Chapter 231 – The Sharpening Stone
Chapter 231 – The Knife Sharpening Stone
The flames scorched the wind thorns, yet the fire fueled the wind, and the speed and power of the wind thorns increased instead of decreasing.
The Red Flame Horse was furious and tried to block the wind spikes with a wall of fire, but it was futile.
The wind thorns traveled through the fire wall and pierced through the Red Flame Horse’s body, nailing it to its body.
Xu Chuniang took the opportunity to transform several more Thunder Light Spells, blasting them towards its injured parts.
Within a short period of time, the battle situation changed dramatically, as dozens of wounds, large and small, appeared on the Red Flame Horse’s body, and it soon collapsed to the ground due to physical exhaustion and excessive bleeding.
Just as he was about to take advantage of the victory, a burst of white light flashed, and the Red Flame Horse that fell to the ground disappeared.
What appeared afterward was the entrance to the fifth floor.
Xu Chuniang breathed a slight sigh of relief, this layer was actually not difficult, the test should be on the arts.
It was just that in the face of the Red Flame Horse, which was naturally adept at fire, due to common sense, most people would use water and ice-based techniques to counteract it, thus becoming passive.
If you want to break the game, you have to find another way.
Xu Chuniang closed her eyes and meditated to recover her aura, and it took two days of work to replenish the depleted aura in her body.
She got up and looked toward the entrance, gold, wood, water and fire have been experienced, next, it’s the turn of the earth.
She wondered what would greet her on this fifth level.
Xu Chuniang stepped into it, but in the next second, she lost consciousness and fell into endless darkness.
—
The sky was drizzling, and in an inconspicuous corner beside the vessel furnace lay a huge stone.
From time to time, people hammered spirit ore and made fire to refine weapons here, but that huge stone seemed to have nothing to do with this Weapon Furnace.
Occasionally, when a spirit weapon becomes dull, only then does someone polish the dull spirit weapon on that huge stone.
It turned out that the boulder was a sharpening stone.
After Xu Chuniang regained consciousness, she realized that she had turned into a grinding stone.
To be precise, it was her Yuan Shen that was imprisoned within this stone.
She attempted to externally release her divine sense, only to find that the sea of consciousness in her Yuan Shen was empty, with no semblance of divine sense.
During the days of being trapped in the stone, Xu Chuniang had tried all sorts of methods, but was unable to detach herself from this stone.
She couldn’t recall what she had gone through and why she had been reduced to this state.
Yet at that moment, a voice in her heart told her that it was all just a dream.
As long as she wanted to, she could get out of this dream at any time.
Xu Chuniang didn’t do as she was told, cultivators have always had little sleep and no dreams, she didn’t believe this was a dream.
It should be some sort of prohibition that trapped her Yuan Shen in the stone.
After turning into a stone, her life seemed to have become as long as the stone.
Everyday, there was nothing else to do but listen to the sounds of refining around her, and her consciousness became more and more chaotic.
Until one day, a rusty spirit blade was continuously polished on her body, causing her to wake up with a jolt.
The stone sharpened the knife, and the knife sharpened the stone.
It hurt, like it was cutting directly into her Yuan Shen.
That voice in her mind appeared again, telling her that she could all leave the dream and be free of the pain immediately if she wanted to.
If she didn’t leave, sooner or later she would die.
Xu Chuniang didn’t say a word, just silently endured the pain, cleared her mind in the midst of it, and continued to persevere.
It didn’t take long for her to realize that in the process of sharpening the blade with the spirit weapon, the “prohibition” seemed to have loosened.
However, this degree of loosening was very small, and her Yuan Shen was unable to detach itself from it.
The days that followed were an infinite cycle, and every time her consciousness was blurred, the grinding of the spirit weapon brought her pain and at the same time cleared her consciousness.
“Restraint” broke through a crack at the same time, that voice in the bottom of her heart had appeared less and less as she persisted.
In the end, it even stopped appearing for a long time.
As time passed, the originally very large boulder slowly became much shorter. It wasn’t until one day, when it was casually discarded outside of the artifact furnace because it was no longer in their hands and was exposed to the sun and rain, that the voice reappeared.
“Give it up, it’s just a dream.”
“It’s not a dream.”
Xu Chuniang replied to her heart’s voice, and although she didn’t know why it was like this, it definitely wasn’t a dream.
Regrettably, she was so close to breaking the “forbidden system”.
But it was precisely at this time that she was thrown out.
“This kind of persistence is pointless, sooner or later, your consciousness will completely fade away.”
Pointless? Perhaps.
Then hold on until the day your consciousness fades.
Without a spirit weapon to sharpen her blade, she could only use her Yuan Shen to desperately hit the cracks in the forbidden system.
Her consciousness became chaotic day by day, and she even forgot many things, only mechanically repeating this one thing every day.
The cracks grew larger and larger under her day and night impacts.
The voice in the bottom of her heart spoke again, “If you don’t leave, you will completely lose your consciousness and turn into a real stone.”
“Is that so? There’s nothing wrong with turning into a stone. Mountains and rocks are eternal, this is not an eternity. But I think I won’t be able to experience such an eternity for the time being.”
She replied to the voice in her heart and slammed with all her might towards the growing crack.
There was a “click”, like the sound of something shattering, and then the mountain rock cracked open, and Xu Chuniang was finally able to get away.
Just as she was freeing herself, she remembered that she was in the Seven Star Pagoda, and couldn’t help but look around.
Where could she still see any artifact furnaces and stones, only an entrance to the sixth floor slowly appeared.
It turned out that everything that happened just now was just an illusion.
In the illusion seems to experience many years, but in fact only a few days.
Feeling the long-lost freedom, Xu Chuniang’s heart calmed down, and a little bit of enlightenment rose.
The Yuan Shen had a dao heart, and the mountains and rocks were like shells, protecting the Yuan Shen while imprisoning it, making the dao heart dependent.
The spirit weapon that sharpened the sword was like a calamity, bringing pain and destruction while allowing the Dao Mind to remain calm and clear, able to continue to move forward.
Her heart is like a rock and cannot be turned.
Just as Xu Chuniang gave birth to such thoughts, the dao platform within her body vibrated more than just a little, and even directly shrunk by three points.
After the dao platform shrunk, it then stabilized and returned to silence.
Xu Chuniang pondered, she had seen some records in the Tibetan scripture pavilion.
Building the foundation to cultivate the dao platform, with each level of cultivation, the dao platform would be a little higher.
After reaching the Great Perfection of Foundation Establishment, when the Dao Platform was high, one would have to refine the Dao Platform and condense the Jindan.
With the same grade of Dao platform, the larger the Dao platform, the more difficult it is to condense the Jindan.
On the contrary, the smaller the dao platform, the more favorable it is for the formation of the Golden Dan.
However, the size of the dao platform was generally fixed, and only a very few techniques were able to change its size.
Xu Chuniang guessed that the change in her body’s dao platform might have something to do with the advancement of her dao heart.
A neutral and stable state of mind could only aid in cultivation.
This fifth level of the trial, the test is the Taoist heart.
She looked towards the entrance to the sixth level and walked forward, soon her figure disappeared into it.
Just after entering the sixth level, she felt the hunting hurricane wind blowing on her body.
(End of chapter)