Chapter 5: Memory X Divine Ability

  The main purpose of the Heavenly Court setting up a Yin god in the Yang realm is to monitor the world, reporting any wind or grass movement in the Yang realm to the Earthly Court or the Heavenly Court, with the land being the lowest level.

  The land is equivalent to a small official among people, each land is in charge of a part of the territory, and every month it reports to the Chenghuang all the things that have happened on its own territory, no matter how big or small. The Chenghuang then reports to the Difu, of course, if an emergency occurs, it will not be limited to once a month.

  This is also why after a person dies, the underworld will have an extremely detailed record of their entire life. Because of the existence of these spirits, your every move can't escape surveillance. The saying "there are gods watching from above" refers to this principle.

  To enable the yin spirits to survive for a long time in the yang realm, the heavenly court created tens of thousands of magical seals, which are like official tokens. They serve two purposes: first, to prove the identity of the yin spirit; second, to provide a dwelling place for the yin spirit. For the tens of thousands of yin spirits in the yang realm, these magical seals are their foundation, and only secondary to their divine images. However, later on, the yin spirits in the human world discovered that through massive incense offerings and vows, they could enhance their powers and divine abilities more quickly than by cultivating in the yin realm. As a result, strife broke out among the yin spirits.

  The more prosperous the place, the fiercer the struggle for incense power, the larger the territory occupied by yin gods, the more people believe in them, and the stronger their strength.

  In order to contend for the power of incense, apart from the internal strife among yin spirits, they must also vie for the hearts of the people. They need to make the living believe in them; only then can they obtain the power of incense offerings. Otherwise, no matter how large a territory a yin spirit occupies, it is useless if no one believes in it. The method of vying for the hearts of the people is to satisfy their desires. For densely populated areas, this means ensuring that the place enjoys good weather and prosperity, with all families living in peace. Therefore, regardless of the moral character of a yin spirit, they must always find ways to make the masses believe in them. As a result, they cannot help but do many good deeds, which makes them much better than those so-called public servants in their dream world.

  Monitoring the world, killing each other, competing for incense is the main theme of the order of heaven and earth after Fengshen. As for the competition among yin gods, neither the underworld nor the heavenly court cares about it. In their view, as long as these yin gods can effectively help them monitor the world, it's okay. Who wins or loses among you has nothing to do with me?

  Order is difficult to establish but easy to overthrow.

  The yin gods also had competitors. For the yin gods, three thousand years ago, their greatest competitor was the ancestral spirit of humans.

  What is the ancestral spirit of humanity?

  They are the spirits of human ancestors after death, and these are ancestral spirits.

  Humans were originally non-believers in gods, they believed in their ancestors. In fact, even now, humans believe in their ancestors first and then various spirits. Whenever something happens, the first thing is to bless the ancestors, and then ask for divine help.

  The nether world and the mundane world are adjacent, and the place where they meet is called Mount Yin.

  In the world of the living, no one can find the Mountain of Yin, but once a person dies, they are able to see this mountain and at the same time feel the enormous attractive force emanating from it, drawing in the deceased soul into the back of the Mountain of Yin, which is also known as the underworld. The vast majority of souls cannot escape the attraction of the Mountain of Yin, but there are exceptions.

  The Yang realm is vast and there are some special places where the influence of the Yin realm cannot reach, in these places death does not necessarily mean being drawn into the Yin realm.

  But ordinary souls have no divine mark and cannot cultivate, even if they stay in the sun, they are muddled and do not know the world, and will soon disperse in the world.

  Apart from these special places, there are some people whose will to live before death is particularly strong. Perhaps it's a kind of resentment or perhaps it's a kind of obsession. This resentment and obsession help them resist the devouring power from the underworld, allowing them to stay in the world of the living. These, then, are ghosts.

  Ancestral spirits are also a type of ghost, but they are special. In addition to their own willpower, they have the willpower of their family members helping them. If someone had an extremely good relationship with their family while alive and was able to bring great help to their family, and their family did not want them to die, or wanted them to continue protecting the family after death, then they would be able to easily break through the Yin Mountain's engulfment and remain in the mortal world. These are ancestral spirits.

  In comparison to gods, ancestral spirits can only obtain the incense and candlelight offerings from their own family, which is a bit less, but they have an advantage in stability. If a family has enough members and is prosperous, the power of the incense and candlelight they receive will be even greater than that of ordinary gods. Moreover, since it's all within one family, the ancestral spirits' received incense and candlelight offerings are extremely pure, and their divine powers are relatively strong. When the ancestral spirits discover the secret of the incense and candlelight offerings, they will then entice their descendants to stop worshiping the gods.

  Therefore, for a very long time, gods and ancestral spirits have been in opposition to each other, which is the mainstream.

  This mainstream changed about three thousand years ago.

  The spread of Buddhism.

  The emergence of Buddhism has fundamentally changed the pattern of human society, because Buddhism possesses a method that allows people to attain physical sanctity. What is meant by physical sanctity?

  It is a Dharma gate that ordinary people can also use incense and vows to cultivate.

  As a result, not only the ancestral spirits are competing with the divine spirits for faith, but also some monks, especially those of the demon race, have begun to conflict with the gods, killing local gods, seizing divine seals, exercising divine power, and taking incense. The struggle between the yin gods and the Buddhist monks is becoming more and more intense.

