A Guide to Self-Rescue in the Cultivation World - Chapter 11

“But ‘Same Life, Shared Longevity’?” A hoarse, twisted voice, filled with endless malice and madness, exploded in the gloomy underground chamber. “That was the last dying obsession of that old corpse, Dao Moxing, a beautiful bubble he spent his entire life trying to grasp, but it is not mine!”

Xuan Yangming’s face, contorted by extreme agitation, looked even more monstrous and aged. He smiled savagely, appearing utterly terrifying.

His voice was resentful and distant, as if piercing through a thick coffin, carrying a bone-chilling cold:

“Little girl, since you’re about to die… I, this Elder, will take pity on you and let you die with understanding, considering you’re the final stepping stone for my ‘Three Paths Unified’ grand endeavor.”

His withered, ghoul-like fingers pointed at the pulsating flower beneath Zhou Suyao:

“Look at it, look closely at the flower beneath you, doesn’t it resemble a baby being gestated.

A baby…?!

At the mention of it, Zhou Suyao violently looked down at the grotesque, vibrant flower at the base of the altar and found it indeed bizarre.

Had Xuan Yangming not said that, she would never have noticed that the flower’s color wasn’t a standard red, but a kind of human-flesh tone. Its stamen was twitching inexplicably, as if a heart were constantly beating inside it was distinctly a deformed heart being nurtured within the demonic flower.

The color of flesh and bl00d, a bloody human flower.

Master had once said that any plant that took on a human appearance was invariably an object of great evil and dark yin!

Her heart instantly froze halfway in her chest.

Not long ago, she and Second Senior Brother were discussing, full of worry, how to counter Xuan Yangming’s plot. They had both subconsciously assumed the Elder’s goal was identical to the one in her dream to achieve eternal life, the “Same Life, Shared Longevity” pursued by Elder Dao Moxing.

But now, it seemed this was not the case.

Xuan Yangming’s ambition was far more insane, far more irrational than mere longevity!

“Dao Moxing was an idiot. He craved ‘Same Life, Shared Longevity’; he wanted eternal life, thinking it would grant him everything. He was too foolish.”

“Don’t you see? What I desire is the power to truly unify the Three Paths! This ‘Infant Flower’ is the Three-Path Meridian Flower I seized from the Spiritual Path’s furnace and planted here. As long as this flower is successfully nurtured, the control over the Three Paths will henceforth belong to me, Xuan Yangming!”

He laughed wildly with a grating, hoarse voice, like rusted iron scraping jade, creating a shrill, sickening sound.

“Since the tragic great war between humans and demons in ancient times, the order of heaven and earth collapsed, and the mortal world split into Three Paths. The Heavenly Dao governs human order, the chaotic Human Dao contains the mortal world, and the mystical Spiritual Dao communicates with the creation of heaven and earth.” Xuan Yangming’s tone was filled with the arrogance of one who controls everything. “I used the bl00d of the Human Dao, the vital essence of those ant-like mortals, as the initial nutrient to awaken this Meridian Flower’s spirit… but the bl00d of the Human Dao is mixed and thin. Nurturing it was too slow! Too slow! I have waited too long—long enough to have gone through several reincarnations. This body is already decaying, and my soul is on the verge of scattering. If this continues, once the power of the Spiritual Dao fully revives and senses the flower’s imminent collapse, I will gain nothing and my soul will be scattered, suffering eternal damnation!”

His voice betrayed his past anxiety and despair, but it was immediately replaced by a twisted sense of triumph.

“Just when I was at my wits’ end, that fool Dao Moxing appeared. He discovered the secret manual of ‘Same Life, Shared Longevity’ from the Demon Realm, attempting to refine the Demon Race for his eternal life. Little did he know, his very desire forged this perfect flower today! Everything he did was merely to refine the most concentrated Spiritual Dao Bl00d from the Demon Race for me… Henceforth, the high authority of the Heavenly Dao, the complexity of the Human Dao, and the mystery of the Spiritual Dao, the essence of these three lineages only requires the bl00d of the predestined person you to help this flower completely fuse and refine the Three Paths into one, allowing me to seize control of all three!”

His bloodshot eyes, like those of a hungry vulture, were fixed on the inverted Zhou Suyao, filled with a crazed determination to succeed.

“You, Zhou Suyao! You are the key chosen by heaven and earth! Use your bl00d, your soul, to help this Three-Path Meridian Flower bloom completely, refining the scattered lines of the Heavenly Dao, Human Dao, and Spiritual Dao into one! When that happens, all things in the universe will obey my command! I, Xuan Yangming, will be the only true god in this world…!”

The Fatal Flaw

However, in this suffocating moment of despair, Zhou Suyao’s brain, which was heavily congested from being inverted, suddenly recognized an undeniable logical flaw after hearing such extreme, crazed statements. This tiny loophole hit her like a stone, stirring a strong sense of contradiction in her heart.

“The only true god?” she scoffed.

“But if my bloodline is the bloodline of the predestined person,” she bit down on her tongue, ensuring she spoke every word with absolute clarity in her rebuttal, “then the Meridian Flower that is nurtured with my bloodline and soul…”

Her lips twisted into an almost satirical arch.

“It’s true rightful owner… who should that be?!“

“The Spiritual Dao only nurtured the Three-Path Meridian Flower because the Spiritual Dao itself was its original owner, wasn’t it? But now you’ve used Ning Qinggui and the Demon Race to refine this Three-Path Meridian Flower, so you probably won’t get your wish, because the owners of the Three-Path Meridian Flower have long become the vengeful spirits of the Demon Race who died by your and Dao Moxing’s hands!”

