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Chapter 891: This Path Does Not Lead to Death

“What’s the meaning of this, young friend?” the Greenwood said in a weak, ancient voice. It seemed confused.

The only answer it got from Xu Qing was a black spear surrounded by a sea of flames. It shot through the starry sky like a fireball, heading right toward the huge tree.

A rumbling boom rang out as the battlefield the Greenwood and Hellfei had been fighting on suddenly superimposed with itself. It was as if... it was actually a bubble created by an illusion. The spear pierced right into it, causing the bubble to start collapsing. An aura of rot and death immediately emerged and spread through the starry sky.

At the same time, the eye that Xu Qing had slashed apart collapsed into strands of black smoke, filled with poison and filth, which swept back toward Hellfei and turned back into an eye.

It glared at Xu Qing.

“How’d you figure it out?” said a deep voice that resonated with resentment.

Xu Qing was right. Everything he had seen was an act.

It was trickery that could be considered Hellfei’s last resort. It really was incredibly weak. And it was true that during the catastrophe of the gods many years ago, it gave birth to the rancorous energy of this immortal world. In a critical moment, it had indeed entered the Northyear Heaven to devour the Greenwood heavenly dao. From that point on, this place was its resting spot.

Where the story deviated from reality was the part about Hellfei being locked in combat with the Greenwood. That battle had actually ended countless years ago.

The Greenwood had used a trump card to end that fight in mutual destruction, although in the end, it died, while Hellfei survived, albeit with a serious injury.

As the guardian of Northyear, the Greenwood had been given a mission by the immortal emperor, and therefore, it was only natural that it was extraordinary in various ways. The trump card it used was extremely formidable, and though it didn’t successfully pull off mutual destruction, it inflicted an injury that sealed Hellfei and would make it very difficult to recover.

In fact, that wound would never fully heal, and would get worse over time. Because of the sealing, Hellfei was essentially imprisoned for all eternity.

Later, when the world became a god domain, that prison became even more of a prison, and led Hellfei into further depths of despair. There was no life force here. There were no visitors. There was no nourishment in this dead world. And thus, Hellfei just got weaker and closer to death.

It wasn’t willing to just give in, though. It wanted to be free, and to return to its previous peak. But as countless years passed, it just weakened further and began to wither up.

At the very end, as its last sparks of life were about to vanish, Xu Qing arrived. His arrival brought hope to Hellfei. It envied his physical body, except that it was so weak it couldn’t easily possess him.

And that was what led to the trickery.

The moment Xu Qing showed up, it created an illusion that showed Xu Qing what it wanted him to see. Then it sent him into the world of that decaying leaf.

There, it communicated to Xu Qing in the guise of the Greenwood, telling him things that were half true and half fiction. Its goal was to get Xu Qing to trust it.

Although the Hellfei dao forms that Xu Qing slayed in that illusion weren’t real, they did contain some real poison. It hoped that, as Xu Qing fought those forms, he would unwittingly end up infected by the poison. If the ploy worked, then Hellfei could use that poison to possess Xu Qing’s fleshly body, then finally gain freedom.

How could it have guessed that this opponent would actually have a way to deal with its poison? In fact, in a shocking development, this opponent used Hellfei for research purposes! He even wanted to study its soul!

Fearful of being exposed, Hellfei put everything on the line by using Five Filths of the Gods. It was another attempt to possess Xu Qing, except it also failed. He dealt with Five Filths of the Gods as well.

Its trickery wasn’t limited to those things, though. Its final plan was to let Xu Qing think he had succeeded, then give its eyeball as a reward.

If Xu Qing simply absorbed that eyeball, Hellfei could possess him.

Unfortunately... Xu Qing’s quick action with the saber ended everything.

“When did you realize the truth?” Hellfei asked.

Xu Qing didn’t reply. He lifted his right hand like before. The black spear swept forth, surrounded by fire, sending fluctuations rolling out into the starry sky.

The bubble illusion collapsed. The truth was revealed. There was no starry sky. It was nothing but a void.

A spherical planet hovered in the void. It was shockingly large, and if you looked closely at it, you would see that it was made up of countless dead and rotting branches. They were all intertwined to create a massive, planet-sized... wooden cage!

Inside of the wooden cage was Hellfei’s true body!

Hellfei was stabbed through and through by countless branches. It was withered to the point of looking like a corpse, even its head. The armor that had once covered it had turned into innumerable resentful souls that constantly devoured Hellfei both inside and out.

The only thing about it that remained intact was its solitary eye. It looked at Xu Qing with pain and despair. There was no vigor left in it. Its spirit was fading and was about to disappear forever.

“How’d you figure it out...?” it said again, determined to know the answer.

“I’m not a trusting person,” Xu Qing replied. He strode forward. It took only a step to bring him to the wooden cage. There, his taboo poison god trove thrummed with boundless longing as he reached out with his right hand toward the solitary eye. All of the taboo poison within him erupted, and all sense of life in the eye faded. It turned gray, floated out of Hellfei’s corpse, and became a stream of mist that flowed into Xu Qing’s taboo poison god trove.

The trove pulsed slightly, and then erupted with the aura of a heavenly dao. At the same time... the second trove gate opened! A terrifying mightiness exploded out.

On the other side of the trove gate was a huge eye. Six ancient sealing marks swirled around it, imparting a mysterious sensation that seemed full of hatred for gods.

The eye was a heavenly dao. The six sealing marks were the Six Filths of the Gods. Without that eye, Hellfei’s corpse collapsed into ash. The planet-sized wooden cage collapsed along with the corpse. Together, they turned into a vortex in the middle of the vast void.

That was the path out. The fate of Hellfei and the Greenwood was sealed. Karma had been consummated. They were both destroyed in body and soul.

