Lingxi quickly concealed that tiny bit of a guilty conscience. Her cold gaze, like ten-thousand-year-old ice, slowly turned once again toward the only remaining person on the field, the pale-faced Murong Qiu.
Lingxi's cold gaze, like ice that would not melt for ten thousand years, slowly turned toward the only remaining person on the field, the pale-faced Murong Qiu.
This gaze was sharper than any divine weapon. It instantly pierced through Murong Qiu's final madness and paranoia, as if illuminating his decaying soul.
"When the Dao heart is covered in dust, lifespan is nothing but an excuse. Greed for life and fear of death—that is the true demon."
Lingxi's voice was not loud, yet every word was like a crack of thunder, exploding within Murong Qiu's sea of consciousness!
There was no reprimand, no disdain. It was as if she was not judging him, but rather stating the most fundamental truth of the universe.
Greed for life and fear of death... that is the true demon...
These few short words were like the sharpest sword of the Heavenly Dao, instantly cleaving through all his disguises, justifications, and self-deception!
They laid bare his most wretched heart—the heart he dared not look at—exposing it nakedly to the light of day!
Yes... for these past few centuries, had he truly been pursuing the Great Dao?
Under the seemingly justified excuse of "extending his lifespan," he had merely been indulging his fear of death and nurturing the greedy demonic nature within his heart!
His Dao heart had long been swallowed by this true demon of the "fear of death"!
All his obsessions and madness appeared so ridiculous, so pitiful before those words!
As if struck by lightning, Murong Qiu's entire body trembled violently. He jerked his head up, looking in disbelief at the woman in green who had spoken those words.
Her gaze was calm and rippleless, yet profound as a sea of stars. That look... that look did not belong to a young cultivator at all, but rather to a supreme being... overlooking the mortal realm and commanding the cycle of reincarnation!
At this moment, all his flukes and paranoia were completely crushed. An immense shame and a sense of despair at being completely seen through, with nowhere to hide, extinguished his last trace of madness like ice water.
The blood-red madness in his eyes completely faded, replaced by extreme shock, bewilderment, and an uncontrollable shame and enlightenment rising from the depths of his soul.
He stumbled back a step. The Autumn Water Sword in his hand let out a mournful cry, its radiance dimming, as if it too felt the drastic change in its master's state of mind.
"I... have lost..."
His voice was dry and hoarse, as if it took all his strength to spit out those words. But this defeat seemed to refer to more than just today's battle.
He looked around at these overly young yet incredibly powerful faces, feeling the vigorous, high-spirited, and indomitable Dao intent radiating from them. Those eyes, that aura... how familiar it all was...
Once upon a time, he, Murong Qiu, had been just like that!
The floodgates of memory crashed open, and the past rushed into his mind like a tide.
He remembered his youth, leaving his sect with a sword in hand, full of vigor and spirit, desiring to measure heaven and earth with his blade and right all the injustices of the world!
Back then, his sword heart was clear and bright, his sharpness unstoppable. The cold light of his single sword strike had made him famous across the Eastern Region. He was the idol of countless young swordsmen, hailed as the genius with the greatest hope of reaching the realm of the Sword Saint.
"The long Autumn Water Sword shakes the stars; a youth travels with an aura that towers over a thousand mountains..."
He muttered to himself, a distant gleam flashing in his cloudy eyes—a reminiscence of his lost youth.
But time... is the most ruthless blade.
He didn't know when it started, but his former sharpness had been ground away, and his past ideals had been drowned by reality.
Watching his peers and friends turn to yellow earth one by one, feeling his own vitality declining day by day, and touching the barrier to the Saint Realm that seemed so close yet so impossibly far... he became afraid.
He began to scheme desperately for life-extending pills, calculating resources. For that illusory glimmer of survival, he did not hesitate to lay down his dignity, joining forces with other old monsters to besiege the younger generation and snatch the legendary Seven Stars Secret Token and the Undying Divine Elixir.
