Chapter Ninety-Seven: The Turning of Heaven and Earth

For this entire year, he had lived as though the world beyond the window no longer existed to him. No matter how the heavens and earth shifted and changed, he devoted himself wholly to refining the Lunar Stele, blending his essence, breath, and spirit with the lunar meridian.

Yet for reasons he could never understand, North Spirit kept bringing back female demons from time to time, every few days without fail. Some were alluring, some dignified, all of them enchanting and graceful in endlessly varied ways. After South Fall’s refinement of the Demon Moon Mirror had reached the realm of complete spiritual union and breath as one, he only needed a single glance to see through the true forms of those she-demons entirely.

South Fall could only sigh in helplessness and ask North Spirit what she intended to do, but she never answered. Only after some time, when she captured that Spring Song girl, did he finally realize that she had merely wanted to see what sort of woman he liked. Was that not disturbingly strange?

Still, North Spirit had always seemed uncanny in his eyes. She acted entirely according to her own whims; even the color of the clothes she wore changed with her mood. South Fall had only recently discovered that.

Fortunately, after the day she slew the Sand Gold King, she had run off to gather up that mountain of demons, and had not come to trouble him for quite some time.

While South Fall cultivated and refined himself with all his might in the depths of the mountain caverns, the outside world was undergoing earthshaking changes.

Among the beings born together with heaven and earth was a Kunpeng, a creature adept at transformation and in communion with all things. After attaining the Dao, it took Kunpeng as its name, though many knew only the name and not the form, for it was counted among the supreme powers of heaven and earth.

Just as South Fall was exerting himself to the fullest in refining the Lunar Stele and merging it with the lunar meridian, that Kunpeng appeared in the Heavenly Court, where the Heavenly Emperor issued a proclamation to the world.

The Kunpeng was appointed Master of Demons, charged with teaching and transforming all living beings beneath heaven, and a special Daoist sanctuary was opened beneath Mount Heavenless for the sole purpose of hearing his sermons. The Kunpeng himself declared that he possessed eight hundred great paths, each of which led into the Dao. From that time onward, the beings of heaven and earth came to know the four realms of cultivation: Immortal, Divine, Dao, and Sage.

Countless creatures surged there in endless tides, and the power of the Heavenly Court rose day by day.

In the eighth year of the Heavenly Emperor’s reign, the Eastern Emperor once again toured the world. He was blocked by the Shaman Clan’s ancestral shaman Gonggong and flew into a rage, striking him down.

Mountains and rivers collapsed, the great streams were severed, and Gonggong was utterly defeated, fleeing in retreat.

The Eastern Emperor, enraged, gave chase with the intent of destroying him there and then. At that moment another ancestral shaman, Jumang, appeared. His form was strange indeed, with the body of a bird and the face of a man, riding upon two dragons as he came.

The two of them joined forces against the Eastern Emperor, their power surging many times over, yet they still could not prevail and were forced to flee.

The Eastern Emperor pursued them, and then two more strange giants appeared. Some recognized them as the ancestral shamans Rushou and Tianwu. The four formed a battle array and fought together, only barely managing to hold the line and prevent a rout, yet they were still at a disadvantage.

From that moment on, no one could ever again shake the position of the Eastern Emperor Taiyi as the number one figure under heaven. In the early days of the Heavenly Court’s founding, when Taiyi had pressed the world down beneath overwhelming force, many had not felt the depth of it clearly. But this time, with four of the famed Twelve Ancestral Shamans of the primordial world joining forces and still falling behind, everyone gained a direct and unmistakable understanding.

Many knew the strength of the Shaman Clan’s great shamans, but opportunities to witness an ancestral shaman’s hand were few and far between. Yet from the great shamans one could infer just how terrifying the ancestral shamans truly were. Even so, with four of them forming a battle array and still no match for Taiyi, everyone felt a deep shock.

Only then did people truly grasp the meaning of the Sage realm among the four realms of Immortal, Divine, Dao, and Sage.

"This Taiyi has already stepped into the Sage Dao. Truly formidable. In front of him, are we not no more than ants?"

This was the feeling in many hearts after seeing Taiyi chase Gonggong, only to draw out four ancestral shamans who fought him together as one.

As for how the battle ultimately ended so abruptly, some said Taiyi saw that he could not kill the four ancestral shamans in a short time and feared drawing in more of them to surround him, so he withdrew. Others said that by then more ancestral shamans had already arrived, and someone had once seen a woman in a pink dress standing motionless atop a cliff at the edge of the battlefield, untouched by the slightest ripple of the conflict. Some said she was the Shaman Clan’s ancestral shaman Xuanming.

Still others claimed that the other ancestral shamans of the Shaman Clan had already laid down a formation outside the battle ring, waiting only to join the four within and seal the array together, so as to strike Taiyi down in a single blow, but that the Eastern Emperor Taiyi withdrew at that very instant.

No one thought Taiyi weak. His standing as the world’s foremost figure had become unshakable. After this battle, the Heavenly Court’s status soared at once, rising above all living beings.

Yet afterward, some reflected that the ancestral shamans of the Shaman Clan were all incomparably powerful. It would have been impossible for them not to appear after the four had fought for so long, or to have failed to arrive in time. Thus people began to suspect that the Twelve Ancestral Shamans of the Shaman Clan had long been at odds with one another, and that rumor now seemed to be true.

