The golden spear slipped from the woman’s hand.
“I offered a lifetime of incense.”
“You did not save her.”
Taiyi Ancient Immortal said coldly:
“She was merely a mortal.”
“If she died, then she died.”
The incense-offering thread around the woman’s soul suddenly went taut.
Taiyi tried to tear her apart outright.
Wang Hao took one step forward.
The Imperial Dao River spread out beneath his feet.
Pale golden water instantly enveloped the woman’s soul.
The incense-offering thread around her paused for an instant.
“A mortal’s life…”
Wang Hao looked up at Taiyi.
“Is still a life.”
Smack!
The incense-offering thread at the woman’s brow was severed by the World-Crossing Law Seal.
Her soul quickly grew dim.
Yet a smile appeared on her face.
It was the first time she had smiled since being imprisoned inside the Immortal Bell.
She did not dissipate.
Instead, she turned and charged into the depths of the countless souls.
A moment later, she emerged from among them carrying a tiny figure.
It was an eight-year-old girl.
The girl’s soul was incomplete.
Yet she still remained in a kneeling posture.
The woman gently stroked her head.
“Mother came too late.”
A faint glimmer slowly appeared in the girl’s empty eyes.
The same scene began unfolding across the other stars.
An old man with one arm missing slowly rose to his feet.
“I prayed for the Holy Land to hold the frontier.”
“But when the savage beasts breached the city…”
“The Holy Land sealed its gates.”
“Thirteen million civilians…”
“Not one survived.”
An armored general pulled the broken arrow from his chest.
“I offered the lives of a hundred thousand soldiers.”
“I prayed for the Ancient Immortal to send rain.”
“The rain never came.”
“But the Holy Land took the last shipment of grain from the city.”
An ancient demon beast prostrated itself upon a star.
“Our tribe worshiped Taiyi for thirty thousand years.”
“Taiyi said he would grant our people the method of transforming into dragons.”
“In the end…”
“Our bloodline was refined into seventy-two incense lamps.”
More and more voices rose.
One.
A hundred.
Ten thousand.
Hundreds of millions!
They had once been afraid to question him.
Because Taiyi was an immortal.
Because the Holy Lands had told them:
They received no response because they were not devout enough.
The disasters had not ended because their offerings were not rich enough.
Their loved ones had not been saved because it was their destiny.
Generation after generation,
they blamed all their suffering on themselves.
Yet they had never considered that the being who collected their incense offerings
had never intended to do anything for them from the very beginning.
Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s face twisted violently.
“Silence!”
“This immortal spread the Great Dao.”
“Established seventy-two Holy Lands.”
“Gave countless mortals the opportunity to cultivate!”
Wang Hao asked:
“And what happens after they cultivate?”
“They become powerful.”
“And then provide you with even more incense offerings.”
“That is their glory!”
“Can glory be eaten?”
Taiyi Ancient Immortal fell silent for a moment.
Wang Hao raised the account book.
“I’ve checked the prices throughout Great Xia.”
“A pound of ordinary rice…”
“Costs at least four copper coins.”
“And as much as thirteen at the highest.”
“That glory you speak of…”
“Can’t even buy half a pound of rice.”
The New Emperor Sword added from the side:
“It can’t cure illness.”
“It can’t save anyone.”
“And it can’t be used as wages.”
Wang Hao shot him a glance.
“You can leave out the last part.”
“Why?”
“Cursed artifacts don’t get paid.”
The silver-haired youth clenched his fists.
Once they got out, he had decided,
he would rebel for exactly one minute.
Outside the Immortal Bell,
Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s true body began to tremble violently.
Blood Luo Immortal Lord, Heaven-Deficient Sword Immortal, and Xuanming all noticed the change.
On the incense-offering immortal ring behind Taiyi’s head,
one immortal rune after another began to dim.
The sixth.
The ninth.
The seventeenth.
Within a few breaths,
more than a dozen immortal runes had already gone dark.
A sea of blood surged forward beneath Blood Luo Immortal Lord’s feet.
“Taiyi…”
“Your blood seems to be almost cold.”
Taiyi Ancient Immortal abruptly turned his head.
“Come any closer…”
“This immortal will kill you first!”
Blood Luo Immortal Lord did not retreat.
Instead, she revealed a row of pale teeth.
She had just devoured a mass of life-fire and a large quantity of corpse fluid from the Corpse-Releasing Immortal.
The origin of her blood sea was rapidly growing stronger.
Her craving for immortal blood
had also become increasingly difficult to suppress.
