The Divine Steles of the Dead City

“The so-called Buddha, the so-called life and death—before me, they are all emptiness. Absolute power can shatter everything!” Dugu Jianmo had once shattered Yichi the monk with three sword strikes, and he indeed possessed transcendent cultivation that looked down upon his peers. He left an afterimage in place, appearing before Yizhen the monk, and swung his sword. The blade emitted a terrifying demonic howl, and the surrounding space twisted—a manifestation of absolute power.

Yizhen the monk did not parry. Instead, he spun into the air, drifting forward like a Buddha treading upon the moon, and vanished along the ancient street.

“Dugu Jianmo, let us settle this elsewhere.”

“If you wish to die, is that not easy? Before absolute power, all scheming is futile.” This confidence of Dugu Jianmo stemmed from his own overwhelming strength. He did not linger, but surged forward with a cloud of black mist in pursuit.

“Walking is emptiness, sitting is emptiness, silence and speech, every movement—none is not emptiness. Though a white blade be brought to my brow, it is but a sharp sword cutting the spring breeze…” Yizhen’s words drifted ethereally as he receded into the distance. It was clear that he had indeed ascended to a new realm; every phrase he uttered was infused with Buddhist truth.

The crowd on the square did not pursue. Though that might have been a rare battle, a peak confrontation among the younger generation, no one was willing to recklessly charge into such perilous ground where life and death hung in the balance. Moreover, the stone tablets surrounding the square were carved with ancient cultivation diagrams. Though fragmentary and difficult to decipher, they were a rare opportunity for all present. Everyone carefully searched, seeking diagrams useful to themselves.

A flash of blade-light—a streak like a bolt of white silk shot straight at Liu Mu’s back. Xiao Chen sensed it, but to rescue him was already too late; he was still some distance away. Though he trusted Liu Mu’s strength, Liu Mu was already severely wounded, and Xiao Chen could not help but worry.

But then a surge of cyan light flowed forth. Liu Mu’s body was enveloped in a hazy radiance. The incoming blade-light, upon entering that strange space, slowed as if mired in quicksand. A translucent flying dagger was halted mere inches behind Liu Mu’s back.

Liu Mu turned, looking at the railing not far away. “I was nearly caught once before. But the same assassination strike is useless against me a second time. Wang Tong, come out. I have already locked onto you. Today, only one of us will walk away alive.”

Wang Tong, the inheritor of the Flying Dagger technique, rose from behind a stone tablet and fled. But Liu Mu soared into the air, tracing an arc of cyan light in pursuit.

Xiao Chen did not hesitate. His left hand was veiled in the Big Dipper sealing light, while a brilliant star coalesced in his right hand. He radiated killing intent, unwilling to let Wang Tong escape again. His figure flickered, leaving a trail of afterimages in pursuit.

“Xiao Chen, you need not act. I have already locked onto him. This time, I will settle life and death with him. I want him to understand that a Space Spiritist cannot be assassinated at will!” Liu Mu, despite his wounded body, was determined to kill. His killing intent was unshakable.

They crossed the Blood River, threading through the ancient streets, Liu Mu and Xiao Chen in relentless pursuit of Wang Tong. At last, they returned to the square. That early ability to fly was the greatest advantage of Spiritists and Spellmasters. Wang Tong was finally cornered.

Liu Mu enveloped Wang Tong within his cyan space. With no escape, Wang Tong engaged Liu Mu in fierce combat. The Little Li Flying Dagger rent the void, transforming into a cascade of dazzling lights that shot toward Liu Mu.

But when facing a single opponent within the cyan space’s domain, Liu Mu possessed overwhelming power, capable of handling any cultivator of the same level. The legendary Flying Dagger technique failed today. All the daggers slowed within that space, everything clearly visible to Liu Mu. He calmly evaded every streak of blade-light and even halted several daggers in midair.

In that moment, before the eyes of countless onlookers, Liu Mu validated the myth that a Space Spiritist was king among equals, and defeated the legendary Little Li Flying Dagger!

A metallic clang rang out. Several flying daggers shattered in midair. Liu Mu’s space-condensed blade-rain, formed in the likeness of the Little Li Flying Dagger, blazed with piercing light as it shot toward Wang Tong.

Though Wang Tong possessed formidable cultivation, he was now powerless. He experienced what Xiao Chen had felt earlier—within Liu Mu’s controlled space, his entire body was bound, unable to move, as if trapped in a bog.

Pfft, pfft, pfft…

Over a dozen blazing streaks pierced through Wang Tong’s body. Jets of blood spurted forth. Wang Tong’s body now bore more than a dozen bleeding wounds, front and back. Liu Mu had defeated Wang Tong with space-condensed Little Li Flying Daggers.

The cyan light faded. Wang Tong wavered, on the verge of collapse. He coughed blood continuously and laughed bitterly. “At least I die at the hands of the living. I am far more fortunate than you. You will all die miserably…” With that, he tore open the front of his robe, revealing a blood-drenched hole in his chest. His heart still beat within, but it was clear that a claw had once dug into him, nearly ripping his heart out. Deep claw marks, down to the bone, scarred his chest.

Clearly, he had suffered a grievous wound long ago. He had only a few days to live. This suicide-like assassination indicated that he had long since accepted death. After speaking these words, Wang Tong collapsed into a pool of blood. No one knew what he had encountered, but those claw marks did not seem to have been made by a normal human. Recalling his last words, everyone felt a chill run down their spines. After all, this was a dead city.

