Su Li had a particularly terrifying dream.
In the dream, he had a fight with Qi Changying and refused to travel with him. Instead, he rode Wanshui south to Jiangnan by himself. After a few days, however, he changed his mind and decided to turn back. He planned to look for a thick iron chain to tie Qi Changying up, and tell him, “You must stay by my side for the rest of your life. Without my permission, you’re not allowed to go anywhere.”
But when he returned, he couldn’t find Qi Changying.
He saw flames reaching into the sky and deathly auras as thick as ink. He passed many corpses, their faces familiar or unfamiliar. They were all people he had spent every day with over the past five years.
He had seen those faces before.
Some had been by Qi Changying’s side, while others had stood guard and patrolled the camp with swords and spears in hand. When they saw him, some instinctively showed fear, some always kept their faces stern and expressionless, while others smiled at him and respectfully called out, “Lord Qiyueban.”
But now, all those faces had become blurred. They lay on the ground, reduced to piles of cold lifeless corpses.
Su Li also found Shen Huarong and Su Pingbei among them.
He saw so many people, yet he couldn’t find a single one who still had even the slightest sign of life.
He tried to summon the souls from this mountain of corpses and sea of blood, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t hear even the faintest response across the vast world.
So many people had clearly died. Some of their corpses even retained a little warmth. The life force in their dead souls shouldn’t have dispersed yet. How could there be nothing at all?
This dream was truly terrifying.
‘Su Li, wake up. Hurry and wake up.’
‘Wake up…’
You still haven’t…’
‘You still haven’t found that person.’
“…!”
Su Li suddenly opened his eyes.
“Master!”
Shoumo was keeping watch beside him. Its large eyes were red and swollen from crying, like walnuts.
“Master, you’re awake… Wh-what happened? What happened here? I saw, I saw Lord Shen…”
“…What?”
Su Li’s mind was full of vast blank spaces. He pushed himself up and looked around. The entire scene from his dream was reflected before his eyes, chilling him to the bone all over again.
He subconsciously raised a hand and wiped the corner of his mouth.
His hand came away covered in bright red blood.
So it wasn’t a dream.
It was all real.
“…Where’s Qi Changying?!”
He grabbed Shoumo by the wrist.
“Have you seen Qi Changying?!”
As he said this, he was practically holding his breath.
He didn’t know what answer he wanted to hear. He stared intently at Shoumo’s expression. His gaze was so terrifying, like that of an evil ghost, that Shoumo couldn’t help feeling a little frightened.
After a long while, Shoumo finally regained his composure and shook his head repeatedly.
“N-no! I’ve looked everywhere. I couldn’t find the commander!”
“…” Su Li silently breathed a sigh of relief.
But the anxiety in his heart didn’t ease at all.
As though he had thought of something, he suddenly reached into his clothes.
After fumbling around for a long time, he took out a piece of jade that had been warmed by his body heat.
“Y-you go find Wanshui.”
Su Li clenched the jade pendant with its poorly carved cloud patterns and pushed Shoumo away.
“Go quickly. Take it away. Go somewhere far away and wait for me.”
“I… Why? What is Master going to do? I can…”
“You can’t help me!”
Su Li interrupted Shoumo.
“Get far away! Don’t get in my way!”
Shoumo wanted to say something else, but after hesitating for a moment, he turned and left as Su Li had instructed. Before going, he only left him with one sentence: “Be careful in everything.”
Shoumo left.
For a while, Su Li was the only person left on this battlefield scorched by raging flames.
He lowered his eyes and looked at the jade pendant, rubbing its clumsy patterns with his bloodstained fingertips.
The jade pendant was supposed to be worn at the waist, but Su Li carried it against his chest every day. He said that the pendant was too ugly, not delicate enough, and unsuitable for his status. If he hung it outside for others to see, he would only make himself a laughingstock.
Besides…
Besides, this was his possession. It was made for him, and from the moment it came into existence, it belonged to him alone.
Why should he let other people see it?
Su Li clenched his teeth. The hand holding the jade pendant trembled from the force of his grip.
Finally, he raised his hand and smashed the pendant hard against the stone beside him.
With a crisp sound of breaking jade, the pendant shattered into numerous pieces.
Su Li found the sharpest fragment among them, rolled up his sleeve, and used its pointed edge to cut his forearm. He then smeared his blood over its milky-white surface, merging it with the blood Qi Changying had once left on it several years ago.
Su Li had used the soul-summoning spell too many times just now, nearly exhausting himself. Even now, his mind was still somewhat hazy.
He braced himself against the ground and stood up. Stumbling, he threw the blood-covered fragment into the largest burning fire beside him.
