Open an immortal path in the human realm?
Regather the spiritual essence of heaven and earth?
A golden age of cultivation?
Longevity, power, authority that surpassed the mortal world—
All of it was no longer an unreachable fantasy, no longer merely a story passed down in novels!
The breathing of every minister grew heavy.
Many eyes burned with fervor; they could hardly restrain themselves from asking how one was to begin “cultivating immortality,” and whether they themselves possessed the destined affinity for it.
Yet the Chongzhen Emperor merely waved a hand, a perfectly measured trace of weariness appearing on his face.
“The specific details cannot be explained in a single day. The hour is late, and We must also enter quiet cultivation to consolidate Our gains.”
He rose and said,
“At tomorrow’s court assembly, We shall explain it to you ministers in detail.”
With that, Chongzhen paid no further heed to the ministers’ reactions, only brushing his Daoist robe with a sweep of his hand.
The civil and military officials, their minds filled with wild imaginings, could only be ushered out of Yongshou Palace with great reluctance.
Afterward, the Chongzhen Emperor entered the warm side chamber.
Wang Chengen knew the Son of Heaven’s habits and said to the eunuchs and palace maids following behind,
“All of you withdraw. His Majesty is going into quiet cultivation. Without summons, no one is to disturb him.”
Most of the attendants bowed in assent and silently withdrew.
Only one person slowed his steps, a fawning smile piling onto his face.
It was none other than Gao Qiqian, one of the eunuchs supervising the capital garrison.
Relying on the emperor’s considerable trust in him, as well as his command over part of the military authority, he thought to take advantage of his proximity—
If he could extract even a little secret to immortal cultivation from the emperor before tomorrow’s court assembly, even the tiniest bit, he would be ahead of the outer court!
He stepped closer and raised his shrill voice.
“Imperial Lord, you have labored all day. This servant—”
Before he could finish, Wang Chengen shot Gao Qiqian a fierce glare in warning.
Pierced by that gaze, Gao Qiqian’s ingratiating words immediately stuck in his throat. He could only follow the others out in resentment.
The instant he turned away, a flash of unconcealable jealousy and hatred toward Wang Chengen passed through his eyes.
‘Dog-like thing. He only dares suppress me like this because he has seniority as an old servant from the prince’s estate!’
The silent struggle between the eunuchs was naturally reflected without omission in the Chongzhen Emperor’s spiritual sense.
At present, he had no time to bother with the thoughts of such minor figures.
Once the chamber door closed, cutting off inside from outside—
“Huff…”
He practically staggered to the side of the couch. His body went limp, and he collapsed.
Within his dantian, the spiritual power that had originally been stored like a mountain spring was now nearly exhausted to the bottom, with only a few wisps of spiritual energy as fine as drifting threads remaining.
“At the first level of Fetal Breathing, casting five spells in succession nearly drains all my spiritual power…”
Chongzhen pondered carefully over the spells he had cast today.
The spiritual power consumed by the [Condensed Spirit Arrow], [Silencing Art], and [Fetching Objects Through the Air] had in truth amounted to only about thirty percent.
The true great drain had been Mao Wenlong’s corpse.
Chongzhen lifted his arm.
With a soft rustling sound, several little figures roughly the length of a finger, cut from dark-yellow straw paper, slipped from his sleeve and fell onto the brocade couch.
This spell was called [Cutting Paper into Men], a rather practical low-level spell.
A cultivator poured his own spiritual power into specially made talisman paper, cut it into the desired shape, and could then drive the paper figures to perform actions ranging from simple to complex.
With Chongzhen’s current cultivation, not only were these paper figures limited in strength, they had no intelligence to speak of and could only execute the most basic commands.
At the time, he had secretly hidden several such little paper figures beneath Mao Wenlong’s rotting official robes and corpse using the technique of [Fetching Objects Through the Air].
Through their connection of mind and spirit, he had driven the paper figures to exert force together, creating the illusion that the corpse had “sat up by itself” and slowly “turned its head.”
As for making Mao Wenlong speak, that was thanks to the minor art [Voice-Mimicry Formula].
