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Heavenly Evolving Corridor?
Qi Lin could tell that Nüba apparently knew the mystery behind this corridor, so he asked her what was going on.
Nüba knew only a few details after she previously asked her mother about Emperor Yao. Back then, Emperor Yao had shown Xuanyuanshi a magic treasure she had crafted herself, the “Heavenly Evolving Corridor.” She said that this magic treasure was crafted according to the numbers of the Heavenly Spirits and Earthly Fiends. Once a person was trapped inside the winding corridors, there was no escape. Only those able to calculate heavenly mystery were able to leave the corridor. As it could transform in myriad manners in accordance with the heavenly way, it was thus named the Heavenly Evolving Corridor.
“Meaning we are inside Emperor Yao’s magic treasure right now?” Qi Lin was surprised.
“Could she have refined her own magic treasure into the palace to serve as a mechanism?” Changxi faintly sighed.
“This should be the case. Back then, Mother disdained her craft because ‘trap’ magic treasures were very commonplace. The most famous Mountains And Rivers Country Map can even create an entirely different world to trap the target. Yao indeed said that her magic treasure was most distinct in that it could be fused into a palace, with the target entering the magic treasure completely unawares.”
“Right, when Yao showed Mother, Mother personally entered the Heavenly Evolving Corridor.”
“Yellow Emperor Xuanyuan was able to escape?” Gongyang Tu urgently asked.
Nüba beamed: “Of course. Given Mother’s Realm, even her Xuanyuan Sword can cleave a path through the Mountains And Rivers Country Map, let alone the Heavenly Evolving Corridor.”
Hearing that the Yellow Emperor had used her Xuanyuan Sword, everyone was very speechless and very disappointed.
“Mother was very impressed with this Heavenly Evolving Corridor because it was very ingenious.”
“What? We’re trapped inside a magic treasure?” Nezha moaned. She loathed trap magic treasures the most.
“If this is the case, we are unable to escape.” Gongyang Tu’s expression changed. He had never surmised of such an ending.
Nüba’s expression was also a bit unsightly. The girl grit her teeth: “The Emperor Yao is known to the world as benevolent. To think she could be so vicious, laying a magic treasure trap in a palace.”
“If we want to escape, This Palace fears we can only unite our Divine Energy and break this magic treasure barrier.” Nüba said.
No matter how powerful a trap magic treasure was, in the end, they were not without limits. With the Divine Energy of everyone present, they could breach the Heavenly Evolving Corridor’s barrier.
“For now, don’t do this.”
Qi Lin categorically refused their offer to collaborate.
“Why? Does Young Lord Qilin have a better solution? This Palace does not want to die trapped here.” Nüba furrowed ger beautiful brow.
“If this treasure is destroyed, this palace will be, too. By then, I fear we won’t be able to find whatever secret of the Divine Cauldron that Emperor Yao left behind.” Qi Lin shook his head.
Gongyang Tu jeered: “You care about some Divine Cauldron when we are hardly able to fend for ourselves. The Divine Cauldron is not worth your life. After all, you cannot do anything with it if you are dead.”
“And if I said I can solve the mystery?” Qi Lin calmly asked back.
“Yao indeed mentioned that only those able to solve the mystery can leave, but does Young Lord Qilin feel certain?” Nüba asked.
“We have to try. If there is honestly no other way, then we will break the magic treasure.” Qi Lin was adamant.
Nüba glanced at Fenghou. This could also work.
“Then I will watch how capable you are.” Gongyang Tu sat down and closed his eyes in meditation.
Qi Lin said to Nüba: “Lady Nüba could you tell me even more details about the Heavenly Evolving Corridor. Perhaps there is a clue.”
“Young Lord Qilin, are you certain you can solve it?”
“Emperor Yao integrated the Heavenly Evolving Corridor into the palace as a defensive measure. Very clearly, she wants to protect something secret hidden inside the palace, right.”
“En.” Nüba nodded in agreement.
“But think about it. She may have doe this to leave something behind for the next Divine Name Yao.” Even after a Divine Name was destroyed, it could be reborn after tens of thousands of years. A Divine General may die, but the Divine Name was immortal.
“Are you not aware of the significance of the Register Of Deities?” Nüba smiled.
“What significance?”
“It is said that Divine Names who enter the Register are unable to be born for a hundred thousand years.”
“Is that the case?”
“You are unaware of even this despite being an Emissary?” Gongyang Tu sneered: “Only when the Register Of Deities opens can the sealed Divine Names be reborn. All battles between Invested Deities are when the Three Doctrines can eliminate dissidents, exploiting the Register to destroy their foes while strengthening their own doctrine in order to unite the Primordial.”
“Meaning that the ‘Yao’ Divine Name has already been reborn.”
“But how is this related to the Heavenly Evolving Corridor?” Nüba was still a bit confused. Even if the new Yao was to appear, her Divine Energy could not possibly match the power of the Five Emperors. At most, because of the achievements and fame of the previous “Yao,” this Divine Name would be leaps and bounds ahead of other Realms in aggregate. If one underwent multiple karma tribulations, they would grow even faster.
And the new Yao could not possibly control the Heavenly Evolving Corridor.
“This is the crux.” Qi Lin explained: “Yao wants to give her next successor a few things. If the successor is unable to cross even the Heavenly Evolving Corridor, then everything will become complete nonsense.”
“En.”
“Then she must have left behind clues for the ‘heavenly mystery.'”
Nüba was a bit taken aback. Then she had an epiphany.
“So this is the case. Young Lord believes that Yao left secret preparations to hand over to his apprentice, but out of fear that the successor’s Realm would be insufficient. Even if they arrived at the palace, they would be unable to leave with this treasures. That is why she left behind clues, to inform the successor of how to escape?”
