V2C102

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Shi Ying simply lowered his head in silence and lifted his foot, taking another step forward. As he strode, the lightning in the clouds moved with him, once again descending from the sky and striking him in the back – yet this time, because he was prepared, he only staggered a little as he stepped on the blade, his knee resting against the sharp edge, without falling.

When the pain subsided, he braced himself, raised his hand to wipe away the blood that had seeped from the corner of his lips, and pushed forward. But as soon as the next step was taken, another thunderbolt descended!

Everyone at the bottom stared up in amazement, watching the white robe moving further and further away in the clouds, gradually fading behind the countless streaks of lightning, no longer in sight, and for a while there was a great deal of talk and sense of commotion.

“I never thought I would live to witness such a glorious sight!”

“Alas… It’s been over a hundred years since someone last set foot on this path, isn’t it?”

“I believe it was during the reign of Emperor Shan Chun. It is said that the Divine Priest fell in love with the daughter of a Clan King, and made up his mind to leave the priesthood and take this path in spite of everything.”

“Which Clan King’s daughter was so gifted?”

“Well… it seems to have been from the Red King’s house?”

“The Red King’s Palace? Those women from the Desert are demonic spirits!”

“But I don’t think our Great Priest would be after a woman this time for sure – you know he’s been cultivating in the Temple since he was five years old, he probably hasn’t seen many women in his life.”

“Then what is it for? Enduring so much torture would be like dying and coming back to life again and again!”

” Heaven knows…”

By the time he had reached thirty thousand steps, the chattering voices beneath his feet had already faded away and could no longer be heard. There was only the roar of thunder and lightning thumping in his ears, and in front of his eyes just a mountain of swords and a sea of fire, where spirits and ghosts were sneering and the demonic creatures were howling.

The path that leads to the clouds appeared to be so incredibly long that it had no end.

While Chongming spread its wings to fly towards the south, Zhu Yan could not help but keep her eyes turned towards the north.

Looking back, the clouds lingered on Meng Hua Peak, with countless lightnings weaving between them, and from so far away she could still hear the thunder falling with a startling bang, as dense as a heavy rain. As she was listening from afar, she felt a shiver run down through her body – had all those lightning bolts, all those thunderbolts… hit on her Master?

He… How is he doing now?

Her heart was burning with anxiety, so she quickly formed a seal with both hands interlocking them at the center of her forehead and instantly opened her celestial sight, swiftly penetrating with her vision into that patch of clouds and mist, trying to find the trace of the white dress.

However, upon opening her eyes, all she could see was a bright scarlet bloodstained robe!

“Master!” With just one glance, her heart broke and she cried out in disbelief – that… was Master? The man who was staggering around in the midst of the fire, covered in blood, was indeed her Master!

Master… How did Master become like this?

“Four-eyed bird… four-eyed bird!” She slapped Chongming’s neck recklessly and shouted sternly, “Get back… hurry up and bring me back there! Go to Meng Hua Peak!”

Chongming, while flying in the clouds, hearing these words, rolled up his eyes to look back at her but didn’t show any sign to change his direction – Chongming was an ancient Divine Bird and had been instructed by Shi Ying to send her back to the Red King’s Mansion, how could he be willing to listen to someone else’s instructions in the middle of the journey?

However, when Zhu Yan became so anxious that she nearly choked his neck in her attempt to force him to turn back, Chongming suddenly let out a long sigh and his huge snow-white wings unfolded into the wind, instantly making a great turn in the clouds, flying in the direction of Meng Hua Peak!

One step, followed by another. Treading across the ten thousand blades, Shi Ying finally emerged from the clouds and mist.

In his blurred vision he could already catch a glimpse of the top of Meng Hua Peak, glowing brightly in the sun like an invocation from the Other Shore. He counted silently, knowing that he had already taken 83,960 steps and was about to cross beyond the clouds of the Heavenly Thunder Refinement and enter the region of the Delusional Thoughts and Heart Temptations.

