Your Method of Preserving the Fire

Wang Hao finished reading the intelligence report.

His gaze fell upon the five Heavenly Immortals.

“Twelve hundred thousand years ago.”

“You fled back from the Immortal Realm.”

“And smashed the gate behind you.”

The auras of the five Heavenly Immortals

all flickered at once.

The Taixuan Heavenly Immortal’s eyes turned cold.

“How do you know that?”

“You needn’t concern yourself with that.”

Wang Hao said,

“I only want to ask one thing.”

“Who is paying”

“for the gate you smashed?”

The Taixuan Heavenly Immortal said nothing.

The Faceless Heavenly Immortal had no features on his face.

The smooth skin of his face squirmed faintly.

Yet a hoarse voice emerged from his abdomen.

“The Immortal Realm is no longer a place of ascension.”

“It is sick.”

“Every immortal domain”

“is rotting.”

“To send us back”

“would be to send us to our deaths.”

Around the Ascension Platform,

quite a few Earth Immortals changed expression.

The vast majority of them

had never entered the Immortal Realm.

They knew of it only

from records in ancient texts.

There, immortal qi was as vast as the sea,

the Great Dao manifested openly,

and substances of longevity lay everywhere.

Immortal birds and divine beasts roamed freely.

It was the land every cultivator dreamed of reaching.

But now,

five Heavenly Immortals who had once entered the Immortal Realm

were saying that it was sick.

The Taixuan Heavenly Immortal looked at Wang Hao.

“You have seen only three corrupted immortals.”

“And you think that means you can control everything.”

“But in the Immortal Realm,”

“things like them”

“are as numerous as dust.”

“Golden Immortals are rotting.”

“Immortal Kings are mutating.”

“Even the Immortal Emperor Palace, suspended high above all heavens,”

“has become the source of corruption.”

“We remain in the lower realm”

“not because we fear death.”

“But because we must preserve the last sparks of the immortal path”

“for the cultivation world.”

Wang Hao smiled.

“Preserve the sparks?”

“And your way of preserving them”

“is to hide in forbidden zones”

“and drain one world after another dry?”

The Taixuan Heavenly Immortal said,

“Compared with the entire cultivation world,”

“what do the sacrifices of a few worlds”

“amount to?”

The smile on Wang Hao’s face

slowly vanished.

“Did those who were sacrificed”

“agree to it?”

The Taixuan Heavenly Immortal replied indifferently,

“The opinions of ants”

“are meaningless.”

As those words fell,

the Longevity Earth Immortal slowly closed his eyes beneath the white stone steps.

The Earth Immortals who had still been hesitating

also wore complicated expressions.

Wang Hao raised the Realm-Returning Immortal Seal.

“Then there is nothing more to say.”

“Open the gate.”

The immortal seal descended.

Rumble—

The entire Ascension Platform of the Myriad Heavens shook violently.

All ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine stone steps

lit up at once.

Countless broken formation patterns

began repairing themselves.

Above the immortal gate,

a pale crack rapidly spread wider.

The Taixuan Heavenly Immortal stepped forward.

The will of a Heavenly Immortal swept across the Ascension Platform.

“I have said it before.”

“No one can force the immortals!”

Boom!

The other four Heavenly Immortals unleashed their power at the same time.

At that moment,

the Earth Immortals also made their choices.

Of the forty-one uncorrupted Earth Immortals,

twenty-seven moved away,

unwilling to take part in the battle.

The remaining fourteen

stood before the immortal gate.

The seventeen Earth Immortals in the early stages of corruption

simultaneously sprouted black fungal threads from within their bodies.

The thirty-one deeply corrupted immortals

tore away their disguises.

Some grew tens of thousands of eyes.

Some had their flesh transform into seas of writhing blood.

Others had their skulls split open,

from which emerged ancient black trees hung with human faces.

In an instant,

the Ascension Platform

became a place where demons ran wild.

Wang Hao looked at those corrupted immortals

and said calmly,

“I knew it.”

“You can’t judge a medical report”

“just by looking at the surface.”

