Chapter Index

    Muffled thunder rolled in the high sky, so dense it made one wonder if the dome of the sky was cracking.

    The sea pillars outside the Nine Cities of Zhunan glowed, like silent, majestic fathers and brothers spreading their powerful arms to protect their lifelong loves in their embrace as disaster loomed, then using their own spines to meet the falling thunder. Among them, eight bronze pillars shone with the most brilliant light.

    Zuo Yuesheng stood on the Tide-Watching Tower.

    One after another, flying boats, urgently retrieved from the treasury, hovered in mid-air. One after another, elite disciples of the Mountain Sea Pavilion boarded the flying boats in an orderly manner. Among them were young couples standing side by side, and close friends smiling at each other. They had all experienced the great calamity not long ago and knew what awaited them on this journey.

    The only regret was that if they died in the Undying City, they could not become the sea pillars of Zhunan.

    But it didn’t make much difference.

    The Undying City was also a city built by the dead.

    Before boarding a flying boat, one disciple hesitated for a long time, stepping onto the deck and then retracting his foot. Zuo Yuesheng noticed him and was about to speak, but Yan Huatang placed a hand on his shoulder and gently shook her head at him. Zuo Yuesheng opened his mouth to speak, but then saw a round-faced girl hurrying over with a sword in her arms. The disciple’s face instantly lit up.

    He jumped down from mid-air and, mustering his courage, opened his arms to the round-faced girl.

    A wave of good-natured, teasing laughter came from the flying boat.

    The girl’s face turned beet red. She thrust the sword into his arms, turned, and walked away.

    The disciple, grinning foolishly, jumped onto the flying boat with the sword in his arms, no longer dragging his feet.

    Zuo Yuesheng imperceptibly bared his teeth, soured by the sight.

    The muffled thunder grew more and more dense. Everyone was ready, the flying boats hovering, awaiting the imminent command.

    Yan Huatang walked past Zuo Yuesheng.

    “Depart!”

    The vast Cangming Sea surged. Yan Huatang landed on the foremost flying boat. All the elders and disciples shouted in unison, and the Falcon Wing Cloak Boards on both sides of the flying boats’ gunwales unfolded simultaneously. The falcon wings beat, breaking the wind and spiraling rapidly, like a goshawk soaring, plunging headfirst into the vast darkness. No one looked back.

    Zuo Yuesheng stood motionless.

    Lou Jiang stood behind him, like his shadow, just as Lou Hexuan had been to Zuo Liangshi.

    “A bunch of son-of-a-bitch bastards, wanting to swallow the whole mortal realm. They should see if their stomachs can handle it!” Zuo Yuesheng slowly turned, the muscles on his face twitching. “I’ll break their teeth!”

    “Do you need fire tongs?”

    Lou Jiang asked, holding his sword.

    Zuo Yuesheng was taken aback.

    In the past, when he lost fights with the grandsons and disciples of the elders, he would also shout and make threats, wanting to secretly knock out their teeth. Once, after being beaten badly, Lou Jiang had silently found a pair of fire tongs and taken him to knock out that bastard’s teeth.

    “Ordinary fire tongs won’t do,” Lou Jiang said with his usual old-fashioned, stiff face. “We can go steal Old Heavenly Works’ fire tongs.”

    “Alright.”

    Zuo Yuesheng grinned, punched him, and then strode towards the Mountain Sea Grand Hall.

    A thousand boats sailed urgently, disappearing from sight.

    The round-faced girl who had sent him off with a sword returned, looked at the empty sky, and slowly squatted down.

    That day, the sky was very dark.

    ***

    The moonlight was stolen, and one could not see one’s hand in front of one’s face.

    The people living in the Twelve Continents were used to the darkness. Every year, after the brief Clear Moon passed, the black miasma would press in from all directions, trapping the people of each city within the meter-thick city walls. But the current darkness was as if the sky that had always covered their heads had been covered from the outside, devoured by the legendary Heavenly Dog.

    Old Man Luo, with his raspy voice, urged desperately, “Faster, faster! Faster!”

    The Desolation-Trekking Team was trapped in a narrow valley. The braying of mules and donkeys mixed with the neighing of horses. Tattered tents and pots and pans were scattered all over the ground. The hastily lit torches flickered precariously in the knife-like wind. Men carried the elderly, women carried children, and the sounds of crying and shouting were mixed together.

    Half of the Wilderness Guard cultivators had already fled on their swords. No one had expected the Miasma Moon of Yong Continent to arrive so suddenly. Even an experienced expedition leader like Old Man Luo had not detected any sign of the miasma’s approach. When the world suddenly darkened, everyone had hastily fled under the sound of thunder.

