A Pawn's Passage

Qi Xuansu directly infused the totems with the Xuan Jade’s divine power.

This time, the power was directed mainly into Wu Fan’s and Wu Ji’s totems, raising both of them to the seventh level.

At the same time, Qi Xuansu’s Qi Refiner lineage broke through the Wuliang stage and advanced to the Zaohua stage.

This in turn triggered a series of chain reactions. Aside from his core Rogue Cultivator lineage, Qi Xuansu now had three lineages at the Zaohua stage—the Martial Arts Practitioner, Shaman, and Qi Refiner lineages. This fulfilled the condition needed to push his Banished Immortal lineage into the Zaohua stage as well, namely the Three Corpses Severance Realm.

Upon reaching this realm, Qi Xuansu could sever one Three Corpse Incarnation from himself. At the Pseudo-Immortal stage, he could sever two Three Corpse Incarnations, while at the Immortal stage, he could sever all three.

A First-Tribulation Immortal could even allow the Three Corpse Incarnations to separate from the true body and become independent individuals, which already resembled the rudimentary form of a Heavenly Immortal Incarnation.

The Martial Arts Practitioner, Shaman, Qi Refiner, and Banished Immortal lineages then fed back into Qi Xuansu’s core Rogue Cultivator lineage, pushing it into the Pseudo-Immortal stage.

To Qi Xuansu’s surprise, the gains from this advancement were not limited to his cultivation. A vast amount of knowledge also flooded into his mind.

This knowledge concerned the Pseudo-Immortal, Immortal, Quasi-First-Tribulation Immortal, and First-Tribulation Immortal stages. Many of the concepts were things Qi Xuansu had never even heard of before, yet they were directly poured into his mind all at once.

There was no doubt that this knowledge had been left behind by Elder Yao and stored within the Longevity Stone Heart. In the past, Qi Xuansu’s cultivation had been too low, so there had been no need for him to know such things. Now that he had advanced to the Pseudo-Immortal stage, he had finally crossed the threshold and met the minimum requirement, so these secrets unknown to ordinary people were transmitted to him as well.

The Zaohua stage of the Qi Refiner lineage corresponded to the Fusion Realm. The defining characteristic of this stage was the unity of heaven and man, allowing the cultivator to draw upon the power of heaven and earth for their own use.

Each of the Daoist Order’s major lineages had its own strengths and weaknesses.

A Qi Refiner capable of drawing upon the power of heaven and earth could unleash terrifying levels of destruction, perhaps even the greatest among all the major lineages. However, this also came with a major weakness. Achieving the unity of heaven and man required time to gather momentum. For example, when locked in close combat with a Martial Arts, a Qi Refiner would find it difficult to use techniques that required time to build up power.

The Martial Arts Practitioner lineage emphasized moving the instant the mind willed it, even acting before conscious intent fully formed. They could anticipate the enemy’s moves and attack where they least expected it. Thus, a Martial Arts Practitioner would never give a Qi Refiner the opportunity to achieve unity with heaven and Earth. But if the Qi Refiner were truly given enough time to finish gathering power, even a Martial Arts Practitioner’s formidable physique would not be able to withstand a full-force strike.

After becoming an Earthly Immortal, this ability to unite with heaven and earth would be further strengthened and transformed into one of the Five Innate Tais. Whether used for offense or defense, it could be brought to an extreme. However, each Earthly Immortal could obtain only one of the Five Innate Tais rather than all five, so weaknesses still remained.

That was why the Earthly Immortal lineage ranked only second among the Five Immortal lineages.

The Heavenly Immortal was ranked first. As the superior lineage to the Earthly Immortal, the Heavenly Immortal also possessed a kind of sixth Innate Tai.

The Five Innate Tais were Taiyi, before qi had manifested; Taichu, the beginning of qi; Taishi, the beginning of form; Taisu, the beginning of substance, when qi, form, and substance were all present but had yet to separate from one another; and Taiji, when qi, form, and substance were all present and had already separated.

