Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way 20: Mutation

“Since I’ve already come so far, I might as well give it a shot. Even if it fails, I’ll just look for another body to take over.” Gu Suihan decided to go all out.

“Body is the target. Soul to return.”

The Spiritual Sense that filled up the entire Cultivation room immediately brought Gu Suihan’s soul back into his body.

By the time he had to go through the ninth execution of the technique..

Gu Suihan looked more like the spirits of those who had died wrongful and tragic deaths – he was bleeding from every orifice and even his eyelids were torn. He looked like he had been possessed by a demon.

Craaaack..crussshhh..creaaak..

He made several unintelligible shouts and as he shouted, his swollen head started to flatten, like a balloon that was losing air, before finally falling silent again.

“Asura shapes the body. Rakshasa solidifies the soul.”

Deep within his subconscious, Gu’s soul had already spiraled into confusion. As a result, this soul had no choice but to use Gu Suihan’s Spiritual Sense to forcibly awaken the sleeping consciousness of the real Gu Suihan

Back when Suihan had taken over this body, he had locked the baby Gu’s soul deep inside his consciousness and injected a little of his own soul, leaving the rest of his damaged soul to quietly recuperate.

But now, it had become too hard for Gu’s soul to hold the fort on its own. He had no choice but to awaken Gu Suihan’s soul and force it to merge with his.

“I see.” Gu Suihan’s actual soul looked through the past ten odd years of his life’s memories and was rather astonished.

“I got into the Seven Kill Sect? An orthodox sect that cultivates the Truth. And I know martial arts too?” The more Gu Suihan’s actual soul saw, the heavier its heart became.

It looked at the confused other soul before it and fell silent for a while. The only way to survive was to merge both souls and take back this body. There was no other way.

“We’ll just go with that then.” Gu Suihan let out a long sigh, swallowed the other soul and took control over the clump of flesh on the floor.

“Extreme Asura Breach, ninth time. Shatter the bones. Rebirth.”

His Spiritual Sense trembled and for that moment, the highly concentrated Qi inside the Cultivation Room was instantly sucked dry and the clump on the floor slowly started swelling up.

Craaack..craaaack..

A skull, a backbone, a pelvis. The bones that had been shattered to almost nothing but powder, were now slowly coming back together under the guidance of his Spiritual Sense.

It took some time, but the dry and formless pile of flesh on the floor slowly took the shape of a man again and his limbs began to tremble.

“Gosh.” No matter how powerful Gu Suihan’s will was, there was no way it could come out of this retransformation unscathed.

“Ten odd years of recuperation have gone to waste,” Gu Suihan sighed and shook his head as he felt like his soul was now as shapeless as water again. He now felt some displeasure with the soul he had swallowed.

Gu Suihan had initially intended to remain within this body to recuperate as an ordinary person and even if the body he had taken over died, he could just take over another. Recuperating like this was a very slow process, but he didn’t have a choice. Who knew if there was something powerful and dangerous in this world? After what happened the last time, he wasn’t taking any chances.

The image of that mysterious pair of eyes was still deeply embedded in his mind until now. A formless pressure continued to surround him. So, even though he was now in a different world from before, Gu Suihan was still not confident of facing those eyes.

But this isn’t a bad thing either. The world of cultivators has a lot of good resources, so I’ll heal up a lot faster too, thought Gu Suihan. The other soul was also himself after all. Getting upset with it was the same as getting upset with himself.

He snorted quietly in self-deprecation.

After his memories had all merged, Gu Suihan frowned. He didn’t expect so many people to know about that ship robbery. Things were going to get messy now.

At that time, Gu Suihan had sensed that there was something inside the ships that was useful to the recuperation of his soul. When night fell, he lurked near the ships, then sent his soul out all at once, wiping out everybody on those two ships in an instant.

To his surprise, he found a large amount of Vow Power. Someone had used a magic weapon to seal all of it in.

There wasn’t much time, so Gu Suihan threw it into a magic storage bag and also took the chance to carry off as much gold and silver as he could.

The story behind this magic storage bag was that he had happened to nick it from one very unfortunate cultivator. This man was supposedly an external disciple of one of the sects and had been chased out of the sect after he had spent more than ten years without any progress. Gu Suihan had overheard the cultivator drunkenly bragging about his halcyon days and all the valuables he had in a restaurant, so Gu Suihan quietly killed him in the night.

Sometimes, blessings and curses didn’t come from a higher power. There were times when people brought these things upon themselves. Too bad for this cultivator.

It’ll be the next month in just a few days, thought Gu Suihan with a sinister glint in his eye. Li Xianlong, was it? Hur hur.

The soul that had been swallowed was Gu Suihan as well, but that soul with just a tiny bit of Suihan’s soul was still a little more humane, or perhaps, a little kinder.

Right now, Gu Suihan was the same tyrant who wiped out whole clans for no reason, who slayed enough people at one time to fill a field and who massacred so many that there was sufficient blood to cover an entire continent.

“It’s the body of an Asura, alright.” Gu Suihan sighed and made a face after he checked the inside of his body.

His external appearance hadn’t changed much, but his bones were nothing like a human’s now. They were shaped at an angle and intertwined with one another like the roots of a very old tree. His shoulder alone consisted of more than ten bones twisted together. His ribs were even thicker and sturdier than before.

“I’m glad that my meridian channels and acupoints have not been affected. From the looks of it, I’m at least five times stronger than before.” Gu Suihan looked more pleased when he felt the energy surging through his body and the sound of air blasting when he swung his arms.

He wiped away the dried bloodstains on himself, put his clothes back on, then sat in a lotus position to convert as much of his internal energy as possible.

Boooom..

It was as if his meridian channels were like a great river or a huge waterfall – they were a lot wider than before. The energy that filled his dantian was like a ferocious beast that rushed towards the Spiritual Root in his spine.

