Tens of thousands of feet in the sky, howling gales roared.
Faint tremors and rumbles drifted up from the earth below. Death and destruction seemed so distant, yet the mortal struggle and strife unfolding in the high heavens felt as though it was right before one's eyes, within arm's reach.
Gazing upward, the firmament was murky and dark, as if gods were reigning over it—yet those very gods were warring against one another.
Looking downward, the mortal dust stretched white and boundless, everything as tiny as ants—yet those ants roared or wailed amidst ceaseless slaughter.
Above and below, in this turbulent world, all was consumed by struggle.
Like a chessboard.
Yet what kind of invisible hand was manipulating all of this?
Who stood beyond the higher heavens?
Could this, too, be the so-called Heaven's Mandate?
Ji Jue raised his head, looking toward the shattered boundary membrane before Kanemoto, and toward that massive roaring engine. His thoughts were a tangled mess.
Kanemoto suddenly looked back, flames flaring within his emerald-green eyes as he scrutinized him.
"You seem very nervous?"
"Indeed." Ji Jue lowered his eyes, silently gripping the handles of his wheelchair. "In a situation like this, how could I not be?"
Kanemoto glanced at his wheelchair, as if seeing the hidden blade within it, and reminded him, "Now is not the best opportunity."
"I know. That's why I'm nervous." Ji Jue smiled faintly without concealing it, his gaze shifting behind Kanemoto. "What is that?"
"The remnant of a past glory, nothing more." Kanemoto reached out, stroking the red-hot, running engine, and murmured with emotion, "Lu Changsheng offered this as my reward to enlist my aid—the remnant of the final Juzi is said to be right here. Posterity searched for so many years, all in vain."
Ji Jue let out a mocking laugh. "A thing like this... you couldn't make one yourself?"
"Even if I could, what of it?" Kanemoto shook his head. "What is precious about it is not this shell, but its mission—and the Celestial Rail behind it that once connected the entire world..."
For a brief instant, Ji Jue wanted to throw himself at the engine, cross the short distance, and awaken the struggling remnant spirit trapped within the cage.
Yet he could not move.
Reason constrained his body, forcing him to sit motionless in the wheelchair.
When his peripheral vision swept across the surroundings and found that the President had vanished without a trace, his heart grew even heavier—a dog was truly a dog, and a dog of a boss was not only a damn dog, but a boss to boot. Of the two most obnoxious things in the world, it checked both boxes; why had he lost his mind and counted on it?
Kanemoto was right before him, and the engine was right before him. There would only be one chance.
He had to wait.
Yet out of the brief silence, he heard Kanemoto's mocking voice: "Isn't this precisely what you came here for?"
Dead silence.
He froze in place, unable to move.
"In the past, 'Mohist' was merely an umbrella term. Most of them actually hailed from within the Eternal Empire. Take the last Juzi, for instance: when he threw his life down to bar the Emperor's path, who would have thought that the Hand of the Emperor would draw his sword against the Emperor himself?"
Kanemoto looked back at Ji Jue, glancing down at his hands gripping the armrests, his tone dripping with mockery. "Since you bear Non-Offensive and carry the legacy of a Sage, how could you be entirely ignorant of this?"
Ji Jue did not fall silent; he simply shook his head nonchalantly.
"And what if I truly know nothing?"
Kanemoto said nothing.
He merely stared at him.
Was Ji Jue playing dumb to be mysterious? Or making a sarcastic quip?
He did not care either way.
"Whether you know or not matters little."
From the bottom of his heart, he did not hold the so-called legacy of the Juzi in high regard. "What is past is gone, impossible to retrieve and impossible to rely upon. If one truly wishes to pioneer a new era, how could they pin their hopes on the afterglow of yesterday?"
Kanemoto raised his hand toward the sky. "Today, I will let you see—with the creations of Kanemoto, just how much of the Celestial Rail's past glory can be revived!"
At that instant, boundless dark light surged, erupting from the workshop. It shot up into the sky and rained down upon the earth like a colossal pillar connecting heaven and earth, piercing the axis of the world.
Right at the center of the world.
The position known as Tianyuan!
