CHAPTER 45: 045 HEAVENLY EMPEROR’S LIBRARY KEEPER

The area of Qiong Yuan was immensely vast, stretching over a thousand miles both horizontally and vertically, surrounded by a ring of mountains. The peaks were covered in brilliant white snow, the middle of the mountains were thick with green pines and verdant cypresses, red maples, and white birches, while the ground was covered with lush green grass, clear streams, and tumbling waterfalls, as if winter, autumn, and spring were all gathered in one place, allowing one to take in the beauty of all seasons at a glance.

Shi Feiyang found a narrow valley in the Northwest Qian Position, enclosed by high mountains, with only a winding path on the west connecting to the outside Qiong Yuan.

The valley stretched for over a hundred miles, with the Northwest leaning against a main peak that was three to four thousand zhang high, its top covered with ancient, unmelting glaciers. Shi Feiyang had picked a good spot, dug out an ice cave, and stored the frozen body of Geng Peng there, waiting until he retrieved the Gathering Essence and Refining Form Pill to think of a way to rebuild his soul and save his rebirth.

He himself dug a cave at the foot of the mountain to serve as his resting and living place. The cave was several dozen zhang wide with a huge lying dragon stone in the center, and he had drawn in a stream of spring water to flow around the dragon stone.

This environment was the most comforting for him.

Besides, he made a secret door and continued to dig obliquely downward for three hundred zhang, setting up nine stone gates, each weighing tens of thousands of tons, and at the very end, a larger spherical cave which he used as his training room.

The reason he arranged it this way was that the Cave Spirit Zither was too mysteriously powerful. A casual strum could invert the souls of demons, even dispersing soul and spirit, and it could also split mountains and break stones. If he played it outside, the many creatures on Qiong Yuan would immediately become agitated like mudfish just dropped into boiling oil, and many of the beautiful mountain sceneries would be blasted into ruins.

Most crucially, he did not want the Xiankong Ancestor to know his details.

He carved talismans on the four walls of the deep cave and set up prohibitions, ensuring absolute safety before beginning to check all the possessions on him now.

Firstly, he obtained Geng Peng’s Qiankun Bag, which was different from others, woven with golden threads made from bird feathers, containing a vast space inside with treasures that Geng Peng had collected over a thousand years.

Geng Peng rarely went to Central Earth; most items he collected were marine products, including many materials for Artifact Refining and Alchemy, as well as various treasure beads, gemstones, corals, and particularly beautiful shells, conches, and many eggs of unknown creatures. There were green-shelled eggs, red-shelled eggs, and color-changing shelled eggs, the largest being bigger than a car wheel, and the smallest like a longan. All were sealed with spells.

Shi Feiyang, unsure of their depths, dared not casually hatch them, and of course, he did not have the mood or energy for it at the moment.

Besides, there were animal and human body parts, including dragon claws, tiger heads, eagle’s wings, leopard tails..., and human heads and limbs, all preserved fresh with spells and medicines.

Shi Feiyang found a jade box with a stack of paper inside, unbound, each page containing both pictures and text.

After reading for a while, he finally understood that this was a volume from the Chi You Three Disks Scripture, detailing the arbitrary exchange of limbs and body parts of any creature, such as chopping off a human’s head and fitting it onto another animal’s body, turning it into a man-beast monster, or fitting other animals’ heads onto human bodies, along with exchanging hands, feet, hearts, lungs, among other numerous contents.

Shi Feiyang was somewhat disappointed. When he first found it, he thought it was the Chi You Three Disks Scripture, but it turned out to be just Geng Peng’s research notes. He did not want to delve into this stuff; it was not of much use to him.

He also remembered that the most famous thing in Xiankong Ancestor’s possession was the Spiritual Medicine that could reattach severed limbs, the Thousand-Year Continuity Paste. Geng Peng and his brother Geng Kun were on good terms with him, probably also related to this.

Besides Geng Peng’s Qiankun Bag, he also obtained half of the contents of Lady Bao Xiang’s Qiankun Bag.

