Chapter 76 – Red Robe, Golden Sun
The dense clouds were like scales.
The Three-Legged Golden Crow paused amidst the cry of the Yuan Bird, its wings spread flat, the sun wheel suspended in the sky.
The Moon Mother tossed her hand, and her long staff rose with the wind. The Jade Armillary Sphere at its head spun rapidly, shooting out seven streams of clear qi. As the clear qi appeared, the dense clouds rolled, rising and falling for thousands of kilometers. Before the horrified gazes of the crowd, the clouds joined head to tail, forming a cage that imprisoned the Golden Crow.
“What… what is she doing?”
Lu Jing asked with a trembling voice.
Almost everyone in the nine cities of Zhunan was asking: What is she doing? What is the Great Wilderness doing?
An indescribable terror swept through the nine cities of Zhunan. Although the temperature had risen due to the Golden Crow carrying the sun, making it scorching hot, everyone felt as if they had been plunged into an ice cavern.
“Hunt… hunt the sun.”
Lou Jiang’s face was as pale as a ghost’s.
“Are you kidding me…” Lu Jing staggered backward a step, his back hitting the cold city wall, and he blurted out, “There should be a limit to hunting, right? Who hunts the sun and moon… Isn’t the sun just a ball of fire? How can you hunt a dead thing? Do you think this is blowing out a candle? You’re going to blow out the fire with one breath?”
“If the heavens can be herded, why can’t the sun and moon be hunted?” Monk Budu said in a low voice. “Indeed, the sun is not a candle, but they don’t need to blow out the ball of fire. They just need to kill the Golden Crow. This humble monk finally understands why the Star-Pushing Plate predicted not just the fall of Zhunan, but the obscuring of the Clear Continent…”
He slowly turned his head, his face colorless.
“The key to herding the heavens and hunting the sun lies in the Golden Crows. Ten crows carry the sun, each performing its duty; not one can be missing. This Golden Crow that appears and disappears near Lacquer-Wu Mountain is in charge of the day and night of the entire Clear Continent. Once it is hunted and killed by the Great Wilderness, the sun wheel will fall into the Cangming Sea, and for the next ten thousand years, the Clear Continent will have no day or night. And once the sun wheel falls… the entire Cangming Sea will instantly turn into scorched earth! This land will have no more spring or autumn!”
There was one more thing Monk Budu didn’t say. The ten suns were all interconnected; to pull one hair was to move the whole body.
Once the sun of the Clear Continent fell, the remaining eleven continents would also face a cataclysmic upheaval.
Lu Jing’s face was a complete blank.
Then what was all this for? What was the death and injury of a million people tonight for? What was Zuo Yuesheng’s father sacrificing his life to fight and shattering his bones in the vast sea for? Was all their effort just a joke in the end?
“The celestial phenomena!”
Half-Diviner suddenly jumped up, staring intently at the Star-Pushing Plate in his hand.
“It’s changed! The celestial phenomena are changing!!!”
Lu Jing was so exhausted he could barely speak. He thought, what has changed? Has the future become the present? But he quickly realized that Half-Diviner’s voice and expression were not of despair, but rather of disbelief and ecstasy after witnessing a sliver of hope in the depths of despair. His heart leaped, and he scrambled to his feet to look at the Star-Pushing Plate in Half-Diviner’s hand.
He saw that the pointer, which had been pointing at the hour of Zi, trembled slightly and shifted to the right by a quarter of an hour. Not only that, but the dark pearls on the outer dial of the Star-Pushing Plate moved with extreme difficulty, as if a heavy millstone was being slowly pushed by thousands of people at once, causing the black miasma on the inner dial to swirl and scatter, a faint line of flowing gold appearing and disappearing.
“The inner dial reveals the Mandate of Heaven, the outer dial reveals human effort,” Half-Diviner looked up abruptly. “This is… this is the Sign of Defying Fate!!!”
The Mandate of Heaven cannot be defied, human destiny follows the count of heaven.
The opposite is defiance.
The nine cities of Zhunan, the disciples of the Mountain Sea Pavilion, the million fishermen, the master of a pavilion… their struggles and battles in the first half of the night had actually caused the Star-Pushing Plate to show this hexagram, which had not been seen in ten thousand years. In the art of divination, heaven determines man, man determines things, and things cannot be spoken of. Yet today, this ancient law was broken.
Human effort changed the Mandate of Heaven!
“The time of the Clear Continent’s destruction has been postponed by a quarter of an hour! The golden line implies a chance of survival! Hold on! Survive this quarter of an hour! Zhunan will be saved! The Clear Continent will be saved!” Half-Diviner jumped up and was about to rush towards the Pavilion Elders to tell them the news.
