novelraw Chapter 33 : Chapter 33
Chapter 33 : Chapter 33
Chapter 33
RIP.
Cai Suhong seemed to hear the sound of space tearing apart.
A gleaming black insect pincer thrust in through the Mystic Realm’s interface. Then came a second, a third... They had already bitten open the entrance to the Mystic Realm, only to be blocked by another layer of spatial barrier.
Cai Suhong had constructed a double-layered Mystic Realm.
But the second spatial barrier was even weaker than the first. It would not hold the swarm for long.
Cai Suhong held up her cauldron. Ripples gradually rose inside it. That was spiritual power, boiling like oil. Soon, the space between the second Mystic Realm and the first was filled with a dense mass of Feizhi.
They gnawed at the second spatial barrier. In only two more breaths, they would chew through that barrier as well.
The “oil” in Cai Suhong’s cauldron had already reached a full boil. Suddenly, she swung the cauldron upward. In an instant, boiling oil poured down like rain between the two barriers. Yet just before it hit bottom, it traced a circle out of thin air, as though caught by an enormous cauldron, and countless Feizhi swept up in the boiling oil tumbled and rolled chaotically inside it.
This was Cai Suhong’s spell, called “One-Ladle Stew.” It was both a killing art and a trapping art.
But a mocking snort soon came from outside the Mystic Realm. The sound was like the buzzing of countless insects, forming a strange vibration that made people dizzy and nauseated.
“One-Ladle Stew” was instantly broken apart. The illusory boiling oil vanished completely.
The dead Feizhi fell in a flurry, while the injured Feizhi pounced down to devour their corpses.
In the blink of an eye, they were whole again and resumed gnawing at the spatial barrier.
The move Cai Suhong had just used with all her strength had achieved almost nothing.
But through that one strike, the Sting King had completely seen through the truth of their strength.
He stepped in through the rift of the Mystic Realm and reached a hand toward Cai Suhong…
“Move.”
A cold, murderous voice suddenly sounded from behind Cai Suhong.
Cai Suhong instantly flashed aside.
The moment the Sting King stepped into the Mystic Realm, a frenzied warning exploded through his spiritual instincts. He retreated out of the Mystic Realm at once. In the next instant, a terrifying killing intent slashed out from within the Mystic Realm.
Before the sword light even reached him, the Sting King already felt stabbing pain. That dreadful killing intent had locked onto him. Countless Feizhi surged before him like moths flying into a flame, yet they could not delay it even for a moment before dying beneath the sword light.
Crack.
A fissure split across the Sting King’s faceplate. Black smoke-like clouds poured out through the crack, slowing the sword light for an almost imperceptible instant. In that instant, the Sting King abruptly dispersed into countless black insects and escaped the killing intent’s lock.
At the same time, two figures rushed out of the Mystic Realm close behind the sword light.
Many Feizhi had already died beneath that sword strike, and the spatial lockdown they had formed had shattered as well.
In the blink of an eye, the countless black insects gathered back together into the Sting King’s form. He crooked his fingers, about to stop the two figures following behind the sword light.
But the Mystic Realm behind him suddenly exploded, stirring up a storm of spatial turbulence.
The Sting King was thrown off for that instant, and by the time he tried to stop them again, the two had already teleported away with a shifting talisman. When he tried to follow the traces through the spatial veins, he found that the signs of the shift had already been thoroughly scrambled by the spatial turbulence caused by the Mystic Realm’s explosion.
The faceplate, split into two halves, was carried before him by the few surviving Feizhi. The Sting King’s expression was dark.
This time, not only had he failed to gain anything, he had even destroyed a life-saving Treasured Artifact.
He thought back to the terror he had felt when that killing intent locked onto him. Life and death had hung on a single instant. It had been many years since he had felt that.
But that threat had not come from those two. As they fled, he had caught sight of the weapon in the second person’s hand—the Blood-Rust Blade. That sense of danger had come from the Blood-Rust Blade.
The Sting King seized the two broken halves of the faceplate in his hand and crushed them to powder. Mist-like black fragments swirled around his arm.
Now, he wanted the Blood-Rust Blade even more.
...
Cai Suhong and Lang Qingyun shifted away together.
The Sting King was the most terrifying enemy they had faced so far. This was the first time Cai Suhong had ever encountered an enemy capable of forcibly tearing open her Mystic Realm. Before this, none of the people who had come to seize the Blood-Rust Blade had ever managed to escape the lock of that dreadful killing intent. Yet after escaping it, the Sting King had even nearly succeeded in stopping them.
