In the Netherworld, the realm of Samsara.
Ever since the Grand Tide of the Three Realms, the territory of the Netherworld had gradually expanded toward the Mortal Realm. The Heavenly Immortal Realm, cut off and inaccessible, was not yet within the Netherworld's reach.
Even so, the cultivation and might of the Netherworld's Five Magnates climbed steadily, growing ever more formidable.
In particular, the Samsara Female Emperor was foremost among them. The power of reincarnation she commanded grew increasingly potent, and her comprehension of the Dao of Samsara ever more profound.
She could manifest into countless avatars, diving into Samsara to pursue living beings who attempted to flee reincarnation, and holding sway over the births, origins, life, and death of myriad creatures.
Yet on this day, a vast divine power suddenly surged from the mortal realm of the living, intruding into Samsara and penetrating straight to its deepest depths!
"What sacred power dares meddle with Samsara, taking no heed of this empress!"
Startled, the Samsara Female Emperor was about to intervene and block it. But the instant she made contact with that divine power, she suddenly heard Xu Ying's chanting voice: "Former sage Qingxuan, receive my incense..."
Her heart trembled slightly, and she did not obstruct the divine power, thinking to herself, "Since it is Young Master Xu's doing, I cannot fail to grant him some face. Let it be."
Curious, she noted that this divine power headed directly for the deepest depths of Samsara—which happened to be the early era when the Netherworld was first formed.
"The Netherworld of the Earth Immortal Realm formed six hundred thousand years ago. Only after the people migrated to the myriad heavens and myriad realms did Samsara gradually take shape. Only some ancient living beings sank into the depths of Samsara, settling down like grains of sand without reincarnating."
The Samsara Female Emperor followed the divine power, wondering, "What is Young Master Xu trying to unearth?"
The divine power burrowed through Samsara, gradually arriving at the dawn of reincarnation's creation. Before long, a secret place appeared within Samsara, covered in seals.
The Samsara Female Emperor was astonished. As the sovereign of Samsara, she had no idea such a secluded place was hidden here!
The divine power surged forward, eroding the seals. After a moment, the seals broke apart, and a speck of Undying True Spirit flew out from within, enveloped by the divine power as it rushed out of Samsara!
"Whose true spirit is this, that Young Master Xu would offer sacrifice and chant for it?"
The Samsara Female Emperor escorted it all the way, guiding the true spirit back to the mortal world, where it flew straight into the crystal coffin of a mausoleum.
At the same time, Xu Ying felt a stirring in his heart and smiled. "Congratulations on your rebirth, fellow daoist."
Beyond the heavens of the Yingquan World, Jun Wudao, ranked first among the Twelve Wondrous, and Patriarch Boshan, ranked third, were locked in a mortal struggle.
For Patriarch Boshan, it was a fight for his life; for Jun Wudao, it was an enjoyable hunt.
Though Patriarch Boshan was ranked third, his cultivation and strength fell far short of Jun Wudao's. In a brief moment, he was heavily wounded: his bodhimanda cracked, his Dao tree was damaged, his Dao flowers withered, and his Dao fruit shriveled.
"Boshan, if you were willing to throw your lot in with a piece of trash like Meng Shanming, why couldn't you submit to me?"
Jun Wudao laughed heartily as he summoned his Dao tree, its Dao fruits shining ever brighter, suppressing the shifts in Patriarch Boshan's bodhimanda. "What benefits could Meng Shanming offer you? A feeble Supreme who survived till now only through schemes and calculations—yet you bowed to him! What a waste of your renown among the Twelve Wondrous! Utterly contemptible!"
On his Dao tree, severed heads sprouted from the branches, fully featured. Some heads beamed with smiles, calling out for Patriarch Boshan to join their ranks; others burned with bitter hatred, cursing Boshan as vile and shameless; still others were vacant and foolish, chuckling incessantly.
Large and small heads numbered in the hundreds.
Besides these heads, beneath the tree sat dark clay jars half a person tall. Gorgeous women were stuffed inside, only their heads exposed, their features lovely. Some giggled nonstop, some whispered softly, and others sang hair-raising nursery rhymes.