A Li stood aboard the Great Xia flagship

and abruptly raised her hand.

“All ships, lock on!”

The cannon muzzles of all three hundred and forty-one black-gold warships

lit up at once.

The Crone of Hundred Burial Mountain opened the Myriad Burial Coffin.

Countless corpses marched forth.

Around the Ascension Platform, they erected a wall of corpses to seal out the corruption.

The Dragon-Slayer’s legs had only just been restored.

The longsword in his hand rang as it left its sheath.

He lowered his gaze to look at his legs.

“This time…”

“No matter what, they must not break again.”

An elderly Ministry of Revenue official stood behind him.

“Senior…”

“You are using military-grade plating from Great Xia.”

“If it gets damaged—”

With one stroke of his sword, the Dragon-Slayer cleaved apart the railing ahead.

Then he charged at a corrupted Earth Immortal.

“Put it on the tab!”

The battle

erupted in an instant.

The Taixuan Heavenly Immortal raised a hand.

A Beiming World emerged from his palm.

Within that world,

hundreds of millions of frigid stars fell at once.

Wang Hao took a step forward.

“Heaven-Imprisoning, Earth-Overturning Palm.”

“First Palm!”

A golden palm imprint stretched across the Ascension Platform.

The first wave of stars

shattered on the spot.

“Second Palm!”

The Beiming World shook violently.

The Taixuan Heavenly Immortal’s sleeves billowed.

The void between the two of them

collapsed layer upon layer.

“Third Palm!”

Boom!

The Taixuan Heavenly Immortal took a step back.

For the first time, shock appeared on his face.

Wang Hao had only just entered the first level of the Earth Immortal Realm.

Yet his strength far surpassed that of an ordinary Earth Immortal.

“Fourth Palm!”

A giant golden hand covered ninety thousand stone steps.

Several corrupted Earth Immortals were too slow to evade.

They were slapped straight into the stone steps.

“Fifth Palm!”

A crack that ran through heaven and earth

appeared in the Beiming World within the Taixuan Heavenly Immortal’s palm.

At the same time,

the Faceless Heavenly Immortal silently appeared behind Wang Hao.

The smooth skin of his face suddenly split open.

There was no flesh beneath it.

Only a pale, barbed maw.

The maw bit toward Wang Hao’s Imperial Soul.

The new Son of Heaven Sword flew up of its own accord.

A silver-haired youth rushed out from within the sword.

He wrapped both arms around the Faceless Heavenly Immortal’s head

and opened his mouth to bite down.

Crack!

He tore off a chunk of flesh from the Faceless Heavenly Immortal’s face.

The silver-haired youth chewed twice.

His expression slowly froze.

The next instant,

he opened his mouth and spat it out.

“Pah!”

“It stinks!”

The Faceless Heavenly Immortal seemed stunned as well.

It had lived for more than a hundred thousand years.

It had devoured countless living beings.

Yet this was the first time it had been bitten by someone else.

Wang Hao struck back with a sword.

The silver blade

pierced through the gap in the Faceless Heavenly Immortal’s face.

Immaculate Kindling erupted with a roar.

“Opening Heaven’s Nine Swords.”

“Fifth Sword.”

“Sever Immortal from Mortal!”

Boom!

The Faceless Heavenly Immortal’s entire head

was pierced through by sword-light.

A mass of black insect eggs

gushed from its neck.

It did not die.

But the Immaculate Kindling burned it until it staggered back in madness.

The silver-haired youth returned to the sword.

He kept spitting.

“Master.”

“This thing can’t be eaten.”

“Who told you to eat it?”

“I thought I could level up.”

“You put anything in your mouth these days.”

“Sooner or later, you’ll upset your stomach.”

“A sword doesn’t have a stomach.”

“Then you’ll damage your sword body.”

The silver-haired youth lowered his head and glanced at the cracks that had only just been repaired.

He immediately became well-behaved.

Elsewhere,

the Crimson Mother Heavenly Immortal had completely torn open her shell.

She had originally appeared as a kindly old woman in red.

But beneath those red robes,

there was no body.