From that battle onward, the Heavenly Court grew ever more like the sun at midday, appointing three thousand six hundred wandering immortals and seven hundred twenty demon generals, along with ten demon gods of tremendous and unfathomable power.

This grand investiture lasted three days and three nights. No one knew exactly who had been named, or where each of them had gone. They did not need to remain in the Heavenly Court; they only had to come when summoned.

On the day of the conferral, the Heavenly Emperor Jun proclaimed to heaven and earth that all he had done was for the sake of bringing clarity to the world, so that there would be no more strife and no more slaughter. He then spoke words as vast as a vow: "I wish to endure with heaven and earth."

How many believed those words, no one could say. Yet when he uttered that final line, heaven and earth seemed to tremble, and the void echoed as though answering him.

In the tenth year of the Eastern Emperor’s reign, South Fall at last fused his own vital essence with the lunar meridian, and the Lunar Stele was finally refined into formlessness.

Yet that formlessness was not truly without shape or substance. At that moment, the lunar stele in the void was like a shaft of light, or like an image reflected in a mirror. If one reached out to touch it, the hand would pass straight through, unable to feel it at all, and yet it remained plainly visible. Moreover, whenever night fell, the two characters of its lunar name grew even clearer, as though resonating with the distant lunar star in the sky.

Whenever the moon was full and hung high at the zenith, when frost-bright radiance poured down, the Lunar Stele would blaze with brilliant light, completely beyond his control, as though it were seeking to merge with the moonlight itself.

The jade bed that gave off wisps of white mist was not merely an ordinary piece of warm jade. It was a jade stone that South Fall had taken from the depths of the spiritual meridian, nourished by the meridian’s essence through countless days and nights.

It should now be called Yin Jade. Following the key principles recorded in Emperor Jun’s Scripture of Lunar Star Spirit Sacrifice, he had carved prohibition arrays into it and drawn up the meridian’s breath, allowing one who sat upon this jade bed to feel the lunar meridian. Yet although his body remained on the bed, it could also be said that he was no longer there.

For his primordial spirit had already followed the meridian breath drawn by the jade bed and entered the lunar meridian itself. Once within it, he felt an indescribably wondrous sensation, like entering a hot spring, warm and gentle beyond measure.

A yearning never to leave began to grow in his heart, as though even the mountains themselves had become a part of him. At once he felt as if his power were without limit.

It seemed that the mana of the entire mountain range could now be summoned at his will. With a mere thought, his awareness could instantaneously reach any place within it.

Man was mountain, and mountain was man.

"Is this the Dao realm?" he could not help asking himself. "Is this what the Dao realm is like?"

Even he could not put the sensation into words. It was a marvelous thing, as though within this one mountain range he could do anything at all.

But he understood that the moment his primordial spirit withdrew, this feeling would vanish. Though he could still borrow somewhat more of the power of this patch of heaven and earth than in other places, it would surely be far inferior to what it was now.

This lunar meridian was not a tangible thing, but rather a current of breath, akin to the breath of the Great Dao and yet not quite the same. That was why so many people, when fighting within their own abodes or their own Daoist sanctuaries, possessed such an endless advantage.

According to the Scripture of Lunar Star Spirit Sacrifice, he began merging the Lunar Stele with the lunar meridian. South Fall’s primordial spirit held up the Lunar Stele, while it was enveloped by that breath of the lunar meridian.

Thus the days passed one after another, and the world outside continued to change. The struggles and conflicts still did not cease. Yet all of it seemed to have nothing whatever to do with South Fall. He had already sunk entirely into that mysterious fusion, united with the mountain, in harmony with heaven and earth, devouring the endless power of moonlight and blending it into the meridian, where it became part of the lunar current and a portion of heaven and earth’s strength that he could command.

Not long after South Fall’s primordial spirit entered the lunar meridian, North Spirit returned. When she saw his faint and flickering aura, and found that the Lunar Stele was already gone, she guessed what had happened.

Because when she had pressed him before, South Fall had told her what he had come here to do. She had asked no more after that, as though she had forgotten it entirely.

Now, seeing his aura dim and elusive, she guessed that he had probably already slipped into the lunar meridian to merge with the Lunar Stele. So she sat down upon the jade bed as well, serving as guardian.

At first she could still sit there in meditation and cultivate, but after a long while she grew impatient. Mana was not something she cultivated by effort in the first place. As a Devouring Spirit Yin Insect, she could swallow any spiritual energy in heaven and earth, especially the mana of others.

That was her innate divine power, and after this transformation, her ability to devour spiritual energy had become even more terrifying. If before she had been but a worm, then now North Spirit had become a butterfly after metamorphosis, already holding a place among the many mighty beings of the Divine realm.

For someone who had never cultivated mana at all, sitting still was an extremely difficult thing. So she went out, fluttering through the mountains, taking a look around Falling Spirit Mountain. She bathed in the lake she had named Spirit Lake, killed a few minor demons and monsters that had carelessly wandered to the lakeshore while she was bathing, and then returned.

South Fall still sat unmoving. His aura was faint and indistinct, merging with the entire mountain as one. Across his crossed legs rested the Blue-Visage Sword, quiet as death, as though it concealed boundless killing intent.

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