It was truly a small cauldron — no more than an inch tall, without any dazzling radiance, without any terrifying fluctuations of divine power. What it had was nature and grandeur.
Yes, it was not large — small, even — yet it gave a person a feeling of vast and majestic immensity. It did not resemble a weapon at all; it was more like a landscape of mountains and rivers, a domain of stars, a world where the Dao follows the natural order.
The Primordial Qi of All Creation was extraordinarily rare — a sacred treasure for weapon forging, exceedingly difficult to obtain. To say nothing of the “primordial source” of the Primordial Qi of All Creation, which existed only in legend, beyond reach — and yet now it had been cast into a cauldron.
Ye Fan’s heart could not be calm. He looked inward at this cauldron, and the more he looked, the more he loved it. Dark yellow spoke of heaven and earth; three legs and two ears; a round and sweeping upper form; Dao and principle evolving together within it.
He circulated a profound method, intending to summon the cauldron forth — but to his astonishment, the small cauldron was as heavy as mountains and rivers themselves, impossible to move.
“This…” He was genuinely stunned. The cauldron was as heavy as mountains and rivers.
“Rise!” Ye Fan exerted every effort, gave a great shout, and poured all his divine power into the small cauldron — finally summoning it forth.
Ancient and unadorned, it hung quietly in the air, like a primordial slab of stone from the dawn of creation, utterly motionless.
“Suppress!” Ye Fan gave a soft command, intending to hurl it into the distance.
The cauldron — not even an inch tall — trembled once in mid-air. Without a sound, every stone in the vicinity crumbled to powder, and the stone forest before him ceased to exist entirely.
“The Primordial Qi of All Creation, tempered into a cauldron — truly terrifying!”
Ye Fan recalled the cauldron. First joy came, then a furrowed brow. This cauldron was far too heavy — he could barely move it, feeling as though he were facing a great mountain peak. Had it not been forged within his own body, inseparably linked to him, given his actual current cultivation, he would not have been able to budge it at all.
This cauldron had already taken on the initial bearing of a great vessel. If Dao and principle were woven through it, it might one day evolve into a supreme-path weapon.
Ye Fan felt no urgency to advance toward the seventh tier’s five-colored cloud flames. There would be time enough to refine the cauldron; before that, he wanted to elevate his own cultivation.
Strengthening one’s own power was the foundation of everything. Otherwise, to have the cauldron on his person without being able to direct it as easily as an arm or hand, swinging it freely — what use was it?
Right now, his physical body was immensely powerful and his divine power abundant. If he settled his mind and cultivated diligently, he would break through in a short time.
Ye Fan chose a new patch of stone forest, carved out a cave dwelling, sat cross-legged inside holding the Bodhi Seed, and began to silently cultivate.
Last time, in the depths of the Qixia Mountain Range — inside the space of the Peacock King — Ye Fan had already made considerable progress. He needed only to take another half-step to reach the absolute pinnacle of the Divine Bridge.
He therefore had confidence that he could break through to the Other Shore right here.
Time passed. Ye Fan sat without moving, his mind stilled in contemplation. After one month, he finally reached the summit of the Divine Bridge and prepared to refine that fist-sized source.
Yet just at that moment, he noticed something wrong. Before his eyes was a haze — he could not see anything at all, as though he had lost all sense of direction.
“How can this be?” His heart lurched; he assumed someone had calculated against him and he had fallen into a trap.
But no killing intent reached him, nor any divine power fluctuations; all was utterly quiet around him.
He extended his powerful divine sense to sweep in all four directions — and what it found was startling: even with his divine sense reaching outward, all he perceived was a hazy mist, nothing else.
“My five senses, my spiritual awareness… why have they grown dim? What has harmed me?”
Ye Fan quickly calmed himself, thought in silence, and then his expression shifted with a dawning realization. He murmured to himself: “Could it be…”
He had thought of a possibility — a cultivation condition he had overlooked. Those at the Divine Bridge realm could suffer the calamity of becoming lost; the Scripture of the Dao mentioned it briefly without elaborating, and he had never paid it any mind.
