O43novel Chapter 856.22: Seven Fragments of the Sutra
Chapter 856.22: Seven Fragments of the Sutra
The mountain winds howled, and thunderclouds churned violently.The higher they climbed, the icier the mountain winds became.
The thunder overhead grew increasingly oppressive.
Chen Huaian moved with exceptional swiftness along the subsequent path.
Zhang Yibai and Gu Changsheng followed silently behind Chen Huaian.
Watching Chen Huaian's back, they felt a sliver of confusion and unease.
The familiar Chen Huaian from their memories seemed to be undergoing a transformation, like an amnesiac gradually recovering their past. Former memories and present recollections were slowly merging, making him seem at times like a youthful boy, and at others like an elderly man in his twilight years.
With each step.
Chen Huaian's tread grew heavier.
Each time they passed a palace or a statue, an additional aura would gather around Chen Huaian.
That aura was majestic as the ocean, far less sharp and piercing than Chen Huaian's Sword Intent, yet it resembled a forging hammer, ceaselessly striking against Chen Huaian's very soul.
Bi Yue Wu also remained silent.
Having come this far, he had already figured things out.
As long as he followed Chen Huaian and didn't run around recklessly, then everything on these floating peaks wouldn't backlash against him.
Otherwise, if he harbored any ulterior motives, or showed even a trace of arrogance or disrespect, the secrets hidden within these palaces were no joke.
They could truly kill even an Immortal.
Each time Chen Huaian entered a palace, he only needed to wait outside.
Wait for Chen Huaian to stand motionless before a statue, then bow, and retrieve a torn scripture.
Then, that palace could be passed through normally.
He couldn't see the sights that made Chen Huaian pause, much less witness the tragic songs of deicide forged from flesh and blood.
The fifth floating peak.
Pushing open the palace doors, a murderous aura of clashing metal assaulted their senses.
No gods or demons were enshrined within the hall. There was only a massive sword-forging furnace that seemed to have burned for ten thousand years without extinguishing.
Within the furnace mouth, two stone statues embraced tightly.
The man was resolute, the woman graceful and beautiful. They were not forging a sword, but rather throwing themselves into the furnace.
They merged into one within the raging flames, you within me, I within you, indistinguishable whether it was man forging the sword or the sword forging man.
Golden characters floated above the sword-forging furnace.
"Gan Jiang, Mo Ye…"
Chen Huaian stopped, frowning as he read the names of this man and woman.
Gan Jiang was the swordsmith, and Mo Ye was his wife.
The golden characters churned upon the furnace's flames.
[The gods, the Supreme Being, are devoid of emotion, feeding on the essence of heaven and earth.]
[They cultivate the 'Path of Emotionlessness', viewing all things as mere straw dogs. Thus, their hearts are unburdened, indestructible like diamond.]
[The gods commanded us, husband and wife, to forge a 'vessel' capable of bearing divine power.]
[We two knew that mortal iron could not withstand divine majesty. The only method was the 'heart'.]
[The gods do not understand the heart. In their eyes, the seven emotions and six desires are mere burdens; love, hate, greed, and anger are but dust.]
[That night, the furnace fire reached its purest blue. The god descended. It opened its enormous maw, demanding that vessel.]
[Mo Ye smiled. She leaped into the furnace; I also smiled, and followed her.]
[With our twin souls united in an undying vow, we transformed into an obsession named 'Ultimate Emotion' and charged into the god's Sea of Consciousness.]
[The god devoured us.]
[Then… the god fell into chaos!]
[For the first time, it felt the pain of 'loss', the bitterness of 'unfulfilled desire', and felt… the 'fear' born from 'love'.]
[The god fell from the clouds, becoming a weeping, fearful, mortal… mad demon.]
[Those who come after, remember this: The god's heart is empty and silent.]
[Make the god fall into the mortal dust. Once a god knows fear, it gains a fatal weakness!]
Chen Huaian gazed at the two stone statues fused into one, speechless for a long time.
Using their own bodies as bait, just to make a heavenly god transform from an unkillable monster into a cultivator similar to those Divine Immortals of the Immortal Realm.
Beings like Bi Yue Wu and Tu Fu Xing were, at their core, nothing more than special Cultivators.
Ordinary Cultivators use True Essence; Immortals use Immortal Essence. They are simply one dimension higher than Cultivators.
Gan Jiang and Mo Ye's meaning was: to kill a god, one must make the god's dimension fall.
But to pollute a god's heart using oneself and one's beloved… the price was far too heavy.
He, Chen Huaian, could not do such a thing.
If he could not kill the god, he would rather Li Qingran remain in the Cangyun Realm forever, never entangled in the karmic cycles of this world.
Chen Huaian sighed deeply, bowing respectfully towards the sword furnace.
Then, from the embrace of the stone statues, he gently retrieved the fifth volume of the torn scripture.
…
The sixth floating peak.
If the musician Shi Kuang's palace was the Great Sound being faint and rare.
Then this place was the Great Image having no form.
The palace walls were carved with ancient seal script, but all were blurred, as if forcibly erased by some power.
The stone statue within the hall was that of a scholar.
No eyes, no hands.
Only a mouth of steel teeth, biting fiercely onto a bald brush, its tip deeply embedded into a wordless stone stele before it.
On the stele, there originally seemed to have been a character, but it had been smeared beyond recognition by bloody scratch marks.
[The Historian Who Broke Words — Cang Jie]
The golden characters carried a resolve to obliterate everything.
[The gods are originally formless, drifting between existence and non-existence, hence deathless and indestructible.]
