Chapter 572 - He Walked Through History and Witnessed Myth - Part 3

Days later.

The court historians gathered to debate the posthumous title.

The late Human Emperor had been powerful. He drove back the Nine Flames Tribe, reunited the realm under one banner. By those merits alone, he deserved to be remembered as a wise and mighty ruler.

But then came the bloodshed. The executions. The officials and martial artists who died by his hand.

The people suffered under his rule, plagued by endless disasters, the land in turmoil, while he did nothing.

“Let’s go with Wu Lie, a

Martial Ardent.

.” The new Emperor despised the tyrant, yet chose not to smear him with a disgraceful name. Instead, he gave him the rare honor of a double epithet, a name that carried the weight of both respect and ambiguity.

The court historians murmured in agreement.

And so,

Emperor Wu Lie of Zhou

was carved into history.

That very moment, as his title was sealed, sunlight pierced through the land that had long been buried under the Evernight.

The ice began to melt, trickling down in gentle streams, soaking into the earth and sand.

But none of it would be remembered as part of Emperor Wu Lie’s story.

A few strokes of ink in the annals of spring and autumn, that’s all it took to define an emperor’s legacy.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Li Yuan quickened his pace.

And at last, on the edge of his vision, he saw the entrance to the Deathless Tomb, ringed by towering black ice pillars like a fortress of the dead.

He no longer knew where they were, but he cried out, “We’re here! We’ve made it! Don’t sleep, don’t sleep!”

He charged toward the tomb, where a murder of crows took wing from its shadowy entrance, wings fluttering in the dark.

But suddenly, he stopped. He turned his head.

Ji Hu was dead.

The journey had been too long. Even the Human Emperor couldn’t survive it.

The crows came to rest, and Li Yuan stood there, silent, staring at the body on his back.

Ji Hu’s white hair hung still in the frozen darkness of the Evernight.

After a long pause, Li Yuan let out a quiet, bitter laugh.

Ji Hu had died at 49 years old. As the strongest man in the world, he could have devoted everything to extending his life. Even if he found nothing, living another three or four decades wouldn’t have been hard.

The fate of the world? The suffering of the people?

What did any of that have to do with Ji Hu?

And Li Yuan, he hadn't been any better. Sending that rainbow-horned snail to him hadn’t exactly been out of kindness.

He just wanted to save Yan Yu. So he’d picked up this heavy chess piece called the Human Emperor and hurled it into the abyss.

One piece for another. One life traded for another.

That was all.

“You really were a foolish son...” He held Ji Hu in his arms, laughing, softly, bitterly...until his eyes finally closed. Two silent tears slid down his cheeks and landed on the wrinkled face below.

After a long while, he raised his hands and handed the body over to the crows.

The crows took flight, carrying the corpse toward the tomb. Li Yuan followed behind them, step by step.

Within the tomb, he watched as Ji Hu was placed into a coffin.

But he knew the truth.

The Human Emperor was dead.

And the Deathless Tomb could not resurrect the dead.

Li Yuan turned toward the quiet young woman who kept watch over the tomb.

Sheng’er looked back at him.

The two said nothing.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

A few days later.

Li Yuan retraced the same long road, this time alone.

Was eternal life a burden? No. Of course not. It meant getting to live a thousand lives. And even if his heart grew numb for a time, he’d just have to give it a little while.

He only needed to wait a little longer, and everything would be fine again.

The youth trudged alone through the frozen wasteland.

After a long silence, he let out a heavy sigh, then stubbornly muttered to himself, “Eternal life..isn’t a burden.”

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain.

Surrounded by swirls of violet energy, an ancient hall stood tall as a mountain. The fractured void around it had long since mended.

Massive gates, towering as if they could pierce the heavens, swung open.

A joint team of eleven, top powerhouses of the Arcane Supreme Sect and Five Spirits Institute, ventured inside once more.

A wave of terrifying blood fiends surged toward them. These creatures were grotesquely built from blood and flesh, their muscle density exceeding anything a living being should possess.

