Chapter 1 Yang Pan

Yang Pan naturally noticed the gazes of those people, which made him feel anxious. He quickly put the scroll into his arms, and bowed to Fang Yun in thanks, "Thank you for your teacher's gift. Please convey the gratitude of my Great Qian Dynasty to your master."

"A small matter." Fang Yun waved his hand.

At this moment, above the sky, in the Starry Battlefield, several figures slowly withdrew. They had determined victory and defeat, and the most surprising thing was that the monk Yinyue, previously known as the Great Qian's number one martial monk, had lost the most miserably.

The other four were actually stronger than monk Yinyue.

"Amazing, amazing! This monk has roamed the world for decades, and I wouldn't submit even to Meng Shenji, but I admire your strength to the extreme!" Monk Yinyue laughed heartily. He was naturally warlike, and now that he had discovered that there were people beyond people, although he had been defeated, the desire to fight overwhelmed his frustration.

Fa Hai chanted a Buddhist prayer, his expression indifferent.

The Dragon Girl and the Wine Sword Immortal simply smiled and didn't care.

On the other hand, Chi Shen looked at monk Yinyue and said, "The technique you used just now was not bad. Is it the legendary Present Tathagata Sutra?"

"That's right, what about it? Do you want to learn it? If you join the Great Chan Temple, I can make the decision to pass the Tathagata Sutra on to you!" Monk Yinyue looked at Chi Shen and smiled. If he could bring Chi Shen into the Great Chan Temple, it would be a good thing.

"No way!" Chi Shen quickly waved his hand. "My Heavenly Demon Sect and monks are naturally at odds. If we have the chance in the future, we will definitely destroy your Great Chan Temple."

"Hahaha! Then I'll be looking forward to it!" Monk Yinyue didn't care, and then looked at Fa Hai, "Zen Master Fa Hai, you've heard it too. This Heavenly Demon Sect is at odds with us, and may even attack Autumn Moon Temple in the future. Should we join forces? The Buddhist scriptures of my Great Chan Temple can also be studied by you."

"No need." Fa Hai said directly, "I haven't even learned all the Dao and Dharma taught by the Abbot."

Monk Yinyue smiled helplessly and looked at the Dragon Girl and the Wine Sword Immortal, but they were even more direct, not giving monk Yinyue any chance to win them over, and refused outright.

This made monk Yinyue even more helpless. He had wanted to recruit one or two strong individuals to join the Great Chan Temple, but now it seemed that people simply didn't want to pay attention to him.

"Finished fighting?" Fang Yun asked, looking at the people entering the hall. With a wave of his hand, the Starry Battlefield was once again transformed into a round bead, returning to his hand.

"This one has... such a strong aura of an emperor." The Wine Sword Immortal looked at Yang Pan and said.

"Great Qian's Yang Pan, greetings to all of you." Yang Pan said to the Wine Sword Immortal and the others. The Wine Sword Immortal and the others were all Human Immortal experts, and had even survived several lightning tribulations. Naturally, he wanted to recruit them as well.

"Hehe, so it's the Great Qian's prince. No wonder you have the aura of an emperor." The Wine Sword Immortal smiled, then took out an ancient book, "This is my Shu Mountain Sword Control Technique. The Dao Lord ordered me to give it to the Great Qian's royal family. Since I happened to meet you, I don't have to make another trip."

"Thank you, Shu Mountain Dao Lord, for the gift." Yang Pan accepted it respectfully, somewhat surprised, but also seeming to have guessed something.

"Hehe, the ideas of the Shu Mountain Dao are in line with our True Dragon Dao." The Dragon Girl chuckled, taking out a purple treasure bead, and said, "This is the True Dragon Pearl refined by our Dao Lord. It can nurture the destiny of the nation, transforming it into a dragon. The stronger the dynasty, the stronger the dragon it becomes."

"...Thank you, True Dragon Dao Lord, for the gift." Yang Pan accepted it again, becoming more certain of his guess.

"This was created by the Abbot, the Great Majestic Heavenly Dragon Mantra. It has all sorts of mysteries. Practicing it can grant the blessing of the Heavenly Dragon's power, doubling one's combat strength." Fa Hai threw out a page of scriptures, which recorded all the mysteries of the Great Majestic Heavenly Dragon Mantra.

"Thank you, Autumn Moon Abbot, for the Dharma." Yang Pan had already confirmed his guess, so he accepted it with peace of mind.

"Hey, it seems that the Dao Lords of our several families all have the same idea." Chi Shen laughed, throwing a scroll of scriptures to Yang Pan, "This is the Heavenly Demon God Body created by our Sect Master. It can improve cultivation aptitude and strengthen the origin of the human body."

"Thank you..."

Yang Pan took it, putting the received treasures and secret manuals into his arms, looking around warily.

"If the rest of you are offering gifts, it would be amiss for my Great Chan Temple to not offer anything, lest we be looked down upon." Monk Yinyue chuckled, walked to the table, and wrote down a martial art of the Great Chan Temple.

