Chapter 165 – A Red Robe Challenges the Mountains
The mountain range, stretching for a thousand kilometers, lay upon the vast ocean waves like a giant dragon resting. The mountain gate was low, and fierce waves surged, rushing over the steps beneath the gate tower, the crests washing over the drooping whiskers of the dragon’s head. It was as if a grown-up silver dragon was resting its head on the azure waves, taking a short nap.
She was just taking a nap during a long wait. She would wake up.
The Divine Lord stared fixedly at this beautiful, enormous dragon head, as if looking at a complete stranger… His memories were chaotic and blurry, as if from another life. He didn’t recognize her, didn’t remember their promise. His joys, sorrows, and angers were all distant. Rain slid down the edge of the umbrella, creating a semi-circular curtain of water in the heavy downpour.
In the rain, his pale fingers trembled unconsciously. Shi Wuluo took his wrist. Chou Bodeng turned his head. Cold rain streamed down his cheeks. He was so pale he looked like a paper cutout, and the ancient, vibrant red robe he wore seemed to be constantly seeping fresh blood. Shi Wuluo placed the oil-paper umbrella in his hand. When their fingertips touched, his hand was as cold as the Heavenly Dao, which had already become a vicious ghost.
Chou Bodeng gripped the umbrella’s frame. The wet red cloth clung to his wrist bone. Rainwater flowed down the frame, collecting at his knuckles and dripping down onto the center of the dragon’s forehead.
After a long while, he half-knelt, his long white hair cascading over his shoulders and into the clotted blood on the dragon’s head. He stuck the oil-paper umbrella in a fork of the dragon’s horn, where it stood firm in the storm, sheltering that one small bird’s nest. Inside the nest was a small, bluish-white egg, its shell perhaps already cracked.
“…A Rong, you’ve grown up.”
Even with only three dragon claws, you grew up well, with so many branching horns. So many birds flew to and from your horns, keeping you company from dawn till dusk, chirping away…
No one called you a chatterbox anymore.
“Don’t be afraid.”
The maddened Divine Lord leaned down and embraced the blood-and-flesh-spattered horn.
“It’s all about to end.”
Foul blood stained the Divine Lord’s face and soiled his white hair. He stroked the Silver Dragon’s graying horn. Shi Wuluo pulled him up.
Lightning split the heavens, and the Taiyi Sword split the curtain of rain. Amidst the muffled roar of thunder, the imposing gate tower of the Beast Taming Sect, built of basalt, collapsed with a crash. The Silver Dragon’s head landed squarely on the ruins. Atop its head, the bird’s nest, sheltered by the red paper umbrella, was unharmed. A small crack appeared on the bluish-white eggshell within the nest.
Crack, crack.
A baby swift pecked hard at its shell. Two sharp cries came from within the storm, and two straight black shadows shot through the heavy rain, landing beside their recovered nest. One on the left, one on the right, they abruptly raised their wings to block the storm.
Chou Bodeng and Shi Wuluo, one with a sword and one with a saber, walked forward along the long flight of steps that wound over the mountain ridge, right through the rain. This fulfilled the words the Divine Lord had spoken in Plum City: he would walk the mountain gate of the Beast Taming Sect himself. The two of them didn’t move quickly, but where they passed, a winding silver line, invisible to ordinary people, appeared in the rain. It was as if the mountain peaks were splitting open at their steps, revealing what lay buried deep beneath.
The entire thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers of the West Continent faintly began to breathe. The icy rain flowed through their hair and soaked their clothes, but neither wiped it away. Their faces became blurry and pale in the rain, yet the breath that proved the other’s existence was so clear. The ninety-thousand heavenly steps and the ninety-thousand-li netherworld road they had once climbed separately now overlapped.
Neither told the other to stay behind. Today was the day to end everything, and they had long ago agreed: either they would fall together, or they would die together. Walking the Netherworld and Incomplete Mountain alone was something to be done only once.
One thousand three hundred and eighty-six peaks of the dragon-bone range.
All rights and wrongs, all grudges and favors, would one day end.
