The Rite of Divine Transcendence was a mysterious and formidable secret art — capable of transforming a person with ulterior motives into a devout guardian of the sect. How utterly beyond comprehension.
One had to understand: this was not a matter of controlling one’s divine sense. It worked from deep within one’s source and heart, allowing the transformation to unfold naturally and effortlessly — not a forcible seizure of one’s will.
Small as the Qin Sect was — barely over a hundred members — it was unfathomably deep. It had stirred a trace of reverence in Ye Fan’s heart. Even the Jade Azure King had been transcended. That was truly a momentous matter.
According to the sickly old man, the Jade Azure King was surely not the only powerful figure who had been transcended within the main peak. In thirty years, there must have been others — all of them remarkable individuals.
In truth, anyone capable of following clues to find this place in pursuit of the Nine Secrets was no ordinary person. The most exceptional among them were, naturally, the dragons and phoenixes of their generation, far surpassing their peers.
Ye Fan parted from the sickly old man, his mind turning over many thoughts. The Qin Sect had many peculiarities, and he must not underestimate them. If even he — a Sacred Body — were transcended, the consequences would be disastrous.
At the same time, a faint unease stirred within him. The Rite of Divine Transcendence was said to have been created by the Heavenly Emperor of the Southern Ridge — who was believed to be another incarnation of the ruthless one. That was anything but good news.
Hua Yunfei was almost certainly within the Qin Sect. This secret art would hold a lethal temptation for him. If he managed to obtain it, it would be like giving wings to a tiger — for the two arts were of the same lineage.
“I must still enter the inner gate. Without it, I cannot reach the Nine Secrets. But I’ll need to guard against being transcended.” Ye Fan thought it through carefully, and some countermeasures had already begun to take shape in his mind.
“For now, I should focus on strengthening my cultivation. Getting into the inner gate is no easy matter, so I might as well use this time to search for dragon marrow.” He made up his mind.
The night wind blew gently. The cluster of small hills lay hazy beneath a sky scattered with stars, the trees swaying softly, wild beasts howling in the depths of the mountains.
The crescent moon gave off only a faint light. The forest floor was dim and shadowed. Ye Fan walked alone, moving through the mountains at midnight to observe the lay of the land, searching for dragon marrow.
In the distance, a pine grove lay perfectly still. A clear spring bubbled and trickled outward. Night birds called softly. The fragrance of grass and trees drifted on the air.
Suddenly, his expression shifted and he came to a halt. He had spotted a beautiful figure — seated cross-legged on a smooth green stone, palms upturned to the sky, enveloped by a radiance of pure white light.
The stars and moon were dim, yet within the pine grove, considerable starlight and moonlight descended, pooling and converging toward her body, filling that space with a soft, white luminescence.
“Li Xiaoman…” Ye Fan was surprised.
The cultivation art she was practicing was extraordinary. Around her body, three hundred and sixty-five golden vortices had appeared — dazzling in their splendor — drawing in life essence from all ten directions, breathing in and out the quintessence of the sun and moon.
“All the stars in the heavens… does she align her body with three hundred and sixty-five primary stars?” Ye Fan watched in astonishment. This kind of profound art was unlike anything he had ever heard of or seen before.
He activated his Origin Celestial Eye and looked carefully, wanting to understand it fully.
In an instant, his heart gave a lurch. Within each of those three hundred and sixty-five golden vortices, a golden figure sat cross-legged — each one like a divine being.
Life essence from the surrounding plants, dragon energy from the earth, stellar radiance and moonlight essence — all of it flowed like water, pouring into the three hundred and sixty-five golden vortices, casting and forging those golden figures one by one.
Ye Fan wanted to see more clearly, but the figures within the golden vortices were too hazy — their features were completely indistinct. He could only sense from them an air of majesty and loftiness, a quality of divine spirit.
“Such a powerful profound art. The human body aligns itself with the primary stars of the heavens, forging a divine being within each of those golden vortices. What inconceivable spiritual power would result if one were to cultivate this to the end?”
Ye Fan contemplated deeply, deeply astonished. In the end, he realized that the three hundred and sixty-five golden figures were in fact a single divine entity — merely dwelling in different positions throughout the body.
“Shaping… an incomparable divine being. Truly wondrous.”
Suddenly, his body gave a jolt. He beheld an even more extraordinary sight. Behind Li Xiaoman’s back, an ancient image had manifested — a golden divine being standing upon an ancient battlefield, gazing down upon all other gods in contempt.
