Chapter 467 – The Dao Follows Nature

To determine the Five Element attributes of every kind of herb was not something that could be accomplished in a short while, or even within a few years. It could only be done through slow and methodical exploration, a process that would take an extremely long time to bear fruit.

As for the question of why herbs, which by nature should be of the wood element, would possess Five Element attributes, Zhang Xiaohua had some vague thoughts. Take, for instance, the Red Flame Grass: its color was fiery red, and it grew in places devoid of any other vegetation; even the soil around it would turn to stone. There was no need to say more—it was clearly of the fire element. As for the Crimson Pearl Grass, one of the two main ingredients of the Crimson Flame Pill, it complements the fire-attributed Red Flame Grass, and so it must certainly belong to the water element.

Of course, there were many other herbs whose elemental attributes could not be inferred merely by their appearance; in such cases, one couldn’t directly determine their elemental nature.

Cultivators of the Immortal Dao possessed vast divine abilities and encountered far more herbs than martial artists ever would. If one didn’t rely on unique divine arts and instead used Zhang Xiaohua’s clumsy method of trial and error, who knew how long it would take to distinguish them all?

In the art of Qi Huang, why is it that even with dried medicinal ingredients, their attributes could be differentiated clearly? One reason was that the range of known herbs was limited; another was that illnesses struck people every day, and such constant practice naturally yielded results. Even so, the art of medicine had undergone refinement over thousands of years before it reached its current level of sophistication.

Zhang Xiaohua engraved the pill recipes and his own insights into a jade slip, expending some of his divine sense in the process. After storing the slip away, he began cultivating [Guiding the Spirit].

Ever since he began using divine sense to inscribe jade slips, Zhang Xiaohua had come to understand that within the Immortal Dao, aside from the great utility of true qi, divine sense was also of vital importance. Since he had only just stepped onto the path of the Immortal Dao, there was no telling how many situations in the future would require the use of divine sense. Thus, he made sure to cultivate [Guiding the Spirit] every day without fail.

After some time passed and his divine sense had fully recovered, Zhang Xiaohua felt a faint improvement in both his spiritual awareness and [Guiding the Spirit] itself. Just as he was about to stand up, a sudden thought came to him—the incantation recorded in the appendix of the Guiding the Spirit’s jade slip, the one that concealed both cultivation level and divine sense.

Back when he first saw it, Zhang Xiaohua had paid it little mind. After all, the Immortal Dao he cultivated was nothing more than a legend in the martial world—no one had ever actually seen it. Unless he used immortal techniques in combat, how could anyone possibly detect it in day-to-day life? That incantation seemed completely useless to him.

But now that his thoughts stirred, he began to feel that something was amiss.

Before long, he would be going alone to the Incense-Spreading Sect. And what kind of colossal force was the Incense-Spreading Sect? It was a sect of the Immortal Dao with a legacy stretching back ten thousand years! Back at Huanxi Villa, Zhang Xiaohua hadn’t yet felt the weight of such a lineage, but once he arrived at the Spring Rebirth Valley, he realized that even a minor sect like this had elders like Elder Zhang, and many others he hadn’t even met. Then what about the Incense-Spreading Sect—a sect that had stood tall in the martial world for millennia? How could it not possess deep foundations? Who could say whether there were ancient monsters over a hundred years old hidden within its depths?

Moreover, this concerned the inheritance of the Immortal Dao. Who was to say others didn’t possess secret techniques capable of discerning a person’s cultivation level? If someone were to see through him, Zhang Xiaohua could only blame his own bad luck. However, his journey to the Incense-Spreading Sect was made under the name of the Spring Rebirth Valley—he was, at least in name, the son-in-law of the Spring Rebirth Valley, going there to further his studies. Wouldn’t that mean dragging the entire Spring Rebirth Valley into trouble?

Thus, for both himself and for others, this incantation to conceal cultivation level and divine sense still had to be studied in earnest.

