Chapter 1536: Dao Arts of the Wild Temple

Chapter 1536: Dao Arts of the Wild Temple

A cultivator's Divine-Sense, unlike flesh and blood or spiritual power, cannot be enhanced through acquired Cultivation Methods.

Thus, in this world, cultivators who walk the path of Proving the Dao through Divine-Sense are exceedingly rare.

Mo Hua was an exception.

Across the entire Nine Provinces, the Dao Lineage of Divine-Sense had almost entirely been lost to the long river of cultivation history.

But this did not mean that there were no cultivators in this world who made their living through Divine-Sense, nor did it mean that there were no methods for utilizing Divine-Sense.

The wonders of Divine-Sense were profound, elusive, and ever-changing, filled with infinite mysteries.

Although Divine-Sense could not be directly cultivated, some methods driven by Divine-Sense had nevertheless managed to survive with great difficulty since the ancient era.

These methods, because they deviated from the orthodox path of the Dao Court and differed from the cultivation system of spiritual power and flesh and blood, were denounced as 【Unorthodox Path Arts】, relegated to folk customs, and never recorded in the classics.

Most major powers and great clans did not hold them in high regard either.

For Unorthodox Path Arts had incomplete inheritances, sought after formless things, were obscure and shadowy, unfit for the public eye, and detached from the material world, cultivating only emptiness and mystery, ultimately unable to prove the Great Dao.

But for Mo Hua, the Unorthodox Path held an entirely different meaning.

"Unorthodox Path Arts..."

Mo Hua's pupils deepened slightly, a golden light rising in his eyes as black and white swirled within, beginning to see through the origins of the Unorthodox Path.

Under the operation of his powerful Divine-Sense and profound Heavenly Secret Method.

The scenes of both the tangible and intangible, the material and the thought realms, began to unfold before Mo Hua's eyes.

He could see tattered spider webs and the corpses of insects—these physical, tangible existences.

At the same time, the Divine eyes of the deity allowed him to see the formless Divine Sense Thought Power that clung to these spider webs.

Mo Hua examined them one by one in his mind, and soon discovered a problem.

The existence of the Divine Sense Thought Power on these spider webs was itself somewhat strange.

It did not seem to be the thought power of a 'human,' nor did it resemble thought power derived from a 'deity,' and it also differed somewhat from the thought power of 'Evil Spirits' or 'demons.'

Rather, it seemed more like...

The thought power of a 'Demon-Beast'?

(TN: Yāo Shòu (妖兽) == Demon-Beast )

Viscous, carrying a hint of blood, somewhat nauseating, emanating a faint purple glow...

"Is this... the Yāo-Sense of a spider demon?"

Mo Hua's heart stirred slightly.

Ancient cultivators once said that all things in heaven and earth possess spirit.

In other words, between heaven and earth, flowers, grass, trees, birds, beasts, fish, insects—and even the many Demon-Beasts—all possessed spirituality, and even 'Divine-Sense.'

It was not only humans who had Divine-Sense.

Since a human's Divine-Sense could be regarded as a form of Thought Power, used to drive various Dao Arts and Spells.

Then naturally, the Yāo-Sense of Demon-Beasts could also be used as Thought Power.

At least the Unorthodox Path Art before him seemed to use the spider demon's Thought Power as the spiritual source for casting the spell.

But... this thought power seemed somewhat strange...

Mo Hua's gaze sharpened slightly as he noticed that this spider-silk thought power appeared faintly gray-black, with Baleful Qi entwined within it...

This meant that the spider demon had been killed first, and then its thought power had been forcibly extracted.

Therefore, this thought power naturally carried 'Death Qi,' making its power even stronger.

Beside the spider silk, there were also remnants of insect corpses, which seemed to be some kind of... 'ritual'?

"Spider demon, spider silk, insects, corpses, death..."

"These are all mediums related to the Unorthodox Path?"