Thin wisps of blood-colored smoke drifted out of the flames. Su Li closed his eyes and took a deep breath, carefully smelling the barely perceptible scent mixed in with the smell of blood and burning. His hands remained tightly clenched the entire time.
He was afraid of sensing something bad.
He was afraid that this shattered jade pendant would destroy the last bit of hope he had that remained uncertain.
Fortunately…
Su Li opened his eyes, and his heart settled back into his chest.
Alive.
Still alive.
Qi Changying wasn’t dead yet.
The scattered clarity and reason in his mind returned in an instant, and Su Li felt as though he had suddenly come back to life.
He took out his compass, raised his hand, and began chanting a spell, winding the faint smoke carrying Qi Changying’s scent around the compass needle.
The needle spun rapidly for a moment before finally pointing Su Li in a certain direction.
It was the mountain range he had just crossed.
He didn’t dare delay at all and immediately set off in the direction indicated by the compass.
Qi Changying…
Qi Changying was still alive.
He had to save Qi Changying.
What happened tonight was definitely no ordinary matter.
There were tens of thousands of newly dead corpses, yet not a single soul could be found. This was something that should have been absolutely impossible.
Where were the souls?
Where had their souls gone?
Without their souls, these people couldn’t enter the cycle of rebirth.
They would remain trapped in this day, reduced to ashes and scattered into nothingness, with no next life.
This was not something an ordinary person could accomplish.
This matter was definitely related to the Nether Path.
Although he couldn’t find even a wisp of a soul, Su Li could more or less sense that what had killed Shen Huarong, Su Pingbei, and the tens of thousands of soldiers of the Qi family army was a curse.
The aura of that curse felt faintly familiar to him, as though it had originated from his own hands. But it was far more cunning and vicious than the original spell he had created.
He had once slaughtered the Chaosu army as well, but even the souls of those killed by ghosts’ teeth had remained. In this case, among tens of thousands of people, not even the slightest path to survival had been left open.
How many Nether Path spirit masters in this world had the ability to accomplish something like this?
Apart from his master, there was only himself.
Naturally, he hadn’t done this. And his master was already a Shenguan, so it was impossible for him to interfere in a massacre of life and death on this scale. Apart from them…
No.
There was one more person.
The one who had secretly tampered with the Qi family’s fate and was still hiding in the shadows, refusing to show themselves.
If it really was that person, who had stolen the Qi family’s fortune and plotted the deaths of so many people… then Qi Changying still being alive now couldn’t exactly be considered something reassuring.
Su Li only hated that he couldn’t go faster, even faster.
He used every bit of his strength to approach the dark mountain range. He ran until the smell of blood rose in his throat. He kept falling and getting back up, no longer able to feel any pain. Only instinct and willpower supported him, urging him to keep going, to take bigger, faster, steadier steps, to find that person as quickly as possible and reach his side.
After entering the mountains, he no longer needed the compass to guide him, because he could see the flames burning in a distant valley.
The flames blazed through the valley like a dancing river, or like an invisible, swaying cage.
Relying on his legs, Su Li crossed thick patches of thorny bushes and passed through scattered rocks and wild grass. At last, he drew close to that patch of warmth.
As he approached, he finally saw the thin figure trapped within the firelight.
The person’s limbs were bound with long iron chains, and his body was practically suspended in the air. His red robe was covered in dirt and torn by the flames. His long hair, which had always been neatly tied up, had come loose and fluttered slightly in the wind amid the circle of firelight.
“Qi Changying…”
Su Li called his name and practically threw himself forward, grabbing the chains around his body.
He wanted to break the chains. But how could he sever iron with his bare hands? He pulled and dragged at them, even biting them like a wild beast, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move the chains in the slightest.
Su Li screamed and shouted like a madman. He rushed into the fire, trying to find the end of the chains, but only when he touched the flames did he realize that although they gave off heat, they wouldn’t burn anyone.
This wasn’t ordinary fire. It couldn’t burn human flesh.
It burned the souls of mortals.
Su Li didn’t know how long Qi Changying had been trapped here. He didn’t know how long these flames had been burning him.
He only knew that the aura of Qi Changying he could sense was growing weaker and weaker. This meant that his soul was also about to be completely burned away by the flames, just like the countless corpses on the battlefield. His soul would be annihilated, and he would never have another life.
If he had enough time, no matter how evil the formation or how difficult the spell, he could always find a way to break it.
But there was no time to wait.
Qi Changying couldn’t wait.
Qiyueban has been proud all his life, but at this moment, for the first time, he felt that he was so useless. He couldn’t break those chains, nor could he save the person before him.
He gritted his teeth and took half a step back.
Behind him, the Fusang Divine Bells appeared in response to his thoughts. The entire set of bells manifested in the world, born amid the raging flames.