The final three words hit Xuan Yangming’s consciousness like a drop of ice water in a frying pan.

They exploded in his mind.

How could this be?!

In his understanding, the vessels were merely nutrients, Ning Qinggui, the Demon Race, and this brat he had chained to the altar, who still dared to talk back; they were all just tools to help him forge the Three-Path Meridian Flower. How could a tool become the master? He, Xuan Yangming, was the creator of this Celestial Meridian!

But when Zhou Suyao’s question, like an invisible poisonous barb, accurately stabbed into the logical flaw that his mad ambition had completely blinded him to, he suddenly realized the truth.

The Celestial Meridian was nurtured by the bl00d of the Demon Race, the bl00d of Ning Qinggui, and her brat’s bl00d. Its foundation, the very source of its power… whose mark was truly imprinted upon it?

These powers! Who exactly would they serve?!

“No… impossible! You’re talking nonsense! I am the…” Xuan Yangming’s facial muscles twitched violently. The madness in his eyes was replaced by a sudden, unexpected fear and doubt.

That instantaneous flicker of doubt was like a small, yet fatal, crack being pried open at the very bottom of an impenetrable dam.

And that very moment of doubt, that single, minute fissure pried open from the bedrock of his logic, was absolutely fatal to the maintenance of the massive altar.

Ohm—!!!

The Three-Path Meridian Flower on the altar, which had been greedily sucking Zhou Suyao’s spiritual bl00d, had its rhythmic pulsing suddenly and eerily… stutter for a split second.

Just one split second.

And after the pause came a far more violent recoil.

The spiritual qi of the Three-Path Meridian Flower began to disperse. The spiritual power it had previously devoured from Zhou Suyao, the demonic power from Ning Qinggui, the vengeful essence from countless demons, and even the forcibly integrated Human Dao essence… all burst forth like a raging flood, mixing with the flower’s own chaotic, berserk source power. It was spewing out uncontrollably from that beating heart.

The immediate backlash stretched Xuan Yangming’s soul to its absolute limit!

He coughed up a mouthful of clotted bl00d mixed with fragments of internal organs.

The next moment, his body slammed heavily onto the ground like a broken puppet, making a dull, thudding sound.

The Flow Reverses

However, at that very same moment.

Zhou Suyao, inverted at the center of the altar, felt a warm current, like a torch suddenly igniting in the middle of winter, filling her entire body from top to bottom.

It was warm, vast, and filled with an unspeakable vitality.

Is this… the breath of heaven and earth, of grass and wood?

Could this be the spiritual qi that Eldest Senior Brother spoke of?

She felt the bleeding from her lower abdomen stop. The wound seemed to be slowly healing, and her hands and feet, which had been cold and numb from the long inversion, slowly regained warmth.

It was the Qi of Heaven and Earth’s Creation, the original spirit of all things.

A surge of spiritual power abruptly condensed at her fingertips.

“Do you know that the first true master of the Spiritual Path was a common village farmer?”

Eldest Senior Brother’s voice, clear as the sound of jade clashing, exploded without warning in her consciousness.

“He discovered that the spirit of the Dao might not come from spiritual power, but from spiritual qi.”

“This spiritual qi is the creation of heaven and earth.”

The rainy night.

The snowy night.

She was so cold. The cold robbed her of her will, like the gentle voice of the mother she had never met, softly whispering: “Sleep now, sleep now…”

Her eyes were about to close.

Just as her consciousness was about to sink, a warm hand gently pressed against her cold forehead.

The icy rain beating on her body, and then, in the deepening snow, the bare peach branch Eldest Senior Brother conjured from his palm, and the words:

“If you want to learn, first use your spiritual power to make the peach blossom bloom.”

Heaven and Earth as the Spirit.

And the Spiritual Qi originates from the body.

The Body is Heaven and Earth.

The Three-Path Meridian Flower’s appearance suddenly grew more monstrous. Its petals spread wide, and its heart-like pulsation sped up, growing faster and stronger.

She saw it.

At the core of the flower’s angry bloom, deep within the sea of knowledge in her glabella, an initially vague, illusory thread of light, like an ungraspable wisp of smoke, suddenly became clear. It was no longer a one-way siphon; it had become a surging channel. The spiritual qi, carrying the vital essence of all the grass and wood of creation, was pouring nonstop into her body through this thread from the Three-Path Meridian Flower.

An ungraspable thread connected the stamen to her glabella.

But this thread… didn’t only connect to her.

Bang!

A huge force exploded from the stamen. Instantly, the thread became distinctly visible, wrapped around her, and then quickly wrapped around Xuan Yangming, who had collapsed from the massive spiritual backlash.

The moment the thread coiled around Xuan Yangming, Zhou Suyao’s vision abruptly went black.

The world spun violently.

The next moment, her eyes were no longer looking at the cold underground altar.

This instantaneous shift in environment was not a faint that dragged her into an illusion, but a forced, violent wrenching and warping of her vision.

The rapidly spinning scene and her suspended limbs caused a metallic-sweet surge to rush into her throat.

She nearly vomited again.

But when the suffocating distortion finally stopped, and her vision refocused, her body began to shake uncontrollably.

Having gone without food for so long, she could only expel green bile from her throat.

Because.

What greeted her eyes.

It was an endless, viscous, suffocatingly bloody stench.

Bl00d red.