Mo Hua took the 'elements' of this Unorthodox Path spell-casting before him, stripped them apart one by one through the 【Heavenly Secret Derivative Algorithm】, and then reconnected and reconstructed them in his mind, attempting to understand the principles and spell structure of Unorthodox Path thought arts.

In his eyes, the interweaving of black and white grew increasingly frequent.

As the derivation deepened, Mo Hua began to establish the initial framework of Unorthodox Path spell arts within his Sea of Consciousness.

Unfortunately, the Unorthodox Path arts he had encountered were still far too few.

The catalysts of the Unorthodox Path before him were also somewhat shabby.

No matter how powerful Mo Hua's Divine-Sense computational ability was, he could not deduce the deeper principles of Unorthodox Path spells based solely on these superficial spell materials.

Moreover, Unorthodox Path arts were also different from Formations.

Mo Hua himself was an exceptionally brilliant Formation Master, and the structures and principles of many formations were already deeply ingrained in his mind.

If it were an ordinary formation, he could simply calculate it mentally and simulate a rough outline.

But Unorthodox Path arts were not formations, nor did they possess formation-based structures.

To study them in depth, he would still need to seek out more Unorthodox Path scriptures, essential techniques, incantation materials, casting mediums...

And through observing the casting process, conducting research, and practicing personally, could he gain a deeper understanding.

"For now, I still need to go find Uncle Gù..."

Mo Hua ceased his derivation, withdrew the golden light from his eyes, and released his Divine-Sense once more, carefully perceiving the flow of Qi Mechanism throughout the entire forest.

Earlier, when he had first entered the dense woods and encountered this Unorthodox Path art, he had not understood it.

Now, he had already used his Divine-Sense to derive the rudimentary outlines of some Spell Formulas. Though he could not yet claim mastery, nor fully grasp their inner principles or reconstruct their casting processes.

But if it were merely a matter of identifying positions and finding a path, that was relatively simple.

Mo Hua sensed the faint purple, viscous, somewhat nauseating remnants of spider demon Yao-Sense Thought lingering in the air, and continued strolling through the forest.

Within the dense woods, his route veered left and right, forward and backward, appearing quite chaotic—but in Mo Hua's mind, things were growing increasingly clear.

The structural map of the entire dense forest was being reconstructed in his mind with every step he explored.

As he walked, his steps grew more and more familiar, to the point where he could even discern the path without releasing his Divine-Sense, as if he were strolling through his own backyard.

After walking another few li, Mo Hua suddenly lowered his head and saw a stele buried in the ground.

Aged and damaged, covered in faint black moss, the stele bore three worn characters:

【Thousand Spider Forest】.

Mo Hua looked at the words on the stele, and his heart stirred suddenly.

"Thousand Spider Forest..."

The dense forest before him—from top to bottom, left to right—was saturated with hallucinatory Divine Sense Thought Power.

There was a high probability that this entire forest was, in fact, a Unorthodox Path Esoteric Arts maze constructed using spider demons as the medium.

Spider demons, spider webs, insects... if all these things were fully arranged and constructed into a spell, eventually nurturing the Thousand Spider Forest, it would likely take many years...

And a cultivator capable of nurturing such a large-scale maze would surely possess no small level of skill in the Unorthodox Path.

"This person... must be a talent of the Unorthodox Path..."

Mo Hua affirmed silently in his heart.

Every craft has its specialty. Such an Unorthodox Path talent was worth seeking out, to exchange ideas and learn from.

Mo Hua had always been willing to ask anyone for guidance, regardless of their status.[1]

Mo Hua set aside his thoughts and continued forward along the invisible path through the Thousand Spider Forest.

After walking for some time, the view suddenly opened up before him.

At the end of the mist, a large cliff face was revealed, and at its base, nestled against the mountain, stood a small temple.

The temple was not large, its walls a dark red, its eaves half-rotted. There was no plaque or inscription before it, so it was unclear what kind of temple it was.

Mo Hua had a feeling that this was likely the 'wild temple' the woman with the child had mentioned earlier.

But...