    Flee!

    Flee to the nearest city!

    “Faster, faster!” Old Man Luo’s voice was almost hoarse, it was hard to tell if he was shouting or wailing. “Once we get through this valley, it’s Mo City! We’ll be saved! Faster!”

    The almost tangible miasma rolled in from the south, about to pour into the valley. The sharp cries of dead souls were already being carried to everyone’s ears by the wind.

    The livestock went mad at this time, kicking their hooves with all their might and charging out of the canyon. The children riding on the backs of the cattle and horses were thrown off and didn’t have time to get up before they were swallowed by the crowd surging from behind, disappearing without a trace, leaving only their mothers, who were being carried forward by the crowd, screaming their nicknames hysterically.

    Han Er led the cultivators who had not fled to the rear, guarding the entrance of the valley.

    As the ghostly qi drew nearer, the formations they had laid out beforehand shattered one after another. The Wilderness Guard cultivators fell one by one, some having their hearts ripped out by vicious ghosts, blood dripping. Others were dragged into the black miasma. The exposed skin of the cultivators dragged into the black miasma was covered with a layer of frost at an astonishing speed before they disappeared. In the end, only Han Er and Cultivator Lu were left.

    Cultivator Lu severed a ghost’s hand with his sword and pulled Han Er, who was about to be dragged into the miasma, out.

    Han Er threw his last Spirit-Containing Pearl to this sharp-tongued, show-off swordsman. “Go!”

    Cultivator Lu glanced at the desolation-trekking team and saw that they had already escaped the valley. Without another word, he threw the Spirit-Containing Pearl into a group of surging ghosts, then hoisted the leg-frozen Han Er onto his back and fled. As he was about to escape, he suddenly saw a small child with half his leg pinned under a rock, crying and trying to crawl out.

    “Dad—Mom—”

    The child’s face was covered in tears.

    Cultivator Lu’s footsteps faltered for a moment. Han Er had already struggled free and rolled towards the child. He cursed under his breath and continued to drag the two of them out.

    In the delay, the miasma had already poured into the valley.

    Countless gray-white, cold, and blue hands reached out from the darkness, grabbing at the three ant-like figures. Just as they were about to grab the child on Han Er’s shoulder, a white-robed youth walked in from the exit of the valley. In an instant, he was in front of Cultivator Lu and the others, passing directly through their bodies, and facing those obsessions that longed for the blood and flesh of the living.

    No one saw him.

    He was more like a ghost than a dead soul.

    The gray-white, cold, and blue hands froze in mid-air. Cultivator Lu and the others moved forward, completely unaware.

    The miasma submerged the valley, and also submerged the unseen white-robed youth. He was not devoured by the demons and monsters in the fog, but he did not seem to be a dead soul or a wild ghost either. Because compared to the ever-changing faces of the dead souls, the white-robed youth’s features were exceptionally clear, and his form was exceptionally stable.

    It was a living soul.

    Chou Bodeng turned and glanced in the direction of Chao City.

    He had played a little trick, fooling an easy-to-bully fool. That fool was clearly the mortal realm, the Heavenly Dao, yet he insisted on using everything he had to exchange for his health and safety. He didn’t care if Heaven Beyond Heavens blotted out the moon or if the Great Wilderness attacked the Southern Chen. But if the sun and moon fell and the Southern Chen collapsed, the Heavenly Dao would also collapse.

    “How can you be so foolish?”

    Chou Bodeng asked softly.

    Cultivator Lu and the others escaped from the valley. Chou Bodeng retracted his gaze and continued forward in the miasma.

    The miasma rolled like a tide towards the plains.

    ***

    The silhouette of Mo City appeared in the pitch-black night. Someone lit a torch in the corner tower on the city wall, guiding the wilderness wanderers forward. The miasma rolled in, and amidst the desperate cries of the wilderness wanderers, the city gates slammed shut.

    The people who couldn’t make it in time crowded under the city walls.

    The families of the wilderness wanderers, built on small carts and horses, were already shattered. A woman with disheveled hair stared blankly at the approaching ghosts, then suddenly shouted one or two names, laughing and crying as she rushed into the fog. Some were still together. A husband lifted his wife, the wife lifted their child, passing the child over the crowded people. The child grabbed a rope and climbed up the city wall. When he turned his head again, the figures of his father and mother had already disappeared into the darkness.

    Cultivator Lu dragged Han Er and the child he had saved onto the city wall.

    Suddenly, Han Er jumped up and stumbled towards another crenellation on the city wall.

    Old Man Luo had pushed someone onto the city wall, and he himself was pushed into the miasma.

