Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Five: Heartless

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Westwind Lie vanished without a trace.

High in the sky, a sun was falling into the darkness.

It pierced through the gloom, illuminating every person in the entire Dark Radiance as clearly as day.

Its brilliance was dazzling, as though daylight itself had descended.

At last, the sun fell west of Dark Radiance, at the boundary between the Sea of Chaos and Dark Radiance.

Behind that sun came countless shooting stars, scraping the heavens into streaks of crimson trails.

In an instant, thunderous crashes erupted from the boundary, as though heaven and earth had collapsed.

“That isn’t the sun?” Xu Zhong’s heart pounded violently. “That’s Westwind Lie’s heart!”

Before the Fengdu Great Emperor had captured him and taken him to Fengdu, Westwind Lie had cut open his own chest, broken through his ribs, and torn out his heart.

Xu Zhong had seen it clearly. Naturally, the powerful cultivators within Dark Radiance had seen it just as clearly.

“A great opportunity!”

Xu Zhong’s neighbor leapt from the treetops. A flying sword shot from the sword case on his back, carrying him away from Tile-Mud Alley.

Yet in the next moment, a dazzling bolt of lightning descended upon Tile-Mud Alley.

Tens of thousands of arcs of electricity spread through the air, striking him to death in midair.

The thunderbolt lingered above Tile-Mud Alley for a long while, like a suspended sword hanging over everyone’s heads, ready to fall at any moment.

Xu Zhong remained calm.

After experiencing so many things, the death of an Outer Scenery qi refiner meant little to him. It was nothing worth making a fuss over.

Within Dark Radiance, the qi refiners who had gained recognized identities all flew out of the city at that moment, seeking whatever opportunity awaited them.

“What a pity!”

Xu Zhong sighed regretfully. He had just turned back toward his room to rest when he saw Old Li staggering toward him, his entire body stained with blood, with a phantom image of part of Fengdu trailing behind him.

Within that fragment of Fengdu, several Impermanence Envoys were drawing Water from the River of Forgetfulness and splashing it bucket by bucket over Old Li, trying to extinguish the fire of vital energy and blood burning upon him.

Steam rose into the air, yet the fire of vital energy and blood only grew more vigorous. It could even ignite the Water of the River of Forgetfulness.

Old Li groaned in pain as he bathed in the water.

“My lord, I fear your prospects are grim.” One of the Impermanence Envoys hesitated over his choice of words, but after thinking it over, decided that speaking plainly would be quicker.

Old Li turned and glanced at him.

The Impermanence Envoy promptly ducked his head into his robes.

“The Six Palaces of Luofeng have already prepared a golden body for you. Once you die, you may inhabit that body, cultivate into a Judge, take your place beneath the True Spirits of the Six Palaces of Luofeng, and receive the incense offerings of all living beings.”

This Impermanence Envoy could be considered one of Old Li’s subordinates.

Although he was human rather than a ghost, he held an official position in Fengdu. According to his rank, he belonged to the Judges.

A Judge was already a member of Fengdu’s middle and upper echelons.

Beneath the Fengdu Great Emperor were the True Spirits of the Six Palaces of Luofeng.

The Six Palaces of Luofeng were the Palace of the Dark Heaven of Absolute Extinction, the Palace of the Heaven of Great Calamity and Accountable Affairs, the Palace of the Heaven of Bright Dawn and the Unforgiving Martial City, the Palace of the Heaven of Tranquil Radiance and Sinful Breath, the Palace of the Heaven of the Seven Nonbeings of the Ancestral Spirit, and the Palace of the Heaven of Daring Governance and Repeatedly Linked Wandering.

The Judges of Fengdu all held offices within the Six Palaces of Luofeng.

The rulers of those palaces were the True Spirits of the Six Palaces of Luofeng.

They had all once been Judges. Later, having completed their missions and attained the Dao, they became True Spirits of the Six Palaces of Luofeng. Existing between life and death, they could transform into living beings with a single thought and wander through the mortal world.

To become a True Spirit of the Six Palaces of Luofeng, one first had to cultivate into an innate deity.