Mo Hua looked around, his gaze turning slightly solemn:

"This wild temple is hidden this deep, and the Thousand Spider Forest is full of confusing barriers, making it hard to tell directions..."

"How did that woman with the child get in? And how did she leave?"

There was something suspicious about all this.

Moreover, according to what the woman said, she had seen dozens of people wearing Dao Court Division robes moving through this forest, and they had also come to this wild temple...

In the Qīngchóu Prefecture Realm, dozens of people from the Dao Court Division most likely meant they were Uncle Gù's people.

Even if they weren't Uncle Gù's people, they were certainly connected to him.

Mo Hua flicked his copper coin, spinning it around his fingertip before it landed in his palm. His mind stirred, and sure enough, he felt the pull of cause and effect in the unseen world suddenly grow stronger.

This meant that Uncle Gù had indeed been here.

And very likely, he wasn't far away now...

Mo Hua's heart trembled, and a glimmer of light lit up in his eyes. Without further hesitation, he stepped directly into the broken temple.

The moment he entered, the light dimmed. Nestled against the shadowed side of the mountain, the temple was several degrees colder inside.

A stale smell of old incense ash and mildew rushed at his face.

Mo Hua held his breath, narrowed his eyes, and looked up. He saw that the dilapidated wild temple was covered in spiderwebs.

In the center, wrapped in layers upon layers of webs, sat a mud statue covered in dust.

The statue was only half a person's height, hunched over, with the face of an old woman. It looked kind and benevolent, as if it were smiling at Mo Hua.

Mo Hua stared back at the statue.

But after looking for a long while, he found nothing unusual.

The mud statue was just a mud statue—nothing hidden inside.

Nor did any mountain spirit like 'Huángshān Jūn' crawl out of the statue to speak with him.

The only strange thing was the old woman's smile—amiable, yet tinged with something eerie.

Mo Hua frowned. His thoughts stirred for a moment, then he shook his head and said:

"Forget it. Smashing someone else's statue isn't exactly a good habit..."

Mo Hua then walked around the wild temple.

The temple wasn't large. Aside from spiderwebs, there was only dust, and the surrounding walls were all gray and bare—nothing worth looking at.

But there was one place that was somewhat unusual.

Directly behind the mud statue was a narrow door. Beyond it was pitch black, exuding Yin Qi.

Two cloth curtains hung over the door, bearing two lines of dark red characters:

"Mortals forbidden to enter. Trespassers shall die."

Mo Hua looked at the words on the curtains, pondered for a moment, and decided that given his current standing, he probably didn't count as a "mortal" anymore.

So the words on the curtain weren't meant for him.

And since they weren't meant for him, they had nothing to do with him...

He reached out, lifted the curtain that read "Mortals forbidden to enter," and quite willingly stepped through the narrow door.

At first, all was pitch black, but as a flash of blue light passed through Mo Hua's eyes, activating the Spiritual Vision Technique, everything around him came into view.

Beyond the narrow door was a secret chamber.

The chamber was piled high with dead spiders and the corpses of all kinds of insects.

They were densely packed together, a rather unsettling sight.

And in the very center of the chamber stood an offering altar.

Mo Hua stepped closer and saw that on the altar sat a wooden cup with spiderweb-like rune-patterns, an incense burner, and an opened clay jar.

Inside the clay jar, likewise, was filled with the corpses of spiders.

Only these spiders appeared larger, with deeper markings, and seemed even more venomous.

And the largest spider, with the deepest markings, had been ripped open from belly to throat, dead inside the spider-patterned wooden vessel on the offering altar.

Seeing this, Mo Hua's heart suddenly skipped a beat. "This is... some kind of Unorthodox Path ritual?"

"Is it meant to sacrifice something, or to open something?"

"Where's Uncle Gù? Was he sacrificed?"

Mo Hua looked left and right but found no traces of human blood, flesh, skulls, or remains, and only then slowly let out a breath of relief.

It seemed he hadn't been sacrificed yet...

"But this ritual has clearly already been activated..."

