***
Perfected Renhua possessed an immortal bearing and an otherworldly presence. Draped in a crane-feather cloak and light fur, with a white jade crown on his head, he sat upright upon a lotus platform. Anyone who saw him could immediately tell that he was a great power—a half-step Divine Transformation cultivator who needed only to await his ascension.
His cultivation had indeed reached that level.
Over the past several centuries, regardless of how well—or poorly—he had taught his disciples, he himself had never slacked in his cultivation for even a single day.
He was truly one of the greatest talents of the Yuntai Yan clan. Like his grandfather, Sword Lord Taibai, he had needed only five hundred years to reach the realm where he had but to await ascension.
But he possessed no merit.
When his grandfather had turned five hundred, auspicious signs had descended from Heaven, and an immortal crane had carried him a piece of jade in its beak, making him the talk of the age.
But Renhua would never have such a thing… He never would.
Perfected Renhua sat motionless on his meditation cushion. After a long while, he slowly opened his eyes.
They were a pair of murky, aged eyes.
And lingering in his nostrils was a faint stench—the smell of decay emanating from his own body.
…He was being devoured by the backlash of his evil karma.
Wenren Ying, consumed by a single-minded desire for revenge, had failed to find him. But the Heavenly Dao had long since recorded the names of the countless victims of Donghua City upon him. That tremendous burden of evil karma had become eternally entangled with him, torturing him and forcing him to spend years in seclusion, desperately using every method imaginable to delay his own decay.
Perfected Renhua had had enough of such a life!
The years of frustration, together with the torment of his karma over the past several decades, had driven him to become increasingly extreme and resentful. Why would Heaven not let him go? Why would it still refuse to let him go? Most of those who had died in Donghua City were ordinary people who did not cultivate the Dao. They had spent their entire lives in obscurity and accomplished nothing of note. Which of them had ever rendered some great service?!
It was not as though he was the only person in this world to have massacred a city. Why were others allowed to do it, while he was not?!
Perfected Renhua’s heart seethed with indignation. The last trace of guilt he had felt toward Donghua City had already vanished.
He believed that he had suffered enough punishment. He believed that what had happened to him had far exceeded what he deserved.
At the root of it all, he had always believed that his life was more important than anyone else’s… No—more important than the hundreds of thousands of people who had died in Donghua City!
Therefore, he absolutely refused to accept his fate. He absolutely refused to die like this!
And so, he emerged from seclusion.
Bai Yunsheng knew only that he intended to travel throughout the Nine Provinces once more. He did not know that Renhua had already come secretly to Mount Mei, intending to find the place where the Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord had been sealed.
For this purpose, he had first sent Daoist Master Songfeng and then sought out the Blood Demon Ancestor. Unfortunately, that demon and that devil had both proved useless. One had died for no apparent reason, while the other had been directly exiled when someone tore open space itself.
Useless! Useless! They were all a bunch of useless fools!
Perfected Renhua nearly cursed aloud.
But there was nothing he could do… The power he could bring to bear was simply too limited.
Because of the Donghua Blood Moon, he had long been marginalized within the Xuantian Sect. He was merely an elder in name, with no actual authority, and no one was willing to serve him. As for his disciples…
His eldest disciple, Wenren Ying, would rather destroy his own spiritual abode than remain by his side.
His second disciple, Bai Yunsheng, was a member of the Bai clan of Yunmeng. How could Renhua dare use him for dirty work?
And his third disciple, Chu Yingfeng… Renhua had originally taken a liking to him because he had no background, possessed exceptional talent, and came from a family of a widowed mother and orphaned child. He seemed perfectly suited to become Renhua’s blade. Who could have guessed that after all the effort Renhua had spent raising him, merely hinting at his intentions would drive Chu Yingfeng’s fierce mother to tie a noose and hang herself?
Though she had ultimately survived… Chu Yingfeng was highly conspicuous within the sect, and even the sect master looked upon him with favor. Renhua’s deeds were all things that could not bear the light of day, and he had already driven the boy’s mother to attempt suicide. How could he dare force Chu Yingfeng to do anything?
In the end, he had no choice but to help the Seven-Treasure Pine assume human form and send it to investigate on his behalf.
Fortunately… Though many complications had arisen along the way, he had learned the location of the Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord’s seal.
That was right. He knew where it was.
When the Blood Demon Ancestor and the Bewitching Young Lord confronted his useless eldest disciple, Wenren Ying, Wu Guanyue had used the power of soul-fire to tear open space and exile the two of them within it. At that time, Perfected Renhua had been hiding nearby and watching.
—Tearing open space.
Such magic truly existed in this world.
The myriad particles of Heaven and Earth were layered beyond measure. Long, long ago, cultivators had already discovered the profound mysteries of the world. They had also discovered that, from time to time, wandering souls that did not belong to this realm would appear between Heaven and Earth. They drifted about like lonely ghosts and would gradually dissipate if not properly housed within a vessel.
After uncovering this secret, certain cultivators created a spell known as “Realm Severance.”
Naturally, the rifts in space could be used as secret locations in which to seal demons and evil spirits. However, the spell was simply too profound; only those at the half-step Divine Transformation realm could use it. And since there were many methods of sealing things away—methods more convenient and efficient than Realm Severance—cultivators gradually stopped practicing it.
But when his grandfather suppressed the Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord, he had already reached the half-step Divine Transformation realm.
