Day of Ascension

Xu Ying sensed a powerful obsession. It came borne on gusts of icy wind from an unknown source, twisting the spacetime of Taiyi Little Profound Heaven.

This obsession far surpassed the undying obsession of the flayed white-robed Exorcist Immortal. It even exceeded the obsession for resurrection held by the neither-dead-nor-alive people at Homeward Pavilion. It was second only to the obsession of those in the Abyss of Cangwu who clung to its sheer cliffs, desperately trying to climb out.

Within that obsession were resentment, hatred, the will to fight, madness, slaughter, reluctance to part, and a longing for life. Most of all, there was fear.

The obsession seemed to affect the curvature of spacetime, as if it had folded a certain stretch of the past into the present. Or perhaps it had folded the present into the past, drawing him into a particular period of history.

Could this be the great terror the Zhu clan’s old immortal spoke of?

Xu Ying observed a version of himself walking toward him. The scene before his eyes seemed both real and illusory, false in every way yet true in every sense.

That other self looked a few years older than he was now, in the prime of youth, around twenty. He strode out of the wind and sand, the hems of his clothes whipping and snapping in the storm behind him.

Xu Ying watched that travel-worn self come to his side and stop. Looking closely, he realized that the other self looked like him several years later. More mature and confident, his eyes dazzlingly bright. A sinister smile hung on his face, making him seem evil, powerful, and utterly arrogant.

This other self did not seem to see him. He paused only for a moment, then walked straight through him.

In that instant, Xu Ying’s perspective changed. His point of view shifted into that of his other self.

Xu Ying hastily looked up at the sky. Dazhong, who had been contending with the Heavenly Dao’s lingering might, had vanished. Even the Heavenly Dao’s divine radiance that had filled the sky was gone.

Has the great terror truly arrived?

A chill ran through Xu Ying’s heart. He hurriedly called out to Yuanqi, but the snake was also gone. He wasn’t on Xu Ying’s shoulder, hidden within his collar, or in his ethereal void.

Xu Ying’s heart sank. It seemed as though Yuanqi and Dazhong never existed at all. Even his memories of them blurred for a moment. Everything he had experienced seemed suddenly unreal, like a dream he had mistaken for reality.

He was a fiend who defied the Heavenly Path, shattered it, and destroyed everything in his path. He loved slaughter, loved destruction, and was consumed by the desire to ruin all things.

Xu Ying shook his head. He felt as though he had remembered something, yet somehow, nothing at all.

Had he really been nothing but a force of ruin and destruction back then?

No! I haven’t returned to the past, nor has the past folded into the present!

Xu Ying thought carefully, then came to a sudden realization and whispered, “I’m not filled with that kind of lust for ruin and destruction either. All of this is only the obsession of Taiyi Little Profound Heaven at work. Its obsession has affected reality, making me believe I’ve returned to the past!”

He looked around. Taiyi Little Profound Heaven was a relay station on the Heavenly Path. Too many powerful beings had died here in the war to slay the fiend.

These mighty beings had been the strongest warriors from the myriad realms. Every one of them was an Ascension Stage Qi Cultivator who had undergone a brutal selection process before earning the right to represent their respective heavenly domains in battle.

Summoned by the Heavenly Dao, they had fought to protect the myriad realms. Here, they had confronted the fiend and died in battle. ℯ

The obsession of the strongest Qi Cultivators of the myriad realms fused with Taiyi Little Profound Heaven, becoming its own obsession. Whenever a certain time comes, that obsession erupts!

There is no such evil in my heart. I do not possess this desire for ruin and destruction. It was the warriors who died here who believed that I did. Their obsessions preserved that belief.

So when their obsession fused with Little Profound Heaven and recreated the scene from that era, I became the version of myself that existed within their collective memory: the fiend they believed me to be.

It isn’t the real me.

No sooner had this thought occurred to Xu Ying than the desert churned. One towering skeleton after another rose from the sands.