  The land of Tieguai is the Eastern Land of Great Tang, one of the four great continents, where Buddhism flourished after the Three Treasures traveled east 800 years ago. Originally, Buddhist teachings only thrived in the Western Continent of Xiniuhe, but everything changed after that. The Buddhist teachings spread widely in the Eastern Land of Great Tang, and many demons learned the Buddhist teachings, obtained the method of cultivating the power of incense and fire, killed the local yin spirits, seized their divine seals, and took over their positions. Despite this being a clear violation of the rules, both Heaven and Hell turned a blind eye to it. As long as you exercised the authority of the yin spirits and refined the divine seal, Heaven and Hell would recognize you, regardless of who you were.

  As a result, many Yin gods were eliminated, and old-brand land like Chen Jiu, who was not good at management, was also eliminated.

  He was barely able to get by relying on his divine position, but 600 years ago, a demon who had obtained the Buddhist Dharma destroyed his statue, took over as the god of the land, and after winning the war against the other gods in the area, killed Xie Jiucheng, merged with the divine seal, and became the new City God of Dengzhou Prefecture. However, this demon was also clever, and after killing Xie Jiucheng, he even took his name, enjoying everything that originally belonged to Xie Jiucheng. As for Chen Jiu, he had probably been forgotten long ago.

  The confusing and complicated memories made Tie Juan's head spin, but after clearing his mind, he found that he had inadvertently dug up a huge treasure.

  Chen Jiu was one of Chen Qi's personal guards, serving him since childhood, equivalent to a companion role. Chen Qi didn't treat him poorly either. His strength was originally not bad, and he practiced the same technique as Chen Qi. He even knew the method of cultivating the yellow energy that made Chen Qi famous.

  But knowing doesn't mean you can cultivate it.

  Because that yellow gas is a kind of divine power.

  Qigong and Kung Fu are different.

  Qigong is the practice of cultivating and balancing life energy (qi) through specific postures, movements, breathing techniques, and meditation.

  While Shen Tong is very similar to Qigong, it requires the assistance of some heavenly and earthly spiritual objects in order to cultivate it. This is the most basic difference between Qigong and Shen Tong.

  The yellow energy in Chen Qi's abdomen had a name, called Lí Hún Xuán Guāng. When it hit someone, it would temporarily scatter their soul. Although Chen Jiu understood the method of Lí Hún Xuán Guāng, he couldn't cultivate it at that time because this divine ability required a heavenly and earthly spiritual object to cultivate, which was Yīn Yáng Lí Hé Jiǎo. This kind of energy only existed in Yang places and could only exist in places with dense Yin energy. In Chen Jiu's lifetime, during the era of King Wu's conquest of Zhou, Chen Qi had cultivated Lí Hún Xuán Guāng with the help of his family using the Yīn Yáng Lí Huàn energy from an ancient tomb. However, Chen Jiu wasn't so lucky as a close guard. The Yīn Yáng Lí Hé Jiǎo was a rare treasure that couldn't be easily found. Chen Qi had found it and achieved great fame in the war of封神 (Sealing the Gods). Chen Jiu also found it, but only after his death when he became a land god, experiencing thousands of years of turmoil before finding it in a chaotic burial ground. He had been the land god of this eastern tomb for many years, making him the master of this place. The Yīn Yáng Lí Hé Jiǎo energy was something he watched condense into being.

  Unfortunately, as a yin spirit, he had no physical body and was fundamentally unable to cultivate this divine ability, so he could only watch with wide eyes.

  "King Yue's tomb, I didn't expect that in Dongling, there would be such a big shot buried here!"

  The formation of yin-yang separation and killing energy is not easy, and it's not something that can be generated by simply finding a place with deep yin energy. To generate yin-yang separation and killing energy, many harsh conditions are required, and places that meet these conditions are rare. The fact that there was such a place in the East Mausoleum's chaotic burial mound was already beyond Chen Jiu's expectations. Originally, Chen Jiu had some ideas and plans surrounding this yin-yang separation and killing energy, but unfortunately, all of his ideas and plans were rendered useless by the sword of a certain swordsman.

  On that day, he was defeated by the City God of Dengzhou and had his golden seal taken away. However, his soul did not disperse, and a wisp of residual soul attached itself to an old locust tree. The tree's root system absorbed yin energy to nourish his spirit, barely sustaining him. Unfortunately, he encountered a swordsman with extraordinary sensitivity to yin energy, who noticed something amiss about the locust tree and cut it down without hesitation. Deprived of its support, the wisp of residual soul coincidentally drifted into Tie Jian's soul as he lay unconscious beneath the tree.

  As a result, Tie Jian inexplicably obtained Chen Jiu's memories, which had little impact on him and did not enhance his soul or harm his body. He simply gained some knowledge, along with an obsessive desire for revenge that would only disappear after he killed the current Dongling City Guardian. Otherwise, it would continue to haunt his soul. For now, Tie Jian's cultivation was shallow, so it wasn't a problem, but in the future, when his cultivation deepened, it would become a heart demon, gnawing at his heart and mind, unless he could fulfill this obsession, which might be the price he paid for obtaining all of this.