Chapter 960: Now, Draw the Tianfu True Talisman!

Qian Chen calmly admired the new talisman he had just drawn.

This talisman was named the “True Talisman of the Seven Laws for Subduing Ghosts and Restraining Gods,” its effect mundane—it was merely Qian Chen’s application of his understanding of the universe’s primordial Dao to uncover the foundational law governing all Jiazi True Gods.

This single talisman could command all deities beneath the Celestial Timekeepers.

Gently blowing to dry the ink, Qian Chen flung the talisman at the crow: “This talisman can restrain and subdue deities—when the hidden master strikes, use it against him!”

The crow opened its beak and seized the talisman, tilting its head, its pea-sized eyes gleaming with sharp attention.

Qian Chen had been about to preen slightly, but seeing the crow’s earnest, clear, foolish, and utterly awestruck gaze, his confidence evaporated; he waved his hand: “Just a trick! My new talisman art is still crude—I can barely draw a handful. This one is more script than symbol; beyond this universe, its power plummets. By the standards of talisman art, it’s barely a True Talisman.”

“Talisman art originated in ancient times, from the custom of knotting ropes to record events—thus, knots were the first talismans. Do you know how the ancient wrote ‘knot’?”

“It was written as ‘Xuan!’”

“Knots had spatial structure—more three-dimensional and information-rich than today’s paper talismans. So I first learned talismans through knots…”

Qian Chen fetched a rope—three zhang long, woven from cotton, hemp, silk, leather, and other fibers, multicolored, forming a massive knot.

It looked like a ball.

Qian Chen slowly unraveled the outermost knot, made of ropes braided from cow, horse, pig, dog, and even human skin.

“This knot represents skin—the skin that envelops all beings!”

“Using the Moon Demon’s Skin-Painting Art, I wove the form and spirit of the Corpse-Ghost who had been flayed alive—the one representing human skin among the Six Ancestors of Green Skin—into this knot, weaving its principle within. Though I haven’t yet consumed the path it represents, that path must embody envelopment, containment, heaven and earth, and the distinction between self and other.”

After unraveling this knot, five or six loose knots suddenly sprang apart.

Each knot resembled a heart, liver, spleen, or lung—an internal organ, each glowing in five colors.

“This one represents the Open-Bellied Buddha of the Medicine King Temple, the five-organs deity chosen by the hidden master. I wove the Five Organs True Form Diagram and fragments of the Divine Treasury secrets into it—try unraveling it later.”

Qian Chen’s fingers touched the small knots linking the five organs.

“These are meridians and blood vessels—I wove the mysteries of acupoints, meridians, and qi-blood circulation into seven hundred and twenty knots. This is the Corpse That Sank in the River!”

“These seven hundred and twenty knots are bound together by two hundred and six knots, forming four large knots and one central knot—representing the human body’s two hundred and six bones and limbs. This is the Half-Man, the Deep-Fried Bones, the Great Golden Man.”

Finally, Qian Chen shook the rope, and all the knots unraveled, revealing countless tiny knots.

He rolled them into a ball—shaped like a brain.

“Here are two billion knots, representing the nervous system and brain—the very path the hidden master prepared…”

He looked up at the crow: “How is my ‘Sevenfold Seven-Body Khruev True Talisman’?”

The crow lifted its head: “Master, the Open-Bellied Buddha is already under my control. With this five-organs talisman alone, he can never rise again!”

Qian Chen shook his head, pressing his index finger to his forehead: “These are trivialities—they won’t hinder the grand scheme. The grand scheme is that this talisman only expresses eleven percent of my inferred Khruev Dao—it’s utterly insufficient to bear the power of a pillar.”

He gazed at the river beneath Wanghai Tower, sighing: “The Tianfu True Talisman!”

“Only the Tianfu True Talisman can bear the power of the Primordial Spirit, can bear fragments of Dao Fruit…”

He took a block of pitch-black, viscous substance—like petroleum, yet fleshy in texture—Tian Sui—and kneaded it in his hands.

