Chapter 531 - The One Who Inherits the Will of the Southern Dipper Lineage

It was not only the places where the Holy Fists of the Southern Dipper lineage stood.

Cassius also saw far-off regions—iconic zones of the World of Calamity, each with its own eerie traits. For example, the Pale Lands, Silent Rain Zone, Despair Skeletal Forest, Pitch Black Mountains, Scarlet Lake, Rotting Marshes, and the Crystal Sand Sea.

At the heart of each zone, an origin of calamity spewed power like an unchecked fountain. Innumerable dark creatures were born from that origin of calamity, thickening catastrophe throughout the underworld. This was something that could be neither halted nor ended.

After piercing through the earth of the underworld, the origins of calamity had gushed calamity from ancient times to the present. So many sources of calamity were undeniably fatal and utterly despairing.

Ancient sages and Holy Fists had once tried to seal those calamity springs. Yet without exception, they had all failed. So long as Xiadu the demonic well existed, the origins of calamity could never be severed. Even the sealing of Xiadu had done nothing. Therefore, humanity needed a way to curb the springs effectively.

But their method was unimaginably cruel. The calamity springs would never stop, swelling up with every moment. Was there anything of similar nature? Yes...

The highest realm for a Covert Martial Arts Practitioner, the Holy Fist!

Every combat artist who reached Holy Fist let his Qi transcend mortal flesh, escaping bodily bounds. It became a concept of Qi that carried their Will of the Fist and bore their memories.

The Holy Fist's Qi grew and expanded outward every moment. Their Qi had unique conductivity and ability to expand, splitting like asexually reproducing microbes. In a sense, a Holy Fist could itself be viewed as an origin—a smaller spring of Qi. It was small only relative to an origin of calamity; in nature, a seasoned Holy Fist could match the currents of a mighty river.

The ancients' solution was to use Holy Fists as mobile Qi springs to confront the origins of calamity of the underworld! Since they could not fully seal or destroy it, they could only pit power against power in reckless attrition! Endless Qi collided with endless calamity and mutually annihilated it.

It was an extremely perilous and brutal undertaking. Should a Holy Fist choose to duel an origin of calamity, he would be chained beside it until a successor arrived. The vast power stored in his body would drain unceasingly. Wherever he looked, it would be a nursery of calamity and dark creatures—a veritable hell.

Could even a Holy Fist whose Will of the Fist had reached the summit possess the resolve to endure such a lonely hell for centuries, even millennia? They were like torches, blazing away their strength to fend off a night without end!

It was sorrowful yet magnificent. Without those Holy Fists damming the springs, the surface world would already have become a vision of hell.

Human society would not still dominate as it did now; dark creatures, though active, would not be skulking in shadows only. More extreme still, the origins of calamity might have geysered into the surface world, transforming it into a second World of Calamity.

Every human would have died or turned into monsters. In the World of Calamity Cassius beheld, nearly every origin of calamity was guarded by Holy Fists from different eras.

They were the crystallization of Covert Martial Arts, the embodiment of human will. Faced with the demise of their world and the extinction of their race, these Holy Fists, whether once good or evil, had united.

Some waged attrition against the origins of calamity while others confronted Ultimate Dark Forms. Over many ages, many Holy Fists had fallen, leaving only broken bones. Others, worn to guttering candles in their endless contest with the origins of calamity, were near burnout.

Some Holy Fists had half their bodies steeped in calamity and were wracked by pain. One side bathed in luminous Qi like a god, the other twisted into a devil. Yet so long as will endured, a Holy Fist did not die. They would persist until the day their Will of the Fist was utterly extinguished.

Cassius silently watched the glass-like, fragmented scenes. Such a vast World of Calamity could not house only the Southern Dipper lineage. Nor could there be only the Totem King, the True Progenitor of Blood, and the Moon God as Ultimate Dark Forms.

Yet they were the mightiest, most active, and deciding factors for both sides. The Totem King and True Progenitor of Blood were likely within the top ten Ultimate Dark Forms. The fallen Moon God ranked no lower, save that it met the White Bird Holy Fist.