In truth, any one of these blood fiends could easily obliterate a single clone of Ping’an.

The team relied on a very old tactic, send in a clone of Ping’an to draw the fiends’ attention, then strike from the flanks.

Without using their trump cards, killing even a single fiend was a grueling task.

“I still don’t understand how these blood fiends came to be,” a man in golden robes said. “But judging by what we’ve seen lately, they all seem to come from the same race.”

The others had noticed it too.

Every one of these blood-drenched monsters was a peak third rank powerhouse, and they all bore a strange resemblance, like members of the same clan who had come here together, only to lose their minds and transform into blood fiends.

But this ancient hall had existed for who knew how long. For any living creature, stepping inside was like walking into a crypt. How could an entire tribe have ended up here?

A creeping sense of mystery hung in the air.

Still, no one said much more. Strange things were common in the ancient era, too many to count. There was no way they could investigate them all.

What they could do was train, fast.

Within the confines of the ancient hall, they had one goal. That was to break through and reach the legendary second rank.

Within this vast space, aside from the overwhelming surge of spiritual energy pouring in from the outside world, there was another force at play, strange, indescribable, and profoundly unique.

The hall masters and sect leaders had all sensed it.

And now, they were trying to carefully absorb it, probing its mysteries as they sought a path toward even greater realms of power.

Before long, they found a suitable area near the ancient hall’s grand, blindingly bright entrance.

Ping’an’s clones took on the task of luring away the approaching blood fiends.

But after all, a clone was not made of flesh and blood. There were times when the more peculiar fiends wouldn’t take the bait.

That was where cannon fodder came in.

In the past, the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain had no shortage of powerful cultivators, but not many willing fools to play bait.

Now, things were different.

The mortal realm’s ancestral lands were teeming with people desperate to climb the ladder, even if it meant dying as expendable pawns.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Three days and three nights passed.

The team’s cultivation efforts reached a plateau, and their prolonged stay seemed to stir something deep within the ancient hall.

The eleven quietly chose to withdraw.

As they walked away, a seductive woman glanced back at the depths of the ancient hall and murmured, “This place must be the Hall of Life.”

The others nodded.

A man with a stiff, expressionless face, flanked by three towering puppets, rasped, “I wonder if there’s a Human Seed Fruit hidden deeper inside. If we could get one...forget third rank, even reaching first rank might be possible.”

“Take it slow,” another said. “Let’s get out first. We’ll have plenty of chances in the future.”

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

By the banks of the Yellow Springs, crimson blossoms had begun to bloom, vivid and strange.

Countless people now shuffled along that road.

They were all the dead, common folk who had perished over the last few decades.

Their spirits had not passed into reincarnation.

Instead, they had gathered in the Underworld, becoming wandering spirits.

But there was no cycle of rebirth. No path forward.

And so, the ghosts piled up until they became a tide.

Tides move in a direction, and so did this sea of the dead.

It pushed each spirit forward, endlessly onward, though none knew where they were going.

Numb, they stared only at the backs of those ahead, moving their feet in hollow rhythm, afraid to fall behind.

Within this tide of spirits, an ugly man suddenly stopped walking.

But before long, he too was swept back into the flow, vanishing into the sea of spirits like a tiny, flickering ember.

The roiling Yellow Springs remained deceptively calm.

Atop a lavish coffin that floated like a ship, a young woman in an azure robe sat quietly near the head.

She looked as though she’d just awoken from a long nightmare, her gaze vacant, her eyes dull, staring off into the distance.

Her lips moved slowly, murmuring, “Yuan Yuan...”

The coffin drifted along the edges of the ghost tide, passing silently by.

The ugly man, eyes shielded by the masses, never saw it.

And the woman on the coffin, now sovereign of the Underworld, would never lower her eyes to notice the tiny spirit among the tide.

She was now its supreme ruler.

But even so, she carried her own sorrow.

She clung desperately to the last remaining thread of memory, whispering that name day after day, year after year, “Yuan Yuan...”