The next day, when Wei Yuan entered the temple again, he made his way deeper, into a new level, and there discovered several great halls. The halls had been cut from the living rock, and in them stood a few torches that gave off a faint blue-green glow. These torches burned yin qi for fuel; no one knew how many years they had been lit, yet not one of them had gone out.
The walls of the halls were carved with niche after niche. A few still held skulls, but most were empty. The other halls were the same. These halls had clearly been tombs for the dead, but now most of the corpses inside had turned into undead monsters.
Wei Yuan sensed the blood bead at his chest and saw that it showed no unusual movement, and only then did he relax a little. He was still extremely careful with the blood bead the old woman had given him, and had sealed it inside the wound on his chest. After a night of flesh growing, it had been completely wrapped up, cut off within and without.
The old woman had not mentioned this tomb chamber, nor that many of the undead monsters were villagers from this very village—their own ancestors.
Past four tomb chambers, another great hall appeared ahead. In the center of the hall stood an altar, and on the altar was enshrined a savage idol. A skeleton lay sprawled across the offering table, a long sword buried in its back.
The long sword had rotted almost beyond recognition, all its dharma power lost over the long ages. Judging by the skeleton, the one who had been stabbed was most likely human, but some parts of the body differed from a human's. Several bones, for instance, grew beneath its ribs, looking like the arms of a small child; whether it had been born that way or had simply not fully developed, he could not tell.
Its tailbone, too, had several extra segments, like a short tail a chi or so long. After studying the corpse, Wei Yuan looked at the idol.
The idol was not large, and its surface was black. Its face was especially savage, as though it wanted to devour everything in the world. It gave off a powerful aura of bloodlust, slaughter, and destruction, yet mixed into it was an inexhaustible force of life.
The idol's appearance revealed nothing of its origin, but when Wei Yuan's spiritual sense touched it, the celestial laurel tree in his Dao Foundation suddenly reacted, showing a strong craving for it.
Wei Yuan considered for a moment, then reached out and pinched the idol, breaking off a small piece. The idol was made of clay, and the lacquer sealing its surface had long since peeled away, so what Wei Yuan pinched off was a small clump of earth, and that earth held an exceptionally thick stench of blood and yin qi.
Wei Yuan's heart stirred, and the clump of earth appeared within Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, then crumbled into a puff of powder that drifted to where the celestial laurel tree stood and, upon landing, sank into the ground. The celestial laurel tree was like a traveler in the desert who has finally found water; it desperately absorbed the yin qi and blood qi in the soil, and its faint spark of vitality and spirit swelled at a rate visible to the naked eye. The moment the idol's earth entered Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, every immortal plant stirred, but the celestial laurel tree was fastest, drawing all the earth to itself.
The idol, however, was three chi tall, and Wei Yuan had only broken off a small piece. So he pulled, tearing one of the idol's arms off and sending it into Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains. The bloody earth turned to rain and fell upon the immortal plants; this time the moisture was shared out evenly, no one getting more or less than another.
The idol suddenly opened its eyes!
They were blood-red eyes, full of brutality. The instant one saw those eyes, a horrifying dharma power rushed into one's sea of consciousness. An ordinary Dao Foundation cultivator's sea of consciousness would shatter on the spot, killing him, and even a dharma idol cultivator would be badly wounded!
But Wei Yuan was blind at that moment; his eyes could see nothing.
The Dao Foundation warrior that had looked into the idol's eyes had indeed gone mad, and Wei Yuan had been forced to erase its sentience. Though it had lost its sentience, the Dao Foundation warrior was still usable; it had merely reverted to the old way, requiring Wei Yuan to control it with a portion of his mind. The madness in the Dao Foundation warrior's eyes lasted only an instant before all its spiritual light died, and then it silently swung up its shield and smashed the idol's head to pieces!
Wei Yuan struck out with a punch as well, shattering the idol's body.
The idol broke apart, and a thick blood qi surged into the air, whirling and dancing within the hall, yet unable to fly out of it no matter how it tried!
Dozens of faces faintly surfaced in that mass of blood qi—some panicked, some full of venomous hatred, some in utter terror. It wanted to escape, but the Red Lotus Bodhi—of which only a length of trunk remained in Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation—suddenly exerted a powerful pull, drawing it gradually toward Wei Yuan.
The blood qi struggled desperately, but it was still drawn into Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains and absorbed by the Red Lotus Bodhi. The Red Lotus Bodhi instantly surged with vitality, putting out branches and leaves; several new shoots grew from the charred stump.
That blood qi concealed a multitude of vengeful souls, each of them quite powerful, but the Red Lotus Bodhi was their natural bane, and it unhesitatingly purified them one by one.
With the Red Lotus Bodhi's revival, a ring of fertile soil appeared around the bodhi tree. The spirituality of the land rose once more, and this time three Dao Foundation warriors gained sentience at once. This whole series of changes was completed in an instant, and when Wei Yuan came back to himself, he broke out in a cold sweat.
