Chapter 2: Refining the Divine Body with Incense and Wish Power

A vast sea of mist shrouded the entire Bamboo Tribe, its presence so dense that even the mountain sun, now sinking behind the peaks, seemed to falter. Dusk gently arrived, its mellow glow gilding Ye Chen with a golden radiance, as though he wore a suit of divine armor bathed in light.

The bamboo forest stood lush and verdant, countless slender stalks cutting the waning sunlight into slivers. These scattered fragments of sunset slipped through the gaps in the bamboo leaves, sneaking into the forest’s depths.

A chill spring breeze drifted by, making the bamboo leaves sway and tremble, their rustling reminiscent of squirrels pilfering nuts.

Amid the Bamboo Tribe, streaks of golden light pierced the sea of mist—twisting like serpents, dancing like lightning—falling upon Ye Chen.

“Stealing the incense of the totem?” the shaman exclaimed in fury. “Such audacity! What ignorant beast dares this? Do they not know another’s incense cannot be stolen?”

He had assumed their assailant would be an old enemy of the Bamboo Tribe—after all, if not for past confrontations, the totem would never have been so gravely wounded, perhaps even slain. But now, it seemed the interloper might be some foolish creature strayed from the wild mountains and forests, ignorant of the world.

Bathed in the glow, the spirit butterfly’s palm-sized form crumbled to ash, yet faint ripples of gentle, watery light continued to gather and merge.

“Seeking your own doom,” the shaman muttered, unease gnawing at him. He could not shake the sense that things were not so simple.

“What sort of spirit butterfly is this? Even if it covets the totem’s place, it should not act so recklessly... And yet, it feels strangely familiar. I must have seen its kind before.”

There were many types of spirit butterflies in the world; even those that consumed spiritual energy and transformed their bodies into demons would not dare to seize another’s incense. Only if they’d lost all reason, blinded by greed and driven solely by instinct, would they dare such lawlessness.

“To steal the totem’s divine seat, one must first usurp its name—gather incense under a false pretense until the false gives way to the true. This takes time; it cannot be accomplished overnight.”

The Bamboo Tribe had not always possessed a totem; it was through generations of incense and worship that a single stalk of spiritual bamboo was transformed, becoming the faith of the people. With time, it grew ever more spiritual and wondrous. In other words, the totem’s foundation depended on the tribe, just as the tribe relied on the totem’s protection. The two were inextricably linked.

A sudden hum—“Weng!” The butterfly’s body crumbled to dust, yet within the dispersing ashes gathered points of light, which soon reformed into a palm-sized spirit butterfly, darting into the sea of mist.

The spirit butterfly’s path led straight toward the Bamboo Tribe’s totem.

The shaman hurried to intercept it, but the mists swirled like a maelstrom, tossing him about and blurring all direction. When he looked again, all was still—the butterfly was lost to sight, and within the mist, all sense of orientation was gone. Yet the shaman did not lose heart; from his bamboo flute trickled faint threads of black light.

He gazed intently at the flute, which, infused with the totem’s divine power through years of ritual, faintly resisted Ye Chen’s influence. Guided by it, the shaman pressed forward without hesitation.

“I know what butterfly that is now—it’s the Great Dream Immortal Butterfly, evolved from the common dream butterfly.”

“Most dream butterflies slumber underground for seven years, then, after breaking free, live only seven days before dying. After countless deaths, one, driven by unyielding hope and obsession, undergoes a miraculous transformation, becoming the Great Dream Immortal Butterfly—the hope of its kind.”

“The terror of the Great Dream Immortal Butterfly lies in the dreamscapes it weaves—illusions indistinguishable from reality, capable of turning truth upside down. Now I understand how it dares to steal the incense.”

“After all, incense comes from the tribe. If the minds of the people are twisted, then nothing is out of the ordinary.”

A bitter taste filled the shaman’s heart, anxiety rising like a tide. He desperately hoped his fears were unfounded. Unable to find the other tribesfolk, he wondered if they too were lost in the butterfly’s dreams.

