The next day.
The Heavenly Prison.
Zhou Yi carrying a prisoner's meal, arrived at cell number Bing Nine.
Enshrouded in plain white garments, four boys and three girls lay neatly on the ground, void of breath. A woman dressed in mourning clothes slumped on the floor, her eyes staring blankly.
Li Xiong stood within the cell, looking at Zhou Yi with cold eyes as he approached.
"Remember this, the general and his family are waiting here; tell Li Wu when he comes in!"
Zhou Yi's brow furrowed slightly at the sight of the tragic scene of a father killing his children in the cell. Taking note of the absence of any jailers on duty, he realized the situation.
The Imperial Court had no intention of carrying out a public execution, signaling to Li Xiong that he should commit suicide in the Heavenly Prison out of fear for his crimes.
"The Great General was incorruptible and dedicated to his duties, and with outstanding meritorious service. In the future, he shall be worthy of being commemorated in the Grand Ancestral Temple." Zhou Yi's words to Li Xiong the day before had overstepped due to his indignation at the massacre of the common people.
How could he casually discuss Li Wu and the Imperial Court today? Even though the Officials yearned to exterminate the Nine Clans of Li's family, they had to praise his loyalty and devotion to the country on the surface.
"He will come. I will be waiting for him!"
After Li Xiong spoke, he struck the forehead of the woman with his palm and then slapped his own head.
The couple died together, their skulls shattered.
"To think it has come to this, why did it ever start!"
Zhou Yi pretended to panic as he went out to call the jailers, having Li Xiong's family carried out from the cell. The Li clan would take care of the bodies, but whether they could be buried in the ancestral graves was unknown.
"Today my mood is foul; I'll pick an unlucky one to practice my demonic technique on!"
Zhou Yi, holding fine wine and dishes, walked unsteadily to cell number Jia Twelve.
The prisoner was burly like a bear, towering half a head taller than the six-foot execution rack, his shiny bald head scarred by several knife wounds. He was the type that would make citizens report a thief entering the city just by walking down the street.
The prisoner glanced at the wine and meat, licked his lips, and said, "Is it my turn today?"
"You seem quite knowledgeable."
Zhou Yi set the food and drink, picking up a piece of meat with chopsticks and bringing it to the prisoner's mouth.
The prisoner didn't hold back, indulging in the meat and wine, eventually belching contentedly: "Even when I was outside, I heard about a jailer in the Heavenly Prison who enjoys torturing martial artists—no one can withstand his cruel punishments."
"I have a reputation in the martial world?" Zhou Yi learned of this for the first time; he focused solely on his daily duties, never caring about the martial world or the court.
The prisoner said, "The martial world calls you the 'Old Devil of the Bloody Prison,' rumoring your entire family was killed by martial experts, making you so vicious."
"Old Devil?"
Zhou Yi looked at his graying hair and nodded slightly: "That's quite a name; it has quite a presence. The fellow martial artists have flattered me with exaggeration!"
The prisoner said coldly, "You're like a turtle, hiding in the Divine Capital, otherwise you would have been beaten to death long ago!"
"Perhaps they came to the Divine Capital, but nobody knew about it."
Zhou Yi noted that over the last two years, his courtyard in the Divine Capital had been bustling; the jujube tree grew lush and bore fruit that his colleagues praised as sweet and delicious.
Perhaps the flesh and blood of the slain martial experts, rich in special energy, made the jujubes extraordinary.
Zhou Yi planned to plant a grapevine next and invite his colleagues to taste it.
"I don't believe in such torture. I'll try your cruel punishment today."
The prisoner boasted confidently, "Back in the monastery, I violated the precept of not taking life, and eighteen Martial Monks broke their staffs on me—young master, I still survived!"
"So, you are a high disciple of Buddhism. My apologies."
Zhou Yi tidied up the bowls and chopsticks and placed his hand over the prisoner's dantian, operating the Devouring Heaven Demonic Technique.
A surge of Inner Qi flowed out like floodgates opening, streaming from within the prisoner's body and soon completely devouring the prisoner's Inner Qi.
"You... what is this?"
Veins on the prisoner's bald head throbbed, his eyes bulging in disbelief: "Devouring... Demonic Technique?"
"You actually know of it?"
Zhou Yi did not wait for the prisoner to speak and struck his head with a palm, allowing Inner Qi to rupture through his body and scramble his brains into mush.
