Even pinned beneath Xu Ying, Emperor Changsheng still fought to retaliate. He tried to unravel the seals on Xu Ying's memories, knowing that if he awakened them, hundreds of years of memories would flood into Xu Ying's mind in an instant.
The memories of the first life would immediately override Xu Ying's present consciousness, reducing his current self to a mere appendage of that ancient incarnation. In that critical fraction of an instant, Changsheng would have a chance to turn defeat into victory.
Those first-life memories could not possibly seize control of Xu Ying's vast, peerless magic power within such a short window, nor could they immediately integrate Xu Ying's combat experience and divine powers. Still less could they comprehend and deploy the Daos Xu Ying had mastered.
At that point, Emperor Changsheng would not only turn the tables, but could also strike back and slay him.
Yet when Emperor Changsheng tried to unravel the seals he had placed so long ago, he discovered to his horror that he could not undo them at all.
Xu Ying had reinforced the seals layer upon layer, weaving in Daos that even included the Emerald Rock Grand Dao he had only recently mastered in the Mortal Realm.
Evidently, these reinforcements had not been added just now. Along his path of cultivation, every time Xu Ying comprehended a new Dao, he had reinforced the seals with another layer, specifically guarding against the possibility of Emperor Changsheng unraveling them.
Emperor Changsheng's heart sank. With even this recourse anticipated and countered, his hopes of turning the tables were virtually gone.
Just then, the voice of Jiuyou Emperor rang out from the distance, calling loudly, "The victor is decided, and the throne is settled! Xu Ying, do not drive him to the bitter end!"
Taixiao Emperor's voice followed close behind. "Celestial Venerable Xu, stay your hand! Emperor Changsheng is one of the Nine Emperors. You must not take his life over a private feud!"
Hearing this, Emperor Changsheng felt a surge of secret delight. *They still need me! If I die, all of the Nine Emperors of the Nine Heavens will be left at Xu Ying's mercy. They need to win me over to preserve the balance of power between both sides!*
His combat prowess was formidable. Winning him over now would not only rescue him from peril and earn his gratitude, but it would also protect the Eight Emperors of the Nine Heavens, all of whom had been severely wounded by the Eastern King.
If Xu Ying killed Emperor Changsheng and installed his father Xu Jing on the imperial throne, Xu Ying's temperament meant he would never allow the Eight Emperors to recuperate at their leisure and resume their roles as grand overlords. Xu Ying would undoubtedly finish them off in secret.
Keeping Emperor Changsheng alive would serve as a check on Xu Ying, preventing him from acting recklessly until the Eight Emperors regained their strength. Once they recovered, no matter who sat on the throne, they would remain the supreme masters behind the scenes.
Xu Ying turned a deaf ear to their cries. The Dao Cry continued to pour down relentlessly, rotting Emperor Changsheng's bodhimanda. Flesh flew from Changsheng's face, dissolving to lay bare the stark white bone beneath. Within his physical body, his five viscera and six bowels were already scorched away. His realm began to crumble and disintegrate in the midst of the Dao Cry, and panic seized his heart. *If the Eight Emperors don't strike now, he'll kill me!*
Yet Taixiao Emperor and the others did not attack, because Yanglong Emperor had not moved an inch. So long as Yanglong Emperor stayed his hand, they did not dare make a move either. Yanglong Emperor was the foremost of the Nine Emperors, the only existence among them who was a Grand Perfection Daluo Golden Immortal.
His vision and discernment were the highest, and his standing was the greatest. His inaction made Taixiao Emperor and the others hesitate.
*Could Yanglong Emperor believe that even all of us together are no match for Xu Ying?*
In truth, Yanglong Emperor cared nothing for the decisive battle between Emperor Changsheng and Xu Ying. His eyes were glued to the bun-selling Good-for-Nothing Qingxuan, never wavering for a moment. His face was ashen, his forehead and cheeks slick with cold sweat, his mind torn between madness and terror, locked in a violent inner turmoil. *It's him... It has to be him... No, it can't be! He clearly died! He has returned for revenge!*
Qingxuan had founded the current Immortal Court, yet no one dared utter his name; he had become the one who must not be named. One could not help but see it as a tragedy.
