A Guide to Self-Rescue in the Cultivation World - Chapter 10

Her first sensation was the terrifying cold of her surroundings.

Her second was the feeling that all the heat was slowly draining out of her body, channeled toward the reopened, tearing wound in her lower abdomen.

She struggled to open her eyes.

The first thing she saw was a massive altar, and in the center of the altar, an incredibly gorgeous, demonic-looking flower. Her bl00d was flowing from the wound, dripping one drop at a time onto the delicate petals.

On the altar stone beside the petals, symbols were filled in with gold leaf. She didn’t recognize the meaning of these symbols, but instinctively felt they were twisted and deeply unsettling.

The next moment, a tearing pain in her limbs brought her sharply back to reality. She looked around, realizing she could see the altar stone because she was currently suspended in an extremely grotesque posture, chained to it. Four thick iron chains fastened her wrists and ankles.

Due to being inverted for a long time, her hands were cold as stone, numb and senseless.

She tried to follow Eldest Senior Brother’s method: forcing the spiritual energy from her Dantian to her hands to see if she could conjure a few seals for escape. But the moment she exerted force, the wound in her lower abdomen tore open another inch. A spurt of hot bl00d flew out and landed on the flower, making it look even more vibrant.

Seeing that this method was useless, Zhou Suyao stopped her death throes—after all, she didn’t actually believe Xuan Yangming would let her die. If he would, well, then she’d die.

Okay, she didn’t want to die.

Even though her hands were utterly frigid, the fear of death drove her to attempt to circulate her inner spiritual qi. She thought of summoning her mount, the Linque bird, but before the qi could even reach her chest, her throat felt completely blocked.

“Ah,” Zhou Suyao thought. “As expected, my spiritual power.”

It had been…

locked down again.

Zhou Suyao felt an unspeakable despair. Since the battle in the Underworld, her spiritual power had never recovered its former strength. Even during the days when Second and Third Senior Brothers were constantly nursing her with medicine, her power barely reached half of what it was before the fight.

And now, one trip to the Golden Thread Pavilion had exhausted the power she’d just recovered.

And being dragged back to the Xingcong Sect resulted in her power being completely sealed off.

Did they think she was a sick cat just because she wasn’t lashing out?

Well, her current situation did make her look rather like a sick cat.

But thinking hard, she remembered something. It was a talisman Eldest Senior Brother had once told her about—one that didn’t require spiritual power, only a bit of spiritual qi to cast. But given her study habits, she usually remembered the story Eldest Senior Brother told, not the actual lesson.

For example, she had completely forgotten how to cast that particular talisman.

But she remembered the story he told when he taught it!

She recalled it was a rainy night. She was throwing a fit because she didn’t want to copy more incomprehensible talismans. She whined that she wanted to learn a spell that didn’t require talismans, swords, hammers… basically, a spell that didn’t require her to do anything, preferably one that only needed her to gently point her finger at the air.

The Eldest Senior Brother had given her a mischievous smile, pushed open the door of the thatched hut, and pointed at the pouring rain outside. “There.”

“Huh?” She was puzzled.

“Come and look,” Eldest Senior Brother gave his chilling, playful smile. “Come to the door. When has your Eldest Senior Brother ever lied to you?”

She secretly muttered to herself, Haven’t you lied to me countless times, Eldest Senior Brother? But she still scampered to the doorway, full of expectation.

She couldn’t help it. Hoping for a pie to fall from the sky so she could be lazy—that was a perfectly normal human expectation.

But just as she bent over to peek outside, Eldest Senior Brother raised his foot and gave her a swift kick, sending her plunging into the torrential rain.

She instantly became a freshly drenched chicken.

“Eldest Senior Brother!”

She spun around angrily, but in that moment, Eldest Senior Brother was already standing before her.

Every raindrop changed direction just before touching him. From Zhou Suyao’s perspective, Eldest Senior Brother was completely dry and composed, his hair lifted by the strong wind, creating an ethereal, godlike image.

The divine man opened his thin lips, his voice ringing like white jade bells from the celestial realm:

“Do you know that the first true master of the Spiritual Path was a common village farmer? When he was sold to the Daoist academy as a sweeping errand boy, he was already fifteen, well past the age for basic schooling. Yet this ordinary man, while listening to the Dao teachings, realized that the spirit of the Dao might not come from spiritual power (lingli), but from spiritual qi (lingqi). Lingqi precedes lingli. Lingli is the creation of a person’s cultivation, but lingqi originates from the creation of Heaven and Earth.”

“This lingqi is the creation of Heaven and Earth: vegetation consumes the creation of Heaven and Earth to gain spirit; beasts consume vegetation to gain spirit; and humans consume vegetation and hunt beasts, thus achieving the culmination of Heaven and Earth’s spiritual qi.”

“Those who cultivate the Spiritual Path have lingqi. Those who see through the Heavenly Dao have lingqi. And those who create the Human Dao naturally also have abundant lingqi.”

