Chapter 298: Unceasing Fist
Before Chen Ping'an threw his first punch.
The old man on the clouds wore a Five Peaks Crown on his head, adorned with the true form diagrams of the five sacred mountains, shimmering with flowing light and color, faintly emitting sounds of pine waves, crane cries, and a mountain stream babbling.
The old man guided the sea of clouds downward, as if commanding a mighty army bearing down on a tiny place. Naturally, he was confident. The old man squinted toward the training grounds of Flying Eagle Fort, and chuckled to himself. A mere child dared to shake a great tree with the strength of an ant—he truly did not know his place. The ghost infant gestating within the heart of the fort mistress—he and his disciple had planned for nearly forty years, and were determined to obtain it. The hardships, sacrifices, and immense expenditures, along with the arcane and coincidental opportunities, were not for outsiders to know.
The original purpose for building Flying Eagle Fort, hidden in the mountains, had likely long since been buried with its first master. But the old man knew that in the central region of Indus Continent, the two largest immortal aristocratic clans, the Divination Sect and Peace Mountain, had two Earth Immortals who clashed and fought fiercely. The Golden Core cultivator from Divination Sect never expected that the cultivator from Peace Mountain he had provoked was actually a hidden Nascent Soul grandmaster!
The latter, knowing his own lifespan was nearly over and having no hope of breaking through to the next realm, had settled his affairs and left his sect to wander the world. Though his body and soul were both decayed, a starved camel was still bigger than a horse. He struck the Divination Sect Golden Core cultivator so severely that the latter nearly died on the spot. The latter fled all the way, but was still intercepted by the Peace Mountain Nascent Soul in the area now known as Flying Eagle Fort. The Nascent Soul cultivator, having the upper hand, showed no regard for the Divination Sect and was determined to kill the Golden Core cultivator.
Seeing no hope of escape, the Golden Core cultivator resolved to die together with his enemy. He used a forbidden technique of the Divination Sect. Since he was at the end of his strength, the orthodox sect technique of inviting gods and descending true deities—summoning those mighty spirits—had little chance of success. So, at the cost of all his lifeblood and essence, he summoned an ancient demon recorded in the secret texts of the Divination Sect. The demon stood over ten zhang tall, its yin-sha energy condensed into physical form, like a suit of pitch-black heavy armor. In truth, the Golden Core cultivator had already died after summoning the demon, and his hollowed-out body turned to ash, scattering across heaven and earth.
The Nascent Soul cultivator from Peace Mountain could have chosen to retreat from the battlefield, but in the end, he decided to fight the ancient demon to the death. He unleashed one magic treasure after another, raining spells onto the demon. The old cultivator's skin split and flesh tore, his soul wavered, until his golden core shattered. His yin spirit, having left his residence in the dantian via the aperture, was the first to fall in battle. Yet the Nascent Soul cultivator still shouted with exhilaration and perished together with the demon's incarnation that had come to the mortal world.
That shocking battle turned the land beneath their feet, for a hundred miles around, thick with yin energy, no less than an ancient battlefield where over a hundred thousand martial warriors were buried.
The Nascent Soul cultivator from Peace Mountain was still worried about the mortal world. Fearing that the yin energy dispersing would affect the qi fortune of the surrounding thousand miles, his remnant soul stubbornly lingered on. He found a young woodcutter who had come into the mountains to cut firewood, and bestowed upon him a secret method of suppression, as well as a martial technique—a blade art of pure, unyielding yang. The Nascent Soul cultivator also ordered the young woodcutter to build a castle here, to spread his lineage, and use the living yang energy of pure martial descendants to suppress the yin energy. At the same time, the descendants of the Huan clan were to practice that blade art, as the invisible yin energy would serve as the perfect whetstone. The martial progress of the Huan clan disciples would often achieve twice the results with half the effort. This established Flying Eagle Fort's status in the martial world for generations to come, producing one genius after another and leading the martial arts circle.
