Chapter 219: Chapter 208: Kunlun Cave Heaven
One year later.
Zhu Kang bowed thrice and kowtowed nine times, the spiritual light flashing as it expelled him from the formation.
"Why doesn't the immortal teach him martial arts and history?"
The Spirit Ginseng doll showed puzzlement and said, "I see that he is innately rebellious and has great destiny upon him. Even without coming to Kunlun Mountain, he would still incite a major rebellion and cause a huge turmoil."
"What difference does it make to pass on the martial arts? Centuries later, it will still be the end of a dynasty, with the rise, people suffer; with the fall, people suffer!"
Zhou Yi said, "What's more, the hearts of people in the world are the hardest to grasp. Zhu Kang may seem to have a good nature now, but who knows if he will turn into the next Qin Zheng once he has power in his hands?"
Truly tracing back to the source, the sins Qin Zheng committed inevitably bore some of Zhou Yi's karma.
However, having read Buddhist and Daoist scriptures for a thousand years, he had long seen through the doctrine of karma. Zhou Yi used it only to maintain his own moral baseline, without any substantial binding force.
To be untainted by karma is, to be precise, to maintain humanity and not commit evil!
Zhou Yi gave the Spirit Ginseng doll a glance, "Since when did you learn to read faces?"
"I was naturally born with the innate Earth Escape Divine Skill; few formations and prohibitions in the world can trap me. According to the Life-Saving Scripture written by the immortal, what I lack is the divination technique to predict danger."
The Spirit Ginseng doll chuckled, "I just visit the Scripture Pavilion to recite scriptures in my spare time from farming, and naturally picked up a bit over time."
"Not bad, you haven't disappointed this Daoist's teachings."
Zhou Yi nodded in satisfaction and explained, "It's precisely because Zhu Kang is rebellious and has destiny on his side that teaching him martial arts would merely be gilding the lily, and hastening his fate might not be a good thing!"
As they talked, one man and one ginseng returned to the Daoist temple.
In the courtyard, there was a massive new presence, made of dark and dull steel gears, pistons, and bearings, fixed in place with rivets.
Following Zhou Yi's instructions, the Spirit Ginseng doll put on a black iron helmet, and its hoe transformed into an iron shovel as it filled the firebox with coal.
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Zhou Yi flicked his finger, igniting the coal with spiritual fire, causing the water in the boiler to begin boiling.
Steam exerted strong pressure on the pistons, starting to drive the wheels to turn. At the same time, black smoke billowed out from the chimney atop the machine.
"The familiar scent!"
Zhou Yi's eyes closed slightly as he took a deep breath in, savoring the acrid, pungent smell of incompletely burned coal.
"Cough cough cough cough..."
Standing too close to the chimney, the Spirit Ginseng doll got a face full of black soot, which immediately lowered its impression of the steel machine to rock bottom.
"Immortal, what use is this hulking piece of iron?"
"To me, this thing indeed doesn't offer much benefit, and may even have some downsides, since the collective wisdom of humanity is too strong. At the end of this degenerate era, maybe in a thousand years, they will be able to create weapons with power comparable to a true immortal!"
Zhou Yi waved his hand to extinguish the coal, then engraved formation patterns in the firebox, casting a spell to condense spiritual energy into crystals, which he placed in the center of the formation.
The spirit crystal drove the formation and prohibition to generate flames, heating the boiler to boiling. The power increased by more than tenfold, and no black smoke emerged.
"The formation's patterns could completely discard the machine's body and be directly engraved onto the wheel, consuming spiritual energy to generate kinetic energy with no loss in between."
"The Daoist prohibitions' understanding of the cosmos has reached a certain pinnacle!"
Zhou Yi did not continue to modify the machine, as his skills in Array Dao and artifact refining could easily create spirit-powered robots, which, when infused with animal souls, could possess partial intelligence to perform routine tasks.
This wasn't Zhou Yi's own innovation; during the ancient times, the Sky Mending Sect had already created such a heritage.
The Dao is immense, pointing directly to the Great Way!
The Spirit Ginseng doll wiped the soot from its face, resembling a painted-face character in Peking opera, and holding the shovel, it asked in confusion.
"If it isn't of much benefit, why would the immortal still want to spread it?"
"Originally, I had no great ambitions and always lived freely and comfortably; I should not have concerned myself with the mortal world."
