When he opened his eyes again, day had broken.
Sunlight filtered through the window and crept across Wei Yuan's eyelids. His eyes fluttered and slowly opened. He looked around in a daze, then suddenly bolted upright. Turning his head, he found the space beside him empty—there was no sign of Zhang Sheng!
Wei Yuan took fright. His divine sense instantly expanded to its limit, sweeping across a hundred-li radius, yet still he found no trace of Zhang Sheng. But then, a faint flicker of sword qi on the table caught his eye.
Only then did he notice a letter resting on the desk.
A great wave of unease surged through Wei Yuan's heart. He first checked the current time within the Splendor of the Many Realms, only to discover that it was already midmorning of the following day.
He remembered only that exhaustion had overwhelmed him at his absolute limit, and he had closed his eyes intending to take a brief nap, only for the next day to arrive in the blink of an eye. Sharp as Wei Yuan was, how could he fail to realize that something monumental had happened?
Straining to remain calm, he slowly unfolded the letter on the table.
"A rival in the Sword Dao has sent a challenge, seeking a fair duel to determine the first step on the path of swordsmanship. As a sword cultivator, when offered a fair duel, what reason do I have to back away?
"Yet there is something I have weighed for a long time, and I believe I must tell you so you understand the whole cause and effect.
"The enemy is vile and petty, and will surely lay ambushes and hidden ploys. But they have seized the karma of your mortal bloodline, using it as a curse capable of severing your life and death—bearing a resemblance to how the Shamans used to operate back in the day. Using this as leverage, they demanded a duel.
"Deducing with my sword heart, I know that if you come along, there is no chance of survival. If I face the tribulation alone, a single sliver of life remains, resting upon whether my sword heart is as clear as water and my dao heart is as steadfast as steel. By the time you read this letter, the decisive battle will already have concluded. Before a battle of life and death, I chose to indulge myself completely with you one last time; if I cannot return, let it serve as a memory for the days to come.
"If I fall, I will surely destroy my own soul and nascent divinity, severing the path of reincarnation so as to give the enemy no opening to exploit. If they ever attempt to blackmail you with my remains or my reincarnation, you must refuse them outright! By throwing myself into this trap, I will surely shake the foundations of their Immortal Heaven, and in the days ahead, you can tear them out by the roots to avenge me.
"If I win this battle, then needless to say—from then on, beneath the Immortal Heaven, I shall walk alone!
"Oh, and perhaps add you as well."
Wei Yuan felt as if plunged into ice. He slowly rose to his feet, and the table and chairs beside him suddenly dissolved into fine dust. One by one, every object in the study shattered without a sound, like an invisible boundary of annihilation continuously expanding. In the blink of an eye, the entire study was utterly wiped away, and the destruction went on spreading outward.
For a moment, numerous divine senses from cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning swept toward this place, bewildered as to what had happened. But the moment their divine senses touched the slowly expanding annihilation boundary, they all let out muffled groans; their divine senses felt scorched by raging flames and recoiled in retreat, sustaining severe injuries in the process.
Only then did Wei Yuan startle back to his senses, reining in his nearly runaway divine sense.
He stood in the empty space where his study had once been, gripping the letter in his hand. Activating his divine consciousness, he began pondering where things had gone wrong. Judging from the letter, the enemy must have seized key karma, allowing them to trigger another Karma Great Curse.
Moreover, that karma appeared to be tied to his mortal bloodline, making the curse far more potent than the previous Karma Great Curse, and impossible for anyone not bound by Wei Yuan's bloodline to share the burden.
Thus, when Zhang Sheng received the invitation to battle, she had immediately decided to plunge into the game herself, bearing this fatal calamity in Wei Yuan's stead.
Yet when Wei Yuan tried to recall his mortal kin, he could not remember a single person, as if his life before the age of six were a complete blank. This meant this thread of karma had either been erased or extracted. And the culprit's methods were terrifyingly profound—capable not only of affecting the present, but also of reaching into the past to erase what had already transpired.
