Was he arriving above the nine heavens? Or perhaps an even higher realm, or even beyond the heavens? Qin Ming was astonished, gazing out toward the majestic giant city.
The nine-colored auspicious cloud soared across the celestial vault, shuttling through endless black clouds and mist. It seemed as minuscule as a solitary leaf-boat in an ocean, yet its speed was astonishing, shooting forward like an arrow.
Qin Ming drew a sharp breath. Above the sea of clouds, he breathed in the astral wind. That mighty, imposing city appeared close, but it was an illusion. Ripples dotted the space ahead, as though a mirror stood blocking the way.
With a whoosh, he breached it, seeming to enter a watery mirror-surface, or perhaps piercing through an extraordinary conduit.
"This is..." After passing through the rippling area, he saw the hazy truth. What met his eyes was boundless grandeur.
It was an immense sheer cliff, upon which that towering pass was situated. Though still vast distances away, he could already feel its crushing oppression.
The towering city walls resembled rolling mountain ranges, winding like colossal dragons with sky-swallowing majesty. The buildings standing within the city seemed connected to the stars and the moon, steaming with auspicious glow and flowing with the rhymes of the Dao.
Even the churning, heavy black mist could hardly obscure this city.
Yet why was it atop a cliff?
Qin Ming felt that, riding an auspicious cloud, he ought to have ascended above the nine heavens.
He stared deeply. The distance between him and the cliff was vast, the expanse between them excessively wide; had he not activated his Eye of the Newborn, he would not have been able to make out the other side at all.
Qin Ming looked down beneath his feet, his heart skipping a beat. There were actually meteors still burning, and immense celestial fragments.
It was like an unimaginably magnificent abyss sprawling across this domain.
Qin Ming took in a breath of cold air. Had he not ascended to the heavens, but rather risen from beneath an endless abyss, only to come upon this fractured highland ahead?
"Perhaps the answer lies in that rippling mirror surface," he pondered. It might have been a portal through which he had arrived in another realm.
Soon, the nine-colored auspicious cloud accelerated, cutting through a misty zone along the way and instantaneously shrinking the distance to the city on the cliff, arriving in the blink of an eye.
Once he truly arrived here, Qin Ming immediately felt his own insignificance. This so-called "cliff" had to be a torn continent.
Moreover, the scenery before him transformed once more. The majestic city abruptly seemed to weather thousands upon tens of thousands of years, decaying in the blink of an eye.
The mountain-like city walls collapsed. Buildings interwoven with chains of law decayed and shattered in an instant, crashing down in vast swathes. Even sky-towering divine trees withered into flying ashes, and lakes rippling with rules dried up in a flash.
This transformation was like an enactment of celestial shifts and epochs turned to dust, seas turning into mulberry fields, everything laid out in the most visceral depiction.
From all directions, many figures arrived riding auspicious clouds and landed upon the giant cliff. They were still the same beings from the night before, numbering several hundred in total, each shrouded in mist so that none could discern another's true face.
"Where is this place?" someone asked.
"A Heaven-chosen land." It was that same mysterious being from yesterday, transmitting conscious ripples from the depths of the night sky.
Qin Ming knew what kind of place this was, for his "good buddy" Bai Meng and that red-robed woman Tang Yushang hailed from a similar realm.
This place was ruined, yet Taixu still stood.
Historically, Yujing would occasionally truly descend upon the mortal realm, merging into one with its projection on the earth.
Such a domain was known as a Heaven-chosen land!
Now the glory had drawn to a close, leaving behind only fractured earth and ruins. Was this the result of the passing of eras and Yujing's departure, or had it been breached by an external force?
A voice echoed from the night sky: "This is a Heaven-chosen land from eight thousand years ago. You have now witnessed what it has become. Strive hard, or else, perhaps one day, the domain you inhabit will suffer the same fate."
Many watched in silence. The entire realm was desolate. What kind of devastating force had it endured?
"Is a new Heaven-chosen land about to appear?" Some were sharp-witted and secretly speculated: Could it be that Yujing was about to descend upon Yezhou?
The night sky fell quiet. The unknown entity did not respond immediately, only speaking after a moment: "One will appear."
"Why was this Heaven-chosen land abandoned?" someone asked.
"It was destroyed by adversaries." The voice in the sky spoke bluntly, revealing it just like that.
Instantly, a stir broke out across the cliff.
In people's hearts, Yujing was supreme, possessing boundless might; that even the ground of its descent had been reduced to ruins by adversaries struck these several hundred cultivators with immense shock.
