Chapter 431 - 386: Respectfully Welcoming the Sect Leader of the Holy Sect

The Microcosmic Cave Heaven.

A milky-white brilliance spread out like a frozen sea of clouds. There was no sun or moon—only the magnificent Light Appearance haloing the head of the Great Sun Purple Extreme True Monarch, illuminating this small world until it was as clear as glazed glass.

Qi Yun stood thirty feet away.

He lowered his gaze, staring at his palm.

The strand of bright yellow light, born from the Refinement of the Grand Emperor Profound Vault Dao Foundation, now rested quietly in the deepest part of the Spirit Vein in his palm.

It showed no sharp edge.

It revealed no killing intent.

It even flowed as docilely as ordinary Magical Power.

He raised his eyes.

He looked at the Great Sun Purple Extreme True Monarch, who stood thirty feet away with his hands behind his back, bathed in Infinite Light.

"Fellow Daoist."

He spoke. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was like the first chime of a bell in a temple that had stood silent for millennia.

"It’s about to begin."

The Great Sun Purple Extreme True Monarch nodded slightly.

He assumed no defensive stance.

He did not activate the projection of the great sun, nor did he unfurl his Divine Court Dharma Aspect. He didn’t even solidify the White Lotus blooming naturally beneath his feet.

He simply stood still.

Like a solitary, ten-thousand-blade peak, he was unyielding, ready to withstand any storm.

Only his eyes, as clear as glazed glass, gently closed.

Qi Yun said no more. With extreme naturalness, he made a light cutting motion forward with his right hand.

The movement was deceptively casual.

Like a master calligrapher laying down his final stroke, like a woodcutter splitting dry kindling in the forest, like an emperor marking a decree "Approved" with his vermillion brush.

No trajectory.

No afterimage.

Not even the slightest ripple of Magical Power fluctuation.

Because—

It was too fast.

So fast that the very concept of "fast" had yet to take form.

So fast that the river of causality had no time to record its path, leaving only a blank space in the unseen world.

So fast that even the one being attacked—that Supreme Being who stood at the rank of True Monarch—only barely realized, in the instant the strike had already landed:

He had been struck.

HISS...

A soft sound.

As faint as a silkworm nibbling on a mulberry leaf, as a dewdrop falling from an autumn leaf.

A hundred zhang behind the Great Sun Purple Extreme True Monarch, the endless, milky-white, luminous ground suddenly split open with a fine crack.

The crack was as straight as a string, its edges as smooth as a mirror.

It was bottomless.

It was as if this strike had cut not through the void, not through Law, but through something more fundamental upon which this Microcosmic Cave Heaven depended for its very existence.

And the Great Sun Purple Extreme True Monarch—

He still stood with his hands behind his back.

His face was still gentle and peaceful.

The Purple Extreme Dao Pivot mark between his brows still shimmered with a faint, glassy light.

But at his temple, a single lock of ink-black hair had been severed at the root.

The cut was perfectly smooth.

As if brushed by the sharpest of blades at the most opportune moment.

The strand of hair drifted down, and before it could touch the luminous ground, it dissolved into motes of light and vanished.

The Great Sun Purple Extreme True Monarch opened his eyes.

He looked down at his empty hands.

After a long moment.

He spoke, his voice still gentle, but now laced with an extremely rare, almost stagnant gravity:

"Just now..."

He paused, as if savoring the memory of the strike that had already vanished.

"I saw it."

"I saw the trajectory of the strike."

"I saw how it tore through causality, how it traversed space, how it—"

He looked up at Qi Yun.

"How it landed three inches before my brow."

Qi Yun didn’t respond.

He simply waited in silence.

The Great Sun Purple Extreme True Monarch continued:

"I saw it."

"But I could not dodge it."

He said this calmly.

As if stating a universal theorem of Heaven and Earth.

"On the level of causality, that strike was ’fated to hit’."

"The moment I saw it, it had already reached my brow."

"To see it is to be hit by it."

"Anyone whose Status is beneath yours... if struck, will surely die!"

Qi Yun lowered his gaze to his empty palm.

The strand of bright yellow light had completely dimmed.

Like an emperor who, after delivering his final blow, lies down exhausted, waiting for the morning sun to don his armor once more.

"Once a day."

He spoke softly, his voice low but echoing clearly throughout the Cave Heaven, which still trembled slightly from that strike.

"It can only be used once."

The Great Sun Purple Extreme True Monarch nodded.

"As it should be."

He gazed at the dissipated yellow afterglow in Qi Yun’s palm, a flicker of understanding in his eyes.

"This technique is too tyrannical."

"So tyrannical that it defies common sense."

"Without this limitation, its wielder wouldn’t be a person, but an executioner sent by the Celestial Dao."

Qi Yun did not refute this.

He knew the Great Sun Purple Extreme True Monarch was right.

