After Becoming the Hero's Ex-fiancée

Soul Consciousness Arts (2)

“The Heavenly Plume Incandescent Robes!” exclaimed Bai Ling’s great-aunt uncontrollably. If she had merely been thinking ‘what kind of darned luck is this damned lass having’ just now, she was now so jealous that her eyes had gone blood-red.

She, who had lived for hundreds of years, had never even touched so much as the edge of the Heavenly Plume Incandescent Robes. It costs hundreds of top-grade Yuan stones each; this damned lass——she didn’t even need to think to know where it came from!

“Great-Aunt, you’re hurting me,” Bai Ling’s voice sounded tearful.

Meanwhile, the procuress had already approached them eagerly.

“Is the Zhenjun leaving?”

“Take a look, let me know how much everything costs,” Cui Wang said.

The procuress was a cultivator of the Accomplisher stage; her spiritual consciousness scanned the room upstairs and calculated, “This Zhenren ordered a pot of wine and two plates of Hongxin fruit just now, and upstairs…”

“It’ll be a total of two hundred and eighty-nine low-grade Yuan stones and fifty Yuan beads.”

Cui Wang tossed her three mid-grade Yuan stones.

“Keep the change.”

Zheng Wan was vexed; after scrimping and scraping these past few days, she only had a total of two low-grade Yuan stones, and this tip Cui Wang carelessly gave out was equivalent to dozens of low-grade Yuan stones…

She stretched out her palm towards the procuress.

“The change, please.”

The procuress’s small eyes widened abruptly, “This Zhenren, you mean…”

Zheng Wan nodded.

“Give me the change.”

She lifted her chin towards Cui Wang, who was already almost at the door, and narrowed her eyes. “Understand?”

Understood.

The procuress coughed, then really fished out ten low-grade Yuan stones from her sleeve, and when she started taking Yuan beads out, she saw the beautiful female cultivator in front of her wave her hand.

“The rest is for you.”

......How generous.

When the female cultivator left, the procuress couldn’t help but ask in the hustler’s ear, “Is that female cultivator under Zi Xiu Daojun?”

“Y-yes, that’s what I’ve heard.”

By the time Zheng Wan walked out of the door with her “huge sum” of twelve low-grade Yuan stones, Cui Wang was nowhere to be seen, but she wasn’t disappointed. Seeing that it was late at night, she headed for home.

When she opened the door, her parents were sitting under the tree in the courtyard waiting for her.

Her father was frowning at a chessboard, while her mother was leaning back in a rattan chair, rocking slowly, with a cup of tea in her hand. The Lanying flowers in the courtyard bloomed quietly, and the fragrance of flowers permeated the entire house.

Zheng Wan threw herself into her mother’s arms.

“Mother! Mother! I earned money today!”

She didn’t talk about how she had earned the money, but just lined up the twelve lustrous white Yuan stones on the round table as she had done with money when she was a child, “Isn’t it pretty?”

“Mhm, it’s pretty.”

Madam Wang picked up a Yuan stone for a closer look. The landscape of this place was completely different from that of the mortal world, and this kind of luminous stone was indeed something she had never seen before. After examining it for a while, she put it back, then Zheng Wan put them away and handed her ten Yuan beads.

An innocent man can get into trouble because of his wealth—it was fine for mortals to possess Yuan beads, but Yuan stones would be no good.

“Mother, don’t be reluctant to spend this. One of those Yuan stones can be exchanged for a thousand Yuan beads, and one Yuan bean can be exchanged for ten bars of gold, your daughter is very rich now!”

Only then did Zheng Zai return to himself; he pushed the chess pieces away and said, “Alright, we will go buy jewellery and clothes for your mother tomorrow. Father also needs to buy a pipe. The pipe I saw a rich man smoking yesterday at the market looked very interesting.”

Zheng Wan smiled contentedly.

In the dim lamplight, she thought to herself, in the human world, there are always flaws amidst happiness, just like the moon overhead, no matter how perfect it looks, there are always grey shadows hidden on that jade disc.

Being able to protect her parents, and to let them live happily and pass in peace, was also very good.

A slight breeze blew by, and Zheng Wan only felt as if there was a clear ‘boing’ coming from her heart, and it felt as if the mortal sentiment in her heart had been brushed by a soft brush.

Madam Wang and Zheng Zhai only thought that their daughter seemed to have dozed off for a moment. She gave them each a hug, then hurriedly went into the room they had prepared for her.

The two exchanged a long look.

“Why is she being all mysterious?”

“It doesn’t seem like a bad thing.”

Meanwhile, Zheng Wan was already sitting cross-legged on the chaise lounge; her soul consciousness sank inwards, and she entered a state of inner vision.

She didn’t quite understand what just happened, but found that in just a brief moment, her twentieth orifice was full!

That crystalline leaf in her sea of

consciousness jumped up and greeted her, then a line of luminous blue square words appeared one by one.

“The curbing of desire brings strength; A strong soul brings forth illusions—this is the ‘Soul Consciousness Arts’.”

Zheng Wan read it speedily and finally understood—so, the Non-Emptiness Sutra was divided into two parts. One was to train vital energy for the sake of cultivation; for example, in the Centring stage, to use desire to practice the arts, then gain advancement by curbing strong desire—this is to fill orifices and increase cultivation levels. The other part was to train one’s soul consciousness.

At the transcendent-level, the Non-Emptiness sutra could create the illusion of life. This so-called transcendent level required both cultivation base and soul consciousness to reach transcendence—only with abundant vital energy could beings be created, and only with transcendent soul consciousness could beings come to life.

This Soul Consciousness Arts was for training the soul consciousness, and what she just unlocked was its most basic mantra.

However——

Zheng Wan looked at the line of small words at the bottom, “Stage 1: Building the foundation of the soul requires the aid of a Polygonum Ice Talisman.”

Again, in small print, “After cultivating this soul arts, you may choose from one of the three aids—talismans, elixirs, and array formations—and use that as a supplement.”

Zheng Wan was faced with a conundrum.

If so, should she draw talismans, refine elixirs, or cast formations?