Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way

No cultivator could remain in their peak state all the time. And when they were in a weakened state, they were often worse off than even an ordinary human.

Take Gu Suihan, for example. He was a powerful cultivator who had reached the Immortal stage, but when he first arrived in the Lower World, he had to conceal all of that and hide among ordinary humans for more than ten years. He had to house his severely injured spirit inside another person’s body without exposing even the slightest aura.

As for entering the Seven Kill Sect, that was just an opportunity that happened to come by. Even if he hadn’t done that, he would still have been able to get rid of the physical body he had taken over after swallowing the spirit of Qingming and forming his own body.

And now, these Nascent Change cultivators were in a much better state than how Gu Suihan was when he first arrived. The former was just exhausted of energy, while the latter had his vitals injured, so it was supposed to take him a few centuries to fully recover from that.

So…why were they having trouble fighting back?

Even though they were exhausted and drained of any internal energy in their bodies, qi was all around them. Furthermore, the qi around them was incredibly concentrated because of the altar. But they didn’t dare to absorb any of the qi around them and could only rely on consuming pills to restore their internal energy levels.

And they did that because…the barrier looked like it might break anytime, so they really couldn’t bear to give up their earlier efforts.

Just when they were struggling to decide if they ought to give up and kill Gu Suihan and his companions first, Xia Yun suddenly spoke up, “Everyone, I’m also a saintess of the Equal Spirit Order. We were just getting rid of the traitors within the Order, and we will not kill the innocent.”

With that, she kicked Rou Lingyun’s body aside and walked toward the altar. She started making hand seals, and the aura that the altar emanated became more than twice as powerful as before.

“What the hell…” Everyone cursed inwardly at her. The ones who had died were all cultivators who had been born and bred in Fengyang and had nothing to do with the Equal Spirit Order. How could they be traitors?

But none of them said any of this out loud. They merely exchanged glances and remained silent.

After all, they weren’t the ones who died. Besides, the ones with her had also stopped their attacks, so it showed that she was speaking the truth.

“Old man Li, you’re the last one!” Gu Suihan looked at the old man greedily as though there were fiery flames blazing in his eyes. A saber whooshed out from the sea of blood and flew toward old man Li in a brazen attempt to kill him.

“Why…” roared old man Li furiously. He howled loudly, and his actual body emerged. A bright flash filled the sky, and a beastly roar resonated as a demonic fox measuring nearly a hundred meters suddenly appeared before everyone. His five white tails wavered slightly, and the blood stripes on his body were like blazing flames that were too blinding for one to look directly at them.

The thick amounts of demonic qi turned into an actual mist around his body, which made the internal energy within the humans pale in comparison.

“You’re a demon, alright! A powerful one too, a descendant of the nine-tailed heavenly foxes. Even though you don’t hail from one of the main nine lines, your bloodline is still a fairly valuable one,” said Gu Suihan with a frosty smile. He thrust the saber forward, and the black layer of fiendish and violent qi around the blade intensified, bringing it down on old man Li suddenly as the terrible stench of blood filled the air.

“Stop right there!” a clear but angry feminine shout echoed just before he could bring the blade down.

Gu Suihan heard her, but he merely chuckled and brought the saber down anyway. It left a silvery glow in its wake, the blade gleaming threateningly in the light.

Just then, a curved sword reflected the blinding light like a clear spring, colliding with the saber with a loud clang.

“I said, stop right there!” Xia Yun’s angry voice echoed once more.

“You’re asking to get killed.” Gu Suihan narrowed his eyes, but it wasn’t enough to cover the bloodthirstiness that seemed to shoot out from them. To her horror, he thrust his saber toward her without hesitation.

“You…” Xia Yun’s face paled and she instinctively held her curved sword in front of herself. Before she could say anything, Gu Suihan pointed a finger at the area between her brows. “Anyone who gets in my way shall die.”

“My fellow cultivator, I do think you’ve gone a little too far.” Tang Xiaoyun covered a few hundred meters in a second and stood in between Xia Yun and Gu Suihan and uttered these words as he stared straight at Gu Suihan. His words seemed to be hinting at something else.

He wasn’t the only one who had rushed over. Even Chamu was slightly to Gu Suihan’s left and was also somewhat in the way. It was obvious whose side he was on.

In that instant, the alliance between the group fell apart.

