荔枝影院

Edited by: Michyrr

"This is Qilin hide!"

The scent of incense inundated the air of the spirit vein mountain. In the center of a hall, the Demonic Emperor Old Man looked at the black hide on the table and gave an assessment that not even Wang Chong expected.

"Qilin hide? Let me see!"

The moment the Demonic Emperor Old Man spoke, a curious and tender little hand shot out from the side of the table, aiming for the black hide.

"Don’t!"

"Careful!"

......

The faces of Wang Chong and the Demonic Emperor Old Man flickered, but they were too late to do anything. The little lady of the Wang Clan had always been one to act on impulse, and always without the slightest warning.

Roooaaar!

The energy in the hall suddenly changed as the scene Wang Chong had experienced earlier replayed itself: at almost the same moment that Wang Xiaoyao grabbed the hide, the resounding roar of a beast, brimming with cruelty and bloodthirst, suddenly exploded within the hall.

An invisible and ruthless energy swept through the hall like a fierce gale, also sweeping up the three people inside.

Plop!

The hide dropped the ground as Wang Xiaoyao loosened her grip. Her face was pale from fright.

"I already told you not to lightly touch it."

Wang Chong bitterly smiled. His little sister had always had such a rash nature. This hide was quite evil. Just by sitting on the side, he and his master had felt a psychological attack. One could imagine what sort of blow his sister had received by directly touching it.

"Little rascal, if you continue to be so impulsive and disobedient, don’t blame your master for being rude in the future."

The Demonic Emperor Old Man glanced at the Wang Clan’s little lady, a solemn expression on his face.

Wang Xiaoyao acted more disciplined this time, not even daring to speak.

Although she had a rebellious nature that not even Wang Chong could handle, she was extremely afraid of the Demonic Emperor Old Man. And this time, the psychological blow from the Qilin hide had truly given her a beating, and she still hadn’t recovered, so she didn’t dare to say a word.

"Master, the Qilin is a beast of auspicious omens, so why is this hide so evil? And besides, do things like Qilins really exist in this world?" Wang Chong asked.

Dragons, Qilins, and their ilk were all legends. In this life or the last, Wang Chong had never seen one, but he had seen all sorts of birds, beasts, bugs, and fish.

Crocodiles, lions, tigers, elephants, orangutans... Wang Chong was sure that the roar from that hide was none of these beasts.

It didn’t even sound like a sound an ordinary beast could make.

"Hehe, Chong-er. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Since we warriors can obtain the strength of myths through cultivation, why would it be strange for something like a Qilin to appear? When I was young, I once saw an Earth Python. Its tail was on one end of the mountain while its head was at the other.

"Though rare, these mystical creatures do exist."

The Demonic Emperor Old Man fiddled his beard and smiled as he gave this astonishing statement. But after thinking about it, Wang Chong found that he couldn’t argue.

It was true. Since warriors could surpass mortals to become sage-like existences, why would it be strange if something like a Qilin existed?

And besides, weren’t those foreign invaders that were going to descend on the Central Plains in the future even more strange?

"...I’ve never seen a Qilin, but you’ve read the Book of Songs2. You should know that the records of antiquity in the ancient books speak of the Qilin. If there’s black in the world, there’s also white, and where there’s good, there’s evil. If there are Qilins who represent auspicious signs, there are naturally Qilins who represent the evil and dark." (The Book of Songs, also known as the Classic of Poetry or Shijing, is a collection of Chinese poetry that is touted as one of the ’Five Classics’ said to be compiled by Confucius. Reading and memorizing these classics formed a key part of the curriculum for any person who aspired to be an official in ancient China.)

The Demonic Emperor Old Man spoke very calmly.

Wang Chong had nothing to say. Wang Chong knew that the ancient books had records of Qilins. During the Spring and Autumn period, there was a saying that when a sage appeared, a Qilin would follow.

And these records had even found their way into the history books.

But such records were far too unreliable, and Wang Chong had always treated them as myths. Until he encountered this hide.

"But I don’t actually care if this is Qilin hide or not. What I care about is this!"

As he spoke, the Demonic Emperor Old Man extended two fingers out of his sleeve to take up the black Qilin hide on the table. Unlike Wang Xiaoyao, however, nothing happened when the Demonic Emperor Old Man grabbed it. It seemed like an ordinary hide.

"What I care about is the treasure map drawn on this hide!"

The Demonic Emperor Old Man turned over the black hide, revealing a very different sort of treasure map. Here was a complicated diagram of lines, and mountains and rivers had been drawn all over it, a few complex symbols affixed upon it. It was completely incomprehensible and seemed very much like a maze.

"...In the pugilistic world, there is a legend regarding a supreme and matchless technique called ’The Supreme and Infinite Origin Immortal Art’," the Demonic Emperor Old Man said.

The name of this technique left his little sister looking clueless, but Wang Chong’s heart fiercely thumped. When Li Siye had given him this ’map’, Wang Chong had not felt much of anything.

But now that he had heard the name of this technique, Wang Chong felt completely different.

In the Central Plains, there were ten legendary supreme arts: ’Art of God and Demon Obliteration’, ’Great Yinyang Heaven Creation Art’, ’Myriad Spirit Sea Art’... ’Supreme and Infinite Origin Immortal Art’ was one of these.