***
The sound of drums shook the sea into a rage. The disciples of the Beast Taming Sect didn’t know where the sound was coming from, only that in its rhythm, their tamed beasts all roared at the sky, as if their bloodlust had been awakened. The rumbling drums and the shaking mountains merged, forming an unprecedented war horn between heaven and earth.
A hundred rivers flowed south, the water level of the West Continent’s sea-river rose, the eight trigram peaks opened, the waters of the thousand-acre dragon pool poured out, and a once-in-a-millennium storm raged… All of this had turned the Dragon Head Thousand Peaks, where the Beast Taming Sect’s main sect was located, into a new ocean. This was originally the West Sea Sea Demons’ greatest advantage in their attack on the Beast Taming Sect.
The temporarily formed inland sea concealed their movements and provided the most suitable battlefield for them. Now, everything was completely reversed.
The giant dragon formed by the merged Dragon Head Thousand Peaks was contracting layer by layer, like a python hunting its prey. The area of the encircled ocean was rapidly shrinking, and as the stone dragon moved, a terrifying vortex appeared. The iron chains that had once connected mountain to mountain, peak to peak, had now become bloody, slaughtering nooses. They rotated along with the mountains, forming a sealing net above the sea’s surface.
The most suitable battlefield for the sea demons had, in an instant, turned into a meat grinder that would trap and kill them!
If the ones trapped inside had been an army of immortal sect cultivators, they would have already been ground into a pulp by the rapidly rotating, gear-like currents. But the sea demons’ innate talent for controlling water made them fearless of the vortex created by the mountains. They were forced back step by step by the approaching peaks, forming a large circular formation. The sea demons with thick armor and heavy shells, along with massive, tough-skinned beasts, gathered on the periphery, forming the first line of defense. The melee-focused sea demons were in the middle, forming the second line.
However, this was not a long-term solution. When the water area was compressed to a certain extent, the blade-like mountain peaks would immediately turn sideways, like inverted dragon scales. No matter how powerful or tough-skinned the Turtle-like Beasts were, they would be crushed into a bloody pulp under the grinding of the peak-blades.
Nu Mie stood barefoot on the Fish Breath Cauldron, her expression shifting uncertainly. Faced with the Beast Taming Sect’s killing formation, the West Sea Sea Demons were not without a countermeasure. But they had to be wary of one thing—an attack from the Great Wilderness! They absolutely did not believe that the Desolate Emissaries and evil demons who had previously joined the battle were the full strength of the Great Wilderness!
The former White Emperor, now the Desolate Lord, had not yet appeared. The many heavenly gods who had fallen to the desolate state twelve years ago had not yet appeared either.
The Beast Taming Sect, the demon race, the Great Wilderness. Who was the autumn cicada? Who was the mantis? Who was the oriole? The situation was not yet decided, everything was still uncertain, but whoever showed their trump card first would be the first to be devoured by this ever-changing battle.
The peaks drew closer, and the vortex was already tinged with red. The sea demons that hadn’t retreated into the formation in time, those without intelligence who only knew how to kill, had already been slaughtered by the stones and iron chains. Even some of the lower-level Beast Taming Sect disciples who couldn’t keep their footing during the drastic changes were killed after falling into the water. The killing formation had been activated, and not even the elders could save them.
Flesh and bone fragments splattered with the vortex, splashing onto the surrounding mountain peaks, as if someone had dipped a large wolf-hair brush in cinnabar and was wildly scribbling on the rocks. Every character dripped with blood.
“Lady Nu Mie,” the sea demon A-He said, holding his bone fork and bowing to request a mission, “I will lead a team to kill the one behind this!”
Lightning illuminated Nu Mie’s cold face. She knew what A-He meant. Since their most important countermeasure could not yet be revealed, he would lead the most elite Cold Wilderness great demons to directly kill the person controlling the formation and the Dragon God’s inner pill. Although this plan was so simple it could hardly be called a “plan,” it was currently the only option.
Nu Mie looked up. Through the heavy curtain of rain, a dark light flickered on the black mountains. One by one, Earth Tigers with thick limbs panted heavily, pulling out boxes of heavy iron. The iron smashed onto the ground, splashing mud. Huge mechanical crossbows were rapidly assembled, and terrifying iron arrows, no less formidable than the bone spears of the Cold Wilderness Clan, were loaded onto the crossbows, ready to be fired.
