Chapter 638: Primordial Chaos, the Infinite, Innate Art

Chen Shi closed his eyes and circulated his immortal essence, refining the cup of tea inside him.

After a moment, he opened his eyes and muttered, “So it really was just an ordinary cup of tea.”

He had thought the cup Master left behind must contain some profound secret, that drinking it would surely greatly increase his cultivation or transform him completely. But after drinking it and circulating his energy for a while, he realized he had expected too much.

Chen Shi looked around. Sitting here felt like sitting at the bottom of a well: when he looked up at the sky, it was only as large as the well’s mouth. Green mountains covered in plants surrounded him. This place had not been tainted by the external Dao, and the air was fresh, far better than outside.

Everywhere on Golden Turtle Island and west of Penglai, the unpleasant aura of the external Dao was pervasive. Ordinary people and cultivators found it unbearable, and even immortals could not call this place home.

“Master can drive away the external Dao. The method he used isn’t my Dao Unification method,” Chen Shi thought.

The writing brush on the tea table looked as though it had just been washed. It rested on the brush rack, a drop of water still clinging to its tip.

Ink from the Brush-Washing Pool was slowly spreading outward. The tea in the pot was still warm.

Before him was a piece of calligraphy, held down by a paperweight. The ink on the paper had not yet dried.

It was as if Master had been sitting here just a moment ago. He had painted a picture, washed his brush and inkstone, and, while waiting for the ink to dry, brewed a pot of tea. Then something unexpected had happened, forcing him to leave in such a hurry that he had not even had time to drink it.

“But why did Master pour two cups of tea? Who was the other cup for?”

Chen Shi poured himself a cup and looked at the painting.

It depicted mountains and water, with the words beside it: “The wise delight in water; the benevolent delight in mountains.”

The mountains were not those of Golden Turtle Island. Their contours were strange, while the water was from the Dark Sea, pitch-black.

Chen Shi paused. “Did Master paint a mountain in the Dark Sea? Has he been there?”

He examined it closely. The mountain seemed to be an isolated island in the Dark Sea, with elegant, steep slopes. Buildings stood atop it: a green palace with glazed tiles, of which only one corner showed through the forest.

“Did Master disappear because he went to this place?” Curiosity stirred in his heart.

He studied the landscape painting again and again but found nothing else useful. After thinking for a moment, he committed it to memory.

Chen Shi sat at the tea table and quieted his mind.

This was the place where Master had comprehended the Dao. Golden Turtle Island’s cultivation methods had not been passed down in writing. Most disciples received their inheritance by coming to the foot of Dao-Contemplation Cliff, walking inward along the cliff, and sensing Master’s place of enlightenment from within it.

Different people received different inheritances depending on where they stood.

Jiang Guo, Jing Mei, Qiao Gu, and the others each cultivated different techniques and divine abilities.

They had received their inheritances from the outskirts. If even those had been unparalleled, what would Chen Shi receive after coming to Master’s place of enlightenment?

The moment Chen Shi calmed his mind, it was as though he had become Master himself, experiencing what Primordial Chaos was and what the Great Dao was.

He sat at the center of the world. The heavens and earth around him began to collapse. The earth shattered, the sky was destroyed, and the void churned with the surging forces of earth, water, wind, and fire, whirling madly around him!

Golden Turtle Island ceased to exist. West of Penglai ceased to exist. The Earth Immortal Realm ceased to exist.

Only the Primordial Chaos of the heavens, earth, and Great Dao remained. There was no distinction between wind, rain, thunder, and lightning; no Five Elements or Eight Trigrams; no yin and yang or Tai Chi. There was only Primordial Chaos.

The Celestial Way, the earthly way, the human way, the sword way—all were encompassed within Primordial Chaos. The various Great Daos, each with different attributes, merged here without distinction, as if they had no attributes at all.

Yin-Yang Fusion was already extraordinarily difficult to understand. Now the various other Great Daos were all appearing in a state of Primordial Chaos, merging together. It was beyond Chen Shi’s comprehension.

