Chapter 88: The Five Thunders Orthodox Method

Hu Jinhua went to carry the chicken, and Niu Congcong began to boil water. This large pot was a black iron pot from a country kitchen, quite large, and it boiled four or five buckets of water.

Xu Jia, meanwhile, processed the bucket of chicken blood, lest it coagulate later.

He added some wine, cinnabar, and the prepared angelica salt water, stirred it, extracted the fibrous strands, and filtered it once through gauze; this chicken blood was then made into talisman ink.

It just could not be stored for long unless in a low-temperature environment, but this was easy to handle; any minor ghost in the hall could lower the temperature significantly.

However, Xu Jia did not intend to keep it for long, and he immediately used the tail of the weasel that had followed him as a brush on the inner and outer walls.

He began by drawing Door God talismans on the doors, and on the outer walls of the Fox Immortal Hall, he drew a large Four Spirits Peace House Talisman on each.

The little weasel bared its teeth and grimaced; the fur on its tail was almost going bald!

With the remaining ink, Xu Jia climbed up to the roof beams, drew a talisman on the main beam, and then drew talismans on each of the pillars as well.

Finally, he took down the Hall Genealogy and drew a talisman on the back of it before stopping.

This was because the chicken blood ink had run out.

The little weasel was already numb, but it also felt a bit of self-satisfaction, because by using its tail to draw the talismans, it had just sensed the divine intent and the changes in Qi between heaven and earth.

This was a karmic connection; if the fox tails were not too fluffy and soft, and their size too large to hold as a brush, and not as capable of forming a "brush tip" as the weasel's tail, Xu Jia would definitely have used the little foxes' tails to dip in the ink.

This house was originally the home of Niu Erzhu and could not be considered a temple or a shrine. Theoretically, to worship deities, one could only use a family shrine; the format used was not the four beams and eight pillars, but merely a simple cleansing of the altar to remove filth, pacifying the house and protecting the boundary, before proceeding to settle the spirits and invite the divine.

Now that Xu Jia was drawing various talismans, it was actually to "reinforce the altar grounds." After all, as more and more spirits, immortals, ghosts, and demons appeared on the altar in the future, it would be even more necessary to be able to suppress them.

This chicken demon had a hundred years of Daoist Practice, and its chicken blood was also very spiritual; the hen turning into a rooster meant it possessed both yin and yang, and was full of spirituality.

After drawing the talismans, this Daochang appeared much more "stern and solemn." It could gather the divine intent of the four spirits and the Earth Qi, suppress evil thoughts, and soothe spiritual bodies.

If viewed from the Dharma Realm, these talismans glowed with light, then gradually became restrained, yet still transformed into a thin layer, like a barrier, protecting this Fox Immortal Hall Dongfu.

Xu Jia then placed the Broken Bowl that had suppressed the centipede spirit on the altar and attempted to put the Wind Calming Pill into the bowl.

Immediately, the Wind Calming Pill revealed a phantom image of a centipede, wandering within the bowl, while at the same time, a faint light emanated from the Black Bowl.

Xu Jia sat cross-legged before the altar and touched this light with his consciousness, and suddenly he appeared within an illusion.

He saw a hunched old Daoist in tattered, rotten clothes with a wretched face, holding a pitch-black wooden staff in his left hand that was glistening with oil, and a broken bowl in his right hand; the rotten clothes on his body vaguely showed five-colored patterns, but they were also filthy beyond measure.

Yet, he gave people the impression of being a master from beyond the world.

This beggar-like old Daoist had a grave expression in the illusion, for a giant centipede dragon, at least ten-plus zhang long, was hovering in the sky, with a thousand feet and a hundred eyes, a dragon's head and a centipede's body, opening its mouth to inhale young boys and girls.

The commoners below were kowtowing to the centipede dragon.

Although the old Daoist looked wretched, he shouted with great righteousness: "Miao Dragon! You have violated the heavenly laws! Will you not surrender?"

"I am the True Dragon of the Nine Li, who once cultivated under the seat of the Great Emperor Chiyou. You insignificant weasel, when I became famous, you didn't even know where you were!"

"Evil creature! I see you refuse a toast only to drink a forfeit! Witness my Five Thunders Orthodox Method!"