These were originally the sharp weapons meant to resist the first wave of the West Sea Sea Demons’ attack before the Dragon Head Thousand Peaks was awakened. It was only because the West Sea Sea Demons had arrived so quickly that the Beast Taming Sect hadn’t had time to deploy them.
Even with the Turtle-like Beast clan as a shield, the Cold Wilderness Clan would have to pay a heavy price to break through the encirclement and reach the core of the formation—it could even be said that the entire Cold Wilderness lineage would be buried here! If the Cold Wilderness lineage was wiped out, the West Sea Sea Demons would also be severely weakened.
“Lady Nu Mie.”
A-He called out again, anxiously. Nu Mie gritted her teeth, and just as she was about to make a decision, a ball of fire erupted from where the eight trigram-mountains had originally been.
Nu Mie looked up abruptly. Several thousand kilometers away, Mu Di also looked up at the same time.
This aura… a descendant of the Dragon God?
***
Boom.
A huge rock and a red shadow crashed down together. Zhuang Xuan, holding the Dragon Pill, retreated rapidly, no longer possessing his previous air of being in complete control. He looked somewhat disheveled, only managing to stop just before crashing into the Dui position’s mountain peak. The layers of flood dragon corpses in the Dragon Rearing Pool were also thrown up by the crashing red shadow and now fell one after another, like a bloody rain of bones.
The elders who didn’t react quickly enough were crushed into a pulp by the falling dark red dragon shadow… This was not a flood dragon bred with aphrodisiac herbs, but a pure-blooded divine dragon. Even though it hadn’t fully grown, it was still enormous and terrifying.
The dark red Torch Dragon crouched slightly. Fiery blood flowed from the gaping wounds on its body, down to the ground. Gu Qingshui’s final sword strike, when his soul returned to the sect after death, had annihilated the Beast Taming Sect’s main peak, but it had also provided Zhuang Jiuzhu with a hiding place, preventing him from being crushed by the formation when the mountains shifted. Despite this, breaking through the first trigram-mountain had still left numerous wounds on its body.
It stared fixedly at the Beast Taming Sect’s master, Zhuang Xuan, its crimson-gold eyes seeming to burn with rage.
“I underestimated Gu Qingshui,” Zhuang Xuan said, his tone cold as he stared at the dark red dragon. “I never thought that a dullard for a lifetime would have the ability to hide such a surprising trump card from everyone. What a pity, he came to his senses too late. If he had used it earlier, he might have been able to make some waves.”
In the Primeval Era, some overly powerful demons had difficulty controlling their strength in their youth. Their parents would sometimes choose to seal their bloodline, letting them grow up in human form until their bodies could bear the divine abilities inherited through their bloodline.
“Don’t be disgusting.”
Zeng Qing endured the pain of his broken meridians and shattered knees, leaped up, and caught the Bottomless Abyss Sword that flew through the air. Holding the sword in one hand and gripping a dragon horn in the other, Zeng Qing stood up straight on the red dragon that was his little junior brother.
“Only a guy like you would grasp everything in your hands and drain them of their power.” Zeng Qing’s sleeves were torn and billowing, the sword’s edge glinting with a cold light, his voice frigid. “My master never treated Little Junior Brother as some trump card.”
Gu Qingshui had been a rigid old stick his whole life, but he had put all his effort into hiding his little apprentice’s secret. He had entrusted Jiuzhu to the care of his late Dao companion’s childless younger sister from the Zhuang clan. In the eyes of the world, taking him as an apprentice was a way of showing respect to his late Dao companion. Being from the same sect, Zhuang Xuan had never suspected that this distant blood relative, Zhuang Jiuzhu, was a demon and not a human.
And so, Zhuang Jiuzhu grew up healthy and unrestrained in the Beast Taming Sect, right under everyone’s noses.
