Pursuing Immortality

What the hell?

They were all looking up to this fairy-like figure, but that reverence was completely shattered at the announcement of that Patriarch Sky-turning thing—that was a fantasy ruined quickly enough.

It was like a fair-skinned pretty woman with a tiny waist and long legs introducing herself with a straight face, saying, “Nice to meet you. I’m Hammer Smith.”

Emmmm!

Xiaojin ignored the disappointed lot—she had her moment and that was all she cared about. Turning to Old Shui, she asked, “What are you lot doing here?”

“The project on the mountain is done. We’re moving onto the ancient city.”

“Sister said we’re building a market town there. How did the planning go?”

“We gave the job to the municipal architectural design institute. Here’s the map.”

Xiaojin might be known as Little Soap, but she was no less an owner of Phoenix Mountain than the other three. Old Shui was perfectly aware of it and acted accordingly. He took out the map and handed it to Xiaojin.

Opening it up, she saw that all the buildings were to be built within the ancient walls. That was to say, it was going to be a market town with a circumference of 16 km.

A market town was an enclosed city plan which separated the residential district from the trading one. The modern version certainly would not be that distinctly divided, but it was still relatively strictly set out.

Shops and residences could not exceed five stories above ground and two underground. A total of 688 houses was allocated along twelve streets of various width. The size of each house was drawn out in advance, and together, they were laid out as neatly as ridges in a farmland.

An open-air market was also planned. There, those who could not afford a shop could trade. Yup, that was for the paupers and pauper cultivators without a sect.

The entire town sat against the mountain on the north and had three gates opening on the east, the west, and the south, of which the southern one would be the front gate. The city wall would be revamped from the original ancient wall, raising it to about three meters.

Tsk, tsk, that seemed like real fun!

Blinking, Xiaojin put the map in her pocket as if that was where it belonged all along. “I don’t have anything to do at the moment, so I guess I’m coming with you. Don’t mind me. Go back to whatever you were doing.”

‘Go back my a*s! You’ve ruined my rhythm!’ Keeping the sarcastic remarks to himself, Old Shui forced himself to ignore this “Patriarch” and turned back to the crowd. “Now, those that want to work on with us, stand on the right. Those that don’t, we have buses waiting over there that’ll take you back home in a moment.”

“…”

A hush fell over the square. Too much had happened too fast, and they were having a hard time digesting the information. A long moment passed before a few people walked out and stood on the right.

This seemed to have started a mass decision-making process. Men began to walk out in batches, Liu Ziming included. In the end, Old Shui counted the number and saw that over 80% had decided to stay.

“All right, I’ll take you there now. We’ll sign the contract once we get there. Because this project is going to take quite a while, you’re all entitled to a family leave once a month. You’ll need to apply with me beforehand.”

After that, Old Shui arranged them into several buses, which then drove out of the square and headed directly for the ancient city.

They arrived at the destination a short while later. The city had been measured out with the construction markings all drawn out. While the workers went to take registrations, Old Shui discussed with an engineer on the details. Xiaojin went up to them eagerly and asked, “Hey, hey, hey, what are you going to do later?”

“The preliminary work is done, so we’ll start digging foundations,” replied Old Shui.

“Digging foundations? Of the entire city?”

“Um, you could say that.”

“How deep do you need?”

“The soil texture is excellent here, with a high bearing capacity. The supporting layer is about two meters.”

“Two meters…”

Xiaojin squinted, her eyes flickering with dangerous and strange light through the two narrow gaps. Old Shui sensed the danger and asked immediately, “What are you thinking? Don’t do anything stu— sh*t!”

The big fellow’s voice broke and he let out a squeaky scream. The engineer looked as if his eyes were going to pop out, and forgot to breathe.

Opening up her palm, a quaint little seal suddenly appeared. She then tossed into the air.

“Big! Big! Big!”

Whoosh!

The little seal grew crazily like a inflating balloon; its size doubled, tripled, quadrupled… it eventually blocked half the sky and floated there like a tall building.

Boom!

The Sky-turning Seal smashed right down and pressed hard into the ground. Bang!

The sound it made was louder than an earthquake. What was more amazing, though, was that despite the noise, it raised no dirt or dust. It was as light as tapping a seal on an inkpad, then stamping it on a piece of paper—the seal had absorbed all the impact.

“Up!”

At Xiaojin’s clear voice, the seal rose into the sky again, while everyone turned to look at the ground. Jesus Christ!

The ground it landed on was two meters lower, and the tough ground was even tougher from all the pressure. With all the air squeezed out from between the particles, the soil looked extremely dense.

“Where else?” asked she.

“Over, over there,” pointed the engineer with a shaky finger.

Boom!

Another area was done.

It went on like so. The digging process that was estimated to take nearly twenty days was finished within minutes.

“Hahaha! This Sky-turning Seal is indeed very useful…” Xiaojin held her hands at her waist and guffawed. The next second, her laughter stopped abruptly as she frowned and said, “Wait a minute, why did I come all the way here to ram a construction site? This is so menial!”

The leap between her thoughts was miles apart. One had to take a hundred twists before understanding her logic.

She had lost interest in the job after that already; patting Old Shui on his shoulder, she said, “I’m off. Keep up the good work!”

With that, she kicked the ground lightly and was about to leap into the air when a chubby kid popped out of thin air and pounced at her. The fair and plump buttocks landed on her head with a thud, and the kid ran back into the air, clapping its hands happily.

“You little bastard! Your weight means nothing to me!” Enraged, Xiaojin knocked Golden Silkworm to the ground easily and roared, “Qiu Qiu! Get you a*s down here!”

