At any time, reaping free gains was enough to make one's heart sing with joy.
As a proper bystander, Jing Qian had managed to subtly steer the course of a great drama, and the sense of participation left him utterly satisfied!
These two Longevity-stage monks were no ordinary figures; each one was no less than Blueblood Lantern, the core of a great island. One was the island lord of She Dizang Island, the other the scripture master of She Dizang Temple. Their spirits alone were worth a fortune.
Their sudden deaths caused the Inconstant Small Furnace to erupt in violent flames.
The Life Furnace, suddenly deprived of its masters, blazed out of control, sending tongues of fire roaring skyward.
From within the dimension, Jing Qian's eyes gleamed with hunger.
There had to be at least seven or eight Fate Fires inside, burning away wastefully like this was sheer extravagance. If he could swallow them into his Void Furnace, the materials for his sixth Determination of Fate would be ready.
Down in the cavern, Luo Yaozhi, who had just killed the monks, casually plundered two storage treasures from their corpses and tossed them to Chi Ling.
"Daoist Chi Ling, keep these. Consider them, She Dizang Island's compensation," he said.
"Come with me back to Hunzhou Island. I'll open all the Life Furnaces there for your use."
Chi Ling nodded slightly, following him out. Luo Yaozhi had shed blood and offered tribute, and she felt a sliver of trust toward him, though her life still hung by a thread, depending on his whims, sustained only by the power of her background. It was an uncomfortable position.
She had already completed the forging of her Spiritual Construct, and once she advanced into Longevity, she would immediately suppress her first Spiritual Construct to perfection. By then, even someone like Luo Yaozhi, the Prefect of Hunzhou with a weak background but strong cultivation, would not be beyond her reach.
Luo Yaozhi strode to the front without a word. Chi Ling followed close behind, never relaxing her grip on the bronze sword in her hand.
From the dimensional veil, Jing Qian unleashed the full might of World's Insight, carefully observing the bronze sword's nature:
Spiritual Construct: Pure Yang Sword Casket
Suppression Requirements: Pattern of Mountains and Seas, Pattern of Spirit-Treasures
Lifespan Burden: 2 hours per day
This bronze sword was a Spiritual Construct as well, and it had the lightest lifespan burden Jing Qian had ever seen. Even his Lifespan Pattern could easily sustain it.
He continued to shadow the two great cultivators' steps.
The play was nearly over, but a good spectator never left before the final act.
Luo Yaozhi dispelled the copper door's seal and stepped out of the underground cavern, leaping from the bottom of the dry well into the open air.
After forty years in hiding, the Prefect of Hunzhou had finally revealed himself again.
But just as Chi Ling followed behind, preparing to leave the prison, her shadow trembled.
She noticed nothing, but Jing Qian, watching from the dimension, saw it clearly: from her shadow seeped a faint ripple of blue life essence.
The next moment, her shadow was split apart, sliced as though by an unseen blade, and fragmented into pieces.
And as the shadow tore, her body followed suit.
The proud and gifted Spiritual Construct prodigy, on the verge of Longevity advancement, suddenly staggered forward. Her vision went black, and she knew nothing more.
Within the dimension, Jing Qian felt his hair stand on end. His scalp prickled with terror.
A heartbeat before, she had been standing strong, Spiritual Construct in hand, ready for her breakthrough. The next, she was shattered to pieces, body and soul destroyed.
The sight was unspeakably horrifying.
Her corpse lay strewn amid blood, half a head tilted to the side, her expression still faintly tinged with surprise.
The bronze sword fell to the ground. From it erupted a violent surge of life essence.
Its form began to change rapidly, melting down from a sword into a shimmering liquid.
Sensing the disturbance, Luo Yaozhi turned sharply back. When his eyes landed on the carnage, his pupils contracted violently. Rage deep and indescribable boiled within him.
"Wújiàn!" he roared.
With a furious roar, the shadow on the ground spread outward, and from within it a figure slowly emerged.
