Afterward, the disciples withdrew. Accompanied by the four Perfected Persons, Wei Yuan entered the treasure vault of Water Moon Hall to inspect and take inventory of the treasures left behind by successive hall masters and patriarchs.
The treasure vault was situated at the lowest level of Water Moon Hall, right beside the Dao Comprehension Wall. Years ago, Wei Yuan had come here more than once to comprehend the true intent of the Great Dao within the Myriad Aspects of Great Yin Moon Splendor.
Stepping into the vault, Wei Yuan was immediately met by the dense, tangible breath of passing ages. The aura was freezing cold, while the power of moon splendor was so thick it had condensed into physical substance, flowing continuously across the floor.
In the center of the vault stood a jade dais, atop which crouched a jade toad, gazing upward at the full moon hanging high in the center of the hall.
Yet a small dharma sword had pierced through the crown of the toad's head, impaling its entire body. The jade toad merely stared with singular focus at that lofty, distant moon—so absorbed that it seemed to have entirely forgotten the blade buried in its flesh.
For some reason, seeing this sight gave Wei Yuan a strange sense of déjà vu, as though he had seen it somewhere before, or felt it somewhere in the past.
At this moment, all the other treasures in the vault, including three or four immortal treasures, seemed to completely fade away. In Wei Yuan's eyes, only this jade toad remained.
The bloodstains upon the dharma sword were as fresh as if they had just been shed.
A thought suddenly rose in Wei Yuan's heart: *Does it feel pain too?*
It surely felt pain. All sentient beings knew pain; there were simply moments when they forgot.
As a disciple who had inherited the Water Moon Hall lineage, Wei Yuan naturally knew of the founding patriarch's deeds. Yet upon the jade dais was another cluster of patterns that seemed to beckon to him. Wei Yuan examined them closely and found that the patterns were resonating with his imprint as the Master of Water Moon Hall.
And so Wei Yuan walked over and placed his hand upon the patterns. In an instant, a torrent of information flooded his consciousness!
It was the life of the founding patriarch—his true life—along with the final remnants of his divine sense.
The lineage of Water Moon Hall began three thousand six hundred years ago. The patriarch who established this path was named Suchanzi. In his era, his brilliance was peerless; on the Great Dao of Great Yin, he outstripped all peers, a supreme figure who attained Scenery Command at fifty and ascended to immortality at one hundred and fifty.
After ascending to immortality, Suchanzi obtained the authority over the fundamental Great Dao of Great Yin, shocking the world of his time. Back then, anyone in the cultivation world who met him had to respectfully address him as Demon Venerable Suchan.
At that time, the Three Immortals of the Palace of Grand Beginning had already passed away, leaving a temporary gap in leadership. Demon Venerable Suchan possessed boundless pride; though he was not yet the foremost figure under heaven, he believed reaching that pinnacle was merely a matter of time. Thus, he no longer paid any mind to the living immortals of his day. Instead, his gaze reached back through time, fixing upon the Three Immortals of Grand Beginning and the First Ancestor of Grand Beginning.
Demon Venerable Suchan planned to first surpass the Three Immortals, then attempt to overcome the First Ancestor. Out of a mutual respect for worthy adversaries across different eras, he decided to join the Palace of Grand Beginning, intending to first carry forward and magnify the Three Immortals' lineage as compensation for subsequently toppling them across the generations.
To gain entry to the Palace of Grand Beginning, Demon Venerable Suchan hunted down the palace's foremost adversary at the time—the Great State Preceptor of Northern Liao—for thirteen full years. He finally slew him within the Golden Tent domain of the Liao realm, then arrived at the sect's gates carrying the severed head. With this feat, he won over everyone and became the Third Palace Master of the Palace of Grand Beginning.
Thereafter, Demon Venerable Suchan governed with tireless devotion and diligently taught his disciples, leaving behind the inheritances of two halls in one stroke, of which Water Moon Hall was the core.
Demon Venerable Suchan not only wanted to surpass the Three Immortals across the gulf of time, but also wished to exceed them in every aspect, including establishing an orderly and flourishing lineage. Only then would he consider himself to have truly defeated the Three Immortals, before attempting to scale the towering peak that was the First Ancestor.
Yet during his travels, Demon Venerable Suchan chanced upon an immortal of the righteous path: Fairy Mingyue.
Mingyue also cultivated the Dao of Great Yin, but she had merely grasped the barest surface, barely managing to ascend to immortality. When they crossed paths on the road, Demon Venerable Suchan, considering that they walked the same path of Great Yin, offered a few casual pointers without taking the encounter to heart.
Little did he expect that Mingyue would etch those words deep into her memory.
Many years later, in order to make the Palace of Grand Beginning the foremost immortal sect, Demon Venerable Suchan boldly challenged the Sword Palace to a duel. Yet on his way to the appointment, he was suddenly ambushed by multiple powerful enemies. The main force hailed from the Great Treasure Radiance Pure Land, which had spared no expense in mobilizing multiple Bodhisattvas and a Buddha.
Outnumbered and on the verge of defeat, Suchan was suddenly saved by Mingyue's arrival. After a bloody battle, she managed to escort him away. She was gravely wounded, but relying on his divine ability Jade Toad Swallows Heaven, Suchan quickly recovered.
