Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Step by step, Yan Xu tentatively approached, the Grotto-Heaven shook, and he knew that his next attack would be a successful strike.
This was the essence of who Yan Xu is, that despite his respect for Chen Lian, he would never hesitate in the slightest.
He was the only person in the world who caught Shenyang’s flaw unmistakably, that is his ever-growing nostalgia and limitless desire for the mortal realm.
Shen Lian culminated and attained immortality, though he did not regard mortal beings as weak and with contempt, and found the aspiration of seeking relief from endless suffering akin to a hobby, unlike learned Buddhist and Daoist masters who were willing to forsake everything in order to attain nirvana.
This was not who Shen Lian is. He shared a love for life that was actually similar to that of YanXu. The both of them threw themselves into the unknown, braved new challenges and fulfilled their curiosity with high spirits.
It was impossible to detect Shen Lian’s love for life through his indifferent demeanor. YanXu knew to take advantage of Shen Lian’s deep-seated love towards life, how he regarded mortals as equals, to draw out his demonic obstacles, and trap it in a demonic cocoon.
Shen Lian soon realized the reason for the appearance of his demonic obstacles. He should have abandoned those weaknesses and became a pure celestial, complete without hindrance, with complete freedom. He felt that the void in his soul can even be cured after abandoning what he always considered to be a ‘human’ part of himself.
But at that time, he would be a different Shenlian, a ‘Shenlian’ that was truly rid of all emotional attachment.
Only he did not even have the slightest hesitation, he reminisced every person and incident worth remembering – encountered throughout his lifetime and the night where he drank with Bai Yufei on Qing Xia Temple.
‘How often does one get to drink with the accompaniment of song and dance; like the morning dew that dissipates, how fast days go by’
Although life could be a bitter thing, he was happy.
In life laid finite joy, amongst it, an infinite joy.
He, Shenlian, lived a life pursuing that infinite joy, being the person he truly wanted to be.
Shen Lian’s mind became enlightened towards this. His thoughts have seemingly transcended through endless time and space and caught a glimpse of Mount Lun Tai Fang cun, and Cave Xie Yue San xing.
Above the Yaotai, manifested an old man with white beard and hair, and immediately he understood the old man’s identity as the ‘Patriarch Bodhi’.
Seeing the grandmaster, his first impression was that the grandmaster will never change, in another word – everlasting.
When Shen Lian stared at the grandmaster above the yaotai, the grandmaster seemed to be staring back, he then glanced at the disciples under him and said, “This time we will talk about how to conquer your mind.”
All the disciples nodded, composed themselves as they awaited his sermon.
Awed, Shen Lian waited eagerly to hear what the Patriarch would say next.
The Patriarch started by talking about the “mind”. He said that the mind was the origin of all spiritual power: limitless, capable of surpassing time. Conquering it, one would naturally have boundless spiritual power to deal with the world’s disasters.
After the Patriarch finished speaking on this, he began to talk about mantras.
The start of the mantra enlightened Shen Lian once again, it began with a quote ‘To stop is to have stability, to have stability is to have found tranquility.’.
This was a classical phrase of Confucianism, but it has been adopted by the Patriarch Bodhi as a mantra. Of course, ultimately, it was not only limited to that well-known classic. With the narration of the mantra, Shen Lian’s thought seemed to enter an unknown place. He could not describe it. He felt his thoughts were increasingly drifting away, slowly fading into oblivion. He found himself unable to form concrete thoughts.
All of a sudden, yanked from that state of mind, his mind roiled like water. Bodhi’s grandmaster looked at him and said: “Is it understood? This is how you conquer your mind”
Of course, Shen Lian did not fully comprehend what was said, he did not understand what he meant by “this is how”, but still he vaguely understood some parts of what has transpired, but his understanding was murky and lacked clarity.
Just then, the grandmaster placed a finger on Shen Lian, as he did it, a strange atmosphere descended upon him and the grandmaster said: “The talk will end here today.”
