NOVEL WEB Chapter 48: One Day Five Saints
On Mount Sumeru, Zhunti glanced toward the East, where Taishang Laojun had been consecrated, and Yuanshi had achieved sainthood twice. He felt the Grandmist Violet Qi within his body vibrate and gained insight into how to achieve sainthood.
A Saint's job is not to rule but to guide others. No other region needed more guidance than the West. As long as he set up his own teachings, then endless merits would descend, and he would become Saint of Heaven.
However, Zhunti had always considered himself Jieyin's younger brother. How can the junior brother set up a sect and ask his older brother to join?
Zhunti turned towards Jieyin, who was sitting on the Twelfth-Ranked Golden Lotus of Merit like a statue as if the successive consecration of two Saints had not occurred. He knew Jieyin was at a critical time during his cultivation, and he was torn between interrupting or staying quiet.
As the Grandmist Violet Qi increased the intensity of its vibration and Zhunti's anxiety increased, Jieyin suddenly opened his eyes, and within them contained infinite karma. A coercion unique to Saints' emanated from him.
"Senior Brother!" Zhunti cheered.
"Junior Brother, we should set up a teaching and bring salvation to all life in the West," Jieyin said. He had merged his three Corpses into himself and grasped the Law of Karma. As such, he understood cause and effect.
The Dao Ancestor took the two of them as his disciples to repay the karma he owed to the West. When he and Zhunti begged three times, it was nothing more than the Dao Ancestor's ploy to decrease the karma owed. Now that Jieyin and Zhunti had decided to form a sect, then the effect would be further decreased. He also owed the Dao Ancestor karma after accepting the Grandmist Violet Qi.
Zhunti nodded.
Jieyin began first, and his coercion increased with each word spoken. "I, Jieyin, feel that the living beings of heaven and earth are embroiled in bitterness."
"I, Zhunti, will guide all life to kindness, a life of bliss and without suffering," Zhunti said. And then the two spoke at the same time. "Together, we establish the Liberation Sect and anchor its luck with the Twelfth-Ranked Golden Lotus of Merit!"
Endless clouds of merit descended onto Mount Sumeru. Jieyin had already merged his Corpses, so his aura continually increased. Achieving sainthood was only a matter of time, but Zhunti looked bitter. His aura had risen, but he knew didn't have enough merit.
"Why? When Laozi established the Human Way, he was able to achieve sainthood in an instant. Even Yuanshi could do it," Zhunti said. "Why is it that when we do it, our merits are lacking? The Way of Heaven is biased!"
The Three Purities were formed from the spirit of Pangu. Thus, they are loved by the Way of Heaven. Even if they lacked merit, they only needed to supplement the deficiency with the Heaven Opening Merit.
Zhunti turned towards Jieyin. "Senior Brother, what should I do?"
He could feel the Grandmist Violet Qi rampaging, waiting to merge with his soul. If he could not achieve sainthood in this instance, he felt he would not have another chance for eons.
Jieyin stayed silent and then sighed. "Junior Brother, our origins are lacking. If I hadn't established a sect, I would not have been able to achieve sainthood even though I merged three Corpses. Since you lack merit and cannot merge your three Corpses, you can only borrow merit from the Way of Heaven."
"Borrow?" Zhunti asked with furrowed brows.
"Yes, make forty-eight oaths to exchange future merits now," Jieyin said. "The only problem is that you will be even more deeply shackled by the Way of Heaven."
Zhunti gave a bitter smile. "I can only worry about oaths if I become a Saint. If I don't become a Saint now, I don't know when I can."
"If I should achieve the Great Dao, yet there would be hell beings, hungry ghosts, or animals in my land, may I not attain perfect awakening!"
"If I should attain the Great Dao, yet humans and heavenly beings in my land stagnated in the three lower realms at the end of their lives, may I not attain perfect awakening!"
"If I should attain the Great Dao, yet humans and heavenly beings in my land would not all be the color of genuine gold, may I not attain perfect awakening!"
"If I should attain the Great Dao, yet humans and heavenly beings in my land would differ in appearance and vary in beauty, may I not attain perfect awakening!"
"If I should attain the Great Dao, yet humans and heavenly beings in my land are unaware of their past lives and know events of at least the past hundreds of thousands of millions of eons, may I not attain perfect awakening!"
"If I should attain the Great Dao..."
One by one, Zhunti made oath after oath until he made forty-eight oaths. Upon the final oath, the endless merits descended. There was more than enough for Zhunti to achieve sainthood, yet he was torn between bliss and bitterness.
With a bitter smile, powerful coercion emanated from Zhunti's body, alerting all beings of the Great Desolation to the birth of the sixth Saint of Heaven.
Golden light emanated from Mount Sumeru, illuminating all of the West. Any living beings touched by the light were consumed with endless yearning and desire for the source of that light and involuntarily migrated toward Mount Sumeru.
The golden light continued to travel past the western boundaries towards the East. When the golden light reached Buzhou Mountain, two snorts could be heard as the golden light was shattered.
On Mount Sumeru, Jieyin and Zhunti discussed the situation with heavy consideration. "Beneath the Dao Ancestor, Yuanshi should be the most powerful Saint of Heaven."
"Like me, he should have become a Saint by merging his Three Corpses," Jieyin said. "Not to mention the Way of Heaven consecrated him twice. It's unknown what stage he has reached in the Primordial Origin Realm."
"Now that four Saints have appeared, why hasn't Tongtian become a Saint?" Zhunti asked. "No matter if she knows or not, as long as she establishes a sect, she should immediately achieve sainthood."
"Unless something went wrong?" Zhunti asked with a smile. That was good. With how powerful Yuanshi was, the East and West barely achieved a balance between the four Saints.
