"As expected, claiming to be of the same race really works wonders. Even I didn't anticipate it would agree on the spot after I merely made an offhand comment."
"What?" Hearing Lin Ling's answer, Wang Xuanba's expression shifted drastically. "Forming an alliance with that old relic? Junior Sister, are you serious?"
The Earth Vein Ancient Tree's behavior—arrogant at first and servile afterward—had truly earned Wang Xuanba's contempt.
"It was just empty talk to coax it into compliance. An alliance?" Lin Ling's tone was calm, yet the profound disdain in her words was plain to see. "Does it even deserve one? Now that it has joined the Great Qi, does it think it can back out? If it dares bring this up to my face..." Lin Ling let out a cold snort.
Wang Xuanba was stunned.
Having always placed great stock in keeping his word, he found it somewhat difficult to accept Lin Ling's blatant breach of promise.
Seeing his reaction, Lin Ling's icy expression thawed, and she broke into a slight smile. "Senior Brother, all is fair in war. When dealing with an enemy, wouldn't insisting on following through on every promise be nothing short of madness?"
Wang Xuanba was left speechless.
"Besides, Senior Brother, do you still remember Master's instructions before we went to see the Earth Vein Ancient Tree?" Lin Ling asked again.
"Of course I remember. Master said that if the ancient tree proved obstinate and incorrigible, you could take its place," Wang Xuanba recalled.
"The Earth Vein Ancient Tree has quite a domineering name. I had some expectations at first, but after seeing its true state with my own eyes, nothing remained but disappointment." Lin Ling's reply caught Wang Xuanba off guard.
"Weak. Far too weak. The Earth Vein Ancient Tree's greatest strength is that its body is unified with Xuanhuang's earth veins, allowing it to draw upon the surging power coursing through all of Xuanhuang. That is its defining trait and its advantage, but it also dictates the tree's upper limit. Moreover, its form is far too massive—in the eyes of true experts, it is practically riddled with flaws." Lin Ling shook her head slightly.
"My aspiration is to become someone like Master. If I were to truly turn into some Earth Vein Tree, my strength would indeed leap forward in the short term, but my future path would be utterly severed. I'm not a fool. The only thing to do was trick that old relic into staying on duty."
Lin Ling cast Wang Xuanba a sidelong glance. "Senior Brother, just what kind of person did you take me for?"
Wang Xuanba slowly realized her reasoning. Feeling somewhat sheepish, he scratched his head and offered an immediate apology. "I underestimated you, Junior Sister."
He glanced back toward the Earth Vein Ancient Tree rooted within the Sacred Emperor Throne and nodded in agreement. "Ancient artifacts of Xuanhuang are mighty indeed, but they rely entirely on the power of the Heavenly Dao's laws. When Xuanhuang's Heavenly Dao flourishes, their standing naturally rises. But when Xuanhuang's Heavenly Dao is trampled beneath the feet of someone like Chuanfa, as it is today, they can only cling to life, lurking in dark corners reminiscing about their past glory."
"I didn't expect you to be so cultured, Senior Brother. You speak in quite well-crafted phrases." Lin Ling's tone hovered between sincere praise and a playful, sarcastic jab. "I didn't think about all that; I simply want to become stronger."
"Enough talk. I'm going to cultivate. Swallowing a portion of that old relic's body yielded quite a harvest after all. If I had known earlier, I should have been more ruthless and devoured even more." Lin Ling's wistful voice lingered in Wang Xuanba's ears.
A moment later, her figure faded away, and her presence vanished entirely.
Wang Xuanba let out a self-deprecating chuckle, amused at his own unnecessary worry.
***
Tianyu Province, Xuanhuang Realm.
This was the location of a wondrous spectacle renowned throughout the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals.
A chasm hundreds of li long wound across the earth like a blackened scar.
Even before drawing near, one could faintly sense an endless, bone-chilling cold radiating from the depths of the rift. The closer one approached, the faster the temperature plummeted. Even Golden Core cultivators could not withstand the frigid chill for long, unable to linger nearby.
From the depths of the abyss, ghostly blue light erupted at intervals—surges of freezing frost qi.
Yet if one stood at the edge of the chasm and peered downward, one would see countless lotuses made of flame blooming within this frozen abyss.
They were not cold flames, but bona fide, blazing lotuses of fire.
Cold and heat, in complete contradiction yet intertwined, manifested simultaneously in the frozen chasm.
Outside the spectacle of the Ice Abyss Fire Lotus, the figure of Li Ping, the Faceless Sacred Emperor of Great Qi, suddenly materialized.
