Chapter Fifty-Eight: Breaking Through with Fierce Resolve
A thunderous roar erupted, shaking the entire southwest.
—
Within the Red Timber Range, atop the Celestial Dog Cliff, stood a wooden palace. At its highest point, a man sat cross-legged in meditation. Dressed in blue with fiery red hair, his majestic form radiated power as he circulated his vital essence, his breath resonant as a dragon’s, exuding a brilliant crimson glow. The energy emanating from him resembled a plume of war-smoke.
At the great rumble, the man awoke from his trance. His eyes flashed with divine light as he gazed toward Rotten Peach Mountain, spiritual brilliance flickering in his gaze. Suddenly, he leapt up, transforming into a streak of red light.
“Changbao! Come with me down the mountain!”
His voice rolled across Celestial Dog Cliff like thunder.
“At your command!”
Another rainbow arc soared from the cliff, following close behind the first.
—
Deep within Hundred Barbarians Mountain, in the Windshade Cave, there was a palace of white bones. Inside, upon a jade bed, a man sat with eyes closed, lost in thought.
His features were as chiseled as carved jade, with sword-like brows slanting to his temples—a rare beauty among men. His long, jet-black hair cascaded freely, and the emerald-green robe he wore only added to his aura of wicked charm.
The great crash roused him. When he opened his peach blossom eyes, his presence grew even more compelling. He looked toward Rotten Peach Mountain, unable to hide his delight. In a blink, he turned into a gust of wind and vanished from the jade bed.
“Xinchenzi!”
His voice echoed through the cave.
“Disciple present,” came a distant reply, fading as it went.
—
On Mount Springwatch, within the Azure Dragon Grotto, in a small courtyard adorned with pearls, an old Daoist was watering his flowers with a kettle.
Hearing the thunderous noise, the old Daoist looked toward Rotten Peach Mountain, a flash of joy crossing his face. Sensing the immense movements from the Red Timber Range and Hundred Barbarians Mountain, he shook his head.
“Fight, fight if you must. Quarrel over it if you like. After all, it’s on our doorstep. But if any of you ruin these mountains and rivers, this old Daoist will not stand for it.”
Then, sensing something else, he chuckled. “Good. This old man is too lazy to meddle. The youngsters can’t sit still anyway, which saves me from having to worry about Azure Dragon Grotto being left out.”
Elsewhere on the mountain, in a temple outside the grotto, Liutianfang, upon hearing the great crash, turned toward Rotten Peach Mountain. He recalled that his disciple, Cheng Qieqing, whom he had vouched for, had volunteered to venture to Rotten Peach Mountain to recover corpses. His heart grew anxious. Without hesitation, he transformed into a streak of sword-light and sped toward Rotten Peach Mountain.
—
The earth collapsed, sinister energy surged skyward; in the space of a few dozen breaths, the lands around Rotten Peach Mountain were already in upheaval.
By Peach Blossom River, at the head of Drunken Jiao Bridge, a dozen Miao men sat dazed on the ground, bewildered as dust clouds and radiant light engulfed Rotten Peach Mountain.
“What just happened?” someone asked.
“An earth dragon turning over?”
“And Master Cheng?”
The men looked at each other in confusion.
The Miao man who’d been snatched from the sword of “Taodu” by the gathering clouds seemed possessed and tried to rush back.
The others pinned him down. “Are you mad? Did you not see what just happened? The mountain collapsed! That’s centuries worth of poisonous miasma from underground!”
He struggled desperately. “It’s my fault, I got Master Cheng killed—it’s all my fault!”
The men clung to each other, afraid they too would lose control and dash into the chaos. Tears and rain mingled on their faces.
As they wept, the world itself shifted again.
A vast red cloud, luminous in the north, swept away all gloom and rain in a blink. A chilling green wind rolled in from the south, dispersing the heat brought by the northern red cloud.
Beneath these two celestial omens, a clear, youthful dragon’s roar echoed from the north—immature, yet impossible to ignore.
The red cloud condensed into two men who stood in midair. The leader had red hair and blue robes; the attendant, black-haired in Miao garb with a tattooed face.
