Naturally at the Forefront

The sun rose as usual. Watching the morning sun slowly ascend, Wei Yuan took the opportunity to inspect his karmic luck. All five Dragon Blood Trees had sprouted tender shoots, forming a ring like a natural formation. At the center of the formation, a wisp of faint, almost imperceptible karmic luck rose slowly, pushing Wei Yuan’s karmic fortune to a brand-new height. Within the domain, it was still midsummer heat, but in many parts of the Great Tang, harsh winter had already arrived. In three days, it would be the New Year. A festive mood currently filled the domain. People across every city had decorated voluntarily, and many were preparing for the New Year according to their old customs. This was Qingming’s very first New Year, and the cultivators had long agreed to toll the bell twelve times on New Year's Eve to celebrate. For this purpose, Yu Zhizhuo had specially cast a massive bronze bell weighing a full ten thousand jin, and over the past few days he had been racing to carve formations into it so that its chime would resound across the entire domain. A batch of spirit fields would also ripen on New Year’s Eve, as if to join in the celebration. Over the past few days, merchant caravans traveling to and from the domain had increased by fifty percent, continually ferrying all manner of holiday goods into the territory. Everywhere was flourishing and brimming with joy. Wei Yuan stood atop the main peak, gazing out over the entire domain and savoring this brief moment of peaceful tranquility. Yet he suddenly sensed that something was amiss. This morning was far too quiet. Even the cities, which were usually bustling at dawn, had fallen still. People walked down the streets in haste, as if everyone had lost the desire to speak. Wei Yuan frowned slightly and looked up at the sky, then around at his surroundings. He felt only an indescribable stillness, yet he could discern no outward anomaly. *** Deep within the Wu domain, atop a magnificent sacrificial altar nearly a thousand zhang tall, tens of thousands of Shaman high priests ascended step by step. Leading the procession, numerous mighty warriors carried a white jade coffin draped in a crimson shroud. The jade was somewhat translucent, rippling with a faint gleam of bloodlight within. The procession finally reached the top of the altar and set the white jade coffin in the center. Two Spirit Shamans and two Nether Shamans sat at the four corners, while a Sacred Shaman slid open the coffin lid. Inside lay a young girl, resting quietly. Her face was serene, as though she were in deep slumber. Her four hands rested folded alternately over her chest, and a long tail was coiled between her legs. As the ritual commenced, curtains of blood surged straight into the heavens from the altar. A massive, slowly churning vortex appeared in the sky, and its terrifying aura of suppression made every Shaman tremble. From the vortex in the sky, a colossal claw reached out, slowly grasping toward the girl in the coffin. As if lifted by an invisible hand, she drifted upward toward the claw. The claw spanned several hundred zhang; before it, the girl appeared tiny as a speck of dust. Halfway into the air, an expression suddenly appeared on her face—one of immense agony—and piercing, bloodcurdling screams tore through heaven and earth! Her body contorted unnaturally. Then, section by section, her long tail exploded into mists of blood, followed by her legs, torso, and arms, bursting in succession. Her shrieks grew increasingly wretched. Several Great Shamans seated atop the altar abruptly clutched their heads and writhed in torment. Before rolling more than a couple of times, their heads violently blew apart, reducing them to puddles of pus and gore. The girl’s head endured exceptionally long; she even opened her eyes. Yet her eye sockets held only putrid flesh and blood, devoid of pupils. Fountains of blood abruptly erupted from her eyes and mouth, as if an inexhaustible reservoir of blood surged inside her skull. At last, her head blew apart, leaving only her scream echoing across heaven and earth for a long time. Around the altar, a hundred thousand superior sacrifices and five hundred thousand intermediate sacrifices collapsed simultaneously, while surrounding the perimeter were boundless seas of lower sacrifices. Blood welled up beneath the victims, flowing into the altar. In the blink of an eye, a pillar of bloody aura hundreds of zhang thick burst from the altar straight into the heavens, tearing open a hundred-li-long rift across the sky. The pillar of blood lasted for an entire quarter of an hour before dissipating. Where the girl’s body had been, only three specks of the deepest black remained, seemingly ready to devour everything around them. The giant claw in the sky reached down once more, making a grasping motion toward the three specks of darkness from afar. The specks rose slowly, while the claw trembled faintly, as if hoisting three whole mountains. In an instant, the claw seemed unable to bear the strain; cracks spread across it, oozing drops of blood. Once those carriage-sized drops hit the ground, they erupted into raging nether flames, incinerating everything to white ash. On the altar, numerous Desolate Shamans, Nether Shamans, and Spirit Shamans looked up at the sky, watching their Little Princess vanish completely into nothingness. Her future severed, the foundation of her very existence was transmuted into a terrifying karmic power to launch an earth-shattering Great Curse—one meant to curse to death the murderer who had killed her, along with everything tied to them. This arrangement had been prepared for a long time. For it to be triggered now meant that the Heavenly Shaman had finally found a clue. Yet seeing the karmic power split into three portions in the sky, the clue was evidently not yet definitive; all three targets were possible. The Sacred Shaman and a Desolate Shaman knew part of the inside story, and they exchanged a subtle glance. From the moment of her birth, the Little Princess had shown all manner of extraordinary traits. Her perception and spiritual awareness progressed by leaps and bounds, such that no danger could ever draw near before she sensed it. That was precisely why she had dared to venture into the Nether realm for experience with only a handful of guards. She carried a special karma upon her shoulders, which was why she had earned the attention of every Heavenly Shaman, who nurtured her with all their might. It was said that under the blessing of that karma, she was destined to be the next Heavenly Shaman without question. Yet now, all of that remaining karma had been turned into a terrifying curse. The Little Princess, who could have become part of legend, had fallen just as the great curtain was