Su Yan halted, gazing at the corpse on the cliff.
The Martial Heavenly Sovereign's words carried two meanings. First, the corpse's power was extraordinary. Second, it posed a threat.
The corpse on the cliff seemed to sense their stare. Its eyes snapped open.
The Martial Heavenly Sovereign shifted, blocking Su Yan. In that instant, Su Yan's vision was flooded with immortal radiance. Jade towers and crystal pavilions rushed toward him; in the blink of an eye, the hellish battlefield was replaced by a celestial court of sublime beauty.
He felt immortal energy coursing through him, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, every part of him suffused with comfort. His soul, his divine sense, his vital energy, his flesh—all seemed to flow with the Dao.
"Is this immortality?"
The thought had barely formed when a roar that split heaven and earth shattered the illusion. The immortal realm crumbled with the sound, and he was back in the nightmare of the ancient battlefield.
His vision cleared—and what greeted him was a scene of pure horror. The corpse pinned to the cliff had gone dark. Its hair writhed and grew at wild speed, and a halo of sword-light spun toward them.
If the Martial Heavenly Sovereign had not been shielding him, Su Yan would have fallen prey to the trap the instant the illusion took hold.
*Shing! Shing! Shing!*
Strands of hair, sharp beyond measure, sliced past a nearby divine weapon. The weapon had survived the ages unscathed—yet the moment the hair grazed it, it snapped in two.
Su Yan's scalp prickled. Behind the Sovereign, a tower of twelve levels materialized—blazing with golden light. Primordial Spirit and flesh fused into one. He hurled a punch at the razor hair.
The strands pierced his fist, bored into his skin, and wrenched him upward toward the cliff.
The Martial Heavenly Sovereign severed the hair with a wave and landed before the corpse.
The corpse opened its mouth and roared. The sound battered the Sovereign, sending his white hair and brows streaming backward, carving wrinkle after wrinkle across his face. At the same instant, a blurry figure flew from the corpse's brow, exposing its head and torso, and lunged toward the Sovereign's own brow.
"Seeking a replacement?"
Su Yan recognized the spell at once. The roar was meant to scatter the mind; when the soul wavered, the caster would swap places with its target. But the blurry figure had barely emerged when a fist—knuckles bulging, tendons standing out—hammered into its face.
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
Su Yan watched the white-haired old man deliver blow after brutal blow, pounding the corpse's face flat, splattering blood across the cliff.
The blood itself radiated immortal light. Where it fell upon the earth, herbs sprouted, fragrant and lush.
Yet no matter how many times the Sovereign hammered it, the corpse's face re-formed. Its body seemed to hold infinite vitality, regenerating on its own.
The Sovereign's fist was buried in the corpse's ruined features. He tore it free, gripped the broken blade lodged in the corpse's chest, and drove it deeper.
The blade sank toward the heart, plunging further and further.
The corpse screamed in agony. Under the blade, a blurry shadow emerged, straining to separate and escape.
The Martial Heavenly Sovereign released the blade, leapt from the cliff, and returned to Su Yan's side. He wiped the blood from his hands. "That one is truly powerful. I cannot deal with it."
Su Yan stared, incredulous.
The Sovereign looked at him, puzzled.
"Martial Heavenly Sovereign—this may be the corpse of an immortal!" Su Yan blurted.
The Sovereign shook his head. "An immortal? Impossible."
"In the ancient era, immortals were not so strong," Su Yan explained. "Ascension was simpler then. The greatest tribulation was only fifty li across—perhaps fifteen li in diameter. A tribulation of that size, I believe even you could survive."
The Sovereign looked vaguely startled. "So with my current level of cultivation, I could have ascended in those days? Why is it no longer possible?"
Su Yan did not know how to answer.
From what he had pieced together, in the ancient era, each cultivator's tribulation was scaled to their own fortune and karma. Some were small, some large. But at some point, the Heavenly Dao began calibrating the strength of the tribulation based on the previous ascender. That meant the next candidate had to surpass the last in power to survive.
Generation after generation of ascenders pushed the bar higher and higher, until the tribulation grew a thousandfold stronger than any ordinary trial.
After the last ascender departed, no one else could ascend.
"The last ascender killed off everyone," Su Yan said. "And that led to the decline of qi-refining and the rise of nuo masters."
He laid out what he had learned and voiced his theory. "Later, some qi-refiners took a dark path—distorting the nuo arts, using fishing to devour humans, trading souls for power to extend their lives. Now both qi-refiners and nuo masters live in fear."
The Martial Heavenly Sovereign walked on. "A pity. My lifespan is too short to reach the world you describe. I would very much like to spread the martial arts there, to carry the warrior's spirit forward. If one is resolute and forward-looking, even without ascending, life can be magnificent."
A faint decline flickered through his qi and blood. Su Yan's heart lurched.
As a martial powerhouse who had achieved a Primordial Spirit, the Sovereign was his own god—able to control every meridian in his body, sealing himself off so that no essence leaked, maintaining perpetual peak condition.
But the faint decay in his qi and blood meant his control was slipping. His body was aging.
The Sovereign smiled. "I would love to visit that world of yours and smash those fishing-people's skulls with my fists. But time will not wait. If only I had arrived twenty years earlier."
The light in his eyes dimmed. Though he refused to accept old age, refused to concede, the body had its limits.
"This ancient battlefield holds a vast secret," he said. "It prevents the people of the Primal World from cultivating."
He walked ahead. His powerful martial spirit radiated outward, manifesting into figures that swept through the darkness. "It forces us to survive with nothing but our own flesh, our own fists, our own will. I am not an all-powerful Heavenly Sovereign—"
His qi and blood began to wane. Su Yan saw it drifting behind him like crimson sand dissolving in wind.
