Cultivation: Fortune by Lots

Unlike the golden bamboo in the Immortal Bamboo Forest inside the Supreme Pure Thunder Mansion Cave Heaven of Dragon Tiger Mountain, and different as well from the other bamboo groves in the Southern Shu Bamboo Sea,

the long bamboo that grew upon this True Yin Land appeared gray and dull on the outside.

Still, it grew healthily, with lush and vibrant leaves.

Lei Jun could also sense the abundance of Spiritual Energy within it.

The bamboo's gray surface actually made it stand out amid a sea of green bamboo.

Not only did Lei Jun feel pretty good looking at it, but the big guy by his side liked it even more.

The giant Gungun's eyes spun ceaselessly, its tongue flicking out furtively.

That massive body managed to slink about like a sneak right beneath Lei Jun's nose, inching closer ever-so-quietly to those weird, gray-hued long bamboos.

But Lei Jun blocked it right away.

Gungun looked at Lei Jun with big pitiful eyes, its plump, round face showing a pleading, very human expression.

"There's so much Spirit Bamboo all around, eat as much as you want of those, but you leave this patch alone—I need it," Lei Jun patted the big skull.

He gave it a couple of affectionate rubs while he was at it.

Clearly, Gungun was picky as hell.

They had walked all this way with Gungun munching non-stop.

But now, faced with these superior gray bamboos, it suddenly turned its nose up at the green ones nearby.

When Gungun heard Lei Jun's words, its eyes spun, glancing at the green Spirit Bamboo with an unmistakable look of disdain.

Lei Jun ignored his greedy overgrown child for now.

He focused his attention on those gray bamboos.

From the start, the main, most important goal of his trip to Bashu had been this patch of True Yin Land.

If not for that, he would never have bothered coming to Bashu at all.

Now, he had found this True Yin Land.

According to the hints from the Celestial Master Seal and True One Altar deep within his soul, this was exactly what Lei Jun had hoped for.

But the current problem, was how to turn his expected harvest into tangible gain.

Previously, when these gray bamboos had just been shoots, Lei Jun discovered that they weren't really his ultimate goal.

Sure, they grew right on this True Yin Land,

yet even though the True Yin Land resonated with the True One Altar, the bamboo shoots did not.

So Lei Jun hadn't rushed to gather them back then.

Now, the shoots grew up into tall bamboos.

Lei Jun examined closely, but the Celestial Master Seal and the True One Altar still did not recognize these gray bamboos.

Whatever sense he got still came from the True Yin Land under his feet.

But it was as if the spiritual power within the earth hadn't formed the crystal Lei Jun wanted—at least, not in these gray bamboos before him.

Lei Jun began seriously pondering whether he ought to try digging up all the Spirit Soil from this whole mountain slope.

Technically, since he had the Breathing Soil Banner, it would be tough but not impossible.

The question was, would that actually get him what he wanted?

*If he didn't absolutely have to, Lei Jun really didn't want to go with such a drastic, root-cutting solution.*

Heaven and earth had spirits, fortune intertwined.

Lots of Spiritual Objects came into being naturally.

Forcing the process could maybe speed up or help gestate some things,

but could ruin or prevent things that were meant to be born.

*Lei Jun thought it over, and decided to wait a while longer.*

He noticed that these gray bamboos were maturing at a freakishly fast pace.

Their natural lifespan, compared to other Spirit Bamboo or what Lei Jun expected, was much shorter.

*…Could it be, did the bamboo have to flower?*

*A random guess suddenly popped into Lei Jun's mind.*

As far as he knew, while not universal, many types of bamboo flowered just as they reached the end of their lives.

*When these gray bamboos reached the end, and flowered, would their life and spiritual power reach a kind of supreme sublimation—a real transformation…?* Lei Jun wondered.

With this thought, he grew even more patient and decided to wait it out.

Based on the current pace of their growth and their vitality, that moment didn't seem far off.

So this time, Lei Jun simply stayed put in the bamboo grove, building a camp right in the mountains, quietly waiting for the gray bamboos to flower.

He stuck to his usual rhythm, calmly cultivating day by day.

His one little daily pleasure was sparring in a battle of wits against his mega-sized Gungun, keeping its greedy paws off the gray bamboo.

Even while nesting in the mountains, Lei Jun kept in touch with the outside world and roughly understood the shifting currents at play out there.

For the region of Bashu, the turmoil finally began subsiding.

The Mount Shu Sect, severely weakened, would need some time to recover in peace.

Fortunately, in this period, no other power came to give them trouble.

*…Before the internal strife broke out, it was precisely because the external world was calm that the Mount Shu Sect's internal unrest could no longer be suppressed.*

But while Shu found peace, the rest of the world did not.

Soon after Lei Jun set up camp in the Southern Shu Bamboo Sea, something truly big happened in the Great Tang.

The current Tang Emperor, Zhang Qilong, passed away.

Earlier, after the demons of the Western Regions rioted, the Human Race pulled off a victory and slew countless Great Demons, holding off the threat at the frontier and keeping the Great Tang Territory intact.

But in terms of casualties for cultivators, the Great Tang Cultivation World really did lose half its territory in spirit, if not in land.

The Western Regions War—at best, cultivators could call it a pyrrhic victory.

All sorts of cultivators, powerful and weak alike, suffered heavy losses.

Even the Tang Emperor Zhang Qilong barely escaped being buried in the Western Regions.

He made it back alive to the Capital, but his wounds never healed; in fact, he kept getting worse,

and finally, after not even two years, the Emperor still returned to the heavens.

The fate of the Great Tang Dynasty now stood at a crossroads.

Inside and outside the Capital, across the entire Great Tang Territory, the hearts of countless people were thrown into turmoil.

"His wounds never healed, he'd been hanging on for so long, surely people had prepared themselves for this…"