Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal? Chapter 856.22: Seven Fragments of the Sutra
Previously on Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal?...
Chapter 856.22: Seven Fragments of the Sutra
Mountain gales roared fiercely, thunderclouds roiling with savage fury.
As their ascent continued, the peak winds turned bitterly colder.
The thunder booming above pressed down with ever-growing menace.
Chen Huaian dashed forward with remarkable speed on the next stretch of trail.
Zhang Yibai and Gu Changsheng trailed quietly after him.
Gazing at Chen Huaian's figure ahead, a hint of doubt and discomfort stirred in them.
The Chen Huaian they once knew appeared to be changing, akin to someone with lost memories slowly reclaiming their history. Old recollections blended with current ones, rendering him sometimes like a spirited youth, other times like a weary elder in his final days.
Step by step.
Chen Huaian's footsteps grew weightier.
Whenever they went by a palace or statue, another layer of aura converged on Chen Huaian.
This aura surged vast like the sea, lacking the keen edge of Chen Huaian's Sword Intent, but acting like a relentless hammer pounding directly at Chen Huaian's soul.
Bi Yue Wu stayed quiet too.
By now, he had pieced it together.
Sticking close to Chen Huaian without wandering off wildly meant the floating peaks here posed no threat to him.
But harboring hidden schemes, or displaying any hint of pride or irreverence, and the mysteries in these palaces turned deadly serious.
They could slay even an Immortal for real.
Each time Chen Huaian stepped into a palace, Bi Yue Wu just waited out front.
Waiting for Chen Huaian to halt still before a statue, bow deeply, and pull out a fragmented scripture.
Only then could they pass through that palace without issue.
He couldn't glimpse whatever halted Chen Huaian, nor behold the blood-and-flesh anthems of god-slaying tragedies.
The fifth floating peak.
As the palace doors swung open, a savage metallic killing intent slammed into their faces.
No deities or fiends stood enshrined in the hall. Instead, a colossal sword-forging furnace blazed eternally, as if fueled for millennia without end.
At the furnace's mouth, two stone figures clung fiercely together.
The man stood firm and unyielding, the woman elegant and stunning. They weren't crafting a blade but hurling themselves into the blaze.
Within the inferno's rage, they fused as one, you in me, me in you, impossible to tell if man shaped the sword or sword shaped the man.
Golden script hovered over the sword-forging furnace.
"Gan Jiang, Mo Ye…"
Chen Huaian paused, his brow furrowing as he murmured the pair's names.
Gan Jiang the swordsmith, Mo Ye his devoted wife.
The golden script twisted amid the furnace flames.
[The gods, the Supreme Being, are devoid of emotion, feeding on the essence of heaven and earth.]
[They cultivate the 'Path of Emotionlessness', viewing all things as mere straw dogs. Thus, their hearts are unburdened, indestructible like diamond.]
[The gods commanded us, husband and wife, to forge a 'vessel' capable of bearing divine power.]
[We two knew that mortal iron could not withstand divine majesty. The only method was the 'heart'.]
[The gods do not understand the heart. In their eyes, the seven emotions and six desires are mere burdens; love, hate, greed, and anger are but dust.]
[That night, the furnace fire reached its purest blue. The god descended. It opened its enormous maw, demanding that vessel.]
[Mo Ye smiled. She leaped into the furnace; I also smiled, and followed her.]
[With our twin souls united in an undying vow, we transformed into an obsession named 'Ultimate Emotion' and charged into the god's Sea of Consciousness.]
[The god devoured us.]
[Then… the god fell into chaos!]
[For the first time, it felt the pain of 'loss', the bitterness of 'unfulfilled desire', and felt… the 'fear' born from 'love'.]
[The god fell from the clouds, becoming a weeping, fearful, mortal… mad demon.]
[Those who come after, remember this: The god's heart is empty and silent.]
[Make the god fall into the mortal dust. Once a god knows fear, it gains a fatal weakness!]
Chen Huaian stared at the merged stone statues, falling silent for ages.
By offering their bodies as lure, they turned an invincible heavenly god into something like the Divine Immortals of the Immortal Realm—essentially just enhanced Cultivators.
Figures like Bi Yue Wu and Tu Fu Xing boiled down to unique Cultivators at heart.
Regular Cultivators wield True Essence; Immortals wield Immortal Essence. They merely operate on a superior plane.
Gan Jiang and Mo Ye's intent rang clear: slay a god by dragging its realm down to the mortal level.
Yet corrupting a god's heart with one's own and one's love… the cost proved staggeringly immense.
Chen Huaian knew he couldn't bear it.
If slaying the god proved impossible, better for Li Qingran to stay sealed in the Cangyun Realm, free from this world's karmic tangles forever.
Chen Huaian let out a heavy sigh, then bowed solemnly to the sword furnace.
From the statues' tight embrace, he carefully drew the fifth fragment of the torn scripture.
…
The sixth floating peak.
If Shi Kuang the musician's hall embodied the faint subtlety of true sound.
This spot captured the formless vastness of the great image.
Ancient seal script adorned the walls, yet all smeared vague, as though some force had viciously wiped them away.
A scholar's stone statue occupied the hall's center.
Lacking eyes, bereft of hands.
Just a maw of iron teeth clamping a worn brush, its nib buried deep into a blank stone tablet ahead.
The tablet once held a glyph, now clawed into illegibility by gore-streaked gashes.
[The Historian Who Broke Words — Cang Jie]
The golden script pulsed with utter destructive zeal.