“Dear Jin Jin, Sister told me to tell you that the seal is pretty nice, so from now on, it’ll be your job to ram the ground or crush stones. Stay here for as long as you want.”

A giggle drifted down from up Cuanyun Peak.

“Like hell I’m gonna stay here! Get down here!”

With a wave of her hand, Xiaojin released a streak of Water Thunder, which opened up into a big blackish purple web and dashed towards the top of the peak.

“Teehee! I’m only repeating what Sister said. How can I disobey her words?”

With that, a streak of blue light flashed down from the cloud above the peak. It was so fast that it seemed to break the law of acceleration. The light pierced through the thunder web and reached Xiaojin in no time.

It then swirled above her had and flew back to the mountain in the same provocative manner.

“You rat! What have you done to my nice Qiu Qiu! Wait until tonight when I get back… Aaaaaah!”

Xiaojin bristled like a pissed off cat, but she dared not do anything to retaliate—she had been very naughty just then on the mountain and destroyed quite a few trees.

Momentarily, Cuanyun Peak had gone quiet, and Long Qiu seemed to have left. Stomping her feet, Xiaojin jumped up the city wall and sat down there, looking around with a mean look on her face as if she was the new supervisor.

“Pffft!”

Liu Ziming failed to hold back his laughter, but covered his mouth immediately thereafter.

The little episode brought the workers a different feeling to the place, and they did not seem to fear her as they had in the beginning. Instead, she looked more cordial to them now—after all, everyone had known some naughty brat back at home.

***

Phoenix Mountain, the meditation room.

Sitting on the rush mat, Gu Yu suddenly grabbed at the air. A ball of red fire-attributed spiritual essence immediately appeared in his palm. This type was much more agitated than the normal pure one, giving off an explosive and unstable feeling.

He kept using the Small Moving Technique and the ball of spiritual essence grew bigger and bigger. He then compressed it forcibly to increase its density. In the end, the ball was down to the size of a ping-pong ball, while its color had turned into blackish red; it was almost ready to explode.

Even so, it remained a ball of spiritual essence, and did not turn into actual flames.

“Sigh…”

Gu Yu heaved a sigh and squeezed the ball before it could explode. It vanished.

He had failed again!

Since he began his seclusion, he had completed his first study, which was on the escaping skills, and the second one, which was the recipe of Essence-gathering Dan. The third one he worked on was the Five Element skills.

He had to start from zero, for there were no such things like “fire-attributed body”, “heaven-attributed body”, “water-attributed body”, or “chaos-attributed body” in this world. Everyone began with sensing the normal spiritual essence. Only those specially gifted—such as Zheng Kaixin—could become exceptionally sensitive to spiritual essence of a certain type.

He had gone through many trials, none of which successfully turned the spiritual essence into physical metal, wood, water, fire, or earth. Although the air lump itself could be used for attack, it was not what he wanted.

His desired product seemed easy to produce, but it was in fact extremely difficult.

The closer it was to a basic rule, the more advanced a cultivator it required to research it. Scientific formulae or theorems, for example, were mostly discovered or established by people like Newton, while the later users only needed to follow the rules. It would be highly unlikely that an undergraduate could come up with an achievement of the same level.

“I guess I’m a little naive in thinking that I could invent Taoist skills on my own. I can fully understand the existing ones at best, and am still a long way from creating one.”

Shaking his head, Gu Yu was a little ashamed. What level was he at now exactly? Well, if he could obtain a skill of Five Elements, he would be able to draw inferences and see through the basic law.

Xiaozhai had let the words out about collecting various Taoist skills and materials, but so far, they had heard no replies.

“…”

Settling down his mind, Gu Yu cleared his head and took out another object. This time, it was that Seal of Patriarch Sa.

It was left behind by Sa Shoujian and in it were Thunder Technique, the recipe of Essence-gathering Dan, and the method of refining with mental force. Additionally, there were also the patterns carved into the seal. Back then, his cultivation level was not high enough for him to study them, but he could now see that it was indeed a formation of a confining or protective kind.

It was an incredibly complicated and immense formation. Reaching in with his mental force, he analyzed and solved it little by little. It took him over a month to just understand a small fraction of it.

The so-called formations were layouts based on natural properties and the quality of the spiritual essence.

Heaven and earth, mountains, rivers, plants, metal, stones, houses, roads, etc., could all be components of a layout. According to different circumstances and variables, and with different terrain and spiritual essence properties, various formations could be set up.

Hence arose the difficulty in learning formations—one had to be extremely knowledgeable and extremely flexible in their minds. Drawing inferences about other cases from one instance was not enough; they had to be able to draw the whole universe to achieve mastery of the skill.

Otherwise, even if they managed to learn anything, they would be simply memorizing fixed formations. They knew what formation to use in a specific terrain, but could not apply it when the terrain changed—that was also why the teaching of formation had gone extinct.

In other words, the fact that the formation pattern on the seal used no natural terrain but was shrunk to the size of a small seal proved that Celestial Master Sa was not only an exceptional master in formations, but also unbelievably advanced in Taoist skills as well. The man would have at least reached the Immortal state.

“…”

Holding the seal in his hands, Gu Yu explored it with tiny tentacles of his mental force, which slowly peeled off the petals to see the hidden knowledge inside. His mind was like a spinning machine, constantly building, destroying, rebuilding, and destroying again… his purpose was to find something that suited his needs.

What he needed was fairly straightforward—to build a big protective formation of Phoenix Mountain. They couldn’t use iron fence forever, could they?