This Execution was a fissure carved into Heaven and Earth by the Grand Emperor Profound Vault, forged from eons of slaughter and the embers of a hundred battles.

After a long silence, Qi Yun slowly closed his fist, drawing the now completely dormant yellow light from his palm into the depths of his Purple Mansion.

The strand of yellow light, like a treasured sword returned to its sheath, rested beside the emperor’s throne.

Awaiting the morrow.

...

「The Northwest.」

The sky hung low over the plains, the earth stretched into wastelands.

This place was called the Black Abyss Rift Valley. It was not within the territory of the Wuji Holy Sect, nor did it belong to the Cyan Sect, Fengduo, or the Yellow Springs Netherworld.

It was the collective karma of the Northwest Demon Path.

Ten thousand years ago, this valley did not exist.

Back then, the Northwest was a barbaric land of exile. The Righteous and Demonic Daos were locked in fierce battle, and a Demon Dao True Monarch fell here. His True Blood splashed for a thousand li, corroding the earth and carving out this bottomless rift.

Later, more and more Demon Cultivators fought to the death here, passed away in meditation here, or were hunted to their wit’s end here.

Their resentment, hatred, unwillingness, and curses before death seeped into the Earth Veins and merged with the rock strata, stewing this rift into a "demonic brew" that had boiled for ten thousand years.

There were no Sects here.

No Grand Arrays to protect their gates.

No Grotto Heaven Blessed Lands where authority was wielded.

There was only a vast, barren black wasteland where not a blade of grass grew, where the whispers of Ten Thousand Ghosts could be heard on the wind, and that hideous chasm that stretched between Heaven and Earth, as if an Ancient God had sliced the land open with a single blow.

But tonight.

This place came alive.

---

First came the wind.

Not the usual biting gales of the Northwest that carried sand and cut the face like a knife.

It was a Yin Wind.

It surged from the depths of the Black Abyss Rift Valley, carrying with it a timeless chill and the howls of resentment, sending the gray-white skeletons that had lain on the wasteland for eons rolling with a RATTLE.

Where the wind passed, the thin layer of frost on the ground fractured into fine lines.

The lines spread, intertwined, and connected, finally converging into thick, ghostly blue veins of light that pulsed like arteries.

Those were the Earth Veins.

Forged by the generations of Northwest Demon Path ancestors who had died here over ten thousand years, laid down for their descendants with their mangled flesh and blood, their Broken Dao Foundations, and their unresigned True Spirits—

An array.

Tonight, this array had activated.

The first Escape Light came from the most remote corner of the Northwest, the White Bone Hill.

It was a group of Cultivators in grayish-white hemp robes, their faces as withered as dried corpses.

They did not ride swords, command clouds, or travel on any Magical Artifact.

They simply walked barefoot on the thin frost of the wasteland. With each step, the soles of their feet made light contact with the luminous patterns of the Earth Veins, and they would glide forward several dozen zhang.

Silent.

Like ghosts.

The hemp robe of the old man in the lead fluttered in the wind, revealing his wrist—it was no longer flesh and blood, but stark white bone, the joints connected by Black Gold Silk. With every movement, it made a faint, grinding sound.

A young disciple beside him asked in a low voice, "Grandmaster, our White Bone Hill lineage hasn’t ventured into the world for three hundred years. Why tonight..."

The old man did not look back.

He only stared at the Black Abyss Rift Valley stretching across the horizon in the distance, at the countless Escape Lights gathering from all directions and slowly illuminating its edge.

After a long moment.

He spoke, his voice as dry as rotting wood grinding together:

"The Northwest is going to war."

"War against Central Earth."

He paused, and deep within his sunken eye sockets, two points of ghostly green phosphorescence flickered.

"Central Earth... for ten thousand years, they haven’t let us set foot inside."

The young disciple fell silent.

He remembered his master’s dying words.

His master had said that the founding ancestor of White Bone Hill was originally a Foundation Establishment Master from a Righteous Immortal Sect in Central Earth. Because he practiced the Corpse Dissolving Technique, his peers branded him a heretic, destroyed his Dao Foundation, and expelled him from the Sect.

He dragged his crippled body for three years, crawling all the way to the Northwest.

He died at the edge of the Black Abyss Rift Valley.

Before he died, he used his last bit of Magical Power to carve four words into the ground:

I cannot accept this.

A third group, a fourth, a fifth...

The visitors from Soul-Devouring Cliff were the quietest.

They were just a group of silent figures in pitch-black cloaks, their faces obscured, standing motionless at the edge of the wasteland, neither advancing nor speaking to anyone.

But any Cultivator who came within a hundred zhang of them would shudder involuntarily.

It wasn’t the cold.

It was the instinctive terror of a True Spirit being "watched."

The Cultivators from the Five Poison Cave arrived riding a dark green cloud of insects formed from tens of millions of venomous creatures.

The buzzing of their wings could make one’s scalp tingle from dozens of li away.

