6. Phoenix Flying High in the Sky

The old man went up and landed on a branch of a peach tree, “Any question? If not, let’s start our training.”

Ye Lan, however, asked, “What is spirit? What is spirit cultivation?”

“How come you have no idea what it is since you live in the Fengtian Continent?” The old man wasn’t suspicious and would love to impart his knowledge to her, “The so-called spirit is the essence of everything in the universe, the one who has it lives, the one who doesn’t dies. The spirit cultivation is to make your own spirit or exert your power on other things and accumulate it to an entity so that you can use it for self-defense, or engage in a combat. Someone goes even further to use their spiritual power to reverse the heaven and earth.”

The old man stared at Ye Lan, said meaningfully, “And you, will become the one who reverse the heaven and earth!”

“After such a long speech, you still haven’t told me anything about spirit cultivation.”

“Hey, little girl, there is no rush. I will teach you the secret methods so that you will get to that level at one try!”

The old man waved at her, “Come over here…”

With a simple flying jump, Ye Lan came down the peach tree.

“To stand on a branch of a peach tree with an empty stance, can you do that?”

“How hard can it be?”

Ye Lan flied up after a heel kick and landed at the tip of the branch steadily.

The old man stroked his long eyebrow, his eyes full of joy, “Not bad, not bad… it seems your legs are very robust.”

He then swirled up, like a piece of cloud drifting above the peach orchard.

“Fly up high!”

Ye Lan had a gentle heel kick and flew to the same height next to the old man, but this didn’t last long until seconds later, she returned back to the ground.

“Ha ha…” the old man chuckled, “you couldn’t hold any longer than that?”

She looked up at the old man and asked, “How did you do that?”

“Accumulate your spiritual power inside your head, when the power goes up, it should lift you up naturally.” The old man returned back on the ground, leaving no trace on the snow, “This is a move to hone your spiritual power, a basic move every spirit cultivator must grasp.”

“Unable to tame your spiritual power, you are not gonna harness it; unable to harness it, your separate spirit can never form an entity. No entity means you don’t have your weapon, if you don’t even have your weapon, how are you gonna engage in a battle?”

Ye Lan nodded, “How am I gonna tame my spiritual power?”

“That’s easy. You just have to communicate with your inner spiritual power.”

“To communicate?” Ye Lan sneered, “Is this your secret? What’s the difference between this and the weird murmuring of a Taoist priest?”

The old man laughed and said, “The spirit and your body are divided, and mutually live with one another. Using violent force to tame it, one will only end up hurting both of them, so one must be rational and make sure these two elements are integrated into one after gaining the knowledge through experience.”

Ye Lan felt that the old man was not reliable, but she asked nevertheless, “How do I communicate?”

“Ha ha, this depends on your ability of comprehension!”

The old man suddenly disappeared, leaving one sentence, “To possess one’s spirit is up to the heaven, but to have a communication starts from one’s inner heart. Little girl, I have imparted to you the secrets, success or not, it all depend on your individual comprehension ability now.”

“To possess one’s spirit is up to the heaven, but to have a communication starts from one’s inner heart.” Ye Lan pondered this sentence again and again, but still couldn’t figure it out, “Such brief words, is it really the secret?”

After another jump, she landed on the crest of a peach tree.

Ye Lan looked up. After the heavy snow, the sky was crystal clear and cloudless, the earth was blanketed by the white snow. There were high towers and pavilions, with dark tiles and cornices within sight. Whenever there was a breeze, the bronze bell would jingle along.

“To possess one’s spirit is up to the heaven?”

Ye Lan was reading this sentence in her mind while closing her eyes. Darkness as it was before her eyes, there was another world existing in her mind—the sky was like usual, with breeze blowing and sparrows dancing on the dark blue slate, pecking the barnyard millet dropped from the rice wagon.

Up on the streets, it was bustling and hustling; inside a tavern, people doing storytelling, serving the tea…making it more like a circus.

Ding…ding…

Out of chaos, she seemed to hear the slightest movement of the bronze bell hung up on a pagoda thousand li (a measuring unit, 500 meters) away.

What was spirit? How could one accumulate the spiritual power? She asked herself.

Ye Lan knew that she shouldn’t rush into it, so she calmed herself down gradually. All of a sudden there were spots flashing in her vision, and these spots were constantly coming out from her body.

The flashing spots were the spirit? The spirit that belonged to her own?

She opened her arms, and let her consciousness control her spirit. She could then feel spots of spiritual power were gathering up one after another quickly to the top of her head, and her body has become light…

Ye Lan suddenly opened her eyes, only to realize that she was floating in the air as if she could touch the sky within sight.

She was flying!

Ye Lan swirled and dashed out like an arrow. She opened her arms and was flying against the light.

Out of blue, a long phoenix singing, breaking the rock and frightening the heaven, out of the blue sky, a shadow emerged, looking like a phoenix that had its rebirth through nirvana!

The old man hidden inside the ring was shocked and hurriedly wiping the strange scene in the air with his sleeves, “Looks like you really got great talent, easy to comprehend my unique secret. Let’s get down, or you will be noticed flying this high.”

The old man came out of the ring the moment Ye Lan landed on the ground.

“Old geezer, so I just succeeded?”

“You have reached a whole new level, and activated your hold spiritual body!” the old man stroked his beard and nodded satisfactorily. He let out three fingers to her, “You are now a spiritual cultivator at stage three.”

“Only third stage?”

The old man groaned to Ye Lan after hearing that, “What’s wrong with third stage? Anyone with great talent has to go through at least two-years’ cultivation to reach that level, little girl, be content with your lot!”

Ye Lan lowered her voice with her eyes darkened, “The third stage? Not enough!”

The silhouette of the masked man flashed through her mind. Ye Lan had once swore that she would beat him; three stages may not even be close to that.

“Come on, little girl, take it easy, haste makes waste! Besides, you have defied the law of nature to advance three stages within a day!”

The old man threw a glance at Ye Lan while pouting, “Out of all the people in Fengtian Continent, you are the first person within hundreds of thousands of years…”

“Young and naïve kid, too eager to get instant success…Hey, where are you going?”

Ye Lan waved her hands, signaling the old man to shut up.

She made a swirl and landed on the branch of a peach tree again.

“Do you want to keep training? A bit of rest won’t hurt… you are just too hard-working, kid!”

The old man received a positive answer for his question from her eyes. They are shining with cold, without any sign of hesitation or backwardness.

He asked, “Why do you want to revenge so soon?”

“I want to be stronger!” Ye Lan growled, she did the same thing that she had done and instantly, she was upgraded another three levels, and turned herself to be a level three spiritual cultivator at stage three.

There was a sign of amazement in the old man’s eyes. He had never seen anyone who could get to stage three while being upgraded another three levels in his entire hundreds of thousands of years of life until today.

“What is this?”

He followed the voice to see Ye Lan wrapped by a certain black sticky fluid, with his undisguised surprise in the eyes, “This is dark colloid. It is formed by the surplus spiritual power scorching after being mixed with the air. Go have a shower. We can do the spiritual power training some other day.”

Ye Lan left the old man and went into the peach blossom residence. The old man saw her walking away and whispered, “Surplus spiritual power… will there be an infinite spiritual sea inside her body?”

The holy spiritual body plus the infinite spiritual sea, this girl might be…

He stopped thinking further and dared not to. He turned around and caught up with her and then got back into the ring as a puff of white smoke.