Chapter Ninety-One: Year After Year, Bitter Grief Weighs Down the Golden Thread

He is truly going to die," the great monk blurted out in shock.

His gaze collided with Wei Yan's, and in that instant he felt the force of ill fate gnawing away at the other man bit by bit. Though Wei Yan appeared overwhelming at this moment, to his eyes that greatness was nothing more than the final flare before the lamp goes out.

The next moment, Wei Yan's eyes became a rising sun, and within that sun coiled a true dragon forged from boundless pure yang energy. With a single roar, it lunged at the great monk and the others.

Yuan Yi and Monk Kong Hui were horrified. They had already been locked onto by that pure yang energy, and faint currents of it were already circulating through their bodies. It seemed that if they so much as moved, they would be burned to ashes in the blink of an eye.

Fortunately, the true dragon was rushing toward the great monk and Bo Yi. Since those two had not yet fallen, Yuan Yi and Kong Hui were still beyond death's reach.

The great monk bellowed, becoming the Immovable Wisdom King, his face twisted in wrath. He grasped his monk's staff, which transformed into a colossal bodhi tree. One flower, one world; one tree, one enlightenment.

That bodhi tree was the great monk's path.

A pure land unfolded beneath it, while Sanskrit characters flickered like stars and the Buddha sat in stillness like the bodhi itself.

That monk's staff struck the pure yang true dragon and forced it down at once.

"He truly is close to death," Bo Yi said, widening his eyes as he looked. It perceived even more: apart from that lingering aura of calamity, it also saw an eye.

That eye hovered above Wei Yan's head, its gaze hanging down and coiling around him. Another palm also descended, covering Wei Yan's eyes, nose, ears, and mouth.

At this moment, Wei Yan could no longer properly sense the world around him.

His senses were shrouded, leaving him unable to know what the truth was.

Bo Yi looked up at that eye.

Then the eye blinked, and in an instant its blood and qi surged violently within Bo Yi. A frigid chill erupted and spread through him, so cold it seemed even his heart was being sealed in ice.

Bo Yi stood frozen in terror. His whole body trembled, and the nine tails behind him shook nonstop, shaking out twelve divine beasts: Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, Black Tortoise, and the rest.

His fear, in Wei Yan's eyes, became a matter of course.

Wei Yan opened his mouth and swallowed vast streams of blood and qi, refining them into slabs of flesh that stitched themselves together within his body, making him incomparably powerful.

Behind him, the six rings of haloed inner worlds now transformed into four blazing suns rising into the sky. All kinds of Taoistic rhythms appeared and flashed, giving birth to an endless variety of spellcraft.

Yin and yang sank and rose together, wind and thunder rang in unison, and even the force of calamity was brewing within them—boundless, infinite, and terrifying.

This was the might of the Nameless Realm.

Those haloed inner worlds were a unified inner cosmos that governed the Grand Dao and all arts. In the world of cultivation, they were known as cycles of rebirth.

This was because they had already escaped the cycle of reincarnation, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they had become a cycle of their own. Life and death transformed within them, and innate and acquired could shift endlessly.

These six cycles of rebirth were the foundation by which they transcended reincarnation and the Heavenly Way, and they were also the product of simulating the movement of heaven itself. They could be regarded as miniature heavens.

The reason such marvels existed came, in the final analysis, from the fact that they had already attained the Dao.

The Grand Dao has no name, and they could not fully express its mystery, so it was called nameless. The title "innate divine being" was only a designation for them. Once they could truly articulate the Dao, they would be known as Creators.

All conditioned dharmas are evolved word by word from the Dao.

After attaining the Dao, one becomes that "one," escapes from within the Heavenly Way, and thereby achieves transcendence in the truest sense.

The phrase "escape by one" was born from this.

At this moment, six Weya ns emerged at once from the six cycles of rebirth, each as powerful as his true body.