In that brief battle just now, if either of them had been slower by even a moment at any step, it was hard to say whether they would still be alive.
And now that the location of the Blood-Rust Blade had been exposed, the dangers they would face from here on could only grow even more terrifying.
Cai Suhong had only just escaped with her life, and her nerves were still taut when Lang Qingyun suddenly shoved her hard without warning. She staggered two steps to the side, turned to look at him, and was startled.
Something was clearly wrong with Lang Qingyun. The way he looked now reminded Cai Suhong of the state he had been in when he saw the illusion of his relatives’ corpses covering the ground inside the Bewildering Heart Formation. But now, the hand with which he gripped the Blood-Rust Blade was trembling constantly. He was trying his best to control himself.
Cai Suhong looked at him worriedly, but did not go nearer. She knew why Lang Qingyun had pushed her away. Right now, it was best for her to stay farther from him. The killing intent emanating from him at this moment was aimed at all living things.
This was the Blood-Rust Blade’s killing intent.
“Why was it never said before that the Blood-Rust Blade had this kind of effect?” Cai Suhong murmured.
The Mystic Realm System said, “When the Blood-Rust Blade first appeared in Suizhou, it had never been unsealed.”
When the Blood-Rust Blade first came into the world, it was no different from a useless iron rod. It was only after it somehow ended up in the Demon Abyss that things changed. Those Demonic Cultivators stirred up endless slaughter over it, and in that process, the Blood-Rust Blade gradually shed three inches of blood rust.
When it was sealed by blood rust, it did not display this kind of influence over people. When it was in the hands of Demonic Cultivators and slaughter ran rampant, it still did not display this influence.
Only when its holder did not kill did it demand that he kill.
At that moment, Lang Qingyun suddenly reversed his grip on the Blood-Rust Blade and stabbed it into the ground beneath his feet.
A fierce killing intent abruptly spread outward from the blade. The insects and snakes beneath the soil stiffened and died where they were buried. The grasses and trees above ground withered in an instant. Startled birds had only just begun to flap up from suddenly decaying branches when they fell to the ground and died without a sound.
Cai Suhong retreated at once, and her footing landed exactly beyond the range of the Blood-Rust Blade’s spreading killing intent. She looked at the dead land before her, her expression ugly.
Lang Qingyun had failed to control it and had included her within the range of the spreading killing intent. But that was not why her face looked so bad. The spread of killing intent took time. With her cultivation, avoiding it was more than easy enough. What disturbed her was this land itself.
The killing intent in that strike had killed the plants on this land and the birds, beasts, insects, and snakes upon it, but it had not stopped there. Unless some opportunity intervened, this land would be incapable of producing any plant life for at least the next thirty years, and no animal would be able to survive upon it either. The Blood-Rust Blade... had killed the land itself.
After venting that killing intent, Lang Qingyun finally returned to normal. He looked utterly exhausted, and his voice was hoarse. “Let’s go. I need to rest for a while.”
Cai Suhong nodded. Looking at that dead land, she left behind a divine ability seed beneath it. Perhaps her divine ability could help the land recover more quickly. Or perhaps... she did not know. Perhaps the Blood-Rust Blade’s killing intent would render even her inborn divine ability ineffective.
She and Lang Qingyun changed to another concealed place to rest. Lang Qingyun casually found a spot and sat down on the ground.
Seeing that he was still holding the Blood-Rust Blade, Cai Suhong said, “Let me hold it for now.”
She thought that perhaps Lang Qingyun might feel a little better if he were farther away from the Blood-Rust Blade.
Lang Qingyun looked up at her. His eyelids lifted, and the cold gleam in his eyes was sharp enough to pierce bone.
Cai Suhong could not help pausing.
Lang Qingyun said nothing. Hugging the Blood-Rust Blade, he closed his eyes again.
Cai Suhong slowly withdrew her hand. She knew he still had not fully escaped its influence.
“Do you still want the Blood-Rust Blade?” the Mystic Realm System asked.
Cai Suhong sighed.
The unsurpassed Dao Canon. She was a cultivator too. How could she possibly not be tempted?
Before the Sting King appeared, she had still been considering how to use the Mystic Realm to dig out the unsurpassed Dao Canon within the Blood-Rust Blade. Even after narrowly surviving this disaster, what troubled her more had still been how to escape future dangers and how to keep hold of the Blood-Rust Blade.