Likewise for the Southern Dipper line—their Qi grew without limit, and their Southern Dipper Force grew without end. The two fused perfectly into one. It was the keenest attack against dark creatures and calamity.

This was what the Dominator Fist elder of the Red Falcon Fist was doing. One man sealed an origin of calamity and confronted the Totem King on enemy ground! Such a feat was beyond ordinary Holy or Dominator Fists; only the Southern Dipper lineage could manage it!

It meant peril and burden. But equally, it was a mission.

Cassius stared at that distant cruel battlefield; confusion flickered in his eyes, but resolute will cut it off at once. On such a field, Holy Fists could die and Ultimate Forms could perish! All the Holy Fists still enduring in the World of Calamity combined were fewer than the highest recorded number of Covert Martial Arts practitioners breaking through to Holy Fist in a single era of the Hongli Empire's Covert Martial Arts community.

What of the Blue Star Empire? The United States of Yana? The many small nations?

All were dead. Either slain in battle or drained to death. It was cruel, unspeakably so. One had thought that reaching the ultimate Holy Fist realm would let a Covert Martial Arts Practitioner dominate an era, undefeated.

Yet it was in truth the beginning of real despair. Past records of the Hongli Empire's Covert Martial Arts community showed that every Holy Fist breakthrough artist preferred seclusion over publicity. It seemed that at that level, they sensed the entire truth of the underworld. Heavy of heart, they still readied themselves for war.

Cassius recalled the Threefold Gate he had glimpsed before. Xiadu's true body was sealed inside, suppressed by seas of Qi, body, and spirit. Those three originated from every human. That, too, amounted to another form of attrition, just like the tangle between Holy Fists and origins of calamity.

No wonder, the Covert Martial Arts community seemed to be waning on a grand scale. The Hongli Empire, Hongli Country, Hongli Federation... Each generation was weaker than the last. The decline was slight, yet accumulated over time.

Cassius had attended the Eastern Covert Martial Arts Exchange Tournament in the surface world, where the Golem Sect had burst into fame. At that tournament, he had sparred amicably with many Eastern masters. When he compared them to the Hongli Empire's current Eastern scene, the future indeed looked much feebler.

Moreover, Cassius had sensed a mysterious force in the world sealing Covert Martial Arts, making it oddly isolated. Could that relate to Xiadu's remaining body within the Threefold Gate? After all, every bit of power inside was a reflection of living people in the world.

Xiadu was indeed bound at the bottom of the three origin seas. Could he have used that fact to exert an opposite influence? At the moment, many puzzles he had failed to grasp found answers in his heart. Though they might not be correct, he now had a direction for the truth. In the future, he could draw nearer to the truth.

"Huuu..."

Cassius let out a long breath and refocused on his surroundings.

He found himself in a peculiar state. It had been faint at first, but grew stronger with time. Like the myriad shattered images before him, Cassius's senses split into countless shards, each present in different regions of the World of Calamity at once.

The Pale Lands, Pitch Black Mountains, Ash City, and more... The sensation was strange, disjointed, and excruciatingly uncomfortable.

Had his spirit and will not been formidable, the deluge of data and split vision would have driven him mad in an instant. Fortunately, Cassius endured and stabilized. He felt as though he was a sugar cube dissolving into the ocean. Each molecule spread evenly into every corner. He was nowhere in particular, yet seemingly everywhere.

One becoming ten thousand...

Cassius instantly realized this must be connected to Xiadu. The demonic well had swallowed him, letting him briefly experience Xiadu's perspective. It should have been his view from before the sealing. It seemed the demonic well was not Xiadu's original form. Originally, Xiadu should have been a mass of Qi—a concept of calamity.

It existed within every person, in every space. It had no concrete shape, wielding power like it was part of the rules of the world. Yet the Southern Dipper lineage had emerged and, by unknown means, sealed it in a mysterious Southern Dipper Holy Fist's body.

