Day of Ascension

Yuanqi felt a growing sense of urgency. Without Xu Ying's guidance, he never would have become a Demon King. Yet these two bulls had reached the same level through their own intelligence and were even ordained as demon gods by the Underworld Court.

Didn’t that mean they were much smarter than him?

If so, wouldn't his position be at risk?

The sense of crisis grew, and Yuanqi thought, We’re all surnamed Niu. They would probably show me some face... my ass! They whipped me the moment They saw me, as if I were the field-plowing ox.

Xu Ying taught Niu Zhen and Niu Qian how to refine their divine sense and open their ethereal void.

The two Bull Demon Kings had stumbled upon the legacies of ancient Qi Cultivators. Although those legacies only contained Qi-Gathering Stage cultivation methods, they had quickly reached the Demon King level, proving their exceptional talent and comprehension.

Xu Ying was also a gifted teacher. He could explain the most profound cultivation methods in simple, easy-to-understand terms. The two bull demons quickly grasped the method for refining their divine sense. Divine light gradually flickered in their eyes.

At this rate, they would open their ethereal voids within a few days and regulate their five qi.

After Xu Ying was done teaching them, Yuanqi stepped forward to seek guidance on sword techniques.

Xu Ying explained to him once. Seeing that Yuanqi still hadn’t grasped it, Xu Ying tied Yuan Tiangang’s sword case onto him. “Sense the hidden swords within the case first. Once you can sense the sword qi and resonate with it, you can use sword qi. The swords will teach you their moves, and in time, you'll learn to use them.”

Yuanqi shrank until he was small enough to carry the sword case on his back. Then he closed his eyes and focused on sensing the sword qi.

It was rare for Yuanqi to devote himself so seriously to cultivation. Xu Ying naturally wanted him to succeed, so he told Dazhong not to interrupt him.

He asked, “Master Zhong, what did you discover at Qin Yan Cave?”

Dazhong answered, “Nothing. The stupid snake thought that the place of ascension had to be where that underground behemoth had been lurking beneath the water. So, he dragged me into the collapsed Qin Yan Cave and all the way down to the bottom. When we got there, there wasn't any place of ascension.”

Back then, Xu Ying and Yuanqi had followed the vitality flowing through Qin Yan Cave to the bottom of the water. They accidentally startled the underground behemoth, and it pursued them. Since the creature lurked there, Yuanqi had assumed the place of ascension was nearby.

Xu Ying pondered and said, “So far, we’ve only seen one true place of ascension, and that’s the Ghost Cub Hill’s Heavenly God Hall. It manifests only at specific times and can be entered only then. If there's truly a place of ascension on Mount Wu Wang, it likely follows the same pattern.”

Dazhong said, “Mount Wu Wang is so vast. You don’t know when it will open or where it will be located. How will you find it? I think the place of ascension the coffin maiden mentioned wasn't Qin Yan Cave at all. It was Mount Jiuyi.”

Xu Ying’s eyes flickered, and he smiled. “While we don’t know its location, the people from three thousand years ago should. Don’t we have a female ghost from that era trapped inside a mirror?”

Dazhong immediately realized and laughed. “Mount Wu Wang’s name had changed, only because the underworld invasion had undone its seal, revealing the ruins. So, she was already trapped in the mirror three thousand years ago.

“She must know a lot about this place. If there’s a place of ascension here, she must have heard something about it!”

Xu Ying walked into his room and took down the copper mirror on the dressing table. “Miss in the mirror, we’re not bad people. We’d like to ask you some things.”

Inside the copper mirror, the female ghost panicked at the sight of Dazhong. She hurried beneath the reflected bed and hid, not daring to show herself.

Xu Ying furrowed his brow slightly and asked Dazhong, “What did you guys do to her?”

Dazhong stammered sheepishly, “I-I didn’t do anything. Yuanqi looked into the mirror, and she was scared out of her wits when she saw a demon. I thought Yuanqi did something wrong, so I entered the mirror to comfort her. She misunderstood me.”

He said gloomily, “She thought I was a bell demon.”

Having understood the situation, Xu Ying said as kindly as possible, “Miss, we’re not bad people. We only want to know whether Mount Wu Wang has an ascension site. If you answer honestly, we’ll help remove your seal. Otherwise, don’t blame the bell demon for being ruthless.”

Dazhong groaned.

The female ghost panicked and grew uneasy, too frightened to come out.

Xu Ying called out, “Master Zhoooong.”

She quickly crawled out and waved her hands at them, indicating that she didn’t know what a place of ascension was.

Xu Ying explained it to her. Her eyes lit up. She drew a map of Mount Wu Wang on the mirror's surface, then pointed to a location.

