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Chapter 69: There Is Always Someone Greater

The gloom of the underworld that had shrouded the mortal world dispersed. Far at the edge of the sky, a streak of pale, fish-belly white emerged, and the faint light of dawn once more scattered across the earth.

A crimson-black broken sword plummeted straight down from high in the sky, landing with unerring precision before the former mountain gate of Tianshu Sect. The jade paving stones cracked, kicking up dust across the ground.

Where the breeze passed, the hem of his dark robes shot through with flowing gold lifted lightly. Chen Moqing gazed into the distance at that dim, silent length of broken blade, his eyes deep and still as a fathomless pool, his face utterly without expression.

Right up until the very last moment, he still had not managed to draw that answer out from his former master's own mouth.

A tall figure appeared at his side. Cang Shun stood shoulder to shoulder with him, and said, "There's still a pile of little bugs left."

Chen Moqing turned his gaze, looking down upon Tianshu Sect below.

Yu Bai had left behind a trace of his power, shielding the disciples who had not yet emerged.

The once-foremost great sect of the Nine Thousand Prefectures, its high-level combat strength above Void Refinement had all been wiped out. Even if survivors remained, they no longer had the strength to uphold the name of "Tianshu"—let alone after today, for the three characters "Tianshu Sect" were now destined to stink for ten thousand generations to come.

These disciples, who had once basked fully in the glory of Tianshu as a foremost sect, would now carry an infamy that could never be washed clean, for the rest of their lives.

Chen Moqing said flatly: "Let's go."

He turned and left, without sparing Tianshu another glance.

Cang Shun gently caught hold of him, and spoke, his cold, detached voice ringing out across the leveled ruins of Tianshu Sect: "Benzun's dao companion is soft-hearted, and has spared your lives, but Benzun is not so easily reasoned with."

"From this day forward, any disciple of Tianshu Sect shall, for the rest of their life, never be permitted to break through to Nascent Soul."

A decree of the Demon Emperor, sealing an entire sect! His word was law the instant it was spoken, proclaimed to all the world!

A blood-red restriction descended from the heavens, in an instant blanketing the entire expanse of ruins. In that same moment, rising, wavering screams of agony rose up from beneath the rubble—from the Tianshu Sect disciples who had, until then, remained utterly silent.

Every Tianshu Sect disciple above Nascent Soul had their cultivation forced down by the Demon Emperor's inviolable restriction, falling all the way back to Golden Core!

From this day on, no matter how astonishing their talent or how exceptional their mastery of the sword path, for the rest of their lives they would remain stuck at Golden Core, unable ever to break through further.

A Golden Core cultivator might be regarded as a mighty power in some of the lower prefectures, but placed among the upper prefectures, they would amount to nothing more than an unranked, insignificant figure. Nearly all of Tianshu Sect's disciples had come from great clans of the upper prefectures, born into lives where they were surrounded and fawned over like stars around the moon. After today, having long grown accustomed to the sights of the upper prefectures, they would now have to grow familiar with an entirely different, world-upended scenery.

The screams of agony scraped past at his side. Cang Shun's expression remained cold and indifferent, utterly unmoved.

Back in those years, his human had been hunted across ten thousand li by that very sect, even though its high elders had already all been slain, those who remained could be spared death, but they would still have to pay a price.

Cang Shun tilted his head, gazing at those dark, lightless eyes beside him. His fingers shifted slightly, gently hooking around the pale, slender fingertips beneath his sleeve, swaying them slowly back and forth.

His human clasped his hand in return, slender fingers sinking into his palm.

The corner of Cang Shun's mouth lifted at once.

"Let's go," he said, toying with the pale fingertips in his palm, giving the slender, evenly-shaped knuckles a light squeeze, "and settle our accounts with Jinwu Sect while we're at it."

Chen Moqing met those bright, flashing crimson eyes, and gave a soft reply: "Good."

His great vengeance had been repaid, and yet he did not feel any sense of relief, perhaps because the one he had once lost could never return to his side again.

This place was not the end. There was still Jinwu Sect, which had single-handedly created the prison that held the demons of Qingluan Prefecture captive. The great clans and sects who had conspired with them, secretly refining the life-force of mortals all this while, and...Heavenly Dao itself.

The Dao he meant to walk had not yet come to its end.

A pale golden sun was just rising over a sea of pure white clouds. A faint breeze stirred across the vast sky, and Chenjie and Ran Cang soared freely, transforming into two streaks of flowing light, circling around the two of them.

Carrying his human across ten thousand li, Cang Shun swung their clasped hands back and forth, his tone light and easy: "Once this matter is settled, we'll go back to the demon realm."

