Chapter 384

Chapter 384: Entering the Dao with One’s Life

Night gave Mount Ming a calm that the day did not have. Aside from the neat, light steps of the patrol bodyguards, only the wind moved through the dark.

Before dawn, most people slept soundly.

Suddenly, a shadow flashed past at a speed that was hard to believe.

A patrolling bodyguard felt his vision blur, as if something had swept by. When he looked again, there was no one within a hundred meters but his own team.

His companion noticed something off, asking: “What’s wrong?”

The man peered around and scratched his head, saying: “It felt like something drifted by just now.”

Hearing that, the companion looked the way he’d been staring. It was a broad road down the mountain, several hundred meters long. Even a master of the Martial World couldn’t vanish at the far end in a blink.

He chuckled, saying: “You must’ve seen wrong.”

Another teammate teased, saying: “Maybe Second Miss scared you.”

The first guard waved his hands fast, saying: “Don’t talk nonsense. It wasn’t Second Miss-it was that Nuan’er who scared me.”

Talking about this kind of thing in the middle of the night felt unlucky. Before yesterday, they were fearless because they didn’t know better, and they would have joked it off. But after seeing Nuan’er’s ghost with their own eyes last night, they no longer treated such things as vague legends-and they didn’t dare to joke like they used to.

The Guard Corps chief cut them off with a wave, saying: “Enough. Keep moving. It’s getting colder by the day-finish this loop and go warm up.”

After the patrol left, Yu Zhi Yi walked out of the shadows.

Refining four strands of golden merit light at once had boosted her strength. Ordinary people could no longer notice her at all. Just now, she hadn’t even used her full ability-she had walked right under those bodyguards’ noses, and none of them sensed her.

She waited a moment more to be sure no one else would pass, then took out spirit stones and began to set an array.

She had never arranged a large defensive array before, but such arrays were mostly alike. The difference was simple: small arrays cost fewer resources; large ones cost many more. For example, to ward a small yard like her old Windward Pavilion, twelve defense talismans were enough. Add the formation core, and it came to twenty-five in all. To cover an entire Chancellor’s Manor, she needed 128 formation talismans plus one formation core-129 total.

For a mountain as large as Mount Ming, she would need far more talismans.

Luckily, in her spare time she liked to make formation talismans “just in case.” Over time she had saved more than two thousand.

The grand array that wrapped all of Mount Ming ate up 1,999 formation talismans. In truth, using talismans alone, 1,999 would not have been enough to cover the whole mountain. But she also had spirit stones and jade. The jadeware the Song father and son had sent earlier finally came in handy.

She used 36 spirit stones and 98 jade pendants turned into formation flags. Together with those 1,999 formation talismans, she finally ringed the entire Mount Ming.

When she placed the last formation flag, an invisible light screen swollen with power dropped over the whole mountain.

By then the sky was paling. A red sun pushed its round head up in the east.

At first light, the day tore a long rip through the night.

Yu Zhi Yi rarely watched sunrises, and she was briefly spellbound. The first beam of light was just a thin line, yet it was strong enough to split all the darkness. [If your power is strong enough, even a tiny leak through your fingers can scare off the wicked.]

The thought flashed and faded.

Yu Zhi Yi’s resolve hardened: she would walk the path of cultivation to the end.

“Jin’er! Jin’er!” a voice called.

She turned. Xiao Qing Xuan hurried toward her, face tight with worry. A few loose strands of hair made her look a bit messy, but not at all embarrassed-if anything, the mess added a touch of beauty.

“Mother?” Yu Zhi Yi was puzzled. Her mother woke early, yes, but never before dawn. She asked, softly curious: “Why are you up so early?”

[Maybe she got up to see me off? That would make sense.]

Xiao Qing Xuan blinked, then said with surprise: “Early? What silly thing are you saying? It’s already past breakfast time.”

“Uh?”

Yu Zhi Yi froze and snapped her eyes to the east. The thin line of light she’d seen earlier had become a bright, round fireball.

She thought: “…” How had the sun risen so high already? She had only daydreamed for a moment.

Then she remembered what her master once said.

In the Mystic Sect, everyone worships the strong and envies the gifted-but most of all, they envy those who can suddenly awaken. “Sudden enlightenment” means that in a single instant, a person grasps a profound law of heaven and earth. People who gain enlightenment aren’t always one-in-ten-thousand geniuses, but after they do, each one’s future becomes boundless. Even if someone’s talent is poor, their strength can soar after enlightenment. The envy isn’t only for their new power, but for the mysterious force they have touched.

Her own Heavenly Secret Sect had an ancestor like that. His gift wasn’t great. Among many single-spiritual-root geniuses, he had only two spiritual roots and wasn’t impressive. He was nearly unbeatable among dual-root cultivators, but he couldn’t stand up to those single-root prodigies and was suppressed for more than a hundred years. Then, one day, he suddenly awakened and grasped a law of space. After that, the map of talents in the Hidden Realm changed. None of the “geniuses” who had crushed him before could defeat him.

Yu Zhi Yi looked down at her hands. [If I just awakened, what exactly did I grasp?]

She checked her dantian. Her spiritual energy was fuller. Before, she had been far from the late stage of the Foundation Establishment realm; now she could feel the barrier with her fingertips. But that was all.

She listened closely to her body. Neither her meridians nor her dantian had any other change. Disappointment pricked her. [Born in the Mortal Realm, my starting line really is far behind those Hidden Realm prodigies.]

She hadn’t forgotten her master’s words when he accepted her as a disciple: “You have three spiritual roots. Your talent isn’t the worst, but it’s far from good. If you walk the normal cultivation path, you may never break through the Foundation Establishment realm in this life. I see you have some gift in divination. Better to enter my Heavenly Secret Sect and enter the Dao with your life.”