Shen Lian jolted awake, seemingly returned to reality, or it would be that he travelled from the past to present, the light of life that shone from him under that influence shone no more, although an infinity of thoughts raced through his mind, they were calm and unobtrusive, all at once these different thoughts led him to experience a whirlwind of different things.
He thought of the full moon, how there were different phases when different parts were illuminated, creating different angles, but the moon was in fact always spherical. The parts that are illuminated were merely the results of an observer’s perspective.
Like a moon, what he thought to be imperfect was only his perception, and Bodhisattva’s great spiritual influence cleared his mind of the facades.
It is ironic that he would fall for the illusions of truth.
He unsheathed the long sword in hand, the vital force flowed to the gleam of the sword, the demonic cocoon disintegrated and became debris. He would not abandon the mortal realm, which he has always watched over. This was always a part of what he believed in, and it did not clash with his conscience.
There was no need for him to give that up, much less the need to get worked up about it.
Yan Xu’s figure could be seen high along the skyline as the power of his palm technique split the sky.Shen Lian extended his sword in retaliation, and though Yan Xu expended all of his strength into that one strike, it was slowly driven back by the gleam of the sword.
Yan Xuan felt an ancient vital force emanated from Shen Lian’s gleam of the sword, and it melded with the grotto-heaven, forming an unstoppable force that impacted Yan Xu and the Free Form Incarnation he was conjuring.
At that moment, he had an infinite amount of demonic thoughts, he channeled it into an infinite and unstoppable supernatural power. And now, it has all come to a halt.
The gleam emitted from the sword stilled his thoughts, along with the core of his conscience.
This is akin to a fish that swam freely in the water. Suddenly the water condensed and turned into cold hard ice.
The aura did not dissipate, and as karma would have it, it had found every identity he has hidden within heaven and earth.
As the grotto-heaven collapsed, Yan Xu was taken aback by surprise, as his magical body dissipated. At the same time, many people in the mortal world died without cause.
Song Qingyi watched the rip in the space-time continuum collapsed into itself in the sky from the surface of the sea. The Lingtai Fangcun mountain finally disappeared. The magical sword that glowed with a rainbow of colors fell from the space-time continuum and wept.
Song Qingyi held it in his hands and murmured, “What happened to your master?”
After the disappearance of the evil lord – Yan Xu, and the priest of QingXuan – Shen, the Demonic Order finally collapsed. What was left was the pond of blood teleportation technique left behind by the evil lord, it was researched and studied by the humans. And since then, long-distance communication had not been a problem for the monk.
After the disappearance of zhenren Shen, the people of the world thought that Qing Xuan Daoist sect would once again start deteriorating. However, a group of surviving cultists, who tried to provoke Qing Xuan, but was trapped in a bell and shaken until they suffered a horrible death, proving that within Qing Xuan there still exist people who possess powerful abilities equal to an immortal zhenren.
Later, from time to time, it was seen that there were two dragons flying in Mount Qing Xuan, which discouraged the reckless from disrespecting Qing Xuan.
Whereas, Luoism’s sacred saintess – Zhao Xiao Yu, was last seen taking a small boat, heading to a TianHua continent, a faraway place separated by an ocean. Since then, no one knew her whereabouts.
Under the support of the half-dead Dengfeng Taoist priest and the Taoist priestess of divine light, Guangqing, where they learn from Qing Xuan, to focus on sharpening the disciples’ minds. In the course of several decades when it seems like it has resurged, the world will gradually replace the position of Tai Su sect, and list Guang Qing as one of the Four Main Daoist Sects.
However, many years have passed. Although celestials rose to this world again, no one can transcend beyond the mortal world.
A few of the eight Buddhist masters who were close to the state of bodhisattva spent their whole lives training, yet unable to continue any further, but their stubbornness eventually led them down the wrong path, entering into Psychosis, with a heart filled with regrets and in a permanent state of limbo, neither alive nor dead.
Qing Xuan Shen zhenren and the Demon Lord Yan Xu were believed to be the last two people in the world to transcended beyond the mortal world, both of which became legends.
