Chapter 639 – Behind the Curtain, Blade Laid Bare - Part 3

Three more months slipped past.

Li Yuan kept moving west.

Ying Zhuoyao kept pestering him the whole way, repeatedly warning him that the Great Upheaval of Heaven and Earth was getting closer and closer.

And yet, despite all his efforts, Li Yuan found neither Sheng'er nor the Deathless Tomb.

The land had changed so much it felt unfamiliar. He couldn’t even find a single place where it still snowed.

The Deathless Tomb in the far west...it was starting to feel like nothing more than a legend.

Li Yuan glanced at his own stats. They had fallen to 1k~232k (106k~5.15mil).”

That was bad, very bad... Not only had his combat power dropped into the low two hundred thousands, even his upper limit had started to fall.

He walked on for another two days, and his upper limit spilled away by more than ten thousand, dropping to 5.14mil.

He felt that it was time to use the Life Star Art.

Thankfully, he’d kept this trump card. Otherwise, at this point, he really would have nothing left but tears.

Everyone’s cultivation levels were falling, including his.

Injuries could heal, but once his cultivation dropped, that was a real fall.

So Li Yuan chose a secluded lone cliff.

He swept his senses around; there wasn’t the slightest trace of another person anywhere nearby.

It was dusk. Evening clouds sagged along the horizon, beautiful and unsullied.

For the common folk, this was just another peaceful, gentle, utterly ordinary evening.

But for cultivators, it was the night before the end of the world.

Li Yuan set down the secret art stele. Beside him stood the little maid in green.

From a distance, they were nothing more than a young man and a delicate, pretty girl.

Against that vast, empty backdrop, with no one else in sight, the two of them looked especially small, especially alone.

As if the whole world had narrowed down to just these two people.

“Looks like it’s just you and me now.” Li Yuan said.

Ying Zhuoyao answered softly, “At least you still have me, Master.”

After that, the two of them looked off into the distance together.

The road to the ends of the earth was long, but with someone beside you, it didn’t feel quite so lonely.

They shared a brief smile. Then Li Yuan sat down cross-legged, raised a hand, and pressed it lightly against the stone stele, beginning to activate the Life Star Art.

He’d already completed Star Observation long ago.

Star Selection was done as well.

The final step was Star Fating, forging a connection between himself and the star.

Li Yuan focused completely and began to circulate the art.

Ying Zhuoyao’s green robes fluttered in the wind, her skirt swaying. Her bright eyes rested quietly on Li Yuan, the light in them deep and wavering, as if they hid a hint of the netherworld.

Time trickled by, one second at a time.

Several days later, Ying Zhuoyao was roasting something over a campfire when she suddenly heard movement from the patch of forest that didn’t even deserve to be called a mountain path.

She snatched up a hardened branch as a weapon and muttered, “Wild beasts?”

The sounds drew closer and closer, but they didn’t quite sound like an animal. They sounded like footsteps.

A moment later, the brush parted and a figure staggered out.

The newcomer leaned against a tree, gasping heavily, white hair at his temples whipping in the high wind atop the cliff.

“Father!”

It was Ping'an.

“Ping’an?” Ying Zhuoyao blurted out in surprise.

“Father...” Ping'an stumbled toward them, one step at a time.

The closer he got, the more unsteady he seemed. But just as he neared, his sleeve flicked and a dagger gleaming with cold light slipped into his hand and drove straight toward Li Yuan’s chest.

But the dagger didn’t pierce in. Its tip merely came to rest right where Li Yuan’s heart was.

Li Yuan didn’t move. He was still immersed in comprehending the Life Star Art.

Ping'an

let out a quiet breath of relief, then tilted his head to glance at Ying Zhuoyao.

Ying Zhuoyao started walking slowly toward Li Yuan, but after taking two steps she suddenly stopped and barked sharply, “Ping'an, what are you doing? Put down that dagger!”

She hesitated after shouting, waiting to see if Li Yuan would react. There was still no response.

Only then did she continue forward. She settled gracefully at Li Yuan’s side, leaned in, and opened her mouth, fangs aimed at his neck.

And right then, her expression froze.

Li Yuan’s eyes opened. He turned his head slightly to look at her and said, in a tired voice, “You’re the Northern Dipper, aren’t you?”

His gaze shifted to the imposter Ping'an in front of him. There was no surprise there, as if he’d expected this all along. He said calmly, “Celestial Sovereign.”

The Celestial Sovereign didn’t dispel the disguise. He kept his Ping’an’s face, because in his view, Li Yuan was a sentimental man. Using his son’s appearance only made it easier to make him hesitate.

So he merely kept the dagger pressed against Li Yuan’s heart and ground out through clenched teeth, “Father, I hate you. Everyone is dead. Why didn’t you take us with you? Why?”

In the past, he never could’ve posed any real threat to Li Yuan.

But now Heaven and Earth had changed, and everyone’s strength had plummeted.

He had prepared a terrifying amount of spirit stones, then used a secret art to seal himself away, lying in wait in the Western Extremes long in advance. Because of that, his fall in cultivation wasn’t necessarily any faster than Li Yuan’s.

And in times like these, a single injury meant eternal doom. This Heaven and Earth simply wouldn’t give him the time to recover.

If Li Yuan took a serious wound, he could kiss the Life Star Art goodbye.

Li Yuan listened to the Celestial Sovereign, then turned his gaze to Ying Zhuoyao. “Actually, that night, I’d already guessed. That’s why I said we could live together past the end of days, share honor and disgrace, live or die together. With the world like this and the road so long...isn’t it better to have more hands holding you up?”

“Oh?” Ying Zhuoyao stopped pretending. A smile appeared on her lips, then grew brighter and brighter. She lifted Li Yuan’s chin between her fingers.

