The Grand Preceptor of the Son of Heaven

"That wasn't me!" Xu Ying steadied his mind and shouted at the corpse on the ground, "That was merely who they imagined me to be before they died! I'm not that evil, nor am I that powerful! Anyone who truly knows me knows I actually have a very gentle temper and am very easy to talk to..." The corpse on the ground had no chance to refute him. "Hahahaha!" In the distance, a Nuo master had gone mad. Flailing his arms and dancing wildly, he sprinted over, screaming, "The ageless immortal is a murderous demon king!" Xu Ying was furious. Dropping the corpse, he sprang to his feet and barked, "I am not! Stop spitting venom!" The moment the Nuo master caught sight of Xu Ying's face, he shrieked in sheer terror, spun around, and fled in a raving frenzy. In his panic, he blundered straight into a pocket of residual divine abilities! Xu Ying dashed forward to save him, but seeing Xu Ying giving chase only made the man run faster. Xu Ying had only managed to reach out a hand when the Nuo master was instantly blasted into fragments! Xu Ying stepped back twice to evade the detonating remnants of the divine ability. Such remnants could easily obliterate a Grand Nuo, yet Xu Ying's footwork was uncanny. In just a few strides, he glided through the lingering blasts like a fish or a dragon slipping through water, graceful and effortless. Xu Ying stood stunned. He had never learned such footwork; for some reason, he had suddenly mastered it without a teacher! He channeled the Six Secret Depositories of the Human Body once more, only to find the power within all six depositories had seamlessly fused together. That was practically an impossible feat! Not long ago, he had only just opened the Bubbling Spring secret depository and perfected its orthodox method, barely able to mobilize its energy. The orthodox methods for the human body's six secret depositories had only begun to circulate in the past two years. Nuo masters from the great clans across the lands of Shenzhou had been tirelessly searching for and deducing these methods. Xu Ying was among the earliest to complete them, yet even he had been unable to systematically mobilize the power of all six or unify them as one. To reach that step required pushing the orthodox methods to their absolute pinnacle, enabling one to convert the elixir herbs of the six secret depositories into boundless power at will. Now, he had achieved it entirely by accident! The catalyst behind it all was the eruption of Taiyi Lesser Mysterious Heaven's lingering obsessions, which had immersed Xu Ying within that ancient, bloody battle! Although the obsessions had erupted from the perspective of the myriad worlds' most formidable Qi Refiners rather than Xu Ying's own, those cultivators had faithfully reproduced the divine abilities and Dao methods wielded by the Xu Ying of the ancient heavenly road. And it was precisely those memories that awakened Xu Ying's latent combat instincts. Xu Ying's robes snapped in the wind as a torrential surge of power welled up from Mud Pill, Jade Capital, Jade Pool, Yellow Court, Crimson Palace, and Bubbling Spring, rushing like a raging river and multiplying his cultivation and strength several times over in an instant! "I am not a murderous demon king!" he yelled at the raving Nuo masters. The terrified wretches scattered in all directions. Just like the fool spoken of by the villagers of Yunmeng Marsh, they had been dragged into the reenactment of that past battle. The only difference was that they had not become Xu Ying. Instead, they had been cast into the shoes of the realm-spanning experts Xu Ying had slain. Swept along against their will, they had been forced to charge him, forced to watch helplessly as Xu Ying, like a god of slaughter, hacked them to pieces! Not only that, but they had lived through death after death, witnessing the gruesome end of one powerhouse after another. They had learned firsthand the meaning of slaughter, the meaning of despair! Their Dao hearts were shattered, their sanity pulverized, and their divine senses thrown into utter turmoil. They had become madmen. "Seventh Master!" Xu Ying shouted. At some point, Yuan Qi had vanished. The snake had originally been hiding on his shoulder or inside his collar, but when the Great Terror struck, he was nowhere to be