He took out the jade slip and, for the first time, carefully read through it. The incantation was quite lengthy—around two thousand characters—and exceedingly obscure. Zhang Xiaohua read through it with full focus, yet gained absolutely nothing from it.

He couldn’t help but smile bitterly. Indeed, typical Immortal Dao techniques were never easy to comprehend, let alone cultivate. As for a technique meant to disguise one’s cultivation, how could it be simple?

At that thought, Zhang Xiaohua’s heart stirred once more. He recalled how, when he first began cultivating the Carefree Heart Sutra, it had seemed exceptionally simple—there were many aspects he hadn’t understood at all. Yet now, after a few years in the Immortal Dao, his aptitude appeared to have greatly improved. Whether it was alchemy or artifact crafting, though not without difficulty, he could at least make progress on his own by studying them carefully—even without a master’s guidance. Could it be that cultivation in the Immortal Dao made one more intelligent?

“Ah, whatever. What’s wrong with becoming smarter?” Zhang Xiaohua muttered inwardly. “No matter how I got smarter, what matters now is comprehending this incantation.”

With that, he closed his eyes and began to silently ponder the first section of the incantation, word by word, sentence by sentence.

Time passed in a flash. When Zhang Xiaohua finally opened his eyes again, dusk had already begun to fall. He let out a sigh—how short the days are! He had yet to gain any real understanding, and the day was already nearly over. If only I could find a secluded place to cultivate alone, free from worldly distractions—how wonderful that would be!

But that thought was swiftly extinguished. The figures of his mother and father, the rest of his family, Ou Yan, Qiu Tong, Wen Wenhai… and Meng… oh, and Nie Qianyu—all of them surged into his mind. Zhang Xiaohua shook his head, then chuckled and said aloud: “The world is so full of beauty—how could I bear to turn away from it? Cultivation is cultivation, but being in the world is also a form of cultivation. The Dao follows nature… The Dao Follows Nature!”

As soon as those words left his mouth, a surge of true qi roared through his meridians. Zhang Xiaohua was overjoyed. He hurriedly retrieved a jade talisman and laid down an array around the pill room, then took out two yuan stones. After a moment’s thought, he also brought out the Reclining Ox Stone, sat cross-legged atop it, and—rarely, in broad daylight—began cultivating the Carefree Heart Sutra.

Ever since Zhang Xiaohua entered the Spring Rebirth Valley, he had persisted tirelessly in comprehending the Heavenly Dao. He used the principles of the Art of Medicine(Qi Huang) to compensate for his own lack of understanding in this regard, and continued to improve steadily in both alchemy and artifact refinement. Most importantly, every night, he would temper starlight and absorb primordial energy to cultivate the Carefree Heart Sutra. With several months of accumulation, his foundation had become quite solid. Thus, as he gained insight into matters of the heart, his cultivation method also ascended to a new level.

In the dim light of the pill room, Zhang Xiaohua’s expression was tranquil—neither joy nor sorrow on his face. He held a yuan stone in each hand, while all the pores of his body stood wide open, greedily drawing in the surrounding Yuan Qi. Once the ambient energy of the pill room was depleted, streams of Yuan Qi from elsewhere in the Spring Rebirth Valley began to drift toward him.

However, Zhang Xiaohua’s current rate of energy absorption had become extraordinarily fast. Though the valley’s energy was far denser than that of the outside world, to Zhang Xiaohua it still felt unbearably thin. If he were to absorb recklessly out of greed, it might very well cause irreversible damage to the medicinal herbs growing within the valley.

Just then, the results of Zhang Xiaohua’s long and arduous contemplation of the Heavenly Dao began to manifest. The refined Yuan Qi within his body, and the true qi coursing through his meridians, began to undergo subtle transformations under the influence of the Dao of Heaven. These changes were almost imperceptible, yet it was precisely such changes that allowed faint traces of the Heavenly Dao to imprint themselves throughout his entire body.