"I feel it is not so simple," Jieyin said. "The only way Tongtian would not want to achieve sainthood is if she wanted something else."
"You mean to say that Tongtian wants to achieve the Primordial Origin Realm with strength?" Zhunti asked.
"Aside from that, can there be any other reason?" Jieyin said, causing Zhunti to begin to mutter.
Whatever these two thought, the coercion disappeared after their consecration ended.
Jieyin frowned as he looked at Zhunti. With his mastery of karma, he could see a line going from Zhunti to the East. "Junior Brother, Saints are untouched by karma, but that does not mean we cannot pay attention to it. The ones to bear the cause and effect are the ones near us."
"I know," Zhunti said bitterly. "I owe Daoist Redcloud karma, but what can I do to repay him for giving up a seat and allowing me to get a strand of Grandmist Violet Qi?"
"Then?"
"As long as he dies, the karma will end," Zhunti said. "Even if Tongtian intervenes again, I don't believe she can block a Saint's method as a Quasi-Saint."
Time passed as Jieyin and Zhunti plotted Redcloud Ancestor's demise. The various living beings of the Great Desolation settled down. They held excited discussions about what had happened.
Four consecrations in one day!
They had thought the Saints would appear slowly, one after the other like Yuanshi after Nuwa. Who knew that four would appear in one day? They looked toward Kunlun Mountain, wondering if the third Purity would also achieve sainthood, but Kunlun Mountain remained silent.
Suddenly, the day's fifth coercion appeared, but it did not originate from Kunlun Mountain, nor was the speaker a woman.
"I, Redcloud, establish the Interception Sect!"
"The Great Dao is fifty, the Eye of Heaven is forty-nine, and hope is one! Under my sect, all life can reverse their fate and intercept the ray of hope. All living beings in the Great Desolation can achieve the Great Dao!"
After Redcloud Ancestor spoke those words, his aura increased, but it still lacked the final step. When the coercion started to weaken, Redcloud Ancestor swore thirty-six oaths to the Way of Heaven, finally gathering enough merit to complete his consecration.
"Those with a predestined relationship with me can come to my Firesource Grotto to become my disciple!" Redcloud Ancestor said after achieving sainthood.
In Three Purity Hall, Tongtian's expression darkened. A portion of her Karmic Luck she originally occupied flowed out from her. Although she couldn’t sense her own luck as it was normally illusionary, this time, the effect was too large. The Twelfth-Ranked White Lotus of Purification shivered as Tongtian controlled it to anchor her luck and prevent it from flowing out.
'I didn't expect that Redcloud would set up the Interception Sect instead of me. The general trend is the establishment of the Interception Sect, and the variable is who would become its founder,' Tongtian thought. 'Since I didn't establish the Interception Sect, part of my luck was transferred to Redcloud. But that's fine, when my Allheaven Jianmu Tree becomes the pillar separating heaven and earth, my luck will return and even grow without the danger of being besieged by four Saints.'
Tongtian felt slightly apologetic to Redcloud for taking her place, but after a moment, she shook her head. Redcloud Ancestor was supposed to die when Kunpeng and Heavenly Court besieged him, but due to her intervention, he survived. Since she saved him, it was only part of cause and effect that he would take her place.
When the coercion disappeared, Redcloud Ancestor released a burst of booming laughter. After laughing for five minutes straight, he calmed down and glanced toward Heavenly Court. "Hmpf, you're lucky that you are the protagonist of this tribulation. Otherwise, I'll personally clean you up."
He flew down from the mass of clouds he had been hiding in back to the land. For the past years, he had been hiding in the clouds akin to hiding a leaf in the forest.
Redcloud Ancestor had restored his Good Corpse, but he hadn't cut off his evil thoughts to form his Evil Corpse yet. While he had been cultivating, he sensed Taishang Laojun's consecration, followed by Yuanshi's, Jieyin's, and Zhunti's. The Grandmist Violet Qi, which had been silent, suddenly started throbbing like crazy, allowing him to achieve sainthood.
Despite the thirty-six oaths he made, Redcloud Ancestor still smiled happily. The first place he went to wasn't Firesource Cave but Longevity Mountain. He hadn't tasted Zhen Yuanzi's Ginseng Fruit for a long time, and he almost couldn't restrain his gluttony.
Redcloud Ancestor spent a few years at Wuzhuang Temple, feasting on Ginseng Fruits. In fact, he ate so much that Zhen Yuazi angrily chased him away and forbade him from visiting for at least an eon.
On the way back to Firesource Grotto, Redcloud Ancestor stopped and saw a demon.
"Saint, please accept me as your disciple!" the demon said. He was a golden rat with an eye for treasure.
Redcloud Ancestor pinched his fingers and discovered that the rat in front of him had a relationship with himself. "Alright, I will accept you as my first disciple."
"Duobao thanks Master!" Duobao said. He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a book. "I came across this when I was searching for treasure eons ago, and I think Master should have it."
Redcloud Ancestor accepted the book, and his lips curled into a smile when he read the title. "Haha, I never expected the Ten Thousand Immortals Book to fall into my hands. Not bad, not bad."
He continued onward, taking Daoist Duobao back to Firesource Grotto with him. When he arrived, Redcloud Ancestor could already see a swarm of demons and congenital gods roaming outside.
Redcloud Ancestor didn't waste any time setting up a formation he learned from the Ten Thousand Immortals Book. Only those who could pass his formation would be accepted as disciples.
Unlike Yuanshi, Redcloud Ancestor accepted hundreds of disciples, if not thousands. He separated them into two ranks, inner and outer disciples.
Of the thousands that passed, only four became direct disciples: Daoist Duobao, Sacred Mother Jinling, Sacred Mother Wudang, and Sacred Mother Guiling. The rest became outer disciples.