On the Path to the Great Dao

Little Duan Immortal picked up Shang Prince Ziyu’s bones, rose silently, and placed him on the Owl Vessel.

Back when the catastrophe struck, events moved too quickly. The immortals of Great Shang were the first to lose control; involuntary corruption took hold. The stronger their cultivation and the deeper their Dao, the faster the corruption spread.

Before Little Duan Immortal shattered her pocket world and sealed herself, many Great Shang immortals had already turned evil, becoming calamities and slaughtering the living. The remaining immortals, seeing the situation turn dire, shattered the world that unified their Dao and sealed themselves.

It was a helpless move.

The ancestral gods of the Black Bird Celestial Court went to confront these corrupted immortals, and the ancestral gods themselves suffered heavy losses.

At that time, every master within the court had vanished; only lowly Qi Refiners remained, leaderless and confused.

A fifteen-year-old child stepped up when doomsday arrived.

Those who once shielded him—his elder brothers and sisters, his parents, his friends—were all gone. He had to treat himself as an adult, fighting against the heavens, the earth, evil spirits, and nature itself to save his people from disaster.

He fought for many years to preserve the luck of Great Shang so the people could survive.

In the end, age caught up to him. A hero at dusk, his cultivation still present but his body far weaker than before, he finally fell in battle here.

“What were they holding back?” Little Duan Immortal murmured. “Corrupted immortals, or something else? Why did they fight for so long?”

Chen Shi looked up at the bronze Great Wall. “Cross this wall and you’ll know,” he said.

They were about to climb the wall when Chen Shi suddenly stopped, staring at a corner. Besides the shamanic ritual markings, there was a crude painting on the corner of the wall: a man and a woman. The man was handsome, bearing some resemblance to Chen Tang.

The woman smiled broadly, leaning on the man’s shoulder.

Both had big heads and small bodies, their faces wearing exaggerated grins.

“This person should be Grandpa! Who is the woman beside Grandpa? Who painted this on the wall?” Chen Shi was stunned. He looked more closely and saw a cloth doll tied to Chen Yindu’s waist, the doll grinning.

Creation Little Five’s face.

“Grandpa was here,” Chen Shi said in even greater astonishment.

Little Duan Immortal flew upward. Chen Shi quickly cast aside his strange thoughts and hurried after her.

They soon reached the top of the wall. Chen Shi was still wondering who the woman beside his grandfather could be when he looked forward and froze.

On the opposite side of the wall lay clear mountains and flowing waters, birdsong and blooming flowers—floating immortal mountains drifting among seas of cloud and radiant light. On those immortal mountains stood pavilions and palaces, like a paradise on earth.

Between that paradise and the wall stood a Great Dao Wall constructed from countless shamanic ritual patterns, separating the paradise from the darkness like two different worlds.

Chen Shi and Little Duan Immortal stared blankly at the scene for a long time before returning to their senses.

They had assumed Shang Prince Ziyu led Great Shang’s champions against evil, but judging from the contrast on both sides, it seemed the Shang side might be the evil one!

Little Duan Immortal looked at the opposite side dazed, whispering, “I don’t understand…”

At that moment Chen Shi’s body trembled, his gaze fixed on the distance.

There floated a sacrificial platform suspended in midair, more massive than any altar Chen Shi had seen, as if a whole mountain had been carved into a platform with an extremely flat top.

Beneath it were nine tiers, symbolizing the nine heavens.

On each tier stood statues of divine figures in varying forms, several zhang tall.

Some of those bronze statues unmistakably bore ghost-clan features!

To be precise, they resembled the form of the Shang people’s priests!

The altar’s arrangement was extremely intricate. Each tier had halberd-shaped flagpoles hung with strange huge banners, each banner four or five zhang long with tassels fluttering below.

Around the platform floated giant bronze mirrors that encircled the altar, each mirror reflecting splendid mountains and rivers.

Chen Shi glanced hurriedly and was stunned to see many familiar geographies.

Over the past four years he had traveled east and west, restoring Chinese deities everywhere; though he could not claim to know every corner of the Western Ox New Continent, he was very familiar with its geography. At a single glance he realized these bronze mirrors reflected the geography of both the Yin and Yang realms of the Western Ox New Continent!

The Yin and Yang realms were divided into 104 districts; there were 104 bronze mirrors, encompassing almost every geographic region of both realms!

Beyond the 104 bronze mirrors, there were even stranger and grander constructions: beneath the altar stood three bronze black birds carrying the platform on their backs, mist-like substances circled and intertwined around the altar.

But what caught Chen Shi’s attention most were the figures standing on the altar.

One figure was a bald Daoist with a shiny forehead, wearing wide robes and a big belly, unkempt. He had no hair on the front of his head but a ring of hair from behind his ears to the back of his skull, which he had fastidiously tied up.

At that moment the Daoist stood in the center of the platform, performing the Yu walk, pacing the Dipper. With the assistance of another young man, talismans folded and spread from his body in all directions to correspond with the bronze gods arrayed across the nine-tier altar!

The Luo Heaven Sacrificial Rite: one thousand two hundred deities.

The Grand Cosmic Sacrificial Rite: two thousand four hundred deities.

The Universal Sacrificial Rite: three thousand six hundred deities!

Nine tiers, each tier hosting four hundred Great Shang bronze god statues, totaling three thousand six hundred statues, matching the three thousand six hundred deities!

The talismans the two men were deploying numbered exactly three thousand six hundred, corresponding to those statues!

Chen Shi recognized two thousand four hundred of those talismans, but in this bald Daoist’s hands their specific constructions had undergone subtle changes.