"The more one knows, the greater the curiosity and the more dangerous it is!"
...
The beginning of the twelfth year of Hongchang.
The Great General Li Wu crushed the enemy's main forces at Serpentine Mountain, slaughtering two hundred thousand and capturing the Third Prince of Great Yong.
He then pursued the retreating troops for twelve hundred miles, fully recovering the old territory of Fengyang.
Upon the victorious news reaching the Divine Capital, the citizens rejoiced, while the Imperial Court Officials remained eerily silent.
That autumn.
Li Wu led his army deep into the territory of Great Yong, toppling twelve cities and reaching the impregnable Soul Suppressing Pass at the Southern Border.
The commander of Soul Suppressing Pass, despite Li Wu's challenges, refused to emerge, and the Great Yong Dynasty sent envoys to seek peace.
...
All these shifting events in the world were irrelevant to Zhou Yi.
In the courtyard.
Zhou Yi sat cross-legged under the grapevine, silently operating the Devouring Heaven Demonic Technique.
The torrential Inner Qi flowed through his meridians like a roaring river, faintly echoing the thunderous crashing of waves.
"In seven years' time, after devouring the Inner Qi of more than ninety martial artists... Now, I've finally reached the five-hundred-year threshold!"
Zhou Yi took a leave of absence from the jailer position, focusing solely on secluded cultivation at home until he broke through the Innate Realm.
"According to the description of the demonic technique, with Inner Qi accumulating to five hundred years, one needs only to keep cycling it continuously—leveraging one's own body to provoke the forces of heaven and earth, one will be able to perceive the realm of an Innate Grandmaster!"
The Inner Qi continued its circuit through his meridians, cycling through several Grand Circulations.
Zhou Yi felt his meridians stretching to their limits, with some of the finer ones beginning to fracture, yet he still couldn't sense the Innate Realm.
"Hmph!"
Zhou Yi couldn't help but grunt in pain; the agony of the fissures in his meridians was comparable to being torn apart by a cruel torture.
At this point, continuing to operate the demonic technique might either lead to a breakthrough to the Innate level, or completely rupture his meridians, turning him into a cripple. In the worst case, he might perish with his Dao-path extinguished.
"Ordinary people might grit their teeth and persist, gambling their lives for a breakthrough into the Innate realm. I... I will try again tomorrow!"
Thus,
Zhou Yi stopped cultivating and stood up to brew a pot of fine tea, holding Buddhist scriptures in his hand and reciting them.
He centered his spirit and calmed his restlessness.
The next day.
Zhou Yi once again circulated his demonic technique, going a few more cycles than the previous day and once more reaching the limit of what his meridians could endure.
"It seems my innate talent is indeed somewhat lacking."
"Those with common, inferior talents watch the years pass by, year after year. Either they become disheartened and indistinguishable from the crowd, or they risk their lives desperate for a breakthrough, after all, one's lifespan waits for no one."
"Fortunately, there's the Longevity Dao Fruit. What bottlenecks, what shackles, none can withstand the test of time."
"Only I, even if seas turn to mulberry fields and the world changes, remain unchanged!"
Zhou Yi stopped cultivating and took out a roll of Buddhist scriptures to recite.
Apart from teachings on enduring suffering, other topics in the Buddhist texts, such as cause and effect and karma, resonate with Zhou Yi.
Autumn goes and spring comes, time passes swiftly.
In the blink of an eye, half a year has gone by.
At first, people in the heavenly prison would ask why old Zhou had not returned, but later they got used to his absence.
Today.
Zhou Yi was burning incense and chanting scriptures when suddenly he felt an understanding of the profound mystery. The Devouring Heaven Demonic Technique started to circulate on its own within his body.
It circulated for dozens of Grand Circulations, and yet his meridians did not feel the slightest bit of swelling pain.
At this moment, strands of cool air gathered into Zhou Yi's body from the outside world, like threads of ice, like fine rain, silently moisturizing everything.
"Is this the spiritual energy of heaven and earth?"
Zhou Yi closed his eyes to sense and felt that there was a mysterious energy hidden between heaven and earth, splitting into five colors so thin as to be nearly imperceptible.
As the mighty Inner Qi circulated, it led the five-colored spiritual energy to merge into his body, integrating with his Inner Qi. The cloud-like scattered Inner Qi, as the spiritual energy was assimilated, gradually condensed into a tangible form.
