Two figures advanced with divine steps, traversing the star domain, crossing spatial folds.
“This time, this emperor must still thank you. Fortunately, you returned to the Ancient Desolate Ruins City to seek the Heavenly Matron and obtained her divine edict. With this edict in hand, that figure in the Life and Death Ruins of the southern heavens will surely harbour some reservations and refrain from striking at Zhang Ruchen again.”
Seeing Gu She Jing ignore him, Little Black added, “However, this emperor is puzzled. The Heavenly Matron has issued her divine edict, so why not appear in person and head to the southern heavens? Would that not carry greater deterrence? Moreover, with Zhang Ruchen’s cultivation crippled and his life hanging by a thread, the Heavenly Matron merely granted him the title of divine envoy. Why not hasten to save him and restore his cultivation?”
Gu She Jing halted her steps, fixing him with a cold stare. “You know Zhang Ruchen’s life hangs by a thread? If so, why follow me? Should you not be rushing to find him?”
Little Black’s eyes darted about. “I share only a faint connection with him. You absorbed his soul force and cannot sense his location. How could this emperor possibly detect it? Without knowing where he is, how can I search?”
“The Heavenly Matron cannot leave the Ancient Desolate Ruins City! This secret, I have shared only with you. Should outsiders learn of it, it must be you who spread it.” Gu She Jing continued, “Stop following me. We are not close.”
Little Black hurried after her, attempting to build rapport, and chuckled, “We cannot sense Zhang Ruchen’s location, but the Funeral Gold White Tiger can, so this emperor is not worried for his safety.”
After traversing another stretch of star domain, Gu She Jing could endure it no longer. She stopped once more, glaring at him. “This goddess must return to the Luo Ancestor Cloud Mountain Realm to report certain matters. Shall we part here?”
“What a coincidence. This emperor is heading to the Luo Ancestor Cloud Mountain Realm as well.”
“What business do you have in the Luo Ancestor Cloud Mountain Realm?”
“What does that matter to you?”
Gu She Jing rolled her eyes upward. “I am the Pavilion Overseer of the Luo Ancestor Cloud Mountain Realm. Whether you enter falls to my discretion.”
“Very well, Pavilion Overseer. This emperor goes to the Luo Ancestor Cloud Mountain Realm to visit Mu Lingxi. That girl, should she learn of Zhang Ruchen’s misfortune, might do something foolish. This emperor must go to soothe her.”
Seeing the scepticism in Gu She Jing’s eyes, Little Black hastily added, “Truth be told, Mu Lingxi is this emperor’s goddaughter. If you doubt it, ask Zhang Ruchen yourself.”
Little Black had already retrieved the Execution Heaven Jar from the Five Purities Sect. He and Chi Yao had parted ways: one to seek Zhang Ruchen, the other to the Luo Ancestor Cloud Mountain Realm to rescue Chi Xingtian.
Gu She Jing sneered, “Mu Lingxi is your goddaughter? And Zhang Ruchen?”
“With this emperor’s status, son of a divine venerable. Age, over a hundred thousand years. Experience, even you cannot match it, surely? When Zhang Ruchen was still young, he truly called me godfather. It was only later, with his cultivation growing mighty and wings hardening, that he grew insolent and disrespectful.” Little Black spoke with utmost seriousness, tinged with a touch of melancholy and sigh.
Gu She Jing snorted and transformed into a streak of red divine light, soaring through the void.
“Do not go. Wait for this emperor.”
Little Black pursued closely.
…
The cosmos teemed with stars, its spaces vast and boundless.
Among the gods, a great sage had once calculated the number of stars in the Hell Realm’s Yellow Springs Star River, arriving at an approximate figure of nearly one trillion.
A single star could form a minor star system. (In the Solar System, estimates of asteroids exceed a million, with small celestial bodies numbering in the billions.)
This meant the Yellow Springs Star River held fully one trillion minor star systems.
Let alone one trillion minor star systems; even one ten-thousandth of the Yellow Springs Star River’s domain was so expansive that a divine venerable could scarcely cross it directly. One must traverse star paths, wormholes, or interstellar teleportation arrays.