Only a mountain of flesh formed from countless infants’ arms.

Those infant arms seized three Earth Immortals

and dragged them directly into the flesh mountain.

Piercing screams

rang out from different parts of the flesh.

The Crone of Hundred Burial Mountain descended, riding the Myriad Burial Coffin.

Tens of thousands of soulless corpses

lunged at the Crimson Mother Heavenly Immortal at once.

Countless infants cried from within the Crimson Mother Heavenly Immortal.

It tried to draw out the souls of the corpses,

but found nothing to take.

The Crone of Hundred Burial Mountain sneered.

“This old woman’s burial companions…”

“The most worthless thing of all.”

“Is the soul.”

Boom!

The Ten-Thousand-Burial Coffin smashed into the mountain of flesh.

Countless arms of the Crimson Mother Heavenly Immortal snapped at once.

The Crone of Hundred Burial Mountain was also hurled away by the force of the Heavenly Immortal.

What remained of her body—

only half of it—

exploded away by another half.

She fell from the starry sky.

The Dragon-Slayer caught her in one swift motion.

The price was his legs.

Once again, a crisp sound rang out.

Crack!

The Dragon-Slayer’s face turned green.

He lowered his head to look at his legs, bent into grotesque angles.

“I knew it,” he said.

The old crone coughed up a mouthful of blood.

“Didn’t you say…”

“that if they broke again, you’d be a dog?”

The Dragon-Slayer fell silent for a moment.

“Woof.”

At the center of the Ascension Platform,

Wang Hao’s sixth palm strike had already fallen.

“Sixth Palm!”

Sixty-three phantom worlds

rose behind him at once.

The Northern Abyss World in Taixuan Heavenly Immortal’s palm

exploded with a thunderous crash.

“Seventh Palm!”

Three hundred awakening worlds

held aloft the River of Imperial Dao together.

Taixuan Heavenly Immortal retreated without pause.

With every step he took,

a thousand layers of white stone steps shattered.

“Eighth Palm!”

Nearly a billion living souls of Great Xia—

the lights of countless homes—

flowed into the River of Imperial Dao.

It was not immortal power,

yet it was far weightier than ordinary immortal power.

Taixuan Heavenly Immortal formed a seal with both hands.

His Heavenly Immortal Dao Fruit, sealed away for years,

stirred for the first time.

A thread of pressure truly belonging to a Heavenly Immortal

rose from within him.

The laws of the cultivation world

instantly let out a groan of unbearable strain.

“Wang Hao!”

“Even suppressed by the lower realm,”

“I am not someone a newly ascended Earth Immortal like you can contend with!”

Wang Hao’s imperial robes billowed in the wind.

His right hand slowly rose.

The power of the previous eight palms

fully converged in his palm.

“If you were in the Immortal Realm,”

“perhaps I truly could not defeat you.”

“But here…”

“this is the mortal world.”

“Ninth Palm!”

“Imprison Heaven!”

All space around Taixuan Heavenly Immortal

froze solid at once.

“Overturn Earth!”

Ninety thousand layers of white stone steps suddenly flipped over,

like an inverted firmament,

crushing down upon him.

Taixuan Heavenly Immortal roared.

His Heavenly Immortal Dao Fruit awakened completely.

But at that very instant,

the entire cultivation world

unleashed a force of rejection.

Immortals and mortals were fundamentally different.

The more Heavenly Immortal power he released,

the more fiercely the laws of the lower realm rejected him.

The Realm-Return Immortal Seal lit up in response.

A chain from the Immortal Realm

shot out from the shattered Immortal Gate

and wrapped around Taixuan Heavenly Immortal’s waist.

Wang Hao pressed down with five fingers.

“Fall!”

Rumble!

Taixuan Heavenly Immortal crashed down

from the summit of the ninety thousand stone steps.

In the end,

he was struck head-on by the golden palm imprint

and slammed into the Immortal Gate.

“No!”

Taixuan Heavenly Immortal gripped the edges of the gate with both hands.

Half his body had already passed through it.

Wang Hao walked up before him

and raised a foot.

