Fo Ben Shi Dao: Master of the Gouchen Palace

Zhou Qing and Bai Qi fight in the seam between the three realms for more than a month and then all the way from the earth-immortal realm to the Eastern Sea. The dragon palace’s water forces surround the twelve metal men, and the Qisha Star Lord, the Peach Blossom Star Lord and the gods of the thunder department come at the Jade Emperor’s order to help.

In the Numinous Empyrean Hall, Taibai Jinxing and Li Jing are discussing Bai Qi. The old Gouchen Emperor has been destroyed in both spirit and form, and Taibai Jinxing asks the Jade Emperor to grant the vacant title to Zhou Qing, both to use his power against Bai Qi and to set the new Gouchen and the demon kings below against one another.

The Jade Emperor hesitates, since the old Gouchen had been invested by Yuanshi Tianzun, and does not decide at once. When the fighting at the Eastern Sea has slackened, heaven summons Zhou Qing above, and Taibai Jinxing brings him into the Numinous Empyrean Hall.

The talk in the hall goes badly and Li Jing orders him seized. The four marshals Wang Mo, Yang Sen, Gao Tiqian and Li Xingba close on him together and the Star Lord of Martial Virtue follows with his halberd; Zhou Qing knocks their weapons away with the Seven-Treasure Wondrous Tree and binds all five in a rainbow light.

Taibai Jinxing stops the officers before the throne and says that it was only a test of Zhou Qing’s methods. Zhou Qing releases the five, and the Jade Emperor then proclaims that since the old Gouchen died at Bai Qi’s hands and Zhou Qing has helped subdue him, he is invested as the new Gouchen Emperor.

Zhou Qing had expected heaven to grant an office or a treasure at most, and had not looked for an imperial title. The immortals hear the commission out in the hall, the Gouchen seat changes hands, and Zhou Qing returns to the earth-immortal realm to manage the Way of Heaven Sect on Black Wind Mountain.

Once invested, Zhou Qing travels many times between heaven and earth under the title of Gouchen. He goes to Mount Huaguo to ask the Daoist Wukong to help his disciples, climbs to the Wuzhuang Temple to look for Zhenyuanzi, and goes to the Kan palace of the Purple Tenuity Doumu to borrow the Hunyuan Golden Dipper from Yunxiao.

The Way of Heaven disciples remain on Black Wind Mountain, where Wen Lanxin, Liao Xiaojin and the rest cultivate and stand guard, while Zhou Qing, bearing the Gouchen title, is drawn in turn into the wars of the northern sea, Mount Huaguo and heaven. Three years later, as the five hundred years of the calamity begin, he attains the primal unity beyond the thirty-three heavens, and the Way of Heaven Sect becomes the Way of Heaven Teaching.