"Seniors, I wonder what your sects want in return?" At this moment, Yang Pan also asked. He didn't believe that there was such a thing as a free lunch in the world, let alone one that was delivered to his door.

Fang Yun and the others must have some kind of purpose, otherwise they wouldn't have given these gifts.

"I don't know their reasons." Fang Yun smiled faintly, "But my teacher wants to use Great Qian to open up a new path, and gain the recognition of heaven and earth, or endless merit and fortune, thereby reaching the Other Shore."

"The Other Shore?! What is that?"

Not to mention Yang Pan and the others, even monk Yinyue was somewhat puzzled. If it was the Other Shore in Buddhism, he would naturally understand, but what Fang Yun said didn't seem like that meaning at all. Instead, it seemed like a realm.

"No need to ask too much. You only need to know that the teacher has no malicious intent. Otherwise, the teacher could destroy something like the Great Qian Dynasty with a flip of the hand." Fang Yun said.

"Amitabha." Fa Hai looked at Fang Yun and chanted a Buddhist prayer. "I didn't expect that your teacher had already reached that stage. My Abbot gave the Great Qian Buddhist mantra, but only wanted to use it to reach the Yang God realm."

"But... forget it..."

Everyone looked at each other. Why did this sound so infuriating?

"In that case, our situations are similar." The Dragon Girl and the others said again, which directly caused Yang Pan to freeze.

Reaching the Yang God realm? Didn't this mean that the masters of Fa Hai, the Dragon Girl, and the others had already survived nine lightning tribulations, and were only one step away from becoming Yang Gods?

There were actually such terrifying figures in the world, and so many of them had appeared all at once?! And there was even someone who might be trying to reach an even higher realm.

This made Yang Pan feel uneasy. If what Fang Yun and the others said was true, then it would be unimaginably difficult for the Great Qian Dynasty to survive in the hands of these experts.

Even Meng Shenji didn't have such a strong sense of oppression.

"Prince Yang Pan." Just as Yang Pan was lost in thought, Fang Yun's voice awakened him. He looked towards Fang Yun, and then heard the other party say, "I have written my ideas and thoughts into the Martial Canon and Dao Canon. If there is nothing else, I will take my leave."

"Sir, please..." Before Yang Pan could finish speaking, Fang Yun's figure had already left, stepping through the void. In a few breaths, he disappeared into the ends of the earth.

When the Dragon Girl and the others saw this, they also successively wrote down their own insights and then left the state guesthouse.

...

In the blink of an eye, another twenty or thirty years had passed.

The Great Qian Dynasty was now at its peak of prosperity and grandeur. It was vast and expansive, with a population of hundreds of millions. It was a celestial empire, especially after the Great Qian Dynasty, in conjunction with several major Dao lineages, destroyed forces such as the Great Chan Temple and the Dao of Immortals.

Even Meng Shenji of the Supreme Dao was destroyed, his Human Immortal body destroyed, and he could only hide in the shadows now.

After that, the Great Qian ushered in a golden age. Martial arts and Dao spread throughout the four seas and eight wastelands. In addition, the Confucian Dao of scholars was also receiving more and more attention.

Among the four ministers of the dynasty, the Minister of Culture was a great Confucian scholar, who possessed the power of the nation, and could display powers such as subtle words with great meaning, tracing back memories, and the righteousness of heaven and earth. Even a Creator who had survived seven lightning tribulations could not harm him.

Moreover, Confucian scholars like him were constantly increasing in number. The Great Qian Dynasty also attached great importance to this, so that many strong individuals emerged from the Great Qian Dynasty.

Of course, the most watched figure was still Marquis Wuwen, Hong Xuanji. Not only did he have a high-ranking title, but he also held a position of great power. Now he was a Grand Scholar of the Inner Cabinet and a Junior Guardian of the Crown Prince.

He was also both civil and military, able to draw a nine-stone strongbow and shoot arrows in succession when he was young, and charge into hundreds of enemy soldiers on horseback as if strolling in a courtyard. After making great military achievements at the age of twenty-two, he abandoned martial arts and studied literature, passing the imperial examination and becoming a jinshi through Confucianism. Later, he continued to study and research, and became a Grand Scholar a few years ago.

He had once received the highest evaluation of ten characters from Yang Pan, the fourth emperor of the Great Qian Dynasty: "He can govern the army on horseback, and pacify the people on foot."

This year was the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Great Qian, a complete cycle of sixty years since it was established. In these sixty years, the four emperors of the Great Qian Dynasty had worked hard to govern, and had reached an unprecedented golden age.

"Heaven sees as my people see, heaven hears as my people hear..." Early in the morning, the sound of reading came from a remote small courtyard in the northwest corner of the Marquis Wuwen's mansion.

A handsome, fair-skinned young man, about fifteen or sixteen years old, with a slightly thin body, opened half of the window, lit a charcoal fire in the room, and was reading at the table, preparing to deal with the imperial examination and ponder the meaning of the scriptures.

