bell answered honestly, “From the Jade Pillow acupoint at the back of your head. The rise in your vital energy cultivation helped my injuries heal a little. Since you didn’t bring me along, I came in to rest.”
Xu Ying’s injuries and various hidden ailments had healed completely since entering the Qin Yan Cave. His vital energy was more robust than before, and the bell seized the opportunity to absorb more of Xu Ying’s vital energy, regaining his mobility earlier than expected.
He had planned to enter Xu Ying’s brain to siphon even more vital energy to heal his injuries. Unexpectedly, he ran straight into Xu Ying. leading to this awkward situation.
Xu Ying didn’t hold him accountable and asked, “How did you end up near my Mud-Pill Secret Trove?”
The great bell was shocked. He flew several rounds around the egg of primordial chaos and clicked his tongue in admiration. “This is the Mud-Pill Secret Trove? No wonder it won’t budge. I entered your mind through your Jade Pillow acupoint. I had no idea this is where your Mud-Pill Secret Trove lies.”
Xu Ying recounted how he had traced the cave’s mysterious energy and performed Dragon Tracking to find this place. “The mysterious energy entered this place, and my vigor was stimulated. This must be where the Mud-Pill Secret Trove lies.”
The concept of Secret Troves didn’t exist during the bell’s era. He was puzzled upon hearing this. “Why is there a mysterious energy in the Mud-Pill Palace Grotto Heaven that could stimulate the Mud-Pill Secret Trove? How strange.”
Xu Ying replied, “Isn’t it very normal for mysterious spirit qi to exist in spiritual sanctuaries?”
The great bell sneered coldly, “You think spiritual sanctuaries are everywhere, like cabbages? They are few in number, and each of them has a grand origin.
“Though this place is an ancient grotto residence, a grotto heaven can’t exist here! The master of this place called it the Mud-Pill Palace Grotto Heaven, but that’s just him puffing himself up.”
Xu Ying pondered, “It would be strange if this mysterious energy in Qin Yan Cave isn’t spirit qi or spirit force. It’s most likely not formed naturally...”
His eyes suddenly lit up, and he smiled. “If I can trace this mysterious energy to find my Mud-Pill Secret Trove, then I can also trace it back to its source!”
1. Zhong is the character for bell. ☜
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