And this art could be ranked in the top three of these ten techniques!

But Wang Chong had discovered that this technique had been lost ages ago, in the era of the Great Sui Dynasty.

If he wanted to obtain this technique, he didn’t even know where to start. Thus, Wang Chong had not even thought about it or made it one of the items he wanted to seek out.

"...Now that I’m talking about it, this technique is actually closely related to our lineage. Do you remember what I said to you before? It’s extremely easy to progress in the Little Yinyang Art and the Great Yinyang Heaven Creation Art, because we don’t even need to cultivate them. We only need to continuously extract energy from others to possess the cultivation that might take other people ten years to obtain in a short time.

"Relying on this technique, I was able to dominate the pugilistic world as an expert that could look upon the world with disdain. But when there is benefit, there is surely detriment. The deeper you cultivate, the closer you get to perfection, and the higher you raise your level, the more intense and conflicted the Stellar Energy in your body will become, and the more likely you are to suffer a cultivation defect. I spent almost sixty years trying to refine all the different Stellar Energies in my body into one, but I ultimately failed.

"In the end, this was the reason that traitorous and wicked disciple was able to get one over on me."

Saying this, the Demonic Emperor Old Man looked at Wang Chong, a hint of worry in his eyes.

"Chong-er, you’re advancing too quickly in your Little Yinyang Art. Unlike us sectbound people, you don’t need a reason to kill people in the army, but this is by no means a good thing.

"One should learn from the mistakes of one’s predecessors." The Demonic Emperor Old Man had experienced these things and had almost died from them, causing him to completely give up on these techniques and switch to cultivating the Myriad Spirit Sea Art.

But the strength of the Great Yinyang Heaven Creation Art could not be doubted. As long as one could kill a sufficient number of opponents and take their cultivation for one’s own, one could quickly become a peak expert.

The Myriad Spirit Sea Art could not compare in this aspect. The difficulty in cultivating the latter was many times higher than the difficulty of cultivating the former.

Even though anyone who reached the peak with either would still stun the world!

"Master, be at ease; I know what I am doing," Wang Chong sincerely said.

"It’s fine as long as you understand. The massive defect of the Great Yinyang Heaven Creation Art is not impossible to fill. If you can obtain the Supreme and Infinite Origin Immortal Art, the two techniques will complement each other, and the defect of the Great Yinyang Heaven Creation Art will become invisible. However, no one has ever been able to do this.

"The lineage of the Supreme and Infinite Origin Immortal Art is too mysterious. Its true rise to fame was during the Great Sui Dynasty, so I’ve never mentioned it to you before. I’m afraid that over the centuries, this is the only clue to finding that technique."

The Demonic Emperor Old Man looked at the treasure map on the table and sighed.

This was a cruel joke of fate!

If he could have gotten his hands on this technique long ago, he wouldn’t have ended up like this. But now, the world truly was playing a joke on him. His Great Yinyang Heaven Creation Art had already been destroyed and even his dantian had been crippled, making it impossible for him to cultivate this technique.

"But how did such an important item end up in Black Dragon Zhao’s hands? And what’s up with this map?"

Wang Chong’s brow furrowed.

"In the last years of the Sui, the whole world was in chaos and warlords were vying with each other for supremacy. The Supreme and Infinite Origin Immortal Art was probably lost amongst the common people at this time. Black Dragon Zhao, a blockade to the west who plunders for a living, probably managed to accidentally gain the map to this technique.

"As for this map, I heard some rumors about it in my time in the pugilistic world. I heard that the senior who cultivated the Supreme and Infinite Origin Immortal Art had drawn his supreme technique on an ancient map, completely different from the maps we have now. That ancient map symbolized the origin and inheritance of this technique and was also a tradition one had to follow to inherit the technique. One hears of many legends but believes few, so I didn’t expect that this legend was real!"

The Demonic Emperor Old Man sighed.

Wang Chong’s forehead creased. This was the first time he had heard of such a thing. The ten supreme and mystical techniques of the Central Plains—excluding Su Zhengchen’s Art of God and Demon Obliteration and the Demonic Emperor Old Man’s Great Yinyang Heaven Creation Art, for which there were clues he could use to find them—could essentially only be encountered through luck.

It wasn’t actually that strange for the Supreme and Infinite Origin Immortal Art to use the geography of ancient times as clues on its map.

But time could transform a great sea into a mulberry field and the earth was ever-changing. The geography of ancient times was completely different from that of the Great Tang. It was basically impossible to rely on the geographical features on this map to find out where the Supreme and Infinite Origin Immortal Art had been buried!

He could only rely on guessing!

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1. In Chinese, this technique is called 太上无极混元大罗仙功. 太上, supreme/most high; 无极, limitless/infinite; 混元, primordial chaos/origin; 大罗, greater overarching, usually referring to the 大罗天, the highest of the heavens in Daoist cosmology; 仙功, immortal art.↩

2. The Book of Songs, also known as the Classic of Poetry or Shijing, is a collection of Chinese poetry that is touted as one of the ’Five Classics’ said to be compiled by Confucius. Reading and memorizing these classics formed a key part of the curriculum for any person who aspired to be an official in ancient China.