“Young Master... The Northern Dipper is me. Ying Zhuoya is me. Yan Hongxiu is also me. The laws of Heaven can’t be borrowed. Human effort has its limits. Only the Ancestral Land offers a chance to jump out of this world entirely. So. Do you understand? The Ancestral Land can only belong to one person. The Great Dao may reach all the way to the Heavens, but only one can walk it through.”

She chuckled softly. “I understand everything you said. But the world only allows for a single

only one

. If the Dao were a little wider, who knows? Maybe I really would’ve chosen to stay with you. You’re talking right now, but in truth you’re still running the Life Star Art. Once the third step of this technique starts, it can never be stopped.”

Li Yuan asked, “What about Yan Yu?”

Ying Zhuoyao didn’t answer that directly. Instead, she spoke as if reminiscing.

“The Northern Dipper governs death. The Southern Dipper governs life. Unfortunately, I’ve already swallowed the Southern Dipper. I’ve known from the start that you weren’t the Southern Dipper. Back then I lied to you. That was all just to trick you. I imagine you figured that out later.”

“Polaris merged with Valley Obscura. From then on, that heart of pure light carried darkness within it. Because among the Outerborn, Valley Obscura was the darkest of them all. Pity...even so, Polaris was still remarkable.”

Li Yuan followed along with her words. “Polaris heavily wounded you. Of course that’s remarkable.”

“‘Heavily wounded?’” Ying Zhuoyao let out a light laugh. “That was because I let him. By then, I’d already seen it: the path of survival has only one branch. Turning the Ancestral Land into a Life Star is just the first step.

“After that, only by bringing Yin and Yang into perfect union, opening the Underworld, seizing control of reincarnation, and gathering billions of living souls into one place, cycling them over and over, can I complete my Dao and use it to transcend.”

Li Yuan nodded. He understood.

The Ancestral Land itself was an empty shell, but since it was the place where everything began, it was bound to be special, special enough to withstand a Soul Furnace of Reincarnation.

And the Northern Dipper’s plan was to turn every soul into her ancestral seal seeds, forging them into one unimaginably vast soul, and then use that to leap free from this broken Heaven and Earth.

Ying Zhuoyao went on.

“I needed time to scheme, to lay things out. But I had no time to slowly enrich the Yin and Yang energies of this land. And if there wasn’t enough Yin and Yang, then even a Grand Union of Yin and Yang would be meaningless. So, I tossed that little chore to Polaris.

“I knew Polaris would never permit Yin and Yang to fully merge. Polaris is like a physician. He diagnoses the patient, then uses golden needles to seal their acupoints and suppress the illness. But this patient’s sickness is fundamentally incurable. So the longer he holds it down, the more it becomes.

“The Dao rises a foot, the demon rises ten. I used him. And he had no way to escape that role. Still, that’s not why I said he was remarkable.”

She paused, as if her thoughts drifted far away, then sighed softly.

“What makes him remarkable is that he chose the Human Emperor. He knew exactly what kind of person the Human Emperor was. All those years, he quietly influenced him, pushed him, helped him truly carry out his own beliefs.

“It’s just that the Valley Obscura inside him tried to stop him, to interfere, to think about seizing the Human Emperor’s body for itself. In the end, though, Polaris still won. Polaris fused with Valley Obscura, then used the Human Emperor as his vessel. With his own death, he flung all hope forward into the future.

“If I didn’t say this out loud, no one would ever know that the Polaris Archon Star actually had such a plan, would they? In this world, there are always a few idiots who want to be heroes. Polaris is one of those idiots. That’s why he chose another idiot, the Human Emperor.

“Young Master, I know you were influencing the Human Emperor as well, but what you didn’t realize is that you and Polaris were pushing him together, did you?”

Li Yuan shook his head honestly. That part, he truly hadn’t known.

Ying Zhuoyao continued, “As for Yan Yu, thanks to the interference of you and Polaris, she managed to swallow me down in the Underworld. Now she’s its master. But once I turn the Ancestral Land into my Life Star, I can still win it all back.”

Li Yuan said, “The truth is...you’re afraid of losing, aren’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t bother telling me all this.”

Ying Zhuoyao smiled. “You’re qualified to know. That’s all.”

Li Yuan said, “In that case...shall we begin?”

Ying Zhuoyao studied him with keen interest and asked, “And what exactly can you do right now, Young Masteri? The Celestial Sovereign may not be your equal, but at the moment all of your power is being transmitted away. What can you possibly do? You obediently send your strength out, and I’ll calmly devour you and take everything you are.”

Li Yuan let out a quiet sigh. “So that means we’ve already begun, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ying Zhuoyao said.

Li Yuan tilted his head back and glanced up at the sun. “You really shouldn’t have chosen a clear day.”

He smiled as he said it.

All around them, the grass and trees suddenly went berserk, erupting into wild growth. Up in the sky, the sunlight pouring down turned terrifying, as if the power of a new world had abruptly descended upon the human realm.

The Celestial Sovereign’s body jolted. An indescribable irritation surged up in his chest. In the next instant his eyes went blood-red, his head pounding with pain. He sprang away from Li Yuan, tumbling to the side, rolling and thrashing in confusion.

Li Yuan spoke as if chatting to himself.

“I studied that character for a long time. Eventually, I realized it was the character for

dusk

. Blazing sun sinks into grass and wood. That is dusk. Split it apart and you have

grass

and

sun

. The grass grows, the sun burns.

“Put it together, and it can throw the mind into chaos, make power rapidly decay. I was lucky enough to grasp a single brushstroke of this new world’s strength. Maybe I seized it a bit too early...even I’m surprised by how much power I can draw out of it.”