Chapter 211 A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

Cheng Xinzhan stayed in Sanqing Palace for more than ten days. He felt that if the elders did not discuss it for a year or so, there would be no result, so he said goodbye first. When the teachers had any teachings to pass down, he would follow them.

The elders are now immersed in the frenzy of prophecies. This is true for the high-ranking practitioners of the Jingming Sect, and the teachers and elders of the Sanqing Mountain are no exception.

However, Cheng Xinzhan himself was relatively clear-headed. After all, he was only in the third realm, and was still a long way from the immortal realm. Empty talk could not produce an earthly immortal, and accepting disciples could not produce an earthly immortal. Only by practicing Taoism and communicating with the gods could one cultivate an earthly immortal.

I still have a lot of things to do.

First of all, this fulfilled the prophecy of the Jingming Patriarch. It couldn’t be that he was not familiar with the Jingming Dao, right? The prophecy also contained a “great promotion of my religion”, and the true scriptures that filled several sedan chairs were still waiting for him!
Besides, Cheng Xinzhan had not forgotten the original intention of going to Sanyuan Mountain this time, which was to seek scriptures and study the water method of slaying dragons. Let’s not think about things that are too far away for now. A journey of a thousand miles always begins with a single step.

So, Zhenren and Xuanzai were still studying the prophecies and Cheng Xinzhan’s future path to becoming an earthly immortal in the Sanqing Palace, while Cheng Xinzhan himself returned to the Wuyou Cave on Mount Meiji and began to study the scriptures and practice the Dharma.

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From the time when the original body planned to go to Jingming Sect to obtain the scriptures to the time when he returned from the journey, Cheng Xinzhan’s spirit was naturally not idle.

His skill of resurrecting the dead was flawless and no one could discover it. After completely controlling the Fire Temple lineage, he had a clear understanding of the situation in the entire Tianshao Mountain.

First of all, it is true that Tianqiao Mountain is the remnant of the ancient Buddha.

Since Bodhidharma came to China and founded the Zen Buddhism, the dispute between the Zen Buddhism of China and the ancient Western Buddhism has never stopped. The dispute between Buddhism and Zen at that time was countless times more fierce than the current struggle between Taoism and Xuanism. It was common to cut down mountains and destroy temples, burn scriptures and destroy texts.

This struggle continued until the heyday of the Tang Dynasty. At that time, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism, Master Huineng, proposed “Enlightenment of the mind, instant enlightenment” and “Buddhism is in the world, and it is inseparable from worldly awareness”, making the supreme Buddhism that had always been on the altar become a family scripture that everyone could recite. Believers spread all over China at one time, and the Zen practice of “sudden enlightenment” produced a large number of eminent monks.

Moreover, in the early Tang Dynasty, during the period when Zen Buddhism and ancient Western Buddhism were fighting most fiercely, a story of Journey to the West that shocked the three realms took place.

However, that epic story is so long that it is not convenient to describe it in detail here. It is just that after the Journey to the West, Zen Buddhism flourished and its power completely overwhelmed ancient Western Buddhism. It took hundreds of years to drive all ancient Western Buddhism out of China. From then on, Zen Buddhism became the Buddhist sect in China.

However, ancient Western Buddhism had been rooted and preached in China for many years. When Zen Buddhism was swept away and expelled, it was not completely eliminated, and some of them slipped through the net and remained. The ancestor of Tianshaoshan was one of them.

Moreover, the remnants of Tianqiao Mountain have completely gone astray. It is not appropriate to call them the remnants of the ancient Buddha. Instead, they should be called the remnants of the ancient Buddha who fell into evil.

These people belonged to a branch of the charnel ground in ancient Western Buddhism. When they were expelled by Zen Buddhism, they hid in the Tianshao Mountain in western Hunan, where good and bad people mixed together, and remained anonymous for many years.