The tones of the majestic bells resounded through the valley. Su Li desperately tried to find souls he could command. He wanted to find someone, or some ghost, anyone who could save him and help him. But the world was clearly so vast, yet it couldn’t give him even the slightest response.
Only now did Su Li seem to understand why that person had crushed the souls of the dead along with killing them.
So that was it…
It was because they knew he was beside Qi Changying and knew that he could command ghosts. To prevent him from interfering and ruining their plans, they used such a cruel method to force him into a situation where he was completely isolated and helpless, cutting off the next lives of so many people.
Shoumo said that the reason the army stopped was because an important member of the Zhuge family had come from the capital.
What? Did some member of the Zhuge family come up with such a vicious scheme to deal with him?
For a family full of mediocrities to produce someone so deep and calculating was truly not to be underestimated. Or perhaps Zhuge Yu had been pretending to be a fool and hiding his true abilities from the very beginning. He stole the Qi family’s fortune and raised his own family to its current position, where it stood beneath only the emperor and held overwhelming power. Yet he still wasn’t satisfied. He even coveted Qi Changying’s fate, willing to bury tens of thousands of soldiers from the Qi family army and sacrifice the hard-won peace and stability of Great Li just to satisfy his own selfish desires.
…Impossible.
As long as he, Qiyueban, was alive, he would not allow something like this to happen.
Even if he had to stake his life on it, he wouldn’t let them get what they wanted!!!
“Dong!”
The sound of the divine bells resounded throughout heaven and earth.
Su Li exhausted every last bit of his strength, trying to make the sound of the bells travel farther, and farther.
Far enough for some wandering, lonely soul to hear his voice and come over to see him and help him.
But… there was no one.
This wilderness stretched so far that its end couldn’t be seen. How could a cry for help possibly reach the ears of any soul?
There was no time left…
Qi Changying’s soul was about to be burned away. There was almost no time left…
“Crack!”
Amid the deafening bell tones, Su Li heard a dull sound of something breaking.
In that instant, his own soul seemed to have suffered a heavy blow as well. His internal organs hurt as though they were being scraped by knives, as if he himself were the one making that cracking sound.
It broke.
The bells had cracked.
The Fusang Divine Bells were his life-bound natal magical artifact. Now that cracks had appeared on the body of the bells, Su Li himself suffered the same, or even several times greater, damage.
He had already pushed himself too far today, and his body had long since reached its limit. At last, he could no longer bear it. He staggered and fell to his knees, suddenly spitting out a mouthful of blood.
“Ah Li…”
In his dazed state, Su Li suddenly heard a faint voice calling him, mixed in with the bell tones and the ringing in his ears.
He opened his eyes slightly wider and subconsciously raised his face.
He saw that Qi Changying in front of him had opened his eyes at some point.
Those eyes had already lost their former brilliance. In their dim depths, there was nothing but the firelight and Su Li.
“Stop fighting. Forget it…”
Qi Changying’s voice was extremely weak. Yet even this whisper, as faint as a mosquito’s buzz, had taken every last bit of his strength to utter.
“Forget it, Ah Li… It’s not worth it.”
“It’s worth it!”
Su Li’s voice was hoarse. He raised his hand and grabbed the chains around Qi Changying’s body tightly.
“You must keep living with all your strength! You’re not allowed to die without my permission, Qi Changying! If I say it’s worth it, then it’s worth it!!!”
“…”
Qi Changying seemed to sigh silently.
He closed his eyes briefly, and a tear fell with the movement.
“Live well…
“Live well…”
Before the final syllable had even faded, it was suddenly interrupted by another muffled sound that sent chills down one’s spine.
Warm blood splashed onto Su Li’s face.
His vision turned red, and that same warm crimson liquid flowed into his eyes.
A sharp spike flew from somewhere and pierced Qi Changying’s throat from behind. Blood flowed down the pointed tip of the long spike and dripped onto the ground, abruptly cutting off the words Qi Changying hadn’t yet finished.
“…”
Su Li opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Everything before his eyes was blurred by blood, along with the person’s face and figure.
He subconsciously raised his trembling hand and gently touched his left eye, feeling the wet liquid.
Something quietly came undone in that instant.
With his half-divine body, Su Li could vaguely sense what had happened.
…It was karma.
The unresolved karmic bond between Qi Changying and him.
Nine years ago, Qi Changying left a drop of blood in his left eye.
Now, his left eye had once again been soaked in blood, and this karmic bond that had lasted for years had finally been resolved.
So, after all those twists and turns, it really was… Heaven’s own arrangement.
Su Li lowered his head and laughed.
In his dazed state, he saw something fall onto the ground in front of him. He instinctively reached out to catch it. Only when it landed in his palm did he realize that it was the Snake-Bone Nail he had given Qi Changying just a few days ago.