In the interval while Yanglong Emperor was consumed by his inner conflict, Xu Ying's roar had already shattered Emperor Changsheng's primordial spirit and crushed his souls.
The flesh on Emperor Changsheng's body dissolved steadily beneath Xu Ying's hands, his upper torso melting into bare bones. Xu Ying froze for an instant before looking down at the skeletal remains in his grasp, falling into a momentary daze.
He recalled his past lives: the fisherman's son, the merchant's child, the soldier on the battlefield, the scholar traveling to the capital for the imperial examinations, the laborer sweating in the fields...
He had been shot dead and dumped in mass graves; he had been placed inside bamboo steamers; he had been captured, drained of blood to brew elixirs, and sacrificed to the heavens as a ceremonial offering.
He remembered the "Immortal Elder" of whispered legends, the deceit and machinations spun around that mythical figure, and he remembered Feng Xue'er, Yan Bao, and those women who had stood by him through cycle after cycle of reincarnation.
Caught in the gears of manipulated fate, they had struggled, clung to one another for warmth, only to fail time after time, torn apart in painful partings of life and death, enduring endless trials.
Xu Ying exhaled a breath of turbid air. Beside his ear came Xu Jing's voice: "Ah Ying, you've taken your revenge. That's all that matters. Ah Ying, you do not live only for revenge!"
Yuan Qi and Jin Buyi came rushing toward him. Yuan Qi called out to him from afar, having taken the form of a plump white-robed youth, his face shining with pure, heartfelt joy. He and Jin Buyi were calling something out from the distance, but Xu Ying could not hear them clearly.
The Eight Emperors of the Nine Heavens hurried over as well, watching him warily from a distance without daring to approach. They too were saying something, appearing both aggrieved and reprimanding, yet their eyes darted away in fear mingled with indignation.
Then there was Good-for-Nothing Qingxuan, carrying five or six steamed buns in his hands, walking over and glaring angrily at what remained of Emperor Changsheng's half-dissolved corpse, shouting something in Xu Ying's direction.
Xu Ying cast aside Emperor Changsheng's remains. The world seemed to spin around him, but he steadied himself. *Could it be that I do not live for revenge? I do not live merely for vengeance...*
Xu Jing and Jin Buyi surged toward him. Just as they drew near, Xu Ying's figure suddenly froze, then vanished from above the Heavenly Sea.
The crowd stood in stunned disbelief.
Seeing Xu Ying disappear, the Eight Emperors of the Nine Heavens finally breathed a sigh of relief. Jiuyou Emperor sneered, "Xu Jing, don't think that just because your son defeated Emperor Changsheng, you'll be able to sit comfortably on that throne. Do not forget that the supreme authority over the Three Realms rests not with the Immortal Emperor Supreme, but with us, the Great Emperors of the Nine Heavens!"
His words left Xu Jing completely baffled. *What imperial throne?* he thought. *Are the Great Emperors of the Nine Heavens promoting me to take Emperor Changsheng's place?*
Delight surged within him. *If I become the Yantian Emperor, wouldn't that be a meteoric rise?*
Taixiao Emperor spoke up: "You are not yet a Supreme, so you are not fit to ascend the throne just yet. From now on, you will cultivate alongside us in the Supreme cave abyss. Once you attain the Supreme realm, you may ascend the throne as the new Immortal Emperor Supreme!"
*The new Immortal Emperor Supreme?!*
Xu Jing was completely dumbfounded.