If a divine venerable’s divine sense locked onto a person, locating them was no great feat.
But should that person slip the lock, finding them in such boundless stellar expanse was like seeking a needle in the ocean, exceedingly difficult.
In a dilapidated sacred hall, the Exquisite Chan Maiden, clad in Fire God Armour, placed a headless corpse onto a stone platform thick with dust and cobwebs.
Along the way, too many gods had pursued them. She had no time to help Zhang Ruchen refine the potent death vigour infiltrating his body.
Yet fortunately, Zhang Ruchen’s vitality was formidable. His flame of life had not been extinguished.
This place had once been a saint’s cultivation ground years prior, but it lay in severe disrepair, reduced to mere ruins.
“Swish! Swish! Swish…”
The Exquisite Chan Maiden struck out thirty-two array flags, which became thirty-two yellow lights hurtling forth, evolving into myriad inscriptions. Thus arrayed in these ruins, she returned to the broken hall.
Her pair of clear, lovely eyes gazed upon the figure on the stone platform, enveloped in thick death qi. “You, Zhang Ruchen, are truly remarkable. You drew forth a figure like the Ancestor Holder to strike personally, a treatment befitting a divine venerable. He regarded you as a future Lord of Heaven. Yet eroded by such dread death qi, why has your flame of life not flickered out?”
The Ancestor Holder’s strike, even a mere wisp of death qi entering the body, posed an arduous ordeal for elder gods to dispel.
Zhang Ruchen, a nascent god, surviving thus far was nothing short of a miracle.
The Exquisite Chan Maiden noticed a white glow flickering at Zhang Ruchen’s chest.
“It seems the supreme Buddhist treasure, the Great Arhat White Pearl, withstood the death qi, aided by the Buddha ancestor’s relic safeguarding your body. All is karma. Had you not given me the Mani Pearl, how could I have bestowed the Great Arhat White Pearl upon you? Had you not given me the Fire God Armour, granting me means to conceal my identity, how could I have emerged to save you? Sow the seed, reap the fruit. Entanglements of grace and grudge, from the moment we chose to resolve our enmities, were thus ordained.”
The Exquisite Chan Maiden placed her pair of snow-white, slender jade hands above Zhang Ruchen’s body, drawing forth the power of the Great Arhat White Pearl.
“Splash!”
The Great Arhat White Pearl’s radiance swelled, purifying the death qi cloaking Zhang Ruchen thread by thread.
Only a god of the Exquisite Chan Maiden’s calibre, wielding a Buddhist treasure of the Great Arhat White Pearl’s rank, could cleanse such overbearing death qi.
Time passed, unknowable in duration.
The death qi dissipated. The Exquisite Chan Maiden’s divine qi was greatly depleted. Her porcelain-smooth, lovely face bore traces of sweat and a flush of red.
Freed from the death qi’s suppression, Zhang Ruchen’s shattered skull began to regrow slowly. Yet his eyes remained shut, consciousness unreturning.
His complexion was pallid, fraught with sickly pallor.
The Exquisite Chan Maiden’s tender little hand touched Zhang Ruchen’s chest, full and firm. His heart beat steadily; the divine heart was unfractured, pulsing with potent mental force undulations.
Why had he not awakened?
“Hmm!”
The Exquisite Chan Maiden sensed something amiss. She removed Zhang Ruchen’s robes, revealing the “Six Ancestors Chan Enlightenment Scroll” wrapped about his form.
She peeled away the “Six Ancestors Chan Enlightenment Scroll” bit by bit, laying it flat on the ground, and examined it closely.
Gradually, a trace of vexed annoyance crept across her jade-like, creamy face. “So this is the Sixth Ancestor. Damnable, even I was deceived by you!”
Recalling how, in the remnants of Yun Qing Ancient Buddha’s divine sea, she had been awed by the Sixth Ancestor’s presence into kneeling, her heart soured. She felt certain Zhang Ruchen had mocked her then.
Unable to restrain herself, she clenched her fist.