Five hundred years of mighty Inner Qi was compressed and transformed into a delicate stream.
"Is this the True Yuan of the Innate? Its quantity has decreased tenfold, but its quality has increased a hundredfold!"
Zhou Yi circulated the True Yuan, releasing it from his fingertips through his body, condensing into a visible sword of Qi, swinging it towards the stone slabs on the ground.
Whoosh!
Without a sound, the sword of Qi cut the stone slab into two pieces.
"Using Inner Qi to harm others, its power greatly diminishes after three or four feet. Beyond ten feet, the Inner Qi dissipates. But True Yuan is different, even at a distance of twenty to thirty feet, it can stay condensed without losing its power."
"With such a method of killing, to the common folk, it is almost akin to an immortal's!"
"No wonder it is said in the stories of the rivers and lakes that below the Innate grandmasters, all are but ants!"
Zhou Yi circulated the Innate True Yuan, and after a Grand Circulation, the spiritual energy from heaven and earth that had merged into his body was almost imperceptible.
"At this rate of cultivation, do I need to spend hundreds of years to reach the complete perfection of the Innate Realm?"
"The reason for such slow progress must be more than just poor talent. Neither the Devouring Heaven Demonic Technique nor the Guiyuan Technique provide methods for cultivation beyond the Innate stage."
"Secondly, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth is extremely thin in the common world, so absorption is naturally slow. Thirdly, relying solely on one's own cultivation without the assistance of pills and such..."
Zhou Yi carefully considered and enumerated several reasons for the slowness of his cultivation.
"However, I still have to cultivate in hiding among the common people. Even if it takes hundreds of years until there is truly no progress, it is not too late to go to the Cultivation World."
"The Cultivation World is different from the common people's world. It is too hard to stay hidden, there are too many ways to harm others, and it is very difficult to cultivate in peace as I do now."
Zhou Yi actually found that the extremely thin spiritual energy in the common world acted as a kind of protection for him.
"Moreover, it seems that there are indeed cultivation techniques..."
Zhou Yi suddenly remembered the Nameless chant that Wei Chang taught him, which was about sensing the energy of heaven and earth and using the technique to refine and strengthen the body.
Unable to comprehend it at all in the past, now that Zhou Yi had advanced to the Innate realm, he could already sense the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.
"...Calm the mind naturally, breathe gently, gather divine light, and reach the heart of heaven..."
Zhou Yi silently recited the chant, and the True Yuan in his body flowed on its own, attracting the spiritual energy from heaven and earth at a speed several times faster than before.
The spiritual energy refined by the Nameless chant did not increase the Innate True Yuan but instead merged into the tendons, bones, viscera, and limbs, visibly lengthening the martial body refinement that had just entered the initial stage of the viscera realm.
"This chant is not a method of cultivation; it is the Body Refinement technique from the legends!"
"In this case, can I also cultivate another horizontal Innate?"
Zhou Yi revealed a smile. Whether in martial arts or in cultivation, everything was for the sake of nurturing the Longevity Dao Fruit. As long as he could increase his strength, he would not hesitate to spend time cultivating, whether it be a hundred years or a thousand years, there was no difference.
"Tomorrow I should go on duty!"
...
The heavenly prison.
Zhou Yi greeted the duty officer, Feng Qiao.
"Old Feng, long time no see."
"Eh?"
Feng Qiao was lost in memories of the lovely girl from the Spring Breeze Building, the Oiran from eight years ago. Once unattainable even for the wealthy merchants who threw their fortunes at her, now she was available for merely five Silver pieces.
"Old Zhou, you didn't die?"
"..."
Zhou Yi asked, "Who said I died?"
"That's what everyone in the prison was saying. They said you liked to torture practitioners from the rivers and lakes to death, killing so many. There are many enemies outside, and chances are you were ambushed and killed, and not even your bones were left intact!"
Feng Qiao explained, "Captain Zhu even sent people to your house, knocking on the door with no response. Everyone believed it."
"I hid outside for a while, but it's fine now."
Before entering seclusion, Zhou Yi had prepared a large amount of food, locked the door tightly, and spent his days enjoying tea, reading, and contemplating his state of mind, too lazy to pay attention to anyone knocking at his door.
During that period, indeed some thieves entered the yard, perhaps enemies or perhaps just burglars, but none could survive a palm strike from Zhou Yi.
Who could withstand the power of five hundred years concentrated in one punch!