Soon, a lifelike face appeared on his palm: eyes like gaping treasure holes, one black, one white, sucking in the essence of sun and moon, heaven and earth treasures; ears like auspicious features, each side resting a strange insect—one like a cricket drawing a lute behind its back, the other curled like a snail.

The tongue inside the mouth…

Countless dense taste buds, like tentacles, tiny and tightly packed, each bud seeming to open ten thousand mouths.

Two dragons, one green, one white, emerged from the high nose.

And countless hairs—eyebrows, beard, scalp, fine hairs—all tipped with brilliant gold-silver light…

This grotesque face, merely glancing at it made one feel one’s own face warping—as if every face was contained within it, even one’s own.

The crow, upon seeing it, saw its own face—suddenly feeling as if the face Qian Chen had tossed on the table was its true self.

The crow, forged by the Paper-Puppet Art, suddenly formed a mysterious bond with the face—across the distance, Wen Cai Xia in the Medicine King Temple opened her eyes and saw the Master’s hand stroking her own face.

“Caw!”

The crow shrieked, flapping its wings to cover its eyes.

Qian Chen laughed: “What? Afraid of this Ten-Thousand-Faces Demon Talisman?”

“Don’t fear—look at the other talismans…”

He rose, drew back the curtain behind him—Jin Ren, transformed from Chang Yan, burned in flames, while several artisans swung iron hammers, pounding her into the shape of a great bell, ancient patterns engraved upon her.

“Cast metal, engrave inscriptions—this is the Golden Talisman!”

The curtain lifted, and gauzy veils fluttered all around.

The pillars of Wanghai Tower emerged—before the crow appeared vast talisman scrolls, like paintings.

Some resembled human skin, covered in intricate crimson tattoos forming a blood path.

Others were faces molded from Tian Sui flesh, hundreds of masks hanging from the pillars.

Some were ropes and threads coiled around the pillars, densely knotted…

Even the bell being forged had a hanging iron hook left on one pillar.

Eight pillars, eight talismans—skin, rope, metal, flesh, bone, armor… eight talismans, each strange, sacred, bizarre, or profound, arrayed in the eight directions, encircling Qian Chen.

The eight talismans all faced one point—Qian Chen extended his finger, touching it as if holding a brush, yet hesitated, unable to lower it.

“Still missing something!”

Qian Chen closed his eyes and sighed: “Still missing something!”

The crow flew into the night; Qian Chen returned to his desk, lifted his brush again—and this time, in one breath, he wrote a line of blood-red talisman script.

“Khruev…”

“I’ve tried the ancient knot-tying method, the demonic tattoo art, the Moon Demon’s skin-painting art, the Heavenly Zhou casting method, the Heavenly Shang oracle bone method… talisman art has advanced greatly. Yet it remains countless miles from the realm of the Primordial Dao Ancestor. To write the Great Demon Sovereign’s true name, the Tianfu True Talisman is but the beginning. Without grasping the shadow of the Primordial Dao Ancestor, adding strokes is merely adding feet to a snake—laughable!”

Qian Chen fell silent, yet within his gaze shone stars.

“Then I must cheat…”

“In the memories left by the Supreme One, there is another way to draw talismans…”

“The pinnacle of Qianshi technology, the miracle of human industrial development—drawing talismans with light, micro-talisman craftsmanship, the culmination of civilization, the chokehold hand—no nation ranked second could forge a full industrial chain for silicon talismans!”

“Fortunately, the structure of this universe is a colossal photolithography machine.”

Qian Chen’s spiritual essence became the Lamp Father, suspended at the very top of the Spirit Realm—its spiritual light, drawn from the Supreme One, was the perfect source. Beneath the Lamp Father lay the Savior, whose body concealed the Great Demon Sovereign’s true name.

Coincidentally, Qian Chen had prepared a hidden technique on the great mirror in the mortal realm—the “Rising Mirror Secret Rite.”