But now, after seeing this land that the Blood-Rust Blade had killed, she discovered that her desire for it had suddenly weakened.
This dead land stood before her like a glaring reminder: she was Dangkang, an auspicious beast whose presence brought abundance to the world, one who was born to bring abundance.
Whatever the unsurpassed Dao Canon within the Blood-Rust Blade might be, it was not a Dao suited to her.
“Since you’ve figured it out, then give it up,” the Mystic Realm System advised. “From what I can see, you’re about to hit your limit.”
“But how can I just leave him alone?” Cai Suhong looked at Lang Qingyun, who sat beside her with his eyes closed.
“You don’t owe him anything,” the Mystic Realm System said calmly. “Since you no longer want the Blood-Rust Blade, why keep bearing the trouble it may bring? Figures like the Sting King have already gotten involved. His cultivation is a full two major realms above yours. In front of a cultivator like that, your life-preserving secret art is basically useless.
“And besides, you’re almost at your limit too, aren’t you?”
Constructing Mystic Realms was a burden for Cai Suhong as well. Although she could also gain insight from it, throughout all this pursuit and flight, she had never had much time to turn that into true accumulation of her own. Now that the Blood-Rust Blade had been exposed, she would only be constructing small Mystic Realms more and more frequently. Sooner or later, she would no longer be able to endure it.
Cai Suhong was silent for a moment, then said, “When he wakes up, I’ll try to persuade him. Maybe he’ll be willing to give up the Blood-Rust Blade.”
“And if he won’t?” the Mystic Realm System pressed. “I should already be starting to explore the next step—using your gift to try to produce the most basic plant life inside a Mystic Realm. That would be beneficial to you as well.
“You want to hold a world within your belly. You want to use your gift for prosperity and harvest as a foundation, and from there understand more deeply the operation of a small heaven and earth. What comes next is the opportunity. That’s why I chose you in the first place. Our paths complement each other.”
“But if you insist on helping him, then you’re very likely to die next, and I’ll have no choice but to find someone else.”
“What you’re saying makes a lot of sense.” Cai Suhong drew in a deep breath. “But you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” the Mystic Realm System shot back bluntly. “I’ve seen people make stupid and unnecessary choices all the time. How much more can you really help him? If you run into another opponent like the Sting King, how many more times can you save him? Not to mention that he carries a problem of his own. His condition is only going to get worse and worse. Who knows—one day he might want to kill you. He’s not the right person for you to play hero for.”
Cai Suhong looked at Lang Qingyun. Curled around the blade, he looked haggard, with dark shadows beneath his eyes and shallow breathing. His back was drawn tight, and his body leaned away to one side, as though he too wanted to keep his distance from her.
“You’re familiar with people’s words and actions. You know how to laugh, sneer, and scold. On the surface, you look like a real living being. But that’s only imitation,” Cai Suhong said.
“You know what we would do, but you don’t understand why. Back when the Six Bandits of Bima Mountain came to trouble me, he stepped in to help me too, and he didn’t owe me anything then either.”
This time, the Mystic Realm System fell silent.
After another while, Cai Suhong asked, “You’re not leaving?”
“No...” The Mystic Realm System’s voice suddenly became calm and expressionless, and yet there seemed to be something almost like bewilderment in it. “I think... it might be better if I stay.”
From Cai Suhong’s words, it had sensed something that might point toward the road ahead for itself. Cai Suhong was right. It had only been imitating.
What exactly were these so-called “Golden Fingers,” these so-called “Systems”? They were a piece of law, fragmented remnants, world seeds that instinctively longed to complete themselves. But they truly were not living beings.
And yet even the most basic small-thousand world would inevitably contain living beings.
Living beings were not the same thing as life. Only that which both lived and possessed spirit could be called a living being.
Life was one threshold. A soul was another.
What was a soul?
...
Lang Qingyun had not actually fallen asleep. He had only thrown all of his awareness inward, making himself temporarily oblivious to the outside world.
He had not refused to hand the Blood-Rust Blade to Cai Suhong because its influence had made him cling greedily to it. He simply could not hand it over.
When he struck that sword blow, he had used not only the Blood-Rust Blade’s power, but also the Dao Seed’s power. He had vented the Blood-Rust Blade’s surging killing intent into the earth, but the Dao Seed was still trying to seize control of his mind. He needed the Blood-Rust Blade to help him restrain the Dao Seed’s influence.
This struggle within his mind left him deeply exhausted.