The figure was drenched in crimson, as though soaked in blood. He spoke in a low, cold voice:
"Luo Prefect, you took our Blood River Sect's Fire-Sha Refining Method, yet now you falter halfway? Where is the sense in such hesitation, such duplicity?
Those two masters dying unjustly might be overlooked, but did you truly think you could just let Chi Ling walk free?"
Luo Yaozhi's face turned ashen. He snapped back:
"There is a disciple of the Academy hiding here. He can testify that Chi Ling's death was not my doing!"
But Wujian replied with chilling certainty:
"In matters with no proof, no one ever seeks the truth."
With that, his blood-red form burst like a bubble, vanishing.
The next instant, an unimaginably violent surge of power crashed down from the heavens, and a disaster erupted without warning!
...
"Chi Ling is dead!"
A sword-bearing elder staggered, his aura flickering like a guttering flame, yet at the same time, he radiated the majesty of a star suspended in the sky.
"You dare block my way?"
Facing him were two Daoists clad in black official robes. One of them spoke solemnly:
"Shishu, restrain your grief, do not be reckless! At the next Academy Selection, we will find you several gifted disciples. We swear the legacy of Pure Yang Ruins will not be lost."
The old master coughed violently, his body trembling like one wracked with illness. Then he rasped:
"So, you think me decrepit, that I can no longer raise my sword? Which so-called dao-friend stands behind you, to make you so eager?"
The black-robed cultivator replied quickly:
"Shishu, please do not doubt our sincerity. Every bloodline on the Academy's rolls is a pillar of the Divine Dynasty. The Academy supports them all without favoritism.
Chi Ling, too, was one of us. Her untimely fall will not be ignored; someone will be held accountable. The Academy has already dispatched envoys down the mountain. You will have justice."
The elder gave a cold laugh.
"My Pure Yang Ruins has always given justice to others, since when did we need others to give it to us?
I will draw my sword. If you are not afraid to die, then remain where you stand!"
With that, he lifted his iron sword and slashed forward three times in succession.
The two black-robed daoists, bold only in words, did not dare to block the blows. They fled aside at once.
The old master, having spent his strength, turned back and walked slowly into his Daoist temple.
...
In the northwest of Youzhou, a mighty river surged across the land, pouring into the sea.
At its source stood a blood-red divine mountain, said to be the dwelling of a god. Whenever that god appeared, seas of blood would overflow from the mountain, staining the river crimson and rendering the waters undrinkable for weeks downstream.
The mountain range stretched for a hundred li, with five lofty peaks.
On this day, a single thread of sword-light descended from the heavens. Faint and elusive, yet peerlessly destructive, it cleaved straight through the range.
The easternmost peak was struck full on. It was sheared in half, its earth-veins shattered, its vitality destroyed.
As for the cultivators upon it, none survived.
The renowned Academy-listed lineage of the Blood River Sect saw its very heartland ruined. The sect boiled with rage, swearing vengeance without end.
...
In central Yingzhou, at the foot of a vast active volcano, sprawled the wide domain of a great shrine. Within, gods and spirits roamed freely, and though it was broad daylight, ghostly mists billowed, as if it were an earthly underworld.
Suddenly, a sword-light fell from the sky, cleaving the shrine clean in two. A yawning chasm split it along the central axis.
A moment later, a small purple-jade mirror flew forth, radiating infinite brilliance, striking at the falling sword-light.
A furious voice roared out:
"Shangxi! Old dog! Why are you still not dead?!"
The Academy-lineage Mirror Cloud Shrine fared even worse. Their sect's core was split open, their earth-veins ruptured, their energy dissipated.
Their Life Furnace, newly elevated to fourth rank, was blasted down a tier, reduced again to a fifth-rank Sealed Furnace.
And worst of all, the sect had nothing to do with this matter. They had been struck purely by misfortune.
...
The third sword-strike fell upon Hunzhou, at the very site of Chi Ling's fall.
His disciple was dead, and right and wrong no longer mattered to Shangxi. Wherever his sword pointed, all living beings were fated to be buried together.
