The cultivators of the Nine Provinces spent their entire lives seeking a chance to ascend as immortals.
Above the legendary clouds stood jade towers and immortal palaces, along with immortals who never died.
There was also the true fruit of the Great Dao, obtainable only after enduring a thousand tribulations and ten thousand dangers.
In the eyes of those cultivators who rode the wind upon their swords, the emperors and generals of the mortal dust were nothing more than ants that would turn to yellow earth after a hundred years.
Upon this vast land, countless outstanding talents sat in bitter meditation day and night, absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.
All for the sake of severing the karma of the mortal world and finally ascending in broad daylight.
Shen Ci had once been among them, and he was the single drop of water most favored by the heavens within that mighty tide.
He had been carried out from a forbidden land known as the God-Burial Abyss by his master, Daoist Xuan Shu.
That was the most famous restricted area in the Nine Provinces, shrouded in dense fog year-round, a place even Mahayana-stage cultivators dared not enter lightly.
Daoist Xuan Shu brought him back to the Qingming Dao Sect, and only then was Shen Ci saved.
He was no different from ordinary people, except for a grayish-white bone fragment embedded in the center of his brow.
That bone fragment pierced through his skull, yet it did not take his life.
Daoist Xuan Shu used his great magical power to extract the bone fragment, allowing Shen Ci to live a normal life.
As the years passed, Shen Ci’s cultivation talent left every cultivator in the Nine Provinces in awe.
At the age of three he drew qi into his body. At five he established his foundation.
By the age of ten the spiritual energy within him was already as vast as the sea, forming a flawless Purple-Gold Dao Pill.
Every elder, fellow disciple, and even the renowned experts of rival sects would praise him upon seeing him.
They called him a Dao Seed that appeared only once in ten thousand years, the Child of Destiny destined to break the shackles that had prevented anyone in the Nine Provinces from ascending for several millennia.
Those flattering words piled around him like a brocade of blooming flowers.
Shen Ci listened quietly and never felt the slightest pride.
Because he knew that all of it was false.
The spiritual energy of this cultivation world, this eternal Great Dao leading to the heavens… all of it was false.
Because…
In the year he turned ten, Shen Ci had just formed his core and was in the critical period of stabilizing his realm.
Daoist Xuan Shu took him by the hand and entered the Demon-Suppressing Cave in the deepest part of the Qingming Dao Sect’s rear mountain.
The stone walls of the cave were carved full of intricate formation patterns, each flowing with a dark golden luster.
In the deepest part of the cave was a “dog” locked in the center by twelve heavy black-iron chains.
Only when Shen Ci drew close did he see clearly that it was not a dog. It was a person.
Or rather… it had once been a person.
The monster’s limbs were folded backward as it crawled upon the ground, wearing a tattered and dilapidated daoist robe.
Its skin was ashen, and beneath the skin countless earthworms seemed to writhe, rising high and then sinking back down.
The most terrifying was its head.
That head had split open from the middle like a blooming flower of flesh and blood.
And right in the center of the crack sat a ferocious-looking infant.
The infant’s eyes were tightly closed, yet the corners of its mouth curved into a strange arc as it greedily absorbed the essence of flesh and blood from the residual body below.
“Yuan’er, do you know what this is?” Daoist Xuan Shu asked calmly.
Shen Ci stared at the monster and shook his head.
“This is one of your martial uncles, the most talented person in the Qingming Dao Sect five hundred years ago.”
Daoist Xuan Shu spoke without sorrow or joy.
“Five hundred years ago he faced a heavenly tribulation, intending to shatter his core and form a nascent soul, stepping onto the Nascent Soul Great Dao.”
“The entire sect protected him. They watched as he drew in the lightning to temper his body. They watched as the phenomenon of three flowers gathering at the crown appeared above his head.”
“And then?”
Shen Ci asked.
“And then he became like this.”
Daoist Xuan Shu pointed at the monster whose shoulder blades were pierced by the chains.
“This is the ‘Nascent Soul’ that all of you yearn for day and night.”
Shen Ci was greatly shocked.
That day Daoist Xuan Shu told him a truth that had been covered up for tens of thousands of years.
The true spiritual energy of the Nine Provinces had already been exhausted tens of thousands of years ago.
At that time a great catastrophe swept across the entire continent.
A corpse so enormous it was beyond description fell into the Heaven Beyond Heaven outside the Nine Provinces world.
That corpse blocked the passage between the Nine Provinces and the outside.