Unconsciously, he recalled the Infinite Diagram he had seen in the well of Houtu Huangdiqi.

That scroll of the Infinite Diagram had fused the Eight Trigrams Dao power of Heaven Emperor Fuxi into a vision of the Eight Trigrams and the Infinite.

But what lay before him now was a vision of Primordial Chaos and the Infinite!

It went a step beyond the Eight Trigrams and the Infinite.

Chen Shi sat there, experiencing everything Master had experienced. After an unknown length of time, the churning Primordial Chaos before him gradually slowed. The earth, water, wind, and fire slowly spinning around him returned to their proper places, and the heavens and earth fitted back together like a carpenter’s puzzle, without a single crack to be found.

The Primordial Chaos of the various Great Daos of the heavens and earth also returned to normal. Only Chen Shi remained, sitting there quietly.

Chen Shi gently closed his eyes and recalled what he had just seen and felt.

Inside him, the Primordial Chaos Dao Scripture had become extraordinarily lively. This technique had been passed down from Golden Turtle Island and was the most widely circulated method. Anyone could learn and cultivate it. But precisely because it was so widespread, few ever cultivated it to the end.

“Primordial Chaos is innate One Qi, the primordial beginning, the One spoken of in the Dao Scripture. Achieving the One is only the starting point. One must also achieve the Infinite. The Infinite has no bounds or borders, and neither birth nor death.”

In his mind, the Primordial Chaos Dao Scripture became grander and more abstruse. It was no longer Yin-Yang Fusion, but Primordial Chaos and the Infinite, encompassing one by one the yin and yang, Five Elements, Fuxi’s Eight Trigrams, and all the other Great Daos he had comprehended.

The Profound Yin Nine Heaven Art of the demonic Dao, the Great Wilderness Ming Dao Collection of the immortal path, and the Immortal Art of Immortality of Great Shang were all absorbed into the Primordial Chaos Infinite Innate Art.

In the past, Chen Shi had organized the various techniques in the True King’s treasury, deciphered the various methods of the Great Shang Era, and studied the techniques of Despair Slope. These too were incorporated one by one into Primordial Chaos and the Infinite, becoming nourishment for the Innate Art.

The more techniques he saw and the more Great Daos he understood, the stronger the Primordial Chaos Infinite Innate Art became!

This technique encompassed everything. It seemed capable of accepting any Dao technique and turning it into nourishment that would increase the power of innate One Qi.

However, when Chen Shi tried to incorporate the first law of the external Dao into the Innate Art, he ran into difficulty.

His Primordial Chaos and the Infinite could not absorb the first law.

“The demonic Dao is also an external Dao. Why can it be incorporated into the Primordial Chaos Infinite Innate Art, while the first law cannot?”

Chen Shi furrowed his brow slightly. The first law was an external Dao law he had comprehended from the Great Dao of Western Ox New Continent. The Earth Immortal Realm had no such Great Dao, yet it did have the demonic Dao. Could that be the reason?

He continued sitting at the tea table, comprehending the doctrines Master had left behind and gradually enriching the Innate Art. He stopped only when he had no more insights to gain.

During this time, Chen Shi finished the tea in the pot and looked a few more times at Master’s landscape painting to make sure he had remembered it correctly. Then he washed the teapot and cups, tidied everything up, and left.

Uncle Jiao, Jing Mei, and the others were still concentrating on recovering from their injuries. They had no idea he had ever gone to Dao-Contemplation Cliff.

Senior Sister Jing Mei was the first to recover. As she walked out of Caivei Palace, a rich fragrance suddenly filled her nose. Limping, she followed the scent and soon arrived before the spiritual plot outside Biyou Palace. She could not help but stare, stunned by the sight before her.

Dozens of immortal herbs they had planted over the years stood lush and flourishing in the plot. One of them, the Dayuan Flower, had even bloomed!

