Chapter 149: The Changes in Tang Yuan

Su Jie stepped across the void and arrived, his physical body radiating a brilliant, multicolored light. It was as pure as colored glaze, without the slightest flaw. Hanging from his waist was the head of a coiling dragon; the dragon’s eyes remained wide open in death, filled with lingering hatred and resentment.

"Brother Xu, long time no see!"

With a casual point of his finger, he shattered the physical body of the Kaiyang God Child, leaving only a wisp of true spirit to escape. Yet before it could flee far, Su Jie reeled it back in and pried open the coiling dragon's skull.

In an instant, a vast amount of vital essence gushed forth from the dragon skull, shimmering with cyan mist.

He deposited the undying spiritual light and soul of the Kaiyang God Child into it, letting them settle.

Clearly, he had refined the coiling dragon's head into an alchemical tripod!

Only after finishing this did he bother to greet Xu Zhong.

His gaze was profound, burning with an intense radiance like two gigantic suns.

Xu Zhong's heart trembled, and the Dao tree of the Golden Elixir within his body began to stir uneasily. Evidently, that gaze had already pierced through his physical flesh and landed directly upon his Golden Elixir.

"Brother Su, we only met ten days ago! How can you say it's been a long time?" Xu Zhong's heart hammered frantically against his ribs.

The Su Jie before him was no longer the Su Jie he knew!

He simply could not tell whether it was the Sleeping Dragon Valley that had influenced him, or some other reason.

All in all, he had become bizarre beyond measure.

"That is true!" Su Jie chuckled dryly.

Then, the sounds of "bang," "bang," "bang" erupted in rapid succession. The physical bodies of the various Qi practitioners from the Stars Sect present were crushed to pulp by the surging blood Qi emanating from Su Jie, bursting into blooming flowers of blood.

A long dragon manifested from the blood Qi coiled around his outer body, opened its maw to spit the souls and undying spiritual light into the dragon skull, and bared its teeth in a provocative snarl at Xu Zhong and the others.

"The nuisances are gone now." Su Jie snatched up and shattered this blood-Qi dragon. "It is time to enter this treasured land."

Finally, he looked back and asked, "Coming together?"

Xu Zhong's breathing grew ragged, but he pulled Yun Yong closer. "I'm afraid we cannot go together. With our meager strength, we would likely only drag Brother Su down."

Yun Yong grasped the underlying meaning in a flash and immediately activated the zither string within his body.

Su Jie glanced at them, then said, "Then we shall meet inside the treasured land."

With that, he transformed into a streak of flowing light and vanished.

Only then did Xu Zhong recover his wits, exhaling a heavy breath.

"You knew each other beforehand, but judging by your reaction, something is wrong with him, isn't there?" Yun Yong patted his shoulder.

Xu Zhong nodded. "His name is Su Jie. He was the first Qi practitioner I met when I entered Mingzhao. However, the entity currently dominating his body is likely no longer the person I knew."

Su Jie was a sword cultivator, but at this moment, the sword intent on his body had vanished completely without a trace.

Sword intent is born from the sword heart, and the sword heart is the reflection of the mirror heart.

Unswayed by external objects, undestroyed by external things, unchanging and unshifting, it is the solitary eternal constant!

That his sword intent had dissipated now meant that his mirror heart had undergone a fundamental change.

Either he had been possessed by an inner demon, or by another Qi practitioner altogether.

Regardless of which it was, Su Jie was no longer Su Jie.

Yet it remained unknown whether his undying spiritual light and soul still existed.

"Just now, I felt a suppressed killing intent emanating from him," Yun Yong muttered under his breath.

"That is why I pulled you over—to make him wary!" That killing intent had been released the moment Su Jie sensed the Golden Elixir Dao tree within Xu Zhong, and it had reached its absolute peak the instant he asked them to travel together.

"The fact that he was wary proves that his strength is not overwhelmingly formidable." Yun Yong knew full well the power of the zither string within his body; it was only capable of dealing with Qi practitioners below the Inner Scene realm.