found. In all likelihood, Yuan Qi had also been seized by the obsessions of Lesser Xuan Heaven and cast as one of those fallen experts. Xu Ying walked through the wasteland calling for Yuan Qi. After traveling thousands of li, a timid voice finally answered his call: "A-Ah Ying... is that you?" Xu Ying looked in the direction of the voice, feeling both surprised and overjoyed to see a massive head poking out from behind a sand dune. He rushed over, but the huge head hastily ducked back behind the dune. Xu Ying vaulted over, only to find the giant serpent curled into a tight coil, shivering violently with his head pressed against the ground, peering at him in utter terror and dreading eye contact. Xu Ying held out a hand and said warmly, "Seventh Master, it's me, Ah Ying." Yuan Qi shrank even tighter, pulling his head back with shifting eyes as he asked meekly, "Are you Ah Ying... or Master Ying?" Xu Ying cautiously crept forward with a smile. "I'm Ah Ying, of course. You know we've shared life and death together; I'd never hurt you." "You beat me to death over a hundred times." Yuan Qi still shrank away, not daring to come close. Xu Ying gently moved before him, extending an open palm to tentatively stroke his head. Yuan Qi also tried hard to overcome the terror in his heart, allowing the hand to touch him. Feeling that familiar warmth, the fear inside Yuan Qi slowly eased, and he murmured in a low voice, "When time rewound, I don't know why, but I was separated from you. Then I saw that I had become a valiantly mighty great Qi Refiner." The very first artifact hurled at Xu Ying—that giant axe—had been thrown by 'Qi Number One,' ablaze with fighting spirit to cleave Xu Ying in half. Yet that massive axe had been crushed barehanded by Xu Ying until it shattered. Qi Refiner 'Qi Number One' had died a horrific death: charging forward with fierce courage, he was struck by Xu Ying's divine ability, which ignited a sky-fire lamp upon him—setting his Primordial Spirit ablaze and burning him alive! After 'Qi Number One' died, Yuan Qi entered the perspective of a second Qi Refiner, becoming 'Qi Number Two.' This time, 'Qi Number Two' was an enchanting female Qi Refiner with a graceful, supple figure. Together with a group of Qi Refiners, she secretly invoked an immortal palace to suppress Xu Ying, aiming to crush both his physical body and Primordial Spirit into oblivion! Yet Xu Ying smashed half of the immortal palace, and female Qi Refiner 'Qi Number Two' naturally disintegrated into ash along with that ruined half! 'Qi Number Three' had its spine snapped by Xu Ying, was thrown into a well in the immortal palace, and was then pounded into pulp right on the spot when Xu Ying drove a fist into the well! 'Qi Number Four' had its Primordial Spirit shattered by a single roar from Xu Ying. 'Qi Number Five' was shredded by the Yin-Yang Vine. 'Qi Number Six' was shredded by the Yin-Yang Vine. 'Qi Number Seven' was shredded by the Yin-Yang Vine. 'Qi Number Eight' died from an immortal Dao spiritual root it had just consumed, blasted to dust when Xu Ying swept the spiritual root through the air. "Just like that, you killed me over a hundred times." Yuan Qi meekly confessed every one of his deaths to Xu Ying. Whenever he saw Xu Ying reach out, he still instinctively coiled up. Xu Ying smiled. "I truly am not a villain. It was just the dying obsessions of the experts I slew that imagined me as one." "Ah Ying, don't you feel there's a contradiction in that statement?" Yuan Qi inquired. Xu Ying chuckled happily. "The fact that Seventh Master can spot a contradiction shows your wits have returned. Have you seen Lord Bell?" Yuan Qi shook his head. "He was in the sky holding off the intrusion of the Heavenly Dao aura from beyond. He shouldn't have been affected by the obsessions of Lesser Xuan Heaven." Xu Ying looked up at the sky. After the eruption of Lesser Xuan Heaven's obsessions, the heavens had become remarkably serene. Beyond the firmament, the battle between Heavenly God Longyuan and the Painted Immortal seemed to have died down, leaving Lesser Xuan Heaven untouched. Yet the bronze bell was nowhere to be found. The boy and the serpent searched the desert, Xu Ying calling out loudly for Lord Bell without receiving an answer. After a long while, in a desert valley, they finally spotted the bronze bell mostly buried in sand. Like the other battered treasures, half of its body was buried in the dunes while the other half remained exposed, perfectly still. Yuan Qi crept forward cautiously and prodded the bell with the tip of his tail. The bronze bell shuddered and tried to burrow even deeper into the sand. "Lord Bell, it's alright now," Yuan Qi said gently. "Ah Ying and I came to see you..." The bronze bell shook like a sieve, vibrating the surrounding sand so hard it danced into the air, gripped by profound terror. "Ah Ying, try touching him," Yuan Qi suggested. *Clang!