As soon as Song Changsheng returned to his clan, the news from Wind Whisper Hall nearly made him stumble.
"What did you just say?
The two great sects emptied their entire strength and gathered in the Border Province?
The Grand City Lord of Luoxia City broke through to the Golden Core realm and slew the Thundercry Demon King in the Luoxia Mountains with a single sword?
The five Golden Core Real Persons besieged the Black Dragon Demon King, forcing it to retreat grievously wounded.
And then the allied army stormed into the Ten-Thousand Mountains?"
Each report was more shocking than the last, leaving Song Changsheng reeling. By the end, he almost suspected that his clan's spies were writing him a storybook instead of real intelligence.
"How could this be? Weren't the main forces of the two sects locked in battle at Quanzhou? How did they suddenly appear in Luoxia City united, no less? Could it be that their great war was nothing but a show?"
Looking at the pile of intelligence reports about the "sect war" laid out before him, Song Changsheng felt a chill creep up his spine.
If this was nothing more than a play staged by the two sects, then the price of that performance was far too high.
The entire North had been ravaged. The dead and wounded were beyond counting. The sects themselves had lost nearly ten thousand men, with several Purple Mansion cultivators slain.
If this were merely an elaborate deception, then what of those fallen cultivators?
What of the countless who perished resisting the beast tide?
A joke?
In that moment, Song Changsheng felt a deep bitterness for them all.
From the very beginning, they had been nothing more than pawns to be discarded at will.
Perhaps in the eyes of the lofty Golden Core masters, they weren't even worth as much as grass and weeds.
The defeat of the beast tide should have been a cause for celebration, yet Song Changsheng felt only emptiness. Perhaps from the very beginning, this beast tide itself had been deliberately provoked, carefully guided by hidden hands.
And he suddenly found himself wondering what role the Grand City Lord had played in this elaborate farce.
When he thought of that peerlessly elegant man, Song Changsheng dared not follow the thought any further.
If even a figure like that had been reduced to playing an ignoble part in this grand deception, then this world truly had no light left in it.
What a terrifying thought…
He immediately dispatched all of his spies, ordering them to dig deeper into the truth.
He could not believe that the two great sects had paid such a staggering price merely to besiege the Black Dragon Demon King. There had to be another purpose.
And indeed, just as Song Changsheng suspected, the slaying of the Black Dragon Demon King was only one part of their plan. Behind it lay an even deeper motive…
...
The Border Province, Luoxia City
Five days had passed since the great battle. The land was calm again, yet the shattered mountains and the blood-soaked earth silently testified to the carnage that had taken place.
Luoxia City's indomitable vitality revealed itself in the aftermath. Reconstruction was already underway, fierce and unrelenting.
Mu Guibai stood atop Tianyin Mountain, gazing over the scarred land, his eyes heavy with sorrow. Luoxia City would never again see those ten-thousand-mile cloudscapes.
Zhan Tianxia walked to his side and spoke quietly:
"The casualty report is in.
This battle cost the City Lord's Mansion three thousand six hundred and twenty-one lives. Among them, twenty-two Foundation Establishment cultivators, three Purple Mansion elders… Qianri and Qianyue are both gone. Arc Light is gone. Mingxiu as well…"
With each name spoken, Mu Guibai's heart trembled.
The three Purple Mansion cultivators needed no mention; they were his elders and fellow disciples.
Qianri and Qianyue were the city's most respected senior elders. Arc Light had been his direct disciple. Mingxiu had been Zhan Tianxia's direct disciple.
This battle had crippled Luoxia City. For a long time to come, it would struggle to recover.
And yet, because Mu Guibai had broken through to the Golden Core realm, the city's overall strength had not diminished, but instead increased.
On the surface, it seemed they had gained.
But Zhan Tianxia could not hold back the words weighing on his heart.
"You knew from the start that the two sects were only putting on a show, didn't you?" His tone was hard.
Mu Guibai slowly shook his head. "No. Otherwise, I would not have broken through to Golden Core ahead of time."
Everyone knew the Grand City Lord of Luoxia City was a man of unparalleled talent. Yet even at four hundred years of age, he had not broken through to the Golden Core stage, something the entire world found unbelievable.
But the truth was not that Mu Guibai had been trapped by a bottleneck. It was because his ambitions reached higher.
When a cultivator breaks through to the Golden Core stage, a golden core condenses within the Purple Mansion.
The number of apertures on that core represents its quality. The more apertures, the faster spiritual energy is converted into true essence, the greater one's explosive power in battle, and the higher the chance of eventually reaching the Nascent Soul realm.
A Golden Core can hold at most nine apertures. Beyond that, however, exists an even higher form of the Nine-Aperture Purple-Gold Core.