Its flesh began to rot, and the aura of the corpse transformed into an all-pervasive “miasma,” seeping bit by bit into the heaven and earth of the Nine Provinces.
The cultivators who had lost their spiritual energy should have despaired in the Age of Declining Dharma.
Yet they were surprised to discover that from that day onward a more domineering and denser “spiritual energy” appeared between heaven and earth.
They absorbed it frantically, established new dao traditions, and modified their original techniques to adapt to this new power.
They upheld this entirely new power system as the standard and redefined the realms of Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Spirit Transformation, Void Refinement, Body Integration, Mahayana, and Tribulation Transcendence.
“But they did not know that what they were absorbing into their bodies was all the corpse miasma of that extraterritorial corpse.”
Daoist Xuan Shu looked at his own hands. Faint blue-black patterns lay dormant beneath the skin of his palms.
“The so-called ‘Heavenly Dao’ has long been replaced by that decaying thing.”
“It floats in the Heaven Beyond Heaven, turning the entire Nine Provinces into its breeding ground.”
Day after day cultivators absorbed qi into their bodies, believing they were defying the heavens and changing their fate, washing their marrow and tempering their bodies.
In reality they were transforming their five viscera and six bowels, their extraordinary meridians, into nests suitable for the incubation of extraterritorial monsters.
“The higher the realm, the larger the monster gestating within the body, and the faster it matures.”
Daoist Xuan Shu walked toward the monster.
The monster sensed something.
The black-scaled infant suddenly opened its eyes, a pair of pure white, pupil-less eyes staring fixedly at the two of them.
“Look at him. This is a Nascent Soul.”
Daoist Xuan Shu flicked his sleeve, and a streak of sword qi severed one of the monster’s arms.
“The so-called ‘Supreme Emotionlessness,’ severing the seven emotions and six desires of the mortal world.”
“Is nothing more than the manifestation of a cultivator’s three souls and seven spirits being devoured by the corpse miasma, erasing human consciousness.”
“After emotions disappear, what lives in that fleshly body is no longer a human, but… the larva sent down by an extraterritorial deity.”
“Then… what about ascending in broad daylight?” Shen Ci asked the most critical question.
“Ascension…”
Daoist Xuan Shu laughed.
“When a cultivator’s fleshly body and primordial spirit have been nourished to the extreme, and the monster within is fully mature, it will draw the so-called heavenly lightning baptism.”
“That is the ‘Heavenly Dao’ inspecting the quality of the fruit.”
“After surviving the heavenly tribulation, one will be pulled up to the Heaven Beyond Heaven by the guiding light sent down by the Heavenly Dao…”
“To… fill that corpse, becoming nourishment for its supplementation.”
“For ten thousand years, all those ancestral masters who ascended amid rosy clouds have entered the belly of the monster.”
The truth was like ice water in the depths of winter, poured over the glorious outer history of the Nine Provinces spanning ten thousand years.
“Yuan’er, I found you in the God-Burial Abyss. The bone fragment in your brow is a section of Formless Dao Bone left behind by a true immortal of ancient times before his passing.” Daoist Xuan Shu turned around and placed a hand on Shen Ci’s shoulder. “Only you can absorb this sky-full of corpse miasma without having your mind corroded by it.”
“Only you can walk this false path of cultivation without hatching that kind of monster.”
“You are one born in response to the tribulation. Your mission is to end this absurd grand dream that has stretched for ten thousand years.”
From that day on, Shen Ci’s dao heart was set.
He thoroughly memorized all the technique manuals of the Qingming Dao Sect and continuously devoured the corpse miasma between heaven and earth.
In the eyes of outsiders he was the flawless Dao Son of the Qingming Dao Sect.
Clad in white robes, unsullied by a speck of dust, his sword emerging like a dragon, sweeping away all the demons and evils of the world.
No one knew that those demons and evils were mostly cultivators who had failed to suppress the monsters within their bodies, failed products that had mutated ahead of time.
The world called them “going mad from cultivation deviation.”
Under the name of slaying demons and eliminating evils, Shen Ci killed these mutated kin one by one.
His sword was named Severing Karma. Its blade was profound black and heavy as a mountain.
Cultivation knew no years.
As cold and heat alternated, Shen Ci’s cultivation soared all the way.
Nascent Soul, Spirit Transformation, Void Refinement, Body Integration…
The power within him grew ever more terrifying.
