Chapter 145: The Gnosis

Xu Zhong knew nothing of what was happening in the outside world.

Yet, he was still somewhat aware of the expansion of the Reincarnation grotto-heaven.

Slowly, he stretched his head out from the flesh-and-blood marsh to peer outside.

In an instant, he saw numerous Qi practitioners appearing within this Reincarnation grotto-heaven.

He hurriedly pulled his head back into the demonic clouds.

The Demonic Heart King was utterly respectful to him, and upon seeing this, stirred up layers of demonic Qi both inside and outside the flesh-and-blood marsh, shooting out bolts of demonic light.

These mixed strands of demonic Qi and light transformed into various fiends and demons, charging toward the assembled Qi practitioners.

Yet, any Qi practitioner bold enough to forcefully breach the flesh-and-blood marsh at this juncture was hardly a pushover.

Each of them displayed their own mystical arts, ranging from the Samadhi True Fire and Divine Thunder to the Pure Yang arts...

"Someone is over there!" Li Yuanhua pointed just outside the flesh-and-blood marsh.

At the sound, Su Jie turned his head and glanced at him.

It was precisely this single glance that altered the spatial coordinates beneath his feet.

The Eight Trigrams unfolded beneath him, transforming into the Eight Gates, interwoven with the power of Yin—vast in miraculous power and infinite in transformation.

Seeing this, Su Jie merely frowned slightly. Then, the fire of vital blood in his heart suddenly blazed brilliantly. Gathering all his vital blood throughout his body, he raised his fist and struck out.

Boom!

With a thunderous explosion, Su Jie directly shattered the Eight Gates, causing them to collapse inward.

The residual force of his vital blood even condensed into a divine rainbow that pierced straight through Li Yuanhua's arm.

Li Yuanhua's expression changed drastically. Using his hand as a blade, he ruthlessly severed his own arm.

By the time he recovered his wits, he saw that Su Jie had already crossed the barrier and entered the flesh-and-blood marsh.

"He deserves to die!" Li Yuanhua muttered in a low voice.

On his severed stump, fresh granulation tissue continually sprouted. At first, it was only the length of a finger, but in less time than it takes to draw a breath, it grew to two feet long, writhing and intertwining in the air until it shaped itself into a brand-new arm.

"Even if you want to kill him, you'll have to go in after him to do it!" Chen Taifeng carried a sword case on his back.

A ringing sound, like the roar of a dragon and the whistling of the wind, echoed from within his sword case, accompanied by two rays of sun-piercing divine rainbow darting in and out. His sword intent was soaring, resonating with heaven and earth.

Merely standing near him was enough to make one feel an uncomfortable, piercing sword qi rushing toward the face.

"That barrier is quite peculiar." Chen Taifeng shrugged his shoulders, and the sword case instantly sprang open.

Inside the case lay two swords: a master sword and a companion sword. The companion sword followed the clouds in the shape of a dragon, while the child sword followed the wind in the shape of a tiger.

With a wave of his hand, the child sword flew out from the sword case.

"The Heart of God that the ancestors told us to seek is most likely inside that barrier."

The child sword whistled outward. Wherever it passed, terrifying cloud cascades formed—a hundred miles compressed into a single line, that single line stretching horizontally across a thousand miles, surging forward with a crushing downward pressure.

Yet, upon approaching the barrier, it was effortlessly suppressed by twelve golden stone pillars.

"All those people have gone to pluck the blood bodhi."

Ji Lin's eyes flickered.

A single red-hearted bodhi tree still remained within the flesh-and-blood marsh, and the crowd was rushing forward to seize it.

It was not that they lacked the ability to enter the flesh-and-blood marsh, but rather that they were unwilling to expend the effort. They understood that someone else would eventually find a way to breach it. Until then, they had ample time to contend for other fortuitous encounters.

With the opening of the folded sections of the Reincarnation grotto-heaven, this realm had grown even more profound.

The positions of the twelve golden stone pillars remained unchanged, though they had grown much taller. The "Suppress" runes carved upon them had also expanded to a scale where one could barely perceive them in their entirety, yet the sealing power radiating from them remained unaltered.