And Mu Guibai's aim was precisely this pinnacle achievement.
But the quality of one's core is closely tied to one's comprehension of the Five Elements Laws. For years, he had immersed himself in studying the principles of the Dao, striving to perfect his understanding so that he could forge a Nine-Aperture Purple-Gold Core.
Were it not for this pursuit, he would have stepped into the Golden Core realm long ago.
Originally, he was only a single step away from perfection. Unfortunately, the beast horde pressed upon the city. To grasp that final sliver of hope, he slipped out through a secret passage and broke through in a hidden place ahead of time.
But because his understanding of the Laws was incomplete, what he achieved was only a Nine-Aperture Core, not the Purple-Gold kind. This became the great regret of his life.
Hearing this, Zhan Tianxia's gaze softened somewhat. Then he asked again, "So, when did you first begin contacting them?"
Mu Guibai's eyes grew distant, his tone calm yet heavy. "After I broke through to Golden Core, I knew I was still no match for the Black Dragon Demon King. So I went to the Golden Crow Sect to seek aid.
By chance, I met Real Person Su Ding. And it was then… that he told me everything."
...
Qingzhou, Golden Crow Mountains, Jinyang Peak
Xia Qingxue strode firmly toward a grand palace, her beautiful face covered in frost. The cold aura radiating from her body made every disciple along the path shrink back in fear.
"She's terrifying… who could have provoked the Little Ancestor?"
"This lady rarely shows her face. Who in the world could have possibly dared offend her?"
At a corner near the great hall, two Golden Crow Sect disciples whispered nervously.
Suddenly, they felt a bone-piercing chill descend upon them. Looking up, they saw Xia Qingxue staring coldly in their direction, her eyes devoid of expression, as though looking at corpses.
The two disciples shivered violently, their scalps numb. They immediately dropped to the ground, bowing in terror:
"Greetings, Little Ancestor!"
"Hmph!" Xia Qingxue snorted coldly through her delicate nose, then swept past them without pause, heading into the great hall.
Only then did the two disciples dare to exhale. Meeting each other's gaze, they noticed with horror that their eyebrows were already crusted with a layer of fine ice crystals.
With a resounding boom, Xia Qingxue pushed open the heavy doors of the hall.
This was the secluded cultivation chamber of Su Ding, the Golden Crow Sect's First Supreme Elder, and long considered a forbidden place within the sect. Only Xia Qingxue, as his disciple, dared to enter so freely.
The great hall was vast and bare, with seven crimson pillars arranged according to the pattern of the Big Dipper. Upon six of the pillars rested tightly warded wooden boxes. Only the foremost pillar stood empty.
At the very center of the Seven-Star formation sat a yellow embroidered meditation cushion. Upon it, an elderly man with white hair and beard sat cross-legged, his bearing serene and immortal-like. Around him, forty-nine eternal lamps burned, arranged in an intricate and mysterious order.
This man was none other than the foremost cultivator of the Great Qi cultivation world, the Golden Crow Sect's Supreme Elder, Jinyang Real Person, Su Ding, over twelve hundred years old!
During the battle against the Black Dragon Demon King, Su Ding had been the principal attacker. Though he suffered only minor injuries, he left the other Real Persons to hold the line in the Border Province, while he returned ahead of them to recover, relying on the realm's only fifth-rank spiritual vein.
Seeing Xia Qingxue arrive, Su Ding showed no surprise. With a flick of his finger, a meditation cushion appeared on the ground. He said calmly, "Sit."
Xia Qingxue bowed respectfully before kneeling upon the cushion. Looking directly at her master's deeply lined face, she asked bluntly:
"The war with the Heavenly Vein Sect was it truly nothing more than a staged act?"
Su Ding regarded his beloved disciple without flinching. He nodded lightly. "Indeed. This plan was set in motion twenty years ago. Its sole purpose was to lure that old flood dragon out of the Blackwater Marsh."
The moment those words left Su Ding's lips, all of Xia Qingxue's doubts suddenly fell into place.
After being rescued by Song Changsheng, she rushed back to the Golden Crow Sect as fast as possible. There, she reported to Su Ding that the Blood Demon Sect had ambushed her and slain her protector, Dai Zichen, while attempting to pin the blame on the Heavenly Vein Sect. She had also tried to dissuade the sect from waging war.
But Su Ding's response at that time was strange. He only nodded calmly, then pressed forward with the war against the Heavenly Vein Sect, as though the Blood Demon affair had slipped entirely from his mind.
Xia Qingxue could not understand it. Why, knowing the culprit was the Blood Demon Sect, would Su Ding insist on claiming the murderer was the Heavenly Vein Sect? Why would he force the sect into a war built on lies?