He had assumed they meant to appoint him as Emperor Changsheng's successor, never imagining that the Eight Emperors actually intended to make him the Immortal Emperor Supreme! *Did Ah Ying fight so desperately just to put me on the imperial throne?*
He blinked, thinking to himself that he had hardly done anything at all. First, thanks to Lan Suying, he had become the consort of the Immortal Court. Later, he had become Old Celestial Venerable Xu of the Three Perfected of the Dou Department. And now, without lifting a finger, he had become the candidate for the imperial throne, granted access to cultivate in the Supreme cave abyss!
Even so, while Xu Jing's cultivation and strength were respectable—ranking among the very peak of the Heavenly Monarchs—he possessed no Supreme realm cultivation arts or divine powers, and his foundation was far from sufficient.
He had not even touched the fringes of the Supreme realm, so the sudden prospect of becoming Emperor filled him with apprehension. *Still, where has Ah Ying gone?*
He looked all around, but found no trace of Xu Ying anywhere.
***
Most of the Myriad Worlds had already merged together, leaving only the Ancestral Court and a handful of isolated worlds like Yuehui World unmerged.
Yuehui World bore that name because three moons hung in its sky: the largest filled half the firmament, while the smallest resembled a distant fist. Bathed perpetually in the radiance of the three moons, it was called Yuehui, the Moon Glow World.
Yet this world was utterly barren, devoid of sacred mountains or blessed grounds, its ambient spiritual energy exceptionally thin. Even the Heavenly Dao here was faint and frail, and the crops yielded frightfully little.
This world was like a stone squeezed dry by Xu Ying, yielding not a single drop of grease or moisture. It was so destitute that let alone gods and immortals, even Qi Refiners never set foot here. As a result, through tens of thousands of years, Yuehui World had remained relatively peaceful.
What very few people knew was that this world had also produced an Immortal Elder.
He was a youth named Xuan Tiandu. No one knew his true age, only that long, long ago, the ancestors of their ancestors' ancestors had already seen him, looking just as he did today.
He appeared no different from an ordinary mortal, possessing no magic power, no treasures, and no ability to fly through the heavens or burrow into the earth. Some said that Xuan Tiandu had once believed in immortals, abandoning his wife and children to seek immortality, returning only after countless ages had passed.
Others whispered that Xuan Tiandu was himself an immortal; otherwise, how could he have lived so long? But such idle gossip held no meaning for him.
On this day, Xuan Tiandu felt a touch of melancholy.
He walked up to a ridge outside the village, gazing into the distance where the setting sun blazed like a scarlet, sacred fire. Behind him, two moons had already risen, casting their clear, cool glow across the earth.
"It doesn't matter. Even if I failed this time, there is always the next," he murmured softly. "I have a premonition. This will be the grand board I laid out long ago.
"In this great trend, the Mortal Realm and the Heavenly Immortal Realm will both appear, and the Supreme realm will merely be... It is time to step out of Yuehui World."
At that moment, quiet, slow footsteps approached. Xu Ying walked up beside him against the glow of the setting sun.
His face bathed in the reddish light of dusk, Xuan Tiandu's body went stiff, and all hope suddenly deserted him. "Xu Ying, you managed to trace my origins after all," Xuan Tiandu sighed deeply.
"How did you discover I was hiding here?"
"A cunning rabbit has three burrows. Only two of yours had been dug out, so naturally I had to find your third and eliminate you for good." Xu Ying's gaze drifted down toward the village at the foot of the ridge, a strange look in his eyes. "I never imagined the Imperial Monarch would hail from a humble village too. I came from a small town myself."
Xuan Tiandu fell silent for a moment. "You only came to kill me. You won't bring harm upon the innocent, will you?"
Xu Ying shook his head. "Killing you once cannot extinguish the hatred in my heart. Killing you twice won't either. But I will not take it out on anyone else."
Xuan Tiandu breathed a sigh of relief. "Who would have thought that Xu Ying, tormented for forty-eight thousand years, would still hold to principles? For you to find this place, it must have been because of Yantian Emperor.
"I usurped Yantian Emperor's power, and he harbored deep resentment, searching for my roots, though he never should have found where my true body lay."
