Zhang Sheng picked up a blank piece of jade paper and spat out a wisp of blue sword qi from his fingertip. A painting instantly appeared on it. He then handed the paper to Wei Yuan and said, “After a long and careful deliberation, I have decided to teach you the Jade Toad Full Moon Painting. It will become the foundation of your body-tempering. Now, pay close attention to this painting. When you cultivate, you will use this painting to form the bridge between yourself and the world around you. This will allow you to absorb the ambient spirit qi and temper your body. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

“The Jade Toad Full Moon Painting allows one to form a connection with the world and borrow strength from fortune at the Body-tempering stage. There is no doubt that it is an excellent cultivation method. However, fortune and misfortune are two sides of the same coin, and the risks it carries are much higher than other cultivation methods as well. No matter what you see or feel during your cultivation, always be mindful of your true self and consciousness. No matter what happens, never succumb to panic or fear.”

A series of careful instructions later, Zhang Sheng revealed three pills and said, “These are called the Heart Cleansing Pills. I specifically asked them for you because they could potentially improve your foundation and innate talent. There are still three days before you pay homage to the Founder, so you can use one pill per day until the day of the ceremony. It will be beneficial for you when you pray to the Founder’s statue as well.”

After Wei Yuan memorized the painting, he began cultivating as per the cultivation method.

According to the Jade Toad Full Moon Painting, the physical body was the root of everything. The first step to cultivate this cultivation method was to imagine the painting inside one’s sea of consciousness. The size of this image signified the strength of one’s foundation.

Next, the cultivator should absorb the surrounding spirit qi and their own fortune through the image to temper their body. Once the cultivator had fully tempered their body and primordial spirit into an immortal embryo, the image would come alive and become as vivid as a real world. At that point, one had attained great completion of the Body-tempering stage and may begin creating their Dao Foundation.

Wei Yuan possessed an extraordinary disposition. He had lost all sense of himself and his surroundings in just a matter of moments. Seeing this, Zhang Sheng placed a censer in front of his disciple and deposited a Heart Cleansing Pill in it.

There was a bed of charcoal underneath the censer. As the embers smoldered, a wisp of pill smoke drifted out of the vents and coalesced into a single thread. As if it possessed a mind of its own, it flew toward the boy and slipped into his nose.

Wei Yuan could not see anything at first. Then, he caught a whiff of something fragrant at the same time the pill smoke entered his body. In just an instant, it melted into wisps of warmth that slowly spread throughout his whole body. It felt indescribably comfortable. Thanks to the boost, a single dot of light sprouted inside his sea of consciousness and illuminated a tiny world. He could vaguely see a rock lying at the center of the world, and sitting on the rock was a jade toad. Hanging above the creature was a full moon.

Once the image was successfully formed, the wisps of pill smoke immediately found their direction. They entered the image one after another and improved its stability and clarity each time.

Wei Yuan kept channeling the method for an indefinite amount of time. Then, his perspective changed all of a sudden. He felt as if he had transformed into the jade toad, and his gaze was set on the full moon hanging in the sky. He was opening and closing his mouth repeatedly at it. It was such a realistic sensation that he couldn’t quite tell if he was a human or a jade toad.

Luckily, he remembered Zhang Sheng’s instruction and kept a firm grip on his sense of self. He treated it all as normal and just kept doing what he was doing.

Now that he was a jade toad, the full moon in the sky neither looked fake nor flat. In fact, it was a humongous, circular object that felt close enough to touch. Wisps of lunar essence were continuously leaking out of the moon, and Wei Yuan swallowed all of them.

More time passed when suddenly, he felt as if his body had grown a size bigger. In fact, he had become so big that the tiny world he was in could barely fit him. It was difficult for him to turn his body, much less do anything else.

It was at this moment he heard a bell chime, and his consciousness left the jade toad. When he returned to his body, he heard Zhang Sheng saying, “That’s enough.”

Wei Yuan stopped channeling the cultivation method and climbed to his feet. It was only then he noticed that the morning light was shining through the window. A whole night had passed just like that.

Zhang Sheng asked him a little about his experience and taught him some tips and tricks. Then, he sent him away to catch some rest. After all, he hadn’t yet reached the level where he could substitute sleep with cultivation. He returned to his bedroom and fell asleep quickly. Two hours later, he woke up naturally feeling fully refreshed.

His master spent the rest of the daylight teaching him the general knowledge of cultivation. When nighttime arrived, Wei Yuan cultivated on his own.

His second time cultivating went a lot smoother than the first. He quickly lost all sense of himself and his surroundings and transformed into the jade toad once more.