Unfortunately, the voice was unwilling to elaborate.
"You were not brought here to lament the past or pay respects to antiquity. Enter the remnants. If you wish to understand the truth, unearth it within the ruins and fight bravely. Consider this a trial for you as well."
In the next instant, auspicious clouds of diverse hues surged upward, ferrying everyone into this giant city and depositing them in different zones.
"The scenes you behold are a battlefield that has already been cleared, devoid of any trace of the great enemies of old. Even so, it is by no means an easy path," warned the voice in the night sky.
This expanse of ruins was boundlessly vast. With several hundred people scattered across it, none were visible to another.
"Can people die here?" someone asked. On their return journey the previous night, someone had suffered a mishap, yet ultimately revived in their physical body.
"If killed, you will experience the agony of death firsthand. I will... do my best to save you."
Many felt their scalps prickle. Do my best? Did that mean some might not be saved and would truly, completely die?
After landing, Qin Ming examined his surroundings. Broken walls, crumbling ruins, rubble everywhere—this had once been a magnificent mansion, but it had been laid to waste.
He even spotted an architectural dome forged of mutton-fat jade iron lying shattered on the ground. What staggering extravagance!
He walked over and touched it lightly. The jade iron crumbled to dross, devoid of luster, as though drained of all its spirituality by something, inferior now even to ordinary iron.
The voice in the night sky admonished: "Even if you encounter one another, you may still be opponents. Be cautious. That is all."
From the storage space within the rag, Qin Ming retrieved the Measure-God Ruler. Pitch-black in color, this item had been seized from Helian Zhaoyu during their snowy duel outside the pure land.
Crafted from the finest heartwood of a Nine-Life Tree, this Measure-God Ruler possessed astonishing material quality, capable of shattering a mutton-fat jade iron saber.
Qin Ming walked through the estate, coming before a collapsed great hall. Cobwebs, mugwort weeds, and remnants of desolate ruins met his sight.
Suddenly, he sensed something amiss: things were falling from the night sky!
He retreated rapidly and observed closely. It was actually ash drifting down from the depths of the black vault of heaven, like a rotten past reduced to the dust of history, seeking to tell later generations of something long gone.
In an instant, the environment of the ruins shifted. Qin Ming's expression turned startled: why were those weeds suddenly far taller than him?
The change astonished him. Had the mansion grown larger, or had he shrunk?
Broken walls and ruined halls now appeared extraordinarily colossal, and from within came the sound of chanted scriptures, remarkably solemn and sacred.
Qin Ming leaped over a broken wall dozens of meters high to the other side of the ruined hall. His pupils abruptly contracted. He saw layers upon layers of giant webs vibrating into white ripples.
It was a spiderweb, gradually glowing, expanding like a spirit field.
At its center was a large spider, ferocious and intimidating. It was the one chanting scriptures.
Wasn't this the tiny spider on the web in the corner earlier? Pitch-black all over, it was very common in Yezhou and known as an ink spider.
Now it had grown massive, actually praying toward the depths of the night sky with great devotion. Then, its consciousness began to glow as it murmured in an incomprehensible language.
"Seeing the Heavenly Demon, why do you not bow?" The ink spider sent out conscious ripples, stern and forbidding, gazing down from the giant web.
Qin Ming wondered whether he was trapped in an illusion or if this spider had gone mad. An ordinary, tiny ink spider was now calling itself a Heavenly Demon.
Chih!
The ink spider spat silk, shooting toward Qin Ming like a streak of white cloth, dazzling as blade light.
Qin Ming swung the Measure-God Ruler, instantly severing the spider silk.
The ink spider spoke: "An evil monstrosity from the abyss invades! I beseech the supreme existence to bestow upon this humble spider supreme power to slay the evil here!"
It bowed toward the night sky with great earnestness.
Then, the glowing spiderweb erupted violently, looking incomparably sacred as it beamed with nine-colored brilliance.
"Heavenly Demon force field, slay evil!" the ink spider shouted.
Qin Ming was speechless. A spider proclaiming itself a Heavenly Demon had the nerve to call someone else an evil monstrosity? He flared with fury at once, wanting to dispatch it immediately.
Though pitch-black, the Measure-God Ruler in Qin Ming's hand radiated heavenly light like a blazing sun, terrifyingly potent. Such power was enough to slay opponents at the early stage of the fourth realm.
Yet he was momentarily stunned. A tiny spider channeling the so-called Heavenly Demon force field proved astonishingly valiant, blocking his heavenly light that should have swept away all resistance.
