Chapter 389: Nine Stars Alignment

Lu Yang returned to Heavenly Gate Peak, sitting cross-legged upon the great boulder of sword qi, parting his lips to swallow the spiritual essence of the world as he settled his mind into cultivation.

An endless torrent of spiritual essence surged into his body, transformed into pure spiritual power under the influence of the Clear Mind and True Nature Mantra, coursing tempestuously through his veins.

Slowly, he extended two fingers, a ten-foot-long azure blade of sword qi condensing at their tips.

"Go!" With a sudden thrust forward, the azure sword qi flew forth, piercing straight through three trees before sinking half an inch into a fourth, only then dissolving into nothingness.

These were no ordinary trees found in the mundane world, but the Coiled Dragon Trees that Daoist Buyu had deliberately planted on Heavenly Gate Peak; their roots were thick and gnarled like crouching dragons, their bark layered one upon another like dragon scales.

Legend held that a great war had once erupted in the Demon Realm, wherein the Dragon Clan participated and countless true dragons perished, their blood dyeing the lakes crimson; the trees growing along the shores were stained by this dragon blood, undergoing a mutation that granted them the might of true dragons.

Such was the origin of the Coiled Dragon Tree.

The price of a Coiled Dragon Tree was exorbitant, so much so that second- and third-rate sects only dared to purchase one or two to decorate their facades, unlike Heavenly Gate Peak, where an entire small grove consisted of nothing but Coiled Dragon Trees.

Lu Yang opened his eyes, and peering through the gaps pierced into the three trees, he saw that the fourth tree had been penetrated by half an inch, bringing a surge of joy to his heart.

In the past, he could only pierce through three Coiled Dragon Trees, his sword qi exhausting its strength by the fourth, unable to break even the outer bark.

"Days of cultivation have borne fruit after all!" Lu Yang felt his mastery over the sword qi becoming increasingly adept, as a three-inch azure blade of sword qi twined about his fingertips, as nimble as a serpent.

He could even use the sword qi to clean his ears.

"What a pity that none within the same realm can match me in the Dao of the Sword, otherwise, debating the Dao with them would be a splendid affair," Lu Yang murmured, shaking his head in regret.

Though he had never contested his swordplay against anyone of the same cultivation stage, the confidence bestowed by the Invincible Pill made him believe he was truly the peerless number one of his realm in the Dao of the Sword!

The Immortal Fairy nodded secretly in approval; this was precisely the Invincible Momentum!

Lu Yang possessed the demeanor of her own youth; he would surely become a great figure in the future!

"By the way, Fairy, since Buddhism was concocted by the five of you, do you know the Buddha Kingdom in the Palm?"

"What is the Buddha Kingdom in the Palm?"

"Fairy has never heard of this grand divine ability? It is the supreme spatial divine ability of Buddhism, ranking a whole tier higher than the Six Divine Abilities such as the Heavenly Eye and Heavenly Ear."

"Within the palm lies a vast kingdom of infinite space; once fallen into the palm, no matter how great one's divine abilities or how peerless one's speed in the world, there is no escape—a single descending palm is a whole kingdom tilting downward, utterly unrivaled."

"Some say the Golden Buddha Kingdom of the West is actually the manifestation of the Buddha Kingdom in the Palm."

The Immortal Fairy grew thoughtful: "I indeed have never heard of the Buddha Kingdom in the Palm; it must be a spell created by later generations, or perhaps they simply changed the name of a spell from our era."

"For instance, I know of a grand divine ability called the Universe in the Palm; within the palm, it encompasses heaven, earth, and the universe, where the starry sky is but a plaything, and the sun and moon are merely two spheres of Yin and Yang, ordinary and commonplace."

"Perhaps the Universe in the Palm is the Buddha Kingdom in the Palm, merely given a different name by later generations."

"Was it not said that an anonymous figure refined the starry sky into continents? It is highly likely it was this very move!"

The mere thought of the ancient anonymous figure unleashing the Universe in the Palm made Lu Yang's scalp tingle; reshaping stars at will—what manner of power was that?

