Chapter 122: Heaven and Earth Pavilion

Xuanhe stewed in a bout of impotent rage.

There was no other way. Merely possessing the Book Mountain Sect Master with his consciousness left him powerless against that crazy woman. He would only stand a chance if his true body entered the fray.

That option surfaced in Xuanhe's mind for only a fraction of a second before he dismissed it. The reason was simple: the incident in Longxing County had just happened, and it was a sensitive period. If he personally entered the Eight Trigrams Furnace now, wouldn't he just be announcing to everyone that he had botched his job?

‘If I actually did that...’

‘The first one to kick me while I'm down would be that poisonous viper You Xuexin, followed by that bitch Lian Shengyue. They would absolutely pin the blame on me!’

They’d claim the failure in Longxing County was the work of a saboteur.

Or that I was an accomplice of the Heaven-Stealing Thief.

With all sorts of accusations slapped on him, he would not only lose his immortal path in this life, but he probably wouldn't get another chance to cultivate for the next hundred lifetimes.

Even if he paid off his karma and set foot on the immortal path once more, he would have to start from scratch as an independent cultivator... Just the thought of it filled Xuanhe with bone-chilling dread.

‘Are you kidding me?!’

Xuanhe felt his scalp prickle. His blazing anger was doused like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over his head, instantly extinguishing it.

Forget it, forget it.

She was just a martial artist anyway. As long as he withheld the Taiyin Form-Refining Heaven-Ascending Talisman Scripture, she would die of old age sooner or later given her years.

I won't stoop to her level!

Right then, a streak of light abruptly appeared deep within the cosmos. It sped over and landed beside Xuanhe, revealing a short, stout cultivator.

“Fellow Daoist Xuanhe?”

“I was watching from afar, and you suddenly seemed overcome with anger. Your magical power was fluctuating... Did something happen in the Eight Trigrams Furnace?”

“It’s nothing.”

Xuanhe turned his head, his expression already back to a placid calm. “I just had a moment of insight and casually practiced a spell,” he said coolly.

“With me keeping watch, what could possibly happen in the Eight Trigrams Furnace?”

Xuanhe shot a chilling glare at the stout cultivator. “What is it, Fellow Daoist Feixuan? Are you trying to overstep your bounds and watch this furnace for me?”

As his voice fell, the aura around Xuanhe drastically changed. He stood rooted to the spot, but the light of tens of thousands of stars behind him extinguished one by one, unfurling a boundless gloom at his back. Within that darkness, the stout cultivator seemed to hear the clang of metal and spot a massive, looming figure.

In a daze, he felt as if a pair of magma-like pupils were staring coldly at him from the gloom, ready to lunge out and swallow him whole.

“You misunderstand, Fellow Daoist.”

The stout cultivator's expression shifted slightly. He took an immediate step back, putting distance between himself and Xuanhe. “I was merely passing by and got curious.”

“Good.”

Xuanhe nodded. The gloom behind him rapidly dissipated, and the extinguished stars lit up once again, making the anomaly seem like nothing more than a hallucination.

Somewhat flustered, the stout cultivator quickly flew away.

Xuanhe sat back down. The heaviness in his heart didn't fade in the slightest; instead, he grew even more vigilant. ‘After this, they’ll probably send someone even more formidable.’

The stout cultivator was just a measly outer sect disciple, easy enough to intimidate. Xuanhe had effortlessly driven him off just by revealing a fraction of his Divine Powers aura. However, this also indirectly proved his own guilty conscience. The next time those predatory factions sent someone, it would likely be a cultivator in the Divine Powers realm.

‘This is bad.’

If this continued, forget becoming his master's third true transmission disciple—he might not even be able to secure his position in the inner sect. Not to mention, his hands weren't exactly clean to begin with...

Xuanhe violently gritted his teeth.

Given the current situation, he had to find a scapegoat!

Only by dumping the mess of the Eight Trigrams Furnace on someone else could he retreat unscathed. When the problems blew up later, they would be the scapegoat's problem.

The problem was... who could he find?

Xuanhe felt a headache coming on. A scapegoat wouldn't be easy to find. After all, following the incident in Longxing County, everyone had already guessed that something was wrong with the Eight Trigrams Furnace.

It just hadn't been uncovered yet.

Although within the Immortal Gate, ‘not uncovered’ meant ‘no problem,’ the Eight Trigrams Furnace held a special status and was governed by an entirely different standard.

‘If I look for someone to take over now, anyone with eyes will see I'm trying to shift the blame. Not only will they refuse to take the fall, but they'll thoroughly investigate what went wrong. And if I find someone unreliable, they might pretend to accept while secretly using the chance to dig into the matter, only to report me to the Immortal Gate once they uncover the truth...’

The more Xuanhe thought about it, the worse his headache grew.

Finally, he made up his mind. He stood up, shaped a clone with his magical power to watch the furnace in his stead, and flew off deep into the cosmos.

A flying boat led the way.

An indescribably massive gateway of stars stood tall in his line of sight, exceedingly radiant. Piloting the flying boat, Xuanhe quickly approached one of the celestial bodies.

It was an incredibly bizarre star. It lacked the jagged ridges of mountains or the boundaries of oceans; it possessed only boundless layers of gas wrapped around its core. These layers generated countless turbulent storms that endlessly tore and crashed against one another, hanging coldly against the cosmic backdrop.

This star was named the Heaven and Earth Pavilion.

When a true transmission disciple's cultivation reached the Tribulation Transcending Third Layer and they needed to enter secluded cultivation to weather their fate tribulation, they could apply to create such a star in the cosmos to serve as their immortal cave.

