Chapter 1542: Nine Realm Immortal Alliance

Zhou Huaiyu trembled with fear as he approached Fang Chen. He stood below him, waiting to be questioned.

The Forgotten River had long since ground away the pride he once possessed as a sixth-transformation Immortal, and he had already come to terms with his current identity as nothing more than an ordinary wandering soul. Facing an existence of unknown origin and unknown cultivation, Zhou Huaiyu truly had no confidence.

"Go on," Fang Chen said with a faint smile. "Tell me, what was the purpose of your Five Element Grand Sect in starting a war in the Nanqing Constellation back then? Don't leave out any details. Say everything you still remember."

He continued calmly, "Now that you are wandering souls, matters from your previous lives have already been wiped clean. Don't be afraid that someone will come to settle accounts. From what I know, there is no longer any trace of the Five Element Grand Sect in the Five Elements Realm today. Presumably, its lineage has already been severed."

Quite a few people were shocked to hear that. Zhou Huaiyu, especially, stood there in a daze for a long while, unable to react.

Bixuan froze for a moment, then suddenly let out a low laugh.

"Retribution... this is retribution!"

Zhou Huaiyu looked utterly lost.

"The Five Element Grand Sect... is gone?"

A few breaths later, bitterness appeared on his face as he said in a low voice, "That battle back then was meant to purge the Nanqing Constellation of those whose aspirations differed from ours. As for what was to be done after the purge... I truly do not know."

"If you don't know, then who does?" Bixuan sneered. "You were a sixth transformation Immortal. You were already the core strength of the Five Element Grand Sect. There's no way they told you nothing at all."

Zhou Huaiyu remained silent for a moment, then said, "Fellow Daoist Bixuan, I truly did not know the inside story. But I did have some guesses. I remember hearing at the time that many sects across the Nine Mortal Realms had formed an alliance, called the 'Nine Realms Immortal Alliance.' The Five Element Grand Sect was one of them. Although the higher-ups never told us what the Nine Realms Immortal Alliance truly existed for, I could infer it from their subsequent actions. The Nine Realms Immortal Alliance existed to resist the former Heavenly Dao."

He explained, "The Heavenly Dao was unkind. It selected certain sects and, together with the Immortal Realm and the Underworld, enslaved the masses, dividing them into ranks and classes. Even each Immortal Path could only ever produce a single ninth-transformation immortal."

He paused, as if regaining the fervor of his past. His tone suddenly grew passionate.

"Why can each Immortal Path only have one ninth-transformation immortal?! Why does that Heavenly Dao even get to decide how many ninth-transformation immortals an Immortal Path allows? What we cultivators seek is great freedom and great ease! This kind of restriction is like a heavy shackle around our necks, choking us all, so we had to resist!

"If the Nine Realms Immortal Alliance had won, the Heavenly Dao would have been reestablished, the rules of the Three Realms rewritten, and only then could immortals truly attain great freedom and great ease!" Zhou Huaiyu's voice gradually grew smaller, filled with sorrow. "But now it seems... the Nine Realms Immortal Alliance has already fallen."

At first, Bixuan had been shocked by Zhou Huaiyu's words, but by the end, he couldn't help letting out a scornful laugh. "You make it sound so grand. No matter how flowery your words are, weren't you just trying to reshuffle the cultivation world and put yourselves in charge?"

He scoffed. "The Nine Mortal Realms were doing just fine. It was precisely because of people like you stirring up trouble that living beings everywhere were plunged into misery. Back then, I myself had a chance to obtain an Immortal Register and advance to an Ancient Immortal, yet I had to come to the Nanqing Constellation to fight you people, and now I've fallen to this state. There are countless cultivators like me across the world, too many to even count!

"And beyond that, how many living beings were killed by that age of chaos? Look at these wandering souls, how many of them were once mere mortals? They all died in that war! And even more never even made it here. Their allotted yin lifespan was exhausted long ago, and they were completely annihilated, body and soul!"

Zhou Huaiyu glanced at Bixuan, his gaze indifferent. "You don't understand."

He said nothing more.

A soft chuckle suddenly sounded nearby.

Zhou Huaiyu turned toward Fang Chen, his eyes filled with confusion.

"Why are you laughing, my lord?"

"I'm laughing at you," Fang Chen said with a smile. "He doesn't understand, and you don't either. Perhaps what you heard truly wasn't much different from what you just said. Perhaps what you saw really did look as though you were changing the Three Realms. But you don't know what this represents behind the scenes, because from the very beginning, you harbored selfish intentions. You always felt that if the Three Realms changed, you would gain something from it. As for what kind of benefit that would be... you probably hadn't even thought it through yourself."

Zhou Huaiyu shook his head instinctively. "That's not how it was..."

Fang Chen nodded. "That's exactly how it was. After all, chaotic times breed heroes. There are always people who hope to see the world thrown into chaos. With a few words here and there, they were convinced to join. They tell themselves day after day that they are doing something just, sweeping away the world's unfairness. But they never considered that, where there is fairness, there is also unfairness. Only stability is the true principle. Cultivation is about yin and yang, yet you people could not distinguish between the two."

𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

He fell silent for a long while before speaking. "My lord, had we won, you probably wouldn't be saying this."

Fang Chen burst into laughter. "Had you won? If you had

won

, the Nine Mortal Realms would have ceased to exist. You were someone else's borrowed knives. It's very likely that those leading figures of the so-called Nine Realms Immortal Alliance already knew this from the start. They merely wanted to exploit others to achieve their own ends, never considering the outcome of being burned by the very fire they lit."

"Do you know why the age of chaos rose at all? It is because someone wanted to seize the Nine Realms, to seize the Three Realms of the human race."

"You mean... there were other races manipulating things behind the scenes?" Bixuan was startled and blurted out subconsciously. "Was it the demon race? That doesn't make sense. The demon race also suffered massive casualties back then. Some demons stood with the Five Element Grand Sect, while others stood with us."

"This vast Qingming... compared to it, you and I are nothing more than grains of sand. How could we possibly know everything?" Fang Chen said.

Then he turned to Zhou Huaiyu. "Some details, we'll ask them once we reach Yin City. In the meantime, think carefully about the Five Elements Immortal Path. Since you walked the Wood Immortal Path, you'd better arrange it thoroughly and hand it over to me. Whether you speak truth or falsehood lies in a single thought. Think it through before you speak."

Zhou Huaiyu didn't take in much of what was said afterward. He was still mulling over Fang Chen's earlier words. As he thought and thought, his expression suddenly changed drastically. His face turned deathly pale, and he began to tremble uncontrollably.

Someone who could cultivate to the sixth transformation was hardly a fool. Even if he harbored a sliver of selfish intent he didn't want others to know about, basic logic still existed. With Fang Chen laying things bare, many of the doubts he had back then suddenly became clear.

At the same time, the Zhu Long had already swum up to a shattered bridge. It did not approach it, however. It instead kept a certain distance.

Fang Chen sensed a trace of wariness from it.

At the far end of the bridge, a faint figure stood.

With hands clasped behind his back, the figure stared unblinkingly in Fang Chen's direction.

This person wore a long black robe. His complexion was as pale as if coated in white powder, his pupils entirely black with not a hint of white showing. One hand rested behind his back, while the other held aloft a pagoda suffused with dense yin energy.

When Zhou Huaiyu and the others saw this person, shock overtook them.

Someone couldn't help waving and shouting, "Third Elder!"

Bixuan gulped, staring at that figure with eyes full of disbelief. He nervously revealed, "Fellow Daoist... he seems to be the patriarch of the Five Element Grand Sect back then, a... an Ancient Immortal..."

Why is he still alive?