Senior Sister Jing Mei remembered that she had seen this Dayuan Flower on the very day she joined the sect. Back then it had been sickly and wilted—and that had been ten thousand years ago.

For the entire ten thousand years since then, the Dayuan Flower had remained sickly and wilted, never blooming once!

Golden Turtle Island refined medicinal pills by plucking its withered leaves, one at a time. They were always afraid that if they took even one more, the flower would die on the spot.

Who would have thought the Dayuan Flower would bloom, and not just with a single blossom!

It had produced five flowers!

“Dayuan Flowers are used for their petals in medicine, not their leaves! How many batches of Gold Immortal Proving Dao Pills can five flowers make?” Senior Sister Jing Mei’s heart pounded.

She saw that the other immortal herbs were also growing vigorously. They too had once been sickly plants that looked ready to die at any moment. Now they were not only growing robustly, but even flowering and bearing fruit!

“Jing Mei, what is this...?”

Senior Sister Jing Mei turned around and saw that Qiao Gu’s injuries had also improved greatly. At some point, he had come up behind her and was staring blankly at the spiritual plot.

Senior Sister Jing Mei shook her head. “I don’t know what happened to the spiritual plot either. When I got here, the herbs already looked like this... Oh, the Immortal Void Well!”

She hurriedly limped toward the immortal well beside the plot. This well was called Immortal Void. It yielded Qingxiao immortal energy, an exceptionally high-grade kind of immortal qi. Legend had it that when one looked into this well, one saw not the surface of the water, but another immortal realm. That was why it was called Immortal Void: another immortal Dao time and space lay inside the well.

But after it had been polluted by the external Dao, the energy produced by the Immortal Void Well had become rather impure. It was mixed with various alien energies, including demonic miasma, evil energy, and baleful energy. These foul energies had made the well water undrinkable.

They would not use the well water to irrigate the spiritual plot unless they had no other choice.

But when Senior Sister Jing Mei reached the well and looked inside, she saw rippling waves and, beneath the water, immortal light shimmering. Immortal mountains floated in the air, as if another immortal realm lay within!

Senior Sister Jing Mei was stunned.

Just then, Qiao Gu’s voice came from another direction, trembling. “Junior Sister Jing, come quickly!”

He was so excited that he strained his old injuries and began coughing violently.

Senior Sister Jing Mei hurried toward him. Qiao Gu stood blankly before the Jade Clarity Dao Spring on the other side of Biyou Palace. The water in the spring was now crystal clear, descending from the heavens. Each droplet shone like jade and contained a dense immortal aura.

Just from smelling the water vapor, Senior Sister Jing Mei felt warmth spread through her body. All eighty-four thousand pores opened, drawing in spiritual energy.

Strange Dao sounds also reached her ears, as if she were about to comprehend the Dao.

Her voice trembled with excitement. “Has the Jade Clarity Dao Spring returned to the glory it had in the old days?”

“It seems so.”

Qiao Gu tried to absorb a single drop of Dao Spring water and immediately felt the immortal qi in his body surge. A single drop of immortal liquid contained boundless power. Had his cultivation not been unfathomably profound, that one drop might have made him burst apart!

At the same time, the Dao sounds in his ears grew even grander. They recited the very Dao technique he cultivated, but in a far more profound form.

That was the wondrous effect of the Dao Spring water.

He had only heard that it possessed such an effect. He had never seen it for himself, and this was the first time.

“Why have the Jade Clarity Dao Spring and the Immortal Void Well changed like this?”

They looked at one another. Suddenly, Jiang Guo’s cry rang out. The two hurried over and saw that, on another mountain peak, the Celestial Origin Dao Tree atop Jade Mirror Peak had become lush and flourishing. The Celestial Origin Dao Flowers on its branches had bloomed, their blossoms in full display.

The Celestial Origin Dao Tree had once been half-dead. Sometimes it even caused trouble, sneaking to the main peak in the middle of the night to “absorb” a few Golden Turtle Island senior brothers and fatten itself up.