[To kill a god, first make it 'exist'.]
[I discarded my eyes to perceive its origin; I severed my hands to delineate its true form.]
[Give the god a 'name'.]
[The moment the name is inscribed, chaos collapses, and the god gains definition.]
[It is no longer the omnipotent Heavenly Dao; it is merely a beast named 'Heavenly God'!]
[Latercomer: Observe it, define it, clarify its form. The moment the god is 'seen clearly', it gains a fatal weakness. I condensed my life's learnings into a volume of torn scripture. If you can grasp some of its essence from it, you may stand a chance when facing that heavenly god. Alas, by the time this method was completed, my lamp was dry, my oil spent, and I knew not whether that formless, shapeless thing could truly be slain by my Dao…]
[If you didn't kill it… don't blame me! Hahaha!]
The golden characters vanished.
Looking again at the blurred character on the stele, it gradually took form.
The stele bore only ten characters.
Double Pupils, Candle Dragon, Tian Wu, Ruins Corpse, Lord of Soldiers.
Two characters formed one name, with a fist-sized gap after each name.
The handwriting was frenzied, as if written in a state of madness. Chen Huaian could almost see Cang Jie, biting the bald brush, twisting his neck, face contorted in a snarl as he carved these characters.
He must have endured immense agony.
Because merely looking at these characters made one's soul tremble.
Chen Huaian offered a deep bow to the stone statue kneeling before the stele and took the torn scripture.
…
They continued upward, the wind growing stronger.
When the group set foot on the seventh floating peak, a domineering imperial aura that seemed to suppress all eternity made Wang Shouyi and the others' knees go weak even through the tightly shut palace doors, nearly causing them to kneel.
Black clouds press upon the city, threatening to crush it.
Other floating peaks held only a single palace.
This place looked more like a city.
They pushed open the heavy palace doors.
Here, there was no decay, no dilapidation, nor the ethereal elegance of an immortal abode.
The great hall was dominated by profound black, majestic beyond any mortal creation. Thirty-six black-gold dragon pillars, each requiring ten men to encircle, tenaciously supported the vaulted ceiling, as if holding up the entire firmament. The floor was not paved with gold or jade, but with a massive map of the Nine Provinces' mountains and rivers, cast from black iron.
At the far end of the hall, atop ninety-nine steps of black jade.
A stone statue of a man clad in a black dragon imperial robe did not sit upon a dragon throne, but stood with his hand on his sword. He turned his back to all living beings, facing the chaotic void of the heavens, his black robes flapping like a solitary peak severing the path between heaven and earth. The long sword "Tai'a" in his hand, though made of stone, radiated an overbearing sharpness that seemed intent on shattering this heaven, these gods, this so-called Great Dao.
[The First Emperor — Ancestral Dragon]
Chen Huaian stood upon the massive map of the Nine Provinces, looking up at that back.
The Ancestral Dragon soul within his dantian raised its head and roared wildly.
The air trembled violently as golden characters exploded in the void.
This was not a sorrowful letter home, nor a helpless final testament.
It was an imperial edict that shattered the heavens, enduring for ten thousand generations.
[The so-called Immortals are nothing but broken-spined dogs wagging their tails beneath the Heavenly Gate.]
[My Tai'a does not slay ants; it executes only the azure heavens!]
[They recline high upon the ninefold clouds, viewing the Divine Land as pasture, the myriad people as blood meals.]
[What they desire is not a monarch to rule the world together, but slaves who kneel and beg for food.]
[The world calls me tyrannical, says I exhaust the people and waste resources? Absurd!]
[I built the Ten-Thousand-Mile Great Wall, not merely to resist the Xiongnu, but to lock down the Nine Provinces' dragon veins, preventing a single strand of mortal Destiny Energy from being offered up to the Celestial Court!]
[I burned the texts of the Hundred Schools, buried alive the alchemists and Confucian scholars, all to erase the records of 'gods' from the historical annals, severing this incense of worship for ten thousand generations!]
[All under heaven is the king's land. This mortal realm, while I am here, is not a place for 'Heaven' to run wild!]
[I did not lose to the gods.]
[I lost to the unenlightened minds of the people, lost to this deeply ingrained… slave mentality of 'fearing Heaven'.]
[As long as there remains one person in this world whose knees go soft, kneeling to worship the deities, then the gods will never die.]
[You who come after — if you wish to wage war against Heaven, first wage war against the heart and spirit!]
[Gods… also bleed. Only with no god in your heart can you face the myriad heavens.]
Boom—!
This overwhelmingly domineering will assaulted Chen Huaian's Divine Soul.
Chen Huaian took a deep breath. Facing that back, he did not perform a cultivator's Dao salute, but offered the mortal world's cupped fist salute.
Crack.
Upon the high platform, the stone Tai'a sword trembled slightly.
The seventh volume, also the final volume of the torn scripture, transformed into a profound black light that howled down and landed in Chen Huaian's palm.
Thus.
Seven floating peaks, seven tragic songs, seven volumes of torn scripture.
All gathered in the hands of one man.
"Chen Huaian…"
Bi Yue Wu, who had remained silent and hauntingly present all along, finally spoke at this moment.
His eyes, reddened from being scorched by the nine suns, looked at Chen Huaian, a cold smile appearing on his face.
"You've got them all, right?"
"Seven places, seven Opportunities."
Bi Yue Wu's hand slowly pressed against his Array Disk. Although his aura had weakened considerably, it now exuded a murderous intent that revealed the dagger at the end of the map.
"Since the pathfinding work is done."
"Then hand over… the things."