Raising a Fox Spirit in My Home

Li Yundong looked at Sun Baitian and made obeisance with his hands. He smiled and said, "I wonder how you intend to fight against the Five Elements, Zhenren Sun?"

Sun Baitian chuckled and walked up to the table. He rapped on it and said, "Zhenren Li, why don't we use this table as the arena? We'll display our Shentongs and see who's more mysterious. Let's see who wins. What do you think?"

Li Yundong was very curious and asked, "How can we display our Shentong abilities on this arena table?"

Sun Baitian slid five bags out from the folds of his clothes, each of which was about the size of a fist, and put them down on the table. Everyone saw that the bags were filled with soil, but the color of each soil was different: cyan, white, red, black, and yellow.

Sun Baitian placed the five piles of soil on the table and wiped them with his hands. These five differently-colored piles were mixed together and formed a circular Eight Tiagrams pattern.

Zhou Qin looked at them curiously and asked, "Zi Yuan, what are they doing here?"

Zi Yuan responded with a serious expression, "I'm not sure either. However, the five bags Sun Baitian took out no doubt contain soil for the five directions, east, west, north, south, and central. I don't know why he took the soil out and arranged it into an Eight Trigrams pattern like that though. What is he going to do?"

After Sun Baitian had set up the Eight Tiagrams pattern, half of it was aimed towards himself, and the other half was aimed towards Li Yundong. "Zhenren Li," he said, "the Eight Diagrams pattern is like a battlefield between the two sides. The middle Yin-Yang Principle line is the battle line between the two sides. We might as well take out our Shentong and use this Eight-Diagram pattern as the battlefield. Each of us will attack the other side. If one of us pushes the front completely to the Yin-Yang Principle points of their opponent first, they'll lose. What do you think?"

Li Yundong looked down and saw two prominent Yin and Yang points on both sides of the Eight Trigrams of Yin-Yang pattern, one black and one white. They were like two castles in the middle, facing each other eagerly.

Li Yundong laughed. "What an interesting method. Well, let's do as you say!"

Hearing his agreement, Sun Baitian immediately burst into laughter and said, "Great!"

The cultivators in the cabin began discussing amongst themselves. "What kind of a battle is this? Why haven't I heard of it before?" they wondered.

"That's right. How are they doing this?"

"Li Yundong has been too bold. He hasn't even grasped the rules and yet he's dared to agree!"

"Haven't you heard the saying 'The talented and skilled are generally boldest'?"

"Bullsh*t, he's still so young. It's impossible for him to be proficient with thunder magic and all five elements magic even if he had started cultivating in his mother's womb."

Su Chan and Zhou Qin saw that everyone was discussing the fight, and they couldn't help worrying for Li Yundong. Ruan Hongling looked at the arena. She gently tugged Zi Yuan's sleeve and whispered. "Sister Zi Yuan, do you understand this? What does this all mean? Why can't I understand it?"

Zi Yuan frowned slightly. She stared at the arena without blinking, as if she was thinking about something hard. Hearing Ruan Hongling's words, she said without turning her head, "Although I don't know how Sun Baitian wants to battle this out, the fight of the five elements can't escape the principle of mutual complementarity. Sun Baitian is using five-colored earth for the east, south, west, north and center as cities and territories. The earth itself contains different attributes for these five directions."

Ruan Hongling's eyes lit up and she said in a low voice, "Yes, the corresponding color in the east is cyan, which belongs to wood; the corresponding color in the west is white, which belongs to the mind; the corresponding color in the south is red, signifying fire; the corresponding color in the north is black, representing water; the corresponding color in the middle is yellow, which is for earth! This soil was originally an element of earth, but the earth element has been mixed with the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, which has greatly increased the complexity of the difficulty of mutual generation and mutual restraint amongst the five elements!"

Zi Yuan nodded slightly. Just as she was about to speak, Sun Baitian suddenly cupped his hands and said, "I'll invite everyone to watch a good show!"

After that, he waved his hand and took some soil from the Eight Tiagrams in front of him into his palm. Then, he quickly took out a talisman from his pocket with the other hand and stuffed it into his palm, quickly exhaling.

When Sun Baitian opened his hand again, the soil in his palm fell over the Eight Tiagrams pattern on the round table. Immediately, they turned into clay figures about the size of small fingernails.

These clay figures had faces, arms, and legs, as if they were living little people!

When everyone saw this, they were shocked. Some cultivators even jumped up and exclaimed, "You're making troops out of the soil!"

Zhou Qin was also shocked. "What kind of magic is this?" she asked. "I've only heard of people who can use beans to form troops, but this is the first time I've heard of people using soil to do it!"

Zi Yuan frowned and quickly explained. "This is a kind of talisman magic. Just now, Sun Baitian must have used an earth-style summoning magic. This kind of talisman requires the spirit of Heaven and Earth to be gathered in it every day, allowing it to naturally possess intelligence. As time passes, it will catalyze all things that it can come into contact with. Even if it's soil, it can still turn into a clay figure."

Zhou Qin was shocked. "It's such unusual magic? Can it become anything else?"