    Han Er lunged forward, only managing to grab his tattered sack. The white, round paper money in the sack scattered, fluttering into the sky. Old Man Luo always carried some paper money in his sack, saying that if he encountered the remains of other travelers who had been unfortunately swallowed by the miasma on the road, as they were all fellow sufferers, and he had no ability to bury them, he would at least scatter some paper money for them…

    He had walked the wilderness his whole life, scattering paper money for others his whole life. The last handful was for himself.

    …Sorrow of the wilderness, sorrow of the wilderness.

    Sorrow that the sky is dark and it’s hard to turn back.

    East I walk, west I walk.

    Walking east and west to the grave.

    ***

    A soul as light as a feather, crossing mountains and ridges, drifting for five hundred kilometers.

    Along the way, fine particles of ice dust continuously drifted from Chou Bodeng’s illusory fingertips.

    For a soul, the miasma was a very, very cold place, a kind of bone-chilling cold that the living could not imagine. But the dead souls were already dead, with no release, so they could only endure the bone-chilling cold day after day, suffering this torture day after day. That was why dead souls always lingered outside cities, always harbored a deep-seated hatred for the living, venomously envying everything the living possessed, and instinctively longing to return to the warmth of their former lives.

    The people of the Twelve Continents could hardly know this truth.

    Because almost no one could enter the miasma as a soul and return to the mortal realm.

    This was a Netherworld Road.

    The mortal realm and the Netherworld were separated by forty-five thousand kilometers.

    Along the way, Chou Bodeng moved extremely fast, covering an unknown distance with each breath, without a moment’s pause.

    Until he passed a plain that had been swallowed by the wilderness miasma, he suddenly waved his sleeve gently. Like a drop of clear water falling into ink on Xuan paper, a small patch of the surrounding miasma was dispersed, revealing the weed-strewn ground and the embers left behind by a burnt-out bonfire.

    He actually knew.

    He knew what he had to do, knew that one day, he would have to walk the Netherworld Road again, not from the Great Wilderness to the mortal realm, but from the mortal realm to the Great Wilderness… But this road was cold and without light, so cold that no matter how red the clothes he wore or how strong the wine he drank, it was of no use. He didn’t know if he could finish the forty-five-thousand-kilometer journey.

    So he had to flee, to embrace, to be mischievous.

    He didn’t ask for much, just a journey with beautiful mountain scenery, just a moment of being completely and utterly loved. That would be enough, and he could walk the forty-five-thousand-kilometer Netherworld Road again.

    But someone wanted to give him more.

    Chou Bodeng gently closed his eyes.

    …How wonderful.

    He was happy too.

    He smiled, bent down, and his illusory fingers passed through the burnt-out flames, as if to take away the residual warmth of the bonfire.

    “It’s not cold anymore.”

    He said in a low voice, speaking to himself.

    Chou Bodeng no longer lingered. His figure disappeared into the flowing miasma, his sleeves billowing.

    ***

    The white paper money was rolled together by the wind, then scattered again.

    The girl who did needlework knelt on the city wall, crying her heart out. The thin storyteller who had told tales of romance his whole life only had time to give her a small brocade pouch, in which were carefully hidden the copper coins and silver fragments she had thrown to him each time. He never even had the chance to say “My heart adores you.”

    Han Er, with one leg frozen, stood behind the crenellations. The show-off, sharp-tongued Cultivator Lu had climbed the city wall but, relying on his decent lightness skill, had jumped down again to save people. He saved three people, but on the last trip, he never made it back up.

    A city guard cultivator came to lead them down, and an apothecary from the city, carrying a basket on his back, went from person to person, setting bones and tending to injuries.

    Someone, it’s unknown who, began to sing a soul-summoning song to the dark, vast miasma.

    …Oh soul, scattered and gone, where have you gone?

    The four directions you do not return, where have you gone?

    Why abandon your homeland, to go to a place of misfortune?

    Once upon a time, people of the Witch Clan had also sung a soul-summoning song, bowing and kowtowing by a bonfire. The Great Shaman presiding over the ceremony would recite the way back over and over, clearly and distinctly, not daring to mistake a single place name. Their song was like a single, thin flame, guiding the souls of the dead on their journey home.

    “Oh soul, come back! The thick earth is lost in miasma, here you may rest.

    Oh soul, come back! The high heavens are boundless, here you may rest!

    …”

    Chou Bodeng, in his white robes, fluttered past ten thousand mountains in a flash.

    He remembered every place name from back then, clear as day. The Netherworld path from the mortal realm to the Great Wilderness was forty-five thousand kilometers long.

    The mortal realm has no moon, but it has stars.

    This journey of forty-five thousand kilometers through wind and dust, he could walk it again.

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