Chapter 425 – When the Map Runs Out, the Dagger Shows; Third Rank Revealed, Tigers and Wolves Swallow the Exotic Beasts - Part 2

Lu Xuanxian stared at the Revival Tree God, frowning, fingers tightening around the halberd without thinking.

He hadn’t spoken yet when the plain-clothed man let out a quiet sigh. He already knew what Lu Xuanxian’s answer would be. And he regretted it. It was only regret, nothing more.

The outcome, he’d known it all along. So he moved.

He pressed the wooden cane ever so lightly. A crisp plunk rang out, like a pebble dropping into a still spring.

At that plunk, the air around him conjured something from nothing; illusion hardened into reality, and in a blink the world changed.

Titanic vines, wild tangles of aerial roots, uncanny trees and flowers, and a sea of rank, waist-high grass...an entire world of flora had erupted into being. And every stalk and petal radiated a terrible, unimaginable presence.

“Mind steps into Yin and Yang to birth a wondrous realm! Hmph.” Lu Xuanxian’s eyes were grave, but he bared his teeth in a grin, leveled his halberd, and answered in kind. White shadows churned through his pupils, and around him a battlefield took shape as solid as stone.

No men, only broken steel. Thousands upon thousands of shattered weapons stuck at crazy angles across a barren gray plain.

The plain-clothed man called the Revival Tree God glanced at the white gleam in Lu Xuanxian’s eyes and chuckled. There was no mockery in it, only amusement. He shook his head, smiling, and couldn’t even be bothered to look at this peerless Martial God of the Great Zhou, this grand general who had crushed era after era—Lu Xuanxian.

Behind the Revival Tree God, vines and flowers went berserk, exploding into growth.

Lu Xuanxian swept his halberd. Every weapon tore free of the earth and soared into the air, gathering behind him into a vast, slowly turning wheel of blades.

“Go!” He pointed, and ten thousand weapons, as if returning to their source, collapsed into a raging metal maelstrom. It roared like a gale, shrieked high enough to split eardrums, and fountained forward in a crushing tide.

Back then, even Li Yuan had only barely broken this strike after awakening the Heavenly Eye.

But was this all Lu Xuanxian had? Hardly. This time his blow was stronger than the one he used on Li Yuan. The weapons were wilder, more chaotic. Some he drove in outright reverse of his usual thinking—by hunch, by impulse, by deliberate disorder—all to undercut the kind of uncanny pre-reading Li Yuan had pulled before.

And yet—

That grand spectacle of a thousand blades returning to the source shattered like glass under a few emerald vines that met it head-on.

The vines kept going, in the next heartbeat lancing into Lu Xuanxian’s body and pinning him to the earth.

The Revival Tree God didn’t spare him a glance. He walked on to the golden dragon palanquin, flicked his hand and found the carriage empty.

“Lu Xuanxian,” he asked, “why did the Son of Heaven turn traitor at the last moment?”

“Heh.” Lu Xuanxian’s gaze slid toward Xie Feng, who was across the way, harrying the ghost cavalry.

Seeing Lu Xuanxian felled in an instant, Xie Feng was rattled, uncertain. But the man’s ferocity—and his own faith in the Ocean Province Armored Cavalry at his back—steadied him enough to answer. He wheeled his horse and called to the Revival Tree God, “Which side are you on, exactly?”

The Revival Tree God didn’t answer. He glanced over their battle formation, nodded slightly, and murmured, “Forget it.”

Then he said nothing more. He walked to the increasingly dim alley mouth, set upright the paper incense burner that had been knocked over, and, in Zhao Gutong’s stead, planted three chalk-white sticks of incense.

“Stop him!” Lu Xuanxian roared.

Xie Feng leveled his spear. “Men, form up! Purge that fiend!”

Lines of martial energy surged together as Xie Feng swept his spear across and thrust. The spear’s shadow swelled to a ridiculous vastness, raking the sky.