He only needed to attach the spell to one of the paper figures and command it to crawl into the corpse’s mouth, and it could simulate a voice.
Even if the tone did not match Mao Wenlong’s in life, it was of no great consequence.
The corpse’s throat had long since rotted; was it not perfectly normal for its speech to be hoarse and difficult to distinguish?
Of course, resurrecting Mao Wenlong himself was, in theory, also possible.
It was merely that Chongzhen could not do it.
For one thing, the Heavenly Dao of this world had not yet flourished, and the [Dao of the Soul] had not been created. Once a person died, their soul would automatically transform into yin energy.
Having been dead for half a year, Mao Wenlong’s soul was long gone.
Furthermore, spells of resurrection were not something a Fetal Breathing rookie could cast.
“In the end, it was still a trick…”
The Chongzhen Emperor closed his eyes, resting to recover his strength while savoring the scene from earlier.
The ministers’ transformation from terror and doubt to shock and desire was clearly reflected in his mind.
“But the effect was even better than I expected.”
The temptation of immortal cultivation was enough to make these bureaucrats, mired in struggles for power, temporarily set aside their prejudices and shift their attention to an entirely new path.
Only when the night had deepened and all was silent did the Chongzhen Emperor open his eyes again.
Though his exhaustion had not completely vanished, his spirit had improved considerably.
He rose and went to one side of the warm chamber, looking up toward the roof.
There was a small skylight unlike the usual style, one he had ordered craftsmen to specially open not long after he had “awakened” at the beginning of the year.
With a slight movement of his will, [Fetching Objects Through the Air] pushed open the skylight’s latch.
A cold night wind instantly poured in.
Along with it descended a patch of clear, bright moonlight.
The Chongzhen Emperor sat cross-legged on the couch, facing the skylight, allowing the watery moonlight to envelop his entire body.
His hands formed a seal and rested upon his knees. Following the essentials of his previous life’s cultivation method, the Chenxing Guizang Taihe Longevity Art, he slowly breathed in and out.
His consciousness sank into his dantian, like a tiny vortex catching and drawing in the thin spiritual energy diffused throughout heaven and earth.
Especially the “moonlight essence” contained within the moonlight.
The process was slow and difficult.
The spiritual energy of this world was not only appallingly low in concentration, its quality was also extremely inert, like turbid water mixed with countless grains of sand, requiring tremendous mental effort to purify.
Compared to the spiritual essence of heaven and earth in the cultivation world of his previous life, which had nearly condensed into mist and was lively and pure, this place was simply a desert for cultivators.
A night passed quietly in this dull and sluggish process of drawing in energy.
When a faint fish-belly white appeared on the eastern horizon, the Chongzhen Emperor slowly ended his practice and opened his eyes.
Sensing that the spiritual power in his dantian had recovered to about seventy or eighty percent, he did not feel joy. Instead, he sighed softly.
“Never mind that the concentration of spiritual energy is low; its quality is truly too poor as well.”
Chongzhen murmured with emotion, his gaze passing through the skylight toward the moon that was about to fade from sight.
He recalled the discussions in the cultivation world of his previous life regarding the essence of the sun and moon.
At that time, the sect’s ancient texts recorded that throughout the myriad heavens and worlds, the stars all possessed different attributes.
In the great world where he had lived, the bright moon in the night sky was no ordinary satellite, but a true ancient star that radiated pure power of supreme yin.
Its volume was even comparable to that of a supergiant star.
Thus, it could scatter vast and pure moonlight essence, an unsurpassed nourishment for cultivators practicing yin-attribute arts.
But this world…
According to the memories he had merged from the life before his previous one, the land beneath his feet was the surface of a planet.
The moon in the night sky was nothing more than a satellite that emitted no light of its own and merely reflected the sun’s radiance.
The “moonlight essence” it released was, in essence, a transformed energy produced after the sun’s “solar essence” had been converted and weakened by the moon. It was diminished upon diminution, and its quality naturally could not compare in the slightest to true lunar star power.