In the distance, palaces emerged, suffused with a floating, levitating force that mirrored all realms.

Gateways materialized on all four sides, surging with the power of creation. Standing beneath those gateways, one could catch glimpses of the Great Dao, and even channel primordial breath or pure Qi.

"A white jade capital in the heavens, numbering twelve." Ji Lin gazed around. "This Reincarnation grotto-heaven was modeled after the White Jade Capital."

And at the four cardinal directions of the grotto-heaven stood four gates of the mysterious female womb.

Suddenly, a piercing scream drew the attention of all three.

They looked toward the source of the sound.

The red-hearted bodhi tree had revived into a vine-dragon, swallowing whole a Qi practitioner who had just plucked a blood bodhi, before spewing forth demonic flames that swept across the surroundings.

After several Qi practitioners perished, a man with outstanding facial features stepped forward to confront the vine-dragon avatar.

A golden millstone materialized in his hand, surging with Yin and Yang forces that transformed into two ribbons of black and white. These ribbons wrapped around and entangled the vine-dragon before dragging it directly into the millstone.

Screech! Screech!

As the millstone ground away, the physical body of the vine-dragon avatar exploded inch by inch, pulverized into fine dust that scattered into the air.

Withdrawing the Yin-Yang millstone, the man plucked a single blood bodhi.

"This thing is rather strange, but it has value and is worth collecting!" he murmured softly, putting the blood bodhi away.

Sensing something, he turned his gaze toward Li Yuanhua and the others.

His eyes were turbid and unclear, and his body radiated an overwhelming demonic aura.

Though his physical body was human, he was an entity of Qi and monsters.

If Xu Zhong were present here, he would undoubtedly recognize this person.

This man was Shi Yao, a Qi practitioner whose corpse had transformed into a demon.

Yet, merely four years had passed, and this corpse-demon had already cultivated the Outer Scenery realm, while also acquiring some powerful millstone magic treasure from who knows where.

"It's a corpse-demon!" Li Yuanhua's expression shifted.

The aura emanating from that corpse-demon was formidable, suppressing him, while the millstone in its hand was terrifyingly powerful and clearly difficult to handle.

If it came down to a final contest for the Heart of God, this creature would undoubtedly be his greatest rival, alongside Chen Taifeng and Ji Lin.

"Do you wish to make a move against me?" Shi Yao let out a cold snort as two deep-blue ghost fires jetted from his nostrils.

Though he was a corpse-demon, he had also successfully refined the Samadhi True Fire.

Unlike the crimson fire of living beings, the Samadhi True Fire cultivated by lifeless entities like him burned with a ghostly blue hue.

He raised his millstone, itching for a fight.

"That is not our..." Li Yuanhua began to speak.

Before he could finish his sentence, the entire Reincarnation grotto-heaven trembled violently.

Then, the sky abruptly darkened as rays of blood-red light sprouted like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, rising from both the heavens and the earth.

Thump!

A heartbeat abruptly sounded.

Ten directions of lightning split the heavenly vault.

Those ten directions, a Buddhist concept, referred to: Heaven, Earth, East, West, South, North, Life, Death, Past, and Future.

That ten-directional lightning echoed in every single moment of their lives, as well as in what their physical eyes saw and their physical bodies felt at this very second.

The rolling thunder nearly forced them to their knees.

Yet, their proud spines remained erect; even if their vertebrae were crushed to powder, they refused to kneel.

The sound of thunder echoed by their ears and slammed into their bodies.

It battered them until blood leaked from their seven orifices and their skin split open.

Still, they clenched their teeth and persisted.

These audacious individuals mostly held ambitions higher than the heavens, possessing proud hearts and the willpower of the invincible.

This was a conviction branded deep within their mirror-hearts—the very foundation of their cultivation.

To kneel was to surrender.

Even gods had no right to force these Qi practitioners, who held no gods in their hearts, to their knees.

Some Qi practitioners, unable to withstand the pressure, collapsed directly to the ground.