Patriarch Boshan channeled his Dao fruit to resist Jun Wudao's suppression and sneered, "Even submitting to Meng Shanming is a hundred times better than submitting to you! Meng Shanming may be wicked, but he is still a hundred times better than you!"
Jun Wudao sneered back. "In that case, there is no need for you to exist. I shall kill you and refine you into my tenth Dao fruit!"
Patriarch Boshan's face drained of color.
Jun Wudao's cultivation achievements were exceedingly high, his talent peerless. Six hundred thousand years ago, Qingxuan and the Holy Venerable had hung high like the sun and the moon, shining so brilliantly that they eclipsed all others.
Yet among the Twelve Wondrous, there was another whose achievements did not pale beside theirs: Jun Wudao. It was only because Jun Wudao walked the Old Dao that his fame was not as resounding as Emperor Qingxuan's and the Holy Venerable's.
What Jun Wudao was most famous for was not his cultivation, might, or battle record, but his brutality.
He believed that the Haocang Immortal Court was devoid of Dao—tyrannical and unprincipled—which brought down heavenly tribulation and plunged the world into chaos. To eradicate it, one had to be even more devoid of Dao, even more ruthless and cruel. Thus, he had changed his name to Jun Wudao.
The experts who died by his hand met horrifying ends. Men were usually beheaded, their heads hung from his Dao tree and refined into magical treasures. Women were turned into human swine, their four limbs lopped off and sealed inside clay jars.
When he killed, he summoned his Dao tree, and hundreds of severed heads took flight alongside the clay jars containing the human swine, the fair yet hideous fairy maidens' disheveled hair flying in the wind. The full cultivation of these experts had been sealed, and upon being refined into treasures, they became even more formidable—retaining their strength from life and even their conscious awareness, under his complete control!
Jun Wudao not only killed the experts of the Haocang Immortal Court, but even slaughtered his own allies. Back when the rebel armies overthrew the Immortal Court, they numbered far more than the Six Venerables and Twelve Wondrous; there were rebel kings from many paths, yet more than half of them died at his hands, refined into head treasures and human-swine treasures.
Dao Lord Luofu, Gu Bunian, had certainly been exceedingly wicked and cruel as well, killing Emperor Haocang to refine the Ziwei Demon-Purging Tripod, but that deed had merely been in imitation of Jun Wudao.
Thus, aside from Qingxuan and the Holy Venerable, everyone else dreaded him to the marrow.
Jun Wudao unleashed his Dao tree, and hundreds of severed heads surged forward toward Patriarch Boshan!
Patriarch Boshan gritted his teeth, intending to take his own life by destroying his head and primordial spirit to spare himself such torment.
Suddenly, Jun Wudao's expression twisted in horror. His Dao tree halted in midair, and the severed heads sprouting from its branches widened their eyes in terror.
Beneath the tree, the women turned human swine were likewise aghast, as though they had seen a ghost.
Patriarch Boshan invoked his Wondrous Realm treasure and roared, "Jun Wudao, even in death, I will never fall into your hands to become your plaything!"
Just as he was about to end his life, he saw a slender figure walk through his bodhimanda as though strolling through an empty void.
His bodhimanda, his Dao tree and Dao fruit, and the Great Daos permeating the bodhimanda were as if nonexistent, unable to even approach the figure.
The man seemed blended with the Dao, merged into one with the bodhimanda; he was part of the bodhimanda itself, the Hunyuan, the Taiyi.
Patriarch Boshan froze, as if he too had seen a ghost. He trembled uncontrollably, his legs barely able to support him.
Facing a ferocious being like Jun Wudao, he felt fear; but facing this person, he felt respect, guilt, and dread.
Emperor Qingxuan.
Like a ghost returned from the dead, he appeared right before their eyes.
"No, you're dead! You're already dead!"
Jun Wudao seemed driven mad with fright, crying out, "Qingxuan, we killed you! I killed you with my own hands! You can't be alive!"
On his Dao tree, the heads shrieked in succession, "We witnessed your death with our own eyes!"