“No! A Buddhist cultivator must hold a heart still as water. Why do my emotions fluctuate ever more wildly now? Utterly devoid of my former serenity?” The Exquisite Chan Maiden realised this boded ill; her mindset had faltered.
She calmed her feelings, steadying her heart, then rolled up the “Six Ancestors Chan Enlightenment Scroll” and placed it beside Zhang Ruchen.
Outside.
“It is here! Zhang Ruchen’s aura lies within, though shrouded by a skilful array. Breaching it will not be simple.”
“I shall break the array.”
The Exquisite Chan Maiden gazed toward the saint’s ruins, spotting the figures of the Funeral Gold White Tiger and Chi Yao.
She glanced once more at Zhang Ruchen and sighed, “So be it. I can aid you only thus far. I hope this blow does not crush you. Cultivate your mental force henceforth, and you may yet lord over the world with laughter.”
Chi Yao drew her divine sword, intent on forcing the array.
But abruptly, the dense array inscriptions vanished. The hazy grey space before them clarified gradually, revealing the ruins’ broken walls, snapped pillars, and ancient halls one by one.
A streak of flame divine light streaked across the skies.
By the time Chi Yao and the Funeral Gold White Tiger entered these ruins, the Exquisite Chan Maiden had already departed this star domain, fleeing at utmost speed.
…
Zhang Ruchen found himself in a grand palace of golden splendour, with vermilion walls and tiled roofs, glass lamps and bronze lions, iron steeds and jade butterflies, silver flowers as adornments.
So familiar…
Right!
It was the imperial palace’s grand hall of the Central Imperial City of Shengming.
“How am I here?”
As Zhang Ruchen puzzled in bewilderment, a familiar yet estranged voice sounded, laced with bitterness. “Holy Monk, is there truly no other way?”
Zhang Ruchen turned toward the voice and beheld a tall, stately figure with refined features, a middle-aged man of about fifty.
It was the Azure Emperor, Chi Yao’s father.
Zhang Ruchen jolted awake as from a dream, surveying his surroundings. Only then did he notice that in the grand hall stood not only the Azure Emperor and the Radiant Emperor; beside him was the youthful Chi Yao, a girl of merely a dozen years, clad in form-fitting white martial robes.
At the hall’s centre stood a sacred figure radiating Buddhist light: the form of the Sumeru Holy Monk.
“How can this be? I was clearly undergoing the divine tribulation. No, I had already passed it and was constructing the Tenth Heaven Universe when struck by an overwhelmingly fearsome assault… How did I suddenly arrive here?”
Zhang Ruchen’s heart raced. He thought darkly, “Could I have been reborn to eighteen hundred years past, returned to my sixteenth year?”
Soon, Zhang Ruchen realised his notion was amiss.
For though he stood in the grand hall, he held no control over his body. He could only observe and listen passively.
The Sumeru Holy Monk said, “Were there another way, why would this poor monk pin hopes upon two children in their teens? This tribulation is not merely Kunlun Realm’s, but the heavens and earth’s entire. Only by cultivating the ‘King Scripture’ refined to perfection by the Immovable Wisdom King do we hold a slender chance. Of course, we compel them not. We leave the choice to them.”
The Azure Emperor and Radiant Emperor’s gazes turned to Zhang Ruchen and Chi Yao.
“Yao Yao and I have already discussed it. We are willing to cultivate the ‘King Scripture’. Though we know not the enemy’s true might, no matter how arduous the future, we shall face it hand in hand. Not for other reasons, but to seize that slender chance, to claim a future.” Zhang Ruchen’s form was youthful, touched with immaturity, yet his words rang firm and resolute.
Zhang Ruchen’s consciousness, like a mere spectator, could only watch his sixteen-year-old self utter these words.
“Do not decide hastily. You must first know what cultivating the complete ‘King Scripture’ entails. It means that in future, it will not be a choice of joining hands, but an inevitability of parting.”
Thereupon, the Sumeru Holy Monk recounted the brutal truths of cultivating the ‘King Scripture’.
