“My heart is getting more and more restless,” thought Gu Suihan as he quietly recuperated from his injuries. During the fight earlier, Gu Suihan seemed to have had the upper hand, but that wasn’t actually true. He knew his own injuries better than anybody else. His meridians had shattered, and the innumerable cracks all over his bones were a terrifying sight to behold. He looked like a ceramic vase that was about to shatter. On top of that, even the refined blood he stored in his body was completely emptied.
A breeze could break Gu Suihan right now. That was why he wanted Murong Yun to provide him with the resources she had to recover.
During the fight earlier, he had thrust a cursed seal onto the woman in the compass and activated it, so it would probably take her several months of effort to get rid of it. But the elder who attacked him, the fake Immortal cultivator, would probably heal up after resting for two days. For now, Gu Suihan wasn’t powerful enough to pose a threat to the elder. The elder was very wary of Gu Suihan only because Gu Suihan was capable of mysterious moves.
If he ended up angering Gu Suihan and lose years of his years fighting the young man or pushing Gu Suihan so hard that he ended up cursing the entire clan, what was he going to do then? He couldn’t bear the karma of doing that. Not everyone was like Gu Suihan, a man who wasn’t afraid of retribution and didn’t even believe in it in the first place.
“These…these are not dao runes!”
Gu Suihan took a look inside himself and quickly noticed that the strange and sparkly lines on his bones that were becoming more and more obvious were actually giving off a faint air of demonic qi.
“These….these are ancient…ancient demonic script!”
Gu Suihan took a closer look. A few moments later, he finally saw what those lines actually were and what they said. The meaning of those words… was almost the same as the words on that hide.
“Damn, it!! I knew it! There’s no such thing in the world as an opportunity that was left behind by chance! This is actually a trap!”
Gu Suihan’s thoughts started turning quickly, and he turned to his spirit next, only to find that just as he had expected, his nascent soul and spirit that had fully recovered had tiny wisps of demonic script inscribed in between the dense dao runes on it. The difference was that these wisps were pretty tiny and almost unnoticeable.
The truth of the matter was very clear now. He had walked into a trap. He had walked into the trap set up by the person who wrote those words on the hide. He had escaped from Earth and entered the void without a physical body, so he had no choice but to use the hide to cover his weak spirit that was on the verge of falling apart.
He thought that the hide had been slowly weathered by the winds in the void and disappeared as a result. But what actually happened was that it had merely quietly abandoned the hide and seeped into his spirit instead.
On top of that, after Gu Suihan first entered the Lower World and found a suitable body, he entered the Seven Kill sect. He cultivated in the Extreme Ra-Asu Breach technique, so he ended up covering himself in some fiendish yin qi that demons and devils had. After that, he also stayed inside the Devil Abyss for such a long time, which had given all these little things the chance to develop in any way they liked.
And now, it had actually spread all over his bones and was ready to attack his heart-soul next.
Even so, Gu Suihan only had a nasty look on his face but did not panic. He knew that the script wasn’t taking over his body or anything like that. No matter how fucking amazing you were, or how legendary you once were, or how you were powerful enough to rule the world, after such a long time, its consciousness must have fallen apart, and its hun and po no longer existed.
Immortality was a word that motivated countless cultivators to keep going. But if you looked at the basis for it, you would realize that this isn’t possible at all.
Whether you’re an immortal, a demon, a god, a Buddha – it’s the same.
Nobody can live forever.
Longevity is attainable, immortality a mere dream.
Those were the seven words that his own shifu had warned him with when he had first started cultivating.
For example, the highly respected Buddha had to go through reincarnation and restart their cultivation journey. But once you take into account your understanding of karma and you go through your past, present and future lives, are you still the same person?
The answer is obvious.
It was the same for the immortal race. One might not have realized, but so many real immortals from ancient times reincarnated in the Lower World. After they spent a lot of effort cultivating and comprehending the laws of nature, their minds and personalities were no longer the same as before. They were like a different person.
Of course, if you looked at it from a different way, you could somewhat consider it one way of gaining immortality. But this method came with a lot of after-effects and couldn’t be used for long.
The intention of the hide was very simple. It wanted to slowly but surely transform Gu Suihan into a demon. A perfect demon with the desires of humans, the body of a demon, and both the heart for the Way and a spiritual root.
The demonic race had a body more powerful than any other. They were capable of capturing the sun, moon, and stars, or anything seemingly impossible like that.
The heart for the Way was something that any cultivator of any race would have. It was an obsession they each had.