On the other side,
thousands of broken swords belonging to the Heaven-Deficient Sword Immortal surrounded the Dragon-Slayer.
The Dragon-Slayer was covered in blood.
Several more chips had appeared in the hatchet he held.
He glanced at the Immortal Bell.
“Ten breaths are up.”
“How come that kid still hasn’t come out?”
The Heaven-Deficient Sword Immortal said calmly:
“He will die inside.”
The Dragon-Slayer coughed up a mouthful of blood.
“This old man thinks…”
“Taiyi will die in there.”
The natal sword in the eye socket of the Heaven-Deficient Sword Immortal extended an inch.
“What makes you think that?”
The Dragon-Slayer raised his hatchet.
“Because good people generally don’t live long.”
“Troublemakers are different.”
“Especially deadbeats who refuse to pay what they owe.”
The Heaven-Deficient Sword Immortal did not understand.
Nor did he want to.
A natal sword suddenly shot forward.
The Dragon-Slayer swung his blade to block.
Clang!
Another crack appeared in the hatchet.
At the same time, the sword wound in the Dragon-Slayer’s chest burst open.
He was forced back a hundred miles.
His face grew even paler.
But just as the Heaven-Deficient Sword Immortal was about to strike again,
one of Xuanming’s wings suddenly swept across the battlefield.
It was not coming to help the Dragon-Slayer.
It was slashing toward the golden Immortal Bell.
Xuanming had already discovered
that Taiyi’s aura was rapidly weakening.
Rather than wait for Wang Hao to gain the upper hand from within,
it would be better to shatter the Immortal Bell first
and seize Taiyi’s origin.
Blood Luo Immortal Lord had the same idea.
The sea of blood transformed into a spear
and thrust straight toward the immortal ring behind Taiyi’s head.
Taiyi Ancient Immortal was trapped between enemies within and without.
Inside the Immortal Bell,
he had to suppress the resistance of billions of souls.
Outside the Immortal Bell,
three immortal-level beings had already begun fighting over his origin.
The face that covered the starry sky rotted completely.
“Mortal!”
“You forced this immortal to do this!”
All seventy-two immortal runes ignited at once.
The souls that had just risen to their feet
were pierced once more by threads of incense.
Taiyi was going to refine them all.
He would no longer preserve their souls.
He would no longer maintain the incense offerings.
Instead, he would devour everything in a single burst.
Billions of souls let out anguished wails.
Countless souls that had only just recovered their memories
were reduced to ash within the golden flames.
The woman holding her daughter lowered her head
and shielded the girl with her own body.
But she was merely a fragment of a soul.
How long could she possibly protect her?
The flames pierced through her body.
The girl’s soul began to dissipate as well.
Wang Hao’s gaze grew colder and colder.
“Lei Yuan.”
The Thunder Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda trembled violently.
The gate to the ninth level burst open.
A thunder dragon, its entire body violet and the edges of its scales marked with golden immortal runes,
slowly poked its head out from within the pagoda.
It sensed the golden immortal lightning filling the Immortal Bell.
Greed showed unabashedly in its dragon eyes.
“Let one through.”
Roar!
The violet thunder dragon charged into the starry sky.
Its enormous body coiled around the seventy-second immortal rune.
Countless bolts of golden immortal lightning struck its scales.
The violet thunder dragon was blasted until flesh and blood flew in all directions.
Yet those golden bolts of immortal lightning
were continuously devoured by the Thunder Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda.
Behind the seventy-second immortal rune,
a hazy figure gradually emerged.
It was not the rotting immortal body Taiyi Ancient Immortal possessed now.
It was an old man with a hunched back.
The old man wore a tattered gray robe.
A chain was fastened around his neck.
The other end of the chain
was connected to an ancient Immortal Bell.
The Bell-Warding Corpse Slave.
Kuchen!
This was Taiyi’s original form.
Wang Hao raised his hand.
The Immortal-Sealing Altar appeared.
The drop of golden, corrupted blood inside the altar trembled violently.
The Myriad Contracts of One Origin Seal covered the source blood.
It passed through the seventy-second immortal rune
and firmly locked onto Kuchen’s immortal soul.
Taiyi finally panicked.
“How did you know?”
“It’s impossible for you to know this immortal’s true name!”
Wang Hao raised the New Emperor Sword.
The silver-haired youth instantly transformed into a longsword.
“I know.”
“More than you could ever imagine.”
“The Nine Swords of Creation!”
The first sword fell.
An incense-offering star split down the middle.
The second sword.
The threads binding the hundred thousand soul-shadows snapped.
The third sword.
The River of Imperial Dao poured into the Immortal Bell.