The old Daoist struck his command token, and suddenly the wind rose and clouds surged! The whole sky became dim and murky, with flying sand and dust.

"Wind, come!" "Clouds, gather!"

"Thunder, sound!"

The Miao Dragon spat out poisonous smoke and poisonous fire, and within the poisonous smoke were many vengeful souls, transforming into skeletal phantoms.

Hidden among them were two magic weapons refined from poisonous fangs, about to sneak an attack to pierce the Daoist to death.

Who would have known that the Daoist's rotten clothes would release five-colored auspicious clouds, with golden light protecting his body and the benevolent gods of the heavens shielding him!

Neither the poisonous smoke and vengeful ghosts, nor the flying poisonous fangs could get near him; instead, purple thunder, green thunder, profound thunder, and white thunder—four types of thunder—arrived in an instant and struck the centipede dragon.

As the thunder fell, the centipede dragon rolled, and its hundred eyes released countless rays of golden light, shooting into the clouds.

In the clouds were thunder gods and thunder beasts, lightning maidens and cloud boys, arrayed in formation, setting up a Heavenly Net.

The disheveled Daoist held his staff high and shouted loudly: "Thunder Duke, assist me!"

Immediately, five types of divine thunder entangled into the staff, and the staff transformed into chains of thunder, locking the centipede dragon.

The centipede dragon was greatly alarmed: "This is a sacred object of Great Yu!"

"Correct! This is the very staff used when Great Yu was controlling the floods, drawing water maps, traveling across the Three Mountains and Five Peaks, the Nine Rivers and Four Seas, walking the whole way!"

When Great Yu controlled the floods, he opened mountains and chiseled paths, slaughtered evil beasts, and subdued many tribes to work together to control the floods.

This centipede dragon belonged to the old ministers of Chiyou; after the defeat, it fled south from the Central Plains, protecting the people of the Nine Li, and reached the land of Baiyue. The various Miao people, Yue people, and Yi people... were all descendants of the Nine Li.

Huang Muchun called it "Miao Dragon" precisely because the Miao people worshipped it as a totem, and Miao women, when weaving cloth, all liked to weave centipede-dragon patterns.

This centipede dragon in the south still maintained ancient blood sacrifices, and Huang Muchun had gone south to Destroy Mountains and Break Temples during the time of the "Baiyue Rebellion," cultivating external merits.

These thunder chains had the power to suppress dragons. Huang Muchun then threw out that broken bowl, and immediately the bowl emitted a ghostly light, suppressing the centipede dragon, pinning it upside down upon the earth and mountains, refining it with thunder and fire until the demon corpse finally turned into a mountain range, the demon soul was taken away by the Thunder Duke in the sky, and then the Dharma faded and the thunder extinguished.

The illusion dissipated, but Xu Jia's heart and soul were shaken: "The ancestors of this weasel were truly wealthy! This Huang Muchun, a mere demon creature, could actually perform the Five Thunders Orthodox Method; it just goes to show that he had a great background and origin. Compared to the scene of that battle, my own heterodox ways are simply incomparable!"

Xu Jia estimated that this Huang Muchun's Daoist Practice was even more profound than his own in his previous life, not stopping at the Golden Core stage, but at least having attained the Yang Spirit.

After the shock to his heart and soul, Xu Jia felt more joy than anything else.

In his previous life on Blue Star, he was already at the ceiling of cultivation. Now, seeing the level of the battle in the illusion brought by this broken bowl, it was already similar to those in mythology—not to mention the level of Journey to the West or Investiture of the Gods, it at least had the feel of later cultivation novels.

At least there was a sense of hope. However, could the mountain range transformed by this centipede dragon be Yushan? Xu Jia thought carefully; Yushan obtained official worship only during the previous Great Heng dynasty, while this Huang Muchun was a figure from a thousand years ago.

Perhaps the mountain was that mountain, but the Mountain God must have been born later, not transformed from the original soul of the centipede dragon.

But after the Longevity Sect performed their rites to pollute the Divine Nature of the Yushan Mountain God, it was hard to say if it would recover its original nature.

This was also the Karmic Connection that allowed this broken bowl to remain in the Yellow Immortal Temple for worship all this time without being lost.

(End of chapter)