A chill ran down Qin Ming's back. It probably wasn't that the ink spider was powerful, but that the entity it prayed to had bestowed power that was utterly terrifying.
By now, the ink spider seemed to have truly become a Heavenly Demon. All eight of its legs moved in unison, forming hand seals like an eight-armed deity, emanating a solemn and sacred aura.
Qin Ming exerted great effort before inflicting heavy injuries upon it. Subsequently, he went so far as to unleash the Six Ding Divine Fire and Nanming Departing Fire, burning the Heavenly Demon to death.
At this point, the Heavenly Demon reverted to its original spider form, merely an inch or so long, tiny and charred black. The Heavenly Demon force field also transformed back into a simple spiderweb in the corner of the wall.
Qin Ming knitted his brows tightly. This matter went far beyond reason. All of it had resulted from the spider's prayer; in the unseen, it seemed as if some entity had truly lent it strength.
"Was that entity Yujing's adversary? It shouldn't be appearing here. Perhaps it's merely residual energy... yet even that produces such a terrifying effect."
Qin Ming felt heavy at heart. Even the lingering remnants left by Yujing's adversary could briefly turn an ordinary little spider into a formidable menace.
Was this one of the truths they could uncover by entering the ruins?
Amidst the crumbled walls and remnants, Qin Ming continued forward. In the night wind, the chime of bells rang out, remarkably crisp and melodious, giving him a sudden start.
Wind chimes from eight thousand years ago, unbroken and still ringing? This was unnatural.
Sure enough, Qin Ming saw it clearly: a set of wind chimes, mostly broken, hanging from the corner of a collapsed structure. It was glowing and trembling continuously.
The missing portions of the wind chimes actually sprouted flesh and blood, repairing their own defects!
Then the chimes expanded, each growing as large as a great bell. Faces grew upon that flesh and blood, every one resembling an innocent, naive child.
Amidst the crisp chimes, they were all smiling—boys and girls alike—gazing toward the depths of the night sky, murmuring, whispering, praying.
Qin Ming stowed the Measure-God Ruler and fused the rag into his fist. He was currently in a state of spirit wandering, making it easy to conceal the old rag within his fist.
Faced with such a bizarre phenomenon, he took it seriously, going all out.
The rag had never displayed extraordinary might, but it could amplify his heavenly light to a degree.
Sure enough, his caution proved warranted. After the children prayed, the sounds emitted by the wind chimes changed entirely—grand, terrifying, accompanied by wave after wave of bell tremors crashing forward.
Every wind chime was like a massive bell, its reverberations deafening.
Yet the children's faces still appeared innocent as they babbled and cooed.
Dong!
The wind chimes flew up, hurtling down to smash into Qin Ming. His fist-radiance struck against them, feeling like a collision with a mountain.
Qin Ming was jolted until his blood and qi churned. Great bells filled his vision, and many children flew out from the fleshy bell bodies, smiling as they pounced toward him to kill.
One child after another was knocked flying by his fist-light. They were astonishingly resilient; normally, such bodies of flesh and blood should have been blasted apart long ago.
Qin Ming channeled Chaos force, unifying all arts into one, unleashing forty-nine consecutive punches. With the rag's augmentation, his heavenly light reached the absolute peak of density before he finally shattered all the wind chimes and children to pieces.
He exhaled a breath of turbid air. This place was utterly bizarre.
He walked forward and found that all the chimes were shattered and rust-covered, showing no abnormalities whatsoever, all quite small. Just moments ago, they had actually forced him to use his trump cards.
"Residual mysterious power could actually alter an ordinary set of wind chimes and threaten an immortal seed!"
Qin Ming reflected: the unknown entity—the Colossus—could turn the rotten into the miraculous through remnants left behind eight thousand years ago. Just how terrifying would its true appearance be?
Leaving the mansion, he stepped onto a severely ruined street, where many stretches had been blasted into abysses.
Right at that moment, dense fog mysteriously arose across the ruins, and things began drifting down from the night sky once more—multitudes of yellowed pages.
It was as though an ancient volume had been torn apart, scattered down from the celestial vault.
Qin Ming dodged aside, his eyes fixed on them, wishing to scrutinize them closely, for no matter how he looked at them, they resembled precious scriptures.
He shot out a beam of heavenly light to capture a drifting page.
In just an instant, he felt that this single page weighed more than ten thousand jun, saturated with Dao rhymes, bearing down on him so heavily he could barely endure it.
Upon the yellowed paper, dense characters surfaced as he made contact. Sure enough, it was suspected to be... an unknown true scripture, likely of unimaginably immense origin.