"I cannot push martial arts to their absolute peak. I cannot level the darkness. I cannot stop the underworld's invasion. I cannot even uncover the truth of this battlefield or solve the mystery of the missing Heaven-Earth energy."
The Sovereign's voice was still strong, his stride still steady, his spirit blazing like a torch that scattered the gloom and demons around them. Yet behind him, the erosion of his qi and blood was accelerating.
Su Yan caught up. "Martial Heavenly Sovereign, perhaps I can locate the dragon veins for you and help you find the Six Secrets. If you can open the Mud Pill Secret, you could draw down the drugs of immortality!"
The Sovereign's voice drifted back. "Fellow Daoist Su, in a martial practitioner, spirit, qi, blood, soul, and body are fused into one—indivisible. The moment you saw my qi and blood fading, my soul was already aging and my flesh already dying. The Six Secrets cannot stop my decline."
His pace quickened, as if trying to outrun time, to walk far enough to chart a safe path for future generations.
He was already the greatest martial artist alive. He wanted to use his remaining time to accomplish more.
Su Yan activated the Art of Utter Ease and Freedom and finally caught up. He leapt and dove into the Sovereign's Xiyi Domain, traveling through his body in search of the Mud Pill Secret.
Inside the Martial Heavenly Sovereign, qi and blood burned like a blazing sun, scorching and overwhelming. Su Yan felt as though he were moving through a furnace. He soared from within the Twelve Towers, crossed the sealed Jade Pool and Spirit-Bridge, and flew past the sun and moon.
At last he found the Sea of Chaos.
The Sovereign's Sea of Chaos was the most terrifying Su Yan had ever witnessed. Waves towered ten thousand feet; the chaotic energy shredded everything, saturated with the scent of annihilation.
The Mud Pill Palace had already become a celestial sphere suppressing the Sea of Chaos. As it turned, the sea itself churned, spiraling around the sphere.
Su Yan had seen Zhu Chanchan's Sea of Chaos—she had suppressed her cultivation at the Gate-Breaking stage, yet her Mud Pill Chaos was already so formidable that even a flying peak could barely crack it open.
The Martial Heavenly Sovereign's Mud Pill Palace was perhaps a hundred times more difficult.
The martial path was powerful indeed, but unlike qi-refiners, martial artists could not wield divine artifacts. That meant the Sovereign's Mud Pill Palace could not be opened by force.
Su Yan steadied himself. He produced the jade vial he had been hoarding and poured some Primal Dao Essence into the Xiyi Domain.
The Essence spread through the Sovereign's body, releasing the fragrance of a Heavenly-Earth spiritual root.
Su Yan flew out of the Xiyi Domain and secretly channeled some of the longevity herbs drawn from his own Mud Pill Grotto into the Sovereign's body. The Martial Heavenly Sovereign's complexion improved.
His cheeks flushed, his voice grew louder. "Fellow Daoist Su truly possesses the drugs of immortality."
Su Yan looked past him at the qi and blood still drifting away. His heart sank. The Sovereign's flesh and Primordial Spirit were both in accelerating decline.
The Primal Dao Essence and the longevity drugs could not save him.
"The elder who created the Eight Forms of the War God—when he walked this path, he surely went further than I have," the Sovereign said, gazing into the distance. "I have heard ancient tales that he was younger and more powerful. He must have found a way out of this place. He must have."
Su Yan sensed the Sovereign's Primordial Spirit beginning to drain as well. He quickly channeled soul-herbs harvested from the Bubbling Spring Secret into the Sovereign's body.
But beyond that, the Sovereign's martial divine sense and strength were declining rapidly, difficult to arrest.
Su Yan pulled herbs from the Jade Pool, the Yellow Court, and the Crimson Palace, channeling them all at once.
It bought only a reprieve. The rate of decline was accelerating; soon it would outpace Su Yan's ability to replenish.
The Sovereign knew the urgency. He accelerated, charging ahead, shattering every demon and monster in his path. Nothing survived his advance.
He pushed the essence of the martial path to its ultimate expression. This was his most exhilarating battle—and the strongest of his life. Every technique he had learned, every insight he had gained, was distilled into blade-edge and sword-light.
Using fist and foot as the brush and qi and blood as the ink, he poured himself across the battlefield with wild abandon.
He would leave his mark upon this world with his very life.
Ahead, immortal light surged, blazing brilliance sweeping aside the gloom of the underworld and the ancient battlefield.
Su Yan followed the Martial Heavenly Sovereign toward it. They arrived at an ancient mountain, its surface covered in five-colored stone, radiant and dazzling. Its bulk was immeasurable.
From its peak blew a chilling wind, forming a wall that encircled the mountain. It ground flesh and shattered souls.
Around the wind wall lay countless white bones—the remains of the powerful who had died trying to pass.
On the mountain itself, corpses floated in midair, each radiating a soft immortal glow, pure and holy, making the place as beautiful as a celestial realm.
"Fellow Daoist Su, look there!"
The Martial Heavenly Sovereign smiled and pointed to the far side of the mountain.
Su Yan followed his gaze and saw ghosts drifting through the air.
Beyond them, a rift had opened in the sky, and light shone down from above.
Su Yan's heart leapt. "The Abyss of Cangwu! Martial Heavenly Sovereign, it's the Abyss of Cangwu!"
Beside him, the Sovereign's smile froze. His qi and blooddissolved like a tide, forming a crimson mist that trailed behind him like a scarlet cloak.
"I shall sleep here," he murmured, "and point the way for you."
He exhaled his final breath. The martial spirit within him erupted from his crown and blazed as a bright light in midair.
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