Even natural disasters were as small as dust before the mighty power of an Immortal!

"Do you know that the stars rotate according to a certain law? Ah, right, you have never been to the universe, so you have never seen how the stars rotate."

The Immortal Fairy spoke in a slightly flaunting tone: "I once traveled through space and saw meteorites rotating around stars, and smaller stars rotating around larger stars, which led me to wonder: could it be that smaller objects rotating around larger objects is the law of stellar motion?"

"Through observation, hypothesis, drawing diagrams, calculation, and verification, I finally..."

"Finally, Fairy, you calculated the law of stellar motion?" Lu Yang could not help but interject, thinking to himself that the Fairy did have moments of high intellect.

"Finally, the Nine-Layered Immortal told me that someone else had already calculated the law of stellar motion long ago."

Lu Yang: "..."

Thinking about it, it made sense; one did not need to become an Immortal to venture into the universe; those in the Body Integration Stage or Tribulation Transmutation Stage could all ascend to space, and any attentive person lingering by the stars for a few years could easily calculate it.

If they encountered someone skilled in time spells, they might even calculate it within half an hour of observation.

"Back then, fortune-telling using stars was also popular; a grand diviner pointed at a certain nebula and claimed that when the Nine Stars Aligned, the stellar region where the nine stars resided would fall into great chaos, the common people would be displaced, and the stellar region would be utterly destroyed."

"And according to the laws of stellar motion, the Alignment of the Nine Stars was to occur precisely three years later!"

"This grand diviner was named Shi Cang, hailing from the Shi Huang Clan, highly renowned, with half of his divination hexameters being accurate."

"As you know, among cultivators, some believe in fate while others do not, so everyone began to discuss how to contend with this disaster."

"Those who believed in fate felt Master Shi Cang was correct, urging that the people on these stars must be migrated immediately to other stars, as there were many habitable yet sparsely populated stars to choose from."

"Those who did not believe in fate felt it unnecessary to migrate tens of billions of living souls based on a single man's words, which would inevitably cause mass casualties, and arriving at a new star to start anew would cost the time of how many generations?"

"Then, Fairy, did you believe in fate or not?"

"After hearing it, I simply shattered one of the uninhabited stars directly, so that the Alignment of the Nine Stars would never happen again!"

Lu Yang silently gave a thumbs-up, feeling that the Fairy was truly formidable.

"Though I had not yet achieved immortality at that time, crushing one or two stars was still quite simple."

"After shattering a star, I discovered a formation hidden within the stellar core; filled with doubt, I sought out the other eight stars, and the cores of those eight stars contained the exact same formation."

"According to my deduction, when the nine stars lined up, resonance would trigger between the formations, thereby causing a massive explosion."

"It was intentional?!"

The Immortal Fairy spoke viciously: "Yes, it was that grandson Shi Cang; under the guise of divination, Shi Cang disrupted order to reap enormous profits from it—in truth, any disaster they divined was covertly set up by them!"

"In my fit of rage, I slaughtered Shi Cang; it was useless even when the Shi Huang Clan stepped forward to mediate, apologize, and offer compensation—I killed him regardless, and seeing that I gave them no face, the Shi Huang Clan obstructed my path of ascension to the Tribulation Transmutation Stage."

The Immortal Fairy said huffily: "Obstructing me was useless; my talent is unique across the eons, so when it was time to reach the Tribulation Transmutation Stage, I reached it anyway!"

Lu Yang clapped his hands repeatedly.

The conspiracies of the ancient era were truly beyond imagination, utilizing stars as units for their schemes; how many people must have suffered from this?

Just as Lu Yang was contemplating how terrifying ancient hidden conspiracies could be, he heard the Immortal Fairy ask.

"By the way, do you want to learn the Universe in the Palm? I know it."

"The Universe in the Palm? Me?" Lu Yang looked at his own small hand, feeling that the Fairy thought far too highly of him.

The second update will be before eleven o'clock.

(End of chapter)