During this period, this group of remnants were blinded by hatred and discovered that Xiangxi was a treasure trove of corpses, so they tampered with the teachings and spells of the Shituo Forest, worshipped the corpses as Tuo, and changed their appearance to exist in the world under the name of Hanging Coffin Gorge in Tianqiao Mountain.

At first, these people wanted to take revenge on Zen Buddhism, and they would kill some monks from time to time to vent their anger. However, after thousands of years, these people had already discovered that Zen Buddhism was replacing Buddhism, and there was no news from Western religions, so they gave up the idea in their hearts, and completely became the corpse-refining evil way, becoming a local force in Xiangxi.

Until now, only the five major temple masters of Hanging Coffin Gorge and their successors know the secret of the ancient Buddha’s inheritance. The rest of the people just think that their own sect is the devil sect native to Xiangxi.

These five temples are the Gold, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth temples. Each temple has a secret method of refining corpses that has been passed down from generation to generation and was derived from a branch of the ancient Buddha’s cemetery. The combat power of the strange corpses refined is far superior to that when they were alive. They also have Buddha nature and are not afraid of thunder and fire. This is also the reason why Tianshao Mountain ranks first among the Xiangxi Demon Sect.

The inherited strange corpse of the Fire Temple is Hanba. In fact, this Hanba was also named to adapt to the native name of China. In a branch of the ancient Buddha’s cemetery, it was originally called Huolou Luo.

The previous Hanba in the Fire Temple died under the sword of the innocent boy. The Hanba was extremely difficult to refine, so it took one or two hundred years to refine it again. During this period, the status of the Fire Temple was getting worse and worse. Until today, the Hanba reappeared in the Fire Temple, and it was a six-handed and twelve-eyed Hanba, which was much more powerful than the previous three-eyed and four-armed Hanba.

Today, Cheng Xinzhan made an appointment with the owner of the water temple to discuss something.

It is said that water and fire cannot coexist, but in Tianqiao Mountain, the relationship between the Water Temple and the Fire Temple is the best. In the hunt for Long Boyan, the Water Temple can be said to have given its all-out help.

This is because among the five temple masters, only the Fire Temple Master and the Water Temple Master are both from the demon clan, so naturally they have to help each other.

Cheng Xinzhan seemed to be heading to the water temple alone, but in fact, Wu Qingbo and the ape corpse were in the corpse-raising basket around his waist. The corpse-raising basket itself was also a very useful magical weapon. As zombies also had magical powers and intelligence, they were not exactly the same as real dead things, so they could not be put into the cave stone and could only be put in a specially made corpse-raising basket.

The Water Temple is located in the north of Tianshao Mountain. It is extremely humid here, and water is always seeping out of the canyon walls, forming puddles of various sizes on the ground. As a result, in this darkness, there is always the sound of dripping rain, which keeps echoing in the crevices of the canyon, which is very annoying to hear.

The people who had received the order and were waiting in the Water Temple saw the Lord of the Fire Temple coming, and hurried forward to lead the way for him, walking in front with their heads down, not daring to speak.

But this person was very surprised. You know, although the Water and Fire Temples have a good relationship, the two temple masters usually find another place to meet because they hate the environment of each other’s temples. How come the master of the Fire Temple came in person this time?

After walking for a while, the person leading the way stopped, looked back and bowed,
“Master Shan, please come in. My master is waiting for you inside.”

The Fire Temple Mandrill is called Danxingwei.

Cheng Xinzhan looked up and saw a dark cave in front of him. There were five words engraved above the cave:
“The Temple of the Water Hell of Wujian”.

Cheng Xinzhan ignored the person leading the way and walked straight in.

The cave was pitch black. He walked about forty or fifty steps before he saw a faint blue light ahead. Then the view in front of him suddenly became clear and Cheng Xinzhan walked into a cave.

This cave is also very large, with a huge pool in the middle. Densely distributed algae are floating on the surface of the pool. These algae emit a faint blue light, which is the source of the light that illuminates the cave.