Master, master. He was both a teacher and a father. Gu Qingshui, as the Beast Taming Sect’s number one Sword Saint, was strict and stern, but he was uncharacteristically indulgent with his little apprentice, Zhuang Jiuzhu, letting him live a life of debauchery. As a teacher, one always hopes for their students to achieve success and make a name for themselves. But as a father, one mostly just wants their child to be safe and sound.
Even if they accomplish nothing, it doesn’t matter.
“It seems you all knew he was a demon, that this was the secret.” Zhuang Xuan understood. No wonder Gu Qingshui’s other two apprentices had immediately committed suicide by the sword when they saw there was no escape. They had to protect this secret. A secret that, if exposed, would immediately make Zhuang Jiuzhu the target of a full-scale manhunt by the Beast Taming Sect. Between a descendant of the Dragon God’s bloodline and a profligate who squandered his mother’s inheritance, it was clear which was safer.
“He is our little junior brother.”
Zeng Qing gave his final answer with that one sentence. The Torch Dragon let out a low roar and charged forward. The sword light swept across as the Bottomless Abyss Sword slashed down again. On the other side, the remaining elders reacted and immediately moved to block them. As they did, a clear light rose. Elder Yan, the peak master of Changyu Peak, who had been holding back, finally made his move. Thirty-six silver bracelets flew up, and the forms of thirty-six demon gods appeared in mid-air, blocking all the demonic beasts released by the other elders.
The moment Elder Yan acted, two elders not far from him attacked him at almost the same time. Zhuang Xuan’s expression remained unchanged. Since he had long known that Changyu Peak was close to the demon race and not of one mind with them, how could he not have taken precautions?
The only miscalculation was not expecting that Gu Qingshui could have kept the shocking secret of his “apprentice being a descendant of the Dragon God” hidden until now. But that was fine too. If there was a Torch Dragon of the same bloodline for the sacrifice, the Beast Taming Sect’s Dragon Head Thousand Peaks would become the true head of all dragons.
His cyan-gui-colored sleeves fluttered. Zhuang Xuan watched the approaching Torch Dragon, his eyes icy. In the past, even the Silver Dragon God at its peak had fallen in the mists of the West Continent. Did a young dragon like you, not even fully grown, think you could make waves?
Seeing the silver light flowing on Zhuang Xuan’s clothes, Elder Yan, parrying a blade and sword, suddenly shouted in a loud, sharp voice:
“Disciples of Changyu Peak, hear my command—”
“Sever the dragon locks!”
His voice was like thunder, rolling out. At his command, the disciples of Changyu Peak, who had been intentionally or unintentionally forced to the most dangerous front lines, immediately leaped up, drawing their swords and blades, summoning their beasts and demons, and charged toward the rotating, slaughtering suspension chains. It wasn’t just the disciples of Changyu Peak. After Elder Yan’s voice fell, a few other scattered elders’ voices immediately rang out among the mountains.
“Disciples of Flying Crane Peak, hear my command—”
“Sever the dragon locks!”
“Disciples of Qingning Mountain, hear my command! Sever the dragon locks!”
“Cloud Shadow Peak, hear my command!”
“Hear my command!”
“…”
One after another, thin, hoarse voices echoed among the mountains. As the voices fell, disciples leaped up. The peaks that responded had, at most, a hundred people, and at least, three or four. Whether it was a hundred or three or four, the moment they leaped, they never looked back, even as the cold sound of heavy crossbows firing came from behind them.
Bursts of blood exploded in the air. Like sparks of a floating fire. A team of a hundred or so, forming a sword-like formation, managed to sever one dragon lock just as their last member fell. A team of three or four was swallowed by the raging vortex the moment they rose. A team of a dozen or so had just reached the sky when they plummeted down.
The weak and useless disciple from Stopping Clouds Peak, Fang Ying, hugged his Vermilion Bird’s neck and, at the last moment, pushed his partner out of the net. He knew he couldn’t sever the dragon locks. He was very selfish. He wasn’t like the disciples of Changyu Peak; what he had heard at Stopping Clouds Peak was only the doctrine of immortals and demons killing each other, fighting each other. He didn’t understand the great righteousness of immortals and demons living in harmony, didn’t understand the rights and wrongs of a clear conscience. He had only come to set his Vermilion Bird free.