All along, when he contemplated the Scripture of the Dao, he had focused on the cultivation methods, never attending to these seemingly irrelevant passages — and now he had encountered exactly this today.
The human body is endlessly profound. A cultivator wishing to escape the confinement of the Sea of Bitterness and explore the other secret realms of the body must breakthrough the Sea of Bitterness.
Only by cultivating the Celestial Vein — extending it horizontally above the Sea of Bitterness, reaching toward the Other Shore — could one establish the basis for escaping this predicament. This was the Divine Bridge realm: a critically important gateway.
Yet as the Celestial Vein grows and stretches across the void, where does it reach before it arrives at the Other Shore? Some people spend their entire lives unable to pierce through the illusion, trapped on this side of the Divine Bridge, unable to cross the Sea of Bitterness — this is the calamity of becoming lost.
In the most severe cases, all five senses can be stripped away, spiritual awareness extinguished entirely, leaving the person bereft of all sensation and perception, reduced to a kind of living husk — the most terrifying outcome of all.
Most people, upon forming the Celestial Vein, will encounter mist blocking their path, with no sense of where to go — yet it is generally not severe. If they calm their mind, they can pass through unimpeded. For most, it poses no real obstacle.
In Ye Fan’s cultivation up to now, everything had gone smoothly — one could say without any hardship or setback whatsoever. Until the very moment of reaching the absolute pinnacle of the Divine Bridge had nothing manifested. But now, at this precise moment, the calamity finally erupted fully: boundless mist surged forth, illusion shrouded his spiritual awareness, and his path was blocked — this was a severe instance of becoming lost.
“Cross the sea — and the Other Shore is there!” A life-and-death trial lay before him; he had to face it, with no supposed retreat. Otherwise his hearing, sight, and all other senses would be stripped away — he would be completely lost.
Ye Fan set the source down to one side, then tucked the Bodhi Seed away within his robes. He wanted to face this in full earnest, leaving himself no crutch to lean on.
A powerful cultivator must break through this pass on their own; it had to be faced personally. Otherwise, the subsequent cultivation would be overshadowed, the spiritual awareness no longer keen.
In a certain sense, while the calamity of becoming lost is a form of ordeal, if one breaks through it, both body and spirit will be cleansed and reborn. One’s primal instincts will be awakened, the subconscious will grow ever stronger, illusion will be pierced, and the source will be directly touched.
Ye Fan closed his eyes and sat motionless, still as a petrified stone. Not until half a month later did he speak softly: “I will not become lost…”
At that moment, in his eyes, mist locked shut in every direction; he was as though caged within a prison. His consciousness was sunken in the Sea of Bitterness, and even there he could perceive only a segment of Celestial Vein — with no idea which way to extend it.
The calamity of becoming lost was said to be a life-and-death trial — and that was no exaggeration. Many brilliant and gifted individuals, looking back in later years, had spoken at length about this very pass.
Ye Fan had truly met with danger. His five senses were growing more and more numb; his spiritual awareness was on the verge of extinction; the whole of him was as though sealed off — unable to hear, unable to see. He was like one who was deaf, like one who was blind.
“If I ask my own heart — where is the Other Shore?”
Ye Fan felt no fear, no panic. His heart was very calm. He thought carefully about all he had learned, and tried earnestly to gaze through the mist and see beyond it.
“The Other Shore, the Other Shore — is it found by turning back?” He kept asking himself. “The path of cultivation is winding and long. How can one turn back? Why would one turn back? One must always press boldly forward.”
The mist continued to seal him in. His five senses went ever more numb; he felt he was on the verge of losing all spiritual awareness. This was a danger unlike any he had ever faced — he might be stopped here entirely, reduced to a person of no further cultivation.
“According to the records, the greater one’s potential, the harder it is to break free of the calamity of becoming lost. I am not discouraged — I should count myself fortunate.”
Ye Fan remained calm as before, without panic, and instead found an even stronger confidence rising within him.
In the blink of an eye, another half-month passed — and still he had not walked out of the mist.