Including Old Master Huan, several generations of fort masters, after achieving success in martial arts, would ostensibly travel the martial world to win renown for Flying Eagle Fort, but in truth, they secretly traversed famous mountains and great rivers seeking immortals, hoping to find a permanent solution to the excessive yin energy in the fort. But Old Master Huan died under mysterious circumstances back then, and his son Huan Yang, who was not particularly gifted in martial arts, had to hastily take over as fort master. Soon after, demonic cultivators from Agarwood Kingdom allied to attack Flying Eagle Fort. Thus, the thread of that immortal fortune involving the Nascent Soul deity and the ancestral woodcutter was broken. Many relationships painstakingly cultivated by previous generations also came to nothing. For example, the bond of incense friendship between Old Master Huan and the master of the young Daoist Huang Shang was completely unknown to Huan Yang, who instead had to seek help from friends in the capital. Even the existence of the two stone lions at the temple gate remained unknown to everyone in Flying Eagle Fort. Thus came this great calamity.
The high-crowned old man, a notorious demonic cultivator in central Indus Continent, was once a top-tier Golden Core grandmaster with exceptional combat power. As a rogue cultivator, he considered himself no less than the Golden Core cultivators of the Divination Sect or Peace Mountain. But after his feat of killing two Dragon Gate cultivators from Peace Mountain, he quickly faced a thunderous pursuit from Peace Mountain. A young Golden Core cultivator from Peace Mountain came down from the mountain alone, chasing him for ten thousand miles, stripping him of everything he had, even shattering his last storage item. In the end, the old man had to sacrifice half his cultivation and his physical body to pull the wool over his opponent's eyes, barely escaping death from that young cultivator who seemed like a celestial deity.
With deep hatred in his heart, the old man constantly thought of taking revenge on Peace Mountain. Thus came this decades-long, meticulously planned scheme at Flying Eagle Fort. First, he took the fort mistress, who had cultivation aptitude, when she was young. The old man, who had fallen back to the Dragon Gate realm, personally took action, quietly shattering her Longevity Bridge—shattering it without breaking it completely, leaving thousands of cracks, except for the "bridge segment" at her heart, which remained intact. This made her like a ceramic jar constantly absorbing yin energy from the earth, actively gathering it into the "spring eye" at her heart. Finally, guided by the old man's secret arts, the ghost infant, hungry and waiting, was gestated inside her.
Once it succeeded, the ghost infant would burst through her heart and emerge. Then, by finding a few remote small kingdoms far from the watchful eyes of the mountain cultivators, the old man, still a Dragon Gate cultivator, could easily become a national advisor, or set up puppet rulers, or even secretly control the monarchs of those small kingdoms. He would instigate great wars to feed the ghost infant. After a hundred years, the ghost infant would ascend to Earth Immortal. Even the deeply entrenched Peace Mountain, though not necessarily destroyed by its attacks, would certainly be crippled and severely wounded.
In the grudges between mountain cultivators, a hundred years was truly not long.
As for the lives and deaths of mortal commoners caught in these feuds, some cared not at all, like the old man on the clouds. But others did care, like that Nascent Soul cultivator from Peace Mountain.
Yet even such a compassionate Celestial Immortal was still unable to ascend to the Upper Five Realms, and in the end could only wait for death. This also showed that the Great Dao was merciless, indifferent to human good and evil.
The high-crowned old man on the clouds, after the young martial artist threw three punches, still found it absurdly amusing. No matter how fierce the momentum, without a solid realm as support, it was merely a beautiful castle in the air. But the old man truly coveted the boy's golden dharma robe. It was an unexpected windfall—such a treasure on a naive young adventurer who didn't know to value his life.
A good item, indeed a good item. It might even be a genuine immortal magic treasure.
Could it be that fortunes had turned, and he was finally on the rise? No longer needing to be a rat burrowing underground, and able to restore his former glory sooner than expected?
As for whether the golden-robed youth was a descendant of an immortal clan, the high-crowned old man couldn't care less. He had already torn all pretense with Peace Mountain. When you owe many debts, an extra one doesn't weigh you down!