Like the countless travelers visiting this sight, he stood quietly, gazing down into the depths.
"A wondrous gathering of natural spirits, an extraordinary work of creation," Li Ping reflected inwardly after a long time.
In his eyes, the scene differed entirely from what ordinary cultivators perceived.
The blue glacial abyss actually reeked of deep, suffocating death qi, pitch-black and stifling. Meanwhile, the blazing red fire lotuses appeared pure white, radiating vigorous vitality.
What seemed to be an interplay of hot and cold was in truth...
"A black abyss and white blossoms; flowers of life blooming in a chasm of death."
Li Ping stepped forward into empty air, his figure plummeting into the black abyss.
Yet his disappearance drew no notice from any of the cultivators gathered nearby.
From Li Ping's perspective, the surrounding scenery abruptly stretched and distorted.
Although the white blossoms of life appeared close at hand, Li Ping had already been falling for a considerable time without drawing any closer to them. The space of the black abyss expanded and stretched boundlessly with his descent.
Accompanying this distortion was a corresponding, steady increase in dense death qi.
Sensing the death qi trying to taint him, Li Ping sneered inwardly, paying it little mind. If an ordinary cultivator—even one in the Dao Integration realm—were to be corroded by this black death qi, their lifespan would be drastically truncated.
However, Li Ping was an Avatar of the Heavenly Dao, a piece of Xuanhuang's laws. Even if he represented a part that had broken free from control, how could it possibly harm him?
Ever since he forcibly devoured Xuanhuang's malice, Li Ping had indeed felt a certain estrangement growing between himself and the Heavenly Dao of Xuanhuang. Yet he remained confident that this was merely the Heavenly Dao's instinctual reaction to having its malice swallowed. Once enough time passed, the bond between him and Xuanhuang's Heavenly Dao would eventually return to normal.
Though their connection was currently in a weakened state, it was still not something the death qi here could shake.
Sure enough, even though Sacred Emperor Li Ping took no protective measures, he remained untouched by myriad techniques. The black death qi merely swirled around him in layers, unable to find an opening to breach.
Li Ping's gaze pierced the dense death qi, looking directly down at the multitude of life blossoms below.
"The boundary between life and death, the source of all living beings. Xuanhuang has fallen into such a state, yet you merely hide away in this secret ground, clinging to survival... What use are you?!"
A chilling aura of slaughter abruptly erupted from Li Ping, forcefully driving back the surrounding death qi.
"Step aside!"
Li Ping barked a low command. Miraculously, the layers of death qi beneath him split open, revealing a passage.
Space ceased stretching. Li Ping's form drifted down, darting through the breach in an instant.
Vibrant vitality washed over him, and the white blossoms of life were now within arm's reach. Above his head hovered dark clouds of death, swirling without dispersing.
Confronting that concentrated vitality, Li Ping suddenly felt a touch of gravity in his heart.
Compared to pure death qi, an overwhelming excess of useless vitality was far more akin to a lethal poison. Vitality was, by nature, a beneficial state. As an Avatar of the Heavenly Dao, Li Ping naturally enjoyed the favor of heaven and earth.
Who knew how many years had passed since a cultivator not rejected by heaven and earth had set foot here? The millennia of vitality accumulated beside the black abyss and white blossoms seemed to have finally found an outlet, rushing frantically toward Li Ping.
Even though he deliberately tried to hold it back, the vitality was simply too abundant. A portion of it inevitably flooded into his body.
Vitality certainly carried certain benefits. However, Li Ping was not a Longevity realm cultivator who relied purely on his own cultivation.
Source Power Essence, Great Qi's national destiny, the Heavenly Dao's blessing...
The confluence of these diverse powers was what had granted him strength comparable to the Longevity realm. His condition had long since reached an equilibrium following his advancement.
Now, that equilibrium was gradually being disrupted by the continuous influx of boundless vitality.
Li Ping's hair seemed to come alive, growing wildly. In mere moments, it cascaded past his ankles.
His body expanded in tandem. One zhang, two zhang...
Amid the creaking of his bones, Li Ping transformed into a thirty-foot giant in just a few breaths.
While this rendered him all the more imposing, it was by no means a good thing for him in his current state.
Frowning slightly, he did his best to convert and absorb the surging vitality. Yet the rate at which he shrank was far outpaced by the speed of his growth.
While struggling to maintain the balance of powers within him, Li Ping surveyed his surroundings, searching for the method to enter Ruomu's hiding place.