Gradually the clear spiritual power in his body transformed into a thick black-gold liquid as dense as ink.
That was the corpse miasma refined and compressed to the extreme by the Formless Dao Bone.
He could only walk this dead-end path alone, with no companions by his side.
Those fellow disciples who had once laughed and chatted with him either turned into monsters during core formation or nascent soul shattering and died beneath his Severing Karma.
Or they became cold and wooden, entering the realm of Supreme Emotionlessness, becoming high experts who were little more than walking corpses.
Until the year Shen Ci turned five hundred, Daoist Xuan Shu’s lifespan reached its end.
On that day the sea of clouds in the rear mountain of the Qingming Dao Sect churned violently.
Thunderclouds densely gathered, and purple electric snakes danced madly within the clouds.
This was the phenomenon of the peak of Mahayana about to draw the tribulation for ascension.
The entire sect boiled with excitement. Countless disciples knelt outside the mountain gate, shouting that the old ancestor was about to ascend.
Shen Ci carried the long sword Severing Karma and walked alone into Daoist Xuan Shu’s closed-door cultivation place.
The stone door slowly closed, isolating all the roaring of the mountains and seas outside.
In the center of the stone chamber Daoist Xuan Shu sat cross-legged.
His daoist robe had been completely torn apart, his body swollen several times over.
Dark cyan scales spread from his neck all the way to his cheeks, and his eyes were a stark white.
Two fleshy tentacles burst out from his back, flailing wildly in midair.
They lashed against the formation-inscribed stone walls, leaving deep marks.
“Yuan’er…”
Daoist Xuan Shu’s voice was no longer clear and bright.
The echoes overlapped layer upon layer, as if hundreds of infants were crying at the same time.
He was doing his utmost to suppress the enormous creature about to break free from its cocoon within him.
“The time has come.” Daoist Xuan Shu forced out four words with difficulty.
Shen Ci nodded. From the moment he had been told the truth, he had prepared to welcome the arrival of this day.
He stepped forward one by one.
With each step the stone slab beneath his feet cracked.
He could clearly see his master’s chest rising and falling violently.
He knew this was not an immortal about to ascend. This was… a demon about to break free of its fetal membrane.
“Kill me.” Daoist Xuan Shu was making his final struggle, staring at Shen Ci with those stark white eyeballs.
“Do not let me… ascend… do not let me… become its food…”
Shen Ci raised Severing Karma.
“Master, go well.” Shen Ci said softly.
The sword edge fell.
Black blood sprayed out, dyeing Shen Ci’s daoist robe black.
The thunderclouds outside the door lost their target. After circling for a long time they finally dispersed unwillingly.
Daoist Xuan Shu failed his tribulation. The world was shaken.
The Qingming Dao Sect mourned for forty-nine days.
Everyone believed that Daoist Xuan Shu had failed to withstand the heavenly tribulation at the final moment and had perished, his dao extinguished.
Only Shen Ci knew that he had severed one of the Heavenly Dao’s feedings.
From then on Shen Ci completely sealed himself off.
He no longer cared about sect affairs and no longer received any fellow cultivators who came to visit.
Like a stone statue he sat daily atop the highest peak of the Qingming Dao Sect, day and night swallowing and exhaling the most turbid and fiercest corpse miasma of the Nine Provinces.
The Formless Dao Bone within him, because it had endured an unimaginable load, began to be covered in cracks.
This caused every breath he took to trigger a pain as if his body were being torn apart in his lungs and organs.
But he was completely unafraid.
Several thousand years later.
Shen Ci welcomed his own heavenly tribulation.
On that day the firmament of the Nine Provinces was torn apart.
A sky full of bloody rain and foul wind, a crack spanning across the nine heavens.
The Heavenly Gate opened.
This was the first peerless genius in ten thousand years in the Nine Provinces to cause the Heavenly Gate to open wide.
All the cultivators under heaven set aside everything in their hands.
Countless streaks of escape light shot up into the sky, densely suspending around the periphery of the Qingming Dao Sect.
They watched the figure in white robes fluttering on the highest peak with fervent gazes.
“Dao Son Shen is finally going to ascend!”
“The ten-thousand-year dao tradition of our Nine Provinces has finally welcomed a true immortal!”
Accompanying the opening of the Heavenly Gate, a dazzling golden pillar of light descended from the crack, enveloping Shen Ci’s entire body.
Within that golden light there were heavenly maidens scattering flowers, immortal music playing, golden lotuses surging from the earth, and dragons and phoenixes presenting auspiciousness.