Its principle: elevate a mirror shard cast by the Mirror Master to the middle of the Spirit Realm, splitting the Lamp Father’s light into seven colors—but with a slight adjustment, this mirror shard could focus the Lamp Father’s light.

Thus, when Qian Chen activated another hidden technique—the Blood Moon Rite—at the right moment, he could exploit the Savior’s nearness to the Lamp Father’s essence to force it down into the Spirit Realm.

Since the Lamp Father and the Xuan Jun were originally one, the Savior, after falling and drawing near the Lamp Father’s essence, would draw near the Xuan Jun’s essence—descending from the highest peak of the True Spirit Realm to the deepest depths of the True World’s Secret History.

In this process, the Savior became an intensely potent light source, capable of etching through all things.

It would pass through the mirror surface raised by the “Rising Mirror Secret Rite,” imprinting the Great Demon Sovereign’s true name upon it—this was the first exposure.

Then came the great mirror of the mortal realm—when the Savior passed through it, Qian Chen’s true spiritual essence would perform a grand rite, piercing the primordial spiritual essence of all living beings, weaving them into a colossal talisman representing Qian Chen.

This was the second exposure…

Finally, the light source formed by the Savior would fall upon this layer of Secret History.

By then, Qian Chen would have already raised the Five Pillars—the Dao Fruits of Khruev, Jiqi, Se Nie, and Na Gou would be refined into demonic elixirs and painted onto the surface of the Secret History.

When the Savior’s light passed through, they would act as photoresist.

Etching the Great Demon Sovereign’s true name, Qian Chen’s True Self Spiritual Talisman, and the prepared demonic Dao Fruits onto this layer of Secret History.

Finally, sealing this layer of Secret History within the mirror shard.

Thus, using the Kunlun Mirror as the vessel, the four demonic Dao paths Qian Chen opened as the medicine, the flesh and blood of myriad beings nurtured by the Cauldron of Creation as talisman ink, the spiritual light opened by the Supreme One as the light source, and the Savior as energy—through multiple exposures, step by step, the Great Demon Sovereign’s true name, Qian Chen’s True Self Spiritual Talisman, and the four demonic Dao inscriptions would be sealed together, imprinted upon the mirror shard.

Forming a talisman from the mirror!

Achieving the Tianfu True Talisman—the Supreme Great Demon Secret Talisman!

Overall, the Lamp Father, suspended at the very top of the Spirit Realm, served as the light source.

The middle layers—the “Savior,” the “Mortal Realm,” and the “Secret History”—were three mirror shards, each engraved with different talismans: “Great Demon Sovereign’s True Name,” “Qian Chen’s True Self’s Interpretation of the World and the Translated Dao sealed by the Primordial Dao Ancestor,” and “The Demonic Dao sealing the Great Demon Sovereign’s True Name.”

Then, through exposure and reduction, the three talismans merged into one, imprinted as a single talisman.

Finally, using the nature of spiritual light, sealing the talisman within the mirror shard…

Of course, many problems remain—not to mention modulating the frequency of the spiritual light emitted by the Dao Dust Pearl onto the Savior’s light source, or extracting this layer of Secret History from the universe without disturbing any living being within it, and sealing the imprinted Dao within a tiny mirror shard—what immense technical difficulty!

Most importantly, the design of the Supreme Great Demon Secret Talisman—the unification of the Great Demon Sovereign’s True Name, Qian Chen’s True Self Spiritual Talisman, and the Supreme Heavenly Demon Talisman—has yet to succeed in photolithography.

Qian Chen flicked a suddenly appearing lustrous mirror surface—time in the entire universe surged forward, reached a node, then halted, awaiting Qian Chen’s execution.

He flicked the treasure mirror again—time flowed backward…

“Sigh! Photolithography failed again! Must redesign the talisman script.”

“Each failed photolithography costs me plenty of offerings to the Kunlun Mirror! I wonder what she and the Cauldron of Creation are scheming—ah! They’ve concealed a segment of the future—that’s where their handiwork lies!”

Qian Chen muttered, then bent his head to continue studying talisman art, revising his talisman design.