After devouring Xuanhuang's malice, very little in the Xuanhuang Realm could escape his eyes. Even if some memories of that malice had blurred, seeing the place in person would surely allow him to sense it again quickly.
With a flicker of movement, Sacred Emperor Li Ping vanished from the bottom of the black abyss.
Deprived of a target to flood, the surging vitality hesitated in confusion. The white blossoms swayed gently, left with no choice but to draw the vitality back in.
***
In a bizarre world resembling a faded, withered yellow leaf, Li Ping's nearly fifty-foot body abruptly appeared.
The boundless vitality he brought with him surged from his body, expanding outward. Yet in this bizarre environment, it seemed completely unable to propagate. Soon, like autumn leaves falling, it congealed into withered yellow physical matter and drifted down from the sky.
Having found a means to vent the unwanted vitality, Li Ping steadily purged the culprits behind the imbalance from his body, and his size slowly diminished.
However, because his internal equilibrium had shifted during that brief window, certain details of his physique failed to revert completely upon returning to normal, instead settling into his bodily traits.
For instance, his height remained fixed at thirty-three feet, and his ink-black hair cascaded down to his waist. His physique became robust and full, harboring explosive strength beneath his golden robes.
Li Ping did not pay these alterations much heed. They were mere external appearances; if he wished, he could revert to his original form at any time.
At present, his attention was focused on this strange place.
The stench of decay lingering here made even him feel somewhat uncomfortable.
What drew his attention most was the center of the realm.
A colossal tree, spanning from heaven to earth yet entirely withered, yellowed, and mottled with spots, stood silently. Before this giant tree, Li Ping's thirty-foot stature was no larger than an ant.
Dense clusters of countless cultivators hung from the withered yellow branches, resembling fruit that covered the entire tree.
All of them kept their eyes closed, wearing bizarre, blissful smiles on their faces.
Li Ping swept his gaze across the area. Aside from this withered ancient tree, he found no other figures.
"Only the true body is present...?"
Li Ping knew that Ruomu possessed an avatar that frequently roamed outside, abducting cultivators to this place and turning them into Golden Core fruits to vent the resentment in its heart. It was likely out at the moment.
In no rush, Li Ping continued to scrutinize this space.
Upon the towering trunk, he could faintly discern several deep gashes, as though it had suffered some fatal wound.
Narrowing his eyes, Li Ping attempted to reawaken the bond between this creature of heaven and earth and Xuanhuang's Heavenly Dao. Yet perhaps because it had been thoroughly tainted by the withered rot, his call met with not the slightest response.
Instead, it provoked the ancient tree's automatic defenses.
Specks of withered yellow spread along the giant tree's veins, beginning to corrode the ground beneath Li Ping's feet.
Li Ping deliberately lowered his defenses, drawing a wisp of the withered yellow power into his body. He wrapped it in golden Source Power Essence to keep it from spreading, then examined it closely.
Though bizarre, the withered power could not breach the containment of the Source Power Essence.
From this withered power, Li Fan sensed not only decay in the ordinary sense, but also the decline of the entire realm. It was as if heaven itself were on the verge of collapsing—a pervasive, irreversible downfall.
"This is..."
"The world is heading toward ruin."
Countless images surfaced in his mind, depicting scenes across Xuanhuang's provinces where the decline of heaven and earth brought about endless cataclysms. Yet Li Ping knew that, in reality, these provinces had not undergone the disasters that should have occurred.
"Ruomu is the source of all living beings in Xuanhuang. To a certain extent, it truly reflects the state of vitality in the Xuanhuang Realm.
"Ruomu has become like this, yet Xuanhuang appears full of vigor..."
Li Ping frowned slightly, but the answer soon came to him.
"Without an injection of external vitality, Xuanhuang would have withered in tandem with Ruomu.
"The source of this vitality, then, is...
"The fragments of other cultivation realms that were devoured.
"Though they were dismembered, the merging process also drained whatever vitality remained within those realm fragments.
"Thus, Xuanhuang gained new life..."
Li Ping mused, "This surgical procedure was truly exquisite."
As the Avatar of the Heavenly Dao—and nominally its victim—now that he understood what had transpired over the past thousands of years, he could not help but feel genuine admiration.
"Life and death are impermanent; birth and demise have no fixed law."
"I once wielded control over life and death, yet today I have fallen to such a state."
"The world seeks to abandon me. How could I not harbor hatred...?"
While Li Ping was lost in thought, a bizarre voice suddenly spoke behind him, utterly devoid of sound or warning.
Li Ping knew that the owner of the voice was Ruomu.
Chapter 1244