It seemed everything was proclaiming that this was a sacred ceremony.
Yet Shen Ci, bathing in the guiding golden light, slowly drew out Severing Karma.
He went against the current.
His entire body transformed into a black lightning bolt, directly shattering the layer upon layer of golden lotus phenomena, and slashed his sword toward that ten-thousand-zhang-wide Heavenly Gate!
Boom!!!
Heaven and earth shook.
The originally fervent cultivators below had the smiles on their faces freeze instantly.
They could not understand why this peerless genius, when facing the guidance of ascension, had actually drawn his sword against the Heavenly Gate.
In an instant Shen Ci charged into the crack.
Behind the crack there were no jade towers or immortal palaces at all, no true immortals surrounded by immortal qi.
What appeared before Shen Ci was a stretch of void.
In this void a corpse so enormous that it had no boundaries lay across.
It had a human torso, yet grew countless enormous tentacles.
Every tentacle was hung full of dense sacs.
Within those sacs were wrapped the ancient sages who had “ascended” ten thousand years ago.
They were soaked in green digestive fluid, their faces long unrecognizable, becoming the nourishment for this corpse’s growth.
At the chest of the corpse a black heart the size of a star was slowly beating.
The so-called “will of the Heavenly Dao” of the Nine Provinces world, the so-called “laws and order.”
Were precisely the fluctuations emitted when this heart pulsed.
This was the truth.
This was the “Heavenly Dao” that the cultivators of the Nine Provinces had worshiped for tens of thousands of years.
The corpse seemed to sense the abnormality of its prey.
It slowly turned its head, two clusters of green flames lighting up in its eyes.
Immediately after, countless tentacles lashed toward Shen Ci to strangle him.
Every tentacle carried a terrifying power sufficient to easily crush a Mahayana-stage cultivator.
Looking at this extraterritorial deity’s corpse, Shen Ci gripped Severing Karma tightly.
“The ten-thousand-year spring and autumn grand dream ends today.”
He took out a piece of bone, then gripped it hard with his right hand…
Crack.
That Formless Dao Bone which had protected him from being assimilated by the corpse miasma while also compressing the massive amounts of corpse miasma within him to the extreme…
Shattered with a roar.
Without the suppression of the Dao Bone, the extremely vicious corpse miasma accumulated within Shen Ci erupted in an instant!
This was no longer ordinary corpse miasma.
This was the Extinction Poison refined by the Formless Dao Bone, carrying an absolute will of destruction.
Shen Ci’s fleshly body disintegrated in an instant.
His white robes turned to flying ash, his flesh and blood peeled away inch by inch, yet his bones radiated a dazzling black-gold light.
He transformed himself into a long sword and charged toward those countless tentacles, toward that star-like enormous black heart.
“Sword rises, Severing Karma, Sever the Heavenly Connection!”
The black sword radiance spanned ten thousand li, forcefully severing all the tentacles, and finally pierced into that pulsing heart.
The roar of the extraterritorial divine corpse resounded through heaven and earth.
The destructive sword intent refined by the Formless Dao Bone madly spread along the heart to every corner of the corpse.
This enormous corpse that had parasitized the Nine Provinces for tens of thousands of years and devoured countless living beings began to collapse from within.
Those indestructible scales fell off in large areas, and those sacs filled with the corpses of the ancient sages burst one after another.
Shen Ci’s consciousness began to blur.
He knew that his physical body had been completely destroyed, and even his soul would burn out in the collision.
But he saw the final result.
The divine corpse began to implode.
Clusters of light lit up in the void.
He had ended this so-called extraterritorial deity and also severed the blood-sucking umbilical cord connecting it to the Nine Provinces world.
Below, upon the land of the Nine Provinces, the Heavenly Gate collapsed with a roar.
The sky full of bloody rain ceased.
The “spiritual energy” that had enveloped the Nine Provinces for tens of thousands of years rapidly disappeared.
Those cultivators suspended in midair discovered in terror that the true essence within their bodies began to stagnate, and the cultivation they were so proud of was rapidly draining away.
The heavenly laws of the Nine Provinces became clear once more. The headless path of cultivation was terminated.
In that piercing light Shen Ci slowly closed his eyes.
Master, I did it.
One born for the tribulation, when the tribulation ends, turns to ash and smoke.
This is good.
……
……
Shen Ci thought he was already dead.
When a person’s three souls and