Chapter 3: Ice Heart

Although Ji Ning tried to imagine these seven enchanting beauties as skeletons, as toads and other disgusting things, deep down he knew they were not toads. They were the mortal tribulation that came after the descent of karmic fire, illusions naturally conjured by his own heart, not anything repulsive. This still made Ji Ning unable to resist his desires being stirred...

"Endure, endure, endure..." Ji Ning constantly suppressed his desires.

But as time passed, his desires only grew.

"Wrong."

Ji Ning suddenly came to his senses, recalling the legend of Yu the Great controlling floods on Earth: "Blocking is not as good as channeling. How can desires be forcibly suppressed? The mortal tribulation... the mortal tribulation... according to the records in the books at Mount Fangcun, one must enter the mortal world and emerge from it to pass the mortal tribulation."

"But if I enter the mortal world and sink into it, what then?"

"What should I do?"

Ji Ning's heart began to struggle in various ways.

The more one knows, the more troublesome the mortal tribulation becomes. Knowing is one thing; being able to do it is another.

"No matter what..."

"My heart shall never sink."

"All of this is but a tempering of the mortal world upon me."

Ji Ning dared not slacken in the slightest.

In fact, Ji Ning's approach was correct, because for ordinary cultivators who venture into the mortal world to train, they can sink for a long time, but as long as they awaken one day and emerge from the mortal world, their Dao heart will naturally grow greatly. But Ji Ning was different! Ji Ning was now facing the 'mortal tribulation' of descending karmic fire, where sinking was absolutely forbidden.

Time passed.

Lust, food, pride, wealth, love, resentment...

In the mortal tribulation, every aspect of the mortal world was pushed to an extreme.

Lust meant the most beautiful women who could shake your heart.

Food meant countless delicacies beyond imagination that stirred the soul.

Pride meant various forms of aggression, jealousy, anger, and the exhilaration of victory...

Love meant parental affection, marital love, love for children, brotherly love, teacher-student love... This word 'love' truly tugged at the heartstrings, making one willing to break their heart...

Resentment meant overwhelming anger and hatred, filling every corner of the heart, impossible to wash away even with all the water in the four seas, an endless desire to kill one's enemies...

...

At first, Ji Ning forcibly suppressed his desires against all the temptations of the mortal world. The desires struck again and again, leaving him exhausted and狼狈. But gradually, Ji Ning began to awaken.

"Amid all temptations, my heart remains unchanged."

"It's just a stinking bag of skin."

Ji Ning separated his innermost heart from his external self completely.

No matter how desires surged, no matter the excitement, trembling, exhilaration, hatred, satisfaction, unwillingness, joy... Ji Ning no longer suppressed any of it. He let it all wash over and envelop him, but his heart remained detached, like a bystander observing all of this.

"Original heart, external body?" Ji Ning gradually gained insight, thinking of the 'Houyi Archery Art'.

The Houyi Archery Art ranked among the top ten of countless divine abilities, on par with the Star Picking Hand. But executing the Houyi Archery Art was more complex, requiring higher skill, even excellent bows and arrows, and could only be used very few times. Yet its power was astonishingly great.

The ultimate power of the Houyi Archery Art was even greater than that of the Star Picking Hand! Even the ancient great god Houyi, when unleashing arrows of maximum power, could only sustain a dozen or so shots before collapsing, but the power of those arrows was terrifying.

The 'Houyi Archery Art' was not just about divine power; its true essence, which made it unrivaled across the Three Realms as the absolute number one archery art, lay in—heartforce!

Heartforce was a very ethereal yet incredibly mysterious power.

It was completely different from the power commonly used by immortals, gods, and demons. Powers like elemental force, immortal magic power, and divine power were all visible to the naked eye. But 'heartforce' was invisible, and without external means like 'archery', pure 'heartforce' could not even harm anyone.

Yet it was this 'heartforce' that made divine archers truly fearsome beings, and Houyi was the strongest among them. The 'Houyi Archery Art' he created pushed the use of heartforce to a terrifying level, giving rise to this heaven-defying archery art.

This ethereal heartforce...

Yet it unleashed astonishing power. In the ancient world, even True Gods and Dao Ancestors were unwilling to make an enemy of Houyi. He was a man among True Gods and Dao Ancestors who was incredibly fearsome, a legend among divine archers.

The 'Houyi Archery Art' clearly divided the levels of heartforce into many stages.

The first stage of heartforce was entry-level, which was Ji Ning's current level. As long as one could truly apply invisible heartforce to archery, extending it with the arrow for ten thousand miles, that counted as entry. Ji Ning had trained hard in archery for several years on Mount Fangcun before achieving entry. Generally, entering the first stage of heartforce meant stepping into the threshold of a divine archer, becoming a true divine archer, with a real difference between heaven and earth compared to other archers in the Three Realms. Without understanding heartforce, one was never a true divine archer. With heartforce, the bow became terrifying.

The second stage of heartforce was Ice Heart!

Ice Heart...

