Chapter One: The Celestial Blood and Flesh Transmutation Rebirth Technique

Page (1/3)

In a cave nestled on a small seaside hill in the outskirts of Donghai City, a young man with a pale face sat cross-legged. Before him lay a black box adorned with strange, intricate symbols. Behind him stood an odd device, resembling an ancient armillary sphere as tall as a man—a spherical contraption mounted on a metal base, covered in countless tracks etched with runes that rotated of their own accord. Around the hill, dozens of iron towers pierced the sky, their sharp tips vanishing into the clouds—upon closer inspection, they were lightning rods.

This young man was named Shangguan Chuanyun, a native of Donghai City in Huaxia, who, plagued by incurable illness, was compelled to seek ways to prolong his life.

With utmost solemnity, Shangguan Chuanyun opened the black box. He reached in and withdrew a gleaming, silver, spindle-shaped sliver, three inches long, narrow in the middle and pointed at both ends, and gazed at it in silence.

“Six years of painstaking effort—all rests on this moment,” he thought, caressing the small sword in his hand.

The globe-like device behind him, with its myriad rotating tracks, was called the Celestial Armillary—a tool Shangguan Chuanyun had crafted for divining the secrets of heaven and earth.

The black box was designed specifically to house spiritual objects and enhance their essence. The three-inch, spindle-shaped sliver was a flying sword—a famed artifact of legend.

Shangguan Chuanyun had forged this miniature sword in strict accordance with the ancient art of sword refinement, using rare metallic ores, costly medicinal herbs, and nourished it with his own blood. It was intimately linked to his spirit, brimming with vitality.

It was only out of desperation that he now turned to this method, striving to extend his life and stave off the end.

Since the Battle of the Severed Dragon in the Ming Dynasty, the world’s spiritual energy had grown ever scarcer. Aside from the legendary ascension of Zhang Sanfeng, tales of immortality had all but vanished from the world.

Yet the pursuit of the immortal path had never ceased among later generations.

Diagnosed with a terminal illness as a child and told he would not live past eighteen, Shangguan Chuanyun clung to life as tenaciously as any creature. To prolong his days, he devoted himself to the study of medicine—from both Western and Chinese traditions—until he discovered the Daoist arts of health preservation, which rekindled his hope.

With these methods, he managed to eke out his existence, all the while delving into Daoist cultivation.

He survived past eighteen, and subsequently maintained his frail life through cultivation. But with the world’s spiritual energy nearly extinct, Shangguan Chuanyun roamed famous mountains and rivers in search of what little remained. He managed to refine his breath and essence, but could progress no further.

The meager true energy in his dantian was insufficient to resist the ravages of illness.

By chance, he later stumbled upon the ancient method of Sword Immortal cultivation. Legends of sword immortals abounded throughout history: taking heads from afar, traversing the Five Sacred Mountains in a day, ultimately achieving transcendence and ascending to the Isles of the Immortals.

Of all the myriad Daoist arts, he chose but one path—the sword.

The way of the Sword Immortal: first, sincerity; second, faith; third, subtlety and refinement.

The flying sword had three cuts: to sever greed, anger, and delusion.

It had three approaches: skill, technique, and the Way.

To cultivate the flying sword was to cultivate both the Way and the body—body and spirit refined together, life and soul in tandem.

To Shangguan Chuanyun, this was a lifeline. Grasping at this hope, he spared no expense, forging a three-inch flying sword, and through cultivation managed to prolong his life.

But the path of the flying sword demanded much, while the world’s spiritual energy was all but gone. He could only nourish it with herbs and his own blood. Now, his progress had stalled, and his body grew ever weaker.

As his life ebbed away, Shangguan Chuanyun was forced to devise another solution. Through study of Daoist texts and the sword immortal arts, he conceived the Grand Method of Flesh Transmutation—a process whereby one would instantly transform flesh and blood into essence, spirit, and soul, transferring all consciousness and being into the flying sword. Then, through the sword, essence would be refined into energy, energy into spirit, spirit into the void—thus forging a sword-born primordial spirit. By drawing down heavenly lightning, this spirit would gain the qualities of a Celestial Immortal, and finally, with the art of reincarnation, be reborn into a new life.

This was the plan Shangguan Chuanyun devised after countless simulations with the Celestial Armillary.

Page (2/3)

The Celestial Armillary, a treasured artifact of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau through the ages, was used to divine the fate of the nation and regulate its fortunes. Within it lay miniatures of mountains, rivers, cities, and seas, as well as the cycles of sun, moon, and stars, all moving in concert to calculate the secrets of heaven. Its structure corresponded to parts of the human body, which Shangguan Chuanyun used to simulate the internal, reverse-growing path to immortality.

He had been sitting in meditation for three days, awaiting precisely the third quarter of noon on the Dragon Boat Festival—the time when yang energy in heaven and earth reached its peak, thereby hastening the transformation and warding off evil influences. This moment also aligned perfectly with his destiny.

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

The Celestial Armillary ceased its motion, giving out three crisp metallic chimes.