The heavens themselves delivered sword-punishment, erasing the great Fate Island of Hunzhou, which had stood for three thousand years, from the face of the sea.
Beneath that sword-light, whether Prefects or Longevity cultivators, whether lives of cultivation or of ordinary toil, all perished together, a million souls swept into the Yellow Springs.
Within the Void Realm, Jing Qian bore witness to the catastrophe from a vantage unlike any other.
When the sword-light descended, Luo Yaozhi was the first to react, unleashing all of his power in desperate resistance.
But even a Prefect of a whole continent, an exalted Spirit Subduing-realm cultivator, lasted less than two breaths before being cleaved into ash.
Even the Spiritual Construct he had subdued was shattered to dust, erased without a trace.
The island itself was obliterated. To Jing Qian's World's Insight, the unleashed power looked like luminous streams of glassy radiance, spilling and scattering with reckless abandon.
Everything outside was broken apart, yet the chamber beneath remained untouched. The sword-light had deliberately swerved aside, leaving the area around Chi Ling's corpse unharmed.
On She Dizang Island, two veins of White Copper and one vein of Azure Gold were cleaved through. The impurities were annihilated, leaving only refined, pure ore.
These ores collapsed inward toward the cavern, fusing into a hollow metal sphere that sank to the ocean floor, a tomb forged by Shangxi himself for Chi Ling. Sword-qi seethed throughout it, warding all intruders away.
Thus perished She Dizang Island, leaving behind only a massive whirlpool, stirring the sea into even greater fury.
And Jing Qian, the lone surviving witness, though awed by the apocalyptic sight, found himself buried alive inside this metal coffin.
For others, this would have been a deathtrap, but he bore the Heavenly Mandate of Sumeru. Escaping was merely a matter of effort.
Stepping out from the Void Realm, Jing Qian appeared beside Chi Ling's mutilated remains.
He stealthily picked up two storage treasures that had been tossed aside, spoils from the two slain Longevity monks, originally meant as compensation for Chi Ling, but now falling into his hands.
By fortune, the treasures had lain close enough to her body to be shielded from destruction, else they too would have been reduced to ash.
It was a windfall.
The two monks, Yongchang and Yongdian, were among the wealthiest magnates in Hunzhou. Now their possessions were his.
With a thought, Jing Qian absorbed the treasures into his Sumeru Mandate.
The Void Realm nearly doubled in size, spacious enough now to dock two Dingyuan-class ships side by side. For the first time, the realm felt almost empty.
Then his gaze fell upon another prize: a small bronze sword-casket, resting quietly before him.
It was the Pure Yang Sword Casket, a secret treasure of the Pure Yang Ruins, Chi Ling's own Spiritual Construct, and easily the most important gain of this misadventure.
Though he did not yet understand its powers, the artifact radiated a resonance that felt perfectly suited to him.
He tried to bind it with the soul-threads of Weaving Soul, but the sword-casket's innate sword-aura was so fierce that the threads snapped at once.
After a moment's thought, he opened a yawning rift of void, wider than the sword-aura's reach. In one sweep, he drew the entire casket into the Void Realm.
For now, he lacked the refined heritage needed to master a Spiritual Construct. But with the Dao Book still being deduced within World's Insight, he was confident the day would come.
With the sword-casket secured and no other spoils left, the absence of any storage treasures on Chi Ling's corpse surprised him. Jing Qian turned to escape.
The Yin Year still raged beyond, countless ghostly "kin" awaited him, and he had no intention of wasting time.
He summoned several void-rifts, linking them into a square aperture a meter wide, and began cutting outward through the surrounding walls.
What he cut was no ordinary stone, but a seamless fusion of White Copper and Azure Gold, the purified veins of She Dizang itself. A wall of wealth.
The Sumeru Mandate's cutting power sliced through effortlessly. Soon, he had pried loose a massive cube of metal.
Each such block could be refined into thirty units of treasure-grade material, worth hundreds of gold.