“Goodbye,” he said, falling toward the raging, bloody vortex, a smile bringing two dimples to his cheeks. “Go fly.”
I can’t preen your feathers or catch bugs for you anymore. You have to be well.
The Torch Dragon crashed into a mountain, breaking it in half at the waist. The rolling stones buried most of its body. Zhuang Xuan turned, striking out with his palm from a distance. The palm fell, and the red bird fell. Elder Yan, along with his companion of many years, the Dark Bird, crashed into the dry Dragon Rearing Pool, bleeding from all seven orifices. Lightning illuminated Zhuang Xuan’s face.
“You fools!” his voice was as cold as ice. “Who do you think you’re saving? The demons? The West Continent? Or the mortal realm! Fools! Fools! Fools! So foolish it’s infuriating!” He grabbed at the air, seizing Elder Yan’s throat. “At this point, for every demon you save, you will kill a hundred fellow disciples! Kill hundreds and thousands of times more mortals! You think you’re upholding great righteousness, but in reality, you’re more shameful than a despicable villain like me!”
The Dark Bird shrieked and, ignoring its injuries, charged at him. Zhuang Xuan floated backward.
“Great righteousness?” Elder Yan laughed tragically. “How can we distinguish right from wrong, righteousness from Dao? It’s just that…”
He suddenly thrust out his palm, pushing away the Dark Bird that was coming to save him, his own robes billowing.
“Our consciences cannot be at peace!”
A dazzling golden light exploded. The rolling shockwave shattered the two key dragon locks extending from the Qian peak. The peak master of Changyu Peak of the Beast Taming Sect, a proponent of peace and neighborliness between immortals and demons, was martyred.
Zhuang Xuan waved away the rubble, his sleeves tattered, looking somewhat disheveled as he swept up into the sky. It wasn’t just the precise dragon locks that had been blown apart; the turtle-shell light armor he derived from the Xuan Turtle had also been slightly cracked. If he hadn’t already been connected to the Dragon Head Thousand Peaks at this moment, he probably would have been seriously injured.
The self-detonation of Elder Yan alone wouldn’t have had this much power, but the moment his robes billowed, the Dark Bird he had pushed away flew back and chose the same end as him.
With Elder Yan and the Dark Bird breaking the two key dragon locks, the figures constantly leaping up among the peaks made progress much faster. The last remaining disciple of Changyu Peak, the eldest senior sister with a ponytail, shouted into the air, “In the Primeval Era, humans surveyed the land to choose sites, and demons carried stones to build cities, making a pact together! That’s where the blood contract came from! Everyone—our cities in the West Continent were built by humans and demons together! We were the first to betray the demons, not the other way around!”
She was almost sobbing.
“It was us!”
The eldest senior sister of Changyu Peak swung her sword, deflecting an oncoming arrow. Both sword and arrow flew from her hand. Her hands were empty. Before her was her sect, behind her was the demon race. The fires of war on both sides reached the heavens and connected to the earth, burning endlessly. Her throat was choked with sobs, and she could no longer speak. She could only spread her arms and kneel in mid-air.
“We can’t keep making the same mistake!”
The storm, the wind, the raging tide, the mountains… a single person’s desperate roar, in the face of a million blood feuds, a million mutual slaughters, was as thin and futile as a whisper in the wind. But in that whisper, there were still some, though not many, mechanical crossbows whose firing speed slowed.
“Enough!” Zhuang Xuan’s figure appeared high in the sky. He flipped his palm, and a web of silver light filled the gap in the net that sealed the vortex above. “The heavenly gods cannot be trusted, the earthly demons cannot be trusted, only human effort can change the mandate of heaven!”
His cold, sharp voice spread out, suppressing the vibrations of the mountains and seas.
“Demonic beasts have eaten people since ancient times. The blood contract cannot guarantee that all demonic beasts will leave the cities alone, much less guarantee that the cities where your friends and family live won’t be trampled into ruins by a beast tide as the winds and moons change! There’s no point in talking about right and wrong! Today, what we of the Beast Taming Sect want is to end all of this!”