Time flowed slowly on. For a full two months, Ye Fan endured the calamity of becoming lost. When his five senses were finally stripped away completely, he could perceive nothing at all.
“The Other Shore, the Other Shore — it is not a shore on the opposite side. There is no need to search for it. Wherever I walk, it is there. The place where I stand — this is the Other Shore.” Ye Fan said it quietly and calmly.
Rumble!
The mist surged and churned, rapidly dispersing. Heaven and earth became clear and bright; everything was before his eyes.
In just one instant, the mist was entirely gone. His five senses revived — sharper than they had ever been before. A mysterious radiance enveloped his body, as though he were receiving a cleansing and rebirth.
He had passed through the life-and-death trial, pierced through the calamity of becoming lost. His “primal instincts” had been washed and renewed; his divine sense shot out like a streamer of silk, covering an ever wider range of perception. His body and spirit felt as though they had been tempered thoroughly.
Ye Fan submerged his consciousness into the Sea of Bitterness. At that moment, the Celestial Vein had grown even more robust — crystalline and translucent, like a purple-gold beam spanning the sea, reaching toward the unknown.
He stepped onto the Divine Bridge and simply walked forward. Just as he had said — wherever he walked, there was the Other Shore. He crossed the sea.
The Celestial Vein blazed with brilliance; he traversed the Sea of Bitterness and arrived at its far end. This was a domain of pure stillness, enveloped in drifting mist, high above — and there, in the heights, he faintly glimpsed the outline of a vast Dao Palace.
White clouds drifted and drifted, obscuring the view; the Dao Palace was lost to sight, impossible to perceive any further. Ye Fan felt no regret. He had only just arrived at the Other Shore — not yet having achieved perfection — so how could he enter the secret realm of the Dao Palace?
According to legend, the Dao Palace corresponded to the region of the chest within the human body, where five divine figures resided. When cultivating this secret realm, all manner of strange things would come to pass.
The valley spirit that never dies is called the mysterious female. The gate of the mysterious female is called the root of heaven and earth.
The five divine figures nurture the five elements; the five vapors, pure and subtle, commune with heaven and connect with earth — endlessly, without break — capable of giving rise to Dao power.
After reaching the realm of the Other Shore, he felt the changes within himself. His vital essence, divine power, and spirit all ascended; his divine power surged; his Sea of Bitterness expanded to the size of a palm, rippling with light — brilliant and luminous.
He felt that a single palm strike could shatter the blue sky, a single kick could crack the earth apart — this was a strange sensation born of his power growing stronger.
He did not act. Instead, he took that fist-sized source in hand and began slowly refining it; he needed to consolidate this realm.
He was not expecting to reach the great perfection of the Other Shore and undergo a transformation like a butterfly breaking free of its cocoon — that was not realistic. After all, he had only just arrived at this realm.
The fist-sized source was pure and flawless, overflowing with flowing light, containing a vast and boundless vital essence that defied imagination. Ye Fan spent the better part of a full day refining it before finally absorbing every last bit of it.
Afterward, he remained in deep stillness for ten more days before finally rousing himself completely, bringing this cultivation session to its conclusion.
“This is…” Just then, when Ye Fan looked inward at his Sea of Bitterness, he was greatly startled.
The golden Sea of Bitterness was speckled with rippling light. He sensed that something new had come into being — right there on the sea’s surface, full of life, something green was manifesting.
“What is that?”
Ye Fan stared wide-eyed. There upon the golden expanse was a strange plant growing — visible one moment and hidden the next — like a green lotus, with wisps of primordial mist curling around it.
“How can this be?” He was deeply shocked, unable to understand why this transformation had occurred.
And then, when he looked up without thinking, he went still again. Above the Sea of Bitterness, the sky was no longer hazy or empty — it was a clear and open blue, like an azure sky.
Ye Fan was genuinely astonished. After reaching the Other Shore, a series of changes had come to pass.
“A heavenly vault… a green lotus… Could it be that my unique phenomenon is about to appear?” He could not be calm, and then murmured to himself again: “No — this is only the initial evolution of the Sea of Bitterness, not yet a true unique phenomenon.”