"We shattered your primordial spirit and extinguished your life force!"
"We severed your Dao landscapes and threw them into the Realm of the Great Void!"
"Your soul dissipated! You cannot be alive!"
The human swine beneath the tree fell into a frenzy as well, wailing, "Qingxuan's ghost has come for our lives!" "He's going to kill us and eat us!" "I must taste delicious!" "Bitch, I taste even better!" "Slut, I'll kill you!"
Waste Qingxuan stepped between Patriarch Boshan and Jun Wudao, gazing at the faces once familiar yet now alien, wondering why they had degenerated into this state.
"Jun Wudao, Boshan. I have returned," he said.
"You are definitely not Emperor Qingxuan!"
Jun Wudao vaulted into the air, channeling his nine Dao fruits. Unleashing his head-bearing Dao tree and jar after jar of human swine, he pounced toward him, a vicious grin on his face. "Even if you are Emperor Qingxuan, I'll kill you once more!"
Waste Qingxuan stood still, his aura undulating, when suddenly his divine art erupted!
Unlike Emperor Qingxuan, he possessed only the memories from before Emperor Qingxuan severed his flaws; he had no memories of Emperor Qingxuan achieving the Supreme realm. However, in the depths of the Taiyi Cave Abyss, on that land of the other shore, he had battled for six hundred thousand years!
What he had faced were ancient gods crossing frozen time from the distant other shore to enter the Taiyi Cave Abyss!
Waste Qingxuan had thus embarked upon a path entirely different from Emperor Qingxuan's.
Over those six hundred thousand years, he fought the ancient gods of the other shore, slaughtering them and devouring them. His Dao methods were saturated with sheer overbearing force, and his divine arts had grown wild and furious. They lacked the aesthetic grace of Emperor Qingxuan, yet they were brutally simple and effective!
Like a lord of ancient gods charging across frozen time, he wielded his hand like an axe with consummate skill, resembling a giant cleaving heaven and earth as he shattered Jun Wudao's divine arts and cleaved straight into his bodhimanda!
Everywhere his strike reached, head after head was cleaved down the center, branches snapped and flew apart, dissolving into dissipating Dao chains!
The severed heads and human swine circling him wailed shrilly, their demonic shrieks attempting to disrupt his Dao heart. Yet over six hundred thousand years, his Dao heart had been tempered like a reef beaten by endless crashing waves—wholly unshakable.
The demonic voices of those ancient gods from the foreign realm were far more terrifying than this.
Their Zangified forms were far more hideous than these severed heads, and their Dao methods far more subtle and profound than Jun Wudao's, yet he had endured it all, slaying them and feasting upon them.
To Jun Wudao, his moves now seemed the pinnacle of art disguising art, great skill appearing clumsy, having attained the realm of perfection and returned to pure simplicity—sublime beyond all tracking!
To counter his moves was something Jun Wudao could no longer achieve!
Fear rushed in like a tidal wave. Daring to fight no longer, Jun Wudao let out a yell to mask the terror in his heart, turned tail, and fled, vanishing without a trace.
He possessed nine Dao fruits and had mastered nine Wondrous Realm Great Daos. Each Dao could manifest into a tier of Daluo bodhimanda. Nine tiers of Daluo bodhimandas merged together were exceptionally solid and indestructible.
With how profound his cultivation was and how deep his Dao methods ran, he could still have put up a fight against Waste Qingxuan, the outcome uncertain.
Yet his Dao heart fell so vastly short of Waste Qingxuan's that he fled without even being defeated.
Waste Qingxuan turned around to face Patriarch Boshan, a smile appearing on his face. "Brother Boshan, long time no see."
Patriarch Boshan's lips twitched, his hands and legs trembling. It took a long while before he could speak: "Y-Your Majesty..."
Waste Qingxuan laughed. "Brother Boshan, you and I originally raised arms against tyranny because heaven and earth were unjust. How could we become tyrants ourselves? Follow me once more."
Patriarch Boshan wept aloud and threw himself to the ground in prostration. "It's impossible! Your disciple Mingzun placed a brand upon my Dao fruit. This old man can no longer follow Your Majesty!"