* The bronze bell seemed to faint, ceasing its trembling entirely. Xu Ying hauled the bell out from the desert and stimulated its divine sense. Only then did the heavy treasure groggily awaken, muttering, "I feel as if I had a nightmare. When the nightmare began, I was an axe summoned by someone, howling through the air to chop down at Ah Ying." Back then, it had felt thrilled, reveling in the unrestrained unleashing of its immense might. Yet in the very next instant, Xu Ying caught it in his hand, trapping it so firmly it could not struggle. It felt itself squeezed within that grip, suffocating, slowly branded with Xu Ying's mark, and gradually cracking apart... *Bang!* It had been crushed until it exploded. The bronze bell was then drawn into the obsession of another treasure. That time, it was a great cauldron. As it attacked Xu Ying, it found itself seized and controlled by him instead! It suppressed its own master beneath the cauldron, refining him to death, before its own form was twisted into a lump of scrap bronze! After dying that time, the bell took on the obsession of a divine furnace. It saw itself become the furnace, into which Xu Ying stuffed its master before stoking the flames. As its master burned inside, screaming in agony, the bell also tasted what it felt like to have one's heart gouged and sliced. Death after death, its Dao heart collapsed again and again. Even though it knew this was all Lesser Xuan Heaven's obsessions reenacting the ancient past, and knew Xu Ying was its closest friend in reality, the experience had been far too real. It had genuinely died over a hundred times, in a hundred different ways, each death an exquisite torment. It was no ordinary artifact; it had awakened sapience, and dying over a hundred times had pushed it to the brink of collapse. Xu Ying reached out toward it and said softly, "Lord Bell, you know that wasn't the me of today. I would never treat you like that." "I know. You are Ah Ying, not Master Ying." Even so, when Xu Ying laid a hand upon it, the bronze bell could not help but shudder. Two more days passed before the bronze bell and Yuan Qi could barely accept Xu Ying without aversion. They went to search for other survivors, but those people had long since succumbed to madness, wandered into Lesser Xuan Heaven's forbidden zones, and perished. "Ah Ying, how are we going to return to Yunmeng Marsh?" Yuan Qi asked anxiously. Xu Ying looked toward the sky, where the colossal Lesser Xuan Heaven spiritual root stood rooted in the ruined immortal palace, looking mysterious and formidable, looming like a nearby celestial body. "We can only wait for the Stone City to come again," Xu Ying said. The bronze bell said, "However, the Painted Immortal obtained the Heavenly Dao divine artifact. Without it towing the Stone City, will the Stone City return? Can the lingering obsessions of the village ancestors' ghosts alone drive the Stone City to fly back here?" Xu Ying froze, a sudden realization striking him. He blurted out, "Lord Bell is right! The Stone City won't appear again!" Yuan Qi was baffled and asked hurriedly, "Why won't it appear again?" Xu Ying paced back and forth, then abruptly halted. "From the reappearance of Yunmeng Marsh, to the dragon-headed human-bodied phenomenon appearing there, to the convergence of the immortal Dao spiritual roots, the revival of the Lesser Xuan Heaven root, and the restoration of the heavenly road—this entire chain of events might not be a coincidence at all!" His eyes flickered. "Most likely, someone has been orchestrating everything from the shadows! Just like the rerouting of the Nai River and the Netherworld invasion—what seemed like a series of coincidences was actually orchestrated by Xu Fu behind the scenes. This