Chapter 640: Kunlun Sect vs Blood Thunder Sound Temple (16)

WOOOOOM...!

A sound that diffuses faintly from far above the sky.

Yet the instant it reaches the ears one realizes it is an endlessly vast, dreadful roar—the very sound of the heavens collapsing—and everyone, human and Blood Fiend alike, lifts their gaze to the sky.

Every eye gapes wide; veins surge in the whites; dark-red blood floods and spreads.

Inside the sockets, three or four pupils apiece crack within, and as new eyes open, ten million pupils flick and sweep the world at a speed that leaves afterimages.

In that instant, all realize at once:

what laughs till its eyes tear is that baleful thing of the stars, a feral star that does not exist in the world.

And countless hands thrust from the flesh-heap earth and stretch, stretch without end toward the sky.

“Uh—!” “The sky, it’s falling!”

The foulest star in the sky is plummeting.

A fierce malice that means to smash the world.

Rumble-rumble-rumble—point by point the earth disassembles, and with the blood-water everything begins to drift up into empty air.

The most ill-omened star in existence weeps blood.

From thousands and tens of thousands of eyes, blood spills and spreads in every direction.

The blue of the sky vanishes; what remains is a sea of rotten blood over their heads.

After that, cracks begin to score the sky—

“Gasp!” “The sky—the sky is breaking!” “We—we’re all going to die! Primal Celestial!” “Hihik, hihihit...!”

The faces of Kunlun’s warriors contort.

Someone thumps to their knees, drops prone, buries their head and sobs.

Someone claws off their own cap and guffaws till their throat splits.

Someone, rapt, stares at the sundering of heaven, the end of the world; someone despairs; someone mourns; someone sinks in gloom; someone goes slack with emptiness.

But all those different feelings end the same way:

pupils that lose their luster and die.

The instant each hand lets go of its weapon—

“Snap out of it!”

A pure utterance sweeps the assembly once.

Light kindles once in their eyes, but only for a moment.

—–!

With a rupture that the soul feels, the sky that had fissured at last shatters to pieces.

Then, as if a levee burst, rotten blood pours down—

a waterfall vaster than the world, black-red blood falling, and taloned hands stretching, stretching up toward the heavens.

“N-No...!” “Aaaaah...!”

Despair spreads deep again through the ranks.

If those two meet—if they meet—then something immense will happen, something beyond human reason to grasp, an unfathomable thing.

The most perilous, most vicious, most ill-omened, most anxious of endings—something more dreadful than any end.

At last the two meet—

And nothing happens.

One who had sunk in despair slips a sword into hand and rises.

One who had howled in despair sheepishly wipes away a tear.

One who had cackled in despair—ahem—chuckles and fusses with a throat that reeks of iron as if to clear it for no reason.

Suddenly the sky is limpid and bright; the earth regains its native rock; the Blood Thunder Sound Temple—its white walls cleanly brushed with blue pigment—stands perfectly intact as if nothing had happened.

“What was that!” “Don’t know!” “I’m hungry! Food!”

The Blood Fiends fall at once into ravenous hunger and howl.

Kunlun’s warriors snap to at the shout—but they are already a step late.

The Blood Fiends spring and crash down upon them.

“Take up your swords!”

In that instant, someone bursts out and thrusts both arms forward with force.

At the same time, golden protective qi becomes a massive wall and flings every Blood Fiend away.

Great-Strength Diamond Hand.

Law of the Diamond Palm, Diamond Guarding Tower.

A singularly shiny bald head—glint.

The Foremost Under Heaven enters the field, no longer needing to maintain the Lion’s Roar.

Ohh. What is that.

Qing couldn’t help but exclaim.

Because the Great Blood-Annihilating Heaven Array was inside Qing, she could watch that tremendous cultivation from every direction.

Even for someone late in Translucent—come on, that’s not even in the same category as martial arts, is it?

How does a person put up a wall by himself?

Granted, the wall lasts scarcely long enough to count to three, and it isn’t a killing method.

The resplendent golden barrier only flung the Blood Fiends roughly away; the monsters slammed, rolled, and sprang up again, staring ahead with fear—of course they did.

Maybe the Martial Buddha is a monk, so he learned some non-killing teaching—ah, no, that’s not it.

Next, the Foremost Under Heaven demonstrates a dance of war.

One measured punch, and a Blood Fiend’s head goes missing again; he hooks for the ankles, and a Blood Fiend’s legs both sever and it tumbles across the floor.

His whole body, a weapon.

A one-sided fight that doesn’t even show protective qi.

And that’s not all.

He shoots a fist—and the head of a Blood Fiend ten paces away vanishes.

He points a finger—and the head of a Blood Fiend fifteen paces away vanishes.

They’re called the Hundred-Paces Divine Fist, and the Diamond Finger of the Great-Strength Diamond Hand, but from Qing’s view the attainment is so far beyond that she can’t even tell what manner of martial art it is.

Only, the Blood Fiends have two strengths.

One: no sense of fear.

Two: there are a lot of them.

A good hundred swarm without even a trace of dread and charge only to fill their hunger.

They split left and right around Muhak’s onslaught and go hunting Kunlun’s warriors—for flesh to fill their bellies.

But Kunlun’s warriors have already formed ranks.

“At array—advance!” At True Person Cheonbija’s shout, they meet and crash in with brisk motion.

Qing sees the inside of the formation from everywhere.

And from inside the formation she looks outward as well.

Then there are yet new things she sees, feels, and perceives.

The formation is Qing’s inside and outside.

It is the formation method itself, and it is one.

Qing realizes, as if she had known it from the beginning, perfectly naturally:

This formation is mine now.