It was terrifying. How could a Great Dream Immortal Butterfly appear in such a humble tribe? It was a calamity beyond endurance.

“No, if it truly were the Great Dream Immortal Butterfly, its methods would be far subtler. It would not need to rely on miasma conjured from peach blossoms to empower the spirit butterfly. Its power is not yet fully awakened; it is still on the path of transformation, not yet a true Immortal Butterfly—there is hope yet.”

“Even so, I fear that only the chieftain and I remain who can still keep our minds from being warped.”

The shaman shook the bamboo flute, his eyes glinting. This flute was a wondrous artifact, sanctified by years of totemic worship, and bore a subtle resistance to Ye Chen’s power.

He worried for the chieftain’s safety, but could spare no strength to help. Within the sea of mist, all he could do was rely on the flute for self-preservation and hope the totem might recover.

The Bamboo Tribe was not large; rows of bamboo dwellings flickered in and out of sight beneath the rolling mist, then quickly retreated behind him as the shaman pressed on to a three-zhang-high altar.

The altar was built entirely of blue stone, shaped like a longsword thrust toward the heavens. Upon it stood a single golden stalk of spiritual bamboo, leaves once green but now half-stained with ink-dark gold, the rest fallen lifeless upon the stone. Occasionally, a few golden leaves would curl and wither further.

The golden bamboo was all but dead. Upon close inspection, deep and shocking splits marred its stalk.

From the world around, torrents of mist surged in—like waterfalls, like rivers, like flashing streaks of light.

White mist billowed, painting the world in ink and wash, as if a master’s brush swept across a canvas. The waves of fog rolled and churned; within their depths, a butterfly’s silhouette twisted and surged, seeming to overturn the very rivers and seas.

It moved with ethereal grace, almost celestial, as if treading clouds, its wildness palpable.

The spirit butterfly landed upon a branch of the spiritual bamboo. Instantly, the surrounding branches withered, and golden motes of light streamed toward the butterfly, drawn away and absorbed.

This was the power of incense and devotion. The golden bamboo had not been born thus; once an ordinary stalk, it was transformed by generations of worship, becoming sentient. The incense of countless prayers fused into its form, granting it a miraculous evolution.

The shaman’s eyes burned red with hatred as he stared at the butterfly. The black light on his bamboo flute began to dissipate, thinning to smoke and fading away. The totem’s power was too weak—enough only to guide him through the mist, not to change the outcome of the struggle.

Most of the spiritual bamboo had withered, while the butterfly’s image now imprinted itself upon the shaman’s mind. To his shock, he realized that in the depths of his memory, the butterfly was materializing out of nothingness—at first insubstantial as cloud and smoke, but gradually solidifying, as if it had always been there.

In all his past, there had never been a butterfly, yet now his memories were being warped—as if some master artist was cutting and stitching disparate scenes together. Where once the spiritual bamboo stood alone as the object of his faith, now, in memory, a butterfly circled around it, wings fluttering, the scene picturesque, though the shaman’s face twisted with anguish.

“No—you thief!” the shaman roared, rushing up the altar, his hand pressed to the cold blue stone. Fury burned in his chest, but when he looked up at the butterfly, despair overwhelmed him.

It was useless—nothing could be changed. The shaman’s power came from the totem, and with the totem wounded and near death, he had no strength left to turn the tide.

Worse still, the totem’s grievous injury had left him deeply wounded as well; to strike at the spirit butterfly now was nothing but a delusion.

“The butterfly’s power is growing. Before this, it could not twist my mind, but now it has succeeded.”

The shaman’s clarity remained, but his people—no doubt they had already become unwitting followers of the butterfly, no longer tolerating a single word of dissent. Unaware, even their thoughts and desires might now be controlled by another; what they assumed to be their own resolve was in fact seeded from elsewhere.

Step by step, the shaman ascended the altar, the world around him shrouded in mist. The spiritual bamboo bathed in golden light, clad in endless fire, as the butterfly perched upon its branch—utterly unperturbed by his arrival.