The Ancestor of All Demons

The Golden Light Giant Hand swiftly took form, a massive figure several zhang wide as if forged from pure gold, and following Wei Fengniang's delicate shout, it came crashing down.

Shi Feiyang saw this overwhelmingly fierce palm descending from the sky, his two inner cores entangled by Wei Fengniang's Immortal Sword. Not daring to block with any other method, he quickly leaped to the side to dodge.

The Vajra Divine Palm, smashing down from outside the ice hole, hit right upon the Coiled Dragon Stone, a relic left by the Yellow Emperor, no ordinary rock. Struck, it instantly reacted, igniting a thousand streaks of golden light, filling the cave with a red glow.

Although Wei Fengniang's palm didn't hit its target, she still seized the initiative. In unity with her sword, she flew downward, reaching the bottom of the lake and stood atop the Coiled Dragon Stone. She pointed her Flying Sword at Shi Feiyang while simultaneously launching three magical treasures—two Yellow Cloud Nails and one Black Crow Needle.

The Yellow Cloud Nails, self-forged, shot out like two strands of yellow smoke, aimed straight for Shi Feiyang's eyes with lightning speed. The Black Crow Needle, a gift from Brooyinca, transformed into a streak of green fire hidden behind the yellow smoke. It seemed inconspicuous, yet it was far more deadly.

Shi Feiyang, pressed tightly against the rock wall, timely summoned back his two inner cores for protection, and he also raised his White Light Sword. Just as the Yellow Cloud Nails shot with great speed, he frantically used the White Light Sword for defense. He intended to grind the flying nails to dust with his sword light, but since he hadn't been refining his sword for long enough and couldn't wield it as an extension of his will, and the potency of the Scraping Immortal Pill was causing him unbearable pain, he didn't have time to draw back the sword light before the nails dodged around it.

Then came the Black Crow Needle. Unable to block in time, Shi Feiyang was struck in the waist.

The Black Crow Needle, roughly three inches and eight fen long and slightly thicker than a needle, resembled a twig with nine small branches. It burrowed into the flesh like nine living locusts vying to drill deeper; as it burrowed, its front emitted green flames to scorch bones and muscle. This flame carried potent poison, the pain it caused was imaginable—the arm of Master Guangming had been crippled this way. Without deep cultivation, one's very life would be in danger.

Fortunate for Shi Feiyang, his body was already in extreme pain, so the agony from the burning green fire didn't stand out. The toxin released didn't surpass the formidable poison of the Scraping Immortal Pill within him, and with the support of the millennia-old Queen Mother Grass extract inside the pill, the poison couldn't bring down Shi Feiyang.

Wei Fengniang, seeing that the Demon Dragon appeared unaffected by the Black Crow Needle strike, with the Yellow Cloud Nails also failing to take effect, grew impatient. She withdrew the nails with a wave of her hand and unleashed the Vajra Divine Palm once more, this time forming a vertical Golden Light Giant Hand, which she directed towards the Black Dragon with a frontal slap!

She thought that even if the palm couldn't flatten the Demon Dragon, it would at least cause a catastrophic collapse, giving her the opportunity to sever the Dragon with her sword effortlessly.

However, as the Golden Light Giant Hand was unleashed, the closer it got to its target, the more its brilliance dimmed. What originally seemed to be cast from pure gold, by the time it reached the Black Dragon, was left as nothing but a golden hand-shaped light shadow, which the Dragon casually blew away, causing it to vanish into nothing!

Wei Fengniang couldn't believe it and hastily formed the Vajra Divine Palm again, slapping it forward, but the result was the same.

Unbeknownst to her, the spot Shi Feiyang had chosen to take shelter was meticulously selected beforehand. Above him was a ring of Golden Seal Heavenly Talismans, left by the Yellow Emperor. At a glance, they formed an Ancient Star Map, but upon closer inspection, they were made up of three hundred and sixty talismanic engravings.

Shi Feiyang, having carefully studied these Heavenly Talismans with the depictions on the Heavenly Book Jade Box and combined with his own accumulated knowledge, determined that this was a depiction of the Twenty-Eight Constellations.

Ancients gauged time by observing the Heavenly Star Map, concluding that one year passed as the Big Dipper Seven Stars revolved around the North Star. They apportioned time by the angles pointing to the surrounding Twenty-Eight Constellations, where the handle of the Dipper pointing to Yin signified the beginning of spring, and to Chou signified the extreme cold...

The Twenty-Eight Constellations were divided into Twelve Star Palaces, and within these palaces, twelve original 'Shi Chen' were selected, with the child corresponding to the Void Sun rat, the chou corresponding to the ox Taurus, the yin corresponding to the tail fire tiger, the mao corresponding to the room sun rabbit... and finally, the hai corresponding to the hall fire pig; this is the origin of the twelve zodiac animals.