The boundary membrane shattered completely, collapsing and melting like snow. From within, the high-pitched, roaring hum of the engine echoed like thunder through heaven and earth.
Amid the thunderous din, Ji Jue instinctively tried to stand, but immediately his vision blurred into blackness.
He could not move!
Neck, heart, arms, legs, right eye, viscera...
All the punishments Kanemoto had previously inflicted upon him—those cold, black runes—abruptly activated. Like living things, they shifted on their own, and the moment they connected with one another, an earth-shattering transformation occurred. They turned into a lock, piercing through flesh, blood, and soul, sealing him completely and chaining him in place!
And then, he saw Kanemoto raise both hands.
From that riddled, broken vessel of a body, an intricate matrix sprawling like the roots of a giant tree reached outward, shifting through the air into complex spiritus constructs.
In an instant, it drove into the engine, seizing total control.
Just like a key slipping into a keyhole.
Seamless.
*Click!*
At that moment, a crisp sound rang across heaven and earth.
The noise and cacophony of the engine vanished. All former resistance was thoroughly suppressed, wiped away, seen no more. In its place, the vibrations of countless pieces of steel overlapped, ringing out in a magnificent hymn!
Quancheng violently shook.
Immediately following that, the sky tore open.
A purplish-black rift quietly opened, stretching across the sky above all of Quancheng. Then came another, intersecting with the first like a blood-stained cross.
A wound upon the world.
Beyond the scar lay a behemoth woven from boundless darkness and eerie shifting light. Even revealing a mere sliver of its corner, it seemed poised to swallow the entire world whole.
In that instant, Ji Jue finally saw it.
The so-called—[Vortex]!
Burning or freezing, collapsing or shattering, overturning or annihilating... Just looking at it, countless fantasies and fragments of past history floated before his eyes.
Within reach was only boundless, profound abyss.
It was like falling toward a bottomless abyss...
When the streaming light spewed from that engine shot out in all directions, it plunged into Quancheng, connecting to the behemoths buried in various locations.
It forced massive alchemical creations to overload and run burning red-hot, scattering countless streams of light in every direction. Breaking through Tianyuan's blockade, they followed invisible tracks, flying toward the installations that had long been erected throughout Haizhou...
In an instant, it covered everything!
That was... the Celestial Rail reconstructed by Kanemoto!
Who knew how many months and years of preparation had gone into this? The Evil Transmutation Cult had schemed and wandered among city-states, planting silent alchemical constructs and setting up secret rituals in cities, in the wilderness, and in ruins.
Waiting for the promised day.
Now, in the snap of a finger, invisible tracks of flowing light wove into a net, blanketing the entirety of Haizhou. And that was not all; it even stretched out toward the Endless Sea and beyond...
Beneath the darkness of Quancheng, amidst countless living sacrifices and offerings of corpses, an old, bare-chested monk slowly raised his eyes. The stitches of scripture sewn across his lips snapped one by one. He opened his mouth, chanting scriptures long since tainted by corruption, lightning bursting from his eyes.
His words and voice could not be heard; there was only a massive torrent of spiritus.
And the instant his seven-day recitation concluded, countless words seemed to overlap as one, rising into the sky.
They plunged behind the intersecting wounds.
And so, out of the praise woven from boundless vile thoughts, vile views, vile tidings, and vile notions, the Vortex shuddered and erupted into a roar.
Just like a bell being struck.
Grim and sinister, it echoed across all of Haizhou along the tracks Kanemoto had created, spreading outward.
Issuing a summons...
At that, the whole world ground to a halt, sinking into profound silence.
Wherever the bell toll reached, everyone froze in place.
Between cities, out in the wilderness, amidst ruins or farmlands, on ancient battlefields and burial grounds—from within the soil, between corpses, inside graves, within the so-called chapels of underground cults, and even from within living human bodies, wisps of black rose like mist.
The suffering under Tianyuan's shackles, the resentment over White Stag's tyranny, the thirst for unachievable Ascension, the greed of exhaustive scheming, the agony wrought by strife, the deaths poisoned by disasters, the delusions mired in vanity...