This was also the dividing line for true transmission disciples.

True transmission disciples like You Xuexin and Lian Shengyue were still in their infancy; a cultivation base at the Tribulation Transcending First Layer was far from worthy of true transmission status.

Only someone like the master of the Heaven and Earth Pavilion, who had forged a separate star and genuinely secured a place in the Immortal Gate, was considered a recognized true transmission disciple.

Following that, he transmitted a message with his spiritual sense:

“Inner sect disciple Xuanhe requests an audience with Senior Brother Kunyun!”

His spiritual sense plunged into the star.

Before long, the magnificent gaseous celestial body reacted. The never-ending storms suddenly parted, carving out a path along a fixed trajectory.

Soon after, something appeared on the surface of the star.

It was a face.

Its facial features were distinct, stretching from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere. The raging gales even outlined clear muscle textures, making it look astonishingly real.

Then, it opened its mouth.

Offering no resistance, Xuanhe's flying boat was swallowed by the star's gaping maw. After a dizzying spin, it crashed down in front of a palace.

That single process left Xuanhe with a tingling scalp, his magical power depleted by nearly half, and his heart gripped by terror. ‘The rumors were right. Senior Brother Kunyun has mastered that major divine power, A Single Dust Enclosing a Sea of Realms... Incredible. My Divine Powers aren't even worth mentioning compared to his.’

Thinking of those rumors, Xuanhe felt both envy and jealousy.

‘A Single Dust Enclosing a Sea of Realms... at its largest, it can be as vast as a star, and at its smallest, as tiny as a speck of dust. Judging from what I just saw, this entire star is actually a manifestation of that divine power!’

‘Not only that, but it is also a magical treasure.’

‘If this star were shrunk down to the size of a dust mote and used in a magical battle... what kind of Divine Power or magical technique could block a smash from such a treasure?’

Xuanhe couldn't imagine it at all.

However, it was exactly because of such a major divine power that Kunyun had been able to establish a true transmission faction like the Heaven and Earth Pavilion within the Immortal Gate, and even dared to secretly smuggle and sell off the Immortal Gate's assets.

Xuanhe himself was a member of the Heaven and Earth Pavilion. The magical treasures and flying swords he smuggled out of the Eight Trigrams Furnace through Book Mountain every year were all sold via the Heaven and Earth Pavilion. The profits were split ninety-ten; as the platform, the Heaven and Earth Pavilion took ninety percent, while he just made enough to cover the cost of materials.

Besides that, there was also the laundering of dharma currency.

All the incense dharma currency that the Heaven and Earth Pavilion members obtained through illicit operations would be sent into the Eight Trigrams Furnace by him, where it was washed completely clean.

‘But even so, Senior Brother Kunyun isn't the number one figure among the many true transmission disciples. He only ranks fifth... The waters of the Immortal Gate run far too deep.’

At this thought, Xuanhe let out a long breath.

They said the Immortal Gate was a good place to cultivate, but even so, one had to think thrice—think of danger, think of retreat, and think of change. Only then could one survive and walk the immortal path for a long time.

Just then.

“Xuanhe?”

A voice suddenly rang out, jolting Xuanhe from his thoughts. He hurriedly stepped forward and bowed. “Xuanhe greets Senior Brother. May Senior Brother achieve Qi Refining and enter the Dao soon.”

“At ease. Rise.”

A chuckle came from above, signaling him to dispense with the formalities. Only then did Xuanhe raise his head, seeing a young Daoist with a high-bridged nose standing imposingly in front of the palace doors.

“Speak. What is the matter?”

“To answer Senior Brother,”

Xuanhe bowed once more. He instantly worked up his emotions, his voice already carrying a sob when he spoke. “Something has happened to the Child of Destiny that Senior Brother ordered me to look after!”

“...What?”

As soon as those words left his mouth, the initially spring-like atmosphere instantly shifted. A harsh, chilling wind scraped across Xuanhe's face, leaving behind several bloody cuts.

“Something happened to my junior brother?”

Xuanhe buried his head even lower. “It was Xuanhe's incompetence. I failed to watch over Senior Brother Kunlun properly, which led to an unexpected mishap with his reincarnated body.”

“What kind of mishap?” Kunyun pressed in a deep voice.

Of course, Xuanhe didn't dare mention the martial arts matter, but he had already prepared another excuse. “Senior Brother Kunlun's reincarnated body caught the eye of a Brahma Cultivator.”

“A Brahma Cultivator?”

Kunyun paused at these words, then frowned. “A Brahma Cultivator snuck into the Eight Trigrams Furnace, and you just let him get close to my junior brother? Why didn't you just kill him?”

“That Brahma Cultivator is already dead.”

Xuanhe didn't hesitate to take the credit for himself before continuing, “Unfortunately, I had a momentary lapse in attention. Although I killed that Brahma Cultivator the moment I spotted him, the intruder still managed to make Senior Brother Kunlun's reincarnated body practice their Brahma methods.”

“Bastard!”

Kunyun instantly flew into a rage. “I placed my junior brother in your hands and entrusted you to ensure absolutely nothing went wrong, yet you messed it up like this?”

“Are you unaware that the cultivation methods of the Brahma Nation are best at dealing with these types of reincarnated bodies, capable of awakening their memories and wisdom from past lives?”

Xuanhe remained silent, only continuing to bow.

This display only made Kunyun angrier.

“Tell me the truth.”

With that, Kunyun walked straight down from the palace doors and stopped in front of Xuanhe. His gaze was icy and his tone severe, enunciating every word.

“My junior brother... Since his reincarnated body has practiced a Brahma method, is there a risk of him recovering and surviving his fate tribulation?”