Waste Qingxuan walked up to him, examined his Dao fruit, and brushed his hand across it with a smile. "Then we'll just wipe away his brand."
Before Patriarch Boshan could stop him, he felt his Dao fruit suddenly become clear and luminous. The alien brand the Immortal Emperor Supreme had left upon it was entirely gone!
"Come with me," Waste Qingxuan said as he stepped out of his bodhimanda, smiling. "The battle of the Heavenly Abyss draws near. Let us go bear witness."
Patriarch Boshan rose and followed him in a daze, still unable to accept the reality of Qingxuan's return from death.
He couldn't shake the feeling that this Qingxuan was somewhat different from the Qingxuan in his memories. As they spent more time together, he noticed that this Qingxuan was cheerful and radiant, cynical and irreverent, with a child's temperament—and full of all kinds of shortcomings.
Such a Qingxuan was not Emperor Qingxuan.
Yet such a Qingxuan actually put him at ease, allowing him to cast aside the misgivings weighing on his heart completely.
"The Qingxuan before me must be the heavenly fiend Emperor Qingxuan severed from himself," he deduced Waste Qingxuan's origins, musing silently, 'Emperor Qingxuan is truly gone, yet the waste he severed before proving his Dao has survived instead. At this moment of collapse, is he going to lead us along a new path once more?'
At the same time, the Immortal Emperor Supreme frowned slightly.
For some reason, he sensed that the brand he had left upon Patriarch Boshan's Dao fruit had abruptly vanished!
The brand he left was exceedingly perilous, a fatal technique derived using divine reckoning as the key. Under normal circumstances, Boshan could mobilize his Dao fruit without impediment, but should the Immortal Emperor harbor intent to kill, he could instantly obliterate the Dao fruit!
This was the Immortal Emperor's method of controlling Boshan and the others.
"Could Patriarch Boshan be dead?"
He felt uneasy. Over recent days, the deaths of Dao Lord Luofu, Dao Lord Jiugong, and Daoist Taiyuan in succession had already unsettled him. Now that the brand on Patriarch Boshan's Dao fruit had vanished, panic crept into his heart.
Even if Patriarch Boshan wasn't dead, he was no longer under control!
And his other capable aid, Supreme Yaoluo, had also vanished without a trace ever since pursuing Xu Ying. Rumors even circulated that someone had seen Supreme Yaoluo on the shores of the Eastern Sea, raving mad and utterly senseless.
Of the five who set out to hunt down Xu Ying, only Master Dongshi remained!
Aside from these vexing troubles, Jun Wudao, the first of the Twelve Wondrous, Dao Lord Kuyang, the second, and Dao Lord Luoxiao, the eighth, had also broken free one after another, released by the Holy Venerable.
Jun Wudao went without saying, while Dao Lord Kuyang and Dao Lord Luoxiao were fiercely untamed; without an opportunity to provide timely help when they were in dire straits, there was no way he could bring the two to heel.
Now, at the Immortal Emperor's side, only four great experts remained: Creation Supreme, Dan Xuanzi, Dao Lord Yuanying, and Fairy Huoling. As for the Nine Emperors of the Nine Heavens, they were of little use.
"I must cast another divination to divine the fortune of the battle of the Heavenly Abyss!"
The Immortal Emperor concentrated on his calculations: great fortune.
Yet he remained uneasy, feeling divine reckoning could not be trusted. He cast several more divinations, and every result was still great fortune.
"I must step onto the long river of time and observe the future to confirm the outcome of this battle!"
He was just about to make a move when Dan Xuanzi hurried over and reported, "Your Majesty, a strange being has arrived outside. He has the head of a dragon and the body of a man, calling himself Elder Long Dai. He claims to be a guest from the Heavenly Immortal Realm, sent by order of the Dragon Emperor of the Heavenly Immortal Realm to discuss an urgent matter with Your Majesty."
The Immortal Emperor rejoiced. "I wondered why every divination yielded great fortune—so my destiny lies here!"
Chapter 664