The old woman in the lead leaned on a cane carved from a centipede’s spine. Her cloudy old eyes swept over the growing number of fellow daoists on the wasteland, and her shriveled lips moved:

"’Quite a crowd...’"

A young woman beside her asked in a low voice, "Grandmother, our Five Poison Cave has never involved itself in Sect conflicts. Why tonight..."

The old woman didn’t answer.

She just lifted her cane and pointed toward the eastern horizon.

There, in the deepest part of the night, was a faint, almost imperceptible line of pale bluish-white light.

That was the direction of Central Earth.

"Girl."

The old woman’s voice was as hoarse as dried tree bark:

"Do you know how the founder of the Five Poison Cave died?"

The young woman shook her head.

"Thirteen thousand years ago, the Northwest Demon Path launched its first counterattack on Central Earth."

"The founder was the only one in that group who made it to the border of Central Earth alive."

"She was standing before the boundary marker when a Master from the Sword Pavilion, a Foundation Establishment Late Stage cultivator, cut her down with a single sword strike."

The old woman paused, her cloudy eye sockets seeming to reflect a blurry image from ten thousand years ago:

"That one strike pierced her through the brow and exited the back of her head."

"When she died, she was still clutching a handful of soil she had brought from the Northwest."

"She wanted to scatter that handful of soil on the lands of Central Earth."

The young woman fell silent.

The insect cloud continued to beat its wings, its buzzing like a timeless, unending tide.

At the edge of the Black Abyss Rift Valley.

More and more Escape Lights gathered from all corners of the Northwest.

Some rode Corpse Clouds.

Some walked on Blood Rivers.

Some were hidden in the shadows, only a blurry outline flashing occasionally in the moonlight.

Some wielded Flying Swords forged from the spines of living people, their blades still dripping with wet blood.

Some were wreathed in the shrill screams of Infant Souls, a blood-red lotus blooming beneath their feet with every step.

This was the Northwest.

This was the Demon Dao.

This was the Land Beyond Civilization, which for ten thousand years had been denounced by the Central Earth Righteous Dao as "heretical fiends" and "utterly depraved."

In Central Earth, their Cultivation Skills would have them dragged to the Immortal Slaying Platform, their Dao Foundations destroyed, and their Divine Souls banished to the Nine Netherworld.

Their ancestors were the ones chased for three thousand, five thousand, ten thousand li by the Righteous Immortal Sects, only to fall exhausted on this barren land.

Their sect-mates were the ones who died in one "Demon Dao cleansing" crusade after another, their bodies turned to dust, their True Spirits annihilated.

Ten thousand years.

Ten thousand years of suppressed resentment.

Ten thousand years of forbearance.

Ten thousand years of lying dormant.

Ten thousand years—

Of refusing to accept it.

---

The Escape Lights continued to converge.

One hundred thousand.

Three hundred thousand.

Five hundred thousand.

No one was counting.

There was no need to count.

Because the entire edge of the Black Abyss Rift Valley, a wasteland stretching ten thousand li, was now covered by the multicolored Escape Lights of the Demon Dao.

No one spoke.

A million Demon Cultivators, silent as death.

Only the hundreds of millions of Escape Lights illuminated the ten-thousand-year-old wasteland of the Black Abyss Rift Valley, turning it into a sea of aurora suddenly appearing in the polar night.

Cyan, crimson, black, white, ghostly blue, dark gold, ghastly green...

These were the fundamental colors of ten thousand Demonic Skills.

This was the undying flame that generations of Northwest Demon Cultivators had kindled on this barren land for ten thousand years, using their mangled flesh and blood, their Broken Dao Foundations, and their unresigned True Spirits as fuel.

Suddenly, a slight commotion rippled through the crowd.

It was not fear.

It was a near-instinctive palpitation of the heart.

Everyone—whether it was the Ghostly Ghost Dao Cultivator riding a Bone Dragon, the Blood River Sect Elder meditating in the center of a river of blood, or the Soul-Devouring Cliff assassin standing as silent as a gravestone at the wasteland’s edge—slowly raised their heads at the exact same instant.

They looked due north of the rift.

There, where the night was thickest, the void was silently tearing open.

When Qi Yun stepped out of the fissure in the void, there were no strange phenomena beneath his feet.

He was like an emperor stepping out of his palace at a common dusk, hands behind his back, on his way to an appointment that had been waiting for ten thousand years.

Half a step behind him, Black Mountain Master, Qian Xin Master, Qing Li Master, and other core members of the Holy Sect followed in silence.

No magnificent procession.

No overwhelming aura.

However, when Qi Yun’s dark blue figure stepped onto the highest black cliff at the edge of the Black Abyss Rift Valley—

A million Demon Cultivators bowed their heads in unison.

A heaven-shaking cry instantly soared to the sky.

"We respectfully welcome the arrival of the Holy Sect’s Sect Leader!"

...