Across the ancient battlefield, golden light flowed and rippled. Many bodies lay fallen. Their blood flowed in five colors — clearly no ordinary beings — utterly mysterious and inexplicable.
Ye Fan’s shock deepened. Among those fallen bodies were golden-bodied Arhats. Examining more closely, he also saw seven-colored Bodhisattvas — every one of them lying dead across the ground.
“What a terrifyingly powerful divine being — treading forward through the five-colored blood of Bodhisattvas and Arhats alike…”
The mountains trembled faintly. Across the hills and all throughout the earth, the life essence stored within the endless veins of the land surged upward and erupted outward, converging toward Li Xiaoman’s body, flowing into the three hundred and sixty-five golden vortices, pouring into the casting of that golden divine being.
Throughout this process, Li Xiaoman’s body flickered with divine brilliance. Her crystalline, jade-like form was refined and tempered repeatedly, merging as one with the three hundred and sixty-five divine beings.
When her eyes opened and closed, they gleamed with specks of golden light — utterly otherworldly, like an ancient demon-god — beautiful and wild at once.
Quintessence of the sun from above, root energy of the ancestral earth from below — all of it condensed into rivers flowing into her body. The speed at which she breathed in and expelled life essence was breathtaking.
This place was over a thousand li from the Qin Sect, far enough that there was no concern of being detected. She sat motionless, cultivating this divine art — one that had never been recorded in any ancient text.
“Where did she learn this from?”
Abruptly, Li Xiaoman’s body shuddered. Her hair billowed upward. Above the crown of her head, a black sacred vase took shape — indistinct at first, then gradually solidifying.
“That is…” Ye Fan’s eyes turned sharp and piercing in an instant.
Wisp by wisp, dark light seeped out from the crown of Li Xiaoman’s head, gathering above it and forming a sacred vase. The dark light pulsed and rippled, flowing with Dao resonance, ancient and natural in its quality.
The sacred vase was simple in form — like a vessel of the great Dao itself — seemingly capable of suppressing all the heavens and myriad worlds. Profound and inscrutable.
All too familiar. This sacred vase of the great Dao was nearly identical to the Heaven Devouring Demonic Jar. Li Xiaoman had used her own life essence to forge the body of the vase — and had reached this level of attainment.
Black Emperor had once said that upon achieving a certain degree of understanding of the Heaven Devouring Demonic Art, one could choose to forge a sacred vase of the great Dao. It was the vessel of the Dao itself — and in the future, it could be used to gather boundless divine power.
Dark light flowed. The sacred vase was fully forged. It floated and bobbed above her head. The three hundred and sixty-five golden vortices trembled, and then all of them receded — leaving only the sacred vase, merged as one with her, co-cultivated together.
“She has also cultivated the Heaven Devouring Demonic Art…” Ye Fan’s gaze was sharp, but he made no move.
Beyond any doubt, Li Xiaoman was practicing two divine arts. The first defied all speculation — but the second demonic art was easy enough to identify. The sacred vase of the great Dao hovered above her, carrying the force of one who could suppress all of the heavens.
“Boom!”
The mountains and forest shook together. The heavens rang softly. The method created by the ancient Heavenly Emperor harbored infinite mystery. The great Dao descended. Principles and laws manifested one by one, intertwining with the sacred vase.
Moreover, all living creatures throughout the ten thousand worlds were affected. Wisps of divine power gathered from every direction, far surpassing even those three hundred and sixty-five golden vortices in quantity.
“Whoosh!”
Suddenly, Li Xiaoman’s eyes snapped open — pale gold in color — and turned to look directly at Ye Fan. They were like two bolts of lightning.
Her skin was like jade, her beauty transcendent and extraordinary, mysterious and uncanny — like a beautiful demon-god returned to life. She seemed to have sensed something.
Ye Fan used his Origin Arts to merge himself with the mountains and rivers of the land, eliminating every trace of human aura. Then, using the Walking Word Technique, he departed at high speed and vanished without a trace.
“She appears to only be at the Dao Palace realm — so how can she have such keen spiritual perception?!”
Ye Fan was deeply shaken. Li Xiaoman was unusual. Setting aside the fact that she was practicing two divine arts, she had also managed to detect that someone had been watching her in secret.
“Yi Yi once mentioned that Li Xiaoman also entered the immortal palace on the outskirts of the Primordial Forbidden Zone. Could she have obtained a great fortuitous encounter there?”
But something still nagged at him as wrong. The first profound art she was cultivating was too bizarre. Those golden vortices, each forging a divine being — treading forward through the corpses of golden-bodied Arhats and Bodhisattvas — there was something wild and demonic about it.
