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Chapter 66: Unrivaled Under Heaven

A low, imperious voice resounded across the Nine Thousand Prefectures, within Tianshu Sect, an utter silence reigned, the sect-protecting great array quietly rising into place, yet not a single soul appeared.

Cang Shun let out a scornful laugh. "What, think hiding inside a tortoise shell will keep you safe?"

He raised a hand, its joints sharply defined; his gaze, utterly devoid of warmth, fell through the gaps between his slender fingers down upon Tianshu, enveloping the entire sect.

"Senior Brother..."

A faint voice drifted up from below.

Chen Moqing lowered his eyes. On the training ground, Gongsun Buzhi lay sprawled on the ground, covered head to toe in blood, unable to rise, his very sinews and bones clearly shattered beyond repair, yet he still struggled to drag himself forward, crawling across the ground and leaving a long trail of blood in his wake.

His eyes stared fixedly up into the high sky, tracing inch by inch the figure he had not seen in so long; he let out a low laugh, bits of ruined organ spilling from the corner of his mouth along with the crimson blood.

"It's you... it's really you..."

"I knew it! I knew you'd come back! At last... I've waited for you again..."

He crawled bit by bit toward Chen Moqing, straining with all his strength to lift one blood-soaked arm, as if he meant to close that vast distance and touch that figure.

Chen Moqing looked down at him calmly, not a trace of emotion stirring in his eyes, "I've forgotten you."

Cang Shun gave a careless glance, then took hold of Chen Moqing's hand, palm pressed tightly to palm, his own fingers closing around Chen Moqing's slender ones.

Gongsun Buzhi's pupils contracted sharply.

His whole body wracked with agony, his cultivation utterly ruined, not an inch of him left unbloodied, and yet still he strained with everything he had, just to draw a little closer to that one person.

But why... why, even after giving everything he had, was that figure still so far away, forever beyond his reach?!

Why could that thing which had suddenly appeared stand so close to him?! Why could it touch him so effortlessly?!

"Let go!"

Gongsun Buzhi roared in fury, more shredded organ spilling from the corner of his mouth, staining his jaw and neck a solid red.

"You don't deserve to touch him!!"

He snatched up the broken sword beside him and hurled it with all his strength up into the sky; the half-blade fell back to the ground, reflecting a pair of eyes twisted with fury and threaded with bloodshot veins.

"Senior Brother! You're being coerced, aren't you?! This demon-kin is forcing you, isn't he?!"

Even after having been defeated time and again by "Liu Yun," his dignity utterly lost, even after watching Gongsun Qing annihilated before his very eyes in a single strike, Gongsun Buzhi had never lost his reason like this, his defenses utterly shattered, screaming and raving, reduced to a wild-haired madman.

"You must be being coerced! It has to be that! Senior Brother! Look at me! Please, just look at me! The Gongsun family can protect you! Leave him! Come back to my side!"

He vomited up his own organs, vomited up his very heart's blood, pleading, shattering his own dignity completely, smashing it into a mangled, bloody mess.

"Please, I'm begging you! Senior Brother..."

"Come back?" In Gongsun Buzhi's eyes, his senior brother seemed to have heard something exceedingly amusing; in those eyes, beautiful enough to outshine every snowscape in the world, there rose a careless trace of laughter. "Who are you?"

When had he ever stayed by his side?

As if ten thousand swords had pierced straight through his heart, the flame in Gongsun Buzhi's pupils guttered out in an instant, and what little light had remained shattered entirely.

He froze where he was, become a madman struck blind and mute, his throat as though stuffed full of iron nails, the pain so great he could not force out a single word.

Cang Shun cast a light, dismissive glance down at him, the corner of his mouth lifting into a smile that could only be called cruel. "This life, the next life, life after life without end, there will never be so much as a shadow of you in his eyes."

"Because he will only ever look at me."

"Oh, right, I forgot, you won't be having a next life."

Each word of mockery a blade driving straight through the heart.

Gongsun Buzhi's body shook violently, as though undergoing the cruelest of punishments, utterly unable to bear it any longer; at last, he broke completely.

"No! Impossible! This is impossible!!"

He screamed, he howled, tearing his own hair out by the roots, his ten fingers clawing deep, gruesome gashes across his face, his eyes so laced with burst blood vessels his pupils were almost lost from sight.

"I never should have let you go! Back then, I should never have let you leave! Someone like you, someone like you... you were born to be the Gongsun family's cauldron! Meant to never see the light of day!!"