Old Li had already met the easiest requirement.

But becoming a True Spirit required hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years.

“Get lost!”

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Old Li was furious.

The Impermanence Envoys withdrew resentfully and continued drawing Water from the River of Forgetfulness to pour over the fire of vital energy and blood.

As Old Li walked forward, Xu Zhong caught sight of Su Jie behind him, his face bruised and swollen, looking especially miserable.

He followed Old Li step for step.

“How could he…” Xu Zhong glanced at him, then stared in astonishment. “His magic power has been replaced by the power of vital energy and blood?”

Su Jie no longer possessed any magic power. In its place was the same power of vital energy and blood that Westwind Lie had wielded.

He walked with the forceful stride of a dragon or tiger, every step stirring the wind. His vital energy and blood had condensed into a thick fluid; the mere leakage of a thread was enough to send the surrounding mosquitoes tumbling to the ground.

“Every bone in his body, every inch of his skin and meridians, seems to have been tempered.”

As Xu Zhong looked at Su Jie, knowledge that did not belong to him inexplicably surfaced once more in his mind.

In his eyes, the vital energy and blood within Su Jie’s body moved like a great dragon roaming through the heavens and earth of the flesh. At present, that vital energy and blood was powerful enough to leave his body, allowing him to fly through the air, shake forests, shatter peaks, dam rivers, sever seas, and hold his ground against mountain floods with nothing but his physical body.

Su Jie’s vital energy and blood had left his body and resonated with heaven and earth, imbuing them with the nature of yin.

He had refined his vital energy and blood until it was equivalent to magic power.

“No, that’s not right!” Xu Zhong shook his head. “He refined his magic power into vital energy and blood?”

Xu Zhong could not make sense of the situation.

But there was one thing he knew for certain: Su Jie had been lucky. He had recovered his life from the Heavenly Prison.

Clearly, Su Jie had also noticed Xu Zhong while passing by, but he remained silent and continued following Old Li.

“Old Li may be hoping to use Su Jie to refine away the fire of vital energy and blood within his own body.” Xu Zhong’s thoughts raced, and he instantly understood why Old Li had brought Su Jie to Tile-Mud Alley.

“But can Su Jie really do it?”

It seemed to be a cultivation method that did not belong to this world.

“Was it created by the Dragon Capital Great Emperor?” Xu Zhong murmured. “Did he wish to use this method to free himself from the control of the Thunder Ancestor?”

Within the world created by the Thunder Ancestor’s Inner Scenery, all living beings possessed only a yang aspect, never a yin aspect.

Thus, no matter how they cultivated, they could only become the Thunder Ancestor’s leeks, treated as the yang aspects of that being and harvested at will.

Perhaps Ji Longdu had discovered this long ago and sought to create a method by which a yang aspect could exist independently of the world.

But judging from the outcome, he had ultimately failed.

Otherwise, he would not have needed to refine the entire world from falsehood into reality and sacrifice himself so that all living beings could choose their own destinies.

At this thought, Xu Zhong abruptly raised his head and looked upward.

In his eyes, the starry sky was brilliant and magnificent beyond compare.

The spiritual energy between heaven and earth flowed in a hazy current, like vast rivers surging without end.

“Perhaps this spiritual energy originated from the Dragon Capital Great Emperor’s vital energy and blood.”

Once Xu Zhong understood this, everything suddenly became logical.

“He created a new method and cultivated it himself, but after reaching the end of his cultivation, he discovered that creating a new Dao method could not free him from the yin aspect of the Thunder Ancestor.”

That was why the Dragon Capital Great Emperor had ultimately embarked upon the path of sacrificing himself, creating heaven and earth, and refining falsehood into reality.

Unable to find a solution within his Inner Scenery, he had thought of leaving it.

The Thunder Ancestor naturally would not allow him to leave. But by then, the Dragon Capital Great Emperor had already grown powerful enough to make even the Thunder Ancestor’s yin aspect deeply wary.

“Perhaps he also joined forces with the other three emperors of the Ancient Yue Kingdom.”

