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The rain lasted for well over an hour.

The observatory also came up with the data in a few hours: the rain had covered the entire Bai Town area, and the amount of precipitation in that hour had reached the standard of a heavy rain.

Because of the rumor going around beforehand, all districts had made rain-proof preparations accordingly in a half-serious manner. Hence, the rainfall did not cause any problems.

People on the square remained standing in the rain the whole time. Instead of scattering and looking for a place to take shelter, they jumped and cheered loudly in the rain, going wild with joy.

When the sky finally cleared up and the dark clouds dispersed, it was well into the night. The silver moon hung high abovehead as the heat of the summer quickly made its way back, devouring the coolness in the air little by little until it was as hot as before.

However, everyone now knew that it was not the same anymore. The rain had sowed in their hearts a seed, which would one day sprout with their memories and hopes.

With the six days of lectures, one day of the enrollment, and the days of brewing before the actual event, Bai Town had been bustling for as long as half a month. It all ended with this rain, after which, people from all over the country went back where they came from.

Bai Town was empty in a night as if nothing had happened.

Of course, some chose to stay no matter what, and went on to search for their own opportunity.

***

Inner mountain, the meditation room.

That rain stopped after Gu Yu activated the fifth transformation of the talisman, and the purple paper finally burnt up into ashes. A skill such as this which affected the weather was extremely exhaustive, and even with Gu Yu’s Human Immortal state, he still felt worn out.

Right now, he was sitting in the meditation room, combing through what he learnt from using this talisman.

They only had that one Five-transformation Rain-praying Talisman, which was used up now. Although he knew how to draw the talisman, he had yet to comprehend the theories and principles behind it. Hence, he could not replicate one for the time being.

On the other hand, he had learnt a lot from this experience.

First of all, he learnt a little about the law of rain-praying. This so-calling process of praying for rain was not to control the weather, but to react to it instead. Weather was also a part of nature, and nature was Dao itself. Do recall that the ultimate goal of cultivators was to become unified with nature itself.

Hence, there was no such concept like “controlling”. It did not work the way as people assumed, which was to “control” the wind, the rain, the thunder, the lightning, and to move mountains and seas.

Ancient cultivators focused on the interaction between men and universe. When one reached a certain level of cultivation, the reaction would come naturally, with which they would then try to integrate with nature so that the two sides were tuned and could communicate. It was not a master-subordinate relationship.

What happened back then was that the energy of the talisman moved inward first, changing the energy of Five Elements inside his body; then, the external energy of Five Elements changed with it. Both the talisman and the cultivator worked as a medium for the interaction.

‘Wait a minute!’

Gu Yu shuddered all of a sudden: would Xiaozhai go through the same process with her Thunder Technique? Would she react to thunder, which then would feed back onto herself? After that, would her power grow infinitely, enabling her to stay on top for the next tens of thousands of years…

Ssss! No! He would not go into that yet!

Another thing he learned from this experience was about the legendary gods.

After testing it himself, he was almost certain that everything from the vowing and the god-summoning texts to the eight treasures and candles was nothing but for show.

The spell was what made everything happen. For instance, the Rain-praying Spell he used went as, “I hereby summon the god of water so that rain will come out of the Wall Mansion. Leopard of he Winnowing Basket rises and Flood Dragon of the Neck dances…”

These two sentences alone mentioned four gods, which were:

Water Yu of Wall, one of the Twenty-Eight Mansions (of the Chinese Constellation system) and the seventh of the Seven Northern Mansions.

Water Leopard of Winnowing Basket, the seventh of the Seven Eastern Mansions.

Metal Dragon of Neck, the second of the Seven Eastern Mansions.

Wood Flood Dragon of Horn, the first of the Seven Eastern Mansions.

Since it indeed rained, the spell obviously worked, but did it prove the existence of gods?

“…”

Gu Yu shook his head. When he was casting the spell, he sensed no such “presence”. In that case, what was it about these gods?

It was safe to conclude that the figures in the Chinese mythology were mostly the result of “promotion campaigns”.