A long while later, Lang Qingyun opened his eyes. It was very quiet around him, and very dark. Only faint starlight shone in through the cave entrance. Dawn had not yet come. He seemed still to be half-immersed in his sea of consciousness, and reacted only sluggishly.
Cai Suhong called to him, “Are you feeling any better?”
Lang Qingyun paused for a moment before answering with a quiet “Mm.”
Cai Suhong carefully began voicing the words she had been considering for a long time. “The people coming to seize the Blood-Rust Blade have been getting stronger and stronger lately. If we run into a cultivator like the Sting King again, we may not get a second chance to escape.
“And besides, we haven’t really figured anything out from the Blood-Rust Blade. When it unseals, it wants killing, and it also influences people into wanting to kill. I think holding on to it may not be a good thing for us.
“There are plenty of capable cultivators in this world, and there are also the major sects. The orthodox sects are still trustworthy. I have friends in Wan Yao Cave too. Even aside from the Blood-Rust Blade, there must be other ways to solve the problem. You and your family don’t have to meet directly for now. I can help watch over them for you first. So... what do you think? Shouldn’t we give up the Blood-Rust Blade?”
Cai Suhong said a long string of words, thinking through everything she could think of. But even after she had finished speaking, Lang Qingyun said nothing.
Cai Suhong turned to look at him. “What do you think?”
Sitting in the darkness with his head half-lowered, Lang Qingyun’s expression could not be seen clearly. One hand was hidden behind his body. His voice was low and hoarse. “I think... are you trying to keep the Blood-Rust Blade all for yourself?”
Cai Suhong froze for a moment and asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
Her first reaction was not anger, but the sense that something was wrong. She had spent so much time with Lang Qingyun that she believed she understood him. He was not someone who would say something like that. If Lang Qingyun were afraid she wanted to monopolize the Blood-Rust Blade, he would never have shown it to her in the first place.
A muffled sound came from Lang Qingyun’s throat, something between a laugh and a cough, hoarse and terrible. “Everyone wants the Blood-Rust Blade. Don’t you? You used to hold it day and night, studying it without rest, but these last two days you suddenly let go. What are you plotting? I have dreams connected to the Blood-Rust Blade, and I told you every one of them, but you never dream at all. Have you decided that the Blood-Rust Blade can only have one master at a time? Are you trying to shake me off and possess it yourself?”
Cai Suhong’s brows drew together. However patient she was, she could not help feeling anger now. And yet she still felt she ought to ask again, because she did not believe Lang Qingyun was this kind of person.
“You...” She had only just begun to speak when she saw the way he looked, and the rest of her words suddenly stuck in her throat.
“Or rather...” Lang Qingyun raised his head, revealing a pair of eyes gleaming with cold light.
“Are you thinking of killing me?”
He sat in the darkness, with only his eyes shining with a cold, piercing light.
That was killing intent.
Cai Suhong felt as though a bucket of icy water had been poured over her from head to toe, the chill sinking straight into her heart. She was not so blind that she could mistake false killing intent for the real thing. This was different from the killing intent Lang Qingyun had earlier displayed under the Blood-Rust Blade’s influence, when it had been directed at all living beings. This killing intent was directed at her alone.
Lang Qingyun wanted to kill her.
She saw that his right hand was hidden behind his back, and behind him there was a glint of cold light—the tip of the Blood-Rust Blade.
Every excuse Cai Suhong had tried to make for what Lang Qingyun had said vanished completely beneath that killing intent. She only felt that the version of herself that had argued with the Mystic Realm System just moments earlier was a fool.
At once, she stood up within that freezing atmosphere. “I’m no longer interested in the Blood-Rust Blade. Since you don’t trust me, then let’s part ways here.”
Backing out of the cave, Cai Suhong activated a spell, and her figure vanished in an instant.
Inside the cave, after Cai Suhong left, Lang Qingyun lifted the right hand he had hidden behind him and pressed it against his forehead, gasping for breath with difficulty, as though his lungs had become a broken old bellows.
He panted for a long time before his breathing slowly eased. The hand pressed hard against his forehead gradually lowered. It was trembling, leaving a smear of blood across his face.
Lang Qingyun opened his hand. Four deep crescent wounds had been gouged into his palm by his own fingernails.
Earlier, he had hidden his hand behind his back, but he had not been reaching for the Blood-Rust Blade. He had only been clenching his fist as hard as he could.
He had been trying to control himself, to keep himself from killing Cai Suhong.