Mo Hua could sense that above the offering altar, a sinister and secretive Divine Sense Thought Power had descended, continuously supplying energy to keep the ritual running.

This also seemed to be one of the characteristics of Unorthodox Path Esoteric Arts.

Mo Hua's heart sank slightly: "Uncle Gù's actual strength is actually quite formidable. In a Third-Grade State Realm, he wouldn't die that easily."

"Since they can't kill Uncle Gù, then this ritual is most likely meant to trap him, slowly tormenting him until he's worn down to death?"

"Since it's meant to trap..."

Mo Hua looked up toward the back of the offering altar, and sure enough, he saw that on the wall behind it, someone had used spider blood to paint a nine-colored spider diagram.

Nine colors, nine rune-patterns, nine kinds of spider blood, all pieced together into a single spider diagram.

This spider diagram contained certain unknown, mysterious Unorthodox Path techniques, interlinked with one another, condensed into sorcery.

And near the spider diagram, there was also a circular disc, within which nine small spiders of the same colors were sealed.

These small spiders were actually alive, still slowly crawling about.

A white bone needle was pinned inside the disc.

This disc could be rotated, and with each turn, the white bone needle would pierce one of the living small spiders, drawing out some kind of Yāo-Sense Thought Power.

This Unorthodox Path ritual looked quite complex, and the mechanisms set up also carried a hint of cruelty and malice.

With his extraordinary attainments in the Divine Dao and his vast but slightly unorthodox reservoir of knowledge, Mo Hua only needed a few glances to roughly understand it.

This nine-colored spider diagram was a secret door of Unorthodox Path sorcery.

The disc holding the nine small spiders was the mechanism for opening the door.

Since it was a mechanism, it required a 'password.'

The sequence in which the disc was turned was the password to open the door.

If the turning sequence was correct, then the white bone needle would pierce into the brains of the corresponding nine-colored small spider demons, absorbing their Yāo-Sense to activate the Unorthodox Path secret door.

If the sequence was wrong, then most likely, the person trying to open the door would suffer backlash.

The white bone needle would probably drain the opener's Divine-Sense, and worse, it might place a curse in their mind...

"This is a bit troublesome..."

Mo Hua frowned.

According to the usual rules, there were two ways to open the door.

One was to know the password in advance, that is, the sequence of the disc.

Turn the disc according to the password, and the door would naturally open.

The other was to know how to dismantle the sorcery.

Find a way to break the Unorthodox Path technique of the nine-colored spider diagram before him, dissolve the sorcery, and the secret door would naturally open.

Mo Hua naturally didn't know the password, so he could only resort to dismantling the sorcery.

By dismantling the sorcery, he could break down the internal structure of the Unorthodox Path technique and unlock the secret door.

But 'Dismantling Sorcery' should be just like 'Formation Dismantling'... a rather sophisticated Unorthodox Path skill that required considerable depth of attainment in the Unorthodox Path.

Mo Hua's mastery of the Unorthodox Path could hardly be called profound, it was practically nonexistent.

He only knew brutal Divine Dao slaughter; as for insidious, crooked Unorthodox Path tricks, he truly hadn't studied much of them yet.

"But Uncle Gù might very well be trapped inside. I have to try at least..."

Mo Hua no longer hesitated. He focused his mind, activated the Deceptive-Derivation Algorithm, and his pupils turned deep and unfathomable as he stared at the nine-colored spider diagram before him.

Yet he calculated for a long time without making much progress.

After all, though his Divine-Sense was powerful, his understanding of Unorthodox Path techniques was still far too limited.

Even a skilled housewife cannot cook without rice. Many spell mediums and the transformations of cause-and-effect materials had to be calculated from scratch.

And the results he derived were hard to verify as true or false.

After calculating for a while, Mo Hua gave up.

"Indeed, it won't work..."

"The Great Spirit Field Realm is a place where the Unorthodox Path flourishes and Fāngshì run rampant. My own Unorthodox Path proficiency urgently needs improvement..."