Perhaps even his elder sister had not anticipated that he would encounter a primordial deity upon entering Mingzhao.

"The next time we encounter him, try to avoid him as much as possible. If it's truly unavoidable, hide."

Xu Zhong's words made Yun Yong and the others nod in deep agreement—with the sole exception of Tang Yuan.

***

Tang Yuan walked in a daze, as if completely oblivious to what had just transpired, until Shi Yue beside him nudged his shoulder, finally snapping him out of it. "Brother Tang? Are you alright?"

Tang Yuan shook his head. "I'm fine. What just happened? Why can't I remember anything at all?"

Shi Yue, Yun Yong, and Xu Zhong exchanged glances, remaining silent.

"Perhaps because he practiced a similar technique, Tang Yuan was influenced by Su Jie," Xu Zhong thought to himself.

"This damned mystic realm!" Yun Yong cursed.

Had they possessed any other way out, they would never have chosen to enter this sacred mountain.

The corpse of the Nine-Baby was colossal, resembling a range of hills.

As they stepped past the corpse of the Nine-Baby, an image flashed within its eyes—the scene of it being slain beforehand.

A golden sword, radiating supreme divine might like a falling sun, had cleaved the Nine-Baby asunder, utterly destroying both its form and spirit.

"That looks like the personal sword of the previous Kaiyang God Child, Fu Xuan!" Shi Yue murmured as she looked at the three-foot-six-inch-long golden divine sword.

"Can the title of Kaiyang God Child be passed down like a family heirloom?" Yun Yong joked.

"It's not far off," Shi Yue nodded. "The disciples nurtured by a God Child will naturally become God Children themselves. Backed by centuries of heritage and guided by supreme mentors and friends, it is naturally far easier for them to rise above others and effortlessly tower over ordinary mortals."

"It seems that no matter where one goes, such things are a common occurrence," Yun Yong laughed heartily.

"I just wonder how strong that Fu Xuan is, and whether he could defeat *that* person."

Shi Yue fell silent.

Rumor had it that Fu Xuan's cultivation had merely reached the Realm of Leveling All Things, but no one knew his true, exact strength.

Stepping past the corpse of the Nine-Baby and taking one step further, the world turned completely upside down.

After landing, Xu Zhong surveyed his surroundings. Yun Yong and the others were still present, indicating that there was no so-called teleportation array here.

He then began to probe the spatial dimensions.

They discovered that this place was not like the outside world.

The space here was not swallowed by the void; it was fixed.

"It seems the owner of the heart did this intentionally. But what could he possibly want?" Yun Yong pinched his chin in contemplation.

At that moment, Tang Yuan stepped out from beside him. With a hazy gaze and a vacant expression, he walked forward step by step.

Yun Yong abruptly clapped a hand onto Tang Yuan's shoulder.

To his utter astonishment, Tang Yuan spun around and launched an attack directly at Yun Yong.

The blood Qi within his body surged upwards along the spine like a great dragon, a portion of it pouring into his arms. The rest burst forth from his body, transforming into a ferocious, leaping giant dragon that roared forward with a deafening rumble, igniting the air and manifesting a surging sea of fire.

Startled, Yun Yong instinctively moved to cast a spell.

But he was too slow.

Bang!

The Nine-Dragon Divine Fire Tripod materialized before Yun Yong, blocking the sea of fire.

Yet in the next instant, it was sent flying by a punch from Tang Yuan, a deep fist imprint indenting the very body of the tripod.

Xu Zhong brandished his jade ruyi, striking down toward the crown of Tang Yuan's head.

Tang Yuan's body swayed for a fraction of a second, but it did not impede his offensive in the slightest.

His blood Qi detached from his physical body, transforming into a gigantic sun suspended in mid-air. With a slight tremor, it radiated a terrifying, apocalyptic might filled with destructive intent capable of shattering mountains and cleaving rivers.

This formidable power surged directly toward Xu Zhong.

"He has been possessed by an unclean entity." Xu Zhong cast out his sword pellet.

The Cloud-Swallowing Sword flew out from his Niwan palace, suspended in the air to resonate from afar with that blazing sun.

