Chapter 276: A Battle of Qi Refining, the Dao Falls and the Man Perishes!

As his words fell, a three-colored auspicious cloud, vast as a towering mountain, slowly rose above Mingyou's head. It unfurled, spreading to form a massive canopy.

The canopy reached up to touch the stars and stretched down to blanket the Cosmos. Lightning roamed its edges, occasionally echoing with the booming of heavenly drums. Spanning the deep void, it sat at the very center of the universe. With a single breath, it stirred the spiritual energy from all four cardinal directions. Energy surged forward, competing to reflect a myriad of colorful sunset hues that adorned the surrounding space.

In the center of the auspicious cloud, a bright Golden Lamp could be faintly seen. It breathed out radiant flames that pierced the haze, flickering on and off like an invisible eye blinking open and shut.

"Good, good, good!"

The old monk burst into laughter at the sight. "Five Qi Converging at the Origin! You really did reach perfection long ago. It's a pity you cultivated Earth Yin Fire. In this life, it will be impossible for you to attain true cultivation."

"No matter. Today, your master will send you on your way!"

With that, he hoisted the Golden Lamp high and brought it to his lips. Puffing his cheeks, he channeled his Dharmic powers to their absolute limit and blew out a fierce breath.

"Boom!"

In an instant, blazing white firelight was blown from the lamp. Like a ruptured dam unleashing a flood, the surging tide of flames raced straight toward Mingyou.

This Golden Lamp was a Spiritual Treasure he had forged after becoming a Brahma Cultivator, refined from the entirety of his life's cultivation as a Qi Refining practitioner. In his past life, he too had cultivated Earth Yin Fire—the Discerning Truth and Illusion Illuminating Qi. With the aid of this Spiritual Treasure, he could still unleash the many immortal cultivator techniques from his former life.

As for the spiritual fire within this lamp, it was known as the Dao-Loss Dharma-Breaking Flame.

True to its name, it was a spiritual fire refined from the very act of crippling his own cultivation to walk the path of Brahma Cultivators. Because of this, it possessed an extra, esoteric ability: the power to incinerate mysteries.

This was especially true against the Discerning Truth and Illusion Illuminating Qi.

When facing a Qi Refining practitioner who cultivated this exact qi, this spiritual fire was a natural, insurmountable counter. No matter what methods you possessed, encountering this fire meant having your very foundation of life crippled.

"By the mighty virtue of the Wisdom King, Dao falls and qi breaks! Strike!"

The old monk pointed his joined fingers. The flames instantly lunged forward like a viper, on the verge of slithering up Mingyou's auspicious cloud canopy. Yet, the profound mysteries within that cloud abruptly shifted.

The illusory light of the Golden Lamp rapidly faded.

Taking its place was a fiery red sun. It brilliantly illuminated more than half of the dark, deep void, instantly eclipsing the light of the old monk's spiritual flame!

Along with it came Mingyou's cold sneer:

"The light of a firefly, how dare it compete with the sun in brilliance?"

"Insolent!"

As the sun wheel turned, all the spiritual flames were wiped away. Seeing this, the old monk's expression shifted slightly. He took a step back, unable to hide a flicker of astonishment in his eyes:

"The Radiant Universal Illumination Six Harmonies Qi... Heavenly Yang Fire?"

A second qi!

At this moment, Mingyou seemed to have finally revealed his true methods. The auspicious cloud churned; a blazing sun and a bright lamp sat within it, the yin and yang fires perfectly blending to achieve perfection.

However, seeing this sight, the old monk didn't show a shred of fear. Instead, he couldn't help but laugh out loud. "Mingyou, oh Mingyou. My good disciple, did you completely give up on true cultivation after realizing your master had severed your Dao path? Yin and yang fires blending—sure, it's perfect, but what about the third qi?"

"Without a third qi, how will you complete the Eight Trigrams?"

Mingyou didn't answer.

Seeing this, the old monk seemed to have opened the floodgates, rapidly sending a voice transmission: "Of the Three Realms, the Five Elements, and the Twenty-Four Qi, only water and fire qi are the most unique and absolute."

"That is solely because water and fire are the physical manifestations of yin and yang."

"One conceals yang within yin, while the other conceals yin within yang. They are the most complete, yet also the hardest to cultivate."

"Therefore, the other worldly qi—metal, wood, and earth—are all divided into two trigrams of yin and yang. Only water and fire each have a single trigram, because they are already complete in both yin and yang."

