Pursuing Immortality

“Metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, or wind, water, earth, and fire, are very important to the western transcendental system. These are the major elements they believe to be part of this world, and which they have been studying as major disciplines. However, to the oriental Taoist skills, the five elements are only one of the many types of spiritual essence, and are not considered exceptional. Moreover, we have numerous talismans, which include all sorts of skills involving the five elements.”

Under the old tree, Professor Gu was giving another of his cultivation lessons. “Maoshan, for instance, used to be able to cast spells such as Five Thunder Spell, Flaming Cloud Spell, Deluge Spell, Giant Wood Spell, etc. Some golden talismans could even freeze over thousands of miles of land or crush down with a force comparable to Mount Tai’s, and were all much more advanced than purely using Taoist skills of the five elements. That’s why Taoist cultivators mostly use five element skills as auxiliary measures such as for climbing up, going underwater, planting, Dan-refinement, escaping, etc.

“Based on what I have compiled during these months, and to keep it in line with modern-day habits, I have categorized them into three types—excluding the five-element escaping skills. The first type works as an attachment, mainly metal-attributed…”

With that, he snapped a twig and casually ran his hands along it. A thin layer of pale golden light, which had a sharpness to it, immediately radiated from the twig.

He then made a downward swish. Crack! A stone chair crackled as if a sharp blade had just struck it. “I am only using a twig, so the effect is not very obvious. If I was using a formidable blade, with the additional metal energy, its power will be manifolded. The second type is to give order…”

Gu Yu then pressed down at the empty air, and that poor stone chair split neatly into two halves from the middle. He then put a teacup between the two parts and lifted his hand.

Thump!

The stone chair was an unbroken piece again, and the cup was left inside it.

“That doesn’t make sense! There is one more object, so why didn’t the size and shape of the chair change?” Xiaojin was baffled, but answered the question herself almost right away. “Ah, I see. The internal structure of the stone chair has also changed, making just enough room for a cup. Haha, this is so interesting. I’ll be able to fool innocent girls with it!”

“A thing has to exist in the first place; then, you can give order to change its form, such as growing bigger or smaller, separating or combining, increasing or decreasing?” said Xiaozhai.

“Exactly. If it does not exist… for instance, we don’t have a fire here… then it is the third type—transformation.”

Gu Yu grabbed at the air again, and flame materialized in his palm. He explained, “This category consumes the most energy because we’re turning spiritual essence into physical substance. But, it also has the least constraints. You can use it however you like.”

With that, he threw the flame into the air, and the ball of fire surged, turning into a flaming dragon several meters long, and circled around above the island in the river before diving into the water and disappearing.

“You’re actually more immortal-ish after this seclusion. The Taoist skills we were using before were rather plain and could use some sparkles. After all, to common people, Immortals are supposed to travel freely between heaven and earth and control fire and water. Although five-element skills are mostly used as secondary abilities, they are still pretty effective attacking methods when facing normal cultivators without any primary attack skills. I think we can include them in our routine practice.” Xiaozhai thought for a moment and went on, “You mentioned that escaping skills are excluded here. Is it because they’re of a different system?”

“That’s right. The way the escaping skills are activated is different from these ones, and I don’t have an actual example to work on yet. I have recorded the basic rules of these three types of skills in the slip. The requirement is quite high, actually. Only innate state and above can use them.” Gu Yu took out a jade slip and handed to Xiaozhai. He paused a little, and turned to the two younger ones. “You two can look into it when you’ve got time. I only came up with the principles; you can try to make some specific skills based on that.”

“Hey, hey, that’s up my alley!” Xiaojin grabbed the slip at a lightning speed. “All that bicep training in my college years is finally paying off! Leave it to me! It’ll be simple, practical, but so classy!”

“Why, let me have a look!”

“Nope, you will not!”

Long Qiu was very interested in the task as well. The two then began a noisy and tumble play over the slip.

Xiaozhai ignored them and only said to Gu Yu, “Since you’re out, when are you going to have your lecture at the altar?”

“I’ll have to collect some material first to set up the formation for the mountain…” Gu Yu pondered for a moment, then asked, “How about June 8th?”

“June 8th?” Blinking, Xiaozhai chuckled. “Old Gu, I see that the Human Immortal state is bringing your flirting skill up to another level, among other things.”

“That was completely instinctive. I didn’t do it on purpose.” Gu Yu kept his face perfectly straight.

Hearing the conversation, the two girls immediately ran back to them and asked, “What’s so special about June 8th? Why that date?”

“Nothing. It’s only the date of us two meeting each other for the first time,” said Xiaozhai.

‘Eww!’

Long Qiu and Xiaojin gave them the nonchalant look of singletons in unison, refusing to have anything to do with this topic.

***

East of Bai Town, the town of Hekou.

Hekou Town had once planted a peach grove of tens of thousands mu on an island, making it into a quite well-known tourist destination. However, three years ago, the peach trees mutated, forming the Peach Blossom Miasma which covered the entire island and the surrounding area.

The residents of Hekou Town were evacuated, becoming the first batch of migrants after the great change took place.

Now that three years had passed, people had gotten used to the existence of this restricted area. The facilities were rebuilt and the traffic routes redirected, but people still stuck their heads out to look at the place in the distance when they drove by, sighing. ‘It used to be such a nice place!’

Before, a large troop was stationed here to guard the island. Now that everyone knew about the situation, no one dared venture in anymore. Hence, most of the soldiers were removed, leaving behind a single squad only.

