Xu Ying’s eyes shone. If he could find the source, would that not mean an inexhaustible supply of mysterious energy?
Even if he could not open the Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury, he could continuously absorb its life-activity, cultivate the Hidden Vision, and become a Nuo Shaman!
He immediately entered meditation again, turning his gaze inward to the Hidden Realm within his body.
This time, Xu Ying’s spirit sense did not follow the mysterious energy. Instead, it traced the energy backward, against the current, and emerged outside his body.
His consciousness surged upstream, plunging into the flow of energy.
The currents of mysterious energy formed treacherous eddies. The slightest lapse would see his spirit sense swept off course and lost.
Then the sound of the bell reached him: "Young man, I will steady your spirit sense with my tone!"
A clear, resonant peal of the bell sang in Xu Ying’s ears, making his spirit sense perfectly tranquil and utterly solid, impervious to outside interference.
Xu Ying seized the opportunity, weaving through the eddies, drifting ever farther along the thread of mysterious energy toward its origin.
He seemed to pass through ancient spaces, entering worlds unknowable and unfathomable. The bell’s peal grew ever more distant, as though separated by immeasurable space.
Fear gripped him. If his spirit sense could not return, would he not become a simpleton?
"My spirit sense followed the mysterious energy through time and space, traveled so far, and still has not found its source. This must truly be a Heaven-Domain blessed land—not false! Old Bell must have been wrong!"
Xu Ying was about to turn back when the bell’s tone grew clearer.
He froze.
A clearer tone meant he was drawing closer to his own body.
But how was that possible?
His spirit sense had clearly traveled through countless times and spaces, countless planes—covering billions upon billions of li. How could it instead have drawn nearer?
Xu Ying's spirit sense chased the thread of mysterious energy into the Mud-Pellet Palace and arrived before the stone wall behind it. The source of the mysterious energy lay within that wall.
Xu Ying withdrew his spirit sense and leaped from the water, quickly donning his tattered clothes.
He went to check on Yuan Qi. The snake demon was still in the throes of metamorphosis, so he went alone to the stone wall at the rear of the palace.
The wall was covered in moss, indistinguishable from any other. Xu Ying examined it carefully. The mysterious energy seeped into this very wall and vanished.
He tapped it lightly. It was incredibly solid.
Xu Ying thought for a moment. "Old Bell, come out a moment."
The great bell emerged from his mind. "What is it?"
Xu Ying gripped the bell’s handle, swung it back, and smashed it against the wall with all his might. The bell screamed: "What are you doing? Put me down! CLANG! You rascal, CLANG! I’ll fight you, CLANG! A bell can be killed but not humiliated! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!"
The bell trembled, but the wall did not budge.
Xu Ying set the bell down and ran his hand over the wall, pondering: "There is definitely something wrong here. This bell could shatter a City God’s golden body—ordinary stone cannot be harder than that."
The bell retreated hastily from Xu Ying, still shaken: "This boy has violent tendencies!"
Then Xu Ying noticed a faint imprint on the wall—the outline of a left palm, blurred and indistinct.
His intuition stirred. He extended his left hand and pressed it against the palmprint.
The wall trembled, then cracked and split apart, revealing a narrow passage. Xu Ying stepped inside. The wall behind him receded—blocks of squared stone slid back into the mountain’s interior. The great bell hurried after him.
Xu Ying walked forward and the wall retreated ahead of him. After several dozen zhang he arrived at a stone chamber within the mountain.
The chamber was modest—roughly twelve feet square, spartan. A meditation cushion and a jade couch were its only furnishings. On the cushion sat a skeleton draped in robes of gossamer green, so thin one could see the bones beneath. The skeleton’s head was bowed, and its skeletal hands seemed to be cradling something, though they held nothing.
Surrounding the skeleton were rows of bookshelves, now empty. In one corner lay a pile of ash.
"The mysterious energy in Qinyan Cave originates from this skeleton’s skull!"
Xu Ying’s heart jolted. He was about to step forward when he noticed a pair of serpent-wrangling gloves and a snake-startling staff beside the skeleton. He started: "Those are a snake catcher’s tools! A snake catcher has been here before us!"
Snake catchers used wrangling gloves to seize a serpent’s vital point and the staff to drive venomous snakes from the grass. Xu Ying was a snake catcher himself and knew these tools well, though he had rarely used them since his cultivation advanced.