The Eastern Emperor, the Southern Emperor, and the Northern Emperor.

To this day, Xu Zhong knew only the Northern Emperor, the True Martial Great Emperor. He knew nothing of the other two—not even their names.

The Dragon Capital Great Emperor, together with three emperors who had cultivated into innate deities, possessed such overwhelming strength that the Thunder Ancestor’s yin aspect could only tolerate their departure from its Inner Scenery.

This meant that, at that time, the Dragon Capital Great Emperor and the three other emperors had already achieved ascension in a certain sense.

At that point, a disagreement arose between them.

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The Dragon Capital Great Emperor took Wei Yan’s heart from the Thunder Ancestor’s palace in the Endless Sea and chose to return to the Ancient Yue Kingdom.

The other three emperors chose a path different from his. Once they departed, they never returned.

“He may have reached some kind of agreement with Wei Yan, using his own power of vital energy and blood to imprint seals upon Dark Radiance long ago, waiting for the day when Dark Radiance would fall from the sky.”

That would be the moment when his remnant soul once again opened heaven and earth and refined the entire Yu Kingdom from falsehood into reality.

“Then what is he trying to do?” Xu Zhong asked himself.

He had thought this far, yet could not understand what the Dragon Capital Great Emperor intended.

If the newly created method could not solve the problem, why had he still imprinted his vital energy and blood into heaven and earth?

“Then what about Westwind Lie?” he asked himself. “Did he inherit the Dragon Capital Great Emperor’s legacy, or did he create a Dao method like the Dragon Capital Great Emperor’s on his own?”

Xu Zhong could not figure it out. The more he thought about it, the worse his headache became, so he simply stopped dwelling on the tangled mess.

“Su Jie should be safe.”

Xu Zhong did not possess the ability to snatch him away from Old Li.

Besides, someone chosen by Fengdu to become its agent surely could not have a truly poor temperament. At the very least, Old Li would not vent his anger on Su Jie or attempt to seize his body.

Xu Zhong stretched lazily and lay down on his bed.

“I’ve overused my mind. I need a good rest.”

Just as Xu Zhong sank into a deep, heavy sleep, Old Li sat inside his own house beneath the old locust tree.

In an instant, the old locust tree was ignited by the fire of vital energy and blood, burning into a charred black mass.

If Old Li’s abilities had not been formidable, his fate would likely have been no better than that tree’s.

“You cultivated vital energy and blood as well?” Old Li asked, looking at Su Jie.

His voice was not loud, yet it frightened Su Jie until his legs went weak.

After all, the person sitting before him was an invincible expert at the level of an innate deity, the sort of existence whose mere leaking breath could shake a person to death.

“What are you afraid of?” Old Li asked, his expression displeased. He pointed at the mass of fire of vital energy and blood covering his body. “I’m not going to eat you. I only want to ask whether you can refine this fire of vital energy and blood, or whether you have any way to erase it.”

The fire of vital energy and blood clung to him like a parasite burrowed into the bones. Unless he was willing to abandon his flesh and become a Judge of Fengdu, there was no way to remove it.

Even if he killed himself and then regenerated from within his Inner Scenery, the fire of vital energy and blood would still ignite within him.

It was not burning his vital energy and blood.

It was burning his very origin.

“I—I—I don’t know!” Su Jie stammered.

“How can you know if you don’t try?” Old Li glared at him.

Su Jie was badly startled and hurried forward.

He tentatively extended a hand.

The fire of vital energy and blood did not harm him. Instead, it welcomed his palm.

Su Jie grasped the fire and pulled.

A small portion of it was drawn into his hand.

Old Li’s heart leapt with joy. “It really works!”

But the moment he finished speaking, Su Jie collapsed heavily backward.

Old Li was shocked and hurried over to examine him.

“Something’s wrong with his heart.”

Only after cutting open Su Jie’s chest did he discover that Su Jie had no heart.

The cavity was empty, with nothing but a handful of flames burning inside.

—Author’s Note—

I’ll do my best to finish the next chapter before nine o’clock.

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Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Five: The Heartless One — Read for free.