Over the long passage of time, the vile sins sleeping within the soil and souls surged like a tide, answering the summons.
And then...
—The evils of the four seas converged here!
In that instant, high in the heavens, from within the dark rainbow light that teetered on the brink of collapse under the stranglehold of fierce radiance, a sigh and a soft chuckle echoed.
"Lord Tao, this match is mine."
With Lu Changsheng's words, the earth shook, and boundless darkness erupted!
Sunken evil was like an ocean, myriad sins like a tide.
When every scrap of evil accumulated across Haizhou over hundreds of years gathered in a single place, it turned into a pitch-black heavenly cataract that enveloped all of Quancheng!
Blanketing everything, it descended inch by inch!
Without the slightest hesitation or delay, the vast, blazing light met the pitch-black skyfall head-on, holding up the evils of the entire Haizhou with unyielding strength—just as it had once held up all of Quancheng!
Without a single moment's hesitation.
At this moment, everyone in Quancheng who looked up at the sky could not help but tremble.
If that celestial cataract fell and detonated together with Quancheng... vast as Haizhou was, how many places would survive?
.
The world seemed ready to end in the very next instant.
Doomsday had arrived.
The sky collapsed, the earth shook, and everything fell apart.
Just like everything this city had faced several decades ago...
The wails buried deep underground, the weeping buried beneath rubble, the uncollected bones, and the lingering remnant spirits seemed to come alive once more.
Under this unprecedented erosion of corruption, phantom images of the past reappeared before his eyes and quickly dissolved, like fleeting shadows skimming across water.
Right in front of Ji Jue.
Blood trickled down shattered faces, dripping into invisible soil. Within rising flames, wailing figures vanished one after another.
Weeping seemed to ring out, ignored by everyone beneath trampling feet.
A child sitting on the ground struggled in vain, looking around in bewilderment, crying out, seeing nothing but ruins. Until a staggering, slender figure rushed over, falling and scrambling up, crawling forward on hands and feet to hold her tightly.
Holding so hard.
Lowering her head in gentle comfort, she smiled, seemingly saying something, but the words could not be heard clearly.
Only tears rolled slowly down that pale face.
Streaming past her smile.
Reflecting the final lingering light.
Ji Jue instinctively reached out, wanting to touch them, but the phantoms swiftly dissipated.
They had died long ago.
Died many years in the past.
Forgotten by others, overlooked by others, buried by others...
Amid the dead silence, he looked around in a daze, asking hoarsely, "...What will happen to Haizhou?"
Kanemoto pondered for a moment. "About half of it will be corrupted."
"And Yacheng?"
"With good luck, it might be spared. It is quite far, after all," Kanemoto replied nonchalantly. "Even so, what does that have to do with you?"
Ji Jue glared up in fury, wanting to speak, only to meet the other man's smile.
So mocking.
"Do you truly care as much as you think you do? Or rather, have you ever truly held onto anything?"
The Profound Grandmaster raised his eyes haughtily, looking down at him. "The Creation of Non-Offensive is indeed a gift of heaven. All things are shaped by ten fingers, all-powerful and all-encompassing. But the flaw lies with you. Because you reach out toward nothingness, you can grasp nothing—what you see and what you choose is nothing but desolation."
He said, "That is your true nature."
"Even now, Grandmaster, do you still expect to shake me with that doctrine of Stagnant Rot?" Ji Jue countered coldly. "Words are so feeble. Why not try your old tricks again, to see if I will ever bow my head to you?!"
Kanemoto's eyebrows slowly arched.
Confusion, realization, and then indelible mockery.
Unable to hold it in any longer, he threw his head back and laughed uproariously.
He doubled over with laughter.
"I see! So that's how it is! Ha, hahaha, hahahaha... Hahahahaha!!!"
"There's something I forgot to tell you..." Kanemoto spoke between bursts of laughter, tears almost coming to his eyes. "Perhaps you misunderstood, but that Formula of Illumination you underwent before wasn't a ritual directed toward Stagnant Rot."
He paused, his grin turning increasingly sinister.