“Yes.”
Everyone was won over. Gongyang Tu also opened his eyes and was inwardly amazed. This man’s thoughts were surprisingly so marvelous. To be able to instantly think so far, it seemed as if he had seen through Yao’s thoughts.
“That is reasonable.”
Nüba spared no effort to recall details pertaining to the Heavenly Evolving Corridor, however, there were not many at all.
Qi Lin paced back and forth through the corridor, deep in contemplation.
The searches that Nüba and Gongyang Tu’s subordinates conducted also were fruitless. Only naturally, there could not possibly be any clues within the magic treasure itself. Qi Lin tapped the wall, perfectly calculating in his mind the several dozen changes to the corridors, but it did not seem there was any pattern. In short, the changes were abrupt.
Heavenly mystery, heavenly mystery.
Since Emperor Yao back then used the Heavenly Spirits and Earthly Fiends in its creation, then there must be a connection between them to the corridor.
The Heavenly Spirits consisted of thirty-six transformations, from mediating cosmic creation to the Nailhead Seven Arrows. The Earthly Fiends consisted of seventy-two transformations, from communicating with the netherworld to opening a valley. Among cultivators, these were well-known pieces of general knowledge. Rather than say these were powers, it would be better to say they summarized the various Divine Energy and worldly changes that cultivators trained. Of course, Yao’s so-called Heavenly Spirit and Earthly Fiend creation could have originated from combining these changes.
Would Yao leave clues behind for later generations?
Qi Lin took a deep breath and released the Five Elements Universe Origin Shackles. He used Four Yins and Four Yangs power, forming a hand seal of the Dual Modes to sense Heaven and Earth. He attempted to use this method to put himself in Yao’s shoes.
Back then, Yao casted the Divine Cauldron in an attempt to found the Northern Primordial. This Divine Cauldron could be refined into an Earlier Heaven magic treasure, but because the Three Doctrines suppressed the Heavenly Court and produced multiple variables, Yao had no choice but to seal the cauldron into this void realm palace to conceal it. Furthermore, she used fengshui and the Heavenly Evolving Corridor as defensive measures.
After this, Yao and Shun both passed away, vanishing into oblivion.
Given Yao’s wisdom, she most certainly would not be resigned to letting the Divine Cauldron she painstakingly crafted stay sealed in the Primordial. If she was willing to leave behind an asset for her successor in the future Register Of Deities, she definitely would leave clues, to allow the future Yao to navigate the corridor and obtain the Divine Cauldron.
This clue could only be inside the palace.
The Heavenly Evolving Corridor’s network was unraveled layer by layer like a spiderweb inside QI Lin’s mind. The intersections of level upon level left Qi Lin feeling suffocated, and the traces of these corridors slowly increased in complexity and chaos.
All of a sudden, Qi Lin felt a bit of deja vu.
He had apparently seen the traces of the changes to these corridors somewhere before.
“But where?!”
Qi Lin strained with all his might to remember but was unable to. After stripping the essence of the corridor down to lines one by one, Qi Lin found he was already on the verge of finding the end of the thread, but he was yet unable to think of the last piece. Sometimes, this was the case, where the feeling of deja vu often gave someone the illusion that something had already happened.
“Husband, do not force yourself.” Changxi gently wiped away Qi Lin’s sweat. She sensed the worry in her husband’s heart.
Gongyang Tu’s eyes were full of astonishment and envy when he saw this scene.
“To be able to make a Divine Name address someone as husband is truly a rare sight.” Nüba curiously stared at Changxi. This woman, who seemingly had somewhat of a motherly temperament, apparently also had some kind of unique charm, always hiding her brilliance so perfectly that, up until now, Nüba still was uncertain what her identity was.
Nezha and Qi Qi were chatting at this time: “Qi Qi, we may as well leave a mark here of our visit. Hee-hee, just like that wall on the outside. We’ve got to leave something behind, or else we’ll have come in vain.”
Qi Qi grunted and rubbed her palms.
Nezha’s words seemed like a revelation, clearly revealing that end of the thread that Qi Lin was unable to grasp right before his eyes. All of the lines completely manifested.
“Right, that’s it!!”
Qi Lin laughed. Finally, he recalled where he had seen it.
Yes, if the changing paths of the corridors were seen as “lines,” then the tangled mess of changes were the same as the wall on the outside.
Everyone was startled.
“Has Husband solved the mystery?” Changxi gently asked.
“Not yet, but I know where Yao left her clue.” Qi Lin said.
“Hurry up and say it, don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Do you remember those cuts in the wall when we came in?” Qi Lin asked.
“Yes, but how is this related to the corridor?”
“Are you able to perfectly recall the marks on all of the walls?”
“Who would remember this.” Nüba was speechless.
Gongyang Tu felt that mess of cuts was nothing noteworthy. He immediately ordered a subordinate to go back and look, but he then found that the exit had surprisingly changed. The previous halls from before were nowhere to be found at all.
“Fortunately, I already memorized it.” Qi Lin said: “If my guess is right, the marks on the wall were intentionally left by Emperor Yao.”
“Oh? Why are you so certain of this.”
“Yao personally constructed this palace. Even when Qi Qi used High Ancient Divine Energy, she could hardly leave a mark. If it was Yao herself, doing so would be very trivial.”
Nüba nodded. This was true.
“But why would Yao leave behind something so unsightly. It completely destroys the beauty of the palace. And what secret to leaving the corridor could such a messy thing have?”
No one could figure it out.
Of course they could not because that was a map.
A map on how to navigate the Heavenly Evolving Corridor.
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Okay, that IS pretty clever
Yep, who could have imagined that the odd thing out would be the key to this puzzle 😀