I can do whatever I want with it.

In that moment, a gaze somewhere, rankled.

Qing lifts her head (up—down—left—right—turns) and swings her eyes everywhere, looking at the baleful star with a somehow peeved glare.

What, got something to say?

Then the most profane star averts its gaze.

It’s been doing this the whole time; “avoids” isn’t quite right—“turns away” is exact.

As if looking at something filthy, something annoying, it turns its eyes aside.

What, did your feelings get hurt because I said one thing when I rose to Harmony?

Sulking?

Then the baleful star shuts down entirely, lowering hundreds of thousands of eyelids.

Qing is dumbfounded.

Look at that—sulking. For real.

But whether that thing sulks or not—

what does Qing have to be sorry about?

The lamas of the Blood Thunder Sound Temple were listening outside the mountain gate and snickering.

Granted, if anyone saw them, they’d scold, Is this the time for you to be snickering?

At night, stinking men huddled two to a foul blanket; by day, only at the warmest time could they close their eyes a little.

They had to chew tasteless barley flour raw to endure through countless days.

There was even a shortage of food. Food ran short.

Because Kunlun dawdled, the provisions they’d brought were short; by the end they held on by sheer spite, one meal a day.

So the lamas’ bile was up. These dog Kunlun bastards—lazy bastards—kill them all: their killing intent blazed.

Yet strictly speaking, they’d brought it on themselves.

Kunlun’s delay came from their judgment that little hamlets and tent-camps had been massacred to a man, and so they held back their departure to arrange supply.

In any case.

With Lhundup Rinchen at their head, the lamas were listening to the sounds coming from inside the Blood Thunder Sound Temple.

And those sounds were mostly screams and wails, mad laughter, and lines to the effect of we’re screwed now.

So the lamas, venting a little of their blazing hatred, wore sly smiles and stood fully prepared to kill any who might (by others’ agency) get thrown out.

Because there’s the most brute method to escape a formation:

you grab someone and throw them outside.

If you try to walk by yourself, your five senses twist; you can’t walk straight and only circle in place.

Even if someone tries to lead you out, it doesn’t work; to the follower’s eyes, the guide sinks into the ground, then soars into the sky, then pops up behind, then flickers right-left-back—there’s no chasing them.

But if you throw them?

To the one thrown it feels like boring through the ground, passing through the world, turning, falling, flying, crashing—terrible for the heart—but the trajectory itself doesn’t change, so you get hurled successfully out of the formation.

Of course, there’s no guarantee someone under the formation’s influence can throw in the right direction.

But if you keep chucking bodies, someone might get out and fetch help from outside.

Thus the lamas’ role was to block the rear where Kunlun’s warriors might come flying.

The Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign had even promised not to annihilate Kunlun to a man, but to leave a portion alive to let them taste blood, so the lamas kept watch with their hatred roaring.

Those Kunlun monkeys who didn’t even know they’d been let go—when they broke and fled, what faces would they make when they saw the lamas?

And how should they be killed so it would be truly satisfying? The lamas spun sadistic fantasies—

It was then.

Suddenly the world dimmed, as if a thick swath of ink-black cloud had veiled the sun.

But on the Qinghai steppe, rain and snow are rare.

And just now the sky had been clear—where would a cloud come from to make it dark?

At that, the lamas lifted their heads.

And met the eyes of the black-red sun beginning to open—the foulest baleful star the world has.

The materials for the Great Blood-Annihilating Heaven Array are these: one core to receive the mind-image of the baleful star and spread it through the world; and three thousand hearts; three thousand brains; three thousand internal organs—and blood and bone and flesh.

The Ten-Thousand-Slaughters Baleful Star is a feral star forged by the gathered malice of the three thousand worlds.

It is a rite that borrows the power of the great baleful star that casts its light upon a billion worlds.

Even then, that’s the minimum—the materials required to deploy it at the weakest, smallest scale were the human parts of three thousand.

But here, one who holds the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters within stands at the center.

In truth no mere individual can own that baleful star; but sorcery, by nature, manifests from what the many speak and believe.

And the world calls a child born riding the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters, a child ruled by that killing star, thus:

the master of the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters.

The formation twists and expands.

Or rather than expansion, it converts—into a thick border in the shape of a mouth, hollow inside, reaching out around the Blood Thunder Sound Temple.

And within that range, not Kunlun’s warriors but the lamas of the Blood Thunder Sound Temple are the ones who now stand.

Only, the present master of the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters has a different homeland.

Qing’s origin—modern human—against this ancient, primeval Middle Realm is inferior in every respect.

They have the same intelligence, but are short on wisdom.

Their physical ability is hopelessly inferior.

They lack the knowledge needed to survive; they only know how to handle the conveniences of civilization; in truth, as a species, they are the result of repeated degeneration.

The modern native is superior in exactly one respect:

imagination, expanded and expanded again.

Imagination amplified through every kind of medium—

on a level wholly different from the meager horrors a Middle Realmer can summon: nasty shapes, blood, bone, viscera, parasites.

The sky blackens and reveals a perfect void.

Over the earth, dingy, cooled molten iron surges up to a slop and boils, making a sea.

With not a single little hill anywhere, in all the open compass there is only, far off, a steel-colored horizon.

Above, in a world of total dark, hangs a single celestial body: a gigantic baleful star, spiraling as it churns with every color that exists in the world—and yet with not a single color that truly exists—an ill-omened palette.

Inside the baleful star, within that vortex of raging color, the eye slowly lifts its closing lid.

A huge hole between the whites—an endless bottomless pit—stares at the lamas.

A shape from a wholly different world, one that no one under heaven had ever imagined—nothing even close.