What is striking is that there is a female corpse leaning against the edge of the pool!
Now in the pool, only the upper body of the female corpse can be seen. The corpse is covered with thin silver fish scale armor on the chest and abdomen, and there is a huge silver-horned crown on the head. It is obvious at a glance that it is a murdered Miao girl.

The rest of the exposed flesh on the body was a pale white like a fish belly, and scale-like patterns were faintly visible on it. The woman had a pretty face and should have been a beautiful young girl when she was alive. However, at this moment, the woman’s wide-open eyes had no whites, but were pitch black, as if two ink beads were embedded in them.

However, in the mandrill’s memory, the part of the female corpse under the pool was even more horrifying, consisting of the bones of a dragon’s tail that was more than four meters long.

This is the inherited evil corpse of the Water Temple, “The Dragon Girl of the Sea of ​​Blood”.

Next to the Dragon Girl, there was a woman meditating. This woman had a seductive appearance, red lips, snake eyes, and a waist so thin that it could hardly be grasped. She was the owner of the Water Temple, a snake spirit in disguise, and her name was Xue Linglong.

The woman saw the mandrill coming in, but she didn’t move at all. She just said,

“I really didn’t expect you to come here in person.”

The mandrill still had that deep, hoarse voice.
“I came to thank you.”

Xue Linglong smiled.

“Why are you saying all this? We are all foreign monks. It is not easy to chant in Tianqiao Mountain. We should help each other. Besides, I have gained a lot from slaughtering the Longbo village. There is no need to thank me.” The mandrill nodded.
“Yes, we don’t need to thank each other, but Li Laogui is asking for too much. You know how much he asked for from me when Tulongbo asked him to help last time. Now, seeing that I have successfully refined Hanba, he is greedy again and came to me specifically to ask for benefits.”

Xue Linglong’s expression remained unchanged. Among the five temples, apart from the baboon in front of him, he was closest to Li Laogui from the Wood Temple. He was famous for his greed, so it was not surprising that he did such a thing. But, what did this have to do with him?
“My brother, did you come to me just to say something bad about Li Laogui? Or are you dissatisfied with me for helping Li Laogui to accompany you to Tulongbo’s village?”

The mandrill’s expression changed slightly, and his voice became more hurried. “You are doing me a great favor by inviting Li Laogui to come over. How could I be dissatisfied with you?”

Xue Linglong smiled and said, “Then why are you telling me all this? Do you want me to tell him not to go too far?”

The woman herself felt that it was impossible, and this was not Shan Xingwei’s character.

Sure enough, the mandrill shook his head and said,
“I owe you a lot of favors, so I naturally won’t bother you about this kind of thing. I’m here because I have a great favor to give you.”

Xue Linglong’s eyes flickered, “Oh? A great benefit?”

Judging from her tone, she didn’t seem to believe it.

Cheng Xinzhan naturally heard it, but he did not make any excuses. He just used the nail of his thumb to press into his index finger, drawing a drop of blood.

The smell of blood was floating in the water temple cave. After Xue Linglong smelled it, his face changed drastically. He disappeared from where he was and came to Cheng Xinzhan’s side. He put his nose close to Cheng Xinzhan’s finger and sniffed it carefully. Finally, he stretched out his tongue and licked it. Then his snake pupils shrank suddenly and looked at Cheng Xinzhan.

“You, why do you have dragon blood in your body!?”

Xue Linglong couldn’t help but be shocked. She was a member of the snake clan, and her desire for dragon blood, no, it should be said that her desire for dragon blood, dragon bones, dragon scales and other dragon treasures was extremely strong. And how could a mandrill like him possess something that she had been seeking for many years?

And judging from the magical power emanating from this dragon blood, this dragon blood is extremely pure and the master’s realm is also extremely high!

“Where did you get that?!”

Without waiting for Cheng Xinzhan to answer, she asked another question.