The green wind gathered into two more men at the northern horizon: the leader wore a long green robe and flowing hair; his attendant, in a golden crown and white robe, had but one arm.
The dragon-roar sword-light revealed a handsome, robust man who also stood to the north, though he kept his distance from the red-clad pair.
It was the red-haired, blue-robed man who first nodded toward the sword-bearing newcomer. “So, Daoist Liutianfang has arrived.”
According to Daoist custom, the surname precedes the Daoist name, so though Liutianfang’s secular surname was Liu of the Miao, after entering the Dao his name was used in full—thus, he was addressed as Liutianfang.
Liutianfang returned the bow. “Greetings, Senior.”
The tattooed Miao man beside the red-haired elder nodded from afar. “Bai Jiang, it has been a long time.”
He called Liutianfang by his Miao family name, as if they were old acquaintances.
Liutianfang replied, “Indeed, long time no see, Changbao.”
He used the man’s Daoist name in return.
Everyone in the Miao lands knew that the ancestral patriarch of the Hong Clan Village bore the Daoist name Changbao, a true disciple of Red Timber Range and attendant to the red-haired patriarch himself.
With Hong Changbao present, there was no need to ask the identity of the imposing man at his side—the master of the Red Timber Range, the leader of Miao’s unorthodox sects, the Red-Haired Patriarch himself!
The Red-Haired Patriarch looked across and said, “Green Robe, your old illness flares up and you’re not resting, so what business brings you here?”
The target of his words was naturally the leader of the Demon Sect of Southern Wastes, the so-called Lord of a Million Demon Soldiers, the Green-Robed Patriarch. It was said that in his youth, during a fit of madness, he had bitten off the arm of his own chief disciple, Xinchenzi. Thus, the one-armed man beside him could only be Xinchenzi, second only to the Green-Robed Patriarch in Hundred Barbarians Mountain.
“Heh, it’s but a minor inconvenience. But with a new sinister star born on the sacred land of Shenzhou, do you, Red Hair, dare monopolize it? Never mind the Southern Wastes, even the Azure Dragon Grotto would not stand for it!”
The Green-Robed Patriarch laughed.
Red-Haired Patriarch and Liutianfang fell silent.
Though Liutianfang was anxious to find his disciple, the moment he saw the sinister energy erupting from Rotten Peach Mountain, he knew he could no longer merely seek a missing person.
This was an unprecedented birth of a new sinister star!
Since ancient times, it was said that there are thirty-six Heavenly Spirits and seventy-two Earthly Fiends—a number ordained by heaven itself.
The emergence of a new fiend could only mean one thing: an old one was passing.
And for a new fiend to appear at Rotten Peach Mountain was a colossal opportunity for all the sects and clans across the southwest—hundreds of them. The fate of a few youngsters trapped inside was, in comparison, of little significance.
These Heavenly Spirits and Earthly Fiends were essential for Daoist internal alchemy, the fundamental elixir for forging the Golden Core—indispensable on the road of cultivation. At Dragon-Tiger Mountain, the founding patriarch achieved his Dao and dragons and tigers appeared; those very manifestations were a Heavenly Spirit and an Earthly Fiend, and with just those two, the sect’s legacy spanned eight thousand years!
Then there was Three Pure Ones Mountain, whose six-dragons-turning-the-sun nine-heavens cloud-forbidding grand array was as famous as Emei’s life-and-death, yin-yang Dust Array in Western Shu. Rumor held it harbored a Heavenly Spirit within.
Throughout the land, any Daoist sect with an unbroken line of Golden Core masters possessed at least one of these stars. To gain one was fortune; two was boundless destiny.
Even setting aside the Daoist sects, these stars and fiends—manifestations of yin and yang and the balance of heaven and earth—were peerless treasures for crafting spells, weapons, or pills. Whether for Buddhist, unorthodox, or demon sects, they were supreme materials. Even without refining them, simply observing them day and night could yield profound insight into yin and yang—the very stuff of fate.
Given the chance to seize a share of this new star, it was no wonder the Miao and Southern Wastes sects would clash. Nothing about it surprised Liutianfang.