In an instant, these six Weya ns flew to kill the great monk, Bo Yi, Xuan Jiuyuan, Feng Xun, Huang Long, and the dragon tortoise encased in a shell.

Seeing this, the great monk offered up his alms bowl, fixing the palace warship in the void to prevent it from being washed into the sealed land by the tide of the profound golden pill.

Having done this, and not bothering with Bo Yi, he leaped on his own into that sealed land.

"May the Buddha show mercy. Die!" the great monk cried, staff in hand as he smashed downward.

At once, a terrifying force capable of destroying heaven and earth spread through the sealed land.

A sun of immeasurable majesty leapt up behind his head, and the spiritual charm of the Dao transformed into rings of radiance. Within those halos were countless divine art imprints, the flashing spiritual light within them dazzling to the extreme.

He was an inner vision cultivator. Though still far from being an innate divine being, he could already condense a vague and illusory cycle of rebirth.

The first page of three.

Just then Wei Yan suddenly struck. In his hand, pure yang energy condensed into a long spear, a weapon like a refined fire dragon, radiating a terrifying power that could ignite and destroy all things.

One thrust of the spear seemed to point out a colossal sun, with its tip as the sun itself and behind that tip a brilliant river of stars stretching across the sky.

Boom!

A thunderous blast rang out.

The great monk was hurled far, far away by the force of the spear. The illusory cycle of rebirth formed behind his head was shattered outright by the strike, and a terror beyond measure pierced through his entire body.

In an instant, a long river surged through him, filled with the power of time.

That spear seemed intent on erasing the great monk completely from the past, from the very source.

The great monk's face changed.

Only by condensing past, present, and future, by forging the unchanging and unmoving "one," could one become the "one" that the Heavenly Way lets slip away, and transcend all things.

The past is the first step of a mortal's ascent toward divinity.

The present is the second, and the future is the third, yet to be taken.

The great monk's eyelids twitched wildly as he executed the Vajra Great Sun Tathagata Seal.

His golden body shifted at that moment from the Immovable Wisdom King into the Great Sun Tathagata, radiating sanctity beyond measure.

But even the Great Sun Tathagata could not withstand that spear.

The golden body was torn apart, and the spear pierced through his crown aperture, entering the river of time.

A moment later, his past was ripped open by the spear.

In an instant, the great monk lost the primal force of his past, and the cycle of rebirth behind his head was left without a foundation, forever unable to gather itself again.

That spear had nearly severed the very roots of his Dao.

The great monk coughed up a mouthful of blood.

His blood and qi abruptly waned, though that was not the crucial matter.

What mattered was that Wei Yan had now reached an unprecedented peak.

His incarnation had directly slain Huang Long and the dragon tortoise.

Huang Long was the spirit of the cauldron. It had no true physical form and was more like the indestructible spiritual radiance within a human body.

At that moment, after being swallowed by Wei Yan, that dense indestructible radiance restored the soul within him and reconnected it to flesh.

As for the dragon tortoise, though its body died, its Dao did not vanish; only a wisp of indestructible radiance escaped.

The inner world it had condensed was in tatters, full of pits and ruin.

To say it was clinging to life would perhaps be the best description of its present state.

That indestructible radiance drifted and floated toward the skin of the Thunder Ancestor, hovering back and forth beside Xu Zhong.

"It's blocking my view," Xu Zhong said, pressing down on the dragon tortoise's indestructible radiance.

The radiance flew out from the inner world, reshaping soul and flesh alike.

"You are all ants," Wei Yan roared with wild laughter, and a torrent of mana surged out from behind him.

The torrent stirred up monstrous waves, vast and surging.

This seemed to be the full force of his soaring spirit in this moment, as well as his fury.

That fury was aimed at Xuan Jiuyuan.

Xuan Jiuyuan had severed one of his fingers, and Wei Yan had never forgotten that hatred.

In an instant, the torrent of mana rushed to strangle Xuan Jiuyuan.

