In the primordial wilderness, the moonlight outlined the rolling, shadowy contours of the mountains. A fine, howling wind and snow plummeted from the sky, vanishing into nothingness the moment they touched the hearth.
Amidst the silent night, Zhou Tieyi's voice echoed around the hearth for a moment before dissipating.
Every robust warrior clearly heard his voice, causing them to tremble slightly with excitement.
The deity had truly responded! This time, it wasn't conveyed through the shaman, but was a miracle they could genuinely feel!
The shaman's body also trembled slightly, and then he bowed his head even more respectfully, saying, "Yes."
Zhou Tieyi could not keep his attention focused on this primordial world indefinitely; the problems over in Daxia had yet to be resolved.
Therefore, he said, "Tomorrow at this time, come here to make offerings again."
"Yes," the shaman said respectfully once more.
The shaman waited in place for a moment, and hearing no further instructions from Zhou Tieyi, he understood that the deity had fallen back into slumber.
"Shaman, let's hurry back and tell everyone that the deity has responded!"
The older warrior spoke up. His name was Mu, and their tribe was actually a branch of a larger tribe.
Decades ago, a rare natural disaster struck. Even with the protection of their deity, the original tribe had shattered, and a faction of them had fled from the plains to this place.
According to the totem sacrificial methods passed down within the tribe, they had sacrificed several generations to awaken a new totem deity, which meant that their tribe would henceforth be blessed by a deity and flourish.
"Mm." The shaman's expression was slightly troubled as he nodded while deep in thought.
"What are you worried about?"
"Alas," the shaman sighed. "Human sacrifices are the best offerings for a deity, capable of helping a deity grow strong rapidly. But now that the deity forbids us from using human sacrifices, how are we supposed to help the deity grow strong?"
If Zhou Tieyi had still been keeping his attention here, he would have known that this primordial tribe was not as ignorant as he imagined.
On the contrary, they possessed rich sacrificial experience, understanding what a deity needed and what they themselves needed to obtain from the deity.
Mu thought about it carefully, and then a resolute look appeared in his eyes as he said, "Didn't we discover the traces of the Xishan Mountain Lord's cub the day before yesterday? She just gave birth, and right now is her period of weakness..."
"That's too dangerous."
The shaman spoke instinctively.
Mountain Lords were the spirits of the mountains, natural deities.
Yet such natural deities were difficult to turn into guardian spirits of a tribe without a hundred years of taming and enlightenment. That was why the Tauren tribe had used traditional sacrificial methods to revive the totem spirit of their original tribe.
Mu said eagerly, "But our tribe's deity has already awakened! Even if we don't drive away the Xishan Mountain Lord, the moment she senses our deity's aura, she will come to attack us!"
The shaman raised his head to look at Xishan, veiled in the wind and snow. "Notify the hunters in the tribe to prepare their tools. We are going into the mountains to hunt a god."
***
On the other side, after a brief divine wandering, Zhou Tieyi's consciousness returned to his own body.
The moment his consciousness returned, he noticed a difference.
That was, he could now perform "internal and external vision."
Whether due to the divine perspective or not, he could see everything within a fifty-meter radius in a spherical space centered on himself, equivalent to true vision.
He could clearly see everything from the noisy crowd gathering outside, down to the blood vessels inside his own body.
Naturally, he also clearly saw the "Divine Seed" that Guan Guan had planted in his stomach. It adhered to his stomach wall like a small tumor.
Although the divine power within the Divine Seed did not temporarily affect his thinking—and in fact had fallen into slumber because a portion of its divine power had been absorbed—it remained a bane nonetheless, and he needed to find a way to resolve it.
That femme fatale Guan Guan was so confident, unafraid of him making the matter public, which meant that this Divine Seed could kill him in an instant. He could not afford to take risks.
Right now, he needed to solve two problems: pacify Guan Guan and stabilize Zhao Taisui.
"Young Master?"
After Ada instructed his younger brother to leave the back courtyard at a gallop, he heard the commotion outside as he passed through the main hall, and thus quickly returned to protect Zhou Tieyi.