The room was very simple. The fire pot was an iron pot, and the charcoal was also ordinary charcoal, not the exquisite tripod bronze pot used for lighting fires in the houses of noble families, carved with various beast shapes.

When he was reading, there were no servants or maids grinding ink or laying paper by his side, which showed that his status in the Marquis's mansion was not high, but he still had time to read, and was not a slave.

"Whether I can clear my deceased mother's name depends on the special examination in the spring and the provincial examination in the autumn. First, I must pass the juren examination, then the jinshi examination, and be listed on the golden list, and be granted a title for three generations... The imperial court will issue an edict to posthumously confer my mother as a madam. My mother's grave can be moved into the Hong family's ancestral grave, and her spirit tablet can be enshrined in the ancestral hall."

The young man opened a book, read two sentences, but thought of his mother, who had died when he was seven years old.

His mother was a famous talented woman in Yujing City before marrying "Marquis Wuwen". She was proficient in music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, and her poems, lyrics, and odes were even more literary. She sold her art but not her body, and met Marquis Wuwen at a gathering when they sang poems to each other. Later, she married into the Marquis's family.

But although she was said to be a talented woman, she was actually of "base status" from a brothel. After marrying into a wealthy family, her status was very low. Moreover, when his mother married into the Marquis's family, Marquis Wuwen already had a legal wife and a concubine wife. She was in the status of a concubine.

According to the laws of the Great Qian Dynasty, there was one legal wife, two concubine wives, and four concubines. The status of a concubine was very low. Some wealthy nobles and officials even gave each other concubines for entertainment.

When eating, concubines were not allowed to sit down, but had to stand like maids. And as the son of a concubine, he had no right to inherit the title and family property. The only way out was to pass the imperial examination.

The young man thought for a moment and continued to read, but at this moment, a ray of golden light streaked across the sky and fell towards him.

"Ah!"

The young man shouted, but immediately saw that the ray of golden light fell on the table.

"This... is this a hair?"

The young man exclaimed in surprise. On the table, the golden light gradually faded, but what appeared was actually a golden hair.

"Hong Yi—Hong Yi—"

"Who?!"

Hong Yi quickly stood up, looking around, uncertain and surprised. At that moment, he actually heard a series of voices in his mind, calling his name.

But after looking around, he still couldn't find the source of the sound.

"Could it be..." Hong Yi looked at the golden hair on the table, lost in thought.

The sound had only appeared after the hair fell. Could it be that the sound came from this hair?

He had heard that there were all kinds of mysterious and unpredictable existences in this world. Could this hair also be one of them?

After thinking for a while, he slowly stretched out two fingers and pinched the golden hair in his hand.

Boom—

At that moment, a thunderous sound suddenly rang in his mind, like a roaring thunder dragon, resounding throughout the world.

Immediately afterward, golden light flashed through chaos, tearing apart the darkness, and appeared in his mind. In the shadows, a figure came stepping on endless golden light, like an ancient god-king from the nine heavens, or a pure Yang God at the end of cultivation.

"Hong Yi."

The magnificent voice rang again, coming from the golden figure.

"Who is the senior? And where is this place?"

Hong Yi asked. Although he was seeing such a miraculous scene for the first time, and he felt fear in his heart, he was still neither humble nor arrogant.

"You are not afraid of me?" The voice came again, as if asking.

Hong Yi shook his head. "Since the senior has not harmed me, you are probably not a fierce ghost or evil spirit. What is there to be afraid of?"

"Moreover, the books of sages say that being upright and intelligent is being a god. As long as a scholar's heart is upright and clear, his thoughts will naturally be as powerful as a god. How can gods and Buddhas harm me?"

"Scholars are upright and clear, their own thoughts are powerful and pure, they nourish the aura of righteousness, and cultivate the talent of Wenqu. They are already close to the Yang God Heavenly Immortal in Taoism, and are much more powerful than those Yin Gods who cannot manifest and can only give dreams and retribution."

"Hehe, do you think I am that Yin God who can only give dreams?" The golden figure smiled slowly. Hong Yi could not see the other party's joy or anger, but seeing that the other party did not blame him, he continued to answer, "After the senior appeared, you gave me a feeling of being grand and righteous, with an aura of righteousness that will last forever, which is naturally different from that Yin God."

"However, junior is curious, why did senior come to me? And listening to senior calling my name earlier, it seems that you are very familiar with me. I wonder if you can solve my confusion?" Hong Yi said.

"It's very good that you have such a state of mind." The golden figure was silent for a moment before continuing, "Do you know where Confucianism and Taoism came from?"

"Of course I know." Hong Yi said, "In the thirtieth year of the Great Qian, His Majesty called on the Dao lineages of the four directions, intending to work together to create the Martial Canon and Dao Canon. During this period, Fang Yun, a great Confucian scholar from the Heavenly Immortal Academy, descended and passed down a scroll of Purple Gold, which attracted the talent of Wenqu and entered the earth."

"Since then, all scholars can practice the talent of Wenqu and the aura of righteousness."

"That's right." The voice rang again, "Then do you know who I am?"