Chapter 161 The Realm of Trials (Part Twelve)
The trial array emitted a dazzling light, and the cultivators' primordial spirits filed in. Wen Ziheng's voice rang out again.
"The second stage of the Trial Realm is the Refinement of the Mind Realm. Those who fail to refine the Dao Heart Secret Realm will be eliminated."
"The second-level primordial spirit jade armor can be seized, and the primordial spirit can be devoured."
As Jiang Gu listened to the rules echoing in the sky, his primordial spirit slowly settled in the second realm.
The environments of the Mind Refining Realm and the Spirit Tempering Realm are completely different. For a moment, Jiang Gu even thought he had returned to Pingze. The village houses of ordinary people in front of him were filled with the smoke of cooking fires. Under the big banyan tree at the entrance of the village, several elderly people in their seventies and eighties were chatting and fanning themselves, watching a group of children playing not far away with smiles.
"We are born into this world, and our hearts are established in this world. What we seek will be obtained. Good luck, everyone."
Wen Ziheng's voice slowly faded into the air.
The villagers, however, clearly did not hear her and continued with their own affairs.
Jiang Gu initially thought it was another illusion like the Hundred Beasts Village, but he quickly dismissed this idea. His divine sense clearly revealed that these villagers were all living primordial spirits.
He couldn't help but frown. The Yin-Yang Tower had actually captured the primordial spirit of mortals and placed it in the second level of cultivation for cultivators to test.
"A guest has arrived." A hunched old man saw him, smiled and waved to him, "What a handsome young man, you've come."
A group of children's primordial spirits ran towards Jiang Gu with giggles and laughter. Jiang Gu cautiously took half a step back and used his spiritual energy shield to separate them.
"Go away, go away, don't offend the guests." The old man smiled and shooed away the overly enthusiastic children, then smiled at Jiang Gu and said, "My name is Wu Rao, and I am the village chief of our Wu Family Village. You must be from out of town. Our village is very remote, and very few people are assigned here."
"Assigned here?" Jiang Gu keenly grasped the implication in his words. "You mean there are other people coming here regularly, besides Wu Family Village?"
“Haha, of course, there’s more than just Wu Family Village here. There are countless villages and towns in our Refining Heart Realm. In those bustling towns, distinguished guests come every few months. They are quite capable and can be of great help, but they also have a lot of business to attend to, and wars often break out. Our Wu Family Village is remote, and we don’t get a single guest for a year or two. The last time was seven or eight months ago.” Wu Rao recalled, “That guest was very capable and cured many children in our village. But later he went to Shucheng in the east and we haven’t heard from him since.”
"Old man, are the locals here 'capable'?" Consultant Jiang asked.
Wu Rao smiled and waved his hand, "We would like to have it, but how can we escape birth, aging, sickness and death? We are just ordinary people."
After he finished speaking, he led Jiang Gu into the village. Jiang Gu followed behind him and looked at the houses and fields that were almost identical to those in reality. He then understood the meaning of Wen Ziheng's last sentence - the Second Refinement of the Mind should be a small world in the mortal realm created by the primordial spirits of these mortals.
Wu Rao led him deep into the village and stopped in front of a neat little courtyard. "Guest, please rest here for now. We will hold a village banquet for you tomorrow."
"Thank you." Jiang Gu nodded slightly and pushed open the door to enter the courtyard.
A murky, bloody stench assaulted his senses. A thick layer of grayish-white dust covered the bluestone slabs in the courtyard. Jiang Gu sensed the aura on them—the ashes left behind by the fallen primordial spirits of cultivators.
He stepped on it without changing his expression, then pushed open the door. Wu Rao, who was behind him, saw him enter and hunched over to close the door. The sound of footsteps and children's laughter gradually faded away.
The room was furnished in the most ordinary way. Apart from the bone-chilling cold, there was nothing unusual about it, nor were there any ghosts or evil spirits that mortals fear most. The only thing worth noting was a painting hanging in the center of the room.
It was a traditional Chinese ink painting that seemed out of place in the village. There were more than one figure in the painting, some near and some far, all with their backs to Jiang Gu. There were men and women, but the specific details were unclear.
Jiang Gu stared at the painting for a long time, then found a clean spot and began to meditate.
When cultivators reach the True Immortal Realm, they can usually cultivate a Dharma Form. It is said that in ancient times, the Dharma Form was an important medium for communicating with the gods in the upper realm. However, as the gods no longer descended to earth, the function of the Dharma Form gradually evolved into a simple aid in combat. The so-called Dao Heart Realm is the most important step in the cultivation of the Dharma Form. Not only must the cultivator's Dao Heart be stable, but they must also cultivate a realm through the Dharma Form. When the Dao Heart Realm is born, the Dharma Form will have a physical form.
However, it is actually extremely difficult. Many cultivators, even those who have reached the Golden Immortal or Taiyi level, may not be able to cultivate a physical Dharma form.
Jiang Gu carefully recalled the primordial spirits he had observed along the way. Since the Yin-Yang Tower had allowed them to enter this second realm, there must be a shortcut within it that could quickly establish a Dao Heart Realm—
"Tap, tap."
Someone knocked on the window behind me, and dust fell from the window frame.
The courtyard was strange, so Jiang Gu did not rashly release his divine sense. After waiting for a while, the person seemed to have walked to the door again and knocked three times.
The door was opened from inside the room.
Jiang Gu looked at the newcomer. The man was very tall, half a head taller than him. His clothes were tattered, and his face was plain. He was carrying a large bundle of firewood on his back and holding an axe in his hand. He said in a hoarse voice, "What are you doing in my house?"