He had only run two steps when he stopped.
There was no need for anyone to inform them of the celestial phenomena, no need for any celestial phenomena at all. The Pavilion Elders had already drawn their swords and sabers, left the Mountain Sea Pavilion, and rushed to the high sky.
Not one of them shirked the battle.
“You’re trying to stop a chariot with your bare arms?” The Moon Mother held the Jade Armillary Sphere between her ten fingers, a hint of angry crimson seeping into the eerie blue of her eyes. “Do you all think you’re that fool Zuo Liangshi?”
“Pavilion Master Zuo was a hero of unparalleled talent, unique in all of history. We old bones cannot hope to compare,” Pavilion Elder Gao Ruyuan carried a sword box on his back. “But even the Pavilion Master suppressed the sea with his own body. Even if we are just rotten wood, we must hold up this sky that he guarded—Mountain Sea Pavilion, Gao Ruyuan! I request my swords!”
Twelve swords of various styles shot out of the box, their light like peacock feathers. They circled once in mid-air and then shot straight down.
“Mountain Sea Pavilion, Lu Yin.”
The second Pavilion Elder descended, holding a zither of withered wood. His five fingers plucked rapidly, and a heroic, impassioned melody broke through the clouds, wind blades raining down.
“Mountain Sea Pavilion, Qing Huaiyu.”
The third Pavilion Elder’s ink-black saber was like a long dragon, streaking towards the cloud lock.
“Mountain Sea Pavilion, Qu He.”
“Mountain Sea Pavilion, Wang Mingli.”
“…”
One by one, names that had once stirred the winds and clouds of a region reappeared in the sky. They had been forgotten by the world for so long, so long that many names seemed to have long been buried, and even they themselves felt they had already stepped into their graves. Yet at this moment, these old sabers and swords shook off the rust and patina of years and broke out of the earth.
The wind rose, the clouds surged, their faces aged and their hair white.
They fought as bravely as they had in their youth.
“Overestimating your own strength!”
The Moon Mother shouted angrily. With a flick of her fingertips, the armillary sphere spun, the sea of clouds churned, and the seven cloud chains that locked the sky each split off a thread, converging into a ten-thousand-li-long cloud dragon, its whiskers and fangs bared, stirring up wave after wave of tides in mid-air. The white waves crashed down, and the twelve longswords were sent flying backward.
A Mountains and Rivers Umbrella spun out, its ribs like sabers. The surging white waves were split down the middle, flowing in two directions.
The dragon’s tail swept over, striking the umbrella’s surface.
Wang Mingli was sent flying backward.
Qu He appeared behind him, absorbing most of the force for him.
Qing Huaiyu, through the opening created by Wang Mingli, ascended the dragon’s tail, dragged his ink saber, and ran up the dragon’s spine. In an instant, he reached the dragon’s head, leaped up, and his saber drew a perfect circle in the air. The ten-thousand-meter-long cloud dragon writhed and rolled, and a burst of dense ink exploded at its head. The saber qi was endless, and the dragon’s body collapsed section by section into a sky full of mist.
The ink saber beheaded the dragon, and the sword box once again revealed its edge.
The twelve swords that had been repelled, along with twelve new swords from the box, formed two long, brilliant arcs of light, one on the left and one on the right, spiraling towards the Moon Mother who controlled the Jade Armillary Sphere.
The Moon Mother had to free her hands, her palms striking the two sword dragons.
The first sword, shattered!
The second sword, shattered!
The third sword, shattered!
…
Twenty-four swords collided with the jade-like palm, shattering one after another.
Only after personally facing the enraged Moon Mother did the Pavilion Elders truly understand how perilous and terrifying Zuo Liangshi’s battle against the ancient god from beyond the heavens had been. The difference between a true ancient god who could ascend to Cloud City and a cultivator was like the difference between a cultivator and a mortal!
When all twenty-four Bright Moon Swords shattered, blood trickled from Pavilion Elder Gao’s seven orifices, and his body plummeted towards the ground. Qing Huaiyu, who had just beheaded the dragon, swooped down like a swift, grabbing him by the collar from high above.
Forced by Gao Ruyuan’s twenty-four Bright Moon Swords, the Moon Mother had to use her hands to receive the attack. In that instant, the Golden Crow, which had been trapped by the cloud lock and bitten on the neck by the Yuan Bird, finally found an opportunity to beat its wings with all its might. The sun on its back turned from crimson to a furious gold, and a solar flare erupted, thousands of streams of fire shooting out from the Golden Crow’s magnificent black feathers.
The Yuan Bird flapped its wings, soaring straight up, screeching incessantly with a strange rhythm.