"Senior Brother! You can't abandon me!! I'm begging you! I'm begging you! Look at me just once more, just once—"

Cang Shun's voice carried not a trace of emotion. "Disgusting insect."

"This life will be your very last."

By decree of the Demon Emperor: soul and spirit extinguished, barred forever from the cycle of reincarnation!

"No— no!!"

The last words Gongsun Buzhi left in this world were a scream of utter collapse, so broken it could scarcely be called a human sound.

A light breeze swept across the training ground, scattering what little remained.

Cang Shun turned his gaze away with indifference, his crimson demonic eyes fixing upon another figure, pinned down and torn to ruin by sword energy.

When Tianshu Sect's Second Elder had appeared, someone had moved most of the onlookers away from the training ground, but those he had marked remained trapped here still, one was Gongsun Buzhi, and the other—

Xiao Jibai, who had been enduring agonizing pain while feigning death all this while, suddenly felt a terrifying pressure sweep over him; in that instant, he let out a shrill scream as his body was obliterated on the spot, his soul torn free from his body!

Even the pain of being flayed alive could not compare, Xiao Jibai's soul screamed without end, collapsing to its knees, thrashing wildly, then forcing itself to kowtow again and again, its forehead slamming hard into the ground over and over.

"I was wrong!! I was wrong, Senior Brother!! Please spare me! I'm willing to make it up to you! I have items! I have a system! Whatever you want, I can give it to you!! I'm begging you! Please spare me!!"

Amid his wailing and weeping, he heard that ice-cold voice: "Can you turn back time, so that I might kill you the very first moment I laid eyes on you?"

Xiao Jibai froze.

In the next instant, his entire being shook violently.

"No... no! Senior Brother, I know I was wrong! I truly will repent! You can't kill me! Killing is against the law! I'm not from your world, you can't kill me!!"

His soul shrieked, twisting its body in an attempt to flee far away, only to be frozen in place by some terrifying force, unable to move an inch.

Xiao Jibai was afraid, truly afraid; a terror he had never known before swallowed him whole, and he was like a condemned prisoner who knew he was about to be torn apart by five horses, beginning to regret, weeping and wailing, hating himself for ever having raised a hand against Senior Brother, for ever having made that choice.

It seemed that from that very moment, his life had begun its slide to rock bottom.

And yet, at the very beginning, when he had first met Senior Brother... it hadn't been like this at all...

What had he been thinking back then?

"Wow, he's amazing! Is this really my senior brother? His voice is so nice to listen to... I've found a good person! System, I'm going to latch onto him! From today on, I'll be someone with a senior brother watching over me!"

Why? Why had it come to this?

In Xiao Jibai's despairing eyes, darkness became the very last color he would ever see.

On Luohe Peak, a body suddenly jolted upright from the bed, then crashed to the floor.

"System! Thank goodness I have you! Thank goodness I have you!!"

Xiao Jibai lay sprawled on the ground, weeping with overwhelming joy, tears and snot smeared across his face, clutching himself tightly, his body shaking violently.

"Thank goodness you let me keep this split-off clone, waaah! System! From now on I'll listen to everything you say! You're my dad! My father!"

"Host, your cultivation has fallen all the way back to Qi Refinement, and your point quota has been completely exhausted, no further points can be redeemed."

"It doesn't matter! It doesn't matter! As long as I'm still alive, still alive, that's all that counts!"

"I want to go home! I want to go home!! I don't want to stay here anymore, I don't want to cultivate immortality anymore!!"

Xiao Jibai scrambled up off the ground on hands and knees, trembling as he made to bolt outside, but he had barely taken two steps before his entire body froze solid.

"Who's there?!"

A figure stood quietly outside the door, there was no telling how long it had been standing there; only now, hearing Xiao Jibai's shout, did it unhurriedly step forward, its face coming into view.

Murong Zhou.

The outer disciple who had once been on good terms with his senior brother, longsword in hand, walked toward him step by step.

"Host! Run! Run!! This is a puppet! It's not a real person!!"

Every drop of blood in Xiao Jibai's body seemed to freeze to ice, an indescribable terror swallowing him whole; his teeth chattered violently, every inch of him screaming in silent alarm, yet his legs refused to obey him, and with a thud he collapsed to his knees.

He watched, helpless, as that "Murong Zhou" walked up before him, lowered its head, and gazed at him calmly.

——Just as, many years ago, when he had first entered the sect, his peerlessly elegant senior brother had descended from the clouds and reached out a hand to him.