Seven hundred and twenty flying swords deployed into formation—a sword array.

Xu Zhong intended only to trap Tang Yuan within the sword array, not to execute him.

Yet Tang Yuan's intrinsic power continued to swell relentlessly.

The blood-Qi dragon within his body smashed repeatedly against the sword array, gradually making it difficult to sustain, sending individual flying swords scattering in all directions.

Xu Zhong hurriedly called out to Shi Yue, "Lady Shi Yue, quickly open your Book of Life and Death and cast him into Fengdu!"

Recognizing the gravity of the situation—having previously stood on the sidelines alongside Yun Yong—Shi Yue reacted the instant her name was called. She drew forth her astrolabe and spun it.

In an instant, the astrolabe morphed into the Book of Life and Death.

"Contain!" While retracting his sword array, Xu Zhong pointed toward the heavens.

Instantly, fierce winds howled as Xu Zhong borrowed the wind from heaven and earth.

At first, Tang Yuan was buffeted left and right, staggering and stumbling as he fell backward toward the Book of Life and Death.

Yet in the next moment, the blood Qi within his body gathered and circulated continuously within his physical flesh. In that fleeting instant, he seemed to transform into an eternal, unchanging boulder that had weathered thousands of millennia.

Comparing the wind to a raging torrent and Tang Yuan to a boulder, at that very moment, the boulder dropped, instantly halting the violent torrent and cutting it cleanly into upper and lower halves.

"Get in there!"

Yun Yong leaped into the air, a cyan folding fan appearing in his grasp as he swept it forward with all his might.

Another gale-force tempest instantly materialized.

Sandwiched between the two fierce hurricanes, the ancient, unyielding boulder plummeted straight into the Book of Life and Death.

Shi Yue hurriedly manipulated the Book of Life and Death, slamming him deep into a small, localized reflection of Fengdu under her jurisdiction.

Fengdu severed all ties with the outside world. Thus, once inside, Tang Yuan blinked awake to find himself surrounded by curious soul-reception emissaries.

Most of them wore black-and-white garments, donning Ox-Head and Horse-Face masks.

Startled at first, Tang Yuan then heard an Ox-Head emissary speak: "The Envoy says you were possessed by an unclean entity within the mystic realm, making you unsuited to continue operations here, and entrusted us with your care."

The Horse-Face emissary beside it even thoughtfully offered him some provisions.

Tang Yuan fell silent, desperately trying to recall everything that had just occurred. Yet no matter how far back he traced his memories, he could not catch even a fleeting glimpse of the truth.

And so, he settled into his present circumstances, observing the sights of Fengdu.

Back in the mystic realm, upon hearing Shi Yue recount Tang Yuan's current status, both Xu Zhong and Yun Yong let out collective sighs of relief.

"What on earth is going on here?" Yun Yong asked.

A thought suddenly struck Xu Zhong. "Was this method of blood-Qi cultivation popular in the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands from the very beginning? Just like Daoist magic?"

Lost in thought, Yun Yong scoured his memories before finally slapping his palm. "Not at all. I once heard my elder sister mention in passing that this blood-Qi path did not exist from the very beginning. It originated seven thousand years ago, initially spreading from the regions bordering the Endless Sea."

"Is that so?" Xu Zhong already had his answer.

"Do you have a lead?" Yun Yong inquired.

"Perhaps the true origin of the blood-Qi path is right here—within the Ancestor of Thunder's Inner Scene, inside the ancient state of Yue," Xu Zhong stated, pronouncing each word with absolute clarity.

The Emperor of Longdu had once left the Ancestor of Thunder's grotto-heaven. On that occasion, he had brought back Wei Yan's heart, and perhaps he had also carried the path of blood Qi back to the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands.

It was precisely that excursion which had solidified his determination to cleave the heavens, ultimately sacrificing his life for that very cause.

"What is he trying to accomplish?" Xu Zhong looked around, a wild and audacious thought taking root in his heart. "Is this truly the heart of Xifeng Lie?"