Chapter 104 – Who is Willing to Bet? Who Dares to Bet?
“Having traveled the Twelve Continents in search of it to no avail, the mortal realm has buried too many things…”
An old Daoist held a horsetail whisk. With a sweep of the whisk, he parted a path of light, about three meters long, from the darkness. The light extinguished as he walked, and he would part it anew as it extinguished. He continued onward in this manner, his hemp shoes tattered and his clothes ragged. It was impossible to know how many roads he had walked or how many battles he had fought, but the horsetail whisk in his hand remained as white as snow.
If Half-Diviner were here, he would recognize this withered old Daoist.
His master.
The Master of Ghost Valley.
The world was accustomed to calling him “Gui Guzi,” but they did not know that before he became the Master of Ghost Valley, he had used the alias “Lu Xun” and had a chance encounter with Zuo Liangshi, who was about to return to Qing Province. At that time, the future Pavilion Master and the future Valley Master sat opposite each other in a teahouse. Zuo Liangshi casually remarked, “Having traveled the Twelve Continents in search of it to no avail, the mortal realm has buried too many things.” Lu Xun, who had also been searching fruitlessly at the time, made no reply, and the two then went their separate ways.
One went east, concealing his strength and biding his time for six hundred years.
The other went west, casting yarrow stalks and divining trigrams three thousand times.
“Since I can’t find it in the mortal realm, I’ll just go to the Netherworld to look. If I still can’t find it in the Netherworld, I’ll find a way to heaven,” the Ghost Valley Master muttered, tapping his horsetail whisk and once again clearing a path in the Great Wilderness. “One can’t be too rigid… I’ll walk all three hundred and sixteen paths. I’m bound to get there eventually.”
This time, he was walking the path to the Netherworld.
To the Great Wilderness.
The Great Wilderness surrounded the mortal realm, and although miasma constantly surged out, if one were to be precise, the distance between the continents and the true Great Wilderness varied. On the Map of the Three Realms’ Geography, the mortal realm was depicted in two layers: one was the circular “Azure Canopy,” which was the sky, and the other was the “Thick Square” covered by the Azure Canopy, which was the Twelve Continents, generally resembling a square with its four corners spread out. This was the origin of the familiar saying “round heaven and square earth.” The four corners of the square earth pressed against the edge of the round heaven, like four nails holding down a canopy.
Take Zhunan in Qing Province as an example.
Five thousand kilometers east of Zhunan was “Di Mountain,” one of the Thirty-Six Islands. Ten thousand kilometers further east was the end of the Cangming Sea, the furthest limit the moon of Qing Province could illuminate. A cultivator had once traveled fifteen thousand kilometers to reach this border between the mortal realm and the Great Wilderness, only to see a vast and murky darkness, a formless gloom, the four symbols in chaos, and ghostly specters everywhere—a terrifying sight.
But if one set out from the four corners—northeast, northwest, southeast, or southwest—one could step directly into the Great Wilderness.
The Ghost Valley Master had entered the Great Wilderness from the Vicious Plow Earth-Mound in the northeast corner, and had been walking nonstop for nearly half a year.
Outside the path of light created by his horsetail whisk, countless ferocious and bizarre shadows swayed and lingered, coveting the living flesh and blood in the center. Faint sounds of scales, whispers, and giggles could be heard… a cacophony of resentful, cold, and treacherous noises. If one’s Dao heart faltered, one would be instantly devoured, fall into depravity, and become a part of the Great Wilderness.
One step, two steps, three steps…
Five thousand kilometers.
The Ghost Valley Master stopped and looked back at the path he had come from.
The light from four thousand nine hundred and fifty kilometers away was already faint, completely invisible.
Every fifty kilometers, a withered bone; every withered bone, a lingering lamp. These were the guide lamps lit by generations of powerful cultivators who had entered the wilderness in search of knowledge, burning themselves to create light. The lamp at four thousand nine hundred and fifty kilometers was the last one left by his predecessors. The one who became that lamp was the previous Sect Master of Taiyi, Yan Ruqing, who had raised his sword against Kongsang three thousand years ago.