Xiadu was forced to transform from a concept to a hazy-shaped demonic well. In that battle of old, the Southern Dipper failed yet also succeeded. They had not been able to kill Xiadu nor overturn calamity's existence.

However, Xiadu had been sealed, demoted to a well, and trapped in a human body. That gave it form and presence! And anything with form could be slain!

Hope was tiny yet real. It was no longer a formless thing untouchable for a lifetime. While Cassius pondered and surmised, the World of Calamity's Southern Dipper Holy Fists and mighty Ultimate Dark Forms sensed Cassius.

They had felt the resonance, just like he felt them. Of course, only those strong and similar enough in aura could notice Cassius. Ordinary Holy Fists and Ultimate Dark Forms could not.

A dense swarm of dark creatures crawled through a dreary zone of mud-like black fluid layered over mountains. Near the origin of calamity at its core, an immense bronze gargoyle stood between heaven and earth, its body engraved with uncountable totems.

Opposite the Totem King, a gaunt elder whose body bore sixty-six blood-red stars shimmered in and out. His head had been bowed, but now it snapped up. Eagle-sharp eyes stared straight at the sky of the World of Calamity.

Ka-ka-ka...

"Roar!!!"

The vast gargoyle likewise lifted its head and even roared.

Amid the deafening sonic wave, the Red Falcon elder muttered. "Have you met Xiadu already? No, the main body still slumbers. You've only met a split-off avatar..."

Scarlet flames of Qi lit upon him. "Still, this will do. Junior of the Southern Dipper lineage, if you have pushed Xiadu's avatar so far... You are worthy! Go, fight, grow stronger! We old codgers can hold out long enough for you. If need be, I shall drag the Totem King into hell with me in my final moment!!!"

The Red Falcon elder seemed to vow to the air. His whole body grew ever hotter, and his aura ever more dreadful. He pressed one palm to the ground. Scarlet Death's Fang Force surged upward and formed a giant hand that covered the sky.

The huge hand snatched a mountain-sized totem version of a wyvern out of the sky. On the ground, the Totem King roared; the two massive wings behind it had vanished. Clearly, it had tried to shed part of its power as a wyvern to hunt the threat called Cassius. But alas, a Dominator Fist would never permit that!

"Stay here obediently with me, and let’s descend to hell together..."

Elsewhere, inside a vast volcanic cavity, an enormous purple python sensed likewise. Human-like emotion flashed in its eyes. "He even practices my Southern Dipper Sonic Snake Fist! Good! Good! Good!"

"To train two Southern Dipper fist arts at once and live... However you managed, I respect you! Nameless youngster...Inherit my will, inherit the will of our Southern Dipper lineage..."

Boom!!!

The python opened its jaws once again, spewing a sonic wave. The wave echoed within the enclosed space, unleashing destructive vibrations.

On an unknown black sea, a giant white bird suddenly halted. It transformed into human form in an instant as he turned to face a direction in the World of Calamity.

"Southern Dipper Red Falcon Fist, Southern Dipper Sonic Snake Fist. Aside from the uniquely difficult Southern Cross Fist, only my Southern Dipper Waterbird Fist remains out of reach. Perhaps...I should lend this lad a hand..."

The White Bird Holy Fist muttered, then turned into a meteor streaking toward the World of Calamity. He no longer cared for the leviathans fleeing beneath the sea.

Cassius’s will snapped back, as he coalesced back into a single self. The brief fusion had clearly ended.

The next second, the fractured images vanished, leaving only darkness rolling in like thick smoke. If he was right, Cassius was now inside the well—a demonic well of calamity.

The well had just "inhaled", lowering the water level. Then it "exhaled", the level surging upward. An unbelievably dense essence of calamity engulfed Cassius instantly, and a horrible force of mutation descended.

Dark creature transformation! Terrifying radiation!

It sought to turn Cassius from human to dark creature in a heartbeat.

"Golem Covert Martial Arts!!!" Cassius roared and hurriedly activated his core art.

The Golem Covert Martial Arts had once neutralized even Ultimate Dark Form mutations; now he wielded it again.

There was no reason it could fail! Hold fast!