Embers of Sword

Chapter 597 I Am Not Me

"You...killed the sect leader?"

Deng Baiyi's face turned deathly pale.

She instinctively wanted to draw the dagger from her waist, but she quickly abandoned the idea.

A Qi Master who wants to contend with the Yang God?

That's ridiculous.

Chongkan could kill her with just a wisp of divine thought.

but……

Even now, Deng Baiyi still doesn't sense any crisis.

Crash.

The Grand Master's black robe billowed in the wind as he gazed at the empty prayer mat, a faint, almost imperceptible sadness flashing across his eyes.

Chongkan gave a soft "hmm".

Tianyuan Mountain fell silent once again. To Deng Baiyi's surprise, the Great Master showed no intention of making a move... Deng Baiyi knew the reason for the current conflict among the Daoist sects. Given the Great Master's personality, since he had caught her trespassing into the forbidden area, he should not have held back.

"It was indeed 'I' who killed the sect leader."

Chongkan said softly, "But it's not the 'me' you see before you."

The Great Master paused, then said self-deprecatingly, "I am me, yet I am not me."

Deng Baiyi looked at the Great Master with a blank expression.

She didn't quite understand what that sentence meant...

But the next moment, she understood.

A sudden gust of wind blew, stirring up the weeds and grass clippings on the ground.

These bits of grass fell onto the black robe of the shrine, which churned like ocean waves.

Then... it passed straight through.

"this?"

Deng Baiyi's pupils contracted, and an unbelievable conjecture surfaced in her mind.

"good."

Chongkan seemed to see through the woman's thoughts and chuckled softly: "What you see of me right now... is just a wisp of divine consciousness. To be precise, it is an incomplete 'avatar'."

"One breath... transforms into the Three Pure Ones?"

For some reason, Deng Baiyi thought of this supernatural power.

Although her cultivation level was mediocre, she had at least read through all the Taoist classics.

She knew that "One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones" was the most powerful divine ability within Taoism, and that Grand Master Chongkan was the master of this ability. Legend has it that cultivating this technique requires enduring immense suffering, splitting one's soul into three parts, corresponding to the three divine forms of Heaven, Earth, and Man. Over the years, many geniuses in Taoism have attempted to cultivate this method, but all have ended in failure.

The pain of separation of the soul and spirit is something that ordinary people cannot bear!

This requires not only perseverance, but also talent!
Even the current sect leader, Xiaoyaozi, has not been able to cultivate "One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones"!
But... Chongkan succeeded.

"You just said your name is Deng Baiyi?"

The Great Master scrutinized the young woman before him.

A hint of appreciation flickered in his eyes.

He kept his distance, slowly sat down, placed his hands on his knees, and said gently, "You are a newly accepted disciple of Tianxiazhai. You don't need to feel inferior... You are much better than you just said. At least, you are smarter than I imagined."

……

……

"The One Qi Transforms into the Three Pure Ones is the most difficult supernatural power to cultivate in the history of Taoism."

"The more powerful the supernatural ability, the greater the price that must be paid to cultivate it."

"The six supernatural powers of Buddhism are like this, and so is the transformation of one breath into three pure beings."

"If we compare the primordial energy within a cultivator's body to a pool, the higher the cultivation level, the larger the pool becomes... Qi Refining is a small stream, a grotto-heaven is a small pool, and reaching the Yang God Realm is like a vast lake!"

"One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones... It can turn one lake into three." "But the price to pay is that the soul will also be divided, one into three."

A gentle breeze blows, and the wild grasses flutter in the wind.

The Great Master spoke in a gentle voice, slowly.

Deng Baiyi couldn't help but interrupt, "One becomes three? Wouldn't that mean the soul would split apart?"

"This is the difficulty of this supernatural power."

Chongkan paused for a moment and said, “Primordial energy is important, but the soul is the foundation of a person. What use is it if you have a lot of primordial energy but your soul is disordered? The initial cultivation of One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones is not too difficult, but the further you go, the greater the power that the soul needs to bear... You can understand it as the more powerful the ‘Three Pure Ones’ are, the more distracting thoughts they become.”

"And distracting thoughts can also be divided into good and evil."

"Just like yin and yang, they are two separate aspects that repel each other yet merge with each other."

There are no saints in the world. Even the most wicked person may occasionally have a fleeting thought of kindness. Similarly... even the most virtuous person may have evil thoughts.

Hear this.

Deng Baiyi had already vaguely guessed what would happen next.

"After the battle of drinking poison ended, my senior brother, the sect leader, went into seclusion on Tianyuan Mountain. Out of trust, he entrusted me with the sole authority to enter and leave Tianyuan."

Chongkan murmured softly, "At that time, my 'One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones' cultivation was at a critical stage. I wanted to use the rich spiritual energy of Tianyuan Mountain to complete the breakthrough... So I went into seclusion in the back mountain. At that time, I was immersed in the joy of my supernatural power being about to be perfected, but little did I know that disaster had already occurred. Going into seclusion in Tianyuan was the worst decision I ever made in my life."

"In a sense, I have indeed achieved the One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones."

"But... I failed too."

A self-deprecating smile appeared in Chongkan's eyes.

"When the supernatural power was about to be completed, due to the separation of the soul, 'I' and another 'I' could not be united, and a great battle broke out in Tianyuan Mountain."

The Great Master closed his eyes, his voice somber.

Then came a long silence.

"You... have been defeated..."

Deng Baiyi had already guessed the ending. She first sighed, and then couldn't help but ask, "So... there are actually two Grand Master Chongkan? The one outside... is the evil thought that split off from the One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones?"

"You can't say that. Are there any purely evil people in this world?"

Chongkan shook his head and said sincerely, "Good and evil are intertwined in people's hearts, like muddy water. Even if separated, they are still mixed and difficult to clear."

If the great master outside is a manifestation of pure evil.

Over these sixty long years, the Taoist community has been turned upside down.

No matter how heinous Chongkan's current actions of extracting dragon veins may be, they cannot erase his past achievements.

During the years that the sect leader was in seclusion, Chongkan indeed managed the Taoist sect very well.

"Rather than saying that he is a collection of evil thoughts, it is more accurate to say that he symbolizes the 'paranoid and insane' side of the deity."

Chongkan sighed softly: "My senior brother and I fought for many years during our cultivation, and we never won a single battle... I have always held onto this obsession in my heart, hoping to defeat my senior brother even once."

Therefore.

Only by cultivating in a sacred shrine can one achieve the transformation of one's vital energy into the Three Pure Ones.

Deng Baiyi immediately understood the root cause of this chaos within the Taoist sects...

No wonder Senior Junshan told him that after reincarnation and cultivation, he always felt that Senior Brother Chongkan was a different person.

After the Battle of Tianyuan Mountain.

Chongkan, the avatar who leads the Daoist sect, has only one obsession: if he cannot cultivate to the level of Xiaoyaozi in his previous life, then he will lead the Daoist sect to a higher level... It is because of this obsession that he made the "gamble" of betting all the Daoist sect's fortune and dragon veins on Yueyin Cave.

If this dragon vein can restore the prosperous era of Da Chu a thousand years ago, then he will undoubtedly be the number one contributor!
When Xiaoyaozi was in power, the Taoist sect was already the most powerful in the world.

Chongkan wants to win.

That leaves only this one method.

Let the Taoist sect... return to a thousand years ago!
……

……

(PS: This chapter is 2 words, there will be more tonight. I'll try to update 8 words today. Sorry, asking for votes has become an instinct... I haven't been updating much lately, so I won't ask for votes anymore. Please vote if you enjoy reading.)
(End of this chapter)