"On the contrary, that was the very essence of the Path of Embers, passed down for thousands of years! Even as the ritual's officiant, I cannot know what you saw. For what it reflects is the future you wish to see, the world you want to create. What it guides you toward is the path you desire in your heart... But what did you see?"
He demanded mockingly:
"—Was it destruction, or was it death?!"
Ji Jue remained unshaken, glaring with cold detachment. "Before that, weren't you the one indoctrinating me with the doctrine of Stagnant Rot?"
"How could a mere three days' effort compare to the life you've clung to since birth? How could it compare to the years of earnest teaching Ye Xian drummed into you day after day?"
Kanemoto stepped forward and looked down at him, asking word by word, "How much of it was my guidance? How much of it was what your heart truly desires and seeks? And how much flowed directly from your essence? Isn't what you saw the real you, stripped of all gloss and pretension?!"
Thus, amid Ji Jue's silence and stunned stillness, Kanemoto admired the turmoil and fury hidden behind that aloof facade. His smile broadened, as if watching a blade in the forge nearing the completion of its quenching.
"I told you long ago: an artisan never mistakes his materials. From the very first glance I laid upon you, I knew what kind of monster you were—"
Kanemoto bent down to meet Ji Jue's gaze, flames surging within his emerald-green eyes, piercing through every disguise. "I have never seen such a twisted soul, never seen such a contradictory construct. Your heart is empty. You scoff at all grandiose platitudes, leaning on something that does not exist as your pillar, trapping yourself in a cage of your own making like a prisoner.
"I can see it. You are just like Sisyphus of legend—repeating an endless cycle day after day, rushing forward to the point of exhaustion, yet not knowing where you are going and not daring to stop. Until one day, you become utterly unrecognizable even to yourself...
"Precisely because of this, you suffer so much! You crave death so deeply!"
"No wonder so many great abominations favor you so dearly! Compared to a fellow like you who chases after nothingness, what does a madman like me even count for?"
Kanemoto reached out, pointing at Ji Jue's heart. "The arrogance of Stagnant Rot, the void of the Abyssal Void, the madness of Frenzied Slaughter, the desolation of the Vortex, the distortion of the Tower, the hunger of the Wolf—they are all right here...
"You do not care about your own life. No matter how tenaciously you appear to struggle, a day will come when you won't care about anyone's life. Because that is the kind of person you are, and that is the kind of monster you will become!"
Ji Jue remained silent.
He did not answer, frozen in place.
Amid this silence, he seemed to hear his own heartbeat, rising and falling in the pauses between the wails, so deep and muted. Blood flowed through his veins like tides washing against a shore, echoing hollowly.
So much so that he did not even hear Kanemoto's words clearly.
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps this was his true nature; this was the hideous visage hidden beneath his smile. He was indeed such an anomaly.
He could no longer run from it.
Yet none of that mattered much anymore.
His gaze was drawn to something far more important.
As if seeing straight through Kanemoto's obstruction, he fixed his eyes upon those flickering phantoms manifesting amidst the corruption—the final remnants of the departed.
Those strange, blurred faces.
Struggling, shoving, or retreating in flight.
Weeping, cursing, calling out, or shouting, yet without any sound.
It was like struggling in vain in a mire, reaching outward in futility time and time again, trying to grasp something yet catching nothing.
Only tears fell as they embraced one another.
Passing through his palm, they struck the ground, kicking up a final wisp of phantom light.
Ji Jue lowered his head, coming back to his senses, only then realizing that he had unconsciously stretched his hand out once more.
His empty palm held nothing.
Utterly in vain.
Yet he suddenly began to smile.
Grinning mockingly.
Mocking Kanemoto, and mocking himself.
"No."
He raised his head, displaying his empty palm to the Grandmaster before him, and told him:
"I care."
Dead silence. Kanemoto said nothing.
He merely looked down at him, his gaze growing colder.
It was like looking at a piece of rotten wood that could never be carved, a blade in the forge covered in rust and dust, complacently melting into a warped shape.
In the end...
Beyond help!
.
*Boom!!!*
High in the ninth heaven, the heavenly cataract erupted, and the pitch-black tide of evil swept downward, gradually swallowing that thin, dim white light. Amid the roaring din, fissures appeared across the decrees of Tianyuan—one after another...