He had relied on his own Merit Jade to barely restrict the Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord’s movements… The Merit Jade was an extraordinarily precious treasure. Perhaps his grandfather had long since anticipated that people of later generations would covet it and try to undo the seal.
Therefore, he might well have used the art of Realm Severance. That would explain why no one had been able to find the seal’s location in this world for so many years!
Once he had thought this through, Perfected Renhua suddenly felt enlightened, his thoughts flowing freely. He carried a divination artifact with him and immediately cast a divination. Since the question he held in his heart was so clear and he merely wished to confirm his suspicions, even someone of his caliber was able to divine the answer.
The result was exactly as he had guessed. The Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord had indeed been sealed within a rift in space and time!
But he had never cultivated the technique.
And on that day, he had personally witnessed Wu Guanyue open a rift in space and cast the Blood Demon Ancestor and the Bewitching Young Lord into it!
Wu Guanyue!
Her body was plainly filled with an aura that did not belong in this world. So that was what she was—a wandering soul lost in another realm.
—A wandering soul from another realm could pass between the two worlds and thus serve as a key to open a rift in space and time.
As long as he captured Wu Guanyue, he could immediately open the rift, retrieve the jade, undergo his tribulation, and ascend!
A sharp light burst from Perfected Renhua’s murky, aged eyes.
However… Wu Guanyue was the granddaughter of Wu Guizhen. That made him extremely wary.
It was not that Perfected Renhua felt any guilt toward Wu Guizhen. On the contrary, he only hated himself for failing to eradicate the man completely and allowing Wu Guizhen to cling to his miserable life.
After escaping, Wu Guizhen had dragged his barely surviving body all the way to Donghua City!
Of course, Wu Guizhen had done so to take revenge on him!
Wu Guizhen was a master of divination, capable even of peering into the secrets of Heaven… He had gone all the way to Meishan City, opened an inn there, and run it for more than a decade, all while gathering lost remnant souls from other realms… What was he trying to do?
Had Perfected Renhua already calculated that he would set his sights on the Merit Jade, and laid an inescapable net in advance… waiting only for him to walk straight into it?
Perfected Renhua was wary—deeply wary. Although Wu Guizhen was already dead, Perfected Renhua still did not dare set foot inside the inn he had built with his own hands.
And Wu Guanyue rarely left the inn…
What was he to do?
In truth, there was no need to overthink it. He already had a ready-made solution.
Perfected Renhua flicked his finger, and a gleaming white message butterfly flew from his fingertip. Beating its wings, it flew toward Meishan City in the distance, toward the place where his second disciple, Bai Yunsheng, was staying.
When Bai Yunsheng received the message butterfly and opened it, his eyes widened in surprise.
At that moment, he was idling away his time inside the inn. He stared blankly at the letter in his hand for a long while, then looked down at it, raised his head to glance at Wenren Ying, and finally lowered his eyes to the letter again.
Wenren Ying was tending the inn for Wu Guanyue.
As for Little Yue… Little Yue wasn’t there.
That wasn’t because she had gone out. Rather, she had “logged off”—in other words, she had returned to the world she belonged to.
Whenever she logged off, she had to return to her own boudoir and lie flat on the bed in complete silence. Then, just as on that day, her eyes would quickly lose their focus, and her entire body would become utterly devoid of life.
Immediately afterward, the mysterious forces hidden within the inn would quietly reveal themselves, spreading over the Donghua spirit puppet and making it seem as though no one was lying there at all.
…So this was soul-fire too.
It was strange. According to the ancient texts he had read before, soul-fire was a sinister art that required refining souls. Yet at that moment, inside the inn, Wenren Ying felt that the soul-fire here… seemed almost alive, as though it still retained its consciousness.
…Had they remained in the inn and voluntarily helped Little Yue of their own free will?
As Wenren Ying gazed at those strange, deep-blue forces, a thought suddenly occurred to him for no apparent reason: Could his parents and other family members be among them?
He froze for a moment, then shook his head and sighed. “What nonsense I’m imagining.”
He left the room, closed the door behind him, and went downstairs to help Little Yue tend the inn…
In fact, they had both been in no mood to run the business lately. It had taken him three days and three nights just to purge the effects of the Hehuan Powder, and naturally, they hadn’t opened their doors at all during that time… As a result, hardly anyone had come to eat or stay at the inn today.
Still, seeing Little Yue’s body lying there like that made him feel somewhat uneasy… so he wanted to find something to occupy himself with.
Unfortunately, Bai Yunsheng kept darting glances at him, wearing an expression that seemed to question his entire existence. Wenren Ying found it unbearably irritating…
Wenren Ying asked impatiently, “…What do you want?”
Bai Yunsheng cautiously asked, with a vacant look on his face, “You’re… Senior Brother…?”
Wenren Ying: “…………”
The moment Wenren Ying heard Bai Yunsheng address him that way, his brows drew tightly together, and he looked thoroughly displeased.
Bai Yunsheng: “…………”
Bai Yunsheng: “What are you looking so gloomy about…? No, wait! You didn’t deny it—you really are my fellow disciple and senior brother… Damn it! I should be the one feeling miserable about being fellow disciples with a lunatic like you!”
Wenren Ying couldn’t be bothered to argue with him. He merely asked, “Who told you?”
Bai Yunsheng raised a hand, and the letter flew straight to Wenren Ying.
“It was Master. He knows you’re here too, and told me to bring you to see him.”