As the black clouds descended, nearly everyone in Flying Eagle Fort began to feel dizzy. The weak and elderly, women and children with insufficient yang energy, started vomiting inside their homes. In streets and alleys, from high roofs to low courtyards, weeping sounds were unbroken. Many of the strong young men of the fort, who practiced martial arts, stared up in a daze at the pitch-black sea of clouds pressing down upon them. They felt as if their limbs and bones would be crushed to powder. Some young martial artists with unsteady minds had no will to resist at all, their bodies trembling. Even if they managed to escape today, their martial path would be severed.
Following the earthquake-like rumbling, some noticed that in the direction of the training grounds, amidst the flying dust, a magnificent scene of golden radiance was unfolding. One after another, fist auras like rainbows grew larger and larger—first as thick as an arm, then the size of a bowl, then as wide as a well mouth, increasing in size with each strike, breaking through obstacles like splitting bamboo. Again and again, they shot toward the sky, as if someone was punching at the sea of clouds.
Someone couldn't help but think: That person must be relying on his high martial arts to dare throw such punches.
On the training ground.
Chen Ping'an did not stand still and punch straight up. After each punch, he quickly shifted position. The six-step walking stance of Mountain-Toppling Fist, combined with the Eighteen Stops of Sword Qi, using the Cloud-Steam Great Marsh style as his frame, and the Divine Drummer Beats the Drum as his fist intent.
After the tenth punch, the momentum of his fist had completely surpassed the shaking of the ground from his stomps.
A fist aura surged into the sky, carrying whistling wind and thunder. The roof tiles around the training ground, from the inside outward, layer by layer, cracked with a sharp, splintering sound.
With Chen Ping'an at the center, the surrounding walls were covered with cracked webs like spider silk, tangled and chaotic.
The bluestone ground of the training ground was already pitted and scarred, with ten pits of varying depths from his stomps.
The first nine punches, though each more formidable than the last, had only pierced through the sea of clouds. But the tenth punch shot straight toward the cushion where the high-crowned old man sat. Though the old man felt a slight chill in his heart, silently marking the youth as someone who must be killed, and killed first, he didn't find this particular fist too troublesome. Instead, a hint of competitiveness arose in him. He sneered, stretched out one hand, and a large mass of emerald green light blossomed. He flipped his palm and pressed down, just in time to meet the fist aura that had torn through the black sea of clouds.
With a thunderous boom, the cushion wobbled slightly, but the entire sea of clouds beneath the old man shook violently.
The fist aura from the training ground and the brilliant green light lingering around the old man's palm both shattered simultaneously, scattering into thousands of points of starlight. The fist aura dispersed into the nearby clouds, making the originally deathly black sea of clouds look like an inkstone where a pinch of golden powder had been sprinkled, hissing and sizzling with burning sounds.
The old man shook his wrist. Through the hole in the clouds punched open by the fist aura, along the pillar of light that poured down from above, he looked down at the training ground, less than thirty zhang away, and said with a sinister laugh, "Not bad, kid. At your age, among the mortals, you'd be a martial grandmaster ruling one side. But instead of staying in your own lane in the martial world, you have to oppose me. How utterly ignorant of the immensity of heaven and earth!"
As he spoke, the high-crowned old man raised one hand, two fingers together, and lightly traced near the Five Peaks Crown adorned with the true form diagrams. He extracted a strand of the true essence of an ancient eastern sacred mountain, and let it fall rapidly through the hole. At first, it was a miniature mountain the size of a thumb, but by the time it descended beside him, it was already no smaller than his cushion. After sliding out of the cloud hole, it grew as large as a desk. The old man laughed wildly, filled with glee. "After playing the shrinking turtle for so many years, heaven has not failed me! As long as I grind your flesh, blood, and essence to nothing, the ghost infant might even break through its heart barrier and reach the Observation Sea realm the moment it appears!"
On the training ground, Chen Ping'an watched the mountain crashing down from the sky without a trace of fear. Back then, at the old Sun clan residence in Old Dragon City, the cloud-sea flood dragon had charged at him with no less momentum than this immortal technique. Hadn't he still thrown his punches?
His qi surged forth, vast and mighty.
His fist intent was vigorous and powerful, believing that one fist could break ten thousand spells.
The golden dharma robe fluttered and billowed, making the boy from Mud Vase Alley look, for the first time in his life, like a mountain immortal.