The Revival Tree God tilted his head. Every vine and flower behind him knit into a giant shield that rose at his back.

In Li Yuan’s sight, a combat power of over 350,000 floated Xie Feng’s head. Yet the vine-wrought shield still held, though not without cost. This time, many of the vines snapped and fell.

Even so, Xie Feng’s eyes went wide.

The Revival Tree God cocked his head and said, “You’re a general of the mortal world. Do a mortal general’s work, and keep out of things that aren’t your concern.”

With that, a thought flickered, and vines lashed tight around Lu Xuanxian’s limbs, hoisting him high. Whatever skill the Revival Tree God used, Lu Xuanxian began to change in midair. His skin blanched to corpse-white, a stink of rot seeped out, and black hair clung to putrid flesh and bone. In a blink, he was an old corpse dead for who knew how many years. There was nothing left of the proud, indomitable Martial God.

“Look closely, General. This is nothing but a struggle between ghosts. You’re a general of the living. Why help them? Can you truly sort who’s righteous and who’s evil, or guess what schemes they’re playing at?”

Xie Feng stared up at the airborne corpse that had been Lu Xuanxian, and said nothing for a long time.

“Where is the Son of Heaven? Where is he?!” He’d seen the emptiness inside the golden dragon palanquin and suddenly barked the question.

“I don’t know. Go. The future will need an army like yours, to defend hearth and realm, to guard the new world.” The Revival Tree God shook his head. He paused, then added, “I imagine the Son of Heaven has some trick for clinging to life. He’s likely not dead. His disappearance has nothing to do with me.”

When Xie Feng still didn’t move, the Revival Tree God smiled. The strange trees and flowers behind him writhed and braided together, and in moments became a towering nine-headed wood-serpent, over a thousand feet tall. Its bark was withered and wrinkled, like countless plates of vine-armor pressed into one, and all nine heads lowered to glare at the 30,000 cavalry. Its presence rolled over them, oppressive, almost absolute.

The Revival Tree God was one man. And the force facing him was no ordinary army. It was a juggernaut forged by secret arts, honed with time and treasure to sweep the world. Yet this one man clearly seemed to tower over the 30,000.

“Go,” the Revival Tree God said again. “I simply don’t want to kill you.”

Xie Feng looked up at Lu Xuanxian strung in midair, glanced toward the deep, distant alley that was slowly sharpening into focus, then back at the empty dragon palanquin. He lowered his spear and raised a hand. “Pull out of the Jade Capital.”

The Ocean Province Armored Cavalry withdrew at speed.

The eight thousand Flying Bears were Lu Xuanxian’s own, but they' had no idea their grand general was a ghost servant. Seeing him like this, and seeing that terrifying man in plain clothes, they too beat a swift retreat, following Xie Feng’s lead.

Across the torn earth, the remaining undying husks and ghost servants turned to look at the commotion, then one by one turned their backs and drifted off.

The alley was now completely ringed by a garden.

The Revival Tree God watched the alley, then the incense in the censer. When the incense burned high and the alley held steady, he set the paper censer down, strode to the Jade Pool within, and simply leapt in. He hauled Peng Mingyi out by the collar, pinched thumb and forefinger together, and conjured a crystal clear pill.

He popped it between Peng Mingyi’s lips.

Peng Mingyi came to and stared, startled, at the mysterious man in plain clothes. “Who are you?”

“Someone like you, someone who longs for the Grand Union of Yin and Yang,” the Revival Tree God said mildly. “Carry on.”

“Zhao Gutong is dead.”

“I’ll hold the censer and open the road for the dead. Yin and Yang uniting is inevitable,” the Revival Tree God replied.

Even as the words left him, his gaze shifted. Several cold figures had appeared at the corner. Their faces were blank, but the power rolling off each of them was anything but.

The Revival Tree God sighed, shook his head, and smiled. “Let’s deal with the troublemakers first.”

𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

He set the censer aside for the moment and walked to meet them.

Time could spare a minute.