But after he watched as that outburst of internal energy turned into almost nothing after passing through his Spiritual Root, Gu Suihan twitched his lips in dismay. He made use of his technique to quickly suck up the Qi within the Cultivation Room.

The concentrated Qi flowed through his Spiritual Root, and he led it towards his dantian. He had done this so many times and was so used to it already.

The Qi started spinning slowly within his dantian. He used a special technique to make it slowly spin faster and faster until it slowly became a whirlpool. As the amount of Qi increased, the whirlpool became larger and larger, and more and more intense.

After some time, the middle of the whirlpool began to solidify and formed one drop of golden liquid. That was what he was aiming for.

He quietly directed the remaining Qi into that droplet, and as that droplet grew bigger, the thick Qi in the Cultivation Room stopped gathering and the runes slowly dimmed.

“Is my time up?” Gu Suihan’s eyelid trembled slightly as he looked at the empty Cultivation Room.

There was only enough liquid to fill up one third of his body, which wasn’t enough to convert the amount his meridian channels needed. Also, he was only left with fewer than 100 Spiritual Stones. He did a rough calculation and estimated that he would need at least another 2,000 odd Spiritual Stones in order to complete this process. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration that this Asura body he had now might need more than usual.

What was Nuwa’s1 aim when she created humans?

This question suddenly popped up in his mind for no reason. Was it really like what that piece of animal hide said? That humans were just an experiment? What was the experiment about?

Gu Suihan felt like he had a clue of sorts but couldn’t quite pin it down.

It had been nearly 1,800 years since he first started his journey of cultivating the Truth. Back during the Xijin era2, he was only your average cultivator.

The Xijin era was less than a century away from the well-known Three Kingdoms period3, but Gu Suihan knew well that the people in power back then were not merely intelligent strategists.

For some reason, Gu Suihan felt a chill rise from within his heart. He remembered the last bit he had seen among the few blurry scenes revealed in that long river of history.

It was a man dressed in the emperor’s Dragon Robe4 and a sword on his belt. The imperial seal rested on his left hand5 and a number of court officials and military generals stood behind him, but Gu Suihan couldn’t make out their faces. There was also an army so vast that he couldn’t see where the soldiers ended. Beneath that man’s feet was a majestic and awe-inspiring city that looked like a black gigantic beast. Gu Suihan could vaguely make out several people standing in the city, raising their arms high.

And there were also those deep and mysterious eyes on that man’s face.

When his recollection reached this point, Gu Suihan shivered all over. He was 80% sure that that man was that tyrant who had unified a country at the expense of millions of lives.

The First Emperor6.

That monstrous looking city was Xianyang7.

Gu Suihan murmured to himself, “He burned books and executed scholars, Epang Palace8. He amassed much gold, searched for ways to attain immortality from other countries, yet the dynasty collapsed in his son’s generation9.” His face turned paler and paler. “I see it now. He was seriously trying to go against Heaven.”

And now, Gu Suihan had only one question: Did Ying Zheng10 succeed?

“Everything started because of me, and all creation shall call me the Emperor. Haha! The First Emperor, the First Emperor. It’s no wonder that cultivators regard your name as a taboo,” he muttered quietly.

He then kept his thoughts away, packed up his things and walked out of the room.

The Clacker’s Tea Party

Today’s tea recommendation: Pu-Erh. Not everyone likes fermented anything, but I like my tea as black as can be, as aged as can be. Some people have a lot of trouble sleeping after taking this, but..not me.

Clacker CliffsNotes

The Qin dynasty marks the start of the Chinese imperial system that went from 221 until the declaration of the Republic of China in 1912.

The first ruler of the Qin dynasty as well as the very first ruler of China was:

Real name: Ying (surname) Zheng (given name); some call him Zhao (his birthplace) Zheng

Before Ying Zheng came along, the rulers of various territories were called Kings. But Ying Zheng wanted to be different, so he coined the term ‘huangdi’, or Emperor. This term would eventually be used until the monarchy was overthrown. Emperors wore Dragon Robes, or a golden robe that had a huge dragon embroidered on it.

He was also known as Qin Shi Huangdi, or literally, the First Emperor of Qin, shortened to Qin Shi Huang. The capital city during his reign was Xianyang. He also ordered an imperial seal to be made, or the Heirloom Seal of the Realm.

Known as a tyrant/dictator guy, he was known for a few things:

a. Burning of books: supposedly he felt that certain types of books (poetry, history other than Qin, philosophy) might teach the people to compare or come up with their own ideas, so he burned ‘em all. But this story, while famous, is possibly untrue. *shrugs*

b. Killing of scholars: apparently after two alchemists tricked him, he buried a whole bunch of scholars alive. Also, while this story is famous, it is possibly also not true or not entirely true.

c. Epang Palace: he wanted to build a real fancy palace, so construction started while he was emperor, but did not finish even after his successor died, since the dynasty fell after that and the half finished palace supposedly burned down.

d. Qin Er Shi: His son succeeded him as emperor, but Qin Er Shi, or Second Generation of Qin, was a lousy emperor, controlled and eventually forced to commit suicide by his eunuch. One more relative of Qin Shi Huang ascended the throne after Qin Er Shi died, but Ziying was just trying to hold the dynasty together and surrendered to rebel troops after just 46 days as king, so Ziying is not considered an emperor of the Qin dynasty.

e. Possibly the most famous part of all was how Qin Shi Huang was extremely afraid of death, constantly searching for ways to extend his life, including a belief that there was such a thing as an Elixir of Life. But of course, extending life or cheating death, goes against nature, or in those times, the will of heaven.

Hold ALL of this information about Qin Shi Huang for the rest of the book. HOLD IT ALL.