Take the Four Great Celestial Masters Zhang Daoling, Ge Xuan, Xu Xun, and Sa Shoujian as an example. They were generally known as “gods of the heavenly court”, which meant they had ascended to the heavenly court after achieving immortality and were appointed as heavenly officials.

But that was not what actually happened. All four men were cultivators who had reached either the Immortal or Earthly Immortal state, after which they simply wandered the heaven and earth freely, and were nowhere to be found.

Another example would be the Jade Emperor, who became well-known at a rather late stage comparing to other gods and immortals.

The Jade Emperor only received his title as the “Supreme Creator, Imperial Operator, and Jade Emperor of the Great Heaven” in the Song Dynasty from Emperor Zhenzong. Even his statues and drawings were only finalized after Song, depicting a man in a ceremonial gown with nine patterns and wearing a crown with tassels of twelve strings of beads—a style taken from the drawings of the emperors of the Qin and Han Dynasties.

The Jade Emperor was said to have jurisdiction over thirty-six heavens and seventy-two earthly lands, and was the head of all gods, immortals, buddhas, saints, the mortal world, and the netherworld. That sounded even more like a marketing campaign, for it included buddhas!

The Jade Emperor was a Taoist god, but was said to be the boss of Buddha. The two did not even belong to the same system.

There was no way around it, for Taoism had such a messy mythological system even Taoists themselves could not explain it, let alone telling the real from the made-up ones. It was a disaster for those of the later generations.

“…”

Gu Yu sat there for a long time, utterly baffled. He had this vague idea that a type of god did not exist, yet another type seemed to exist at the same time.

The idea of dragons came to him all of a sudden. According to the book “On Dragons”, dragons were the essence of nature, and were created at a calling. In that case, could gods work the same way?

No, that couldn’t be!

He corrected himself right away, for during the rain-praying, an energy had suddenly shot out of his body and floated above his head. It was shapeless and looked the most bizarre.

What on earth was that? He somehow felt that the thing had something to do with gods.

“Ugh!”

Gu Yu sighed involuntarily. One had to say goodbye to the mortal world and see nature as it was in order to move from the innate state to the Human Immortal one. Then, from Human Immortal to Immortal, one had to comprehend the brilliance of mind and soul, perfecting both the physical and spiritual form.

It was not as easy as the words might sound at all!

He only roughly knew that he should be looking into the secrets of mind and soul, but exactly what was to be done? He had no idea at all!

***

Phoenix Mountain covered an area of over 300 km^2, and the main peak Cuanyun Peak stood nearly a thousand meters above the sea level. After the formation was set up, the spiritual ginseng activated the energy of the mountain and the land, which was silently transforming the mountain every day.

Cuanyun Peak had now risen to an altitude of over a thousand meters. Since it happened to sit right in the middle of the mountain range, it was used as a landmark, from which eight directions were divided.

The mountain gate was in the south, and the area between that and Cuanyun—southwest and southeast wings included—was where the old scenic area used to be. It was sizable and fully-equipped with all necessary facilities. After the revamp, the landscape was a feast for the eyes, and almost a paradise on earth.

This entire big area was the front mountain, where a front gate, guest houses, living quarters for disciples, teaching area, training area, service hall, etc., had been built. The 1008 probies would be living here from now on.

Moving north from Cuanyun Peak, a circle of land was partially hidden behind a grove of peach trees, which was a restricted area.

That was the inner mountain, where the Cottage of Pure Mind, the library, and the small training court were. It was also were Gu Yu and the other three lived.

The western slope of the mountain was separated out as the beast farm; moving further north from the peach tree grove was the back mountain, which also included the entire area on the east. This area was quite versatile; one could find here the workshops of liquor, tea, and talismans, the manor, the barn, as well as the orchard, tea plantation, the spiritual farmland, the herb garden, etc.

To sum it up, most of the 300-km^2 land had been put into use, and only less than half remained untouched.

There was no tram or bus on the mountain, and one had to go everywhere on foot. So, you would need to be quite fit to run all the way from the front mountain to the back.

The above-mentioned was probably the first impression the probies had of Phoenix Mountain. The second day after the rain-praying ceremony, they packed up and moved onto the mountain.