He shook his head and said, “Mount Wu Wang has collapsed, and the landscape has changed drastically.

The female ghost paced back and forth in the mirror. After thinking for a moment, her eyes lit up again, and she pointed in a different direction.

Xu Ying’s heart stirred slightly. He stepped out of the room and looked where she pointed. It led toward the interior of Mount Wu Wang.

Xu Ying asked, “Xiao Qi, do you want to search for the place of ascension?”

Yuanqi remained absorbed in comprehending the sword qi and didn’t hear him.

Xu Ying secretly praised Master Qi’s diligence, then set off with Dazhong in the direction the female ghost indicated.

The rust-stained copper mirror floated ahead as though someone invisible were carrying it. Xu Ying and Dazhong followed it to the fractured face of Mount Wu Wang. The female ghost floated about aimlessly, searching for a while before suddenly stopping.

Xu Ying hurried forward and saw a cave opening at the broken surface. The collapse had split it apart from the mountain, making it difficult to notice.

Xu Ying pondered and said, “So, the place of ascension isn’t inside Qin Yan Cave but within the mountain itself. The coffin maiden entered Qin Yan Cave only to pay her respects to the Mud-Pill Palace Master. But if they were old acquaintances, why didn't he see her?”

Dazhong also didn’t understand the reason and said nothing.

Following the fractured passageway, the copper mirror entered the mountain. Both sides of the mountain were like blades and spears, sharp and foreboding. Without the female ghost leading the way, they never would have discovered the hidden passage.

They went deeper and deeper. When they traveled about a third of the way into the mountain, the passageway curved sharply, leading downward into the mountain’s depths.

A faint, eerie glow spread from the copper mirror, illuminating the passage walls. Murals covered the stone. Xu Ying slowed his pace and saw scenes of primitive ancestors hunting and offering sacrifices to the heavens.

This place was likely the cave where primitive ancestors lived, which explained the murals here.

Along the way, he looked at the walls intermittently, noticing that the contents of the murals gradually turned strange. The ancestors were originally dressed in simple animal skins and carried crude clubs and stone spears. Black patterns covered their faces, and thin bones pierced their noses as ornaments.

Glowing bones hung from their necks; those were their trophies.

The later murals grew increasingly bizarre. A woman appeared among them. Her eyes and nose were sketched with simple strokes, making her features indistinct. Yet she wore exquisite robes and led the primitive ancestors on their hunts.

Their weapons also changed. Flying sabers and swords replaced crude tools, and even the massive bone clubs could fly.

The prey they hunted were no longer simple wild beasts but gigantic, increasingly large primordial beasts.

They piled the corpses of the gigantic beasts together and offered them to the woman. She seemed to be practicing a bizarre cultivation technique, and the corpses quickly turned to bone.

In the next mural, even the bones crumbled into dust.

The following murals on the cave’s walls often depicted hunting scenes. Gradually, they were no longer about hunting gigantic beasts. Instead, they depicted war, with the ancestors slaughtering people from other nations.

The woman performed grand rituals on the battlefield. Judging by the drawings, they were extremely bloody and brutal.

The ancestors depicted only mountains with a few corpses scattered across the peaks and foothills. However, Xu Ying recognized them for what they were—they were mountains of corpses.

These ancestors piled corpses into mountains and offered them to the exquisitely dressed woman to practice evil arts!

Deeply unsettled, Xu Ying whispered, “Master Zhong, when do you think these murals depict?”

“Since they show primitive ancestors, they must date back to an extremely ancient era, long before my master and me. Likely the era when Qi Cultivators were at their peak. It could be ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, or even a million years ago.”

Xu Ying was at a loss for words. He hadn't expected this place of ascension to date back to such an ancient age.

The final few murals depicted the exquisitely dressed woman undergoing her tribulation. Enormous tribulation clouds formed overhead, and an unimaginably thick bolt of lightning shot out from the cloud, striking toward her head.

The mural also depicted other strange things. A weapon, shaped like a trident, seemed to be suspended just above the tribulation cloud.

Xu Ying looked at it for a moment. Before he could make any guesses on what this weapon was, Dazhong said, “Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact.”

He asked in confusion, “Master Zhong, don’t they only exist in the Heavenly Dao World? Why would one appear in the mortal realm?”

Dazhong was equally bewildered.

The next mural showed the end of the heavenly tribulation. She had successfully overcome the tribulation. Rosy ascension light descended from the heavens, but the artifact fell and pierced the woman’s heart, nailing her to the ground.

In the mural that followed, the ancestors sealed that woman along with the Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact. They placed her in a coffin and impaled various artifacts they had refined in the past around the coffin.