Cai Suhong had not been wrong. His desire to kill her had been real.
He had known earlier than Cai Suhong that there was something wrong with the Blood-Rust Blade—through his dreams, through the lingering image of that young man.
The Blood-Rust Blade wanted every person who held it to kill.
The reason the Blood-Rust Blade could suppress his Dao Seed was not because it contained the unsurpassed Dao Canon, but because the force with which it pulled at Lang Qingyun ran in the opposite direction from the Dao Seed’s pull.
The kind of killing the Blood-Rust Blade wanted was frenzied, uncontrolled slaughter. Everything in the world was killable. Everything in the world ought to be killed.
What the Dao Seed wanted, on the other hand, was emotionless and desireless coldness. To it, killing was a means, not the goal. It did not want Lang Qingyun to sink into the Blood-Rust Blade’s fanatical bloodlust.
Because these two influences opposed one another, when Lang Qingyun held the Blood-Rust Blade, it seemed as though he could suppress the Dao Seed.
These two terrifying forces had been tugging at him all this time, but on one point, within a single person, they had reached agreement—
Cai Suhong.
The Dao Seed wanted Lang Qingyun to kill Cai Suhong too.
Because Lang Qingyun truly regarded Cai Suhong as a friend for whom he could live or die.
But Lang Qingyun was already on the verge of losing control. The only thing he could do was force Cai Suhong away.
The Blood-Rust Blade lay on the ground, and another half inch of rust had receded from its blade.
During all this pursuit, Lang Qingyun had already been forced more than once to use the Blood-Rust Blade against his enemies, more than once to kill those pursuing him with it.
This bloodthirsty weapon displayed its edge with arrogant excitement. It did not care who died—whether it was the enemy before it or its own master, it made no difference.
It only wanted killing.
But Lang Qingyun could no longer leave the Blood-Rust Blade.
By the time he realized it, it was already too late. He had already used too much of the spell arts’ power, and the Dao Seed’s influence over him was growing wildly. If he cast aside the Blood-Rust Blade now, he feared he would immediately ambush Cai Suhong, then go home and kill his family one by one, completely stepping onto the path the Dao Seed was pointing out for him.
It was easy to kill someone who trusted you. He had to make them wary of him, guard against him.
The cultivators who wanted to seize the Blood-Rust Blade might catch up at any moment. Lang Qingyun gripped the Blood-Rust Blade with his blood-covered right hand and stumbled out of the cave.
He still held on to hope.
Perhaps once he unraveled the secret within the Blood-Rust Blade, perhaps once he understood how it had changed from the sharp weapon in his dreams into the blade now covered in blood rust, he would understand what this so-called “unsurpassed Dao Canon” truly was, and he would be able to solve his problem.
But before that, he had to walk alone.
...
What had Shuang Wenlü’s life been like in the lifetime when he entered the Dao?
Fine rain drifted softly. Autumn had only just begun to turn cool. A lone skiff lay slantwise upon the lake. No one crossed it; it drifted on the waves carrying wine.
When awake, he plucked his sword and sang. When drunk, he slept beside white egrets.
At that time, the Blood-Rust Blade still had no blood rust upon it. It was only a strangely shaped sword. At that time, there was not yet any cultivation path in heaven and earth. At that time, Shuang Wenlü, too, was still practicing the sword.
He had not practiced the sword for killing, but simply because he loved it.
So after mastering all that was hidden within the sword, what he wanted was not to go out and compare swords or kill people. He wanted to find his friends and share his joy with them, to dance with his sword in drunkenness, to board a boat and carry wine.
But after he killed someone by mistake, he put aside all of his anticipation and delight.
He felt that something was wrong with this sword.
There were many strange tales and uncanny things in the world. At first, he had thought this sword was merely a rare treasure that could impart sword techniques to others. But now, he felt that this sword was affecting his mind.
If one were to look for reasons, then different temperaments produced different sword techniques, and different sword techniques could in turn alter a person’s temperament. He had practiced such a killing-intent-laden sword art. It was perfectly normal that murderous impulses had surged up in him for a moment, causing him to fail to hold back and kill someone. Swords were weapons made for slaughter, and sword techniques were methods made for slaughter.
Any ordinary martial artist in the world would probably not think there was anything wrong with that. Even if it were brought before the magistrate’s office, killing bandits while fighting them on the road was no crime.
And yet he still decided to set aside the things he had been looking forward to and first confirm whether there was truly something wrong with this sword.
Carrying the sword, he first went to find someone.