Since the Heavenly Dao embodies circularity, recurring ceaselessly, one circle of the Yellow Path represents one year, which is then divided into four seasons, eight solar terms, and twenty-four solar periods; each period is further subdivided into three 'Hous', and every 'Hou' contains five days, adding up to seventy-two 'Hous'. Each 'Hou' represents a change, amounting to seventy-two transformations in total. The maximum division of a perfect circle into three hundred and sixty degrees is used for calculation, known as the number of the Circulation.

The Yellow Emperor left three hundred and sixty Heavenly Talismans arranged in a circle, with each talisman representing a degree of the Heavenly Dao. Dinghu Peak was where the Yellow Emperor practiced alchemy. The entire mountain was hollow inside, shaped like a massive cauldron. Its height and breadth were all personally measured and designed by the Yellow Emperor. The lying dragon stone at its base corresponded to the position of the North Star. Daylight refracted through the water onto the bottom of the lake, with the angle of illumination changing daily, causing a reaction from one of the talismans on the walls.

Shi Feiyang had a profound understanding of these arts and had already penetrated this secret. He had calculated the angle of the Yellow Path for the day and had taken cover under that particular Heavenly Talisman ahead of time. When Wei Fengniang's Vajra Divine Palm came striking down, the talisman reacted, immediately neutralizing her spell, dissipating it into nothingness.

Wei Fengniang released two palms in succession, both neutralized, causing surprise in her heart. She knew that the bottom of the lake contained Golden Seal talismans left by the Yellow Emperor to protect against the Demon Dragon, but she was unaware of the specific form of protection. Now witnessing this mysterious and daunting phenomenon and after continuously using seven kinds of spells – including Daoism's Five Dings Mountain Opening Skill and the Demon Cult's Demon Fire Burning Heart Technique – upon reaching the talisman, all turned ineffective. She thus ceased using spells and instead released the Yellow Cloud Nails, with her right hand controlling the sword and her left controlling the nails, launching an attack like a ferocious storm.

Shi Feiyang, leaning against the rock wall, maneuvered the two inner cores up and down, with water curtains and flames shooting forth simultaneously, dissolving the incoming assault one by one.

After a brief engagement between the man and the dragon that lasted as long as a mealtime, the time passed into the Chou period, and the grogginess in Shi Feiyang's heart began to subside, like sobering up after being drunk. Originally, he had relied on the potent stimulation of the Scraping Immortal Pill to prevent himself from falling into slumber, but the desire to sleep persisted. Now increasingly lucid, his mana swiftly recovered, growing fiercer as the battle raged on.

Wei Fengniang felt the energy contained within the opponent's two inner cores growing stronger, slowly surpassing her own sword light. She recognized the time had passed, and the Demon Dragon was regaining its three-thousand-year-old mana.

She pondered the oddities of the lake's bottom, not knowing what methods the Yellow Emperor had left behind, causing her years of hard-earned Dao and Demon spells to become ineffective... She had already set up a vast desert array topside; if she could lure the Demon Dragon out for a fight there, once it entered the array, killing this Devilspawn would be as easy as flipping her hand!

Looking up, she was shocked to see the surroundings engulfed in milky white fog. Glancing upward, she saw the ice holes above were now filled with dense mist. This fog formed silently and was initially very faint and sparse, nearly invisible; but as time progressed, it thickened. The combat area where the two were dueling, with raging fires and sword energies clashing, did not reveal the fog, which gathered elsewhere.

A chill fell upon Wei Fengniang's heart, fearing that the other might be using the Yellow Emperor's legacy to lay another ambush. She shouted fiercely, "Devilspawn, this place is too cramped; dare you follow me above to fight?"

Without waiting for an answer, she retracted her Immortal Sword into Human Sword Unity and transformed into a streak of blue and yellow light that shot up from the ground, vanishing into the thick fog.

Shi Feiyang retracted his inner cores and after a brief pause, his dragon mouth gaped open, and a scaleless white dragon emerged, its pink flesh exposed, the newly born body unfolding its limbs onto the lying dragon stone, continuously gasping for air. Turning its head, the original body was still propped against the rock wall—its scales still black and glossy, internally hollow, having become a shell.

He swallowed an Angry Mysterious Pill, rested for a moment, then formed a spell with his hands and sprayed a mouthful of Essence Blood onto the shed skin. The cast-off shell came to life, snapping and writhing, dancing along the rock wall, spiraling out through the ice hole.

Shi Feiyang swiftly followed suit, flying out after the Black Dragon's shed skin to confront Wei Fengniang in a desperate fight.