Chen Moqing looked over at him: "And then?"

Cang Shun held the gaze of those eyes, beautiful as polished black jade, for a moment, then suddenly fell silent.

He blinked, then silently leaned a little closer to his human, lowering his head to rub his own face against that smooth black hair, and said in a low voice: "The Dao Companion Ceremony."

Chen Moqing: "What's Mimi muttering about again?"

Cang Shun raised his voice slightly: "The Dao Companion Ceremony!"

Chen Moqing suppressed the faint curl at the corner of his mouth, looked away, and feigned ignorance: "Mumbling and muttering, I can't hear a thing."

Cang Shun: "?"

Cang Shun gripped his hand tightly, pointed at Chenjie, and declared loudly: "I'm going to hold the Dao Companion Ceremony with your master!"

Chenjie: "……"

Chenjie's blade stayed pointed upward, not moving an inch.

Beside it, Ran Cang bobbed up and down, as though nodding along again and again, but was quickly swatted by Chenjie's blade-edge and fell still.

"You can't weasel out of it," Cang Shun said, his fingers burrowing between Chen Moqing's knuckles, interlacing their ten fingers tightly together, speaking with perfect confidence, "The whole of the Nine Thousand Prefectures already knows I'm your dao companion now. At the ceremony, I'm going to have everyone come watch, too."

As he spoke, he buried his head in the crook of Chen Moqing's shoulder again, rubbing back and forth.

Chen Moqing felt as though he were watching some great furry ball of fluff mewling and pressing itself against him, wanting to be carried home, and couldn't help letting out a soft laugh, saying, "Alright."

The light, pleasant sound of his laughter fell against his ear. Cang Shun lifted a pair of demonic eyes bright as stars, and saw that the corners of his human's eyes were tilted slightly upward, a few strands of black hair brushing across his brow, settling beside the single tear-mole at the corner of his eye.

He had once seen the clear lakes beneath the moon in the demon realm, fallen blossoms scattered across the water, ripples breaking their reflections apart, yet none of it compared to the clear brilliance in his human's eyes.

Cang Shun gazed at him for a long moment, then, without a word, lowered his palm, gently cupping the back of Chen Moqing's head, bowed his forehead down, and pressed a light, soft kiss to the tear-mole at the corner of his eye.

Chenjie, off to the side: "……"

This immortal sword seemed to have gone completely stiff, frozen motionless in midair, only Ran Cang drifted lazily back and forth nearby.

Having stolen his kiss, the Demon Emperor silently looked away, glancing left, then right, holding tightly to his human's hand, saying nothing at all.

Chen Moqing felt as though he were once more watching a small, snow-white beast, poking its head out and shuffling about, its fur possibly even turned pink, transformed into a little peach-blossom cake.

His smile deepened a touch, his tone teasing: "Looks like our dual cultivation will have to be pushed back even further, then."

Cang Shun: "!"

Cang Shun's face whipped back around toward Chen Moqing at once. He silently pressed his forehead against the other's temple, rubbing against it slowly, and said, in a very quiet voice: "It doesn't have to be pushed back."

Chen Moqing was about to say something more to tease the Demon Emperor further, when, in the distant sky behind them, a column of red light shot straight up into the heavens.

He and Cang Shun spun around at once, their expressions already changed.

——That was the direction of Tianshu Sect!

The color of the sky changed in an instant, red light spreading across the entire heavens, blanketing the earth. As far as the eye could see, every direction was steeped in a blood-red crimson.

A towering, broad-shouldered figure stood poised above Tianshu Sect, golden robes billowing boldly, handsome and arrogant, had any high elder of Jinwu Sect been present, they would surely have recognized him at once as their own sect's Grand Elder, long in reclusive seclusion, who had fallen from Tribulation Crossing back to peak Mahayana: Ling Wankong!

The Jiugai Prefecture had long since been sealed off, and yet this Grand Elder of Jinwu Sect had appeared here directly. No one had sensed his presence before this moment at all, which proved only one thing—he had concealed his aura from the very start, hiding away within Tianshu Sect itself!

In this moment, he suddenly appeared, extending his palm toward the ruins that Tianshu Sect had already been reduced to, and clenched it sharply shut!

A blood-red great array rose up from the earth. In that very instant, every Tianshu Sect disciple still alive let out a scream of agony, caught utterly off guard as they were pinned fast across the array, their chests erupting with torrents of surging blood qi!

Amid the blood-light churning and roiling across the sky, Ling Wankong let out a cold laugh: "Yu Bai, how will you thank me for this?"

——By the time Cang Shun and Chen Moqing arrived, they found the bloody great array already covering the ruins of Tianshu Sect, every disciple's blood drained dry, their bodies left withered and dried!