This idol was exceedingly sinister: its eyes were in fact a rare curse, and whoever met its gaze would be cursed on the spot—practically impossible to guard against. Steeped in yin qi for many centuries, the curse had grown quite powerful; had Wei Yuan seen it himself, he would likely have been badly wounded even if he did not go mad.
Fortunately, Wei Yuan's luck was good: he was blind, so the idol's trap had been useless.
After the idol shattered, an iron ring rolled out from inside it. Wei Yuan immediately sensed that the ring contained immense yin qi, and picked it up. The instant the iron ring touched his hand, countless images rushed into his consciousness! In that instant, Wei Yuan seemed to live through another life.
The earliest memory was of a young girl whose days were nothing but endless cultivation; the slightest mistake brought severe punishment. The village elders said she was the genius of the tribe, that only in this way could she become strong, could she avenge the ancestors.
The girl could not bear the endless bitter training and punishments and tried to run away, only to be caught and brought back again and again. She wanted to end her own life, but every time she would wake again, and so she discovered that she was immortal. When the elders learned this, they grew even more frenzied; each time she was caught after an escape, she was beaten half to death.
One day, her blood accidentally saved a doddering old elder, and from then on she had to have blood let every day.
Seeing this, Wei Yuan shuddered involuntarily, as if he had lived through it himself, and he felt completely the girl's despair, resentment, and fear from the depths of her heart. In the girl's memory, the sky was forever gray-black, forever storm and thunder and lightning; there had never been sunlight.
At the bottom of her heart, a shadow began to appear.
Later, when the girl had grown a little older, on a rainy night, after another vicious beating and punishment, an elder utterly violated her. The shadow instantly expanded, almost blotting out her entire heart.
After being badly wounded on a mission, she met a young man of the Liao Clan. The young man saved her, cared for her, gave her an iron ring, and then let her go. The shadow in the girl's heart receded a little.
Another mission—the target was him.
The girl abandoned the mission, and when she went back she was beaten and violated worse than ever. By then every one of the elders had violated her, without exception. The girl fled and wanted to find him, but he had already been killed by other assassins sent by the elders.
The shadow devoured the girl completely. She returned to the village and killed all the elders, then released something that absolutely should never have been released. It was a mass of twisted flesh and blood, a strange dark purple, possessed of an indescribable vitality. Though it was only the size of a fist, it seemed to hold within it the ancient behemoths of an entire tribe.
The girl wanted to destroy the village that had tormented her since childhood, and everything around it. But just as the seal on the flesh and blood was about to be fully opened, a sword pierced her from behind.
She turned and saw the young Liao man, who should have been dead. The young Liao man was no longer gentle and considerate; he wore the arrogance of one looking down on everything from on high. "Why?"
"Because we share the same blood and the same origin; we are both descendants of the same great being. We were born fated to kill one another, to devour one another. Only the one who kills all his brothers and sisters is the final victor, and only he can receive its inheritance!"
"But I... I only wanted to be with you..."
"From the first time I saw you, I knew your identity. But you were too slow; you had never awakened the hunting instinct and had not the slightest inkling of my identity. So I deliberately let you go, because only in that way could I find your tribesfolk, and find the portion of the heaven-granted inheritance that belongs to you—the piece of True Dragon flesh and blood before you."
"But why was there a mission to kill you?"
The young Liao man sneered. "Your people make their living taking assassination contracts; it was not hard to find a channel. I issued that mission myself. You failed, so naturally they would send others. You told me about yourself, and I knew you were one step from madness. Seeing my corpse, you would naturally go completely mad."
An irresistible weariness welled up in the girl's heart, and her vitality swiftly dimmed.
Since he wanted her life, then let him have it. After all, living was nothing but eternal darkness, cold, and pain...
The young Liao man picked up that strange mass of flesh and blood, and fanaticism showed on his face. "True Dragon flesh and blood! I have already completed one hunt, and with this, the other descendants will not escape my pursuit! Hahahaha..."
After his long laugh, he suddenly fixed his eyes on Wei Yuan and said, "...including you!" Wei Yuan instantly tore himself free of that sea of memories.
The owner of these memories, that girl, was also of the Liao Clan. These memories faintly matched the murals in the temple: there really was some great being who had left behind many descendants, and then set all the descendants to slaughtering one another and devouring one another, with the final victor receiving its inheritance?
In the history of cultivation, similar things had not been unheard of. But when a mighty being of that level was involved, there were bound to be layers upon layers of secrets, and that being would surely have left countless hidden measures to conceal them. Unless one was a participant, perhaps no one could know the truth of the matter until the final day of revelation.
But that last line the young Liao man said to Wei Yuan—"including you"—gave Wei Yuan an intuition that it had been spoken to him.
If the corpse before the altar was the girl of that time, she had died an unknowable number of years ago, so long ago that even her dharma sword had rotted beyond recognition. How could the young Liao man have seen him across several thousand or even tens of thousands of years? And how could he be certain that Wei Yuan was also a descendant?
More importantly, so much time had passed—was he still alive? If he was alive, judging merely from the length of his lifespan, he ought to have ascended to immortality by now.
Chapter 363