In truth, this was no escape tunnel; it was plunder.
He dug first straight outward, but soon lost himself in the work, veering left and right, like a mouse gone mad in a barrel of cheese, gnawing to devour it all.
By the time he stopped, he had hollowed out nearly two-thirds of the tomb that Shangxi had crafted for Chi Ling.
The Void Realm was crammed full, no space left to store another grain.
At last satisfied, Jing Qian drilled a needle-fine rift through the metal wall. Through that pinhole, he slipped free of his cage.
Disturbing another's coffin was, without question, an act of grave discourtesy.
Jing Qian drew a wisp of Fate Fire and melted shut the small hole he had drilled to escape. Then, he leapt back into the dimensional void and shot upward toward the sea's surface.
The sights he had witnessed on She Dizang Island would linger in his memory for a long time to come. Having seen firsthand the methods of true great cultivators, his perspective had broadened, and his motivation to advance his cultivation grew all the stronger.
The massive chunk of metal had been cleaved into the deep sea by a single sword strike, and Jing Qian had to dive nearly ten thousand meters before finally breaking through the surface.
But the moment he emerged, he froze at what he saw before him.
Standing there was none other than the Sixth-Rank merman Yang Jia, with whom he had once crossed paths. Somehow, the merman had descended to this very place, hovering above the waves as if waiting for something.
Just then, the cry of an eagle rang out. A Golden-Winged Roc swooped down from the clouds, followed closely by another divine bird, red-legged and white-beaked, in manifested form.
Jing Qian realized with a start that the two governors of Hunzhou Prefecture, Ling Mingji and Zhu Shou, had flown across ten thousand miles of sea in their Dharma Forms to converge here.
Now gathered were the absolute leaders of both the human and sea tribes across this vast region. And, to Jing Qian's surprise, these figures who in his mind should have been mortal enemies did not immediately clash upon meeting.
Instead, the merman Yang Jia spoke first:
"Who could She Dizang Island have offended, to bring down such a heavenly calamity? A starfall erased it from existence. Do you two know the cause?"
Ling Mingji replied coldly:
"Why does the Shark Lord concern himself with our human affairs? She Dizang Island stands behind the academy lineage of Wuchang Temple. Whatever happens there is not for you or me to meddle in."
Yang Jia, delighted to see a human Fate Island erased, overlooked the slight and pressed on:
"And what of Luo Yaozhi? Is he dead? For eight, perhaps nine cycles of Yin Years, I have not glimpsed him. We were on friendly terms; if something happened, someone ought to inform me, so I might burn two sticks of incense on his behalf."
Ling Mingji answered evenly:
"The Governor has advanced in his cultivation. He has glimpsed the mysteries of the Earth Fiend Realm and is in closed-door seclusion. No need for your concern."
Yang Jia gave a booming laugh:
"If you say so, then so it is."
He added with feigned magnanimity:
"By the way, this Yin Year, I will begin the herding two months early. You had best prepare yourselves. In light of She Dizang Island's fall and the blow to human vitality, I shall be generous this once. The Sea Clan will not intervene; we'll leave the culling entirely to you humans of Hunzhou."
With that, the Sixth-Rank merman turned into a stream of light and vanished.
After he departed, the Roc and the Spirit-Bird reverted to human form, standing side by side over the ruins of She Dizang Island in silence.
At length, Ling Mingji broke the stillness:
"The Governor perished in the star disaster. We can no longer cling to false hopes. Yang Jia clearly knows that this round of herding will not be simple."
Zhu Shou gave a solemn nod:
"Two of the fifteen Fate Islands are already gone. We must abandon wishful thinking and mobilize fully; even low-ranked cultivators must join the fight."
Ling Mingji's eyes flickered as he added:
"Then let this round of herding determine it; whoever achieves the greater record shall stand in as Acting Governor."
Zhu Shou gave a curt nod.
"Agreed."
And with that, the two great cultivators transformed once more into their avian Dharma Forms and soared away.
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