The fourth sword.
The cracks in the seventy-second immortal rune spread outward.
The fifth sword.
A colossal purple lightning dragon clamped its jaws around the edge of the immortal rune.
The sixth sword.
The chains binding Taiyi’s immortal soul to the bell reappeared.
The seventh sword.
Billions upon billions of unfulfilled wishes flew out from the bodies of all living beings.
The eighth sword.
All the power of those wishes transformed into karmic tribulation fire.
Wang Hao gripped the sword with both hands.
Blood from the wound in his left shoulder slid down his arm and along the blade.
The corpse-dao markings within his body were now only an inch from his heart.
Yet his gaze did not waver in the slightest.
“The ninth sword.”
“Creation!”
The silver sword-light pierced through the entire incense-offering world.
The seventy-second bell rune—
was split apart by a single sword stroke!
Boom!
The billions of unfulfilled wishes found their source.
The karmic tribulation fire surged into Taiyi’s immortal soul.
Kuchen let out a shrill, agonized scream.
The chains binding him to the bell tightened inch by inch around his neck.
Countless ancient souls he had devoured—
reached their hands out from the chains.
They seized his limbs.
They seized his head.
They seized his immortal soul.
“Let go!”
“You lowly insects!”
“If not for me—”
“You would have died long ago!”
The woman who had been holding her daughter—
her body had already faded until only a faint outline remained.
Yet she still reached out.
She grabbed Kuchen’s right arm.
“We died long ago.”
A sacred-land patriarch seized Kuchen’s left leg.
“You were the one who refused to let us die.”
The old man with the severed arm grabbed hold of the chains.
“What you feared was never our deaths.”
“It was having no one left to worship you.”
More and more souls charged toward Kuchen.
Their power was not strong.
They were not even as powerful as the weakest martial artist.
But there were simply too many of them.
Generation after generation.
Civilization after civilization.
Once, they had knelt upon the ground,
offering their worship to a lofty Incense Ancient Immortal.
Now,
they had risen to their feet.
And with their own hands, they dragged that Ancient Immortal down from his altar.
Outside the Immortal Bell,
Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s decaying body suddenly burst into flames.
These were no ordinary flames.
They were black-gold tribulation fire formed from countless unfulfilled karmic debts.
Blood Luo Immortal Lord’s eyes blazed with crimson light.
The Blood Sea Devouring Immortal Spear thrust forward with all its might,
piercing straight through Taiyi’s chest.
Xuanming’s twelve pairs of wings tore at him simultaneously,
ripping his left arm off by force.
Heaven-Deficient Sword Immortal swung his sword, releasing a streak of gray sword-light
that cleaved the incense immortal ring in two.
Taiyi Ancient Immortal let out an unwilling roar.
“I will not die!”
“The seventy-two sacred lands still remain!”
“As long as there are still people in the Nine Provinces who worship me—”
“I can return from the incense offerings!”
Within Great Xia,
in the surviving mountain gates of the seventy-two sacred lands,
one disciple after another raised their heads.
They saw the truth within the incense Immortal Bell.
They saw the souls of their successive patriarchs.
They saw Taiyi’s true form.
Within one of the sacred lands,
the heavily wrinkled Sacred Lord still knelt before the ancestral hall.
“The incense offerings must not be severed!”
“Taiyi Ancient Immortal is the foundation of our sect!”
“If the Ancient Immortal dies—”
“our sacred land will lose its inheritance as well!”
A young female disciple entered the ancestral hall.
Her father and her elder brother
had both once been chosen by the sacred land as sacrifices for its incense offerings.
The Sacred Lord ordered her to kneel.
She did not.
Instead, she drew her sword.
With a single stroke, she shattered the golden statue worshiping Taiyi.
“An inheritance that survives by devouring its own ancestors—”
“we want no part of it.”
The golden statue broke apart.
One of the incense immortal runes extinguished along with it.
In the other sacred lands,
people made the same choice.
Some smashed the statues.
Some extinguished the incense flames.
Some burned the Dao scriptures left behind by Taiyi.
There were also sacred-land elders who tried to stop them.
But the disciples had already seen the truth.
Rebellion erupted in an instant.
Behind Taiyi Ancient Immortal’s head,
the final incense immortal rune went out.
“I…”
Kuchen’s immortal soul twisted madly within the karmic tribulation fire.
“I am Taiyi…”
Wang Hao stood before him.
“You’re not.”
“You’re nothing but a slave who stole the bell.”
Those words
struck deeper into his heart than even the ninth sword of Creation.
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
