Ascension

1,245 words

Chapter 699: Ascension

The moment those Bai family members appeared, the Er Shen felt the unstable emotions surging from the other half of their shared upper body.

“These are all fake! Illusions! We’re still inside the Earth Dragon’s belly! This place is causing these hallucinations!” the Er Shen clawed at the same feelings within the other, frantically reasoning within her own mind.

“Don’t doubt Wusheng Laomu! Have you forgotten? Wusheng Laomu delivers all sentient beings! Return to the Native Land of True Emptiness! Your whole family is there! They’re all fine! These are illusions! All fake!”

As she finished, she heard Bai Lingmiao’s sorrowful voice ring in her ears. “I know, I know! I know they’re false, I just…”

Immediately after, the Er Shen felt the other’s overwhelming grief crash down on her again like a tidal wave.

“Even after becoming the White Lotus Saintess, you’re still this useless!” the Er Shen spat bitterly, peering through the hazy red bridal veil at the chaos around her.

Her hand, tipped with black fingernails, pressed gently against her own abdomen, feeling the squirming maggots beneath her skin.

The Er Shen’s gaze fell on Li Huowang. When she saw that even he had no solution for this situation, she understood the gravity of the problem.

If even Li Huowang couldn’t fix it, then the crisis must have already reached its most dire moment.

There was no more time to worry about anything else. If she couldn’t think of a way out now, they would all die here!

Clutching at a thread of hope, the Er Shen pressed her hands together in a lotus mudra against her belly. Her mouth, filled with sharp teeth, opened wide, and she began to chant rapidly. “When chaos first split, a spirit-light flashed. First came Wusheng, then came Heaven. Wusheng gave birth to the Taiji Mother, and Taiji then added the Two Principles. After the Two Principles came the Four Symbols, and only when the Five Phases and Eight Trigrams were complete…”

As she recited, the twin-lotus mark on their brow began to pulse rapidly. The Er Shen was attempting to summon Wusheng Laomu through divine possession, yet she felt a constant layer of something, a hazy obstruction she could not penetrate.

As time passed, the Er Shen felt her connection to Wusheng Laomu growing weaker and weaker.

Bound together in one body, Bai Lingmiao felt everything the Er Shen was feeling. Her voice trembling, she spoke to the Er Shen, “I have a way out.”

Hearing the choked sob in her mind, the Er Shen replied with irritation, “If you had a way, why didn’t you say so earlier?!”

“But this method requires us to die.”

“What good is that! That’s like saying nothing at all!”

“But at least this way, Senior Brother Li and Suisui can survive, right? I don’t want them to die.”

“…Fine!”

Pain. Unending pain yanked the Er Shen back from her thoughts.

Surrounded by the malevolent spirits, she felt them tearing at her hair, pulling off her fingernails, gouging out her eyes, and madly gnawing at her body.

Did she regret it? The Er Shen didn’t think so. Once she decided to do something, no matter the cost, she would never regret it. She was only a little unwilling.

“Miaomiao!” When she heard Li Huowang’s indistinct shout from beyond the layers of spirits, it reached her.

“Stop yelling! Hurry up and do the Dung-Beetle Ascension and get out of here! If even my death can’t get you to ascend, then Li Huowang, you deserve to die!”

The Er Shen’s mouth flew open, and she viciously bit down on a spirit’s face. Her sharp fangs sank in, and she tore its head clean off.

Beside her, Bai Lingmiao, her eyes now hollow, wept tears of blood. She felt her body slipping away bit by bit. For some reason, the pain made her feel a strange sense of relief.

At that moment, Li Huowang had charged into the horde of spirits. Ignoring the creatures biting at him from all sides, he searched frantically, desperately looking for Bai Lingmiao.

But after searching around, all he found were Bai Lingmiao’s two eyeballs and a small, broken piece of her body. He let out a heart-wrenching scream.

Everything he had experienced since leaving Qingfeng Temple flashed through Li Huowang’s mind. He truly understood what it meant for his heart to feel like it was being twisted with a knife.

Bai Lingmiao was dead. The girl he had once sworn to take home and marry was dead.

Even at the very end, she still valued his life more than her own!

The Thousand Greats Record was spread out on the ground. Li Huowang, his expression shattered, his hands trembling, ground his teeth until they creaked.

He gripped the long awl buried in his abdomen, twisted it hard to the left, and then pulled it out with a violent yank.

A mass of insects and mangled flesh sprayed out.

“Aaaaah!” Li Huowang raised the awl, now dripping with his own shredded meat, and slammed it into the bamboo slips that glowed with an eerie red light before him.

Clang! There was a shower of strange, black sparks.

At the same time, over a dozen tentacles wrapped around various instruments of torture, stabbing them into Li Huowang’s body all at once before pulling them out again.

Blood and maggots splattered through the air.

As his mind and body plunged into the deepest agony, Li Huowang felt a familiar gaze rising from beneath him.

Li Huowang’s facial features began to blur and mix together. Then, his body suddenly split open like fish scales, each piece vibrating at a high frequency like insect wings.

As this unprecedented phenomenon occurred, Li Huowang finally sensed, once again, the presence of Bashe at an incredible height and depth above him. He saw the intoxicating aura emanating from the god’s body.

Beneath Bashe’s aura, both the pain in Li Huowang’s mind and body began to transform, coalescing into a different kind of substance.