Xu Ying said, "He merely mentioned the name Xuan Tiandu. But being suspicious by nature, I paid a visit to the underworld and asked the Samsara Female Emperor to help me locate this person named Xuan Tiandu."
Xuan Tiandu let out a sigh, his expression darkening. "An ant hole can cause a thousand-li dike to collapse. I kept Yantian Emperor alive only because his combat strength was rare and I could use him to eliminate rivals in the future. I never imagined I would fall because of him."
He pulled himself together, looked out over Yuehui World, and called out loudly, "Xu Ying, can you even imagine? I was born in this very world, a world where spiritual energy is so gossamer-thin that cultivation should be impossible!"
Xu Ying looked out across Yuehui World. His own magic power was so vast and profound that in a single breath, even the spiritual energy produced by a Heavenly Monarch cave abyss could barely keep pace with his consumption.
Yet all the worldly spiritual energy in Yuehui World combined could not equal the waste breath expelled from a single one of his exhalations.
"It was in this world that I found my path to becoming Emperor Changsheng!"
Xuan Tiandu laughed. "Here, there were only a few caves left behind by exiled immortals who had committed crimes. Across six hundred thousand years in Yuehui World, I may well have been the only one to become a Qi Refiner in such a destitute land, relying on the meager spirit pills left by those exiled immortals to cross the starry void and seek other worlds! I am the only person from this world to ever become an immortal!"
Xu Ying was moved. To cultivate to success in such a barren place required a thousand times more effort than in the outside world.
"Though this world was impoverished, disasters were never few—if anything, they were far worse. In my youth, I fled famine with my parents, wandering all the way here. A flash flood washed away a stone chamber in the mountains. I entered it and discovered the relics of an exiled immortal. Only then did I realize that this universe was so vast, so magnificent, so lavish! Before that, I thought the greatest life imaginable was living like Master Wang, the local landlord."
Xuan Tiandu continued, "My parents were content with their lot and remained in the town below the mountain, but I was determined to walk out of it. I wanted to change my circumstances. I wanted to cultivate, to ascend, to become an immortal, to stand above all others! Xu Ying, haven't you had dreams like that too?"
Xu Ying reflected for a moment. He had indeed.
Xuan Tiandu said, "A hundred years later, I finally reached the phase of knocking on the pass, breaking through the boundary of life and death, though my hair had turned prematurely white. By then, my parents had long since passed away, leaving me without attachments. So I worked twice as hard. Before my second life limit arrived, I finally formed a Golden Core, extending my lifespan to five hundred years. But by then, I knew that even if I exhausted all five hundred years, I could never break through to the next realm here.
"If I wanted to achieve anything, I had to walk out of Yuehui and journey to other worlds to carve out a path of survival."
Xu Ying observed, "Since this was a place for exiled immortals, it was surely stranded in the middle of nowhere. Crossing the cosmos with merely a Golden Core cultivation was nothing short of a pipedream."
Xuan Tiandu chuckled. "Yet I had to take the gamble. So I gathered the immortal master's relics and broke out of Yuehui World. I drifted through the cosmos for I don't know how many years. Just as despair set in, I encountered a carriage approaching from the depths of the starry sky. A man stepped down, rescued me, and brought me to a nearby world.
"He called himself Mingzun."
Xu Ying's heart leaped violently. *Mingzun! The current Immortal Emperor Supreme! He rescued him!*
"I was profoundly grateful. I shouted to him that one day I would make a name for myself and repay his kindness. I spoke from the bottom of my heart, wishing I could carve out my chest to show him. He only smiled and told me he believed I would repay him one day."
Xuan Tiandu paused, then continued, "The world I went to was called Zhongtian World. It was rich with ambient spiritual energy, and in some places, even immortal spiritual qi flowed. For the first time, I saw so many Qi Refiners. I was like a country bumpkin entering a grand city: everything was novel, everything was alien. I knew nothing, while the city youths knew everything. They were polished, cheerful, and bright, while I was just an ignorant peasant. But ten years later, I became the most dazzling rising talent in Zhongtian World!"