This represented the clear process through which a world evolved. The so-called “Sixth Tai” was a state before Taiyi, during the period of primordial chaos, when all things were mingled together and had yet to separate from one another. This was known as the Taixu.

The Daoist Order was not alone in proposing this concept. The Confucian School of Qi had also put forward the same idea, using the “Great Void” to describe the dispersed state of qi. This was the original primordial state, while “qi” was the collective term encompassing both the Great Void and all things.

The divine ability derived from the Sixth Tai was the Grand Illusion Realm.

Back then, Daoist Master Nanhua had used the Grand Illusion Realm to envelop the entirety of Jade Capital, causing it to vanish from sight. When people climbed Yuxu Peak, all they could see was an expanse of snow-covered mountains, with the true Kunlun Paradise nowhere to be found. Even Immortals were unable to see through it.

The Grand Illusion Realm was filled with profound mysteries. It not only confounded the very concept of space, but even blurred the passage of time. Some people who ventured into the Grand Illusion Realm became trapped within it, unable to find the entrance to Jade Capital and the path by which they had come. They could only wander through the Grand Illusion Realm day after day until they eventually lost themselves completely and became part of the realm itself.

Moreover, endless illusions arose within the Grand Illusion Realm, striking directly at the weaknesses and vulnerabilities buried deep within a person’s heart, making them almost impossible to guard against. Many experts of considerable cultivation had also fallen victim to these illusions.

Even after Daoist Master Nanhua ascended from this world, leaving the Grand Illusion Realm to operate on its own, it continued to bar the way of countless members of the Daoist Order over the centuries. Only Immortals could barely make their way through it.

It was only after the Kunlun Paradise descended that the Daoist Order finally shut down the Grand Illusion Realm that had enveloped Jade Capital. In other words, the Grand Illusion Realm still existed and had never disappeared. It had already become a semi-independent small world, capable of operating on its own in an endless cycle. Compared with divine kingdoms, which constantly consumed divine power and would collapse without a continuous supply of it, this was superior by an immeasurable degree.

When Qi Xuansu first visited Jade Capital, what had left the deepest impression on him was its moat. Portions of the river had separated entirely from the mountain and hung suspended in midair, resembling a rainbow. That sight alone was enough to make anyone visiting Jade Capital for the first time believe they had entered an immortal realm.

This river was known as the Taixu River, which was a tangible remnant of the Grand Illusion Realm manifested in the mortal world. From this, one could see just how formidable the Grand Illusion Realm truly was.

However, it was extraordinarily difficult for a Heavenly Immortal to obtain such an innate divine ability. This was because the Great Void represented complete primordial chaos, the state of nothingness. Thus, the Grand Illusion Realm was not divided into multiple levels. There was only one level, and its threshold was the highest of all. Only a Quasi-First-Tribulation Immortal could barely touch that threshold, while a true First-Tribulation Immortal could wield it freely.

In other words, an Earthly Immortal could obtain one of the Five Innate Tais upon reaching the Immortal stage, whereas a Heavenly Immortal had to reach the Quasi-First-Tribulation Immortal stage or even the First-Tribulation Immortal stage before they could obtain the Sixth Tai.

This was perfectly reasonable because the Heavenly Immortal lineage had originally evolved from the Earthly Immortal lineage.

If one progressed step by step, one would first become an Immortal through the Earthly Immortal lineage and obtain one of the Five Innate Tais. Then, with further cultivation, the Earthly Immortal would evolve into a Heavenly Immortal while simultaneously advancing to the First-Tribulation Immortal stage. At that point, the Five Innate Tais would transform into the Sixth Tai.

The problem was that the Holy Xuan had consolidated a path for the Heavenly Immortal lineage, allowing cultivators to become Heavenly Immortals without first advancing from the Earthly Immortal lineage. As a result, the Heavenly Immortal lineage had nothing special at the Immortal stage. It lacked the Earthly Immortal’s Five Innate Tais, yet its cultivators were still too weak to obtain the Sixth Tai. This made its reputation as the foremost lineage seem somewhat undeserved.

In that sense, it was actually inferior to the Earthly Immortal’s Five Innate Tais.