As those skeletons stood, the great desert rapidly receded. Verdant greenery from the distant past spread across the sands, transforming into mountains and rivers, with long streams winding through the land.

In the blink of an eye, birdsong filled the air and flowers bloomed everywhere. The barren desert became a pure land resembling the Immortal Realm. Fragments of enormous artifacts flew backward through the air. Piece by piece, the shattered treasures reassembled, restoring themselves to their former glory.

They were supreme treasures of unimaginable power. Inscribed upon their surfaces were the Dao principles comprehended by the powerful beings of the various heavenly domains. Their inner mantras and Great Dao had been engraved into their very bodies.

Every supreme treasure here possessed power capable of contending with Dazhong.

Flesh and blood also grew over those towering skeletons, reviving them. The restored artifacts flew back to their sides.

The revived warriors rapidly retreated. In the depths of the desert, those shattered ethereal voids also swiftly returned, falling into place behind them as though time were flowing backward.

They withdrew to the moment Stone City appeared. One powerful warrior after another walked out of Stone City and arrived at this relay station on the road to ascension.

Their eyes shone brightly. Smiles adorned their faces, and each of them radiated absolute confidence.

They were the strongest warriors of their respective realms. They had superior numbers, overwhelming momentum, ample preparation, and Heavenly Dao Divine Artifacts backing them. They could not possibly lose!

Xu Ying looked at these living, breathing people. The obsession of these powerful Qi Cultivators had influenced his thoughts and consciousness, dragging him into this scene before him. It felt real, yet false. Neither completely real nor entirely illusory.

He thought, So the Great Terror was born from the obsession they carried with them into death.

Suddenly, the gazes of the Qi Cultivators who had walked out of the stone city turned toward him in unison. His heart tightened. A man condemned by a thousand accusing fingers could die without ever falling ill. And these were Ascension Stage Qi Cultivators, the strongest warriors selected from the myriad realms.

“Fiend!” said a woman as beautiful as an immortal in a low voice, hatred in her eyes.

A giant ax came hurtling through the air, filled with an overwhelming murderous aura, cleaving down at Xu Ying’s head!

That murderous aura surged and battered him, throwing Xu Ying’s divine sense into chaos until only fear remained in his heart. “I can’t block a treasure of this level... I absolutely can’t block it! I’m only a minor Qi Cultivator at the Transmutation Stage. There’s no way—”

He saw himself raise his palm. Just as the giant ax was about to strike his head, his fingers closed around its blade. He caught it; the ax stopped dead in midair.

The power within the giant ax erupted. With a hiss, it tore through space, opening a chasm that stretched both before and behind Xu Ying. The earth split apart, forming a massive rift several li deep and more than a hundred li long.

Yet beneath his feet, the ground remained as smooth and level as before, without the slightest change.

Xu Ying felt a smile appear on his face and heard himself speak.

But no one could hear him clearly. Naturally, their obsession had not preserved his voice within this stretch of heaven and earth.

What answered him instead was the roar of thousands upon thousands of great treasures rising into the air, drowning out his voice.

Xu Ying sensed the primordial qi in his body circulating at high speed. His fingers tightened; with a crack, the giant ax exploded.

Instead of retreating, he advanced, facing thousands of great treasures head-on. His sleeve swept through the air, and his palm struck a pagoda.

He seemed to be shouting something in anger.

The pagoda could not withstand his power and was smashed in half, but the other great treasures erupted, engulfing him.

Xu Ying saw himself unleash all manner of profound movement arts and divine abilities as naturally as breathing. He confronted thousands of supreme treasures head-on, moving through attacks capable of destroying heaven and earth.

It was a strength he had never possessed before. He withstood the assaults of all the great treasures head-on, shattered seemingly invincible attacks in the span of a breath, and smashed one great treasure after another into two pieces.

