“Nonsense! Utter sophistry!”
Fang Nu suddenly stepped forward and rebuked him sharply.
His voice had turned hoarse with emotion, but his tone was exceptionally firm.
The face that had been flushed with near-embarrassment moments ago had returned to normal. If anything, it now looked even calmer and more severe.
Years of opposing the Celestial Master’s Palace had given Fang Nu an extraordinary instinct for danger.
He knew that if he did not fight back now, the entire rhythm of the exchange would fall into Gu Chengyin’s hands.
Every word this man spoke was like a carefully woven fishing net. It seemed loose and casual on the surface, but in reality, every strand was linked to the next.
Once caught, there would be no escaping. By then, the outcome would no longer be his to decide.
“You’re nothing but a figurehead Sect Master of the Azure Cloud Sect! You can’t even be considered a member of the sect.”
Fang Nu pointed at Gu Chengyin, his tone as decisive as a knife:
“You must have struck some shady deal with Jiang Qingshan!”
After saying this, Fang Nu abruptly turned around and faced the representatives of the other sects outside the hall.
“Every one of you is a renowned figure in the cultivation world. But has any of you ever dealt with Gu Chengyin?”
The sect representatives shook their heads one after another.
No.
Not a single one.
Gu Chengyin had only ever visited the Azure Sword Sect once. Let alone dealing with him, most of them had never even seen his face.
Seeing their reactions, Fang Nu grew even more confident and immediately delivered his conclusion:
“So the truth is already clear. This is nothing but a self-staged farce to save face!”
“The reason Gu Chengyin joined the Celestial Master’s Palace under the identity of Sect Master of the Azure Sword Sect was to conceal the Palace’s discrimination against the sects!”
“He’s the Sect Master of the Azure Sword Sect, yet he’s barely even been there a few times. He’s completely in bed with the Celestial Master’s Palace.”
“In the end, the so-called members of the sects within the Celestial Master’s Palace are nothing more than people from the Palace itself!”
Those words struck like a heavy hammer, smashing directly into the weakest point of Gu Chengyin’s web of logic.
Fang Nu had found an exceptionally vicious angle.
If being a figurehead counted as being a member of a sect, then the Celestial Master’s Palace could simply assign a few of its own people honorary positions in various sects.
Then it could announce that its ranks were filled with sect representatives.
Wouldn’t that just be deceiving everyone?
Gu Chengyin raised an eyebrow, and his expression became somewhat more serious.
Fang Nu’s rebuttal was indeed well-reasoned.
In such a short span of time, he had pinpointed the only vulnerable point in Gu Chengyin’s entire line of argument.
Then, by linking the ideas of a face-saving charade and insiders infiltrating the sects, he had constructed a complete counterargument.
That ability to adapt on the spot, along with such keen political instincts, was worthy of a veteran Golden Core cultivator who had opposed the Celestial Master’s Palace for many years.
But then again, Fang Nu’s opponent was Emperor Luo.
Although the entire Sun and Moon Cult was nothing more than a punching bag before that emperor, even a pig would have learned a few tricks after being beaten by an unmatched expert for so many years.
The tactic of turning one’s own weapon against oneself was precisely the genuine skill Fang Nu had honed through countless defeats.
But to Gu Chengyin, that was all it amounted to.
“You refuse when we invite you to join us.”
His tone remained calm, but the gentle teasing from earlier had faded, replaced by a sharper directness.
“So, according to Vice Cult Master Fang, you neither want to swear the oath nor join the Celestial Master’s Palace?”
The question cleanly sliced through all the polished rhetoric Fang Nu had layered over his argument, exposing the most naked truth beneath it.
After making such a commotion for half the day, what the cultivation world truly wanted was simply to stop being controlled by the Celestial Master’s Palace and make its own decisions.
Cultivation had always emphasized following one’s nature and acting as one pleased. The orthodox sects were somewhat restrained in this regard, but the demonic sects were another matter entirely.
The Slaughter Dao pursued enlightenment through killing—the more one killed, the higher one’s cultivation became.
The Dual-Cultivation Dao pursued enlightenment through lust—the more furnaces one harvested, the deeper one’s power grew.
There were also more sinister and unorthodox paths whose deeds were even more lawless.
In the eyes of these cultivators, the mortal world was one enormous playground.
They killed whenever they wished and took whatever women they found beautiful to serve as cultivation furnaces.
Officials who got in their way were casually erased. Wealthy merchants were stripped of everything they owned.
To cultivators, mortals were less than ants. At best, they were merely another kind of cultivation resource, no different in essence from spirit herbs and spirit stones.
Yet everything changed after the Celestial Master’s Palace appeared.
The Celestial Masters were even more ruthless in exterminating the demonic path than the orthodox sects that opposed it.
When an orthodox sect encountered a demonic one, it would sometimes still observe the conventions of the martial world and show some consideration for personal relationships.
But the Celestial Master’s Palace recognized only rules.
Break the rules, and you died.
There was no room for sentiment, no mercy to be shown, and no loopholes to exploit.
The first entry in the Celestial Master’s Palace annals was the Founding Patriarch’s Sixty-Year Demon-Sweeping Campaign.
It did not mean that he swept away demons at the age of sixty.
It meant that he spent sixty years sweeping away demons.
For an entire sixty years, the Founding Patriarch led the first generation of Celestial Masters from south to north and from east to west, plowing through the entire cultivation world again and again.
During those six decades, countless sects were uprooted, countless powerful cultivators were cut down, and countless forbidden arts and sinister techniques were reduced to ashes in the flames.
Even when the saintly and righteous figures of the orthodox path tried to intervene and mediate, the Founding Patriarch did not spare them so much as a glance before taking them down along with everyone else.
After that, the demonic path vanished from the world, and the mortal realm entered an age of prosperity.
The rice ripened millions of times over, and for the first time, the people were able to cry, “Long live!”
But now, the cultivation world was stirring once more.
It was trying to cast off the shackles around its body, trying to return to the age when cultivators ruled as they pleased.
The best solution would have been to make the Celestial Master’s Palace disappear in a physical sense.
However, although the Golden Core cultivators of the various sects possessed lofty realms and considerable cultivation, they were utterly incomparable to the Celestial Master’s Palace’s disciplined forces in terms of combat ability and the strength of their Dao hearts.
What was more, so long as no Nascent Soul cultivator emerged, Jingzhe was invincible.
Thus, they had retreated to a second-best strategy and chosen to attack from the political side.
First, they would infiltrate the Celestial Master’s Palace. Then, they would dismantle it from within.
Fang Nu’s provocation today appeared on the surface to be a demand for equal treatment, but in truth, he was testing the Celestial Master’s Palace’s limits.
If the Palace compromised on this issue, his next demand would be for the sects to participate in its decision-making.
After that, he would demand that the sects be granted fixed seats within the Celestial Master’s Palace.
Step by step, they would infiltrate it. Bit by bit, they would devour it.
Their ultimate goal was to turn the Celestial Master’s Palace into a puppet institution controlled by the sects from within.
“Cultivation is supposed to be about following one’s heart.”
Fang Nu’s voice rang out again.
This time, he tore away his disguise and revealed his true face:
“Of course we can’t be bound by an oath. Otherwise, how are we supposed to cultivate?”
“In my opinion, the reason the immortal path has declined in the cultivation world is precisely because of these rotten rules imposed by the Celestial Master’s Palace!”
Fang Nu was equally straightforward. Since Gu Chengyin had already laid everything bare, there was no point in hiding any longer.
He might as well put all his cards on the table.
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.
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
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!
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?"