"Junior Brother, where are you off to?"

On Luohe Peak, a single scream became the last echo left behind.

Light rippled across Tianshu Sect's sect-protecting great array, enveloping the deathly silent sect, as if no one had witnessed the deaths of Gongsun Buzhi and Xiao Jibai, let alone spared them so much as a single sigh.

Cang Shun flashed directly above the sect-protecting great array, and with the weight of ten thousand jun bearing down, stamped his foot down. "Get out here!"

Thunder-light burst forth, swallowing Tianshu whole; the sect-protecting great array collapsed in an instant!

Amid the lightning scattering across the sky, the Demon Emperor, handsome and untamed, his dark robes billowing, turned his head without a word to look at the young human beside him.

Chen Moqing unhurriedly lifted a hand and clapped lightly. "Mimi, so mighty, unrivaled by anyone in this world."

Cang Shun's eyes curved into a smile.

Tianshu Sect shook violently, this towering colossus that had stood for ten thousand years across the Nine Thousand Prefectures seeming on the verge of collapse at any moment—the next instant, a figure flew out from the sect's highest pavilion, hovering high in the air, and with a backhanded press, pushed gently downward.

The shuddering Tianshu Sect fell back into a deathly stillness, billowing smoke and dust abruptly cleared, revealing an old man draped in golden robes standing silently above the sect.

——Tianshu Sect's Grand Elder, who had kept himself hidden from the world for many years, Mo Chen, at mid Mahayana!

He took a single step forward and in an instant arrived before Cang Shun and Chen Moqing, several zhang away, his hands folded together. "This one greets His Majesty the Demon Emperor."

Cang Shun raised an eyebrow, standing to accept Mo Chen's bow without moving. "Yu Bai is dead? And so out comes a half-buried old relic like you?"

Mo Chen's expression remained calm, not a trace of anger showing; he slowly shook his head, his aged eyes turning toward Chen Moqing. "As for what happened back then, the sect was indeed in the wrong. This old one offers apology on behalf of all of Tianshu Sect, might we let the matter rest there?"

Cang Shun laughed, a cold, cold laugh, raising a hand to bar it across in front of Chen Moqing. "And what exactly are you to decide that?"

Mo Chen pressed his palms together and sighed, "Gongsun and Xiao are already dead, the long stone steps stained with their blood, is that still not enough?"

"The Elder knows perfectly well," Chen Moqing said calmly, "That they were nothing more than pawns. Even Gongsun Qing was no more than a piece upon the board."

"The one who moves the pieces still remains within Tianshu. The scheme behind all of this deserves to be known to the whole world."

Mo Chen stared at him fixedly for a moment, then without the slightest warning, struck!

A single strike at mid Mahayana, mountains and seas overturned, ten thousand li changing color at once!

Chen Moqing neither dodged nor retreated; holding steady to Cang Shun's hand, he met the blow head-on, calm and unshaken, as between his brows a crystal-clear nine-petaled lotus sigil flared to light!

Frost and snow swept wildly across the heavens, icy cold blanketing the earth, green mountains dyed into peaks of snow.

Amid a thousand boundless li of pure white snow, a single snow lotus overwhelmed the vast heavens, descending into the mortal world. Taller than the mountains, whiter than the snow-rivers, its nine translucent petals unfurled slowly, a bone-biting cold sweeping across heaven and earth, each thread of it radiating the aura of the great Dao!

A eighth-grade treasure, the Heavenly Ice Nectar Snow Lotus!

The strike of mid Mahayana was utterly dissolved amid the frost-petals of the slowly blooming snow lotus, scattering into countless ice crystals and snow-grit, drifting and swirling through the air.

Across a thousand li of mountains and rivers, nothing remained but white, the great snow swirled and swayed, burying Tianshu beneath it.

Frost and snow brushed across his shoulders; Chen Moqing stood high above in the sky, utterly unharmed!

"...The aura of an immortal lotus!"

Before him, for the first time, violent agitation crossed Mo Chen's face.

"Gongsun Qing once said that the half-immortal he encountered in the demon realm also possessed an immortal lotus... I thought it was something impossibly distant, never did I imagine it would be right before my eyes!"

"So that's how it is, just as I suspected... you never did perish under heaven's condemnation..."

Chen Moqing raised a slender finger, lifting up a flawless, radiant snow lotus, and laughed lightly, unconcerned. "I survived being hunted across ten thousand li by my own sect well enough, why would heaven's condemnation be any different?"

