In Jinling City, the imperial capital of the Southern Ming Dynasty, there is Xuanwu Lake.
The wind was gentle and the sun was beautiful, the fields were vast and the mountains were green. King Zheng Gui of Yue and Taoist Priest Jiuying of Wudang were boating on Xuanwu Lake.
The boat drifted with the current, and a small, low wooden table was placed in the middle of the boat. On the table, there were drinks, fruits, and cakes.
"Have Qiudi and the others responded to your messages these days? They are responsible for the affairs of the Seven Kills Sect and the Yuyuan Army. The task is difficult."
After the wine in the pot was reduced by half, Zheng Gui leaned against the bow of the boat, still holding the wine glass in his hand, and said with some melancholy, "Actually, I had thought about it two years ago, and I would go for a walk to the north alone. Circle, summon all the leaders of the sects."
He smiled and said, "It's very bold. I can do it all by myself!"
"At that time, I said this to Qiu Shenjie, the Minister of War, and Qin Baichuan, the great scholar. Everyone was very excited and said that this matter was too dangerous."
Zheng Gui waved his hand and said, "I said it doesn't matter. I will use it for ten days. I won't stay too long. I will only use it for ten days and bring twenty divine weapons of creation and twenty purple spiritual cores."
"Take a spiritual core to consume during the day and rush on the road. At night, break into the Jiugong Taoist, Xu Shouru, their residence, use the magic weapon to compete with them, and see their martial arts progress, trends in recent years, and the city government's methods."
"If everything looks okay, then let's discuss it. If it doesn't work, I'll just blow up the magic weapon on their house, which should be enough to escape."
Jiuying had a knife in her hand and was peeling a pear. Hearing this, he nodded and said, "I've heard about this. It's indeed too radical."
"Yeah, they all said that, saying that if I do this, the subsequent situation will become very, very complicated, and it will be too difficult to deal with. One bad word may cause Daming to lose the opportunity to continue to develop. , was dragged into the quagmire in advance.”
Zheng Gui smiled mockingly, "So later on, I gave up. Thinking about it now, I still feel sad."
He drank all the wine in the cup and tossed it casually. The white porcelain cup drew an arc and fell into the lake, leaving a fleeting wave on the water.
"Actually, you know, I have been in the military for half my life, and I can be considered an expert in fighting. The situation in the Northland is a buffer zone. In fact, no matter how many years it takes, it will still be resolved through war in the end. .”
"What if a war is coming and we don't know the details of the enemy? Although my method is radical, it is the most straightforward way to find out their details."
The pear skin in Jiuying's hand was peeled round and round, and it was connected from beginning to end. It was very thin and complete. He looked at the edge of the knife intently and said casually: "You are not telling the truth, at least not completely. .”
Zheng Gui fell silent, and it seemed that the only sound left on the Xuanwu Lake was the sound of the waves gently lapping against the hull of the boat as it drifted.
The lake was sparkling, and the island in the water was getting closer.
Zheng Gui looked at the islands. After a long time, he heard the sound of kacha kacha in his ears.
Jiuying started to eat pears. He cut the pears into small pieces, put them on the plate, picked them up with the tip of a knife and ate them. He drank a little wine, ate the sweet pears, and looked at the scenery. It was very leisurely.
Zheng Gui couldn't help it anymore: "Senior brother, you really can keep your composure."
Jiuying ate very quickly. In the blink of an eye, almost all the freshly cut pear meat was eaten. He picked up another snow pear, prepared to cut it, and praised: "This pear is very good."
"well!
! "
Zheng Gui sighed loudly, "Senior brother, don't you really feel irritable? This battle is coming after all."
Jiuying said calmly: "Since we had contact with Yuanjun Temple back then and gained a certain understanding of the situation of the Earth Mother God Clan in the past, haven't we already had a premonition?"
"This war is inevitable. It is a blessing to be able to start a tentative confrontation after so many years."
Zheng Gui shook his head: "Is this really lucky? Over the years, the more I study the skills of Yuanjun Temple, the more I feel how powerful the Earth Mother God Clan was back then, and the more I understand that today's Yuanjun Your Majesty, your recovery has reached such a terrifying level."
"You and I are already at the ninth or tenth heaven, but the two of us together, even if we add the realm knowledge lent to us by the Yuanjun tribe of the twelfth heaven, and work together to face the empress Yuanjun, we can't even reach the first place. You can't even handle it."
"There are powerful men at the same level as Empress Yuanjun in both the Heavenly Palace and the Temple. Fifty years ago, from the first moment they revived, it was impossible for us to truly curb their actions. And over the past fifty years, our cultivation has The speed is far inferior to the recovery speed of these monarchs."