He suddenly raised his voice.
“Beneath our feet is the Heavenly Wedge! The source of the West Continent’s long, cold winters! As long as we change the Heavenly Wedge, from now on, the West Continent will no longer need to transport grain from other continents over thousands of miles. Countless mortals will no longer have to live in fear on thin ice! Now, the three hundred and eighty-two large cities and three thousand six hundred and seventy-three small cities of the West Continent are all praying, waiting for our blood sacrifice to succeed!”
…A thousand, ten thousand kilometers east of Dragon Head Thousand Peaks, facing the surging miasma, a million fleeing refugees, under the guidance of Beast Taming Sect disciples, knelt and prayed. In cities large and small, every city prayed. The sounds of prayer, the songs of sacrifice, converged, silently lighting up one City Blessing Seal after another.
Streams of light traveled through the earth, like the expanding blood vessels and meridians of the land, and also like a huge game of Go. The cities were the stones, the common people the board.
“Success means a thousand autumns and ten thousand years of unending spring. Failure means a thousand cities implicated, ten thousand households lost!”
“The sin of a moment versus the sin of an eternity, which is lighter, which is heavier?”
The thousand mountains were silent. In the vortex, among the demons, Nu Mie stared at the eldest senior sister of Changyu Peak, who was kneeling in mid-air, pierced through the chest by a silver light. The various patterns on the Fish Breath Cauldron she stood on began to glow… Farther away, among the floating islands on the water, Mu Di was also lost in thought.
Amidst the flowing black miasma, outside Dragon Head Thousand Peaks, Huai Ningjun’s expression remained indifferent. The cuckoo-like cries of sorrow from the Changyu Peak disciple, the cold and cruel speech of the Beast Taming Sect’s master, all sounded the same to him. He stopped at a place not far from the thousand peaks… Call him a hypocrite or a man of true feeling, he didn’t much want to see the head of the Silver Dragon A Rong.
Compared to the taciturn Shi Yi, the three-legged little silver dragon that used to coil around the Divine Lord’s wrist was much more familiar to him.
“…The red blade is already here, how can we wait for the demons’ pity!”
“Kill!”
Zhuang Xuan’s order spread far and wide. The thousand peaks suddenly turned into killing blades, and the Fish Breath Cauldron simultaneously let out a long cry that echoed through the four wilds. The moment the cauldron opened and the peaks turned, Huai Ningjun’s expression suddenly changed. The next moment, his figure crossed a hundred miles and appeared above Dragon Head Thousand Peaks, swinging his sword through the air. A sword and a saber collided.
The sound of clashing metal resounded through heaven and earth.
Nu Mie’s expression suddenly went blank. She, A-He, and many, many other demons of the West Sea, as they broke through the waves and mountains on their westward journey, had all thought about what they would do if the Divine Lord came, how they would face him, what they would say… From the moment they abandoned their former vows, they, like the Immortal Sects who had abandoned the blood contract, had abandoned the Divine Lord who had once smiled faintly in white by the bonfire.
They thought they had prepared themselves enough to face the Divine Lord who now wore a red robe. They thought they were ready.
“Lord Divine Lord!”
Nu Mie didn’t realize what she was seeing, didn’t even notice that she had blurted out the honorific that should have been buried. Her crimson-gold pupils blankly reflected the Divine Lord’s figure.
Not the Divine Lord in white robes like snow from the Cloud City, not the Divine Lord in red who had entered the mortal world, but…
A Divine Lord covered in blood.
He couldn’t hear, couldn’t see.
The Heavenly Dao that had fallen to a demon knocked away the scarlet saber, and the Fish Breath Cauldron, carved with ten thousand phenomena, was seized by him in mid-air. The ten thousand phenomena on the cauldron spread out across the sky. The Divine Lord in red spun in mid-air, his long white hair spreading out.
I see not the green of the green mountains, nor the sorrow of old friends meeting with white hair.
I see not the length of the long wind, nor the grand plan of ten thousand years ending in a day.
The Taiyi Sword drew a full moon, one sword to challenge the mountains.
Silver light broke through the peaks, rushing straight to the heavens.