Did not the Five Element Theory in the Art of Medicine state that the five internal organs corresponded to the Five Elements? And the Five Elements were themselves an expression of certain principles of the Heavenly Dao. Through Zhang Xiaohua’s continuous contemplation of the Dao, his body was gradually beginning to harmonize with it. Although the signs were minute to the extreme, they triggered a chain reaction—affecting both his true qi and his absorption of Yuan Qi.

Beneath him, the Reclining Ox Stone originally absorbed the energy of heaven and earth at a fixed rate. Yet due to a subtle shift in Zhang Xiaohua’s method of absorption, the Yuan Qi stored within the stone suddenly seemed to receive a summons. Like a tidal wave, it surged outward, flooding into Zhang Xiaohua’s body through every pore.

The ambient energy of the Spring Rebirth Valley also began pouring into the pill room, but it was now too faint to draw Zhang Xiaohua’s attention. He no longer bothered to absorb it. Instead, the raging current of Yuan Qi from the Reclining Ox Stone rushed into his body and instantly submitted beneath the brilliance of the Heavenly Dao. It followed his meridians with a rhythmic flow—flickering with a rule-bound radiance, moving at a pace that was slow yet swift, sometimes fast, sometimes unhurried.

No one knew how much time had passed. From the night sky, countless beams of starlight cascaded down, penetrating the stone walls and bathing Zhang Xiaohua’s surroundings. The starlight grew increasingly vigorous, and the tempered rays merged into his meridians, fused with his true qi, and much of it even seeped into his bones—those now-transparent bones tinged faintly with red. As the starlight continued to pour in, those crimson threads within the bones, barely noticeable at first, gradually increased in number, point by point, trace by trace.

Within the Niwan Palace, the golden talismanic array etched upon the Pill Heart suddenly began to spin faster, releasing a subtle and profound ripple. The starlight surrounding Zhang Xiaohua’s body, as if summoned by this change, was drawn directly into the golden talisman without needing to be tempered at all.

Once absorbed, the talisman glowed with a faint brilliance. After rotating several times, it released fine threads of golden light from each of its runes. These threads streamed straight into the very core—the tiny inner nucleus—at the center of the Pill Heart.

The core grew even more stable, and the Pill Heart seemed to have been replenished, functioning with renewed vigor. Within its stirring movements, faint traces of the Heavenly Dao could now be discerned.

Everything progressed in harmony, advancing in orderly fashion under the insight of Heavenly Dao’s principles.

He cultivated until dawn. When Zhang Xiaohua opened his eyes, a flicker of firelight danced faintly within them, unusually lively.

He put away the Reclining Ox Stone and tucked the yuan stones into his robe before checking his cultivation.

What he found nearly made his jaw drop.

Back on the desolate island, he had broken through to the sixth layer of the Qi Refining Stage. Since then, he had been slowly circling the early phase of that layer, unable to progress any further. But he understood that this was the natural transition from the early to the middle stage of Qi Refining—it marked a change in cultivation method, and it was not something to be rushed. Signs of a coming breakthrough had already been evident, which was why he had brought out the Reclining Ox Stone the day before, hoping to push his cultivation into the mid-stage of the sixth layer.

But now, with just a light examination, he found the true qi within his body to be abundant and surging. It flowed freely at the stir of a thought. The bottleneck of the seventh layer was faintly visible.

Wasn’t this the sign of reaching the peak of the sixth layer?

Could it be that his cultivation last night had directly skipped past the sixth-layer mid-stage?

Zhang Xiaohua found it a little hard to believe. He had always advanced one solid step at a time in his cultivation—steadily and methodically. This kind of sudden leap was something he wasn’t used to at all. So without hesitation, he sat cross-legged again and began carefully examining himself for any anomalies.

He checked for quite some time but found nothing out of place. Everything was functioning smoothly—yet he still felt that something was different. Though everything seemed normal, it didn’t feel the same as before.

Suddenly, he laughed—he had realized the reason why.