Pride rang in his voice. He had not wanted anyone to know he came from a barren world of exile, so he had changed his name to Chen Changsheng.
Chen Changsheng had been the most eye-catching figure of that era. His talent had stunned the world, his brilliance commanding respect across the land. Any Dao art he laid eyes upon became instantly clear to him; he grasped them upon a single glance and could deduce further insights effortlessly. On an impromptu whim, he could create grandmaster-level cultivation arts and grandmaster-level divine powers.
Fifty years later, Chen Changsheng overcame his tribulation and ascended, becoming a myth and a legend.
Back then, in the prime of his unmatched brilliance, Chen Changsheng arrived in the Immortal Realm, only to discover that the Mingzun who had saved him all those years ago was none other than the current Immortal Emperor! In those days, he was filled with boundless admiration and respect for the Emperor. His cultivation advanced at an astonishing speed, repeatedly shaking the court: Human Immortal, Earth Immortal, Heavenly Immortal, Immortal King, Immortal Monarch...
It had taken Xu Ying three hundred years, and it took him a thousand. Even so, it was an extraordinary feat.
After becoming a Heavenly Monarch, he sought to charge toward the Supreme realm. Only then did he realize he could never attain it. Never.
Only then did he understand how unfortunate he was—yet at the same time, how fortunate he was compared to everyone else.
"The total number of cave abysses is limited; too many monks, too little porridge. Becoming an immortal is destined to be a brutal struggle of mutual trampling and ruthless competition. The higher your cultivation, the fiercer the rivalry, and the crueler the suppression! Even if you wish to change this unjust world, you must first climb to the top!"
Xuan Tiandu threw a punch toward the sky, shouting, "You must climb high enough before you possess the power and the authority to change this world! You don't want to become that kind of person, yet you are forced to become that kind of person!
"Xu Ying, you will become that kind of person too!"
Having vented his fury, he gradually composed himself once more. "One day, Mingzun came to me and asked, 'Little friend, do you wish to take another step forward?' I did. I had ambitions, I had ideals, and I wanted to fulfill them. Mingzun told me that if I wanted to take another step forward, I had to bring down Yantian Emperor and become his man."
He fell silent for a long time. He did not describe the process of bringing down Yantian Emperor. "I only ever confessed my true name to one person, and that was Yantian Emperor. When he was locked in the heavenly prison, I visited him to talk. But only later did I learn that by choosing the path of a Daluo Golden Immortal, I had forfeited any chance of reaching the Supreme realm."
Xuan Tiandu said, "During my climb to power, I witnessed far too much deceit and betrayal. I had to plan for the future; I had to ensure a cunning rabbit had three burrows. So I severed Xuan Tiandu from myself, sending him back here to preserve an opportunity to stage a comeback... until the day you arrived."
Xu Ying's gaze rested steadily on his face.
Xuan Tiandu began to laugh. "Xu Ying, why do you think Mingzun appeared so conveniently in the deep cosmos to save me? When you appeared before me, I finally understood his intentions!"
He threw his head back and laughed wildly. "I was merely a whetstone! A whetstone used to sharpen you!
"What Imperial Monarch? What Emperor Changsheng? What genius of an era? Nothing more than a tool!" Looking completely mad, he cackled hysterically. "Be careful! You must be careful! Every single thing he does for you is nothing more than the price he intends to sell you for!"
*Chi!*
A streak of the Zhuxian broken sword pierced straight through his forehead.
The light of life in Xuan Tiandu's eyes gradually faded, replaced by the stillness of death. Bereft of all vitality, he slumped to the ground.
Xu Ying dispersed his sword qi, a pang of melancholy rising in his heart. It felt as though he had just killed another version of himself.
Chapter 599