The Heavenly Fox’s storage box was vastly different from Geng Peng’s. Apart from some artifact refining and alchemy materials, it mostly contained various herbs, along with Five Elements Essence Qi, Sun and Moon Radiance, Heavenly Gang and Earthly Sha, Five Mountains Cloud Qi collected from various places in Central Earth, famous springs from this mountain, fine teas from another, along with many valuable porcelain and jade items, and various everyday objects.

Among these miscellaneous items, there were two that particularly delighted Shi Feiyang. One of them was a Magical Treasure called the Michen Banner.

This banner was only about an inch big, made neither of silk nor hemp, and it was unknown what material it was woven from. In the middle, a human heart was embroidered, bursting forth with five-colored radiance, glossy and shifting as if it were pulsating. When brought close, the banner’s rhythm synchronized with Shi Feiyang’s heartbeat, creating a subtle resonance.

Besides the Michen Banner, he had also obtained several pages of paper detailing spells and secret treasure refining methods.

Lady Bao Xiang’s father, Elder Xue Xue, had long since ascended and was assigned by the Heavenly Emperor to guard the Langhuan Book Library. The Heavenly Emperor’s library, with its collection encompassing the Three Realms, was vast like a sea of smoke, containing tens of millions of volumes requiring numerous managers, and Elder Xue Xue was just one among them.

Out of concern for his daughter still in the mortal world, Elder Xue Xue secretly learned numerous Immortal Laws, which he then transmitted to his daughter using secret techniques.

These Immortal Laws came not only from this world but spanned across all the heavens and the Dharma Realm. Many languages, customs, materials, and tools were different from those here, and Elder Xue Xue couldn’t fully comprehend them all. Many were simply passed onto his daughter because he found them useful or appealing, but he did not dare to cultivate them in heaven for fear of being discovered by his colleagues.

Lady Bao Xiang compiled these Immortal Laws, recording them first to study them slowly later. She struggled for many years to master several of the spells.

Previously, when the Qiankun Bag tore, this book too was mangled in the twisted space. Shi Feiyang only received a few fragmented pages, barely managing to piece them together. Much of it was incomprehensible, but he fortuitously found the sacrificial refinement methods for the Michen Banner and another Magical Treasure, the Hundred Treasure Ruyi Pure Yang Heart Lock, as well as two spells, one named "Thousand Mile Household, A World in a Bag" and another called "Chi Yin Nine Rushes Small Vehicle Multi-Treasure Spell".

There were more, but too much was missing, such as a spell called "Heavenly Gang Thirty-Six Transformations," which was accompanied only by the names and a couple of sentences: "The Earth Transformation Number is seventy-two, covering the Heavenly Dao’s operations, patrolling the heavens every ten degrees surpassing the star cycles, the Earth Method to heaven, born of Heavenly Dao and finalized by Earth Dao, the Earth Qi changing every five days..." There was half a character after that, resembling the character ’is’ or ’vast,’ making it incomprehensible.

What a pity! Lady Bao Xiang, that cunning fox, only knew how to seduce men all day. Such a formidable Immortal Law could be recognized by its name alone, yet she could not fathom it. Luckily for me, had she understood it, I might not have survived until now.

Shi Feiyang prepared to refine the Michen Banner.

In fact, most of Lady Bao Xiang’s spells pertained to space.

"Thousand Mile Household, A World in a Bag," as its name suggests, compressed a thousand miles into a single household, the scenery of the world into a sachet.

Its essence was still the compression of space, then used for traveling.

The Michen Banner was reputed to be able to contain Mount Sumeru within a mustard seed, essentially based on the same underlying logic.

Shi Feiyang first master the "Thousand Mile Household, A World in a Bag" spell, making new breakthroughs and deepening his understanding of inverting Yin and Yang and manipulating space, then he would refine the Michen Banner, doubling the effectiveness of his efforts.

The Michen Banner was inherently in sync with Lady Bao Xiang’s breath, no matter where the objects were, with just a thought, the banner could transform into a streak of golden light and fly back to her.

However, it had been sealed inside the Jade Box Heavenly Book and then swallowed by Shi Feiyang, and now it was in the heavily fortified underground cultivation chamber in the North Pole, so even if Lady Bao Xiang had incredible abilities, she couldn’t retrieve it.