"This is the home of Yuan Qi’s family. They have lived here for over three hundred years—how could a snake catcher have entered Qinyan Cave and found this place?"
He recalled the book he had read the previous night—a travel journal written by Yuan Qi’s grandfather. It had been so dull that he had fallen asleep partway through.
"The book said Yuan Qi’s grandfather was pursued by a snake catcher and fled into Qinyan Cave. He discovered a cave within a cave and found this Mud-Pellet Palace Heaven-Domain."
Xu Ying pondered. "Could it be that he never shook the snake catcher? The snake catcher followed him and also found the Heaven-Domain. This person must have been extraordinarily clever—perhaps he even sensed the mysterious energy and felt his way here. The books on those shelves must have been carried away by him."
He examined the pile of ash in the corner. The snake catcher could take only so many books; what he could not carry, he had burned.
Xu Ying sighed. "The owner of this chamber must be the one the coffin girl was looking for—the master of the Mud-Pellet Palace. He died here, leaving behind his legacy. The snake catcher stumbled upon this place, obtained the predecessor’s teachings, and fearing that others might also find it, burned his predecessor’s life work to ashes!"
The great bell circled the skeleton once, sensing carefully. "The mysterious energy does indeed originate from this man’s skull. I imagine that before dying, he used his residual energy to help others locate the dragon veins and find the Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury."
Xu Ying sifted through the ashes in the corner, and his eyes lit up. He drew out a book that had been half-burned.
The snake catcher had burned too many volumes; this one had been buried at the very bottom, shielded from the flames. A few pages remained, their characters barely legible.
Xu Ying read carefully, his heart pounding. "This describes the method for opening the Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury!"
The great bell floated over. "The method for opening the Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury? That cannot be right. The witch I suppressed was a Qi-refiner, and she knew this place’s master. He too must have been a Qi-refiner. In their era, Nuo sorcery had not yet appeared—how could there be a method for opening the secret treasury?"
Xu Ying was puzzled as well. "Could this skeleton not be the one the coffin girl seeks? Wait—who was that snake catcher?"
He stared into space, then spoke: "The Zhou family of Lingling began their rise three hundred years ago and later moved to the capital. The Zhou family’s jealously guarded secret was the Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury. Could the snake catcher who followed Yuan Qi’s grandfather into Qinyan Cave have been the Zhou family’s founding ancestor?"
The great bell was equally stunned. "Three hundred years ago, a man and a serpent entered Qinyan Cave. Three hundred years later, a man and a serpent enter it again. Two serpent demons found only the outer white jade palace, not the stone chamber within. Two snake catchers found the chamber. This is too great a coincidence."
Xu Ying looked around. When the Zhou ancestor had entered, the chamber must have been crammed with books—volumes beyond counting, all the Nuo arts and techniques the master had cultivated.
The Zhou ancestor had memorized the most critical texts and burned the rest. The books he took allowed the Zhou family to soar from a minor family of snake catchers in Lingling to a vast and powerful clan.
"The Elephant-Force Ox-Demon Fist that Yuan Qi’s grandfather obtained was probably a low-level demon art that the Zhou ancestor tossed him out of pity," Xu Ying thought.
He carefully unfolded the torn pages and read. The surviving text was incomplete, and he had to fill in the gaps from memory.
The book said the human body possessed six Hidden Gates, with the Mud-Pellet paramount. The chaotic egg was the Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury, but its power was too vast—one had to first crack open the chaos.
Carve a Heaven-Domain within the chaos to draw out Mud-Pellet life-activity. Once one's cultivation reached a certain level, one could open another Heaven-Domain, venturing deeper into the Mud-Pellet to draw out more life-activity.
In this way, opening nine Heaven-Domains would allow one to extract all the power of the Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury.
The method for carving open the Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury was simplicity itself: strike the chaotic egg with all the force one possessed.
"Such a thing would indeed require a Great Nuo Shaman’s help."
Xu Ying stored the torn pages away, thinking: "The Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury lies within the brain. One misstep and you punch a hole in your skull, spilling your brains. Even with a Great Nuo Shaman assisting, the danger is extreme."
"I can help you."