Zhou Yi sighed, "Over a thousand years, I've witnessed the rise and fall of dynasties, flags changing over city walls, while the common people are like grass, going through cycle after cycle of suffering in both prosperity and decline."
"I've long seen that the immortal is compassionate, not indifferent like other immortals."
The Spirit Ginseng doll looked up at the lump of metal, "Can this clunky thing really change the world?"
"Perhaps I can, perhaps I cannot," said the Taoist priest, who never insisted upon matters.
Zhou Yi gently touched the bearings and gears, feeling the familiar yet strange texture, and said, "Time is the greatest innovator in the world. The only thing I can do is to push forward; it is extremely difficult to halt..."
The age of declining law is long and distant, and even without Zhou Yi's dissemination, such things would emerge thousands of years later.
Humans' thirst for power and wealth never ceases.
Qi-Blood and Inner Qi martial arts, in the end, are the strengths of a few, and they tend to reinforce class barriers—correspondingly, martial experts will detest machines!
The Spirit Ginseng doll racked its brain, its eyes turning into spiral shapes, still failing to understand the use of this lump of metal.
"Immortal Master, what are the drawbacks of this object?"
"The drawback is, the Spring Breeze Building might disappear, and I will no longer be able to celebrate!"
...
On this day.
The Soul Splitting Technique infiltrated the Treasure Bead, finally piercing through the last layer of barrier and directly emerged from it.
Zhou Yi's Divine Sense locked on tightly, and as the soul split from the Treasure Bead, a faint spatial distortion appeared at the breach.
The white vastness within the Treasure Bead churned tumultuously, undergoing mysterious changes. The split soul re-entered, and after a long while, it did not disperse.
"Let's test the hardness again."
Zhou Yi spat out the Light Dividing Sword, which had recuperated for four hundred years and had been restored to a magic artifact.
Sword Qi sliced across the surface of the Treasure Bead, still leaving no mark. However, the Light Dividing Sword, destroying from inside to outside through the opening, was much more efficient than the soul split.
"The breach is nearly imperceptible. If I set up a Formation for defense inside, it is indeed a Protective amulet. Moreover, the most wonderful use of this object is to move Kunlun Mountain inside it, then I will have a portable cave dwelling!"
Zhou Yi inscribed a few prohibitions inside the Treasure Bead, temporarily refining it into a magic artifact similar to a storage bag. It took the shape of a fleeing light and circled for a moment before finding a desolate mountain.
The opening of the Treasure Bead faced Nameless Peak, and as Mana was exerted, the Scripture of Collection was cast, immediately drawing soil and stones into it.
A moment later.
After consecutively capturing two mountain peaks, the Treasure Bead was filled to half capacity.
Back to the Taoist temple.
Zhou Yi pondered for a moment, then called the Spirit Ginseng doll with a smile.
"After spending two hundred years, I have finally refined the Kunlun Cave Heaven. Would you like to try living inside for a few days?"
"There's no danger, right?"
The Spirit Ginseng doll confirmed its safety multiple times, then turned into a green fleeing light and entered the Treasure Bead, standing on the ground and dancing with joy.
A transparent sky displayed a huge eye, as if a god were overlooking the world; it was Zhou Yi observing from the outside. One had to look closely to see the tiny, dust-like Spirit Ginseng doll.
Half a month observation.
The Ginseng doll toiled away inside the Treasure Bead, casting spells to level the land and pre-arrange the spiritual fields.
Zhou Yi, noticing sufficient space inside the Treasure Bead, took water from the outside world, creating a lake that was thirty feet square.
"It seems there are no problems with living and cultivating?"
One month later.
The Taoist temple, ancient trees, and Spiritual Medicine were all moved into the Treasure Bead. Only Zhou Yi and the Jumu tree remained outside, beginning to observe the growth of the Spiritual Medicine in the space.
Years later.
The growth of the Spiritual Medicine was normal. Zhou Yi brought the Jumu tree into the Dantian, turning into fleeing light and entering the space of the Treasure Bead.
Zhou Yi's physical body entered for the first time; his soul split had already been there for two hundred years, so there was no feeling of unfamiliarity. He planted the Jumu tree in the center of the space, consumed lifespan to cast the Jade Dew Art, and emitted a rich and surging Spiritual Energy.
"From now on, I shall cultivate in this Kunlun Cave Heaven!"