Chamu and the other men didn’t want Gu Suihan to kill old man Li because they were afraid that the Nascent Change cultivators would feel threatened and choose to fight back.

Xia Yun, on the other hand, felt that old man Li was still useful to her. For example, she could blackmail him with Rou Lingyun.

That’s right. Rou Lingyun wasn’t actually dead yet. Xia Yun had a better plan in mind, so she had merely injured Rou Lingyun’s physical body beyond saving, then extracted her soul and trapped it instead of letting it vanish.

“Excellent, excellent!” cackled Gu Suihan. The fiendish qi around him grew thicker and more concentrated while huge waves leaped up from the sea of blood, slowly gathering around him and turning into a whirlpool that grew bigger and bigger.

Just when Chamu and the rest thought that Gu Suihan would come to his senses and retreat.

All of a sudden, an incredible pressure that seemed able to crush the earth and destroy the heavens burst forth from him. That was a pressure that was so great, it was as though it came from a being that was above all living creatures and looked down at them in disdain.

“That’s…his spiritual sense?” One of the Nascent Change cultivators was as white as a sheet and he was shaking all over. Terror was written all over his face.

What was spiritual sense? It had similar capabilities to what one’s qi could sense after one became a cultivator, but the difference lay in the essence. The former was like someone who was a billionaire, while the latter was like someone who also had money in the bank, but was barely getting by.

“Bingo! Too bad you don’t get any prizes!” Gu Suihan let out a snort, and with one thought, the heads of a number of cultivators were shattered. Their nascent souls were all absorbed by Gu Suihan even as they shrieked in terror.

“You…you…” Xia Yun kept a smug look on her face, but the terrified look in her eyes spoke volumes.

“Equal Spirit Order? What’s that even?” said Gu Suihan disdainfully as his lips curled upward slightly. He could foresee what she wanted to say.

Immediately after he uttered those words, the members who were once allied with him turned into nothing but minced meat with a loud bam before they could even react.

“Just ants, you said,” said Gu Suihan with a sinister smile on his face as he looked at the rest around him. He brandished his saber, filling the air with fiendish qi. The bloody waves of the sea of blood churned and his qi attacked the cultivators like they were swords. Several more died in an instant.

“Damn it! Kill him!” yelled one of them furiously. He raised a long sword that glinted brightly as he pounced at Gu Suihan with a crazed look on his face.

“We’ll die either way, so in comparison, we’ve got a better chance at killing this fellow. He’s probably a high-level cultivator who’s had to restart his cultivation journey and he’s now only at Origin Core, so that’s nothing to us. We still stand a chance!”

The remaining dozen or so cultivators quickly realized the situation they were in and cut off their connection with the altar. Brilliant sparks flew as they started casting spells. Internal energy gathered and turned into frightening lines of runes for executing god-level techniques and flooded the area where Gu Suihan was.

“You guys shouldn’t have let me gobble up so many nascent souls earlier,” Gu Suihan’s menacing voice suddenly resounded. He became one with the sea of blood, making the waves rise by a thousand meters, which quickly swallowed all the remains of all who had died. It was like a ferocious beast that had opened its mouth full of sharp teeth and came aggressively toward the cultivators.

“Nascent Change…is very simple, actually.” Gu Suihan chuckled to himself. All the qi around him seemed to have received the same command as they rushed into Gu Suihan’s body, including the pillar of light from the altar that had gotten dimmer over time.

He had finally digested all the energies he had consumed. The deep cracks on his spirit had been healed and the tiny, densely packed runes on it flowed slowly around it. If his heart-soul wasn’t so badly damaged, Gu Suihan would have reached the Immortal stage by now.

“You’ve put a stone down, so it’s my turn now!”

The sea of blood dissipated and the altar shattered. The pillar of light was long gone and the barrier around Fengyang was silent once more. Gu Suihan looked up into the sky, slowly took out a stone from his coat and pressed his palm down.

Qi gathered and the laws of nature altered such that a translucent Go board appeared in the air. One lonely white stone was right in the middle of the board. Gu Suihan slowly brought his black stone down and walked away. A maniacal smile spread across his lips. “We will meet someday!”

Immediately after he said that, the barrier in the sky suddenly shattered like it was made of glass, sparkling brightly before disappearing altogether.

“I, the emperor, await!”

Gu Suihan felt he could hear a burst of joyous laughter ringing in the distance…