"What is your current strength like?"
Zhou Tieyi quickly snapped out of his thoughts and asked. Through his perspective that could see both inside and out, he saw a pool of abundant *qi* and blood at Ada's middle elixir field. The *qi* and blood were like silver mercury, constantly interacting with the blood throughout his entire body.
When the *qi* and blood surged upward from the *qi* sea elixir field to the Hundred Meetings acupoint, a crimson cloud formed three inches above Ada's head. The cloud shifted and changed in myriad ways, and Zhou Tieyi vaguely saw a *Pixiu* roaring at a sharp sword within it.
*This is not just internal and external vision; it's more akin to the Taoist Art of Qi Observation and the Buddhist Heavenly Eye,* Zhou Tieyi judged in his heart.
Hearing Zhou Tieyi ask about his strength, Ada split his lips to reveal a few white teeth, and said with considerable pride, "A while ago, thanks to the Dragon Blood Grass bestowed by the Young Master, I broke through to become a Rank 7 Martial Master."
Zhou Tieyi gave a noncommittal hum, rapidly recalling the classification of strength in this world within his mind.
Methods of cultivation did exist in this world, and they could indeed transcend the mundane.
Among them, there was a distinction between the Nine Schools and the Hundred Sects.
The Nine Schools referred respectively to the Confucianists, Taoism, Buddhism, the Legalist School, the Mohist School, the Agricultural School, the Military School, the School of Yin-Yang, and the School of Diplomats.
Beneath the Nine Schools, various lineages such as the Medical School, the School of Names, the Historian School, the Painters, the Poison Masters, the School of Fiction, the Feng Shui Masters, and the Puppeteers formed the Hundred Sects.
The primary reason the Nine Schools ranked above other lineages was that the cultivation methods of the Nine Schools could lead directly to the First Rank.
Even among them, the upper three schools—Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism—had all produced Sages, causing practitioners across the world to flock to them like ducks.
Ada was a Rank 7 Martial Master. The martial lineage was a branch of the Military School, specializing in individual *qi* and blood cultivation, capable of reaching up to the Fourth Grade at most, after which one had to switch to cultivating the main branch of the Military School.
This cultivation lineage excelled most at close-quarters combat. In hand-to-hand fighting, they even had a chance of victory against opponents one grade higher than themselves.
As for himself, Zhou Tieyi instinctively looked down at his own strongly-knuckled palms. According to the memories of this body,
his family had generations of martial nobility and martial talent. In truth, the most suitable cultivation for him was the method of the Military School, yet his father had made him cultivate Confucianist doctrines since childhood.
The former Zhou Tieyi was a blockhead who utterly despised studying, indulging instead in worldly pleasures; to this day, he wasn't even a Ninth Rank Confucian scholar.
This world similarly possessed the Hundred Schools of Thought, and they weren't just similar—they were identical, because the Confucian classics in his memory were nearly identical to those of his past life.
What was going on here? Was there some connection between the two worlds?
Zhou Tieyi temporarily suppressed the doubts in his heart because outside, that fellow Zhao Taisui had already barged in with his servants.
Flanking him were two men. One was around twenty-three or twenty-four, with a lean build, wearing a grayish robe washed until its color had faded, a gleaming bald head, and clear eyebrows and eyes. He held a string of prayer beads in his hand, and a dot of precious light between his brows was like a Buddhist relic—restrained yet crystal-clear.
The other man was around forty years old, dressed in brocade clothes with slightly graying sideburns, possessing a gloomy and sharp gaze. However, he had heavy eye bags and occasionally coughed in a low voice. At his throat, a sharp golden light flickered in and out of view.
He carried a sword box on his back. The box was four feet long, carved entirely from rosewood, and adorned with carved dragons and phoenixes in brilliant colors.
This time, having someone to back him up, Zhao Taisui felt anger surge as he saw Zhou Tieyi still sitting leisurely in the main hall. "Zhou the Barbarian! You still dare to sit here?!"
The bruises on his neck from being choked had not yet faded. Now, sticking his neck out, he looked precisely like a proud, blue-necked rooster.