novelraw Chapter 4 : Chapter 4
Chapter 4 : Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Twelve hundred years ago, it rained like this as well.
The ages drifted on.
Even now, storytellers could never finish recounting the tale of that day, and poets still gazed from afar at that clash of arms.
In later generations’ telling, that storm was always tragic and heroic, a sweeping stroke in the annals of heaven and earth.
The radiance of that sword seemed, even after twelve hundred years, to leave people dazed and entranced.
Those who had never seen that rain imagined it.
Those who had seen it were mostly buried beneath the Yellow Springs.
It had been a red rain.
Blood-red clouds rolled like waves of gore across the sky.
Cultivators and demons fell again and again from the air, their blood staining the rain crimson before it even struck the ground.
Between demons and cultivators, there could be no reconciliation. More precisely: between demons and all living beings of Qiankun, there could be no reconciliation.
The Demon Abyss was a world utterly unlike Qiankun, possessing a Dao entirely its own.
Indulgence, slaughter, and greed were their nature, and also the foundation of their growth.
And when, twenty-seven hundred years ago, the Demon Abyss collided with Qiankun, the passage between the two realms opened—and they discovered a shortcut to growth: shattering a cultivator’s Dao heart.
The higher a cultivator’s realm, the greater the benefit they gained when that Dao heart broke.
And the living beings of Qiankun, who had never before seen demons, were to them nothing less than a rich feast.
In the many years since the Demon Abyss and Qiankun became connected, cultivators and demons had fought countless times, yet never had any battle been as brutal as the one twelve hundred years ago.
The Demon Lord of the Demon Abyss had plotted for fifteen hundred years, personally selecting eighty-one Demon Generals.
At the junction where the Demon Abyss and Qiankun connected—where rules were chaotic—he evolved a formation from that chaos, igniting demonic flames within it.
The southeastern corner of Qiankun was dyed into a sea of fire that could overturn the heavens.
Qiankun’s rain could not extinguish the raging demonic blaze; cultivators’ blood fell together with the rain.
The sword that cleaved out from Qiyun Peak had been more dazzling than the world could imagine.
Amid the boundless crimson glow, heaven and earth became a blazing furnace.
Sword light like a bolt of snowy lightning shot in, as though splitting creation itself, cleaving open the eerie blood-red and revealing, in Qiankun’s night, the pure light of stars.
That sword cleaved all the way to the Demon Lord, Fang Fuge.
The formation Fang Fuge had laid over fifteen hundred years shattered because of it.
Only then did Qiankun’s cultivators finally break free of the constraints, and the brutal tide of battle began to turn.
That sword truly changed the war, but not as effortlessly as people imagined.
At that time, Shuang Wenlü still bore wounds.
“You force yourself to strike like this—do you wish to enter reincarnation once more?” Fang Fuge leaned amid a swath of brilliant crimson flame-cloud, watching the Sword Immortal who had cleaved open the furnace of heaven and earth like a strip of snowy lightning.
Though his plan had been broken, he did not flare with rage.
Fang Fuge had chosen this moment to move because he had calculated everything.
Whether Shuang Wenlü struck or not, he had contingency plans.
Layer upon layer of demonic flames gathered into chains.
Each chain wound toward Shuang Wenlü and his sword.
The furnace of heaven and earth shattered—then regrouped into a smaller, tighter, hotter furnace, meant to refine that sword and refine that man.
Qiankun’s Dao had not yet grown into a flawless completeness either.
Those demonic flames gathered all the desires of the Demon Abyss' demons, and all the weaknesses they had pried from Qiankun’s cultivators.
Shuang Wenlü cultivated the Dao of Qiankun as well.
Fang Fuge did not believe his Dao heart had no flaws.
For Shuang Wenlü, striking that sword had already been an exertion.
Otherwise, his sword would not have leaked its force and shaved off an entire mountain top.
Inside and out, he seemed to have no path to escape.
Yet Shuang Wenlü, who had forced out that sword, remained calm.
A swordsman, whether steady or not, will always carry a certain lonely, absolute quality when there is no road behind him—the conviction of staking everything to carve a path through despair.
But Shuang Wenlü showed no such quality. What other means did he still have?
“I have no other means,” Shuang Wenlü said, as though he had seen through the Demon Lord’s veiled thoughts with ease.
“But I know where your flaw lies.”
His sword was being melted by demonic flames, yet in his eyes shone the sharpest sword light in the world.
No one knew what occurred within the Demon Lord’s furnace.
People only saw that deadland forged from surging demonic flames explode apart.
The stars trembled, and snow-bright sword light, carrying countless sparks of flame, fell like a vast rain of fire, plunging all the way into the depths of the Demon Abyss.
Twelve hundred years later, that sword light once again skimmed through a storm, crossed the blood-stained Red Sand Sea, and entered the Demon Abyss.
The Demon Abyss had no rain.
Its rules were completely different from Qiankun’s.
There were no sun, moon, or stars, no spring, summer, autumn, or winter.
The sky roiled in dim darkness like cloud layers, and between those clouds were ceaseless dark-violet lightning bolts. Their light illuminated the Demon Abyss.
All desires, all emotions, all chaos rubbed and collided—this was the Demon Abyss' power.
The rules of the Demon Abyss suppressed all existence that differed from its own rules, just as they had suppressed that sword light which fell with a skyful of fire-rain twelve hundred years ago.
But this time, the sword light that cleaved into the Demon Abyss seemed to carry the biting chill of wind and rain from outside.
It cut through the sweltering sky and brazenly severed bolt after bolt of lightning.
The razor edge it left behind prevented the sky from healing for a long time afterward.
In the hot, chaotic Demon Abyss, it carved out a single thread of clear, cold wind and rain.