Riddled with holes.
And so, pitch-black rain fell, gradually drowning the ruins of the broken city.
It fell into Lu Changsheng's hand.
"Look, Lord Tao: the filth of the mortal world and the vile sins of human hearts are vast as an ocean."
Beneath the dark rainbow light, Lu Changsheng lowered his eyes to gaze at the drops of corrupted essence pooling like venom in his palm, asking curiously, "Why is it that you practitioners of Sovereign Virtue refuse to spare it even a glance?"
Lord Tao remained silent, uttering not a word.
Lu Changsheng merely raised his head, bathing in the rain of vile corruption. The rainbow light across the sky expanded, growing ever more profound and eerie.
Thus, looking down upon the world slowly enveloped by rain and the surging tides of corruption soaring into the sky, he restrained himself no longer and laughed aloud toward the heavens.
"All this time, I have had a question."
That deep laughter spread across the firmament, ringing through Quancheng and echoing in everyone's ears. "If this world was created by Sovereign Virtue, then from what were abominations born?"
"Until I finally understood another question—men do not throw themselves into evil; rather, evil is forged from men!
"Only those who cannot survive, cannot understand, cannot find a way forward, and have no place left to dwell will plunge into evil...
"Yet were those people created by abominations?
"Before that, was it not the grace of your Sovereign Virtue that they received?!"
No one answered.
Only wails rose like a tide, laments echoing ceaselessly like thunder.
The Priest-Saint of the Evil Transmutation Cult raised his voice, demanding, "When disaster first struck, the one who abandoned this place was the Federation! When the aberration spread, the one who chose containment was the Security Bureau! And what brought everything to this state was the very world you take for granted and take pride in!"
Lu Changsheng threw back his head, surveying all around, spreading his arms in scorn. "Quancheng, aberration, degeneration...
"These are all things you discarded.
"Yet if you don't want them, why can't you leave them to the people you have no room for?!"
At that moment, the vast space between heaven and earth fell abruptly silent.
From far above the firmament, a chilling wrath and murderous intent descended like thunder.
"Haha, hahahaha, hahahaha."
Lu Changsheng laughed hoarsely and violently, posing a final question: "If Sovereign Virtue is the principle of this world, then evil must also be a part of it! Why can there be no room for me to compete on the same stage with you?!"
*Boom!!!*
In that instant, as his aura surged, an overwhelming pressure descended from between heaven and earth, as if freezing everything in place.
That was no mortal intervention, but the Absolute Sentence handed down the moment the iron law of Sovereign Virtue was provoked.
Evils surged, fierce light and thunderbolts crackled.
Between the projection of the Vortex and the mortal realm, Lu Changsheng made no attempt to conceal his soul. Accompanied by a vast deluge of spiritus, this Celestial-Human belonging to Vile Folly drew upon the endless evils of heaven and earth with near madness—and even...
Took a step further!
"Lord Tao need worry no more..."
"—All the evils of this world, I shall bear upon myself alone!"
The rainbow light filling the sky abruptly shattered.
Lu Changsheng's body broke apart and mutated, rapidly swelling. In the blink of an eye, he turned into an amorphous behemoth, a bizarre form faintly taking shape as it bathed in the endless cataract from the sky, shedding its former shape.
Or rather, revealing its true countenance...
Like an icon cast of bones and blood, with four heads and three eyes, purples, cyans, and indigos swirling ceaselessly—wholly different from the past, save for the mocking smile upon that face, which remained unchanged.
Thus, standing in the mortal realm, he reached out toward the Vortex.
Clenching his hand across the void.
At that instant, the massive Vortex above Quancheng violently shuddered, churning fiercely. Behind the Vortex, some colossal entity seemed to let out a dying wail before falling to pieces.
Then, pitch-black divine quintessence rushed forth, falling and merging into his body, rendering his form all the more bizarre.
Sacred and monstrous.
Now, answering his resonance, the two wounds in the sky that had begun to slowly heal parted toward both sides once more!