Less than a quarter of an hour had passed since they left and returned, and yet in that short span of time, Tianshu had been utterly annihilated!

The towering blood-light transformed into countless crimson serpentine dragons, surging and roiling wildly across the vast sky. All that blood-light converged together as one, and condensed into a single, upright figure!

White hair, snow-white robes, untouched by even the faintest speck of dust, it was none other than Yu Bai!

Through the crimson, bloody haze, he slowly opened his eyes, his calm, unruffled gaze once again meeting Chen Moqing's across the distance.

"A Blood-Sha dark technique?" Cang Shun's voice was cold, "No wonder he wanted to keep those disciples alive."

The so-called Blood-Sha dark technique was the cruelest resurrection sorcery known to this world. It required a sufficient number of cultivators, preferably exceptionally talented heaven's chosen, upon whom the technique's markings had been carved over the course of many years, so that when the time came to maturity, their lives could be sacrificed to grant the caster a single chance at resurrection.

No one had imagined that these Tianshu Sect disciples had, all along, been nothing but the sect head's own backup plan for resurrection!

Yu Bai's gaze lingered on Chen Moqing for only a single breath before his figure shot forward like an arrow loosed from the string, straight up into the vast sky!

He crashed into the very heavens, carrying with him the freshly-revived aura of his sword path! Ling Wankong followed close behind!

Cang Shun and Chen Moqing moved to act at once, but it was already too late. In the blink of an eye, these two half step Tribulation Crossing cultivators detonated themselves without hesitation, falling from the sky, their bodies transforming into a surging rain of blood that poured down across the Jiugai Prefecture!

Their combined cultivation exploded directly above Jiugai Prefecture, a power nearly the most terrifying this world had ever known, shattering the very sky, cracking open the whole heavens, splitting open countless rifts into the void!

Several thousand zhang away, Chu Langtao, having just landed with the others from the teleportation array, looked up in shock at the dense black fissures now spreading across the entire sky, gooseflesh rising across his skin: "What was that?!"

A faint, cool woman's voice drifted down from above him: "This is bad."

Chu Langtao turned his head. Not far off, hovering in the air, stood a particularly tall woman in yellow robes, sword-like brows rising toward her temples, eyes like cold stars, her bearing astonishingly fierce and sharp—not long before, when Tianshu Sect's Second and Third Elders had joined forces, their overwhelming pressure had reached as far as the viewing platform, and it was she who had acted to save all the onlookers there.

Qiu Tianyue, Grand Elder of Qiushui Sect, a weapon cultivator who had ascended to peak Mahayana through her blade!

In the next instant, Qiu Tianyue's sharp, clear voice rang out across the entire cultivation world: "Everyone. A great calamity is about to befall the Nine Thousand Prefectures! All cultivators above Void Refinement, please come at once to lend aid!"

Chu Langtao stared, dumbstruck: "Elder Qiu... do you know something?"

Qiu Tianyue slowly shook her head, her gaze still fixed on the vast sky above: "I have a... very, very bad feeling."

Before she had even finished speaking, her expression suddenly sharpened, as though she had sensed something. Clear anger surfaced on a face that had, until now, remained composed and unshaken.

"Heavenly Dao's presence has vanished!"

In that same instant, it was not only Qiu Tianyue, every mighty cultivator scattered across the cultivation world felt a chilling premonition rise up within them all at once.

Once one stepped into Body Integration, one gained a certain sensitivity to heaven and earth, faintly able to perceive the presence of Heavenly Dao itself—and now, every mighty cultivator at Body Integration and above found, to their shock, that Heavenly Dao's presence had suddenly vanished, no longer perceivable to them at all!

Heavenly Dao was not merely the embodiment of this world's laws, but also exerted influence over this world's boundary walls. With Heavenly Dao directly gone silent, before the world's very laws could even react, it was as though the boundary wall sealing the cultivation world they lived in had simply been lifted away, throwing open a gateway to a world of a far higher order!

In an instant, the wind stilled, the clouds stopped moving, the mountains and rivers stood motionless, the seas and streams fell silent, heaven and earth entirely still, as though the whole world had been frozen into a single painted scroll.

Amid this utterly abnormal silence, a single long, deep fissure appeared simultaneously across every sky throughout the Nine Thousand Prefectures, the crack stretching across the heavens without end, as though the world were a sealed box whose lid had been slit open by a single cut running clean through its top.

A single enormous eye squeezed out through the fissure, rolling slowly as it turned, silently peering down into this world.

