novelraw Chapter 54 : The Blood Moon Descends
Chapter 54 : The Blood Moon Descends
Chapter 54: The Blood Moon Descends
True Person Han Yi had detected a weak point, but it was one that True Person Han Ze had deliberately left behind.
The entire Mountain-Protecting Array of Jade Palace Palace had already been reversed by Han Ze into an Ascension Formation.
True Person Han Ze held the moon in her hand: “The blood of three at the Dawning Sun Stage, together with the blood of several at the Jade Balance Stage. What a pity, I had thought more of you would come.”
In her calculations, True Person Han Yi should have drawn five or six from the Sixth Realm, and perhaps even one or two from the Jade Radiance Stage.
Han Ze raised her hand, and a glazed lotus flower so cold that just looking at it could almost freeze one into ice appeared in her palm.
The Heaven-Purifying True Lotus.
Not only the Mountain-Protecting Array, but even Jade Palace Palace’s Heaven-Purifying True Lotus had long since been taken by her.
True Person Withered Corpse cried out in disbelief: “You’ve already refined the Heaven-Purifying True Lotus?!”
“Not yet, there was still the final step.” True Person Han Ze opened her mouth and swallowed the lotus into her belly: “Now, it is refined!”
Her aura surged skyward, scarlet mist flooding everything.
An endless spiritual force drew blood and flesh from the three True Persons of Zhu Lu, delivering it toward Han Ze.
The Mountain-Protecting Array of Jade Palace Palace, which Han Ze had tampered with for years, finally revealed its terrifying use at this moment.
“Heaven’s moon, lake’s moon, moon within my hand!”
True Person Han Ze flung the moon in her palm upward, and her body began to sink into the moonlight.
She became the moon.
The red mist, wrapped with blood, slowly dyed the moon crimson.
Her voice echoed across the heavens:
“Han Ze of Jade Palace, four hundred years in cultivation, today, I tread the Heavenly Ladder and ascend to Jade Radiance!”
The scarlet mist expanded violently, engulfing the entire Jade Palace Palace.
The Blood Moon spoke: “Not enough, still not enough. Too few have come. Then the rest—shall be filled by the disciples of my palace!”
“Han Ze, what are you doing!?”
True Person Han Qiu, in tattered robes and with her left eye bloodstained, had just saved several disciples, but she arrived a step too late.
What she saw was Han Ze intending to devour even the disciples of Jade Palace Palace to ascend to Jade Radiance.
She roared in fury: “Han Ze!!!”
The Blood Moon trembled: “Silence! As long as I ascend to Jade Radiance, you will be the Sixth Realm pillar, Yuehan will be the next successor, and my Jade Palace Palace can endure for centuries more! The rest are nothing but worthless trash!”
Daoist Withered Corpse cried out in terror: “No, we cannot escape—this wretch has reversed the Mountain-Protecting Array!”
True Person Zhu Lu lifted his spear, drawing a circle upon the ground.
Radiance flared a thousandfold: “Then what are we to do?”
If once the Mountain-Protecting Array had defended against outsiders, now it defended against those within.
Thus, it had become their cage.
True Person Withered Corpse said again: “If this continues, even if she fails to ascend, we will all die before that!”
The Blood Moon stretched forth countless tendrils, lashing wildly.
A disciple of Canglan Sect was impaled in an instant; his cheeks swelled, and then his body exploded.
Threads of blood were drawn out, consumed by the Blood Moon.
“Hungry…”
The syllables warped.
A gaping maw split open in the center of the crimson moon, packed with fangs and oozing pus.
Shriek!!!
The tendrils lashed even more frantically.
True Person Withered Corpse summoned a massive coffin and hid himself inside: “This old man withdraws first.”
Not only that, a corpse puppet identical to him appeared at the spot.
It was the substitute puppet he had refined.
Half of his body had already been devoured; he could not delay any longer, or he would surely die here today.
Thus, he fled into the coffin, which sank into the ground.
With his puppet as a decoy, he sought to dig his way out of the mountain.
Bang!
He had miscalculated.
The earth split open.
A colossal tendril pinned the coffin down.
From its suckers, countless threads unfurled, trying to swallow coffin and man alike.
True Person Han Ze could already feel it—the Dao lay just ahead.
So mysterious and wondrous, the gate of the Seventh Realm had opened.
She could not hear Han Qiu’s desperate cry:
“Han Ze, you have fallen into demonic ways!!!”
“Why go so far?”
Jiang Jiayi rose slowly, sword already unsheathed.
It was a wooden sword, crimson in color, so sharp that the very act of drawing it split apart the space around, revealing the void beneath.
She would cut down the demon.
The Sect Master of the Dao Sect had ordered her to see who would ascend to Jade Radiance.
But she saw no laws of Jade Radiance—only a demon.
The Sect Master had also said: “Only watch, do not interfere.”
This was because the three palaces plotted against Jade Palace.
If the plot succeeded, so be it.
If it failed, so be it.
The Dao Sect cared little for the rise and fall of sects in the cultivation world.
So long as mortals were not involved, the Dao Sect remained a bystander.
But if a demon emerged, it was different.
If a demon emerged—
Then slay!
“Hm?”
Jiang Jiayi suddenly looked into the distance: “Still alive? Why is there… another one?”
She sat back down, resuming meditation.
It seemed there was no need for her sword here after all.
The trembling blade calmed, though it did not return to its sheath.
~~~~~~~~~
Beneath the blood-red moon, madness seemed to taint every face.
The whipping tendrils carried an oppressive, grating noise.
“Master, Han Ze has fallen into demonic ways, I…”
Xia Lianxue clung tightly to Lu Changyuan.
Lu Changyuan sighed.
The young girl wished to leave a perfect image in his heart, and thus became anxious and uneasy.
“I know, but it must be resolved.”
“Mhm.”
Lu Changyuan smiled: “I was thinking, what exactly did True Person Hanshui mean by those words back then?”
Xia Lianxue touched her lips in thought: “Perhaps… on one hand she wished to protect me, on the other, Senior Sister may have always been the calamity I had to face in retracing the Red Dust.
Hanshui might have only sought to bring my tribulation forward.”
Neither of them truly knew what Hanshui had thought at the time.
Lu Changyuan ruffled Xia Lianxue’s small head: “Enough, think of a way. That moon above us still hangs.”
That blood moon was like a strange totem.
All touched by its light would have their life drained away.
The Immortal Fairy gazed at the night sky: “The Desire Demon is truly vile. I never thought that even in retracing the Red Dust, I would be tainted by it.”
Lu Changyuan chuckled.
Xia Lianxue, retracing the Red Dust, had nearly been devoured by the Desire Demon—luckily, she had met him: “It is precisely because you are retracing the Red Dust that the Desire Demon clings so easily.”
It was said—
Long ago, when the world was still chaos, three thousand great demons plagued it.
But after centuries of struggle, cultivators either slew or sealed them all.
The Desire Demon was the hardest among them to deal with, and the hardest to kill, for its food was the “desires” of cultivators.
Thus, the Desire Demon alone remained neither dead nor sealed.