The solar flare seemed to be suppressed by an invisible force, like a receding tide. The weight of the sun wheel instantly increased again, as if to crush the Golden Crow completely into the sea.
The Yuan Bird’s cry stopped the sun and moon!
“Such an awful sound, and you still have the nerve to squawk?”
A dissatisfied voice sounded out. The Kuafu-like Old Heavenly Craftsman appeared high in the sky, his two blood-red axes spinning into two whirlwinds.
“Get lost!”
The great axes shot through the air, simultaneously embedding themselves in the Yuan Bird’s back. The Heavenly Soldier Blood Axes were enormous in Old Heavenly Craftsman’s hands, but compared to the sky-blotting bird with a wingspan of several thousand meters, they were as insignificant as dust. But the moment the dust settled, the Yuan Bird’s song abruptly stopped. The angle Old Heavenly Craftsman had chosen was extremely cunning; the blood axes were lodged precisely in the gap between two bones. Every time the Yuan Bird exhaled to make a sound, it would cause them to churn in the joint.
Though not fatal, it was extremely annoying.
The Yuan Bird flipped over rapidly in the sky, stirring up a thousand li of fire clouds, trying to shake off the insects nailed to its back.
The Moon Mother controlled the Jade Armillary Sphere with one hand and, with the other, pointed a finger at Old Heavenly Craftsman from a distance, sending out a stream of saber qi. The saber qi transformed into a towering, bizarre black peak imbued with a fierce, malevolent aura, which came crashing down on Old Heavenly Craftsman. If he had both axes in hand, he might have been able to split the heavenly mountain like the Kuafu of old. But at this moment, the blood axes were carried away by the Yuan Bird.
Either recall the flying axes, causing the Golden Crow to lose its chance to escape.
Or bear the mountain with his flesh, causing his flesh and blood to be crushed to dust.
The sea of clouds churned, and the heavy peak crashed down.
A flash of saber light.
A line of golden light shot up from below, and the black mountain split in two with a roar.
Jun Changwei split the mountain with one strike and, without pausing, rushed straight for the cloud lock. In an instant, he swung his saber thousands of times, the gold-inlaid blade like a flock of wild geese, a formation of geese severing the lock! Three eighty-thousand-meter-long cloud dragon locks were shattered at the same time. The Golden Crow’s restraints were mostly gone, and its body suddenly lightened. It cried out, beating its wings with all its might.
Its thousand-meter-long wings flapped, snapping two more chains.
Just as Jun Changwei was about to cut the last cloud lock, he heard Old Heavenly Craftsman shout, “Old Ghost Jun!”
A sky-blotting black shadow shot through the air. The Yuan Bird had shaken off the two blood axes and was once again pouncing on the Golden Crow, trailing a plume of water vapor. As the two equally massive divine birds fought, their wings were like thousand-meter-long sabers, stirring up swaths of wind blades. A cloud lock in front, wind blades behind. Jun Changwei did not turn back, but pushed his Gold-Inlaid Saber out flat.
A spray of blood flew into the sky.
Old Heavenly Craftsman crashed into Jun Changwei’s back, and they were both sent flying nearly a hundred li by the wind blades. Jun Changwei held his Gold-Inlaid Saber horizontally in the void, forcibly stopping his momentum. He spun around abruptly and lifted Old Heavenly Craftsman, whose chest armor was peeling off in large chunks. “Hey, hey, hey! Are you dead? If you’re dead, I’m going to welsh on my debt!”
“Pah!”
Old Heavenly Craftsman spat out a large mouthful of blood. The blood armor on his chest slowly squirmed, gradually regenerating. The wind blades stirred up by the divine birds’ battle could even shatter heavenly soldiers. If Old Heavenly Craftsman hadn’t blocked for Jun Changwei just now, Jun Changwei would have been torn to shreds.
“You still owe me a saber bone and a cranium! I’ll outlive you even if you die!”
“Good, as long as you’re not dead.”
Jun Changwei tossed him downwards. At the end of the day, the people of the Heavenly Works Mansion were just a bunch of blacksmiths. Forcing a blacksmith onto the battlefield was really asking too much of them. Jun Changwei himself once again swung his saber, passing through the gaps in the wind blades, to cut the last cloud lock.
The moment he moved, he suddenly felt a weight on his shoulders, as if he were carrying a great mountain.
He roared, and his upper garment shattered, revealing his lean shoulders and back, the muscles and veins on them writhing like dragons and snakes. He carried the weight of a mountain on his shoulders, stood firm, and slowly turned around. All the Pavilion Elders of the Mountain Sea Pavilion were being pressed down from the sky, facing the Moon Mother and Huaining Jun. Only he was left.
A bow.