"Heh heh... Haha..."
Murong Qiu suddenly began to chuckle, his laughter filled with endless self-deprecation and desolation.
"To think that I, Murong Qiu, fancied myself a grandmaster of the sword, having cultivated for over a thousand years... only to become, in the end, the very type of person I despised and loathed the most in my youth...
Trapped by lifespan, blinded by greed, my Dao heart covered in dust without me even realizing it... How ridiculous! How pathetic!"
His gaze fell once again upon Fang Hanyu's pure and powerful primal chaos sword intent. His look was no longer one of jealousy and madness, but an almost pious envy, along with deep... regret.
"I once thought that the sword in my hand could slay demons and sever evil, that I could freely exact gratitude and revenge... Only now do I know that even the sharpest sword in this world cannot sever the flow of time, nor can it break the shackles of lifespan... Time is ruthless, exclusively striking down the chosen geniuses..."
He took a deep breath, as if to inhale centuries of degradation and remorse into his lungs, and then slowly exhaled.
His eyes became unusually calm, even carrying a liberating clarity.
"Today... witnessing the brilliance of you all, I finally understand the vastness of heaven and earth, and the immensity of the Dao of the Sword... It has also allowed this lost soul to catch a glimpse, before death, of a long-forgotten... original heart of the sword."
He looked at Fang Hanyu, no longer bearing any resentment in his eyes, only complete candor and an almost grateful sense of release.
"To see such pure sword intent before I die, to witness the infinite possibilities of the sword's future... perhaps this is the final mercy... that time has bestowed upon this lost old man."
Before his voice had even faded, a look of absolute resolve flashed in his eyes, and he abruptly reversed all the remaining spiritual energy and sword essence within his body!
"Buzz—!"
The Autumn Water Sword let out an unprecedented, mournful wail that sounded like weeping blood. The light on the blade surged, no longer the cold gleam meant for killing enemies, but a dazzling brilliance born of burning one's life force and returning to the origin! This radiance faintly reflected the spirited and vigorous shadow of his youth.
"I, Murong Qiu... use this broken body to thank you all... for allowing me... to bid farewell... with dignity..."
In the next moment, the sword aura around his body erupted explosively, yet it did not attack anyone. Instead, it all collapsed inward, condensing at the center of his brow!
"Pfft—!"
A soft sound echoed, like the snuffing out of a candle.
An illusory sword shadow, formed purely from his lifelong cultivation in the Dao of the Sword and his final divine soul, flashed and vanished at his brow, instantly obliterating all his life force.
His body slowly fell backward. His face bore a trace of liberating peace, and even faintly held the serenity of returning to his original heart.
The Autumn Water Sword, which had accompanied him for nearly a thousand years, let out a final sorrowful cry. The blade shattered inch by inch, turning into specks of flowing light that lingered by his side, like a loyal companion escorting its master on his final journey.
A once all-powerful sovereign of the sword, whose name had shaken the Eastern Region, used this tragic yet resolute method to draw a period on his misguided path—a conclusion filled with regret, yet retaining his final dignity and original heart.
The field fell into a deathly silence, with only the wind sobbing, as if weeping and complaining.
Xiao Ruobai put away his smile, looking with a complex expression at Murong Qiu's fallen figure. Ultimately, it turned into a soft sigh: "Alas... the blade of time is indeed ruthless."
Fang Hanyu watched in silence as the sword phantom dissipated and the Autumn Water Sword broke. The chaotic sword qi flowing around his body rippled slightly, as if paying tribute to a fallen swordsman.
Ling Xi's gaze remained aloof and cold, but deep within her eyes, a faint ripple seemed to flash by, a subtle sigh at the unpredictability of fate.
Within the cocoon of light, Fatty Wang stared blankly at the scene, a complex mixture of emotions churning in his heart.
Three chapters today!
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