Beneath the gaze of that colossal eye, all living beings throughout the Nine Thousand Prefectures fell into dead silence, swallowed whole by terror and dread!

Above Tianshu Sect, Chen Moqing, standing face-to-face with the rift that had torn through the world's boundary, suddenly felt a sharp, searing heat well up in his chest, nearly scorching through his very skin.

The Withered Wood Spring Revival Decree!

This immortal-bequeathed decree, which had lain dormant in his spiritual sea all this while, pulsed now with a sensation stronger than it ever had before, as though it were furious! As though it were howling in silent rage!

Before him, Cang Shun stepped forward, shielding him behind his back, his crimson demonic eyes blazing fierce with burning fury: "Heavenly Dao!"

Heavenly Dao made no response, as silent as death—instead, a sharp burst of laughter echoed across the entire breadth of the Nine Thousand Prefectures: "Hahaha! Hahahaha!"

Where Chen Moqing's gaze was locked, within that colossal eye staring down into this world, a small black speck appeared.

In an instant the black speck swelled larger, slipping through the fissure into the territory of the Nine Thousand Prefectures, descending directly above Jiugai Prefecture!

"Oh, Yu Bai, Yu Bai. If you had only called upon this one to act sooner, how could you ever have fallen to such a state as this?"

A black robe billowed in the air, like withered wood scorched by cracked flame, giving off a cold, oppressive aura of darkness.

Beneath that robe, a warped, distorted figure was shrouded within towering black mist. Neither Chen Moqing nor Cang Shun could make out his face at all, only hearing his sharp, piercing laughter.

"Well, isn't this fine, now this one has to waste the effort bringing you two back to life. Tsk, tsk, tsk, truly... hm?"

The laughter paused. The black robe shifted, and a head slowly turned toward Chen Moqing, as though a sharp gaze pierced straight through the dense black mist, fixing directly upon him.

"How strange. On a little lowborn thing like you from this lower realm... there lingers a trace of an aura this one finds familiar."

Chen Moqing's expression showed not the slightest change. He merely watched as a withered, gaunt, pitch-black hand, like a charred branch of dead wood, reached out from beneath the black robe, pointing from afar at the space between his brows.

"Ah, this one recalls now, it's Huan Chen's aura..."

Huan Chen.

The scorching heat in his chest surged stronger still, the Withered Wood Spring Revival Decree nearly manifesting outright. Chen Moqing pressed a hand to his chest, his spiritual sense settling, soothing that immortal-bequeathed decree, as he stared straight at the black-robed visitor across the distance.

"You speak of this world's immortal?"

"An immortal?" The black-robed visitor seemed to be in remarkably good humor, letting out an amused chuckle and even nodding toward him, "Indeed. In the terms of this lower realm, one qualified to cross the boundary and depart would naturally be called an immortal, I suppose."

"For a world as impoverished in spiritual energy as this one, producing but a single immortal once every several hundred thousand years, that's no small feat, truly."

"However..."

The black-robed visitor let his words trail off into a long, drawn-out note, then suddenly burst once more into a fit of sharp, piercing laughter, nearly enough to pierce straight through Chen Moqing's eardrums.

Cang Shun once again stepped forward, shielding him from view. Before them, the black robe billowed open, and countless strands of black mist surged forth in a wild torrent, swallowing the great sun in an instant, plunging their field of vision into darkness, dragging the whole earth once more down into a lightless underworld!

Within that sky-smothering, sun-blotting darkness, the colossal eye within the rift spun rapidly, crawling over with fine, dense, blood-red veins—in the next instant, an unceasing torrent of blood-red began pouring down from the eye, in an instant converging into a vast, boundless sea of blood, drowning tens of thousands of li of sky!

The sea of blood churned and boiled, like some ancient beast out of a primeval age that devoured heaven and earth, splitting open a great, blood-red maw!

In that same instant, Cang Shun's and Chen Moqing's expressions turned cold as ice. Their auras erupted without the slightest reservation, crashing headlong into that surging sea of blood!

——The Demon Abyss!

Beneath the overflowing Demon Abyss, in the terrified eyes of every living being across the Nine Thousand Prefectures, the black-robed visitor's ferocious laughter rang out across the whole of the mortal realm: "Your Heavenly Dao has long since rotted away! Your immortal, the very instant he ascended, was devoured flesh and blood by the likes of us, picked clean to the very last scrap! Hahahahaha!"

The laughter echoed across the entire breadth of the Nine Thousand Prefectures. His own cultivation poured forth in the very same moment, and with but a single clash, he drove both Cang Shun and Chen Moqing back several thousand meters!

It was, impossibly, a cultivation above Tribulation Crossing—

The Ascension realm!

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