The other one thousand two hundred talismans Chen Shi had not seen before, but they looked raw—newly grasped and not yet refined.

“Grandpa! The bald Daoist, that’s my Grandpa!” Chen Shi cried out, pointing to the figures in the paradise across the way, his excitement stumbling his speech. “Little Duan, my Grandpa is there! The one helping him must be Fifth Uncle Creation Little Five! That woman should be Granny Sha!”

His excitement was uncontrollable; he wanted to fly over immediately.

“There are three more people. The one shaking his legs must be Uncle Blue Goat! The timid one must be Uncle Hu! The one who acts indifferent must be my Uncle Du!”

Unable to contain himself, he rushed forward, trying to break through the Great Dao Wall. Little Duan Immortal quickly reached out, grabbing his wrist and pulling him back. “This Great Dao Wall was set up by immortals. This immortal’s cultivation far surpasses mine; don’t act rashly!”

Chen Shi calmed at her words and stood before the Great Dao Wall.

The shamanic ritual patterns shimmered in the air. Different patterns linked together into an immensely complex web, forming an isolation wall of unknown height and breadth, blocking the evil energy and darkness beyond the bronze wall.

He examined the patterns carefully. Various patterns formed small array formations; small arrays combined into larger arrays; larger arrays combined into a giant array covering thousands of li. And giant arrays connected with other giant arrays.

Pull one thread and the whole body moves.

Touch any of those shamanic lines and a small array would trigger; nearby arrays would activate in turn. Whoever touched them would likely be vaporized in an instant!

“Who erected this Great Dao Wall?” Chen Shi suddenly wondered.

It could not be Shang Prince Ziyu.

Shang Prince Ziyu was defending, so he built the bronze Great Wall to hold off invaders.

But this Great Dao Wall looked more like a sealing mechanism.

After killing its enemies, someone would seal the polluted land so the evil energy would not spread to this clean land.

Or perhaps someone had done something shameful and wanted to seal the atrocity away to protect their own image.

This Great Dao Wall, however, was composed of shamanic ritual patterns; logically, the one who set it up could only be a Shang person. If it wasn’t Shang Prince Ziyu, then it must be the people across the way.

In other words, the person who erected the Great Dao Wall on the opposite side was a Shang person!

“What place is on the other side? Who set up the Great Dao Wall? Why are Grandpa and the others there?” Chen Shi’s mind brimmed with questions as he looked far across. He saw Chen Yindu and Creation Little Five aligning three thousand six hundred talismans to the three thousand six hundred statues, while Granny Sha and the others hurriedly checked whether each talisman’s construction matched its corresponding statue.

After a while, they returned to the altar and nodded in agreement.

Chen Yindu’s primordial spirit shimmered, manifesting a hundred or more arms, each forming different hand seals to activate the talismans.

Three thousand six hundred talismans paired with the statues, and the nine-tier altar’s statues began to light up.

Shamanic patterns etched on the statues flashed, rapidly illuminating the patterns across their surfaces. One by one the bronze statues seemed to revive like deities, their momentum growing as if the Black Bird Celestial Court reappeared among mortals!

The chanting of the gods roared like thunder. Even through the Great Dao Wall, the sound reached Chen Shi and Little Duan Immortal with crystal clarity!

The Universal Sacrificial Rite had been initiated.

Chen Yindu’s primordial spirit flailed those hundred arms, reaching toward the bronze mirrors.

He clawed through the air, then leaped up, gathering the others, flying off the platform and roaring toward the Great Dao Wall.

On Qianyang Mountain, Yan Xianzhi was working the fields when he seemed to sense something. He looked up into the sky. The suns that had hung around Qianyang Mountain since Chen Tang and Chen Shi moved in a few days earlier suddenly seemed tugged by an unseen force. From each sun surged a long stream of light into the void!

The flames were blisteringly hot and dazzlingly bright, illuminating the surrounding Qianyang peaks!

Chen Tang, Wu Qingyu, and the others paused their chores, looking up to see the suns’ light growing dimmer.

Further away, silver-white light also shot from several moons, likewise pouring into the void.

Even farther, the great serpent Xuan Shan and Madam Zhuang looked up at the strange heavens.

In Gongzhou’s Red Mountain Hall, Yu Tiancheng and the other incense masters watched the sky as solar essence rapidly flowed away.

In Qingzhou, Li Tianqing leapt up, summoning his primordial spirit to try to stem the loss of solar essence, but he found he could not stop it.

In Quanzhou, Yudu, Binhai, Beimeng, Jiezhou, Pangu, Lanhua, Beilai and other provinces the same thing occurred: the Upper Realm was collapsing, leaving sun and moon remnants that were rapidly dimming.

It was as if invisible monsters were greedily devouring the light of sun and moon!

A wave of despair washed over everyone, enveloping them.

But atop the bronze wall, Chen Shi and Little Duan Immortal saw a river of power pour like light from the 104 bronze mirrors into the sacrificial platform.

Something within the platform seemed to awaken. Divine light seeped through the surface of the highest tier, stitched together in the sky to form an enormous black bird.

Though the bird’s essence was black, it flowed with fire; flames formed its tail feathers and external halo, spreading out ever wider.

The sky rumbled. Under Chen Shi and Little Duan Immortal’s watch, the sky slowly split open and the Celestial True God appeared outside the heavens, more vividly than ever before. The distance felt so near that they could clearly see the True God’s face!

Little Duan Immortal’s body shivered. Her face went pale as she stared blankly at the Celestial True God’s visage.