The Snake-Bone Nail gradually grew in Su Li’s hand until it was as long as his forearm. This was its original form.
He had spent three years refining this magical artifact, yet it had only accompanied Qi Changying for a mere three days.
What was the point of spending so much effort on this thing? In the end, it still hadn’t been able to protect Qi Changying.
Even though Su Li was naturally eccentric and solitary, always thinking the worst of people and viewing them in the worst possible light, he had never imagined that human hearts could be so wicked. When stealing secretly wasn’t enough, they simply resorted to openly snatching what they wanted.
They had snatched his person right under his nose…
They could dream on.
Su Li tightened his grip on the long nail.
Now that the karma had been resolved, the obstacle preventing Su Li from becoming a god was gone. He should have felt relieved, then turned around and left, leaving behind the corpse hanging amid the flames and waiting for his soul to completely dissipate, severing this bond and karma once and for all.
From then on, there would be no more Qi Changying in this world.
But he wasn’t willing.
He wasn’t willing!
He said Qi Changying belonged to him. Whether alive or dead, he was his.
Unless he willingly abandoned him, no one else could ever take Qi Changying away from his side.
Su Li curled his lips into a smile. The blood covering half his face made his expression look even more crazed.
At that moment, he didn’t think about anything or do anything.
He simply raised his head and stared at Qi Changying, who had completely lost all signs of life.
“Boo.!”
The entire set of divine bells behind him shattered. The force of their destruction generated a shockwave and fierce winds, making the surrounding flames sway violently, as though the valley itself were wailing for this final parting in death.
Qi Changying’s shattered soul was forcibly dragged back by the power released when the Fusang Divine Bells destroyed themselves, like a sacrifice.
Someone wanted his life, while someone else was willing to stake their own life to keep him from leaving.
His life-bound magical artifact was completely destroyed, and blood began to seep from all seven orifices on Su Li’s face.
His flesh and blood churned inside him, and his soul hurt as though it were being pierced by needles. It was already the most extreme torture in this world.
The resentment released by his half-divine body gathered and surged little by little, but it still wasn’t enough.
Not enough.
Still not enough…
Su Li raised the Snake-Bone Nail and plunged it into his own left eye!
This was the beginning and the end of the karma between him and Qi Changying. It was this eye that had bound him and Qi Changying together for so many years.
Since one karmic bond had ended and the two of them were no longer connected, then he would simply create another one.
Only this time, what bound the two of them together would no longer be Qi Changying’s blood.
It would be his,Su Li’s body and soul.
At this level, this bond should be deep enough, right?
They would be entangled from life to death. Even after a thousand years, it wouldn’t be easily severed.
“…With this body, I offer myself as kindling. With divine bones, I build the furnace; with my Dao heart, I make the charcoal. I tear out my bones and gouge out my heart, using my three souls as chains and my seven spirits as guides. I refine ghosts with my body and sink into eternal damnation. Let heaven and earth witness this oath, and let gods and ghosts hear it!
“…Qi Changying!!!”
Su Li once said that with Qi Changying’s cotton-like temperament, he could never turn into a ghost. Even if he were tortured to death, he would only sigh and say, “Forget it.”
He said it casually at the time. Who would have thought that his words would become a prophecy?
But it didn’t matter.
Someone wanted Qi Changying’s life. They wanted to snatch away what belonged to him, crush it, and make sure he no longer existed in the human world.
Qi Changying accepted his fate and didn’t fight back.
But he, Qiyueban, would fight for him.
“With my half-divine body, I shall burn away my divine bones and flesh, refine your soul, and bestow upon you an immortal divine soul! I shall grant you the power to overturn heaven and earth and stand above all ghosts!
“If anyone wants to seize your soul or steal your fate, make them pay the price!!!”
Su Li endured the excruciating pain and used his one remaining eye to gaze at the soul gradually piecing itself together in midair.
Another warm trickle flowed from the corner of his eye.
Su Li didn’t know whether it was blood or something else.
“You…”
His flesh and blood melted away, his bones broke inch by inch, and his mind was crushed. Such extreme torment gave rise to extreme resentment, and his soul should have turned into a vengeful ghost from then on, but the owner of the body and soul chose to give all of that up.
He poured all his resentment, along with his flesh, blood, and soul, into another person.
Qiyueban was an extraordinary grandmaster of the Nether Path, a genius whose brilliance had made him the pride of the Nether Path throughout his life. Even in death, he would make a magnificent spectacle of himself. He wanted the person he loved to wield his power, dominate heaven and earth, and make all ghosts bow their heads in submission.
Before his consciousness completely sank into nothingness, Su Li took one last look at Qi Changying.
He didn’t know whether he had managed to say his final words aloud, or whether Qi Changying had heard them.
He said:
Qi Changying…
Wait for me.