The sun was shining brightly this morning and a few clouds drifted slowly in the sky. However, centering around the island and radiating out to an area several kilometers in diameter, an air mass had accumulated in the sky, blocking the sunlight and rolling like a sea formed by pink fog.

Inside that area, plants were growing perfectly, but other than those, not a single living creature could be seen. The pink color was slightly paler at the perimeter and grew darker the deeper one moved in. The pink miasma was so dense at the central area of the island that it almost turned into liquid.

Whoosh!

A streak of golden light suddenly flew across the sky and landed on the island. Golden flame gradually dissipated, revealing a figure from within. It was none other than Gu Yu himself.

Before, he had to block the miasma with his spiritual essence when coming onto the island, but that was no longer necessary. Just by standing there, the peach blossom miasma was running away from him as fast as it could, as if it had seen a natural enemy. It even kept on leaving out a blank area around him.

The devil-smashing sword energy was the unbeatable rival of all evil and malicious things!

“It is denser than before, and the area has expanded as well.”

Looking around, Gu Yu suddenly recalled his first trip here, when he was infected by the miasma and tried to have his way with Xiaozhai in his libidinous state, but Xiaozhai turned out to be the one having their way… the memory brought a smile to his face. He then took out a small gourd, unplugged it, then held it up.

“In!”

Activating the Small Universe Technique and Small Moving Technique simultaneously with his capability of the Human Immortal state, the space inside the gourd expanded infinitely. A powerful suction machine seemed to be running inside.

Whoosh!

A hurricane seemed to start inside the peach blossom miasma covering the tens of thousands of mu, and the pink fog rolled and surged like torrential waves. It rushed towards him, then turned into a thin pink streak and squeezed into the gourd.

The little gourd no more than 15 cm tall seemed to have turned into something gargantuan as it frantically sucked in the miasma.

After quite some time, when Gu Yu sensed that the expansion of the space inside the gourd was reaching the limit of his capacity and the gourd was filling up, he took out a new gourd and repeated the process.

Just like so, the miasma that had troubled the government and the people for three long years was solved by two gourds.

“It’s gone! It’s gone!” The soldier on duty across the bridge cried out all of a sudden and called out to his fellow soldiers in a hurry.

“What happened?”

“The miasma, the miasma has disappeared!”

“Holy crap! How did that happen? Let’s go have a look!”

The soldiers boldly ran across the bridge right away and stood there, dazed. Having been stationed here for so long, this was the first time they had ever seen Hekou Town.

The peach trees covering the hills all withered after their vital essence was sucked dry. Gravel paths criss-crossed in the woods, and also there were the dilapidated houses, tables and chairs left in the open air—together with tricycles and all kinds of daily articles that the residents could not take with them.

It almost seemed that the people only moved away yesterday and everything froze at that sad moment. As the long-absent sunlight fell on this small town again, everything almost felt all right again.

***

Inside a certain meteorological observation center, the staff was busying themselves with the daily operation.

The country had just recently launched a new-generation meteorological satellite it independently developed—the FY-4 meteorological satellite. Covering various bands from visible light to short-wave, medium-wave, and long-wave infrared light, it could achieve high precision quantitative detection of atmospheric structure on the vertical direction, which even exceeded the record level of the western countries.

A male staff member was in charge of monitoring the cloud images. Everything was going normally, but when he looked up again, the wave band jumped abruptly. He reported it right away. “Attention! Abnormal activity in the low clouds above Hebei Province!”

“Run data analysis of the image!”

“Yes!”

The analysis result came back a moment later. “The configuration is undetectable! We have an unidentified flying object!”

“How about the trajectory?”

“It is flying in a straight line from the east to the west at an extremely high speed, possibly passing the cities of Zhangyuan, Yunzhong, and Mayi ahead.”

“Calculate the trajectory and capture a clear image!”

“Yes!”

Tension filled the air. Radar was the very first air defense mechanism, and with the advanced radar technology nowadays, only a handful of rare substances could evade detection.

The fact that this thing had already reached the Central Hebei Plain meant that the domestic radar system had failed completely. If this was a magical puppet or some crazy monster released by one of the rival forces, which had entered the Chinese airspace unchallenged, all hell would break loose!

Hence, the roomful of people went into a busy round of calculations, and set up a few points on its trajectory ahead to catch its image.

After much maneuvering, with a click, a clearer image was finally put up onto the big central screen.

“Zoom in! Zoom in!”

“Can you make it out?”

“Yes! Yes! It’s…”

“…”

The hubbub that filled the room somehow died down all of a sudden. The next moment, it came back even louder.

“A sun! It that a sun flying?”

“Gosh! What are we seeing?” The man in charge was panicking. Picking up the phone, he reported to his superior right away. “There’s a golden flame, no, not flame, but flame within golden light… it doesn’t have a specific shape, just a streak of light flying across the sky… what? P-please repeat that?!”

He suddenly looked utterly baffled and stuck the phone tightly to his ear, fearing of missing any words.

“N-normal procedure? Did you just say that was a normal procedure?” He suddenly raised his voice.

“That’s right!” The voice on the other side sound equally helpless. “We’ve only just got the news ourselves. That was Mr. Gu.”

“Mr. Gu?”

“Yes, Mr. Gu himself.”

“But… All right, I see!”

Putting down the phone, the man in charge could not decide what facial expression should he digest this piece of information with.

The strange silence stretched on. Moments passed when he finally smacked the table and roared, “Calm yourselves down! Go back to your tables! Back to work!”