Mortals were not heavenly gods. They could neither emulate the Divine Lord in establishing the Four Poles, nor could they imitate Kuafu in transforming into the Deng Forest.
They could only press forward like this, generation after generation, fifty kilometers by fifty kilometers.
Foolish, clumsy.
“Thank you, predecessors, for paving the way for those who come after.”
The Ghost Valley Master bowed deeply towards the path he had come from.
Then, he stood up, took out a wooden figure with a birthdate and eight characters carved on its back, and placed it in the gloom. He then took out seven peach wood nails, pricked his seven orifices, stained each with a drop of his essence blood, and then drove them into the corresponding seven orifices on the wooden figure. When he continued forward and died, these seven peach wood nails would draw his soul to attach to the wooden figure, burning into a new guide lamp.
After doing all this, the Ghost Valley Master continued forward, never looking back.
A five-thousand-kilometer road to the Netherworld.
A hundred life soul lamps.
***
The Bone Whale, with only its skeleton remaining, carried a jagged, withered peak as it slowly swam through the darkness.
Dark, viscous blood flowed endlessly from the Bone Whale’s massive eye sockets, winding into two long rivers. Skeletons and rotting flesh accumulated into soil, and white bones and malicious thoughts piled up to form walls. Unlike the Great Wilderness of the Primeval Era as recorded in the Records of Ancient Stone Steles, the depths of today’s Great Wilderness had faintly evolved its own City of the Netherworld.
Huai Ningjun sat cross-legged on the Bone Whale’s skull, pouring himself a drink.
When the Ghost Valley Master hammered in the seven peach wood nails, the wine cup paused in mid-air for a moment. Then, he smiled, “Finally, there’s another one.”
Slowly finishing the wine in his cup, Huai Ningjun lowered his eyes to look down at the City of the Netherworld, which was coiled around the whale bones.
Those who came and went in the city were mostly Dead Souls and Demons and Goblins, interspersed with Vicious Demons and Specters. After them were…
Humans.
Or perhaps, they should be called “Desolate Attendants.”
They were once considered cultivators.
It’s just that the Great Dao is hard to attain, and even if one achieves cultivation, one is still as weak as an ant in the face of the all-devouring Great Wilderness. Thus, there have always been cultivators who fall to evil, using the slaughter of living beings to bring disaster to the mortal realm in order to cultivate “karmic obstructions.” Those entangled in karmic obstructions become a different kind of demon or monster, so the collapse or non-collapse of their Dao heart no longer matters, and they can enter the Great Wilderness.
Huai Ningjun picked up the white jade pot and slowly poured wine into the cup. The pale green liquid rose bit by bit, its color somewhat strange under the dark red blood fire.
“In Whalebone City alone, there are no less than ten thousand Desolate Attendants,” Huai Ningjun said in an unhurried tone, as if intentionally speaking for someone to hear. “In the entire Great Wilderness, how many evil cultivators do you think have betrayed the mortal realm?”
He was speaking to a wisp of divine fire in the center of the ghost city.
This wisp of divine fire was even fainter than the life soul lamps left by the likes of Sect Master Yan in the Great Wilderness. It had been burning since the Primeval Era, for far too long. Moreover, the Great Wilderness had specifically built a city of decaying bones and rotting flesh here, constantly battering and eroding it with cold, gloomy, and foul qi.
Logically speaking, it should have reached its time of exhaustion a hundred years ago.
But for some unknown reason, the remnant soul’s fire, though flickering like a thread, refused to be extinguished.
The remnant soul did not answer.
“Compared to the tens or hundreds of thousands of Desolate Attendants, a hundred life soul lamps…” Huai Ningjun smiled. “What do they amount to?”
The remnant soul was silent.
It did not speak.
Huai Ningjun also fell silent, gazing at the wisp of divine soul in the city.