These were not mere words.

In truth, the old monk's methods were already unfolding within this booming, chant-like voice. He was using his Daoist attainments to strike at Mingyou's heart, levering the worldly qi in an attempt to make Mingyou collapse without a fight.

"Thus, all cultivators of fire qi—whether Yin Fire or Yang Fire—ultimately have only one trigram left to cultivate at the end of their path. That is the Li Trigram of the Eight Trigrams."

"What is Li? Two yang lines on the top and bottom form the exterior, while one yin line hidden in the middle forms the interior. This is the Li Trigram. Arranged like this, corresponding to the Three Realms of Heaven, Earth, and Man, they are Heavenly Yang Fire, Human Yin Fire, and Earth Yang Fire... In other words, only a cultivator who has mastered these three qi has any hope of forming the Li Trigram!"

"Anything else is a dead end!"

"Otherwise, do you think the Great Rebellion engaged in Purging the Stale Qi of the Six Heavens just for fun?"

"Completing the Li Trigram requires Earth Yang Fire, which is the Heavenly Craft Supreme Yang Nine Smeltings Qi. But as it happens, that qi is gone! No one can ever cultivate the Li Trigram again!"

At this point, a rare trace of bitter resentment bled into the old monk's voice. He seemed to recall the grief and fury of standing before the precipice all those years ago, unable to advance his Dao path even an inch:

"This didn't just sever the Qi Refining path for Earth Yang Fire."

"It severed the path to true cultivation through the Li Trigram!"

The old monk's voice echoed around Mingyou's ears, brimming with malicious delight. "So, my good disciple, the moment you used Earth Yin Fire for Qi Refining Entering the Dao, your path was already dead!"

As his words reached their end, a faint glimmer seemed to rise in the Cosmos.

Immediately after, the glimmer rapidly expanded and smashed into the auspicious cloud above Mingyou's head. This time, it finally made the cloud canopy tremble slightly.

This was "damaging the Dao foundation"!

A Qi Refining spell battle had long ceased to be a simple contest of brute force. Or rather, the myriad esoteric techniques were fundamentally just probes; true victory depended entirely on one's Daoist attainments.

The party with the higher Daoist attainment could use these profound methods to quickly sniff out their enemy's origins and secrets. Then, through Daoist debate and doctrine, they could specifically shake their opponent's Dao foundation and slay them. This was known as a "Dao Struggle." It was a contest of whose Dao was superior; falling short by a single move meant instant death and a shattered Dao!

"Crack, crack, crack!"

In an instant, the trembling of the auspicious cloud canopy became increasingly obvious. Large swathes of radiant light were shaken loose and tumbled down. This was the exact symbol of a Dao foundation being shaken and damaged.

Right at that moment, however.

"Master. Fellow Daoist Xianming. Are you planning to chant the Scripture of Human Deliverance next, trying to recruit me into the Brahma Nation so we can resume our past bond as master and disciple?"

Mingyou's voice rang out, eerie and faint:

"Master, oh Master. I didn't expect that after all these years, you would be exactly the same as before. You haven't made a lick of progress. Your Daoist attainment for this life will forever remain at this level."

"...What?"

Hearing this, the old monk froze in place.

Then, his expression shifted slightly. He realized that while the auspicious cloud above Mingyou's head had shed a lot of radiant light, that was the full extent of the damage.

The blazing sun and the Golden Lamp bobbing within the cloud remained as steady as Mount Tai.

It was as if what he had shattered was nothing more than a bit of dirt clinging to the outer shell. Not only had his Daoist doctrine failed to make the foundation collapse, but it had actually made it shine even brighter.

"No, that's impossible."

The old monk frowned deeply. "You've already walked a dead-end path. By using Earth Yin Fire for Qi Refining Entering the Dao, you were beyond saving long ago. Why isn't your Dao foundation shaking?"

"It's simple."

Mingyou sneered, speaking with careless ease. "Human effort can achieve anything. Since the qi is Earth Yin Fire, I just have to refine it into Yang Fire again, don't I?"

Hearing this, the old monk blinked blankly, then instinctively shook his head:

"What kind of joke is this?!"

"Earth Yin Fire is a worldly qi! Its yin and yang attributes are deeply ingrained to the core. How could you possibly change it?"

"Why couldn't I?"

Mingyou shot back. "We are Qi Refining practitioners. We are people who refine the worldly qi to begin with. If the Great Rebellion could extinguish six qi, what does changing yin and yang amount to?"