Twelve hundred years was not so short a span, yet neither was it long enough for every demon who had witnessed that storm to have been ground to dust by time.
The chilling sword light stirred deep fear and unease in many demonic hearts.
Some ignorant juniors even leapt up, trying to chase the sword light and see which Qiankun cultivator was so arrogant as to charge into the Demon Abyss with such blatant swagger!
Yet when the many demons roused by it pursued that sword light, they lost its trace at the end of that razor edge.
Only a single line of cutting intent remained, suspended in the air, mercilessly cleaving apart anything that dared draw near.
Luo Mi could not be bothered with those eager juniors.
He returned to his Cuoya City.
In Qiankun, there was the Sword Pavilion as a wall to block the Demon Abyss.
Within the Demon Abyss, there were naturally similar arrangements.
Cuoya City was the Demon Abyss' defensive wall.
At the boundary where the Red Sand Sea met the Demon Abyss, the most conspicuous sight was a cleft canyon.
This canyon first showed its trace at the edge of the Red Sand Sea and extended straight into the depths of the Demon Abyss, splitting deeper and deeper like a wound in the earth, with no telling where it ended.
Cuoya City was ferocious and imposing.
Rough, dense red stone rose from the earth like interlocking beast teeth.
It stretched to the cleft canyon, then continued interlocking downward into the lightless depths of the ground.
Only the dark-violet lightning patterns with sharp-angled turns upon the red rock cast a faint glow.
Cuoya City looked intimidating, grim and majestic, yet if one lifted one’s gaze higher, it resembled a pitiful seam stitched across the wound in the earth.
Luo Mi’s thoughts were in turmoil. Instead of returning to his city lord’s manor, he wandered the streets.
As the lord of Cuoya City, guarding the Demon Abyss' border, Luo Mi’s strength was beyond question.
Among the Demon Abyss' eighty-one Demon Generals, he was in the highest tier.
Countless demons envied his power and position, yet being the lord of Cuoya City was truly dull.
If neither could keep the enemy out, what difference was there between a rotten wooden door and a layer of pasted paper?
Sword Sovereign… Sword Sovereign!
Why had he come to the Demon Abyss?
Did he no longer care about the Demon Abyss' suppression? Did he intend to break the contract with the Demon Lord? Was he going to seek the Demon Lord—or was it because of… the recent disturbances?
Between layers upon layers of red rock were built demons’ dwellings and markets.
Demons loved fierce fighting and wild indulgence.
They trampled across the red stone, racing and shouting.
Their steaming desires were drawn away by the lightning patterns in the rock, feeding the entire city’s defenses—and feeding him, the lord of Cuoya City.
Such an environment was familiar and comfortable to Luo Mi.
He enjoyed that atmosphere where decadence and wild abandon fused into one, and it soothed him.
Yet at this moment, he suddenly felt as if lightning had lashed his heart with a whip.
A certain cold, dreadful sensation stabbed into him, making him lift his head at once.
Amid the scorching dark red ahead, a figure in white robes and black mantle stood like a sword, cleaving a thread of clear cold from chaos itself.
The Sword Sovereign?! When had he appeared there?
Shuang Wenlü stood on Cuoya City’s main street.
He did nothing at all—he simply stood there, watching this city within the Demon Abyss, watching these demons, so utterly different from Qiankun, in their food, clothing, words, and conduct.
Yet not a single demon had noticed him standing there, and not a single demon knew how long he had been there.
Luo Mi suddenly understood. It was not that Shuang Wenlü had appeared out of nowhere—rather, it was that he had only just now noticed Shuang Wenlü standing there.
The realization dried Luo Mi’s throat and chilled his heart even further.
His throat bobbed once. His expression did not change, yet beneath the concealment of his garments, demonic patterns crawled across his body, faintly resonating with the lightning patterns carved into the red rock fangs underfoot.
The city’s formation could be triggered in an instant.
“Why have you come here, Your Excellency?” Luo Mi asked.
Only then did Shuang Wenlü turn to glance at him.
The glance held no contempt, yet compared to the stillness of those eyes—deep as a black pool—Luo Mi’s demeanor looked far too tense.
Under that gaze, Luo Mi’s heart clenched.
He felt as though all his small movements, all his secrets, all his thoughts were laid bare within those eyes—like standing naked in a vast field of white snow, nowhere to hide, cold cutting to the bone.
“Heaven and earth have changed,” Shuang Wenlü said.
Luo Mi’s heart eased slightly.
As long as there was room to speak, it was better.
He feared most that Shuang Wenlü would draw his sword without a word. But before his heart could settle for more than a moment, Shuang Wenlü’s next words dragged it tight again.
“Some demons have obtained foreign fragments of rules, and so they wish to test my sword.”
Shuang Wenlü spoke neither too quickly nor too slowly, as though without emotion, ensuring every word could be heard clearly and remembered.
“I am very tired of dealing with them one by one, and I dislike even more that they disturb Qiankun.”
Alarms screamed in Luo Mi’s mind. His power surged, and lightning flared across the entire Cuoya City, linking into a formation in an instant.
Shuang Wenlü’s voice carried clearly through the thunderous roar.
“So I came to test a sword.”
Sword light erupted.
A line of cold white cleaved through the dense lightning. The sound of collapsing red rock fangs mingled with thunder’s bellow.
The formation that reached from sky to earth split as easily as a painting drawn upon a paper screen.
When the dust settled, Luo Mi had already revealed his true Heavenly Demon form. Ferocious iron armor covered him, demonic Qi swirling from head to toe.
He looked majestic and fearsome, yet standing amid the ruins, he was taut with terror, like a startled cat.
Half of the towering, grim Cuoya City had collapsed.
As for the Sword Sovereign in white robes and black mantle—after that single strike, he had already drifted away.