Chapter Ninety-One: In Cultivation, Time Passes Unheeded; in the Mortal World, the Dao Heart Is Tempered

Cultivation is time’s most faithful enemy, and its most merciless witness.

In the eternal stillness of the Penglai Immortal Palace, time had lost the measure it once possessed. Spring gave way to autumn, winter to summer; to us, it was only the interval between a few breaths.

Though the age of spiritual decline had arrived, I had driven the palace’s great array to its fullest, channeling all the spiritual energy of Penglai Island into the three secret chambers. The qi was so dense it had almost become tangible, billowing like clouds and mist around the three of us. Even the immortal island seemed to know that this was its final master, and so it offered up the last of its warmth.

I sat cross-legged upon a prayer mat, my spirit wandering the vast void as I pressed against the invisible barrier between the Nascent Soul and Spirit Transformation stages. Yiyi was immersed in the mysteries of the Nine-Orifice Exquisite Heart Sutra. Her soul power matched the technique in perfect harmony, and her body radiated a clear, pure Dao resonance. Little White, meanwhile, had revealed her true form as a six-tailed immortal fox. Her enormous body curled inward as she drew upon the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to temper the ancient bloodline inheritance deep within her veins.

Thus, before we knew it, two hundred years had passed in the blink of an eye.

When I slowly opened my eyes from the deepest state of meditation, I could sense that both Yiyi and Little White had reached a temporary bottleneck as well. Endless seclusion was not the answer; too much of it could easily breed inner demons.

“Come,” I said, pushing open the stone door of the chamber. My voice broke the silence of two centuries. “I’ll take you to see just how beautiful the world beyond truly is.”

So began our first journey, one that lasted ten full years.

We stood side by side atop the summit of Mount Everest, watching the sea of clouds surge beneath our feet, feeling the soaring ambition of standing above the highest peak and seeing all the mountains below. We ventured deep into the heart of the Amazon rainforest, listening as countless living things sang together under the moonlight, and touched the primal pulse of untamed life. We strolled across the golden sands of the Sahara, watching the setting sun dye the dunes with a blood-red hue, and came to understand its ancient desolation and solitude. We drifted through the fjords of Norway, gazing upward at the brilliant aurora rippling like green silk, awed by the splendor and wonder of the cosmos.

We fed pigeons beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris, sampled street food all along the avenues of Tokyo, listened to gondoliers sing upon the canals of Venice, and stood before the pyramids of Egypt, remembering the glory of the pharaohs. We witnessed every sunrise and sunset, experienced prosperity and ruin, and saw birth and extinction alike.

Those ten years, we were travelers, spectators, and a single brushstroke within the vast painting of mortal life.

I took the two of them to Kunlun to see the Heaven-Origin Sect, whose leader was now an elderly man nearing the end of his life; he had already become the Supreme Elder. We went to see the current sect master of Kunlun, Yuan Hao, then to Mount Shu to meet Ling Qingzhu, the master of the Mount Shu Sect, and to the Tang Clan to visit Tang Ling. We went to England, to the Holy See... many places, and met many people. Some were already gone; others would be gone soon enough.

During the journey, Little White also chose a name for herself. Seeing that both Yiyi and I bore the surname Jiang, she tugged at me and asked me to give her one too.

“From now on, you’ll be called Jiang Xiaobai,” I said with a smile, ruffling her hair.

“Jiang Xiaobai...” She repeated it, her golden eyes narrowing into crescent moons. “I have a name now!”

From that day on, she began to call me “Father” as timidly and expectantly as Yiyi had done.

That single word carried the dependence of two daughters. The emotions I possessed as a human being became, in this journey of tempering the heart amid the mortal world, all the more profound and warm.

After ten years of wandering, we returned and entered seclusion once more.

This time, another two hundred years passed.

When we emerged for the second time, a sea-changing transformation had come over Jiang Xiaobai.

The hallmark of her six enormous, fluffy fox tails had vanished from behind her. Not merely concealed, but completely stripped away from the source. At this moment, apart from those still-pure golden eyes, she was in every outward respect no different from a true human girl.

This was the sign that the Nine Transformations of Qingqiu had reached perfection, meaning she had fully broken free of her beastly form, transformed from demon to human, and brought her Dao foundation to completion.

“Father, look!” she cried excitedly, spinning in place before me, her white skirt fluttering. “No more tails! It’ll be so much easier to wear pants now!”

Her innocent words made both Yiyi and me laugh despite ourselves.

As for Yiyi, after four hundred years of cultivation, she was no longer the girl who once needed my guidance. Her cultivation had already reached the peak of the Golden Core stage, only one step away from Nascent Soul. More importantly, her temperament had grown ever more ethereal and transcendent; every movement of hers seemed to accord with Heaven’s law, as though she herself were part of the Dao.

Our second journey was no longer merely sightseeing, for many of the people we knew were already gone.

Among the war-torn ruins of Syria, we once rescued an orphaned girl searching for her parents amid the gunfire. A small protective array I casually set in place kept her safe through the bombardment that followed.

In a famine-stricken land in Africa, Yiyi could not bear to see the starving masses. She activated the Nine-Orifice Exquisite Heart Sutra and used her own soul power to commune with heaven and earth, summoning a nourishing rain infused with vast vitality. By dawn, tender edible shoots had sprung up across a hundred-mile radius of barren earth. The local people worshiped her as a deity and knelt before her without cease, yet she only watched in silence, a trace of pity in her eyes.

And on one crossing of the Pacific, we encountered a cargo ship seized by modern pirates. It was then that Little White truly acted for the first time.

She used no magic at all. She merely stood at the prow of the ship and narrowed her gaze. In an instant, an invisible pressure of rank and bloodline, born from the depths of her heritage, blanketed the entire pirate vessel. Those vicious, murderous pirates, under the regard of those golden eyes, seemed to have come face to face with their natural predator. They trembled all over, collapsed to the deck, and could not even keep hold of their weapons.

No battle was needed to break the enemy’s will.

Afterward, I forged her a flying sword. Its blade was like a pool of autumn water, crystal-clear and immaculate, yet with all its sharpness held inward.

“Father, what’s its name?” Little White asked, unable to put it down as she stroked the blade over and over.

“It has no name,” I said slowly. “The name of a sword should be given by the one who wields it. Whatever you wish it to be, that is what it becomes. When your heart holds the will to protect, it is a sword of protection; when your heart holds the will to punish, it is a sword of punishment.”

Jiang Xiaobai nodded, half-understanding, and solemnly drew the nameless divine sword into her body.

On this journey, we witnessed even more suffering and injustice in the world. That experience made the hearts of the two girls, untouched by mortal dust, all the firmer in Dao, and all the clearer in their understanding of what power truly meant.

By the time we returned once more to Penglai Island, there was a steadfastness in all three of our eyes that had never been there before.

This time, we would not emerge until Spirit Transformation was achieved.