“Therefore, if one day your spiritual power is suppressed, you can try to take the heavens and the earth as your source of spirit, and mobilize the lingqi within your body. Just like this:”

With that, he clasped his hands and raised them to his brow. The next moment, his body began to glow with a brilliant white light. The torrential rain that had been pouring down instantly transformed into crystalline snow, falling slowly onto both of their heads.

Zhou Suyao was stunned. Despite being soaked and chilled to the bone, she still looked up sharply, grinning widely at Eldest Senior Brother’s snow-dusted eyelashes. “I want to learn that too!”

The Eldest Senior Brother saw her bright smile. His pupils trembled involuntarily, and his throat tightened. He was afraid to speak, lest his voice waver. After a moment, he slowly used his spiritual qi to conjure a bare peach branch in his palm and handed it to her.

“If you want to learn, first use your spiritual power to make the peach blossom bloom,” he said. “You have the time it takes an incense stick to burn. If you succeed, come find me.”

With that, he turned and walked back into the thatched hut, leaving Zhou Suyao in the rapidly intensifying snow, staring at the peach branch and the flame she had conjured in her other palm, struggling with her decision.

A snowflake slammed heavily onto her face. This snowflake, compared to all the others, felt so thick, icy, and painful that she rubbed her forehead fiercely. Finally, she decided to extinguish the flame in her palm so as not to burn the ugly branch Eldest Senior Brother had conjured with his spiritual power, and then she yelled loudly toward the hut:

“Eldest Senior Brother, I’m cold!”

Just like now, she truly wanted to call out, Eldest Senior Brother, I’m so cold.

But at this moment, she was trapped in this altar with no sense of night or day, no spiritual power, and unable to summon the spiritual qi he had taught her to use.

Eldest Senior Brother… The Eldest Senior Brother was nowhere near her.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she silently cursed herself. “Why didn’t you just pay attention in class, Zhou Suyao!“

But now it was too late. As she secretly regretted her past choices, an old voice slowly rang out.

“How much do you truly know about Ning Qinggui?”

“If you know enough, you should understand that I never forced her to her death.”

Perhaps it was because his Life-Sharing Vessel Mingluo was no longer nearby, or for some other reason, but Zhou Suyao now felt that the old man before her was frighteningly ancient and unfamiliar.

The white hairs on his chin were sparse, and the folds around his eyes were so thick they almost obscured them. More importantly, his voice sounded as if a thick layer of phlegm was caught in his throat, hoarse to the point that she momentarily missed what he had said.

But she still recognized him.

That frail, aged voice was the voice of Xuan Yangming.

The accomplice in that “Same Life, Shared Longevity” scheme had now become the chief orchestrator of persecution!

Zhou Suyao offered a faint smile—in truth, the previous struggle had left her with no energy for a real laugh, but hearing Xuan Yangming’s blatantly dishonest claim, she decided to smile as a sign of mockery.

“Elder Xuan, perhaps our ways of thinking are different. I have always believed that an accomplice is also a mastermind. You knew full well that she was going to her death by entering the Hall of Pure Radiance, yet you willingly pushed her toward the tiger’s mouth!”

Her voice was clearly weak, yet every word cut like a blade.

And this blade finally sliced through Xuan Yangming’s pretense of virtue.

“What do you know?!” Xuan Yangming’s body trembled almost imperceptibly, his voice suddenly rising, carrying the furious humiliation of having his facade ripped away. “It was all her choice…! She chose to become Dao Moxing’s Flesh Cauldron, willingly agreeing to dual cultivation with that old geezer, all for a channel for her base Demon Race, for an illusory vow! All I did… was facilitate it! If I hadn’t picked her up at the River Styx, she, a demon, trespassing into the Human Dao, would have long become a worthless slut for thousands of men to ride!”

The rant seemed to drain all his remaining strength. He coughed violently, his body hunched and twisting like a crippled shrimp.

Zhou Suyao said nothing more, only using all her effort to form a silent, profoundly sarcastic smile.

Though Zhou Suyao was merely linking Xuan Yangming’s resemblance to a shrimp with the comical image of his head on a shrimp’s body, the smile that reached Xuan Yangming’s eyes felt like boundless ridicule.

She was mocking him! But by what right did this greenhorn mock him?!

After a long moment, he finally caught his breath and lifted his bloodshot eyes, staring intently at Zhou Suyao’s face.

“Just like you,” he said. “However much you want to mock me and laugh at me, your bl00d, your appearance, they are so similar to hers… This is fate! This is fate! This is the fate that you can never escape in eternal life!”

His withered finger pointed at the throbbing flower in the center of the altar, and he let out a dry, horrifying laugh.

“Ning Qinggui has been dead for too long! The bl00d she left behind is almost incapable of nourishing this flower! I searched the whole world and couldn’t find a bloodline similar to hers, but today, you appeared!”

“Accept your destiny, Zhou Suyao.” His voice hissed like a venomous snake’s tongue. “This is fate! It is fate!”

“That old fool only knew ‘Same Life, Shared Longevity’; he only wanted eternal life… but in this world, there are things far more valuable than longevity!”

“And I found that valuable thing! And it will finally belong to me!”