She had wanted to argue her case, but Su Ding used the excuse of seclusion to refuse her audience. The other Golden Core elders did the same.
She thought, then, that the elders must have had deeper considerations, so she suppressed her thirst for vengeance against the Blood Demon Sect.
Until a few days ago, rumors began spreading within the sect of a beast horde, and with them, endless praise for Luoxia City, which had guarded the northern frontier of Great Qi selflessly for a thousand years, now portrayed as tragic and unyielding in its final defense.
Though most disciples knew of the beasts' northern advance, few realized the situation had grown so dire.
Thus, within the Golden Crow Sect, from the outer disciples up to the elders and even the sect master himself, the call grew stronger: stop the war with the Heavenly Vein Sect and instead unite against the true enemy, the beasts.
And it wasn't just the Golden Crow Sect; the Heavenly Vein Sect was no different. Calls for unity resounded there as well.
Faced with the overwhelming will of their disciples, Su Ding "had no choice" but to declare a ceasefire.
So it was that the two sects, who had already been fighting in earnest, set aside their grievances for the moment to stand together in defense of humanity.
Their combined might struck the beast race with a thunderous, unexpected blow. In a single campaign, millions of demon beasts were annihilated. Filled with righteous fury, the coalition marched straight into the Ten-Thousand Mountains.
At that moment, all past enmity was poured out upon the demon race.
It should have been remembered as an unprecedented victory. Yet afterward, troubling whispers began to spread.
The rumors had many versions, but all pointed to the same conclusion: the war between the two sects had been nothing but a trap, bait to lure the beasts of the Ten-Thousand Mountains. Everyone else, the disciples of both sects, Luoxia City, and even the entire Great Qi cultivation world had been mere pawns.
This rumor reached Xia Qingxue as well. She was no fool. Thinking back on Su Ding's strange behavior, the truth revealed itself in an instant.
And so she confronted him.
Even then, she had clung to a sliver of hope. She wanted her master to tell her these were just baseless rumors that the two sects had united out of righteousness, for the good of humanity, and not through conspiracy.
After all, this war had left sects and vassals crippled, the entire north shattered, nine-tenths of humanity's cultivators wiped away.
So many lives lost. Even with her heart frozen for years, she trembled at the thought.
But Su Ding's words shattered her last hope. Staring at the man she had always revered most, Xia Qingxue asked in a voice as cold as ice:
"Why?"
"Why?"
Su Ding tilted his head back and gave a bitter smile. "Because there is no time left to scheme further. My… time has come."
At that, Xia Qingxue's eyes widened in shock.
Ordinary Golden Core cultivators lived less than a thousand years, but Su Ding had once consumed rare treasures that prolonged his life, allowing him to reach more than twelve hundred years of age.
Xia Qingxue knew his lifespan was dwindling indeed; it was why she had entered the Qiantian Secret Realm in search of that rumored longevity herb.
But hearing it confirmed in Su Ding's voice still shook her to her core.
"Across all of Great Qi, the only one who can face that old flood dragon head-on is me. Once I die, it will inevitably launch a full invasion. By then, Great Qi will be drowned in calamity.
So I reached out to the Heavenly Vein Sect. Before my end, I would set the stage to slay that beast and rid the world of its blight.
But that old flood dragon is deeply suspicious and endlessly cautious. For over twenty years, we found no way to lure it from its lair.
Then came the day the Blood Demon Sect ambushed you, killed Dai Zichen, and left your life uncertain. Though I grieved, I also saw an opportunity.
I immediately contacted the Heavenly Vein Sect, and together we forged this plan. To prevent leaks, no one below Golden Core was told.
To outsiders, this scheme may seem cold-blooded, inhuman even. But that is the most foolish view of all. If that flood dragon remains, then after my death, the entire cultivation world of Great Qi will be doomed.
To sacrifice a few to save the many, I deem it more than worthwhile.
The guilt lies in the present, but the merit will last for eternity."
Su Ding's eyes were icy. To him, it was a bargain well worth making.
Xia Qingxue fell silent. Was Su Ding right?
Yes… and no.
For the future of Great Qi's cultivation world, his reasoning was sound. Only by slaying the Black Dragon Demon King could the balance between humans and beasts be restored once he was gone.
But for those who had died in this war, they would surely wish to tear him limb from limb, drink his blood, and grind his bones to dust.
For in the end, they had been nothing more than pieces to be sacrificed.
Right or wrong, no one in this generation could judge. Only later generations would decide.
But one thing was certain: Su Ding's name would forever be etched in the annals of Great Qi's long history.
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