Having plundered the divine quintessence of multiple high-tier abominations, he transformed himself into a high-tier abomination!
Just like that, anchoring himself, he corrupted Quancheng and took root in the mortal realm!
From this moment on, Quancheng would be an extension of the Vortex in the mortal world, a sanctuary of Vile Folly!
There was no need for him to cower like other high-tier abominations, chained within the Vortex beneath the mortal realm...
He himself was an enduring abomination walking the mortal realm!
Now, amid the silence of the entire world, Lu Changsheng threw back his heads, looking down upon everything. Finally, he turned his gaze behind him toward the vague figure emerging from that dim light.
"It seems I have won."
Lu Changsheng asked solemnly, "Lord Tao, will you go back on your word?"
If you wish to purge the corruption and save Quancheng...
This is your last chance!
By now, with each shift in the situation, the wager they had once agreed upon could no longer constrain reality. Tao Cheng could easily overturn the table, shatter their final tacit understanding... and escalate this entire struggle completely!
At this moment, Quancheng, teetering precariously in the storm, had drawn countless eyes.
Even if Tao Cheng threw his hands up and walked away, the moment victory and defeat were settled, it would become the fuse for another brutal war.
From the darkness in all directions—high-tier abominations, living Sages, Celestial-Humans or abominations, the Empire or the Wild Gathering... countless parties were already itching to place their bets.
Waiting for a choice.
When that aged figure materialized high in the heavens, he felt innumerable gazes fixed upon him.
There was no trace of the radiant splendor befitting an exalted Celestial-Human.
His eyes were clouded, his hair patchy and white.
He looked like an ordinary, decrepit old man one could find anywhere.
Yet the moment Tao Cheng appeared, Lu Changsheng instantly tensed, as if facing his greatest foe.
"I never thought things would come to this, though... it hardly seems surprising," Tao Cheng sighed softly. "When it comes to sinister schemes of the human heart, you surpass me by far. With your boldness and your ambition to transform evil into righteousness, after so many years of preparation and waiting...
"Now that you have unleashed it, heavenly timing, earthly advantage, and so-called 'human harmony' are all in your hands.
"While I have nowhere left to retreat."
He looked at Lu Changsheng. "Looking solely at how you have unified so many factions and stirred the winds of change today, you are almost like a Tianyuan among evil kind. Were the Unbuilt Tower to take shape, it would likely cast a shadow over you as well, wouldn't it?"
Lu Changsheng shook his heads. "Is this not all thanks to Lord Tao's personal teachings by word and deed?"
"You are wrong."
Tao Cheng's smile grew peculiar, or perhaps mocking.
"I was never able to teach you anything, Lu Changsheng."
He surveyed the dark world and said with regret, "Otherwise, you would understand—though the world is chaotic, at times black and white have always been distinct... Even if you crown it with the grandest rhetoric or conjure deafening philosophies, it remains the same. Evil is evil, demons are demons, and ugliness is ugliness!"
"..."
Lu Changsheng was silent for a moment, then sighed with regret. "A gentleman can be killed, but not humiliated. It is only natural that Lord Tao does not wish to keep company with someone like me."
"Don't sound so pitiful, Lu Changsheng. You talk of rats and snakes in the gutter competing against incompetent folks like us, turning heaven and earth upside down, turning evil into righteousness.
"Yet the righteous path was always there, and you never took it. When you took pride in being a rat or a snake, you indulged in stealth and deceit, scorning to understand the morality of those who live beneath the sunlight. Instead, you want to overturn the entire board and deny everything.
"Isn't the most arrogant one here you?"
Lord Tao raised his eyes to look at him, completely devoid of anger, filled only with sorrowful pity.
Like looking at a blind man who basks in the sunlight yet denies its existence.
"That is why you still do not understand..."
At last, he gave a smile of relief and closed his eyes.
Lu Changsheng's expression drastically changed.
*Watch closely, Lu Changsheng—this is the first lesson I have to teach you!*
At that instant, smiling, Tao Cheng raised his hand.
Toward his own neck...
He brought it down.
—The so-called: sacrificing one's life to achieve virtue!
Chapter 238