The next moment, a suffocating, nauseating horror radiated from Li Huowang, infecting everything around him.

Maggots, malevolent spirits, and the other survivors all collapsed to the ground, writhing in desperate agony and letting out wails of despair.

At that same moment, the wall beside him seemed to come alive, splitting open into a myriad of twisted, screaming faces.

Then the ground itself began to tremble. A low, deep sound came from all directions. It was the voice of the Earth Dragon. It, too, felt the ultimate pain.

“AHHHHH!” Driven mad, Li Huowang stood up, his body arched back. He screamed with his very soul at the line of sight shooting up from the earth, and thrust both his hands directly into the ground.

Li Huowang’s mind grew immense. BANG! One of his heads exploded, followed by a second.

As the third head, pierced by a sword, was reaching its limit, the ground finally split open under Li Huowang’s tearing. They all tumbled out through the crack.

The fall was fast. Soon, he heard the wind. Li Huowang saw the deep, dark sky below them.

Somehow, while they were in the Earth Dragon’s belly, they had become inverted.

Li Huowang and the others did not slow down. They continued to fall at terrifying speed into the blackness.

In that darkness, Li Huowang could smell Bashe, and he could hear other things as well. The strange call of a crane.

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Reading Guide Decoding

The Price of Ascent: A Sacrifice That Breaks the World

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Let’s break down this horrifying alchemy. First, the Dung-Beetle Ascension (苍羌登阶). As a reminder, this isn’t a metaphor. It's a literal path named for the lowliest of creatures that pushes filth. Li Huowang’s breakthrough isn't about purifying qi—it's about weaponizing his own absolute suffering and using it as fuel to climb a ladder made of broken bone and seared nerves. This chapter confirms the grim logic: the price for power is a commensurate amount of pain.

Next, the Er Shen’s chant. “When chaos first split… first came Wusheng…” This is a direct, corrupted echo of Daoist creation cosmology. Orthodox Daoism has a grand chain of creation: from the Dao (道) comes the One (一), the Two (二, Yin and Yang), the Three (三, Heaven, Earth, Man), and then the Ten Thousand Things. Here, the Er Shen warps this into the unique theology of the White Lotus Society. The ultimate source isn’t the abstract Dao, but Wusheng Laomu (无生老母), the “Unborn Venerable Mother.” She is the creator, and from her springs a cosmogony that leads to the material world, which her followers see as a prison of suffering. The chant is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to call home.

Finally, the manifestation of Bashe. True to the novel’s Lovecraftian DNA, the god doesn’t save Li Huowang. It simply is. Its “aura” acts as a passive catalyst, a force of nature that strips Li Huowang’s personal agony and broadcasts it as a universal law of torment. The god is a pane of glass that simply focuses the sun’s rays to a burning point. It has no agenda, only a function.

Chapter Overview

Gather ‘round, fellow Daoists, because this is one of those chapters you put the book down for and just stare at the wall for a while after. “Ascension” delivers exactly what its title promises, but not in the way any normal cultivation story would. This isn't a triumphant breakthrough bathed in golden light; it's a visceral, bloody, screaming transaction paid in flesh and fresh grief. We see the Er Shen and Bai Lingmiao make a desperate choice against an impossible siege of malevolent spirits, and we witness Li Huowang shatter his own body to grasp the final, horrifying ladder rung of the Dung-Beetle Ascension. Get ready for a chapter that redefines what ‘paying the price’ really means.

Key Plot Points

Faced with the illusionary Bai family members and a relentless horde of spirits, the Er Shen and Bai Lingmiao are trapped in a corner. The Er Shen tries to summon Wusheng Laomu, but the connection is blocked, growing weaker by the second. In a moment of devastating clarity, Bai Lingmiao reveals a way out—a sacrifice. The path requires both of them to die. After a moment of bitter argument, they accept this fate, not for themselves, but for Li Huowang and Li Sui. The Er Shen’s final act is a bellow of defiance, ordering Li Huowang to seize this chance to ascend.

Driven to complete madness by Bai Lingmiao’s death—finding only her torn remains—Li Huowang unleashes the full, horrific ritual of the Thousand Greats Record. He impales himself, mixing his own blood and maggots into the bamboo slips. This triggers a monstrous physical transformation, his body splitting like fish scales and vibrating. The unbearable pain connects him directly to the god Bashe, who transforms his agony into a new, ambient force of pure suffering. This ‘Dung-Beetle’ radiation collapses everything around him—spirits, survivors, and even the Earth Dragon itself are all driven into a shared, torturous death-throe. The final, agonizing act of Li Huowang’s ascension literally tears open the world, dropping them into the night sky.

Reading Guide

This chapter is the payoff for every single horrifying ritual Li Huowang has ever performed. Don’t just read it—feel the weight of it. The sacrifice of Bai Lingmiao isn’t a plot device to make the hero angry; it's a deeply emotional gut-punch that the story has been building towards. Notice how the Er Shen—always the cynical, brutal half—is the one who ultimately accepts death with a bitter resolve for the sake of another. Her final scream isn’t despair, it’s a command to live.

Also, appreciate the sheer, unrelenting body horror. This isn’t a cultivation breakthrough with lightning and heavenly gates. It’s a man ripping his own guts out and screaming until the world breaks. The power is real, but it feels like a curse. If you’ve been wondering why this novel is praised for its “anti-cultivation” narrative, this is your definitive answer. The cost is everything, and the victory tastes like ash.