When he reached to this point, his white robe was completely bloodstained and not a single piece of skin on his entire body remained intact. When the last heavenly streak of lightning fell, he finally could not sustain it any longer and collapsed. The blade sliced into his body, piercing his ribs and jamming him against the cliff. However, because of being blocked in this way, he was lucky not to fall straight into the Ten Thousand Foot Abyss. He slumped against the cold blade, breathing sharply and staring silently into the depths beneath him.

There was a withered skeleton there, split open by the lightning, with only half of its body left, hanging by the edge of the cliff above the nest of the Wretched ones, with its cavernous dark holes looking upwards, as if to meet his gaze.

Anyone who could make it all the way up to more than eighty thousand steps should have been a Divine Priest with a high level of cultivation as he was, right? There were only a handful of them in the history of Yunhuang – what made that person take this path without hesitation? And what was it that was calling for him from beyond the ten thousand feet of red dust?

Maybe it was the other daughter of the Red King’s Clan from a hundred years ago that the attendants were talking about? Those women of the Red Clan really do have the power like a fire to make moths fly willingly by themselves into the flames…

When Shi Ying’s face plunged against the cold blade, he stared blankly at the withered bones for a moment, and his thoughts drifted out of control for a while, unable to distinguish between the past and the present.

In his hallucination, he even got the impression that the dead bones had suddenly transformed into a familiar face that smiled at him, innocent and bright as a rose in its first summer bloom.

“Ah-Yan…” he couldn’t help but murmur out of breath.

As soon as he uttered the two words, he clenched his teeth with a stiff grit. After a short pause, Shi Ying collected his mind and finally managed to slowly prop his arm against the blade, pulling his pierced body out of the blade bit by bit. Another bloodied hole was added to the divine robe.

From there on, the intervals between each of the steps ahead become enormous.

He took a deep breath, jumping from one blade into the next, vaulting high above the wall, ready to plunge into the abyss if he was not very careful. The Heavenly Lightning dispersed and turned into a thousand sharp swords hanging above his head, like dense stalactites that were ready to drop at the slightest tremor! He struggled to sustain his breathing, not allowing his sanity to wander away again as he carefully moved forward step by step.

This final section of the path was no longer just a physical torture like the previous one, but transformed into a catalyst for countless delusions of the mind and heart. Everyone who travels on it will see all sorts of visions and will be drawn to the darkest things within – exhausted, one wrong step and they will turn into dust.

He walked in solitude along this path, numbed by all the physical pain. Yet what was unfolding in front of his eyes, scene after scene, was an endless stream of illusions.

He caught a glimpse of his early childhood: the cold palace was dark, the food was rancid, and everyone’s faces were stark and glacial. His mother was lonely and desperate, and his father… his father was an empty canvas. It was just a silhouette of a tall-crowned man with long robes sitting distantly on a throne, having no memory of him, never coming close.

Then he saw his own adolescent years: the tiny ascetic boy in the deep valley, as lonely as his mother – growing up in complete solitude, contemplating alone, talking to the dead, gazing at the stars, the sun and the moon, passing long hours among countless ancient scrolls of secret incantations. His eyes were devoid of desire or brilliance.

One day, that young man sighted the patch of returning evil upon the Blue Sea, heralding the downfall of the Kongsang Kingdom and the turmoil of the Yunhuang, and made his best efforts to oust that last trace of Ocean Emperor’s bloodline.

Then, at that was resuming his entire life.

Yes, he lived a humble and simple life, born in loneliness and growing up in silence, like a black and white ink painting, perfect in its lack of substance. All these years he has been so strict, his words and actions so impeccable, that even in the realm of illusion he could not find the slightest shadow of his inner demons, so he must be able to walk through this final purgatory as if it were a smooth path, isn’t it so?

However, as he stepped forward, Shi Ying shook violently.

Having passed through so many black and white, cold memories, the illusions in front of him suddenly changed, becoming rich and colorful, as if flames were blazing right in front of his eyes!

There was a young girl dressed in red standing in the sea of fire, just gazing firmly at him, with a dancing light in her eyes, like stars, like embers, calling after him, “Master, you have come?”