It meant the heart was truly detached and introverted, unmoved by any external temptation, the deep lake of the heart frozen into ice without a single ripple! When the heart could be so introverted, 'heartforce' underwent a qualitative transformation, greatly increasing its power.

...

"So beneath the karmic fire, without my realizing it, I have actually reached the 'Ice Heart' realm, and this mental power has improved." Ji Ning felt a faint joy. "As is widely acknowledged, as long as one can survive the descent of karmic fire, one's Dao-heart will undergo a qualitative transformation, and even one's strength will increase."

When karmic fire descends, there are three calamities.

Each is stronger than the last.

Ji Ning had just now experienced only the second calamity, the Red Dust Calamity, and had already reached the Ice Heart realm. This showed that although karmic fire was a great tribulation... fortune and misfortune were interdependent; if one survived, there would be gains. However, very few cultivators were willing to be entangled by karmic fire. After all, once entangled, even if one endured the three calamities of karmic fire, from then on the karmic fire would cling forever, and one would have to endure the pain of being scorched by it at every moment. Although it was not as severe as the previous three calamities, the constant burning pain... unless there was a special need, who would be willing to endure it?

Moreover, after being entangled by karmic fire, it was extremely difficult to reduce one's sin to the level of 'Sinful Blood Light'.

Merit and sin: merit is hard to obtain, sin is easy to incur!

Killing a mortal was a great sin, and sin would easily descend...

But obtaining merit was far too difficult. For example, when Ji Ning killed great demons and evil patriarchs with Sinful Blood Light as great as that, and even took disciples, gaining their loyal submission, his merit had only barely risen from 'Pure Merit Qi' to 'Merit Golden Light', and the range of the golden light was very small. To reach the legendary ultimate of merit, 'Adorned with Seven-Colored Auspicious Light', was many times more difficult.

Sometimes, even 'good intentions lead to bad results'. The 'merit' in heaven and earth—even the most powerful True Gods and Dao Ancestors could not truly understand its rules. Even if saving those with great merit and killing those with great sin seemed to bring merit, and even if ninety-nine such acts brought merit, perhaps the hundredth such act would instead bring sin.

Going from 'karmic fire' down to 'Sinful Blood Light' was as difficult as going from 'Merit Golden Light' up to 'Seven-Colored Auspicious Light'.

Thus, once entangled by karmic fire, one could almost never shake it off for eternity.

Eternally burned by fire—who would be willing?

...

"What else?" Ji Ning had previously been exalted, sitting high on the imperial throne, unifying the world, and at his command, none dared disobey.

But then everything before him dissipated and transformed.

The scene before him became an ordinary courtyard. Inside the courtyard, a woman was holding an infant, another woman was playing beside them, and a sturdy man was cutting meat.

"Hmm?" Ji Ning found that he had become an infant.

"What's going on?" Ji Ning realized for the first time that he had become an infant. In the previous calamities, he had always been in his original form.

As time passed, Ji Ning gradually understood.

He had become an infant, and the infant gradually grew into a young child. The young child received unified instruction within the tribe, but being young, how could he calm his mind? Only as he grew older did he gradually become diligent. At the age of eight, his father never returned from hunting in the mountains.

He began to mature, for he was the only man in the family. Under the care of his mother and second mother, he started to work hard.

His mother and second mother, in order to provide him with good instruction within the tribe, toiled bitterly and endured untold hardships.

He swore...

To give his mother and second mother a good life.

"Luo Jun, you can reach the Perfection of the Houtian stage before the age of sixteen; you have some potential. What you need now is life-and-death tempering. If you can break through to the Xiantian stage... then your mother and second mother's lives will improve." A middle-aged man patted the youth's shoulder.

"I know." The youth nodded heavily.

"Mm, once you reach Perfection of the Houtian stage, I will report it to the higher-ups. I believe you will soon be qualified to add the characters 'Shao Yan' before your name." The middle-aged man smiled. "By then, you will truly be recognized as a member of the Shaoyan clan by the tribe."

"Mm." The youth's eyes showed longing.

But Ji Ning, who was fully attached to the youth, grew increasingly uneasy and worried.

After the youth returned to the city from a life-and-death adventure, a green-haired immortal suddenly appeared high above the entire city.

"The entire city must be relocated." The green-haired immortal spoke immediately, his voice resounding everywhere.

In the small courtyard, the youth and his two mothers looked up, confused and puzzled. Relocate? How?

Whoosh.

Then they felt space shift, and then they found themselves in a space.

"So many people?" The youth felt that the crowd stretched beyond sight.

"Luo Jun, what... what is this?" Both mothers were panicked.

"Don't worry, this is all immortal arts." The youth said confidently. "Countless tribesmen are here; we'll know what's happening soon."

Soon.

Whoosh.

The youth and the others were relocated again, this time more densely packed.

"This time, it's probably the Fufeng Old Demon gathering them together?" Ji Ning had a vague guess, along with fear. Over ten years of being attached to the youth, Ji Ning had come to empathize deeply. He knew how simple and honest the youth was, and he knew how deep the bond between the youth and his two mothers was.

He already knew the youth's future, a future he did not want to believe.

"Boom~~~"

Space shattered.

...