Wei Yuan racked his brains, finding the matter hard to fathom. He was now enveloped in monumental karma; after the formation of the Splendor of the Many Realms, his six grotto-heavens had begun to coalesce into an integrated whole, vast and magnificent. If an ordinary cultivator's karma was a pebble that could be tossed about at whim, then Wei Yuan's karma was a mountain range—immovable to anyone below the realm beyond the Immortal Heaven.
Even Immortal Monarch Yanshi could no longer thoroughly erase Wei Yuan's mortal bloodline karma like this. It was as though Wei Yuan's life in the mortal realm had vanished entirely.
Yet Wei Yuan still remembered Fengyuan Commandery, and he remembered Ye County, the place of his birth. As long as he made a trip to Ye County, he would surely uncover some trace. In accordance with the customs of the cultivation world, Wei Yuan had previously severed this karmic connection, intending to reclaim it only after attaining Scenery Command or even ascending to the Immortal Heaven. But now, he was forced to advance that timeline.
Tampering with a cultivator's mortal bloodline was an absolute taboo in the cultivation world, an outrage universally condemned by mortals and immortals alike. Clearly, the other party harbored no such scruples.
They seemed to have no scruples whatsoever.
A towering fury slowly formed deep within Wei Yuan's heart, freezing into an ancient, abyssal chill. Those people were not entirely without vulnerabilities; they had figures operating out in the open. And among them stood a core figure: the King of Ji.
Wei Yuan collected his thoughts and immediately gave orders to requisition all records in the Palace of Grand Beginning concerning the Martial Ancestor's stratagems, while also preparing to seek audiences with Yanshi and the Sword Palace Master. The two Immortal Monarchs could hardly be constrained by conventional means and would likely know far more than others.
Wei Yuan wanted to know just what kind of game the Martial Ancestor had arranged back then, and how great a price it took to topple the monarch of an empire. A hundred million units of mortal fortune could slay an immortal. What if it were a billion, or ten billion? Would that be enough to overthrow a dynasty?
Just as the order was given, he suddenly turned his head to see the void part. Bathed in blood and surrounded by four immortal swords, Zhang Sheng was borne out from the emptiness. The moment her feet left the void, her strength gave out, and she pitched headlong into Wei Yuan's embrace!
Wei Yuan instinctively caught and held her close, only to find his hands drenched in blood! Her left sleeve hung empty, the arm gone. A wound pierced clean through her abdomen from front to back, sword qi relentlessly sparking and extinguishing within it, her flesh continuously regenerating only to rot away again. Beyond that, deep sword wounds scored her body, many baring bone.
Seeing Wei Yuan, Zhang Sheng forced a smile and murmured, "Put me down... I want to... stand..."
"Treat your wounds first—"
"Since I'm back, I won't die. This battle... wasn't a bad haul..."
Two halves of a broken sword appeared in Zhang Sheng's hand, and she cast them to the ground. The broken blade was broad and heavy, steeped in an ancient aura; upon striking the earth, faint chanting seemed to resonate around it.
Zhang Sheng said, "Turns out there wasn't just one Buddhist Sword. Still, this one has been snapped by me. From now on, their Buddhist Swords are incomplete—they'll have to come to our Buddhist Sword Peak if they want to make them whole again."
"Is the Buddhist Sword that formidable? Did they not play dirty?"
"Of course they did. They concealed a Scenery Command expert in the shadows. I trapped him inside the Immortal-Slaying Sword Formation, suppressing and executing him right alongside the Buddhist Sword."
Zhang Sheng spoke of it lightly, yet Wei Yuan could see that even her soul was unstable, and signs of decay had seeped into the World's Sword Tomb, as though a thousand years had passed over it.
Having recounted her victory, Zhang Sheng finally muttered, "My wounds are a bit heavy... you..."
Then silence followed.
Wei Yuan gave a start of alarm. Looking closely, he realized Zhang Sheng stood with hands clasped behind her back, having already passed out.
Chapter 1036