Human desires, as the name suggested, refer to one’s emotions and desires. Humans went through worldly desires and had to get through disaster and affliction.
Spiritual roots were basically the weaker version of an immortal root. It was something that human cultivators had to possess before becoming a cultivator.
“But even so, I’m still puzzled. How were you so sure that…the person who would get hold of this thing would turn out to be a human?”
As Gu Suihan’s heart slowly settled again, there was a spark in his brain as he thought through everything once more and instantly found several loopholes.
“Perhaps…maybe it doesn’t have to be a human. But even if a barbarian or a demon got ahold of it and somehow found a way to decode the message on it, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. After all, not everyone meets the same fate as Gu Suihan has.” Gu Suihan narrowed his eyes and looked distractedly at the complex pattern of the carpet on the floor as he murmured to himself, “Could it be that…you calculated this in advance. You were sure that I’d be the one who would get hold of this.”
This thought made him shudder. Every cultivator knew some divination technique or two. But he had never heard of anybody who could calculate thousands of years into the future.
Or perhaps he was just worrying too much.
He shook his head and rejected this explanation. He never believed in coincidence. Anything that looked like a coincidence was definitely secretly being planned and executed by a mastermind.
“If you’ve already schemed this ahead of time, then…you would have gone through some changes or revealed a few details.”
Gu Suihan gave up this meaningless guessing game and put these thoughts away. He glanced out of the ship, his gaze seemingly crossing millions of miles to look at that supreme emperor with an authoritative expression who could rule over the world with an iron fist.
“We’ve found You Hantian,” said Murong Yun softly as she held up a storage ring with an exhausted look on her face.
“Where is he?”
Gu Suihan took the ring from her and waved it about, pouring out more than a hundred bottles of pills. He swallowed everything at once like a whale swallowing water and slowly digested the copious amounts of internal energy they contained.
“He’s in the 39th domain.”
“Oh?” Gu Suihan paused, and a mysterious little smile spread across his lips. “Is this…a coincidence too?”
“Apparently, they have received a mission from the empire and have gone to the 39th domain for work,” added Murong Yun quickly as she stared unblinkingly at Gu Suihan, hoping to gather some clues from his expression.
“That’s going to be interesting. For work? Hoho,” chuckled Gu Suihan. The saber nearby trembled almost unnoticeable. Ink-colored fiendish qi flashed across the blade for just a second, then the saber stopped moving again.
“This mission doesn’t pay well at all. We’d be better off conquering new areas outside the empire,” grumbled Zhan Wuchang as he took a few unhappy swigs from his pot of wine.
“Gu Suihan…is coming,” said You Hantian quietly as he put the jade slip he had been fiddling with onto the center of the table.
“Who?” Zhou Lingfeng, who had been silent all this time, suddenly widened his eyes. A sword glow filled the air, and two beams of sword will illuminated the room.
“Gu…Sui…Han!” Great Elder Lu had a conflicted look on his face as his hand froze and suddenly and pulled out a couple of hairs from his long gray beard without him realizing.
“What…did he say?” Zhan Wuchang stammered as he stared at the jade slip on the table but did not reach for it. He looked extremely wary of it.
“He…wants to do something that he wasn’t able to get any results from the last time,” replied You Hantian reluctantly. He didn’t want to say it, but he had to.
Why? Because he himself wasn’t confident of facing the Gu Suihan of today. That young man was simply too mysterious and too wicked.
“Something he wasn’t able to get any results from the last time…” murmured Great Elder Lu for a moment before a thought seemed to hit him. He had a look of horror before turning to stare sternly at You Hantian.
“That’s right,” said You Hantian with a sad smile as he nodded back that the elder.
“That has nothing to do with us,” said Zhan Wuchang as he heartlessly breathed a sigh of relief. He had reached Nascent Change, but the higher in level he went, the more wary he became of Gu Suihan.
“We’re one unit now,” clarified You Hantian as he glanced meaningfully at Zhan Wuchang and ignored the other man’s angry expression.
“You’re…threatening me!”
Zhan Wuchang wasn’t the only livid one. Even Great Elder Lu’s expression had shifted.
“Besides, he was only at Origin Core or so back then. Even if he’s got a whole pile of trump cards, he can’t possibly have recuperated so quickly and returned to his prime in such a short amount of time,” said You Hantian quietly, disregarding the furious looks in the other two men’s eyes.
“Are you saying..” Zhou Lingfeng’s eyes glinted as he stared straight at You Hantian. “You want to attack him?”
“We need to make detailed plans!” said You Hantian without actually saying whether that was what he wanted to do or not.
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