Yet before Qin Ming could ponder and comprehend it, blood seeped from the paper's surface, causing all the small characters imbued with dense Dao rhymes to explode, then burst into flames.
He switched to another scriptural page; it seemed even heavier, and it quickly combusted on its own.
The scriptural pages fell like withered leaves across the sky, exploding the moment characters surfaced, swaying like expanses of candlelight before falling to the ground as ash.
"Yujing... supreme true scriptures... all reduced to waste..."
Once the falling scripture pages were all burned through and blown apart, an ethereal, faint voice drifted over with those words.
Qin Ming's fine hairs stood on end. Was this conveying some cruel truth? Even Yujing's supreme true scriptures were useless, having seemingly degenerated into waste paper!
He felt a chill of terror, recalling the rumor: Yujing favored path-pioneers.
If that were true, it would make sense.
Were the old methods losing their effectiveness, gradually becoming useless?
Or more precisely, Yujing's arts had lost their deterrence against enemies.
In an instant, Qin Ming thought of many things. The old order of Yujing was decaying, unable to shackle the "Colossus."
"In reverse, the adversaries have suppressed Yujing, locking away the old arts. Yujing cannot break through, cannot free itself from this predicament, and requires new methods, entirely new chains of the Dao."
When even the most ancient Earth Immortals above the nine heavens could not see the path forward, Qin Ming's thoughts could only count as wild speculation—yet he felt they might touch upon the truth.
At this moment, a figure approached from across the main street. Though neither could see the other's true appearance, shrouded as they were in mist, Qin Ming could broadly ascertain that this was a tall, imposing man.
"Fellow Daoist, did you run into any mishap?" the newcomer asked in a hoarse voice.
In the next moment, he struck. A wisp of divine radiance shone in all directions, hurtling toward Qin Ming like a clap of thunder.
Qin Ming dodged and immediately deployed a technique of the immortal path, unleashing the supreme art of Cao Qianqiu's lineage—the runic golden rope.
His hands gripped empty air as fine golden patterns flowed from between his fingers, interweaving in the night sky into a rope of gold.
Like a golden python, with a whoosh, swift as lightning, it crossed the expanse of air to ensnare the tall man ahead.
The man reached out two fingers, which glistened with translucent jade luster even through the mist, and with a metallic clang, snipped the runic golden rope barehanded.
Qin Ming showed shock. What he had imitated and displayed was definitively a trump card of the immortal path.
In his day, Cao Qianqiu had once used this supreme art to slay peerless powerhouses among demons!
Who was this? Qin Ming's heart sank. The newcomer's strength was beyond imagination, definitely far more than merely entering the fourth realm; his cultivation was far too profound.
The tall man in the mist spoke: "Mm, Fellow Daoist, you have been corroded by the mysterious power lingering from eight thousand years ago. Fear not, I shall help purify you."
In an instant, Qin Ming felt boundless killing intent, like an abyss surfacing to swallow him whole.
The other party's body brimmed with vigorous vitality; he was certainly a young master. With such profound cultivation and actually intending to slay him outright, what was his background?
Qin Ming realized there was a flaw in his immortal path technique. Though he had masked his heavenly light with conscious spiritual light, when the other party pinched and severed the runic golden rope with two fingers, he must have noticed and already discovered his identity.
"Cui Chongxiao!" Qin Ming called out the name. In this age group, with such unfathomable cultivation and intense hostility toward him, the candidates could be narrowed down to only a select few.
Thus, he immediately saw through the other's identity. This was one of the two dragons of the Cui clan, the elder brother of Cui Chonghe, who had studied under an elder predecessor of the esoteric sect.
"Second Brother, I trust you have been well. You have been tainted by the lingering remnants of this place. Allow me to help you." Across the way, the tall figure slowly stepped forward, closing in.
Fury surged within Qin Ming's heart. Back then, as Cui Chonghe's body double, he had warded off disaster for Cui the Second, drawing hostile eyes and enduring several assassination attempts.
The Cui clan had not only burned bridges behind them, but had targeted him time and again afterward.
"You truly are like lingering specters!" Qin Ming had not yet come knocking at their door to settle scores, yet today a member of the Cui clan appeared before him dripping with such intense malice.
His eyes turned deep. Never had he borne such hatred toward any clan.
At this moment, Qin Ming's entire body grew taut. He directly drew the Measure-God Ruler, standing on guard. He knew full well that this man's realm was exceptionally high, exceedingly dangerous.
"Cui Chongxiao, I'll—!" Qin Ming could not hold back a fierce "greeting."
Chapter 413