“It’s time,” Shangguan Chuanyun murmured.

He stood, lit three sticks of incense, and placed them in the censer in the order of center, right, then left, bowing thrice to heaven and earth.

He then took up a ritual scroll covered in script and began to recite:

“By the authority of heaven, earth, sun, moon, and stars, of all things, mountains, and rivers, before the Three Pure Ones, I, Shangguan Chuanyun of Donghai, humbly seek to enact my self-created method of sword immortal reincarnation…”

As he finished, the ritual scroll ignited of its own accord, burning to ash without flame.

Shangguan Chuanyun returned to his position and took up the flying sword.

Ding.

Another clear chime rang from the Celestial Armillary, echoing into the distance. Shangguan Chuanyun felt his mind sharpen, as if he had heard the one true sound of heaven and earth.

With that, he slipped into a trance, a primordial state as if the world was just being born.

At that moment, Shangguan Chuanyun activated the Grand Method of Flesh Transmutation. His body began to fade, flesh and blood dissolving into essence, which streamed into the three-inch flying sword. Then his blood, organs, and bones followed, turning into a blood-red stream that poured into the sword.

He felt a searing pain seeping into his soul, a torment that even made the flying sword tremble—his mind and sword had become one.

Once his entire body had been transformed into essence, Shangguan Chuanyun instantly drove his technique to refine all his vital energy into true qi, causing the sword to glow with an increasing radiance. He dared not pause, fusing his refined qi and spirit into the sword, merging completely with it.

This was the process of refining qi into spirit—henceforth, Shangguan Chuanyun's primordial spirit was the sword, and the sword was his spirit.

He had rehearsed this method countless times. Though it would allow him to exist in this form and persist in the world, the great Way would forever be out of reach. It ran counter to the immortal path; he could only exist as a flying sword—a form of immortality, yet a prison. Unable to transcend, in time despair would consume him, forcing him to summon heavenly lightning and end in ashes.

Page (3/3)

Or perhaps, if one could summon a true immortal, they might extract his true spirit for reincarnation.

But Shangguan Chuanyun could not invoke such immortals, nor would he resign himself to annihilation. If such help were possible, he would have had no need for this desperate method.

Now, the flying sword hovered in mid-air, shimmering with silver light.

Suddenly, it transformed into a streak of light and plunged into the Celestial Armillary, slipping into a slot at its core that had been designed for this very purpose. Shangguan Chuanyun, now one with the sword and bereft of limbs, could only act through the Celestial Armillary.

The device began to turn with a series of clacks. Mist rose around the little hill, soon enveloping it entirely, then linking the hill to the vast expanse of the sea. A tidal wave of vapor spread from the hill to the ocean.

At that moment, yang energy blazed in the sky, but below, the mist drew up the concealed yin energy from earth and sea.

Heaven and earth were on the verge of connection. As the clouds above and vapor below neared contact—threatening to bring thunder and rain—Shangguan Chuanyun, through the Celestial Armillary, plunged into the space between them.

Pure yang and pure yin clouds began to swirl around the Celestial Armillary. The energy of yin and yang wrapped around it, forming a vast black-and-white sphere.

Shangguan Chuanyun spun the device, guiding the yin and yang clouds into a Taiji pattern, preparing to let their collision generate lightning with which to enact his reincarnation.

As the Celestial Armillary directed the clouds into a great sphere, it suddenly slipped from his control. The black-and-white energy outside fused into the device, rendering it shrouded in gray mist—a state without up or down, past or future, a return to primordial chaos.

Shangguan Chuanyun felt this gray vapor thicken, merging the Celestial Armillary into itself. Powerless, he watched as it was absorbed and vanished.

The black-and-white sphere outside grew ever larger, darkening the world. Countless people filmed the giant orb forming above the East China Sea.

Despair welled up as Shangguan Chuanyun saw the Celestial Armillary dissolve. Its materials, though not as precious as those of his sword, were scarcely inferior—yet the gray vapor consumed them all.

He felt himself on the verge of the same fate, ready to enact the art of reincarnation, only to find he could no longer control his actions—his abilities failed.

In that instant, clarity returned. At the threshold of oblivion, he felt the terror of death—how, in life, he had struggled in lonely pursuit of survival, only to face utter fear at the prospect of nothingness.

Watching his flying sword dissolve, the memories of yesterday faded to nothing. Everything, present and future, faded into oblivion.

Between past, present, and future, he slipped into enlightenment, sensing in the boundless void the presence of form, and in the midst of confusion, the existence of substance.

A flash of insight allowed him to silently recite the “True Scripture of Heavenly Attainment as Spoken by the Primeval Lord of Heaven”:

“At that time, the Primeval Lord of Heaven, in the Great Luo Heaven atop Jade Capital Mountain, expounded this true scripture of attaining the heavens before the assembly of celestial beings.”

“He told the immortals: Now I shall teach you, opening both body and mind, and proclaiming the essentials of the Way.”

“To cast aside all external bonds, to forever eliminate attachment.”

“Let neither outer forms enter nor inner forms exit.”

“…”

Page (3/3)