Ah-Yan? He hesitated, his mind wavering for a moment.

“You, how dare you kill my beloved Yuan!” However, she turned pale in an instant and shouted at him, tears running down her face, while a sharp blade stabbed him right in the heart, “Damn you… I’ll kill you!”

Upon hearing these words, he fell suddenly into a trance and his heart ached.

“Ah-Yan… didn’t you say you had forgiven me?” In that moment, he actually forgot that he was in the illusionary realm of the Hell of Ten Thousand Tribulations and muttered, “You actually still hate me… don’t you? Then… you can come and kill me.”

He reached out in the midst of the illusion to touch the illusory shadow that floated in the void, completely ignoring the blade stabbing him in the heart, just like on that day all over again.

At this point in the journey, his body was already riddled by a thousand wounds and on the verge of collapse. Right now, all the dangerous elements were swarming around him! As soon as Shi Ying’s body moved, his feet stepped into the air and he fell straight down into the abyss. At the same time, a sharp blade suspended above his head moved in response, plunging directly towards his heavenly spirit!

“Master!” In that instant, someone jumped through the air and shouted.

Who is it? He looked up in dismay from his illusion and saw the shadow of the maiden in red descending from the sky – the figure that came out of the clouds and carried the light, in a flash overlapped with the shadow in his illusion that came stabbing with a sword.

Stunned in place, he allowed the long sword to plunge straight into his head, his mind going unexpectedly blank for a moment.

“Master! Watch out!” Disregarding the fact that he was high in the air, Zhu Yan jumped off from the back of Chongming and recklessly lunged over to hug him, dodging sideways in the direction of the stone wall – with a swish sound, the sharp blade overhead grazed against her cheek and fell, shattering into a thousand pieces deep into the abyss.

In the next instant, the mirage in front of him vanished, while the figure beside him became clear.

“You…” he turned his head, struggling to look at the person beside him, and murmured, “Ah-Yan?”

The young girl descended from the sky and embraced him amidst a sea of swords and fire. Fear and concern were covering her bright face as she looked at him from just a few inches away, her whole body was trembling slightly and her breath was coming in sharply.

He fell into a steep trance again, surprisingly unable to tell whether it was reality or illusion.

“Master… you, you… what happened to you? Didn’t you see the sword that fell from above your head just now? Such a big sword!” Zhu Yan leaned against the stone wall, only to become pale in terror, clutching his sleeve, “You almost fell down, you know? What’s happening to you, what is going on here…”

She couldn’t continue, staring at him covered in blood, she couldn’t help bursting into tears.

“…” Shi Ying propped himself up and breathed deeply, doing his best to gather his sanity back together, finally seeing the young girl beside him clearly, and his body swayed abruptly.

This was the real person! This was not an illusion!

What? Ah-Yan… she actually came back? Didn’t he told her not to come? Why did she come back? She wanted to see him walk into the hell of all hells so badly and never make it back alive?

In that moment, a sudden and endless annoyance and anger seeped into his heart.

“Who told you to come here?” Shi Ying struggled to his feet and stumbled back a step, pushing her away, “Look what you’ve done!”

His tone had lost its usual calm demeanor, his eyes were distant, his face turned pale, and his white robe had long since been stained red with blood, like a lonely ghost emerging from a pool of blood and hell, with no trace of his former clarity and beauty.

“Master, is there something wrong with you?” Zhu Yan was naturally frightened when she saw him fuming, yet at the moment his appearance made her be even more frightened: “Just now you were struck by a demonic spirit, and that sword almost fell down and pierced you! Fortunately, I…”

“I don’t need you to save me! This is the path I wanted to take on my own!” Before the words were out of his mouth, Shi Ying’s eyes filled with rage, and with a snap of his fingers, he struck down the forest of swords hanging above his head!

Zhu Yan had no time to even utter a shout of surprise when another sharp blade descended from the sky, falling like a flash of lightning. She subconsciously wanted to rush forward and push him away, yet Shi Ying did not dodge but unexpectedly welcomed it with his body!

With a single thrust, the sword stabbed through his right shoulder and pierced his body diagonally!