They also built a stone sarcophagus around the coffin, engraving it with countless sealing patterns.

They left the woman at the place of ascension, and each went their separate ways.

The passage ended before a massive stone gate. It was tall and heavy, with images stained with blood and gloomy watermarks, giving off an overwhelming sense of oppression.

The female ghost in the copper mirror stopped going forward and hid behind Xu Ying.

Xu Ying asked, “Is Mount Wu Wang’s place of ascension beyond this gate?”

The female ghost nodded repeatedly.

He composed himself and pushed hard. The stone gate slowly creaked open, and bright light entered his vision.

Beyond the stone gate, the place was nothing like the evil, hideous scene he had expected. Instead, it was bright, filled with blooming flowers and lush greenery.

It was a cone-shaped space, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. Even though the sky was very narrow, it was still over ten mu wide, while the bottom was around a thousand mu.

Xu Ying looked all around. The four walls were mountains, made entirely of jade, unlike the stone outside. As he approached the wall, a faint fragrance reached him. It resembled no flower he had ever smelled.

This fragrance could penetrate the soul, mesmerizing it.

“It’s Ten-Thousand-Year Hollow Azure,” said Xu Ying.

Dazhong was filled with envy. “The interior of Mount Wu Wang had already transformed into jade. The larger it is, the easier it is for it to gather the spirit qi of heaven and earth.

“The jade here is unimaginably vast. At its core, it slowly liquefied under the nourishment of the spirit qi of heaven and earth. That liquefied jade is called Ten-Thousand-Year Hollow Azure. Consuming it grants eternal life.

“When the demoness in the mural was seeking ascension, she must have consumed the Ten-Thousand-Year Hollow Azure, forcibly overcame the heavenly tribulation, and ascended here. Unfortunately, she had committed too many evils in her life and was slain by the Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact behind the heavenly tribulation.”

Xu Ying looked around. In such a vast space, exactly how much Ten-Thousand-Year Hollow Azure would there be?

Alas, it had all been consumed.

Feeling a pang of regret, he saw a stream of rosy ascension light descend from the sky, brilliant and dazzling. Faint celestial music drifted through the air like profound Dao sounds from beyond the nine heavens, making him feel light enough to float away like an immortal.

Beneath the rosy light was a straw hut, the straws still gleaming golden.

A stone sarcophagus sat beneath the straw hut, chains wrapped around it, and its surface engraved with crimson blood curses. Strangely, next to it was a table with a pot of tea and a teacup.

The teacup emitted faint white steam.

Xu Ying stepped forward and held the teacup. The water inside was still warm.

“Has someone been here?”

Xu Ying looked around, but he saw no one. His heart skipped a beat. He hurriedly looked toward the stone sarcophagus, feeling creeped out.

“Don’t tell me she came out to drink tea?”

“Ah Ying, it’s most likely tea from three thousand years ago.” Dazhong said, “I heard that places of ascension have rich primordial qi of heaven and earth and transform into spirit qi. The abundance of spirit energy in places of ascension prevents other things from emitting their own energy, keeping the tea warm all this time. Look, isn’t the steam rising from the tea just drifting upward without dissipating?”

Looking carefully, it was indeed so. Xu Ying smiled. “I was just scaring myself. Then, who was drinking tea here three thousand years ago?”

Dazhong replied, “Naturally, it’s that small sect outside. I guess that the descendants of those primitive ancestors made up this nameless little sect. They passed down through the generations, suppressing this land to prevent that demoness from escaping and wreaking havoc upon the world.”

Xu Ying nodded and smiled. “It seems those ancestors had a bit of a conscience. After all these years, that demoness should be dead, right?”

Dazhong urged, “Overcoming the tribulation makes her an immortal; how could she die so easily? Ah Ying, you’ll surely achieve twice the result with half the effort cultivating here. It’s probably better than the Truth-Seeking Supreme Void Grotto Heaven!”

Xu Ying immediately practiced the Grand Unity Guiding Method and channeled the Eight Sounds of Primordial Nurturing. Indeed, the spirit qi of heaven and earth here was rich beyond imagination. The splitting headache he got from recalling his memories was fully healed before he realized it.

He was overjoyed, then he suddenly remembered something that felt off. “The map of Mount Wu Wang drawn by that female ghost earlier seemed to be from a bird’s-eye view. To draw an image like that would require one to fly into the sky to get a full view of Mount Wu Wang, wouldn’t it?”

Cold sweat gradually broke out on his forehead. “Then, why was the female ghost sealed within the copper mirror? How did she know such a hidden place of ascension?”

Xu Ying hurriedly stopped what he was doing and turned to grab the copper mirror. “Master Zhong, cover the stone sarcophagus!”