Afterward, Mingyue confessed that she had in fact belonged to the Great Treasure Radiance Pure Land, and that after two more reincarnations, she would have attained the karmic attainment of an Arhat.
Yet upon discovering that the target of the ambush was Suchan, she had resolutely rebelled against her sect. As a consequence, her golden body was shattered, and she plummeted directly from the immortal realm.
Moved with gratitude and emotion, Suchan helped her recultivate the Dao of Great Yin. The path of Great Yin possessed miraculous efficacy in repairing the primordial spirit and sea of consciousness. After several decades of recuperation and cultivation, Mingyue finally regained her immortal status.
During this time, the two fell deeply in love. Mingyue gave birth to three daughters in succession, and the family lived in blissful harmony.
Yet one day, Mingyue fell into danger. Drawing upon his authority over the Great Dao of Great Yin, Suchan located her whereabouts and rushed over immediately. To his shock, an ambush awaited him—several formidable true immortals, sword immortals, and two Buddhas.
Right before Suchan's eyes, Mingyue ran her sword through her own eldest daughter, casting a curse with the sacrifice.
This curse specifically targeted true love and emotional devotion: the deeper the target cared for the sacrifice, the more catastrophic the injury. It was venomous to the extreme, truly the most vicious curse of that era.
The moment the curse took effect, Suchan—a man who had spent half his life in romance and had known countless female confidantes—had half of his cultivation severed on the spot!
Yet the weight of Suchan's Great Dao authority defied imagination. With his remaining cultivation, he directly banished one Buddha into reincarnation and subdued a sword immortal. Using the sword immortal's life as leverage and willingly offering his own death as the price, he secured the safety of his other two daughters.
Once every true immortal present swore a binding oath, staking their immortal path, cultivation, and Dao fruit to guarantee that the two girls could grow up freely, untainted by karma, Demon Venerable Suchan sat cross-legged beneath the moon and serenely accepted his death.
Holding the God-Slaying Immortal Sword, Mingyue thrust the blade through the crown of Suchan's head, piercing his sea of consciousness and extinguishing his soul alongside any future reincarnation.
Only then did Suchan finally understand that from the very beginning, all Mingyue had ever wanted was the authority over the Great Dao of Great Yin that he possessed.
At the moment his body died and his soul dispersed, a wisp of Suchan's remnant thoughts returned to the Palace of Grand Beginning carrying the single-use God-Slaying Immortal Sword, transforming in Water Moon Hall into this moon-gazing jade toad.
At this point, Wei Yuan finally understood why, ever since obtaining the ancient full moon, he had always felt that something was missing from the true intent of Water Moon Hall's inheritance, and why Water Moon Hall's path had seemed considerably weaker than expected.
Having accepted the hall master's imprint and witnessed the life of Third Palace Master Suchan, Wei Yuan finally knew what was missing: the authority over the Great Dao of Great Yin, as well as the divine ability concerning the scouring of time.
No wonder Wei Yuan had sensed the intensely concentrated aura of time scouring the moment he stepped into the vault. Time scouring was originally meant to be an inherent divine ability of the *Myriad Aspects of Great Yin Moon Splendor*. Once that portion was seized, that part of the inheritance preserved in the Palace of Grand Beginning automatically vanished.
Just as when Xu Shiba was born and claimed Sweeping Away the Four Barbarians from the Sword of Ten Thousand Generations and Autumns, the inheritance held by Xu Wangu had likewise disappeared.
The *Myriad Aspects of Great Yin Moon Splendor* had already been close to the Great Dao itself, not a whit inferior to the Three Immortals' inheritances. Yet it was only complete with the divine ability of time scouring and the corresponding authority over the Great Dao of Great Yin.
Even stripped of its two most crucial components, the *Myriad Aspects of Great Yin Moon Splendor* was still sufficient to serve as the foundational legacy for one of the twelve halls—a testament to Demon Venerable Suchan's heaven-defying might back then.
However, the divine sense Demon Venerable Suchan sent back carried his dying wish: he did not desire this secret history to be made public. Only successive Masters of Water Moon Hall who had attained the true intent of Great Yin Moon Splendor were permitted to see it.
Even True Monarch Xuanyue had cultivated the Water Moon inheritance in his youth before transferring to Sky Azure Hall, and thus was unqualified to examine this imprint; consequently, he was unaware of this secret history. He had assumed Water Moon Hall was founded by an immortal who emerged a thousand years after Suchan's death.
Aside from this secret history, the imprint also contained the final wisp of remnant thoughts left behind by Demon Venerable Suchan.
For reasons he could not explain, Wei Yuan suddenly felt a dull ache in his sea of consciousness, and his breathing grew slightly labored.
Steadying himself, he reached out and touched that wisp of remnant thoughts with his finger. In an instant, the scenery before him shifted, transforming into the shore of a lake beneath the moon.
A man with faintly graying temples, yet possessing an extraordinary, jade-like bearing, stood with hands clasped behind his back, looking up at the bright moon in the sky.
As though sensing Wei Yuan's arrival, he turned his head and said placidly:
"I never once regretted it."
Chapter 1039