“Don’t you love sacrificing the few?”

“Now it’s your turn.”

Bang!

Taixuan Heavenly Immortal vanished completely beyond the Immortal Gate.

The laws of return to the Immortal Realm

abruptly intensified.

Upon the Ascension Platform,

a pale mark surfaced within the bodies

of every being of the Immortal Dao.

Wang Hao turned around

and looked at the remaining eighty-eight immortals.

“Who’s next?”

The Withered-and-Blooming Heavenly Immortal was silent for a moment.

He was the first to withdraw his power.

He walked to the Longevity Earth Immortal’s side.

“The Immortal Realm may be dangerous,”

“but he is right.”

“We should not treat the lower realm”

“as a place to flee to.”

The Star-Fishing Heavenly Immortal also let out a sigh

and stepped toward the Immortal Gate of his own accord.

Those Earth Immortals who had not been corrupted

made their choices one after another.

Some remained silent.

Some were enraged.

Some turned back to look upon the worlds they had once protected.

In the end,

they still stepped onto the white stone stairs.

Wang Hao did not urge them.

The immortals willing to cooperate.

They could take their own weapons with them.

Their inheritances.

Even portions of their former homelands in the lower realms.

But those immortals who had been contaminated—

their treatment was entirely different.

Chains of Imperial Dao descended one after another,

binding them into a single line.

Around the neck of every one of them

hung a wooden placard.

“Severely Contaminated.”

“Strictly No Contact.”

“Do Not Feed.”

The gaunt Earth Immortal stood to one side,

looking at the placard around his own neck.

All of a sudden, he felt that

“Registered, Pending Repatriation”

was not entirely unacceptable either.

The Crimson Mother Heavenly Immortal and the Faceless Heavenly Immortal still tried to resist.

Two violet thunder dragons

burst from the ninth level of the Thunder Abyss Demon-Suppressing Tower.

One from the left, one from the right,

they rammed the two into the Immortal Gate.

The thunder dragons were not powerful enough to harm Heavenly Immortals,

but the immaculate kindling burning upon their scales

made the two contaminated Heavenly Immortals shriek in agony.

The new Son of Heaven Sword stood guard beside the Immortal Gate.

Whenever someone moved too slowly,

the silver-haired youth would kick them from behind.

“Line up!”

“You’re already immortals.

And you still think you can cut in line?”

A contaminated Earth Immortal with more than a dozen legs roared angrily,

“I wasn’t cutting in line!”

The silver-haired youth looked at his legs.

“You have too many legs.

You’re the prime suspect.”

An hour later,

the final contaminated Earth Immortal

was dragged through the Immortal Gate by the chains of Imperial Dao.

Only Wang Hao and the people of Great Xia

remained upon the Ascension Platform.

A Li stepped down from the flagship.

“Retired Emperor.”

“All eighty-nine immortals

have entered the Immortal Realm.”

Wang Hao nodded.

“The fleet returns to Great Xia.

The Ascension Platform is to be sealed permanently.”

A Li looked toward the Immortal Gate, which was slowly closing.

“And you?”

Wang Hao put away the Thunder Abyss Demon-Suppressing Tower

and took up the new Son of Heaven Sword.

“I promised them

I would personally see them to their destination.”

The silver-haired youth poked his head out from the sword.

“Master,

when did you promise that?”

Wang Hao said,

“Just now.”

He turned to look at the others.

The Crone of Hundred Burial Mountain lay in her coffin,

with less than half her body remaining.

The Dragon-Slayer lay beside her,

his legs broken for the fourth time.

The people of the Ancient Longevity Sect,

the Ice and Snow Divine Palace,

the Illusory Sea Immortal Sect,

as well as every Great Xia soldier aboard all three hundred and forty-one warships—

all of them were watching him.

Wang Hao raised a hand.

“Go back.

Tell the new emperor:

not a single immortal remains

in the cultivation world.”

With that,

he stepped into the Immortal Gate.

Immortal light surged.

Wang Hao’s figure

and the final chain of Imperial Dao

vanished at the same time.