Mo Chen pressed his palms together once more and closed his eyes. "If that is so, then Tianshu is in grave peril."

"As Grand Elder, I cannot stand by and watch Tianshu fall, cannot let the legacy of this ten-thousand-year great sect be lost in this old one's hands..."

He opened his eyes, and in that instant, heaven and earth stirred once more, the ancient great sect beneath his feet trembling without end!

"I have heard that in days past, the Demon Emperor overpowered the Nine Thousand Prefectures, unrivaled by anyone in this world. This unworthy old one would like to beg His Majesty's instruction!"

Cang Shun reached out a hand, lightly toying with the small, crystal-brilliant snow lotus resting in Chen Moqing's palm, and said, calm and indifferent, "Instruction? And you think you deserve that?"

Mo Chen's voice drifted faint and far, carried off on the wind. "Then let us stake the entire fortune of Tianshu Sect upon it, that my Tianshu might weather this great calamity..."

"I ask that all of you lend your strength!"

As his words fell, a great wind rose, and the very heavens changed color!

"It is our solemn duty!"

"We shall give our every effort!"

High above Tianshu Sect, a host of stars lit up one after another, forty-nine in total!

Every high-ranking elder of Tianshu Sect, whether they had spent thousands of years in seclusion from the world or withdrawn entirely from worldly affairs, now appeared above Tianshu, every last one! Forty-nine mighty cultivators spread themselves across the heavens like a field of stars, charging fearlessly against the Demon Emperor's cold frost and bright moon, vast sword energy crisscrossing the world, forming a dazzling great array—the Big Dipper Star-Plucking Array!

Mo Chen rose high into the air, settling at the very center of the array's eye. His hands slowly closed together, and a torrent of overwhelming fortune poured in from every direction of the great array, surging into his body, as though an immortal had reached down to touch his brow and bestow eternal life upon him, his cultivation leapt in a single step from mid Mahayana to peak Mahayana! And then climbed further still, to great perfection of Mahayana!

And then, at last, ascending even higher still—

Early Tribulation Crossing!

Tribulation Crossing, the very summit that every cultivator in the cultivation world strove desperately to reach. Beyond Tribulation Crossing lay nothing less than ascension to immortalhood itself, and for this reason, those who reached it were also called the 'quasi-immortals' who trod above the Nine Thousand Prefectures!

Such was the ten-thousand-year foundation of Tianshu Sect! To forge, on the spot, a mighty cultivator of Tribulation Crossing, able to overpower every hero across the Nine Thousand Prefectures!

Mo Chen slowly opened his eyes, and every elder of Tianshu Sect opened their eyes in the same instant, pair after pair of eyes transforming into brilliant stars, seeking to overpower the radiance of that bright moon hanging in the sky!

Their voices rose as one, layer upon layer of ancient, resounding sound rolling across Tianshu: "We ask the Demon Emperor to yield his head!"

The bright moon remained cold and proud as ever. Cang Shun, his back to its full silver light, let out a soft laugh. "Tribulation Crossing, is that really so impressive?"

He turned his head to look at Chen Moqing beside him, his sharp sword-brows lifting, brimming with spirit, utterly unrestrained. "Watch me pluck down every star in the sky for you."

The corner of Chen Moqing's mouth lifted slightly. "Good."

Blazing radiance filled Cang Shun's eyes. The once-cold, bright moon began to pour out light like the height of a polar midday sun, so brilliant it seemed as though it would swallow sky and earth whole!

The full moon turned and shifted. His raven-black hair streamed high upon the wind, the silver ornaments threaded through it flying wild and free. Cang Shun took a single step forward, no longer suppressing his own cultivation, his presence at its very peak sweeping outward, cutting clean across every mountain and river!

The Big Dipper Star-Plucking Array shuddered violently. The brilliant light of all forty-nine Tianshu stars was instantly overpowered, dimming into nothing!

Mo Chen's expression shifted once more, "That's not right! It's impossible! Five thousand years ago, you were clearly—"

Five thousand years ago, the sovereign of the demon realm, who had looked down with disdain upon the entire cultivation world and forced a host of ancient powerhouses to bow their heads, had stood at peak Mahayana, his combat strength rivaling that of Tribulation Crossing itself!

And now, the presence erupting from this newly awakened Demon Emperor overpowered a hundred million mountains and rivers across the world, cutting clean through heaven and earth both ancient and eternal, making even the great Dao itself tremble—

Genuine, unmistakable, early Tribulation Crossing!

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