Those great treasures and weapons were powerful enough to suppress an entire era, one heavenly domain after another. Yet when they struck Xu Ying, they could not harm him in the slightest.

Then the might of the Heavenly Dao flared. Hidden among the great treasures was a Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact. It had concealed its power, revealing its true might only when it drew within striking distance.

The artifact wounded him.

The other Heavenly Dao Divine Artifacts erupted at the same time, tearing open more wounds on him and forcing him to retreat.

The strongest Qi Cultivators of the myriad realms grew excited. Each summoned an artifact of their own and charged into close combat, their battle cries shaking heaven and earth.

“For the living beings of the myriad realms!”

“For the Heavenly Dao!”

“Slay the fiend!”

Their fighting spirit surged as they attacked Xu Ying with fearless ferocity.

Under their assault, Xu Ying repeatedly retreated. He also had to guard against the hidden strikes of the Heavenly Dao Divine Artifacts, while other powerful enemies hid among the Qi Cultivators and wounded him time and again.

The killing intent in his heart grew increasingly difficult to suppress. The next moment, he saw his finger pierce through a woman’s forehead.

The back of the woman’s head burst open. Yet, her Primordial Spirit emerged on its own and continued attacking him. She seemed utterly indifferent to the possibility that her Primordial Spirit might be scattered into oblivion.

Xu Ying swept his sleeve, drawing the woman’s Primordial Spirit into it. Within his sleeve, water and fire refined together, reducing her Primordial Spirit to ash.

He could no longer suppress his killing intent. In the next instant, he tore the head off an elderly Qi Cultivator.

He broke a long saber in half with one hand, caught the broken blade between his fingers, and slashed it across its owner’s throat.

He let out a great shout that shook the Primordial Spirits of the surrounding experts until they wavered. His own Primordial Spirit raised its weapons as offerings and blasted those experts’ Primordial Spirits to death.

Covered in blood, he traded palm strikes with a great Qi Cultivator whose vital energy boiled and whose cultivation had reached the peak of the Ascension Stage, crushing the man’s physical body to pieces.

He dragged a heavenly god hidden among the crowd out into the open, ignored the others closing in around him, and fought him in close combat, cutting off his head.

With more than ten successive heavy blows, he shattered a Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact. Xu Ying caught a fragment and drove it straight into the forehead of another expert who had tried to ambush him.

His eyes had turned crimson with slaughter. One divine ability after another shattered beneath his hands. Around him, severed limbs piled into mountains.

The battle between him and the experts of the myriad realms nearly destroyed this immortal realm.

Hundreds of mighty beings from the myriad realms summoned the immortal palace and brought it crashing down from above. More than a dozen experts surrounding Xu Ying were crushed into pieces beneath it. Yet Xu Ying shot into the sky under that suppression and shattered half of the immortal palace with his blows.

Even upon the path of ascension, an immortal palace refined by the immortals themselves could not halt the fiend’s slaughter.

Xu Ying killed his way into the immortal palace and cut down hundreds of experts. He hung the heads of many Qi Cultivators on the palace gates. He beat others to death against the walls, smearing them with blood. Some corpses were thrown into wells. Others were buried beneath the ruins.

Those who attempted to flee were pursued beyond the heavens and slain beneath the vast starry sky, their corpses left drifting among the stars.

Then many Qi Cultivators summoned the immortal Dao spiritual root of Taiyi Little Profound Heaven. The enormous Yin-Yang Vine erupted with boundless power and swept toward him, coiling around him.

Hundreds of Qi Cultivators gathered their true primordial, mobilized their Primordial Spirits, and drove the treasure with all their might.

Xu Ying’s Primordial Spirit flew out and began refining the treasure from his side as well, battling those hundreds of Qi Cultivators for control of the Yin-Yang Vine. In the end, he seized the Yin Vine.

Each side controlled one vine and fought a bloody battle for control of the treasure. Under the strain of their battle, the Yin-Yang Vine repeatedly snapped apart. No one knew how many people were whipped to death. Fragments of the shattered spiritual root flew in every direction, scattering from the battlefield.