"Because the qi didn't match, you felt your Dao path was severed, fell into despair, and threw yourself into the Brahma Nation. You only thought about changing yourself instead of how to change the qi. You're utterly foolish."

"Master, you should have cultivated to become a Corpse Dissolution Immortal instead."

As he finished speaking, the auspicious cloud above Mingyou's head shifted once more. An incredibly condensed pillar of Dharmic light abruptly shot up. Both the blazing sun and the Golden Lamp orbited around this light.

"True cultivation doesn't cultivate the absolute truth of heaven and earth; it cultivates the absolute truth within man. Therefore, what must be used isn't the Cosmos' Three Realms of Heaven, Earth, and Man, but the human body's Three Realms of Essence, Qi, and Spirit! The so-called Essence, Qi, and Spirit are the Heart's Spirit, the Lungs' Qi, and the Kidneys' Essence. The heart is fire, the lungs are metal, and the kidneys are water. Water and fire are the exterior and interior of yin and yang."

"The Heart's Spirit and the Kidneys' Essence are the yin and yang positions of the human body!"

"The Lungs' Qi resides right in the center. It can accept both yin and yang without restriction."

As his words fell, the Golden Lamp imagery—which was originally Earth Yin Fire and symbolized the Discerning Truth and Illusion Illuminating Qi—suddenly leapt up and landed on the left side of the Dharmic light.

There, a spark of fire emerged.

This was the fire of the Heart's Spirit.

The original Earth Yin Fire, bolstered by the heart's fire, instantly reached the extreme of yin and gave birth to yang. Right under the old monk's nose, it transformed into a brilliant Yang Fire!

This time, it was the old monk's turn for his expression to violently freeze. The Golden Lamp in his hand suddenly shattered uncontrollably. The seething Dao-Loss Dharma-Breaking Flame instantly climbed up his body, drilling into his pores and spewing out from his seven facial orifices. It turned him into a human torch on the spot, drawing out a shrill, bloodcurdling howl.

"So it was like this... it was actually like this!?"

"Ahhh!"

His wails echoed throughout the Cosmos. For a moment, even the other Qi Refining practitioners and Ascetic Monks engaged in their own magical battles glanced sideways, revealing awe in their eyes.

"That's Xianming, right? I remember he used to be Mingyou's master before defecting to Brahma all those years ago... Truly, indigo is bluer than the plant it comes from. Is he about to be slain?"

"His Dao foundation has collapsed. Even if he survives this, he won't have long to live."

"What a pity..."

Countless thoughts intersected across the Cosmos, but at this moment, the old monk—or rather, the former Qi Refining practitioner Xianming, now an Ascetic Monk—could no longer care about them.

Though he was in agony, he also found enlightenment within that pain. Alas, this enlightenment only brought him even greater agony, completely shattering the Dao foundation he had so painstakingly cultivated.

"The water and fire of the human body inherently possess yin and yang."

"The yin and yang of the worldly qi simply don't matter. As long as you select according to the Three Realms, the shifts of yin and yang can be adjusted and reshaped through the yin and yang of the human body."

"He made the Earth Yin Fire occupy the Heart's Spirit, the human body's yang position, and thus transformed it into Yang Fire."

"The Heavenly Yang Fire was already perfect, so it naturally resides right in the center with the Lungs' Qi."

"As for the final human yin position, the Kidneys' Essence... regardless of whether he cultivates Human Yang Fire or Human Yin Fire, he can ultimately use this method to convert it into Yin Fire."

"And then... cultivate the Li Trigram!"

Mingyou's Dao path wasn't severed at all; in fact, it was the exact opposite! He was only missing the final qi. As long as he grasped one more human qi, he could attain the Dao and achieve true cultivation!

'Yet here I am...'

As the flames began to recede, the old monk actually regained his calm. He no longer howled, though a touch of tragic sorrow surfaced on his face. "Back then, I was utterly convinced my Dao path was broken."

"I cursed the heavens and blamed others, telling myself that failing to become an immortal wasn't my fault."

"I defected to Brahma, abandoned the immortal path, and schemed so endlessly."

"So it turns out it was simply because... my Daoist attainment wasn't enough?"

Boom!

In the next second, the old monk's Dharmic body violently exploded. The blast of light nearly eclipsed the stars, washing over the deep void. The Cosmos turned as crimson as blood, reflecting Mingyou's icy face.

An Ascetic Monk had fallen just like that!