Fo Ben Shi Dao: Seeking the Dao in the Human World

Zhou Qing receives the transmission of the instrument-refining school and its Compendium of Refining from the Daoist Lingyun. He deals in antiques and jade while refining breath, drawing talismans and making instruments by the book. The Compendium is incomplete, and he fills out what he has learned from the methods of other schools and from old objects.

The Wheel of Extinction, the Blood-Transforming Blade and other treasures come into his hands one after another. He works the god-summoning method of the Compendium and lays out a demon-sealing formation with the power of the Dipper stars, and more than once nearly suffers the backlash of his own arts while calling gods and driving cruel blades.

After Liao Xiaojin takes Zhou Qing as master, he helps in the refining with the Jiuli bloodline in his body. Zhou Qing obtains the larva of a six-winged golden silkworm, feeds it with the sacred blood of Jiuli, erases the silkworm’s own mind, divides off part of his spirit, and refines it into a second primordial spirit.

The second primordial spirit can fight in the silkworm’s shape or appear as Zhou Qing himself. When the old Daoist Qianji sees through the silkworm body, Zhou Qing confuses him with the second spirit while his own body works the Blood-Transforming Blade and shows a golden dharma-form, and only so ends that fight.

The Xuanyuan Dharma King draws Zhou Qing towards the ancient seal beneath Changping. The interdiction left by Xu Fu holds Bai Qi and the army-souls; when it opens, Bai Qi comes free from below the earth and the ghost army of Changping stirs within the array.

Through repeated fighting with the human-world schools and with demons, Zhou Qing goes on taking disciples and collecting texts, and meets more of the old treasures in the Kongtong cave-heaven and in an undersea mansion. The single surviving line of the instrument-refining school gradually gathers followers of its own through those wars.

Once Bai Qi has come into the world he fights Zhou Qing again, and the two drive into the seam between the three realms and chase each other along a void without numinous air. The fighting runs more than a month, until the two come near the edge of the earth-immortal realm.

Zhou Qing passes from the seam into the earth-immortal realm and refines the rank of heavenly immortal from the primordial spirits of a wolf spirit and the Withered Bone Lord. He then returns to arrange for his human-world disciples and prepares to move the Jade Pillar Immortal Mansion and everything the school has gathered to Black Wind Mountain.