The next moment, within the mirror-heart of the fallen, a deity manifested.

This deity occupied his mirror-heart, continuously expanding until it ultimately seized control of his physical body.

Having lost his invincible will, he had transformed into the very image of that deity.

Plunging into madness, the Qi practitioner unleashed spells from his hands that turned into blinding golden divine rays.

These rays blasted other Qi practitioners backward, shattering their physical forms into bloody mist.

He then harvested the bloody mist to cultivate and cast further spells.

Everyone gasped in cold breath.

This Qi practitioner's attacks were ruthless, devoid of all emotion, and completely devoid of reason.

Even more suffocating was that the Dharmic power within his body was also undergoing a transformation.

As his corruption deepened, his Dharmic power was being bit by bit devoured by the force of vital blood.

This meant he was being usurped by that deity from the inside out.

How terrifying!

It meant he was still himself, yet no longer himself.

Fundamentally, he was still the same person, but at this very moment, his soul had been altered and transformed, his destiny-lattice rewritten, and his consciousness usurped; he was no longer who he had been.

"Kill him!" Ji Lin roared furiously, a bronze ancient mirror appearing in his hand.

He flashed the mirror directly at the corrupted Qi practitioner.

Instantly, a dazzling divine light swept horizontally forward.

It ultimately transformed into a divine phoenix, wreathed in phoenix divine fire, which burned the Qi practitioner directly to ashes.

However, behind Ji Lin, more such corrupted Qi practitioners were appearing.

Ceasing their steps and movements on the spot, they refined their own magic treasures and charged toward Ji Lin.

"If we don't kill them, we will all end up just like them!" Ji Lin shouted, throwing his arms out and exhaling deeply.

He swept out a gale of Lesser Yin Wood wind and spat forth the Samadhi True Fire.

Wood fueled the fire, and wind fanned the flames. In an instant, the might of his Samadhi True Fire surged dramatically, and several Qi practitioners were directly refined alive by the flames into pills.

Chen Taifeng gave his sword case a gentle shake, instantly sending the mother and child swords flying out amidst a howling tempest of wind and clouds.

The two swords encompassed the remaining Qi practitioners, wheeling back and forth to slaughter them all.

Then, with a flash of light from his sword case, he recalled the swords.

Possessing formidable strength, he could well be considered the strongest person present here.

"Look up at the sky."

Having endured the pressure of the giant heart, they finally managed to spare enough mental energy to look toward the heavens.

They saw a vast expanse of crimson sky pressing downward.

Suspended within the heavens was a gigantic sun, radiating the most blazing sunlight imaginable—a concentration of vital blood power so dense it was palpable. That sun was still pulsing rhythmically, every single beat triggering a halo of light like a tidal wave.

That was the heart of Xifeng Lie—the Heart of God.

Contained within that heart was a terrifying force, the ultimate source of all transformations.

The moment they set their eyes upon this heart, greed took root in their minds.

*If only I could make this my own!*

Once this thought sprouted in the heart, it was difficult to erase.

"This sky seems connected to the earth beneath our feet." Li Yuanhua suppressed the turbulence in his heart and carefully sensed his surroundings.

Within this Reincarnation grotto-heaven, there seemed to be no distinction between heaven and earth; the sky was the earth, and the earth was the sky. There was no beginning or end, or perhaps the two had merged into one. It was filled with an alternative chaos and primal unity, where one could walk from the ground into the sky, or from the sky down to the ground.

Of this, Xu Zhong had already witnessed proof.

Because they had already walked from the flesh-and-blood marsh right up into the sky.

"Ascend those twelve golden stone pillars."

With gaze like torches, Chen Taifeng uttered these words and took the lead, charging toward the golden stone pillars.

Yet even faster than him were the other Qi practitioners stationed beneath the golden pillars.

Shi Yao was among them.

As he climbed upward, he cast a hasty glance and caught sight of Xu Zhong.

*"Such a familiar face, have I seen him before?"*

He muttered inwardly to himself.

Yet, the next moment, the runes upon the golden stone pillars began to flash with blinding light.