"If tomorrow, this war really comes to a decisive moment, then as long as one of those monarchs frees up his hands, he can kill us, all the armies of our Ming Dynasty, and all the resistance forces, and crush them all. Vanished.”
Zheng Gui smiled bitterly, "I deeply understood this in the past two years, that's why I had such an idea."
"The future of the world actually depends entirely on the victory or defeat between a few people. Everything we do and any consequences we need to consider are actually unimportant. In this case, why not be more comfortable?"
"If I had really gone to the north, fought with the leaders of the sects, and died happily, I would still know how and why I died. It would be better than being blown away by the master's aftermath on the battlefield in the future. Ash, so dead."
Although he was finally persuaded to give up the idea, it was only because he was fettered by human ties.
In fact, in the past two years, he has felt more and more that if he had really done that, he might not have gotten a better result.
However, Zheng Gui also knew that his thoughts actually meant giving up on himself, so he endured it for two years, restrained his thoughts, cheered himself up, practiced hard, and often retreated.
It wasn't until recently that news about the north came that he finally couldn't hold it any longer and came out of seclusion to talk to Taoist Priest Jiuying.
"The laws of heaven are constant. Yao will not survive, and Jie will not perish. A holy king like Tang Yao is no different from a tyrant like Xia Jie. So what is the difference between the sun in the sky and the grass on the ground?"
After listening to Zheng Gui's analysis, Taoist Master Jiuying said calmly, "Junior brother, you have also gone to the mountains to learn the Tao. You should know that the Tao is as small as the inside and as big as the outside, covering the universe. , all over the dust. The great road never exists only for the strong."
"There are things in the world that those beings who are as powerful as gods and demons have to do, and there are also things that people like us have to do. There is no distinction between them."
"Those monarchs in the Heavenly Palace and the Temple may be able to kill a hundred Jiuying with a wave of their hands, but since we have not met, then he is no different from the pear in my hand."
"Well, they definitely won't taste as good as my pear."
Taoist Master Jiuying cut a piece of pear and gave it to Zheng Gui. He said with a smile, "No matter what the result is, until the result comes, it will not affect us from doing things according to our own hearts. Why worry about gains and losses?"
Zheng Gui sighed: "Understanding the truth does not mean that you can really convince yourself to act according to the truth. Your level of master can probably be regarded as the unity of knowledge and action mentioned by Mr. Yangming. I can't learn it." Come."
He started talking, and the depression in his heart was finally relieved a little, so he took the piece of pear and started eating it.
Before they finished a piece of snow pear, Zheng Gui and Jiuying looked towards the northwest with strange expressions on their faces.
They vaguely seemed to feel something happening in the far northwest, but it was just a sense of the lake, and they couldn't tell the specific reason.
Not long after, a green-shell crab the size of a millstone flew from the air. When it was about to land on the boat, its size suddenly shrank and then shrunk, and finally it became the size of a palm and landed on the table.
Taoist Priest Jiuying said hello: "Brother Yunhua."
This Mr. Yunhua was the first Dimu tribesman to come into contact with Nanming.
The cooperation between Yuanjun Temple and Nanming was decided by Zi Yuanjun, but it was the friendship between Yunhua and Jiuying that laid the foundation.
"Brother Jiuying."
The big crab made a slightly old voice, but full of energy, and said, "Empress Yuanjun said that there are relics from ancient times over the Minshan Mountains, and there is a lot of movement. She has rushed to check it out and called you. Be prepared, maybe the experts here will participate in something in the future."
Zheng Gui quickly asked: "What relics are there, are they from the Yuanjun Temple, or are they from the Tiangong or the Temple?"
"Probably not. In ancient times, although the entire Earth Mother God Clan was led by our three parties, there were still many forces second to us."
Yunhua said without hesitation, "Actually, since that group of people rebelled from the ancestral temple and founded the Taiyuan Temple, the overall strength of our Yuanjun Temple, excluding the Yuanjun Empress, may not be as good as that of some people without a monarch. The holy place where the great religion is located.”
"I think the ruins that appear this time may be related to one of the forces of Kungu, Yanliang, Fudu, Yangping, and Tongen."
Yunhua was knowledgeable and thoughtful. He was also a master at the peak of the Twelve Heavens. He belonged to the humerus minister of Yuanjun Temple and was familiar with almost all the classics collected by Yuanjun Temple.
He made some guesses and gave guidance to Taoist Priest Jiuying and Zheng Gui to make a list of all the masters above the seventh heaven in Nanming.
The Southern Ming Dynasty already had a cabinet, and the emperor basically became a symbol, and officials in various ministries performed their duties. After the Yuanjun Temple came into being, in addition to teaching them various exercises, they also gave them some references from ancient times. system.
In today's Nanming Dynasty, in terms of government affairs, almost no one is truly indispensable. Even if some people are transferred from seemingly very important positions, someone will immediately take over the authority and make the entire system run in an orderly manner. , the government remained generally stable.
