Chapter 141: Treasure Mirage, Mage's Precedent

That is absurd! Ji Ming expressed his doubt.

Qian Geng countered with a question, Does it sound absurd?

Judging by his demeanor, he seemed quite confident in his ability to persuade Ji Ming. This caused Ji Ming's resolve to waver slightly, preventing him from entirely dismissing this folk method out of hand.

It is hard for anyone to believe.

Matters of the immortals are often wondrous and arcane; you should be long accustomed to such strange marvels. Qian Geng shook his head with a chuckle, pointing at himself as he said, Do you know how I was transformed into a yaksha ghost?

How so?

Ji Ming was indeed somewhat curious. Both yakshas and rakshas were among the most exceptional entities in the ghost realm.

This exceptional nature denoted something supreme and exceedingly rare, surpassing even the likes of the famished ghost King Huang Jue.

He had heard that among yaksha ghosts, there were two distinct categories: those that traveled by water and those that traveled by land—a very peculiar distinction.

Back in the day, I died during a spell battle, and my solitary ghost spirit drifted without any place to rely upon, so I hid within an ancient Buddhist temple and attached myself to a statue of a yaksha deity.

As the days and months passed, my soul resonated with the spiritual aura upon the statue, and I was enlightened and transformed into such an impure yaksha body.

Ever since then, I have possessed great physical strength and excelled in traveling through water, so I pledged my allegiance to the Jinbi Water Mansion, serving diligently for over a hundred years. Only then did I manage to carve out a place for myself there.

With that, Qian Geng summoned the toad monster to fetch some wine, sitting down by the well to pour and drink by himself.

During the present dynasty, and further back in the Great Xia, the Heavenly Zhou, and the nameless reigns of the Yellow Kings—the more ancient the era, the more wondrous and bizarre things abounded.

It is simply because the mirage dragon is tied to that great supreme treasure that it managed to spark a craze of cultivation among those great masters. Otherwise, as a mere member of the flood dragon lineage, the mirage dragon would not be considered anything rare by true tier-five or tier-six grand masters.

Ji Ming had already managed to half-accept the story of the mirage dragon within his heart, and he asked, Listening to you speak this way, it seems that among those great masters, successful examples are exceedingly few.

If I tell you there are no examples, you will surely think I am trying to deceive you. But if I say there are, you will undoubtedly press me for details and investigate them thoroughly at a later date.

Qian Geng smacked his lips and smiled as he spoke.

If Daoist Qian is able to give a coherent and logical account, then I shall drop all my demands and fully cooperate with your operation to open the well and unleash the dragon two months from now.

Good, it's a deal.

Such arcane and wondrous matters happened to align with Qian Geng's interests. Having now convinced Ji Ming, who represented the greatest variable, he could not help but feel a slight sense of relief.

In the South China Sea, there was a Master Qianhuan who was already a tier-four true immortal several hundred years ago, and he successfully hatched a mirage dragon.

I heard that he even established a sect on the shores of the South China Sea, and later relied on this very mirage dragon to enter and take charge of the Thirty-Six Qi Treasured Mirage Tower, becoming one of its masters.

What is that Treasured Mirage Tower?

You do not know? Qian Geng was somewhat surprised, but after a brief flash of thought, he realized that this Daoist must have spent his days secluded within a cave dwelling, rarely venturing out into the world, and thus possessed rather shallow life experience.

That Thirty-Six Qi Treasured Mirage Tower was forged by the Progenitor of Mirages, and it is a supreme treasure born in the wake of the creation of heaven and earth.

Within that Treasured Mirage Tower reside thirty-six strands of mirage qi, which can be tracked down and obtained with the aid of a mirage dragon, thereby allowing one to become one of the masters of the Thirty-Six Qi Treasured Mirage Tower.

Ji Ming's eyes lit up as he asked, How many masters are there in that tower already?

I do not know. The Treasured Mirage Tower is inherently a supreme illusionary treasure. Why else do countless great masters study the method of nurturing mirage dragons, if not to gain entry into it and thus ascend to the heavens in a single bound?

Ji Ming felt an itch of curiosity and asked, How did True Immortal Qianhuan go about nurturing his mirage dragon?

There are three major difficulties in nurturing a mirage dragon.

First, it is extremely difficult for chickens and snakes to conceive and produce eggs. One must raise them into spirit beasts and demons with genuine cultivation before the vital essence and spirit of the two can interact and engender a destiny egg.