Uncle Jiao had called it demonic possession.

“This Dao tree has been tainted by the external Dao and possessed. At times it’s lucid, at others it’s muddleheaded,” Uncle Jiao had said.

Now it seemed the Celestial Origin Dao Tree had recovered from its possession!

“Junior Brother Jiang, what happened?” Qiao Gu asked.

Jiang Guo was just as confused. He shook his head. “I don’t know either. When I got here, the Celestial Origin Dao Tree was already like this.”

Just then, Uncle Jiao’s voice rang out. “The wicked dragon in Longyuan seems to have come back to life!”

They hurried over to Longyuan, the ravine between the two mountains. At its bottom was a wicked dragon, its body grotesque, its back humped and covered in hooked bone spines. It crawled slowly through the ravine, guarding the treasure land below.

There was a rumor on Golden Turtle Island that Longyuan was an extremely important place in the sacred ground west of Penglai. It was where the Three Purities had once refined treasures, and they had set the wicked dragon to guard the treasure land while waiting for the magic treasure within to mature.

But later, pollution from the external Dao had corrupted the spiritual energy of the heavens and earth here, and the sacred ground had been destroyed. The wicked dragon had died in the deepest part of Longyuan. The magic treasure had likely been destroyed long ago as well.

Who would have thought the wicked dragon would come back to life!

“If the wicked dragon has come back to life, then the magic treasure refined by the Three Purities...” Qiao Gu’s heart pounded as he spoke.

Uncle Jiao said, “The treasure lands on Golden Turtle Island are reviving one after another. There must be a reason. Let’s look elsewhere!”

Everyone rose into the air and headed for the next treasure land, a place called Hanging Flower Pavilion. From afar, it looked like a pavilion with hanging flowers, but up close, flowers blossomed out of the void, taking the shape of hanging blossoms.

The flowers of Hanging Flower Pavilion had once withered long ago. Now they were blooming everywhere, an exquisite sight.

“Let’s go to the Yellow Iron Dao Mine!”

They hurried to the mine, where even the ore deposits tainted by the external Dao had regained their immortal light and precious aura!

“Could the external Dao’s influence over the lands west of Penglai have dissipated?”

Everyone hurried into the air and hovered high above, looking in every direction. The vast lands west of Penglai stretched without end. Its Dao Fields were all dim and gloomy, with demons and monsters everywhere and black winds raging. Immortal cities stood guard over one place after another.

The external Dao in the lands west of Penglai had not dissipated.

“It must be Chen Shi’s doing.”

Uncle Jiao’s heart stirred as he recalled the changes in the small village where Jiang Guo’s family lived. “Chen Shi can dispel the external Dao. He must have acted and restored Golden Turtle Island to how it once was.”

His heart was filled with emotion. Chen Shi had not even formally become a disciple of Golden Turtle Island, yet he had brought the island such a tremendous change. Uncle Jiao felt deeply humbled by comparison.

Only now could Golden Turtle Island truly be called a sacred ground. It was no weaker than the sacred grounds of the disciples of the Three Purities!

If they could clear away the pollution of the external Dao from the entire region west of Penglai, this place would unquestionably be one of the top sacred grounds in the Earth Immortal Realm, entirely on par with the sacred ground of the Three Purities!

“But where is Junior Brother Chen now?” Senior Sister Jing Mei asked.

Everyone hurried to look for him, but they found only Black Pot and the Hu dog. Chen Shi was nowhere to be seen.

Jiang Guo had been more observant. “Junior Brother Chen must have gone west of Penglai, trying to find more treasures. Look, after he left Golden Turtle Island, he dispelled the external Dao somewhere outside as well.”

Everyone looked, and sure enough, one place stood out from the others. The external Dao had been removed there, and the area had become a pleasant landscape of clear waters and verdant mountains.

Senior Sister Jing Mei’s expression changed. She rose into the air. “The lands west of Penglai are extremely dangerous. I’m going to find him!”