[The gods are originally formless, drifting between existence and non-existence, hence deathless and indestructible.]
[To kill a god, first make it 'exist'.]
[I discarded my eyes to perceive its origin; I severed my hands to delineate its true form.]
[Give the god a 'name'.]
[The moment the name is inscribed, chaos collapses, and the god gains definition.]
[It is no longer the omnipotent Heavenly Dao; it is merely a beast named 'Heavenly God'!]
[Latercomer: Observe it, define it, clarify its form. The moment the god is 'seen clearly', it gains a fatal weakness. I condensed my life's learnings into a volume of torn scripture. If you can grasp some of its essence from it, you may stand a chance when facing that heavenly god. Alas, by the time this method was completed, my lamp was dry, my oil spent, and I knew not whether that formless, shapeless thing could truly be slain by my Dao…]
[If you didn't kill it… don't blame me! Hahaha!]
The golden script faded away.
Gazing once more at the tablet's smudged glyph, it sharpened into view.
Ten characters scarred the stone.
Double Pupils, Candle Dragon, Tian Wu, Ruins Corpse, Lord of Soldiers.
Pairs forming names, each followed by a fist-wide void.
The strokes raged with frenzy, like etched in delirious torment. Chen Huaian nearly envisioned Cang Jie gnashing the brush in his teeth, neck writhing, features twisted in agony as he gouged them in.
He must have suffered excruciating torment.
For even glancing at those characters shook the soul.
Chen Huaian bowed profoundly to the statue crouched before the tablet and claimed the torn scripture.
…
Upward they pressed, winds howling fiercer.
Upon reaching the seventh floating peak, a tyrannical imperial presence, crushing across endless ages, buckled Wang Shouyi and the rest's legs despite the sealed doors, almost forcing them to their knees.
Dark clouds loom over the fortress, poised to pulverize it.
Other peaks bore single palaces.
This resembled a fortress city.
They heaved open the ponderous doors.
No ruin or decay here, no ghostly immortal grace.
Deep black dominated the vast hall, grander than any human forge. Thirty-six obsidian dragon pillars, each needing ten arms to span, braced the soaring dome, as if propping the sky itself. The ground lay not with gold or gems, but a colossal black-iron map of the Nine Provinces' terrain.
At the hall's distant end, up ninety-nine black-jade stairs.
A statue in black dragon emperor robes shunned the throne, hand gripping his sword. He turned from all mortals, confronting the starry heavenly abyss, robes billowing like a lone crag cleaving sky from earth. His stone blade "Tai'a" exuded haughty menace, eager to sunder this firmament, these divinities, this vaunted Great Dao.
[The First Emperor — Ancestral Dragon]
Chen Huaian stood amid the Nine Provinces map, eyes lifted to that defiant silhouette.
The Ancestral Dragon soul in his dantian lifted its head, bellowing ferociously.
The atmosphere quaked as golden script erupted in the emptiness.
No lamenting missive or desperate last words here.
This was a sky-shattering decree, eternal through myriad eras.
[The so-called Immortals are nothing but broken-spined dogs wagging their tails beneath the Heavenly Gate.]
[My Tai'a does not slay ants; it executes only the azure heavens!]
[They recline high upon the ninefold clouds, viewing the Divine Land as pasture, the myriad people as blood meals.]
[What they desire is not a monarch to rule the world together, but slaves who kneel and beg for food.]
[The world calls me tyrannical, says I exhaust the people and waste resources? Absurd!]
[I built the Ten-Thousand-Mile Great Wall, not merely to resist the Xiongnu, but to lock down the Nine Provinces' dragon veins, preventing a single strand of mortal Destiny Energy from being offered up to the Celestial Court!]
[I burned the texts of the Hundred Schools, buried alive the alchemists and Confucian scholars, all to erase the records of 'gods' from the historical annals, severing this incense of worship for ten thousand generations!]
[All under heaven is the king's land. This mortal realm, while I am here, is not a place for 'Heaven' to run wild!]
[I did not lose to the gods.]
[I lost to the unenlightened minds of the people, lost to this deeply ingrained… slave mentality of 'fearing Heaven'.]
[As long as there remains one person in this world whose knees go soft, kneeling to worship the deities, then the gods will never die.]
[You who come after — if you wish to wage war against Heaven, first wage war against the heart and spirit!]
[Gods… also bleed. Only with no god in your heart can you face the myriad heavens.]
Boom—!
This crushing tyrannic intent battered Chen Huaian's Divine Soul.
Chen Huaian drew a profound breath. Before that turned back, he skipped the cultivator's Dao bow, instead cupping fists in mortal homage.
Crack.
Atop the dais, the stone Tai'a quivered faintly.
The seventh fragment, last of the torn scripture, morphed to inky black radiance, shrieking down into Chen Huaian's grasp.
Thus.
Seven floating peaks, seven dirges of woe, seven fragments of torn scripture.
All converged in one man's hold.
"Chen Huaian…"
Bi Yue Wu, ghostly silent till now, at last broke quiet.
His eyes, seared raw by nine suns, fixed on Chen Huaian, lips curling in icy smirk.
"You've got them all, right?"
"Seven places, seven Opportunities."
Bi Yue Wu's palm eased onto his Array Disk. Though his power had dimmed sharply, it now brimmed with lethal edge, baring the hidden blade at journey's close.
"Since the pathfinding work is done."
"Then hand over… the things."