Zi Yuan's gaze was glued to the arena as she responded, "It's not impossible. However, humans are the primacy of all things. Naturally, they will turn things into the most intelligent things they can. Could anyone turn something into a lower-level being?"

The two of them were still whispering to each other when Sun Baitian waved his hand again and summoned a mahogany stool from one side. He held the stool with both hands and, with a wave of his hand, this mahogany stool was crushed into countless small shards of wood as easily as if he were pressing tofu.

Sun Baitian gathered the wood shavings with one hand and muttered to himself for a while. Then, he released the wood scraps, which instantly turned into small wooden blocks of varying shapes and sizes.

But when everyone took a closer look, they saw that these small pieces of wood were in fact ladders, chariots with turrets, catapults, Fen Wans and other siege weapons!

Everyone turned pale with fright and let out involuntary gasps of shock!

To make these small wood chips into such small, precise siege weapons by using his Shentong, what tremendous wood-controlling magic!

But before the crowd could even recover, Sun Baitian laughed and waved his hand again, and a bronze censer on the table next to him appeared in his hands. He held the censer with both hands, only to show that it was being deformed bit by bit, as if it was made of water. After a while, he kneaded it into a ball of mud!

Everyone in the cabin could scarcely believe what they were seeing. They all exclaimed, "He's turning iron into mud?!"

Zhou Qin had seen Chen Yunyan compressing a fist-sized ball of water with the power of the Neidan within his body into a thumb-sized ball before. She had thought that alone was an extremely terrifying skill and ability. However, she had not expected him to be able to turn a Furnace tripod into a pile of mud like he was kneading dough!

"Isn't this just insane!?"

For a moment, everyone from the Fox Zen School was too horrified to even utter a word. Su Chan's eyes widened and she gaped at Sun Baitian in panic. She asked in a trembling voice, "What kind of cultivation is this? It's too scary, isn't it?"

The color of Zi Yuan's face was a little pale as she said, "Sun Baitian is indeed a Qianbei of the Gezao Sect. He is a great cultivator who earned his fame twenty years ago. During the past twenty years, he kept himself hidden. I hadn't expected his cultivation to have improved to such a level!"

Ruan Hongling also said with a face full of fear, "Shijie Zi Yuan, do you think it's possible that there's something hidden in his palms? Otherwise, how could he be strong enough to pinch metal into mud?!"

A thought flashed through Zi Yuan's mind. Her eyes lit up as she said, "That's right. If there's fire-type magic hidden in the palm of one's hand, considering that fire is the nemesis of metal, once the temperature rises, naturally the metal will soften!"

Hearing this, everyone breathed a sight o relief and exclaimed, "It must be so!"

Patting her chest, Su Chan was still in a state of shock. "I was scared to death. I thought he was so strong that he was able to squeeze hard bronze as if it were made of mud with his bare hands!"

Zi Yuan shook her head. "Even if that's not true, we can't underestimate Sun Baitian's ability. Think about it. To hide fire-style magic in the palm of one's hand without showing any sign of it, one must have extremely strong fire-element control. Moreover, he must be able to control power without hurting himself. In particular, when the bronze has reached its melting point, he is able to hold it with his own hands. Not only will he not be scalded, but he will also be able to freely use it! What a powerful ability this is!"

When the crowd heard this, they couldn't help but frown and look at Li Yundong with concern.

At this time, Li Yundong couldn't help but show a little shock on his face. He watched Sun Baitian digging a little piece from the iron and throwing it on the table. As soon as it landed on the table, it began splitting and becoming multiple weapons - knives, spears, halberds, axes, and so on! Everything was there!

These clay men picked up the weapons quickly, and then moved into battle formation. Every step they took made a neat rumble on the table, as if they were a real army marching, putting out a kind of pressure that could not be underestimated. When they walked to the dividing line of the Yin-Yang Principle pattern, the leading clay man came out. As soon as this clay man raised his hand, the others behind him suddenly stopped in an impeccable display of obedience.

The leading clay man raised his sword, and then the soldiers behind him also immediately raised their weapons. It was as if a forest of steel had just sprouted out of the table.

Although the cultivators in the ship felt that there was a distance between them, they still could feel the murderous aura being produced!

They were all stunned. It was as if an army had suddenly appeared on the table and was going to attack the city in the next second!

At this point, the ship was so quiet that it was as if they could hear a needle being dropped.

Sun Baitian looked at Li Yundong arrogantly and said, "Well, Zhenren Li, shall we start?"

As soon as he finished speaking, the leading clay man, who was standing in the Eight Tiagrams pattern on the round table, suddenly slashed his longsword through the air before him!

These dense clay men roared loudly. They fiercely broke through the dividing line of the Yin and Yang Principle Eight Trigrams and rushed toward Li Yundong's critical point!

For a moment, everyone felt that the round table was like a real battlefield, and that the clay men were warriors bathed in blood. They roared and rushed forward like fierce beasts, murderous and unstoppable!

Zi Yuan was stunned by the astonishing auras of these little clay men. She had never seen such a battle before, and she hadn't the faintest idea of how to deal with such a battle!

Her eyes widened, and she stammered out, "Wh-What should we do now? How on Earth can we deal with this?"