Only now did Qi Xuansu learn that there was such a thing as the Sixth Tai. So this was how the Heavenly Immortal lineage overwhelmingly surpassed the Earthly Immortal lineage.

The manmade Banished Immortal path was known as a dead-end road, so Qi Xuansu would probably never live to see the day when he could attain the Grand Illusion Realm. On the other hand, Zhang Yuelu and Yao Pei might truly obtain this divine ability if they could survive the Heavenly Tribulation.

But then again, as the one who refined the Longevity Stone Heart, Elder Yao could not possibly have been unaware of its upper limit.

If that was the case, why had she deliberately left behind secrets concerning the Grand Illusion Realm? Surely, it was not just to tempt those who came after her, letting them see something they could never attain. Admittedly, that would have been Elder Yao’s style, but Qi Xuansu still felt there had to be another explanation.

Perhaps the Longevity Stone Heart also had some method of breaking through its limitations. For example, the second-generation Undying Elixir and the Shamanistic Sect’s Shaman King had once relied on the Longevity Stone to survive the Heavenly Tribulation.

Qi Xuansu suddenly thought of something.

The Shaman King had used the Longevity Stone to survive the Heavenly Tribulation, but not in the same way Qi Xuansu used it. The Shaman King had already been an Immortal. After refining the Longevity Stone, he did not use it to increase his cultivation. Having learned from the disastrous examples of Wu Xian and the others, he instead treated the Longevity Stone directly as a magical treasure and used it to withstand the Heavenly Tribulation.

If Qi Xuansu became an Immortal and then obtained another Longevity Stone, could he advance to the First-Tribulation Immortal stage?

Of course, there was a problem with this line of reasoning. The Longevity Stone Heart was not the same as the Longevity Stone, so they could not simply be treated as equivalent. Even different Longevity Stones could vary greatly from one another.

But if one followed the logic that three Pseudo-Immortals were equivalent to one Immortal, and three Immortals were equivalent to one First-Tribulation Immortal, then perhaps three Longevity Stone Hearts would be enough to break through the limitation of this dead-end path.

A person with one Longevity Stone Heart could advance no further than the Immortal stage. But what if one person possessed three Longevity Stone Hearts? That would amount to the power of three Immortals. Would that not be enough to break through the limitation of the dead-end path?

More crucially, Elder Yao had indeed gathered the resources of the Daoist Order to refine three Longevity Stone Hearts back then. One went to the Li family, another to the Yao family, and the third to Huasheng Hall.

Simply dangling something unattainable before later generations would have been child’s play by comparison. Having three outstanding talents of the Daoist Order, each with a different Longevity Stone Heart, turn on one another for the sole chance to become a First-Tribulation Immortal could have been Elder Yao’s intent. She was the type to instigate a great upheaval within the Daoist Order.

The number of Longevity Stone Hearts also corresponded perfectly to the Three Daoist Sects. If the Zhang family had never become embroiled in the affair concerning the descendants of an Ancient Immortal, would the Longevity Stone Heart held by Huasheng Hall have somehow ended up in the Zhang family’s hands?

The three great families—the Zhangs, Lis, and Yaos—just so happened to represent the Zhengyi Sect, Taiping Sect, and Quanzhen Sect respectively. ℯℯ𝘭.

If everything had unfolded according to Elder Yao’s plan, then in this age of division among the Three Daoist Sects, each of the three families would possess a Longevity Stone Heart. Each would put forward a successor whose cultivation far surpassed their peers, with the three contenders evenly matched, rather than Li Changge towering above the rest. More importantly, the eventual victor would not merely become Grand Master of the Daoist Order but also advance to the First-Tribulation Immortal stage. If so, they would stand unrivaled in the world for 200 years, and their influence would last across generations.

In such a situation, none of them could back down, and no one would dare to. It would truly become a fight that could end only with death.

The Three Daoist Sects would inevitably split apart, and war between them would be equally inevitable.

As Qi Xuansu followed this line of thought, cold sweat broke out all over his body. Would Elder Yao truly dare to do something like this?