Cheng Xinzhan signaled her to be patient, cast a spell to heal the wound, and then said,

“This happened many years ago. I was going to the Southern Wasteland to find a fire corpse to refine the drought demon. There were many fire caves underground. As soon as I left the house, I bumped into Li Laogui. I asked him and found out that he was also going to the Southern Wasteland. After all, that was the territory of the Green Robe Patriarch, so we had to be on guard. So we agreed to walk together for a while and then go our separate ways when we got there.

“On the way south, we met a few monks from Fanjing Mountain and were about to kill them, but a young monk got scared and revealed a secret in exchange for his life.”

“What secret?”

Xue Linglong asked.

Cheng Xinzhan looked at her and said slowly,
“It is said that he discovered an ancient dragon trail under the Wujiang River, but he could not get in after he found it, so he made a special trip back to the sect to find help and explore the dragon trail again.”

“The dragon trace is real? Did you two go in?”

Xue Linglong stared into Cheng Xinzhan’s eyes.

Cheng Xinzhan nodded.

“what is inside?”

She asked closely, and she knew what happened to those little monks without asking.

“The dragon’s tracks are very secretive and already very dilapidated. It seems that it was a cave that a wounded dragon temporarily opened up to heal its wounds. After a long time, the spiritual ban gradually became ineffective, and the cave collapsed, and was seen by the little monk who happened to pass by.

“The injured dragon was too badly injured and died. I don’t know if it was because of the long time or some other misfortune. No magical treasures were left behind, and no dragon balls were found either. There was only dragon blood that turned into blood crystals and dragon bones that had turned into jade.”

“What about the dragon bone?!”

Xue Linglong tightly grasped Cheng Xinzhan’s hand and said, “My dear brother, take out the dragon bone. I will obey you!”

Cheng Xinzhan looked at Xue Linglong like this, his mind was as clear as a mirror. He knew too well how attractive a genuine dragon bone would be to Xue Linglong. If she really got the dragon bone, then the evil corpse of the dragon girl next to her might really be comparable to the fourth realm.

But he just shook his head. “At that time, I hadn’t yet refined the Hanba, but he had the Mumei. There were only three blood crystals, but a whole dragon bone. Who do you think took the dragon bone?”

Xue Linglong’s body stiffened, and she slowly loosened her hand. After a long silence, she said,

“No wonder my brother started to criticize Li Laogui as soon as he came in. It turns out that he was waiting for his sister here. It’s just that you two have been hiding it from me for a long time. The dragon bones and blood are icing on the cake for you two, but they are a timely help for me!

“Dragon blood can improve my bloodline, but it’s fine for you to take dragon blood, brother. It can invigorate blood and strengthen strength. But, but what is Li Xiahuai going to do with the dragon bone? To refine weapons? Can he refine it?”

Cheng Xinzhan also shook his head in embarrassment.
“Sister, we swore an oath in Dragon Trace that after we get out, no one will miss each other, and no one will tell anyone about this.”

Xue Linglong looked at Cheng Xinzhan and asked, “Why is brother willing to spread the news now?”

Cheng Xinzhan snorted coldly.
“I have just told my sister that when Old Ghost Li saw that I successfully refined the Hanba, he got angry and came to me specifically, saying that I was able to obtain the Longbo giant corpse only because of his help, so the reward I gave him before was not enough, and he even came to ask for benefits, asking if there were any blood crystals left. How could I bear this?

“We agreed not to worry about each other, and I did it, but he broke his promise. In this case, it’s no wonder that I told my sister about the dragon bone.”

Xue Linglong’s eyes flickered and she looked at Cheng Xinzhan, then asked,

“So what does brother mean? Do you want to go with your sister to persuade Li Laogui?”

“Ah!”

Cheng Xinzhan sneered.
“Persuade, what’s there to persuade, sister? The human race often says ‘those who are not of our race must have different hearts’. The three of them have been wary of the two of us for a long time. Moreover, Master has passed away for so many years, and the position of the leader of Tianjiao Mountain should be re-discussed. At this time, are you still just persuading me?”

(End of this chapter)