slowly opening. Since ancient times, the will of Heaven has always been unfathomable. The three black specks vanished one by one. Afterward, rain of blood began to fall from the sky. The blood in the rain was human blood, rich in abundant spiritual power—the feedback of heaven and earth to the sacrifice. The shamans opened their bodies and minds, cultivating and absorbing it. A small group of Shamans at the top of the altar absorbed fully ninety percent of the entire bloody rainfall. *** Qingming Domain City. The morning glow continued to spread, quickly blanketing the entire horizon. The dome of the sky turned a dark crimson, taking on a thick, viscous texture. The people across the domain raised their heads to gaze at the sky, each eerily calm. No one panicked, and no one fled, as though all had silently resigned themselves to fate's design. This was terror at its extreme. Elementary fear meant panic, screaming, and fleeing. Intermediate fear meant going limp and weak, unable even to run. But extreme terror was a tranquil, serene waiting for everything to unfold—neither thinking nor contemplating, bordering on heroic fearlessness. With a hum, a streak of clear qi erupted from the center of Qingming, transforming into a canopy of azure light that blanketed the entire domain. The cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning had all received the summons and flew toward the main peak. The peak held the formation left behind by Ji Liuli; pooling the power of all the cultivators, it could provide the greatest possible defense. Faced with such an anomaly of heaven and earth, the original surviving elders of Qingming all remembered: this was a Shaman Great Curse. Yet the blood curse back then had possessed nowhere near the scale of the one before them. Wei Yuan sat in his study, picking up a mirror to look at himself. In the mirror, the flesh on his face was melting and sliding off, and then both eyeballs rolled down one by one. Wei Yuan understood instantly: this was a Karma Great Curse! At this moment, Wei Yuan had no time to wonder how the Shamans had found out. He dashed out of the room, ran a circle around Zhang Sheng’s residence, and planted four tender shoots of the Dragon Blood Tree at the cardinal positions. Wei Yuan already knew his fate from the jade mirror’s divination. In truth, one did not even need divination to know that under a Karma Great Curse, no one could escape. Thus, Wei Yuan now only hoped that his teacher, who was most deeply entangled with him, might survive the calamity. The final Dragon Blood Tree was planted by Wei Yuan beside the Qingming boundary stone. Everything began here, and everything would return here. He wondered whether this meager bit of karmic luck could save a few more mortals. Within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, Maiden Yin-Yang slowly opened her eyes, resonating faintly with somewhere beyond the skies. At this moment, Wei Yuan could no longer sever her connection with heaven and earth. But with the Karma Great Curse already descending, the Shamans must have already learned of her existence. Amidst the blood clouds in the heavens, a colossal eye opened. This long, narrow eye possessed three pupils, each looking toward the past, the present, and the future. Wei Yuan stood atop the peak, looking up at that Heavenly Eye spanning several hundred li, completely devoid of fear. Naturally, Wei Yuan desperately yearned to live, yet with death staring him in the face, he found that he was not afraid in the slightest. Looking back on his life, brief though it was, it had been fiercely blazing. He had forged a Dao Foundation peerless under heaven, campaigned against alien tribes, opened and expanded territory, kept hundreds of thousands of people alive, and led hundreds upon thousands of people who once had no hope on the Dao to cast their own Dao Foundations. The Great Bright Demon-Subduing Sword, the Ten Directions Glazed Golden Fire, the Six Paths Jiayi Divine Wood Qi—they might look like jokes, but they had genuinely opened paths of cultivation for countless souls. Wei Yuan hoped that after his death, someone would continue down this path rather than let it be cut short. Fortunately, the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning had already embraced the ideas of the world beyond; as long as some of them survived, they would surely carry on. As for Xu Wenwu... even if this world were completely destroyed, he might still cross over into the next. His father, the mother he had never met, and his other bonds—there was no time to attend to them now. Everything had arrived so abruptly that Wei Yuan had no preparation whatsoever. Within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, Maiden Yin-Yang’s expression shifted continually, at one moment showing painful struggle, and at the next turning cold and detached. All the immortal flora held their breath, maintaining absolute silence, as if sensing that the end was about to descend. The Red Lotus Bodhi grew increasingly ethereal, its branches and leaves swaying as faint chanting resonated. The celestial laurel tree hid behind the Bingli Divine Wood. Wei Yuan entered the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains and unearthed the White Lotus of the Defiled Earth. *** In his study, Zhang Sheng cast a divination to calculate Wei Yuan’s fate. The hexagram read: *The End*. Zhang Sheng rose, straightened his robes and cap with care, and bowed three times to the portrait of Patriarch Xuanyue in the study. He then sat cross-legged upon the couch, resting his sword across his knees, quietly awaiting the arrival of that moment. Resting on his knees was the fourth immortal sword, which suddenly hummed softly: "There is still a thread of survival." "I know." "Then why not seek it?" "How can it be sought?" "Use me to slash open the void, return to the Palace of Grand Beginning, escape through feigned death with the Yin-Yang Reversal Pendant, and sever the karma relying on the millennium of power accumulated in the Sky Azure Hall. You can secure a chance at life." "If I do that, Wei Yuan will die." "He is doomed to die!" "Even so, I must stand in front and shield him from a blow." "Knowing full well it means certain death?" "Yes." "Why not preserve your useful body to avenge him in the future?" Zhang Sheng gave a calm smile and said, "The great tide surges relentlessly; the red dust rolls on and on. You and I are merely ordinary members of the bustling throng. Life or death is truly not so important. If one cannot step forward even in this moment of life and death, how can there be any talk of a future? A so-called useful body preserved through cowardly survival is worthless to me. "Therefore, at this very moment, as his teacher, I naturally ought to stand at the forefront."