Therefore, even if these masters of Nanming usually hold multiple positions, when necessary, they can quickly join the war without much burden.
Jiuying and Zheng Gui personally went out to mobilize the experts quickly enough.
But just two quarters of an hour later, Qiu Di contacted Yunhua through the communication core of Yuanjun Temple.
"You have met Brother Xiaoguan from back then...repelled the Lord of Heavenly Palace...Thousand Mile Abyss...Gongtong Holy Land..."
After Jiuying and the others learned about Qiu Di's recent experience, they were shocked for a while before they came back to their senses and grasped the key points.
The Tianhuang Spiritual Stone in Gongtong Holy Land contains a large amount of martial arts resources from ancient times, which requires a large number of seventh-level masters and above to mine them.
Yunhua contacted Ziyuanjun again and confirmed the news.
Everyone did not dare to delay and set off immediately.
When Yuanjun Temple taught them various martial arts techniques over the years, it also created many divine weapons for them.
Most of these divine weapons of creation are swords. As long as you hold the sword in your hand and instill Qi and blood or fill it with gems such as purple spirit cores, you can generate huge flying power on the sword body and even form a layer of exhaust shield. , driving the human body to fly at high speed.
After hearing the news and issuing the order, everyone drew their swords one after another by the Xuanwu Lake, grabbed their swords and took off.
In an instant, groups of streams of light streaked across the sky, and they were all clearly visible even in the daytime.
Among the streamers who were flying with swords, only Jiuying was flying with weapons.
Mainly because his weapon is a spring and autumn broadsword, which is black, thick and heavy, with a wide blade. It would be unsightly to hold it in your hand and fly it, but flying on it is just right.
The Holy Land of Gongtong was of great importance, so they did not spare their spiritual cores. They galloped with all their strength, and before long, they were close to the Minshan Mountains.
But before they entered the mountains, they already felt an extremely depressing atmosphere and couldn't help but slow down.
The clouds over the entire Minshan Mountains seemed to be in a frozen state. Above the clouds, there was a black fortress castle.
In front of the ancient mottled castle, two figures were suspended.
At this moment, Yunhua had shrunk to the size of half a palm, lying on the shoulder of Taoist Master Jiuying, with two thick white beards hanging down in front of his crab mouth.
“This kind of aura is the Heavenly King and the Heng King of the Ancient Ji Heavenly Palace!
"
The old crab's beard trembled, "They actually found the Iron Star Castle from back then?!"
Taoist Priest Jiuying and others hovered in the air and looked over there.
They could already see the huge underground cave in the Minshan Mountains. As expected, it was dozens of miles in diameter and even more bottomless.
The castle in the clouds is actually on the west side of the abyss, and there are two figures on the mountain peak on the east side.
A man with black clothes and black hair, his right hand clasped behind his waist, his fingers as smooth as jade, and his posture upright, more like a ten thousand-year-old ancient pine, inexplicably making people feel a feeling that the sky and the earth could not bend him.
Next to him was a woman with tall hair, a long purple dress, and a light purple veil covering the lower half of her face.
The auras of the two people did not interfere with each other. It seemed that they just happened to come to the side of the abyss, overlooking the scenery in the abyss, chatting and watching, but it was like a match made in heaven, with black and yellow standing side by side, and the sun and moon running side by side.
Everyone can understand that if someone rashly approaches the area where they are at this time, they will surely receive a terrifying blow that will turn the world upside down.
This blow may have come from Guan Luoyang of Yuan Ting Yue Zhi, or it may have come from the careless Zi Yuanjun. It is even more likely that the two of them launched a devastating offensive in unison.
】
It seemed like a long time passed, and it seemed like I just watched Guan Luoyang and the others for a short while.
The fortress on the cloud slowly descended and was located on the west side of the abyss.
The clouds and mist drifted across the fortress. The figures of the Heavenly King and the Heng King were looming, and they all disappeared into the fortress. Instead, groups of Tiangong tribesmen stepped onto the edge of the abyss from the west side, cautiously They stuck to the cave wall in batches and descended into the abyss.
On the east side, Guan Luoyang chuckled, turned his head to the south, and said hello.
"Taoist Master, Your Majesty, long time no see."
Taoist Master Jiuying and the others all came here and said hello.
In fact, Taoist Master Jiuying and the others didn't get along with Guan Luoyang for very long back then, and those years were not the most unforgettable moments in their lives.
However, when they met now, the Taoist and the prince couldn't help but have many feelings in their hearts.
After they composed themselves, they decided to talk about Gongtong Holy Land first.
Guan Luoyang waved his hand and said: "Don't worry, I have a new exercise here. It won't be too late for you to go down after you learn it."