time, someone planned everything to claim the Heavenly Dao divine artifact, reunite the Yin-Yang Vine spiritual root, and connect the heavenly road." The bronze bell said, "Our appearance, exposing him as an impostor of the Heavenly Dao, and stealing the primordial Dao essence he collected were merely unforeseen accidents." Xu Ying added, "Once he obtained the divine artifact and restored the spiritual root, why would he bother dragging the Stone City along to stay here?" Yuan Qi finally understood. "In other words, the Stone City won't come back, and we're trapped here forever." "There must still be a variable!" Xu Ying paced back and forth, pondering aloud, "The only thing the Painted Immortal failed to secure was the primordial Dao essence inside the gourd. Another purpose behind his scheme must have been to obtain that essence! As a Qi Refiner, why would he need so much of it?" He stopped and slowly looked up, meeting the confused serpent's gaze. Yuan Qi gathered his courage, just about to voice his confusion, when Xu Ying suddenly exclaimed, "Seventh Master is right! That person must obtain the primordial Dao essence because he has a massive amount of unrefined immortal medicine within him!" Yuan Qi nodded vigorously. "That was precisely my thought." The bronze bell sneered, "Your thought, my foot!" Yuan Qi flared up in anger. "If I didn't think it, did you?!" Just as the bronze bell was about to argue with him, Xu Ying said, "Lord Bell asks a wonderful question! Refining the immortal medicine inside him shouldn't require this much primordial Dao essence, so why does he need so much of it?" The bronze bell froze, thinking, *That really does get to the heart of the matter, but I never asked that!* Xu Ying answered his own question: "Why? Naturally because he is surrounded by people just like him—people who also require massive amounts of primordial Dao essence to refine the immortal medicine within their bodies. So who are these people?" His eyes shone brightly as he looked encouragingly at Yuan Qi and the bronze bell. Yuan Qi gathered his courage and cleared his throat. "So... who are these people?" "Seventh Master asks a brilliant question!" Xu Ying said excitedly, "If they were the Qi Refiners harvesting leeks, they possess the orthodox methods of the six secret depositories and could refine it slowly. They wouldn't need this much primordial Dao essence—at most one or two varieties. That's why they could simply send disciples like Xue Ying'an to search for them. But the Painted Immortal is boldly audacious and supremely shrewd. He subjugated a Heavenly Dao divine artifact, posed as the Heavenly Dao to infiltrate this place, reunited the immortal Dao spiritual root of Lesser Xuan Heaven, and gathered so much essence. There is only one possibility!" He paused and smiled. "He is someone who returned from the other shore! By his side are many others like him, all returned from the other shore, harboring vast amounts of immortal medicine within their bodies!" Yuan Qi and the bronze bell stared in dumbfounded shock. Just then, slow clapping sounded from the distance. Xu Ying looked over to see the Painted Immortal treading across the desert, walking toward them against the setting sun. His shadow stretched long across the sand. "No wonder Heavenly Artisan Zhu always praised you, saying you were exceptionally clever. Seeing you today, you truly live up to the name." Though the Painted Immortal's pace seemed leisurely, he moved swiftly and soon arrived before Xu Ying. Bowing with a smile, he said, "Jiang Qi, Grand Preceptor of the Great Zhou, greets the ageless immortal. On behalf of the Son of Heaven of Zhou, I send our regards." Xu Ying quickly returned the courtesy and said, "I dare not accept. Grand Preceptor Jiang is ruthless—destroying an entire world just for the Lesser Xuan Heaven spiritual root seems rather cruel." Jiang Qi replied indifferently, "Those who fail to become immortals are mere ants. Why regret their deaths?" Yuan Qi suddenly realized something and hurriedly asked, "Ancestor Chanchan parted with us two years ago and hasn't been heard from since. Did she go looking for you?" Jiang Qi smiled. "Because of embezzlement, she conned the Son of Heaven aboard the Divine Boat of the Other Shore. Right now, she is redeeming herself through meritorious service."