Master Qianhuan was very direct; he captured a wild snake demon and a pheasant sprite, and forcibly compelled the two to produce an egg.

Second, this egg must be tempered through wind and lightning, which is the most critical step of all.

Such an egg is merely an ordinary creature's egg and is nothing like a phoenix egg or a roc egg; how could it possibly withstand the tempering of wind and thunder?

However, Master Qianhuan's illusionary arts had already reached the pinnacle of perfection. Within a secretly transmitted illusionary array, he forcibly altered the very nature of the egg, truly making it temporarily transform into a divine egg and spiritual ovum akin to that of a phoenix.

As for the final point, for two to three hundred years, it must absorb the true quintessence of heaven and earth and the essence of the sun and moon, becoming spiritually sentient and engendering the spiritual embryo of the mirage dragon.

Whether it was during the Heavenly Zhou or the Great Xia, in some ancient era, the Thirty-Six Qi Treasured Mirage Tower suddenly emerged and sparked a massive craze for dragon-raising.

Many grand masters and even earth immortals managed to survive the first and second steps, only to stumble and fail at the third step. They toiled and waited for two or three hundred years, only to end up with a dead egg.

Speaking of this piece of immortal history, Qian Geng sighed with lingering emotion. He said to Ji Ming, I won't take advantage of you; there happens to be an egg stored within the water mansion.

That egg is still buried in a certain location to this day, but it has already exceeded three hundred years and has long failed to hatch. You may take it and try your hand at it.

Ji Ming did not refuse, and instead asked, How did Master Qianhuan complete the final step?

Look at my loose tongue; I was talking and completely forgot to mention the most crucial matter.

Qian Geng lowered his voice and said with a wink and a playful nudge, It is said that the master bribed a certain ghost god of the netherworld, allowing the soul of one of his daughters to be reincarnated into that egg, and that is how a dead egg was turned into a live one.

Really? This matter of reincarnation...

False. Qian Geng laughed heartily and said, The notion of reincarnation and transmigration is merely a method propagated by the heterodox Buddhist schools to fool ordinary folk. For three days and across the heavens, I have never heard of anyone truly mastering such divine and genuine capabilities.

If one could truly reincarnate freely, this world would have long been monopolized by immortal clans and noble families, and there would be no room for practitioners like me to make a name for ourselves.

That is true. Ji Ming felt a weight lift from his heart. If anyone else could also master the technology of reincarnation, his own advantage would be drastically diminished.

That yaksha had truly given him a scare.

However, the matter of reincarnation does indeed exist.

Ji Ming said.

Qian Geng nodded solemnly, saying, As long as one attains the Golden Elixir, one can preserve a shred of true, unclouded spirit after death and seek reincarnation in the afterlife. However, this endeavor is fraught with risk and is extremely uncontrollable.

You might end up reincarnated as a pig or a sheep, or as someone with congenital defects, and so on. Even if you are fortunate enough to be born into a good family, if your memories from past lives fail to awaken, upon undergoing yet another reincarnation, that true spirit will be clouded over, and you will forever become a completely different person.

Ji Ming nodded, feeling somewhat reassured. It seemed that when it came to the technology of reincarnation, he still held a leading advantage.

Since it was not a true transmigration, how did Master Qianhuan manage to hatch the mirage dragon?

What is false is taken for true when the true is also false; where there is nothing, true existence emerges from the void. Qian Geng wore a look of utter admiration as he said, Master Qianhuan was absolute without peer as a genius in illusionary arts. He applied an illusionary divine technique upon that egg, and actually conjured out a fake soul.

Day after day, this fake soul within the egg absorbed the true quintessence of heaven and earth and the essence of the sun and moon, gradually engendering the spiritual embryo of the mirage dragon and truly transforming into a genuine mirage dragon.

As Qian Geng spoke, he noticed that the young Daoist's eyes were like a deep pool, within which he seemed to be desperately suppressing some indescribable thoughts and ideas.

Could he really have a way?

The moment this thought crossed his mind, Qian Geng himself was startled.

If the young Daoist truly had a way to hatch a mirage dragon, who was to say he couldn't use that mirage dragon to enter and take control of the Thirty-Six Qi Treasured Mirage Tower, becoming one of its masters?

Furthermore, relying on the resources within the Treasured Mirage Tower, his future prospects of ascending to become an earth immortal would be virtually guaranteed.

One update today, the missed one will be made up tomorrow!