“What exactly has she experienced? Her actual combat strength is already far beyond the Dao Palace realm. What happened to her?”
Ye Fan made no move. He did not want to alarm her and cause her to take flight. He wanted to draw out Hua Yunfei — that person was hiding far too deeply, and so far not a single clue had turned up.
The earth beneath the Qin Mountains was riddled with ancient mausoleums. Whenever a mountain flood broke out, one or two ancient coffins might be washed out from within the mountains. Among the locals, it had long since ceased to be a curiosity.
Ye Fan traveled and cultivated as he went, moving in and out of the Qin Mountain ranges, surveying the terrain of the mountains and rivers, searching for rare and precious marrow — something he could use for a breakthrough at the moment of comprehension.
In the past half month, he had traveled tens of thousands of li and within the earth’s veins had discovered eight ancient coffins, all containing corpses at the Sacred Lord level. They had long since decomposed — their weapons had rotted away entirely.
The oldest of them had passed away some one hundred and eighty thousand years ago, as evidenced by some clearly legible inscriptions within a jade coffin — the tomb of an emperor from that era.
Yet he had not found a single drop of extraordinary marrow. He had penetrated deep into the hearts of countless mountains and encountered dragon energy — but it always remained out of reach.
“Across the million li of the Qin Mountains, a magnificent great dragon lies prostrate. It must have given birth to matchless divine marrow of the world — yet this region is simply too vast…”
Ye Fan furrowed his brow. He stood in the heavens and looked down over the boundless expanse of the Qin Mountains — a million li in every direction, endless beyond sight. But he could see the immense dragon energy accumulating below.
This energy was unusual. Only those who had inherited the Origin Celestial Master’s legacy could perceive it — and what he saw was a single great dragon stretching for hundreds of thousands of li. It was staggeringly magnificent.
“No wonder the Qin Mountains are full of ancient tombs. This dragon is simply too vast — it holds within it endless life force, harboring the mysteries of life and death. Someone must have glimpsed this secret in the most ancient of times, and so they all came here to be buried.”
The dragon vein was too vast. It was difficult to determine in which part of the body the precious marrow had been nurtured — and there were many false dragon veins entangled within, making it hard to distinguish truth from illusion.
“There must be dream-realm divine marrow here — comparable to the undying medicine — and it has most likely already taken the form of a living creature.” Ye Fan arrived at this conclusion.
Another quiet night fell. The full moon hung in the sky, and the earth was bathed in silver-white moonlight, as though a thin veil of mist drifted across the land.
Ye Fan had been searching for half a month now with nothing to show for it. Without realizing it, he had traveled deep into the Qin Mountains, tens of thousands of li away from the Qin Sect.
“Ahwooo…”
Suddenly, a sound rang out — part bird cry, part wolf howl — and the mountains all around began to tremble.
“Boom — boom — boom…”
In the distance, more than ten great mountains collapsed one after another. Dust and smoke billowed to the sky, obscuring the divine moon above.
“What kind of living creature could possibly be this powerful?!” Ye Fan’s expression changed.
A strange bird radiated green light across its entire body. Its form was like a great azure roc, yet it bore the head of a wolf — fangs bared and savage. It stretched over thirty zhang in length, and the sound had come from it.
“An ancient variant species — the Night Sky Wolf.”
“Roarr…”
Another great roar rang out. From within a different mountain range came a series of thunderous booms. A silver giant ape — over a hundred zhang tall — came striding out, crushing every low-lying hill beneath its feet. Its silver fur shimmered and blazed with light.
The two creatures laid eyes on each other and immediately charged, as though bound by deep and ancient hatred. Azure light and silver light erupted in a boiling frenzy. Every exchange sent shockwaves through the earth, leveling more than a dozen mountain peaks around them.
Ye Fan was stunned. These two were beast kings — even a Sacred Lord would struggle to subdue them. Their power was absolutely terrifying.
“What are they fighting over?”
“Bang!”
In the distance, a magnificent great mountain collapsed on one side. A battered bronze chariot burst forth, drawn by several ceramic horses — an altogether strange and peculiar sight.
Behind it, an old man wearing an ancient dragon robe and a rust-mottled dragon crown drove the chariot. His face was the color of dead ash, devoid of any trace of life.
“An Ancient Emperor has become a Corpse King… and now serves as a charioteer for someone else…” Ye Fan was profoundly startled.
Within the broken bronze chariot sat a small figure — barely over a foot tall — radiating purple throughout its body, radiant and strange.
Note: The final line is an advertisement for another novel and has been omitted per instructions.