A Field of Corpses

The mountains and wilderness were filled with tens of thousands of soldiers guarding several hilltops. At the foot of the mountains, a maddened beast horde was charging and rushing about recklessly. In the sky, willow catkins were fluttering down like snowflakes.

These tens of thousands of soldiers could not hold off the beast horde, nor could they comprehend the willow catkins. Unable to defeat or escape them, they only felt endless despair.

Lying severely injured on the ground or barely standing, they watched as the snow-like cover of willow catkins descended upon them... Tens of thousands of people simply gazed blankly into the distance.

In midair, Qin Ran looked at the despair of those tens of thousands of soldiers and came to a stop, because he also felt extremely hopeless.

"Did you foresee such a scene?" he asked Su Changqing.

Su Changqing had foreseen it.

He knew that having the Devouring Demon Willow merge into the Dao would kill many people - many cultivators would die, many living beings would die. He had envisioned such a scene.

But...but!

It was one thing to think about millions of deaths in his mind, but seeing tens of thousands of soldiers standing in the beast tide and waiting to die firsthand was shocking beyond imagination.

He had not thought it would be like this.

Not far from Qin Ran, Su Changqing watched as willow catkins landed in front. They fell onto the damaged armor of a soldier, disappeared, and that soldier then withered away.

One, two, three... hundreds, thousands...

In an instant, several thousand valiant soldiers who had given their lives for their country transformed from living people into desiccated corpses.

Su Changqing looked back. In the forest behind and the mountains and wilderness, on the treetops, there were countless withered corpses of monstrous beasts, birds, beasts, and insects!

Corpses were scattered among boulders, corpses were hanging from barren trees...

Willow catkins fluttered down continuously. The human world had become hell.

"So this is what it's like," Su Changqing murmured.

So this was what the Devouring Demon Willow was like when it engulfed all things.

"Brother Su, I suppose you no longer need to hunt me down," Qin Ran's voice rang out at this time.

Su Changqing looked over to see a catkin after catkin falling onto Qin Ran's body, landing on his hair and his shoulders. Then, like snowflakes falling onto a person, they melted and disappeared.

"From the moment I set foot on the path of cultivating immortality, every second I feared for my life, feeling that I could die at any moment, killed by some powerful being casually unleashing a mystic art. I've imagined countless ways that I could die..."

Qin Ran looked at Su Changqing. "But I never imagined I would die drained by willow catkins. I knew the Devouring Demon Willow was formidable and terrifying, but I didn't think I would die because of it. I thought I could at least escape with my life to another domain."

Willow catkins had also landed on Su Changqing, but the ones on him did not melt. To him, they were just ordinary willow catkins. Catkin after catkin landed on him, turning his shoulders and hair white.

"I'm just a passerby in this world. When I die, I die," said Qin Ran. "But there's still one thing I can't let go of... and that's my silly disciple." He earnestly pleaded with Brother Su, "...Poetry has exceptional talent for cultivation. If you see potential in her, please take her as your disciple. If you have no intention of accepting a disciple, please send her back home, because she is not suited for the world of cultivation."

"As for Chasing the Wind, set it free. And Long Qiqi, please guide her onto the proper immortal path..."

After listening to Qin Ran's last words, Su Changqing was silent. He nodded, about to agree, but at that moment he suddenly realized something...

Why was it that the catkins meant immediate death for everyone else, with no one able to survive even a brief moment, yet Qin Ran was able to speak so many lines here?

Having conveyed his last words, Qin Ran closed his eyes, held out his hands to the sky, wanting to die in as dignified a posture as possible.

He waited for the catkins that had permeated his body to drain him, but after waiting for quite a while, he discovered that he was still fine, still alive, still not dead.

There were no signs of being drained by the catkins at all.

Qin Ran frowned and focused his spiritual sense to look within his body, then discovered surges of red electricity sparking inside.

Red lightning bolts - they were clearly Tribulation Lightning!

Aside from the Tribulation Lightning coursing through his flesh and blood, the Nine Prefectures Cauldron in his dantian was also continuously releasing Tribulation Lightning. This lightning spread from his dantian to his physical body, incinerating all of the invasive catkins.

"Tribulation Lightning?!" Seeing the red lightning circulating inside Qin Ran's body, Su Changqing exclaimed in astonishment.

He knew that Qin Ran had tempered his body with Tribulation Lightning, but who would have thought that the residual amounts inside his body would have this effect?

"Can't believe I can still cling to life like this," Qin Ran said with a bitter laugh.

He looked ahead. The mountains were covered in skeletons, the virgin forest had become a desert, vitality was extinguished, and the human world had turned to hell. Of those tens of thousands of soldiers, only a few had not yet been tainted by the catkins.

Witnessing such an apocalyptic scene, he suddenly had the illusion that everyone else was dead and only he was still alive.

Looking closely, he saw that Li Shiwen was still alive. He was buried under countless skeletons...

Those were his subordinates who had thrown themselves on top of him, using their own flesh and blood to win him a breath more.

"Are you still going to kill me?" Qin Ran asked Su Changqing.

Facing the field of skeletons, Su Changqing did not speak.

"If you're not going to kill me, then I'm going to see my friend first," said Qin Ran when Su Changqing remained silent. His figure flickered as he arrived at Li Shiwen's side.

Qin Ran squatted down amidst the skeletons and spoke to Li Shiwen buried underneath: "Why didn't you leave?"

Hearing the voice, Li Shiwen turned his head to look. Seeing it was Qin Ran, hope instantly appeared in his eyes. He grew excited and desperately pleaded to Qin Ran, this cultivator, "Save... save them! I beg you, save them!"

"It's beyond my power!" Qin Ran shook his head. He looked up at the endless fluttering catkins falling from the sky like snow and said, "I only barely escaped death... I'll die as well."

Now his body was still crackling with electricity, incinerating any catkins that drew near. But how much longer could that electricity last? It was just the residual Tribulation Lightning inside him.

The hope in Li Shiwen's eyes faded. He calmed himself and became numb again.

After a long pause, he answered Qin Ran's question: "Why should I leave? I'm a soldier guarding the borderlands to protect my family and country. Because danger came, I should flee? For a general, when facing the enemy, if he thinks not of strategies to engage them but of ways to desert, what is he?"

"This is a calamity that no ordinary man can face..." said Qin Ran, glancing around. Suddenly amidst the soldier corpses he spotted a rat scavenging. Rats could be found anywhere, it seemed. He threw a rock over, killing it, then continued, "Nor is it one that cultivators can handle."

Su Changqing followed over and hovered in midair, still not speaking as he glanced at Li Shiwen.

"They were the ones who should have resolved this to begin with," said Qin Ran, pointing at Su Changqing in the air. "But they chose the Dao fruits instead.

"So we're all going to die."

As Qin Ran spoke, he recalled that time Li Shiwen had treated him to wine. He rummaged through his Universe Bag and took out a jug of wine, pouring himself a mouthful before passing it to Li Shiwen.

"No side dishes to go with it. Make do..." Suddenly recalling the rat he had just killed, Qin Ran laughed and said, "Well, not exactly none. You treated me to roast chicken and wine; I'll repay you with fried field rats."

He went to retrieve the rat corpse, drew out a sword, and began skinning and cleaning it.

But just as the sword sliced open the rat's skin, Qin Ran suddenly realized something...

With these catkins filling the sky, how had the rat managed to survive?