A bow appeared in Huaining Jun’s hands.
Just as when the Red Emperor Gu Yu appeared and the sky threatened to shatter, the moment this bow appeared, the celestial dome sank. The Red Emperor Gu Yu had descended upon Zhunan in his true form, which was why heaven and earth could not bear him. But the former White Emperor, now Huaining Jun, had somehow brought a divine weapon from beyond the heavens into the mortal realm.
“The bow is named the Twelve Earthly Branches.”
Huaining Jun said.
He reached out his hand and slowly drew a wisp of darkness from the unseen world.
The darkness fell upon the bow and became a pitch-black long arrow. The Red Emperor Gu Yu had previously taken lightning to forge a Dragon Fang Spear, but Huaining Jun’s methods were even stranger. The sun rose at the hour of Zi, day and night were reversed, and he directly drew the six hours that had been replaced by daylight to form an arrow. Using night to cover day, darkness to replace light.
Jun Changwei took a deep breath, holding his saber in his right hand and pressing his left hand on the blade, holding it horizontally before his chest.
He could not retreat.
Zuo Liangshi hadn’t retreated, so how could he?
His gaunt fingers slid bit by bit across the blade. A fair lady gave me a gold-inlaid saber, how can I repay her with a fine qiong jade? The qiong and yao are a fine pair, and the road ahead, though long, will be peaceful… The blade’s edge cut through his skin, and blood rolled over the edge, like a touch of red makeup on a bride’s wedding night. The Gold-Inlaid Saber was pushed out flat.
Facing the former White Emperor, Jun Changwei of the Taiyi Sect brazenly struck first.
Ten million strikes laid flat into one, the gold-inlaid blade rolling like scales. It was as if thousands of gold-clad fish were leaping in unison, or as if a great river was surging through the clouds. The firelight shone upon it, and it faintly resembled a wave of red silk. The river of saber strikes broke through the pressure brought by the divine weapon, the Twelve Earthly Branches, and traveled three thousand li.
Huaining Jun released his hand.
The first arrow, Zishi Dust.
It left the string.
Wherever Zishi Dust passed, space distorted, and the golden river scattered into a stream of light across the nine heavens. But the river’s waves were heavy, one after another surging out. Jun Changwei was still swinging his saber, and it was unknown how many strikes he had delivered in just a few breaths. His attacks always landed on a single point, all one hundred million strikes landing on the tip of Zishi Dust’s arrow.
If one strike was not enough to shatter the hour, then a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred million strikes would!
His goal was different from Zuo Liangshi’s.
Zuo Liangshi wanted to sever the hand that reached into the mortal realm from beyond the heavens; he only needed to ensure that the Golden Crow could survive.
The sharpness of a long arrow lies in its head!
A thousand li.
A hundred li.
Ten li!
A cloud of blood mist exploded. Jun Changwei was like he’d been hit by a heavy battering ram. He threw his Gold-Inlaid Saber with all his might and was sent flying back for an unknown number of li. With a crack, the Gold-Inlaid Saber shattered in an instant. The moment the Gold-Inlaid Saber shattered, the tip of Zishi Dust’s arrow crumbled with it!
Jun Changwei fell from the sky like a small pebble.
The Golden Crow completely broke free from the last cloud lock.
The second arrow, Choushi Moon.
It left the string.
The Golden Crow, bearing the heavy sun, flapped its wings, trying to avoid this arrow. The Yuan Bird circled, ignoring the scorching solar flare, and rushed into the raging fire, entangling itself with it. Jun Changwei’s pupils contracted. Forgetting that his long saber was already broken, he desperately tried to block that arrow. He thought he was flying upwards, but he was only slowing his descent.
Choushi Moon fell.
Drip.
The water clock in the nine cities of Zhunan dripped.
A quarter of an hour had passed.
A sword’s cry filled heaven and earth.
A line of cold light pierced the cosmos. The Cangming Sea roared, and a thousand-meter-high furious tide surged into the sky. The sinking celestial dome was suddenly propped up high, and the pressure on everyone was lifted. Jun Changwei, Gao Ruyuan, Qing Huaiyu… everyone’s pupils simultaneously reflected that line of cold light.
In the light, Choushi Moon shattered.
Huaining Jun’s fingers, which were resting on the string of the Twelve Earthly Branches, paused. The expression on the Moon Mother’s face suddenly went blank, and the Yuan Bird forgot to flap its wings and flew backward for a thousand li. Only the Golden Crow let out a cry of extreme joy, flapped its wings, and without hesitation, met that sword light. It was so joyous, so joyous that it didn’t even care if it would be injured by the sword light.
The sword light shattered into thousands of star points, and a figure slowly descended.
Red robe, golden sun.