The only thing left behind were a few echoing words that were all that remained of Hellfei’s determination.

“How’d you figure it out...?”

The words echoed in Xu Qing’s mind and heart as he stepped through the exit vortex. Speaking softly, he said, “I’ve seen sacrificial dances before.”

Compared to the sacrificial dance for a god, which could completely change perceptions and cognition, Hellfei’s trickery didn’t count for much.

Xu Qing stepped through the portal and vanished. The seventh path didn’t lead to death. It led to life.

***

The tomb of the ancestral emperor, which could also be called the immortal emperor’s tomb, did not have a complicated structure. The periphery was made of the labyrinth. Next came the five paths of life and four paths of death. Finally there was the emperor’s mausoleum. That was where the immortal emperor’s corpse rested.

The mausoleum was so massive it formed its own dimension. It was like a major world hanging in the vast expanse. There was a heaven. There was an earth. Visible in the sky were 108 sealed planets. They hung there in the starry sky over the emperor’s mausoleum. The planets were all very gruish as they cast starlight down constantly. [1]

Behind them, there was a terrifying face. A voice full of anguish and grief chanted, the sound of it spreading through the emperor’s mausoleum like a funeral dirge.

Looking closely, it was possible to see that within the starlight coming from the 108 planets were several figures seated cross-legged. They included Sir Firedark, Tuo Shishan, Sir Heavenink, and Fan Shishuang.... All of them were seated cross-legged on different planets, looking down at the emperor’s mausoleum with expressions of vigilance. They were waiting for something. Clearly, the clans and organizations that backed them had provided them with plenty of resources to get them here.

The Captain was also present. Compared to the others, he looked very anxious, and was shifting his attention between the unoccupied stars and the emperor’s mausoleum.

As everyone looked on, the starlight spilled down and converged into the form of nine dragons. Though made of starlight, they were extremely lifelike as they twisted and turned.

There were two additional heavenly bodies above that were brighter than the others. They were the sun and moon that had been sealed here, and they moved on a specific orbital track. When the sun came around, it emanated the golden power of a sun, which was incomparably hot. When the moon came around, it emanated the silver power of the moon, which was endlessly frigid.

In between the lands below and the sun and moon above, there was an enormous, seven-colored umbrella canopy that covered more than half of the ground! Crystal bells hung from the umbrella. As the umbrella slowly rotated, the bells chimed, a sound like the chanting of immortals. Combined with the anguished chanting that filled the starry sky, it created something very holy.

There were also banners, bells, and gongs. All were massive as they floated in midair. They were burial items.

The nine starlight dragons swirled among the burial items, guarding over them.

The lands below weren’t made of soil. Instead, it was a patchwork of skin, which included pieces from humans and nonhumans alike. Countless patches of skin made up all of the terrain features. There were bones piled together to make mountains and rivers that were pure blood. What was more, there were rows upon rows of armored soldiers and warhorses, all of them pulsing with murderous auras. There seemed no end to them.[2]

In the middle of these terrifying lands, right underneath the huge umbrella, was a massive altar! Atop the altar was a golden coffin! It was carved with worshipful throngs and the geography of an entire nation. It was the coffin of the immortal emperor.

High above the emperor’s mausoleum, one of the 108 planets that was currently unoccupied suddenly trembled. Then... a figure stepped out onto it. It was none other than Xu Qing. The moment he appeared, he saw the emperor’s mausoleum as well as the familiar faces on the other planets. He got the feeling he’d arrived a bit late.

Numerous eyes shifted to look at him, and many strange expressions could be seen.

As for the Captain, as soon as he spotted Xu Qing, his anxious expression vanished. Eyebrows dancing up and down, he waved enthusiastically and sent a message via divine will.

“You’re finally here, little Junior Brother! I was really starting to think you’d croaked!”

1. This entire section gets a bit wonky, because the author uses a nebulous term that can mean star, planet, sun, or basically any heavenly body. In this section, “planet” is the correct interpretation, however, the Chinese term actually contains the common character for ‘star’ in it. This isn’t really unusual. Most Chinese “words” are made of two characters, and the meaning of the word often supersedes that of the individual characters. What I mean is that just because it has the character for “star” in it doesn’t inherently mean that the word needs to have the English “star” in it. I have an entire chapter on this in my little handbook Understanding Chinese Fantasy Novels. In any case, the presence of that character makes it extremely easy to have all sorts of ‘star’ related wordplay or at least word connections. For example, in this chapter, the ‘planets’ are said to emit light, which is subsequently called ‘starlight.’ All of this makes sense in Chinese, simply because of how the language works. To explain what I mean using another set of words, take the English: train, horse-drawn carriage, windmill, bicycle. In English, those words don’t really have any linguistic elements connecting them. But in Chinese they all have the character for ‘car’ or ‘vehicle.’ A train is a fire-vehicle, a horse-drawn carriage is a horse-vehicle, a windmill is a wind-vehicle, and bicycle is a self-operating-vehicle. Because of that, if you said something in Chinese akin to “if you want a windmill, take the fire away from the train and you’re halfway there,” it would make no sense translated directly into English but perfect sense in Chinese. We have a similar situation here in which ‘planets’ will emit ‘starlight.’ When teaching Elementary-level science in Chinese, it was always a challenge to be precise about different heavenly bodies, simply because so many of them contain that ‘star’ character. In mythological/xianxia settings, it’s easy for the author to lean into that vagueness to create fantastic atmosphere that intentionally doesn’t conform to physical reality. ☜

2. The ‘soldiers and warhorses’ here is the same wording used to describe the famous Terracotta Army of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of China. Simply google the term and you can find countless pictures of the army, which includes chariots and warhorses among many other things. ☜