The great bell spoke abruptly. "I am extremely powerful. Even after the witch’s devastating blow, a burst strike at close range surpasses anything a Great Nuo Shaman could produce. But I will not do this for free. If I help open the Mud-Pellet Secret Treasury, you must provide me with more blood and qi to aid my recovery."
Xu Ying eyed it, hesitant.
The great bell was undeniably mighty. After sustaining grievous injuries, it had still clashed with both Zhou Yihang and City God Xue. While it slumbered, Xu Ying had nearly used it to crush both Zhou Yihang and the evil City God to death.
His concern was that the bell was too powerful. A full-strength strike inside his skull would not merely open a hole—it would blow his head apart.
"Probably nothing above the neck would remain," Xu Ying thought.
The bell, seeing his hesitation, eyed him suspiciously. "Do you not trust me? Surname Xu, while I have lived I have fought in no fewer than a thousand battles. Do you dare not trust me? Who has not heard that the Bell of Stone Mountain acts with steadiness and prudence?"
Xu Ying said sheepishly, "Yes, yes. But how did the coffin girl escape?"
The bell flew into a rage: "Someone ambushed me, taking advantage of the chaos to free the witch! Those scoundrels have been plotting against me for a long time—even going so far as to divert the Nether River to crash into Stone Mountain! Otherwise, how could I have let the witch escape?"
Xu Ying still wavered. The bell urged, "Let us leave the cave. I will show you my accuracy!"
Xu Ying stepped out of the chamber and into the Mud-Pellet Palace. Yuan Qi had not yet awakened.
He left Qinyan Cave and stood on Wuwang. A cool breeze blew. The great bell floated up. "Do you see that great tree atop the cliff?"
Xu Ying looked. At the summit of the cliff stood a towering tree, some three hundred feet tall, its crown majestic.
The bell said, "I will unleash my power and destroy it with a single peal. Watch closely!"
Xu Ying waited with anticipation. Then the bell tolled once—a single, resonant peal that sent shockwaves rippling through the air. In the next instant, more than a dozen men and women were blasted out of the forest, flailing wildly in midair.
Xu Ying’s heart lurched. "Lingling officials! They have tracked us down!"
After a moment the officials crashed to the ground, scattering birds and beasts through the woods.
The bell paused. "I sensed people hiding in the forest, spying on us, so I redirected the blast to drive them out. A-Ying, I have exhausted the power I accumulated these past two days. The rest is up to you!"
With that, the bell zipped into the back of Xu Ying’s head and vanished.
From the forest came the sound of hurried footsteps. The dozen officials, bruised and battered, emerged from the trees.
Xu Ying stood motionless. "My cultivation has advanced greatly. I am now a Demon King. You are no match for me."
The officials hesitated, but a voice drifted from the trees, accompanied by a laugh: "Demon King Xu is a human anomaly. That ordinary Nuo shamans are no match for him after becoming a Demon King is only to be expected. So this time, they need not intervene. I will subdue you personally."
Xu Ying turned toward the voice. Magistrate Zhou Yang emerged from the forest, dressed in a robe of fine black silk, elegant and imposing.
"Deploy the swords," Zhou Yang said softly.
Xu Ying noticed that each official carried a sword basket on his back, holding a dozen blades. They stopped about thirty paces away, drew the swords, planted them in the ground, and withdrew at once.
Zhou Yang advanced, drew a seed from his sleeve, and planted it in the center of the sword formation.
The seed germinated and grew at astonishing speed, becoming a towering tree whose canopy covered several acres. Its branches hung thin and supple—every one of them resilient and flexible.
Like a demon, the tree swayed its limbs, plucking the planted swords from the ground with a metallic ring.
"This tree is called the Phoenix Flower. Legend says it absorbed phoenix blood and became a demon tree. Under my command, it will wield a hundred swords, executing my Zhou family’s ultimate art—the Zhou Heaven Demon-Slaying Sword."
Zhou Yang smiled faintly. "Xu Ying, as the magistrate of Lingling I love my people as my own children. I offer you a path: surrender to me, and I will not only clear your name but grant you a position as an official."
"What kind of official? A dog-official like you?"
Xu Ying walked to a willow tree nearby, snapped off a branch the thickness of his little finger, and smiled. "Dog-official, let me see how the art your ancestor stole from Qinyan Cave compares to what I have deduced on my own!"