Yet again, he felt constrained by the space he existed in. He felt like he was stuck inside a tiny cage where even turning his body was a pain. Unable to move, he could only focus on swallowing the moon’s essence. Every time he took a gulp, he could visibly feel his body becoming a little denser.

As he swallowed, Wei Yuan suddenly noticed what looked like the silhouette of a gigantic creature appearing on the moon. The next moment, a familiar wisp of black qi appeared in the lunar essence he was swallowing.

As soon as the black qi entered his stomach, he noticed that the range of his perception had increased slightly. It finally passed through some sort of limiting, invisible barrier and expanded into the space beyond it. He noticed that many invisible grains in his surroundings that he could pull with his consciousness and mold into the earth beneath his feet. As more and more grains were pulled in, the ground beneath his feet finally expanded a little, and the restrictions enveloping his body were lifted slightly.

Right now, there was a small patch of ground in Wei Yuan’s sea of consciousness. It was a little over one zhang in radius. There was a large rock on the ground, and a pure white toad was sitting on it and looking up at the moon, swallowing lunar essence. While this was happening, a palm-sized patch of land had appeared at the edge of the earth beneath the rock and was gradually solidifying over time.

The new patch of earth had just become fully solid when the boy was woken up by Zhang Sheng. After listening to his experience, the scholar deduced that the shadow he saw was a reflection of his fortune, and the black qi mixed within the lunar essence was extracted from it.

His third day of cultivation were little different from the first two except for a few things. One. the shadow had appeared on the moon from the very beginning. Two, every wisp of lunar essence he consumed was mixed with the black qi. And three, the ground underneath him had grown a whole size.

Three days passed by in the blink of an eye. The day he used up all of the Heart Cleansing Pills was also the day of the Founder Commemoration Ceremony.

It was early morning, but Wei Yuan had already performed his ablutions and gotten himself ready for the event. He even meditated for an hour under Zhang Sheng’s guidance to clear his mind and affirm his sincerity before they finally headed to the Founder Hall.

The Founder Hall was set on a tall mountain. Its paths were exceedingly treacherous, and a tall waterfall poured down from seemingly the nine heavens and ultimately formed a mirror-like lake at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was also covered in all sorts of colorful trees and flowers and filled with an exotic fragrance. A mortal merely needed to stay on the mountain for a bit and take a sniff or two to instantly extend their lifespan by a decade. There was a staircase paved from green jade winding its way up the mountainside all the way to the summit.

Zhang Sheng was carrying him and traveling using a Dao spell. Every time he breathed, his vision would blur for a moment. When it sharpened once more, he would already be a hundred zhang away. After pushing himself somewhat to make sense of what was happening, Wei Yuan finally realized that their surroundings were rushing backward at a breakneck speed during those blurry moments. They were simply moving so fast that he couldn’t tell until some time later.

But even with Zhang Sheng’s speed, it still took them a while before they finally reached the Founder Hall. A couple hundred people were already gathered on the plaza by then.

The Founder Hall was a hundred zhang tall. Even its red bronze double gate was thirty zhang tall. He wondered what kind of immortal would ever need such a tall gate.

The double gate opened to reveal the Founder’s statue. It was thirty zhang tall. To Wei Yuan’s surprise, he looked like a youngster; one who hadn’t matured completely. It was said that the Founder had attained his Dao Foundation before he was twenty and so was stuck with this appearance. He did not change it even until the day he passed away. The statue had one hand resting above his waist and another hand holding a scroll. Four immortal swords floated around him.

The statue looked incredibly realistic. It really looked like its sleeves were fluttering in the wind. Not only that, the four immortal swords didn’t have any support whatsoever. They were literally floating in the air.

A ceremonial Daoist led Wei Yuan to a spot outside the hall where all the new disciples were gathered. They would step inside when their names were called.

The new disciples were separated by region. When the ceremonial Daoist called their names, it was always in groups of five or eight.

The process to pay homage to the Founder was already stated in the admission guidelines. The disciple must kowtow seven times and mentally recite the memorial text. The memorial text was approximately one thousand words long and primarily chronicled the Founder’s deeds, the current state of the human world, the true reason they joined the Palace and so on. There was no incantation in the memorial text whatsoever, but if the new disciple was sincere, and their foundation and fortune were excellent, then the Founder might choose to bestow upon them his boon.

Back in the day, Zhang Sheng had obtained two sword qi from the four immortal swords. He used them to forge his immortal foundation and caused quite the sensation at the time.