Jiang Gu's gaze lingered on his clothes for a moment before he explained, "Wu Rao arranged for me to come here."
The other person looked somewhat disgusted. "It's always like this."
Jiang Gu readily opened the door and invited him in, saying politely, "I'm sorry, I thought this courtyard was unoccupied, so I locked the doors and windows."
Actually, a barrier was erected using a magic array; this person must have been unable to open it, which is why they knocked on the doors and windows.
He put the firewood and axe he was carrying at the door, pulled off a cloth and wiped the sweat off his face haphazardly, then looked Jiang Gu over with displeasure. "My house only has one room for sleeping. You'll have to sleep on the floor."
Jiang discreetly withdrew the detection array; the opponent's primordial spirit possessed no magical power, and was indeed just an ordinary mortal.
"I can sleep in the outer room," Jiang Gu said.
"There's no room for you in the outer hall," the man said gruffly. "Take it or leave it."
Jiang Gu's eyebrows twitched slightly. He rarely encountered such a straightforward and rude person, so he couldn't help but take another look at him, but his tone remained polite. "Okay."
His obedience made it difficult for the other party to press him further. He glanced at the setting sun outside the window, then stepped through the small door on the west side. "Come in with me."
Just as Jiang Gu stepped into the room, the other person suddenly turned around and slammed the door shut behind him.
His bare arm clenched slightly from the effort, pressing against the thin door panel beside Jiang Gu's ear, almost completely enveloping Jiang Gu. His cloudy eyes stared intently at the door behind Jiang Gu, as if trying to see something through it. After a moment, he shifted his gaze to Jiang Gu's face, straightened up, lowered his hand, and said coldly, "Don't go out and wander around at night. You 'guests' are all killed by curiosity."
"Not even the outer hall?" Consultant Jiang asked.
"No way." The other person glared at him fiercely, turned around, pulled a thin blanket from the closet, and threw it at him. "Go to sleep!"
After saying that, he lay down on the only bed in the room, fully clothed, with his back to Jiang Gu, and soon began to snore loudly.
Jiang Gu glanced at the dusty quilt in his hand with a hint of disdain, recited the Cleansing Incantation and the Water-Drawing Incantation three times before throwing it on the ground, and then sat cross-legged to prepare to start meditating.
To everyone's surprise, the man, who had been asleep, suddenly turned over and said in a harsh voice in the dim light, "Lie down and go to sleep! Can't you understand human language?"
"..." A hint of impatience finally surfaced in Jiang Gu's eyes.
But before he could make a move, a jumble of footsteps sounded outside the window, followed by countless hands of all sizes clinging to the windowpane, weaving countless shadows through the dim light.
The man on the bed changed his expression, nimbly rolled off the bed, grabbed Jiang Gu's collar and pulled him down onto the thin mattress.
The clapping motions suddenly stopped and began to slow down.
Jiang Gu was pulled to the ground by the other person, who held his wrist and forced him to loosen his clothes. "What is that?"
"I don't know," the other person said curtly. "Go to sleep."
Jiang Gu waited for a moment and noticed that the other person had no intention of getting up and going to bed. He frowned, but the other person's breathing became very even, indicating that they had fallen into a deep sleep.
He diverted some of his spiritual power to carefully examine the other party's primordial spirit again—it was dim, a trait unique to mortals, with blocked meridians and an unopened sea of consciousness. Most importantly, the primordial spirit was perfectly intact, without any injuries.
It's not Wei Feng.
He impatiently tossed the person back onto the bed, cast a concealment spell, opened the door, and then quietly closed it again.
The once empty outer hall was now densely packed with villagers, stretching all the way to the outside of the courtyard. They all stared wide-eyed at the ink painting in the center of the hall. The figures in the painting moved a few times with their backs to them. One of them raised his hand, and ink dots floated in the air, gradually turning into blood-red, flying out of the painting and landing on the foreheads of each villager.
Their previously empty eyes instantly came alive. Wu Rao stood at the front, trembling as he knelt down and kowtowed. The villagers behind him also knelt down. They performed the grand ceremony of three kneelings and nine kowtows before gradually standing up.
"Thank you for blessing and favoring Wu Family Village. We will definitely treat our guests well tomorrow," Wu Rao murmured to the person in the portrait.
The villagers began to walk out silently, like clusters of ghostly figures in the moonlight. Before long, the entire courtyard returned to peace.
Jiang Gu's gaze fell on the painting in the center. He vaguely felt that one of the figures looked familiar, but before he could take a closer look, a gloomy voice suddenly sounded from behind him: "Didn't I tell you not to run around?"
Jiang Gu slowly turned his head. "They've already left. Aren't you going back to the painting?"
The other person's expression changed instantly. "What nonsense are you spouting!"
“You are not the owner of this courtyard at all. There is no stove in the courtyard, so you didn’t need to chop firewood to come back,” Jiang Gu said. “And the bedding you gave me should be this painting. If I had actually slept on it as you said, I would probably have been devoured by you.”
The other person's expression turned slightly ferocious.
"There's just one thing I don't understand." Jiang Gu lowered his voice, his gaze falling on his tattered clothes. "Where did you get these clothes?"
A hint of surprise flashed in the man's eyes. "Clothes?"
“This belongs to my apprentice,” Jiang Gu said.
This tattered and faded garment, almost beyond recognition, was the one Wei Feng wore when he was taken away from the Songsui Illusion.
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