The contradiction between his overly developed Divine Dao Thought Power and his overly backward Unorthodox Path techniques had become somewhat irreconcilable.

To possess a body full of brute Divine Dao strength yet lack good techniques to unleash it... that was somewhat of a waste of heaven's gifts.

Mo Hua nodded slightly.

Then he looked back at the spider diagram before him.

Since he couldn't unravel the spell, and the clever approach wouldn't work, he could only resort to the brute-force method.

He stepped forward, pressed his hand onto the disc, and began using Divine-Sense Thought power to forcibly drive the disc to rotate.

He didn't know the password, so he could only spin it randomly—commonly known as trying the password.

And sure enough, after only a few turns, he got it wrong.

From the bone-white needle seeped a sinister strand of Thought Power.

Ordinary cultivators couldn't see it, but Mo Hua could clearly sense a wisp of venomous spider-demon Thought power flowing in reverse along his lock-picking Divine-Sense, streaming into his Sea of Consciousness.

Within his Sea of Consciousness, a green venomous spider bared its vicious serrated jaws and began to devour his Divine Sense Thought Power.

This seemed to be the insidious backlash of the nine-colored spider's Unorthodox Path arts.

But it couldn't devour him.

On the contrary, with a mere light pinch of his Thought Power, Mo Hua crushed the spider's Yāo-Sense to dust.

Mo Hua only felt a slight itch, nothing particularly notable beyond that.

Mo Hua shook his head, somewhat unsatisfied, then stopped being polite and began rotating the disc back and forth.

When he got it wrong, he'd return it to position and continue trying.

He spun it for a long while, making frequent mistakes and suffering who knew how many backlashes.

The bone-white needle would sometimes absorb the little spider's Yāo-Sense, and sometimes absorb Mo Hua's Divine-Sense.

After absorbing for who knew how long, the bone-white needle had become somewhat worn.

Mo Hua himself was perfectly fine, but the little spider demon inside the disc was being tormented to the brink of death.

Finally, after trying more than twenty more times, Mo Hua at last guessed the correct password.

With a flash of nine-colored light, the 'ritual' upon the offering altar was crudely altered by Mo Hua.

The great spider diagram on the wall seemed to come alive, slowly writhing and splitting into nine smaller spiders that crawled toward the corners of the room.

Where the spider diagram had been, a hidden door was now revealed.

Beyond the hidden door lay a deeper, denser forest, gloomy, carrying a bloody scent, with the stench of spiders and rotting insects.

It seemed to be the lair of some great spider demon.

Mo Hua's gaze sharpened slightly. He stepped through the Unorthodox Path spider hidden door and entered the depths of the wild temple.

The atmosphere was oppressive. Thick mist—impossible to tell whether black or purple—shrouded everything around, and the stench was utterly unbearable.

The forest was deep and dense, with rotting leaves scattered about, and an eerie, nameless presence seemed to lurk in the depths, sending a chill down one's spine.

Before he had walked far, Mo Hua's expression suddenly shifted. He crouched down and touched a bloodstain on a withered tree trunk with his fingers.

His intuition regarding cause and effect began to tremble once more.

"This is... Uncle Gù's blood?"

Mo Hua's pupils darkened slightly.

...

Translator Notes:

[1] 不耻下问 is a traditional idiom meaning that a knowledgeable or accomplished person doesn't consider it beneath them to ask someone less knowledgeable, younger, or of lower status for advice.

In Mo Hua's case, “not ashamed to ask/willing to ask anyone for guidance”, means he has no problem asking others questions when he doesn't know something, even if he is a Divine Dao deity.

...

Fāngshì (方士): In ancient China, a "Fangshi" was an occult practitioner, alchemist, diviner, and magician — someone skilled in esoteric arts such as alchemy, geomancy, divination, and the pursuit of immortality. In Xianxia, the term refers to a practitioner of heterodox/unorthodox or esoteric techniques, often outside the mainstream Daoist sects.

(End of Chapter)