Many Qi Cultivators seized those broken spiritual roots and consumed them, pushing their cultivation and strength to the limit as they fought him with their lives on the line.

Yet even then, they could not kill him.

Behind Xu Ying, they saw his grotto heavens, brilliant beyond compare, their existence twisting and distorting space and time. Beyond those grotto heavens, the six great Other Shore worlds were faintly visible.

This was an unequal battle. What they faced was no longer human; it was something far beyond their understanding.

At last, the slaughter reached its climax.

Three hundred supreme Qi Cultivators surrounded Xu Yin; they shouted in unison and drew down a heavenly tribulation. Its vast might descended from the sky as they tried to drag him down with them.

Xu Ying pushed the six secrets of the human body to their limit, killing thirty-three people in an instant. Then he raised one hand to the sky and met the heavenly tribulation head-on.

Behind the heavenly tribulation, drums thundered in the Heavenly Dao World. Heavenly gods were sending tribulation down upon him from across the boundary between worlds.

This heavenly tribulation was a trap, a killing move aimed at him. The gods of the Heavenly Dao World had activated a Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact to destroy him.

Even if Xu Ying survived this heavenly tribulation, he would still face the siege of two hundred sixty-seven immortals. Yet he survived that great calamity and slew all those immortals.

The scene was so dreadful, so terrifying, that it had been branded into the obsession of Taiyi Little Profound Heaven.

In the final scene, the few surviving warriors stared in horror at Xu Ying. He was drenched in blood as he slowly walked toward them. Among them was Tianqingzi, whose Dao heart had been shattered by the killing.

Then heaven and earth shook violently. The mountains of corpses and sea of blood receded, and the yellow-sand desert once more came into view.

Having erupted, the obsession of this world finally subsided, and Taiyi Little Profound Heaven returned to the present world.

This must have been the battle as seen through the eyes of the strongest warriors of the myriad realms, right?

Xu Ying thought, In their eyes, was I really that evil and terrifying...

“Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

A shrill cry came from the distance. Xu Ying followed the sound and saw several Exorcist Masters who had gone mad. They had failed to return to Stone City and leave this place, and their cries were utterly miserable.

“Don’t come any closer!” one Exorcist Master of the Guo clan shouted at Xu Ying, his face twisted with terror and despair.

Xu Ying stopped. From farther away, he heard someone laughing wildly and shouting, “Kill!”

He walked toward the sound and saw a Qi Cultivator from the Yuanding Realm. The man had already cultivated a Primordial Spirit, but terror had driven him mad. He had killed more than a dozen of his own clansmen, and when he looked at Xu Ying, his eyes shone with murderous light.

“Fiend!” He threw himself at Xu Ying and, in his frenzy, unleashed his strongest divine ability.

Without thinking, Xu Ying met him with a casual palm seal. The primordial qi within his body began circulating in an unfathomable pattern, linking to his six secret grotto heavens.

His palm seal tore through the Qi Cultivator’s divine ability as effortlessly as if it were rotten wood, then struck the man in the chest. His ribs cracked and broke, and the clothes on his back burst apart.

Acting on instinct, Xu Ying swept his five fingers through the air and tapped the Primordial Spirit rushing toward him, separating it from the Divine Soul.

Although what he had just experienced was merely an obsession born from the deaths of the mighty beings of the myriad realms, one that had distorted the present world, it seemed to have unknowingly affected some of Xu Ying’s memories.

Xu Ying stood there in a daze. Some of his combat memories seemed to be slowly awakening.

The Qi Cultivator’s life force had been severed. Kneeling on the ground, he stretched out all four arms and clutched Xu Ying’s lapels in a death grip, refusing to let go. His eyes brimmed with resentment and the obsession of one unwilling to die.

“You’re that great terror...” He breathed his last, collapsed with a thud, and died.