“Master!” Her heart and soul split and she jumped forward in disbelief.

“Let go of your hand!” Shi Ying, on the contrary, did not hesitate to shake her hand away, pointing at the sword that ran through his body and snapping, “Do you see? That’s to make up for the sword earlier! This path is mine to take. What I have to bear, no one can bear it for me!”

He turned around and pointed to the invisible entrance of the path, with an icy tone in his voice: “Otherwise, I’d rather walk through it again from the very start myself!”

“…” Zhu Yan was too terrified to speak and hurriedly retracted her hand – Right now, her Master’s eyes were as dark and unforgiving as a deep black forest, with a determination and ruthlessness that she had never seen before. If she really dared to interfere again, he would most probably do what he said and walk the path all over again from the beginning.

“Go back.” Shi Ying spoke to her without raising his head, and his tone was chilling.

“No!” She stepped aside, almost with a sobbing voice, “I’m not going back.”

“Chongming!” Shi Ying raised his voice to summon the divine bird in the mid-air, “Take her back!”

However, a white speck of feathers swept through the clouds, and Chongming let out a grunt of unexplained meaning, but ignored him, and flew straight up into the clouds, leaving the two behind.

“Chongming!” Shi Ying was furious, yet he was extremely weakened at this moment and could do nothing about it, so he could only turn his head and sneer at her, “Well then, since you want to have a look, then watch!”

He turned his head, without looking at her any further, and set off by himself up the mountain of swords. The remaining ten thousand steps took him an entire day and night.

The slanting sun above the Meng Hua Peak sank and rose again, alternating between morning and evening. Covered in blood, he stumbled and staggered, exhausted, as he marched through the Hell where he could no longer see in front of him. In the end, having nothing more than a blurred vision, he could only grasp for the edge of the blade and climb inch by inch towards the place where the sun and moon rises.

All this time there was a vague sobbing sound following him from behind, not budging by an inch.

It’s been really annoying… obviously she has been told to go back to her parents, but she had to turn back halfway. Did she really wanted to see him in this bloodstained and wretched state? He didn’t want her to see him in this state… This little girl, how could she not understand?

Thinking in a trance, Shi Ying slowly walked step by step up to the Terrace of Forgetfulness – the steps, which were a few feet high, appeared to be like a heavenly rift at this moment, and each step was as difficult as climbing an impossible wall.

As he took the final step, all of his spiritual energy was on the verge of collapsing, and Shi Ying stumbled, falling to one knee on the Terrace of Forgetfulness, raising his hand trembling and pulling off the divine robe with a thousand cuts and holes covering his body. The divine robe had been completely turned scarlet with blood, sticking to the skin in a shocking mess.

He lifted his arms with all his might and offered the bloody robe on the High Altar, clasped his hands together and bowed deeply to the Divine statue with a long sigh of relief.

Yes, from this moment, he could finally say goodbye to the past!

After bowing, Shi Ying was just about to stand up when he felt a sudden blindness in front of his eyes, his entire body could no longer hold back and slumped forward, even his breathing being momentarily halted.

“Master …… Master!” He heard her dashing from behind and cry close to his ears. Why did she even follow him up to the Terrace of Forgetfulness? Quickly… hurry away! The five lightning punishments are about to come down next…

He tried to push her away, yet his arms and legs were no longer functioning properly. He opened his mouth to tell her that she had to leave immediately, but he could barely utter a sound – his vital energy was almost dissipated after his journey through the Hell of All Tribulations.

“Master! You, you must not die!” She was so frightened that she was crying her heart out, shaking his shoulders desperately, big tears falling in drops on his cheeks.

In that instant, the wind and clouds above their heads changed, and countless rays of light were gathering and swirling on the Terrace of Forgetfulness – this was the final blow of the Hell of Ten Thousand Tribulations: to shatter the Ocean of Qi with the Heavenly Lightning, destroying all the cultivation, so that the mastery of Jiuyi Temple could never be carried into the mortal world along with the sinner!

Just moments before the words were spoken, five thunderbolts struck the ground!

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