Vessel of Worlds

Concealing the greater part of his spiritual power, Andy closed slowly on the great crab.

The Supreme Yang Crab, scarlet from end to end, was clamping chunks of fire-red coral a chi across in its two pincers—each over a zhang long—and feeding them into its mouth, grinding them down with a relishing crunch, crunch.

It suddenly stopped, rolled up the two eyes atop its head—each larger than a human skull—glanced at the cultivator drifting slowly overhead, and wore an almost human look of disdain.

Then the crab sprang, vaulting dozens of zhang in an instant, spewing red fire-mist, both great pincers hammering down at Andy.

Andy's posture never shifted; his body simply slid backward, slipping the pincers with ease. Then his left hand rose, and a green jade ruler several cun long floated up over the crab—swelling in a blink to a zhang, its color deepening moment by moment until it glowed a green that seemed about to drip.

The crab froze—only now sensing that this human's cultivation matched its own, and registering the enormous pressure rolling off the ruler overhead. Its pincers snapped up at the ruler.

Those pincers were the hardest part of the Supreme Yang Crab's body. Never mind peak-grade artifacts—even an ordinary dharma treasure, once clamped fast in them, could scarcely tear free, and might take real damage.

The ruler seemed too slow to evade—and was caught cleanly in the great pincers!

The crab bellowed low with pleasure and crushed down with all its strength—and its force closed on nothing. At the pincers' bite, the ruler dissolved lightly into motes of green and was gone.

The crab froze again, eyes rolling in every direction—and saw a ruler of purest green dripping beads of verdant sap, each bead swiftly becoming another identical ruler, and each of those bleeding out more sap and more rulers in turn.

In the blink of an eye, the crab stood ringed by dozens of jade rulers green enough to drip.

Its dim intelligence could not tell true from false. It flailed its pincers at ruler after ruler—and every one it caught burst into green motes and vanished.

After a futile frenzy, the beast seemed at last to know fear, and vented a great cloud of fire-red mist about itself. For now it saw that the dozens of rulers had ceased their shifting and were sweeping toward it as one—green ruler-shadows on every side, no gap to flee through, nothing left but the mist to shield it.

Yet the dozens of green rulers did not strike home at once. They ringed the crab instead, trembling ceaselessly a dozen zhang out.

And above the crab's head, at some unnoticed moment, there now hung a golden bell a zhang across.

Andy struck a seal into it, and the bell tolled one enormous DANG.

The fire-mist around the crab scattered as if blown apart by something formless, more than half of it gone in an instant—and in the same heartbeat of that toll, the crab lurched drunkenly in midair and began to fall!

The dozens of green rulers seized the moment and struck as one.

The crab shuddered back to its senses halfway down, barely righted itself—and saw the numberless ruler-shadows already upon it. It could only whirl its pincers wildly, shielding its vitals.

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But every ruler its pincers touched dissolved into harmless green motes—while every ruler that struck its body landed with enormous force. Before the wave of blows had even fully fallen, the crab loosed a single scream, died where it hung, and crashed down onto the coral reef.

Andy's face showed satisfaction. He shrank ruler and bell back to miniature and stored them away, then descended to the reef and extracted the crab's core and soul. Nor did he pass over that pair of impossibly hard pincers.

That done, he burned the carcass to ash and flew on toward Recluse Ximen's dwelling.

"Master—both treasures are formidable! Among Core Formation cultivators, self-preservation is assured many times over!" Youruo's bright voice sounded again in his mind.

"A pity both lean auxiliary. Against higher-ranked cultivators, their true attack power will fall short. In raw offense, I suspect neither matches that high-grade spirit tool Master wielded when we first met him," said Youlan, whose learning was evidently no small thing, naming the treasures' natures precisely.

"Oh yes! Master was only mid-stage Foundation Establishment then—hardly stronger than the two of us—yet he owned a high-grade spirit tool that mighty! It frightened Youruo out of her wits!" The girl's voice still trembled at the memory: Andy's frozen face as his hand closed on the Blazing Heaven Blade stood before her yet, as though at any moment he might raise that scarlet bone saber and cleave the two sisters' souls to nothing, erased from the world forever.

"Which is exactly why Youlan saw at a glance that Master was a man of no ordinary substance—and gladly risked becoming his ghost servant, hanging both our sisterly hopes upon him!" Youlan said, smiling.

"Mm! With Master's wealth, even that misty, distant Nascent Soul realm is only a matter of time!" Youruo agreed.

Andy laughed ruefully. Enough flattery from the pair of you. I know my own situation. Without the Primal Unity Technique, even holding the Heart-Cleansing Pill and both supreme liquids of heat and cold, I could never have formed my core—and even so it took two full cycles of the technique before the Primal Unity Golden Core condensed at all. As for the Nascent Soul—my jade slip of the Primal Unity Technique contains no method whatsoever for that assault. There is nothing even to attempt!

"Master, don't lose heart! Isn't this very journey to Recluse Ximen's dwelling for the sake of that final restriction—the one only a Core Formation cultivator can break? Perhaps behind it lie the methods for the Nascent Soul assault and all that follows! Then Master's worry dissolves of itself!" Youlan soothed, her voice gentle.

"Yes! And perhaps some heaven-defying treasure besides, to swell Master's strength at a stroke!" Youruo chimed.

May it be so, Andy murmured.

At his current speed—even pausing midway to meditate and restore his power—a mere three months brought him once more to the desolate islet that hid Recluse Ximen's dwelling.

Along the way he met several more beasts; as a rule he simply flew on without a glance. Only one rank-five beast earned a moment's pause. Deploying the Verdant Sap Ruler and the Heart-Beguiling Bell again, he destroyed it just as easily, taking core and soul.

Reckoning it up, the beasts along this route had been remarkably numerous—two of them rank five. In both grade and density, the seas seemed markedly richer in beasts than in the years of his great hunts here decades ago. Was the fabled beast tide drawing near again?

Andy hung above the barren island, examining it closely.

"This is the site of Recluse Ximen's dwelling? Youlan senses nothing unusual at all!" the girl's voice sounded in his mind.

"Truly—just a smallish barren island. Not even the aura of a single low-ranked beast," Youruo agreed.

Exactly so. Desolate and untrodden as it is—were it easy to find, earlier comers would have emptied the dwelling ages ago, and nothing would ever have fallen to me, Andy said with a nod. He checked the several places he had once discreetly marked—identical, all of them, to decades before. No one had come in all these years. He let his heart settle.

Certain the island stood exactly as he had left it, Andy descended beside the great stones, shifted them gently aside, entered the hidden cave beneath, resealed the mouth behind him with the boulders, and started slowly down the sloping dark.

"How did Master ever find this dwelling? Is Master a descendant of Recluse Ximen—or his disciple?" Youlan asked, mystified. The hidden cave was concealed past all reason; even at arm's length, spiritual sense could not find it. That a Foundation Establishment cultivator had discovered it was beyond her imagining.

"Truly—such a concealment formation is unheard of. It may not even come from our Star Sea's cultivation world at all," Youruo added, grave for once in her life.