After the battle in the clouds, the Divine Lord had fallen, his shattered divine bones scattered across the rivers and mountains of the Twelve Continents, while his ignited divine soul had fallen into the Great Wilderness. A portion of the remnant souls had been summoned back to the mortal realm by the Witch Clan. The rest were scattered in various parts of the Great Wilderness, carrying his dying wish for “miasma to recede, wind to arrive, and the sky to be filled with stars,” burning day and night.
There were thirty-three wisps in total.
Of these, Shi Wuluo had taken eleven during his nine trips into the Great Wilderness.
Eight had been incinerated on their own while refining an evil weapon.
Six had burned out completely.
One had been taken by the Scripture Woman of the Moon Mother Clan.
Another had been taken by Mu Di.
…
All in all, there were now six remnant souls left.
“Still can’t refine it?”
A hazy black shadow, seemingly with and without form, appeared beside Huai Ningjun and asked.
Huai Ningjun slowly drank the wine in his cup, then asked in return, “Haven’t you tried many times? Why ask me.”
“But I suspect you’re clinging to old feelings,” the black shadow replied coldly. “Don’t forget, even if you show mercy, he won’t necessarily show you mercy.” After a slight pause, the black shadow pointed out sharply, “Back when the immortal sects and Kongsang summoned his soul back, since you were able to plant a Soul Thread in his remnant soul, how is it that you can’t even refine a wisp of a nearly extinguished soul now?”
“No.”
Unexpectedly, Huai Ningjun shook his head.
“You’re wrong.”
The black shadow looked at him coldly.
“I did nothing,” Huai Ningjun said, looking at the embers in the city, his tone strange. “From beginning to end, I did nothing.”
The black shadow heard the pitying mockery mixed in his tone and asked, puzzled, “If you didn’t plant the Soul Thread, then how did he go mad?”
Huai Ningjun put down his wine cup and turned to look at it.
“After the first Desolate Calamity, all the heavenly gods knew that to truly curb the wilderness miasma and truly establish the mortal realm, the only way was to let mortals embark on the immortal path. With the masses of living beings, they would form a wall, and with ten thousand years of cities and a sky full of stars, only then could the miasma be cleared and the heavens be clear. But besides him, no one was willing to impart the Dao. Don’t you find that strange?”
“What’s so strange about that?” the black shadow asked back in surprise. “If I were a heavenly god, I naturally wouldn’t want mortals to be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with me.”
“Indeed, that’s one reason, but it’s not the most important one,” Huai Ningjun said. “The most important thing is karma.”
“Karma?”
The black shadow repeated, seeming not to understand the meaning of the word.
“If one person cultivates the Dao for good, they gain one portion of merit. But if one person cultivates the Dao for evil, they create ten, a hundred, or even tens of thousands of portions of karmic obstructions.”
“Whoever imparts the Dao to the world must bear this karma for the world.”
“Who dares to bet?”
One person’s good is weak and feeble.
One person’s evil is deep and heavy.
Who is willing to bet?
Who dares to bet?
***
“He said he was willing to bet.”
Shi Wuluo spoke word by word, each one like pulling a bone spike nailed deep in his heart.
That was when the four poles of heaven and earth were still missing one.
The Great Wilderness awakened and launched its first unprecedentedly violent counterattack. Miasma surged in from the still-unbuilt Southern Chen Pole, toppling city after city. The unfinished orbits of the sun and moon trembled in chaos. One afternoon, the white-robed Divine Lord sat in silence in the clouds for a long time.
He made a decision that no other heavenly god in all of history was willing or dared to make.
“I am willing to bet.”
“I bet that the good in the people of the world will always triumph over the evil.”
“I will take this bet.”
He said it, and he really did it.
“He made the bet.”
Shi Wuluo’s scarlet saber pointed diagonally, the knuckles of his hand holding the saber turning a grim white. He wanted to brush away all the dust for someone, to wash everything clean with snow.
All around was silent.
Only Shi Wuluo asked softly:
“But what did he get in return?”