Xuan Jiuyuan wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, then directly burned her indestructible radiance, blood and qi, and lifespan, pouring them all into the long blade in her hand.

The second page of three.

At that moment, Xuan Jiuyuan's hair turned white, and she looked like a dried corpse, a living embodiment of one at death's door.

She stood in the void and smiled. "You're nothing but a fool. Haven't you noticed the strangeness in your own body yet?"

He swung a blade with all his strength.

That strike was plain and unadorned, stirring no spectacle at all, not a trace of mana, not even the slightest ripple.

And yet that utterly ordinary strike severed the torrent of mana cleanly in two.

Then she pressed forward and, with one slash, drove the blade through the head of Wei Yan's incarnation.

A moment later, that head burst apart with a thunderous explosion, and the body toppled toward the sealed land. But in the next instant, the shattered flesh and blood fused together once more, becoming Wei Yan's head again.

"Xuan Jiuyuan has reached her limit," Xu Zhong said with a sigh. "But this is already the limit of what she could do."

Unlike the finger she had severed before, Wei Yan had not yet perfected his cycle of rebirth then and could only be counted as a pinnacle inner vision cultivator.

But now Wei Yan had already stepped into the Nameless Realm and was a true innate divine being.

To burn blood, lifespan, and indestructible radiance and still cut off the head of an innate divine being—such a feat could be called epoch-making.

For only an innate divine being can kill an innate divine being.

Wei Yan's incarnation was shaken in spite of himself.

His gaze toward Xuan Jiuyuan also changed somewhat.

At this moment, Xuan Jiuyuan, exhausted of strength, fell downward. The blade in her hand flew up with the utmost effort to support her.

"You were able to cut off my head. Even in death, you should be satisfied."

Wei Yan sneered, then extended a hand. On his palm, the Six Ding Divine Fire welled up in concentrated abundance, seeking to use that true flame to refine Xuan Jiuyuan into a supreme human elixir.

But the instant the Six Ding Divine Fire touched Xuan Jiuyuan, an inexplicable force suddenly burst forth from her body.

Before her appeared a gentle and lovely woman, clad in a white dress and holding a long zither in her arms.

The woman opened her eyes and looked at Xuan Jiuyuan. "I told you to take good care of Yun Yong. How did you end up in such a miserable state?"

Then she glanced at Wei Yan. "You are going to die."

"What nonsense are you spouting?" Wei Yan asked, not understanding. "I am clearly so powerful, yet you keep saying again and again that I will die. If you mean to shake my Dao heart, use another method."

Though the woman was only an imprint, a seal holding a single art, that power was actually far stronger than his.

The woman merely shook her head with a smile, then seized Xuan Jiuyuan and flew upward. Extending her hand into the void, she also grasped Yun Yong, Fang Yuan, Tang Yuan, and Li Feiyu, carrying all four out from this imperial palace.

"He truly is about to die!"

Even Xu Zhong could see that eye.

That eye was incredibly familiar—so familiar that even if it had turned to ashes, he would still recognize it.

It was the eye of the Thunder Ancestor, the eye of Yi Xuanji, and the eye of the Ancient Yue Heavenly Way.

Because the Thunder Ancestor had once swallowed the Ancient Yue Heavenly Way, he was now able to protect Feng Xun at this critical moment.

Xu Zhong had already found it strange: even someone as strong as Xuan Jiuyuan had been forced to burn her own essence, yet Feng Xun, facing Wei Yan's incarnation, remained perfectly at ease. So it turned out the Ancient Yue Heavenly Way had been protecting him.

"What is the Thunder Ancestor doing here?" Xu Zhong's heart was filled with dread, and his eyelids twitched violently.

He already sensed danger. The storm that was about to come had already stained the entire sealed land red, and everyone could feel it clearly—everyone except Wei Yan.

He was immersed in the ecstasy of regaining his strength, utterly unguarded against what was coming.

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Chapter Ninety-One: Year after year, bitter hatred presses the golden thread. Read free.