“Roar…”

A tremendous roar came from beyond the dead city. None knew how many ferocious dragons had gathered. The true assault had begun. Even the surviving cultivators who had retreated to the city center could still feel the vast fluctuations.

The dragon race was attacking furiously, as if trying to destroy this dead city as quickly as possible. Though the dead city radiated a black light that shot into the sky, and murderous aura filled the air, it seemed difficult to hold them back. Before long, the entire dead city began to shake, as if on the verge of collapse.

The blood rain in the sky had stopped. The dark sky was now lit up by the divine light of the dragons’ spells, shining brilliantly. They seemed to be trying to break through the gloomy clouds, letting sunlight fall and allowing light to destroy this dead city.

With a deafening boom, the dragons outside the dead city roared in unison. They appeared to have unleashed a powerful dragon spell. Blinding light shone like ten suns in the sky, tearing apart the dark clouds and scattering the demonic clouds above. Sunlight streamed down in an instant.

It was a startling change.

It was now high noon. The falling sunlight clashed with the monstrous light erupting from the dead city, producing a continuous rumble like thunder, as if fire and water could never coexist. Then, death energy surged into the sky, and blood light blotted out the sun. Though the demonic clouds had been scattered, the sunlight was now stained blood-red by the dead city!

A rumbling sound came from the square. The hundred-meter-tall divine stele and its several nearly corporeal phantom steles revolved with a thunderous noise, encircling a pitch-black well at the very center—a well no one had noticed before. Only when the blood-red sunlight fell did this dark ancient well appear so utterly different. Though light shone from the sky, it remained as dark and sinister as ever, exuding a soul-shaking, demonic power.

It was an ancient well no more than three meters in diameter. Faint black vapors coiled around it, giving an unfathomable feeling, as if it connected to the gates of the underworld. The longer one gazed at it, the more one felt its profound, demonic depth, as if it would swallow a person’s mind.

Under the blood-red sunlight, the front face of the great divine stele and its surrounding phantom steles could be clearly seen. All bore inscribed characters. Two ancient characters were shared by all: “Eternally Settle.”

Xiao Chen was deeply drawn to the first stele. It bore the inscription “Eternally Settle the Yellow River”! Wasn’t this the divine stele from his homeland? How could it appear here? He knew this stele was a phantom, but the fact that it was connected to the divine stele from the Yellow River startled him deeply.

Each divine stele bore more than just “Eternally Settle.” The ancient characters after “Eternally Settle” differed. Looking at the other steles, besides the second stele, which bore “Eternally Settle the Sealed Island,” only “Eternally Settle” was legible on the others, the rest too blurred to read. Moreover, in the next instant, those characters flickered once and vanished entirely. Then, each divine stele revealed vivid, lifelike carvings.

Though the several giant divine steles were right before their eyes, everyone knew that only the second stele, “Eternally Settle the Sealed Island,” was real; the others were seemingly real phantoms. But what shocked everyone was that all the steles emitted strange energy fluctuations, as if they were channeling power into the true stele.

Under the blood-red sunlight, the carvings on the steles not only took on vibrant colors but also seemed to gain souls, as if they would leap out from the stone.

The first divine stele—the one inscribed “Eternally Settle the Yellow River”—bore an image unlike any other. In the heights, dark clouds gathered, rain poured in torrents, and massive lightning bolts rent the void. On the earth, mountains crumbled, the surface cracked open with magma surging, and the entire land shook violently. In the ocean, tsunamis rose wave upon wave, monstrous breakers crashing against the shore, as if trying to engulf heaven and earth.

The second divine stele—the one inscribed “Eternally Settle the Sealed Island”—showed primal ferocious dragons charging through the sky, roaring and wailing. Many humans and gods struggled; above them stretched a boundless sea of blood, thousands of waves high, tens of thousands of blood crests. In the center of the blood sea stood a mountain of white bones, ten thousand zhang tall. The towering waves of blood crashed and raged against it, but the bone mountain stood unmoved.

Beneath the ferocious dragons and those divine beings lay a dead city, ghostly and murderous. A pitch-black gate to hell was half-open, revealing a deathly, dark, and sinister world within, exuding boundless death energy. But most astonishingly, beneath that dead city, there was a serene, pure land—a stretch of palaces, radiant divine trees, and jade grass covering the ground. However, it was only faintly outlined, near the bottom of the stele, making it difficult to see a broader view.

The third divine stele’s carvings consisted of several unrelated scenes: a farmer plowing with an old ox, a herder driving herds of cattle and horses across a vast grassland, a fisherman casting his net from a boat into a river, and a merchant hawking goods from his shop. These small images seemed unrelated, but together they evoked a simple, rustic life, reminding one of the myriad ways of the mortal world.

The fourth divine stele’s carvings faintly radiated multicolored light: majestic heavenly palaces stood atop clouds, with many jade towers and storied buildings half-hidden in mist.

The fifth divine stele’s carvings showed boundless purple mist shrouding heaven and earth, as if thousands of troops were charging within, or as if millions of creatures were roaring. This carving was very blurry, yet it sent a chill through the heart. Though one could not see through the mist, it emanated a vast, sea-like oppressive aura.

There seemed to be a sixth and seventh divine stele, but even their stone bodies were barely visible, let alone any carvings upon them.

Under the blood-red sunlight, the visible carvings not only possessed vivid colors but also emitted faint, elusive sounds. These carvings were so real, so vivid, as if each had its own soul.

It no longer seemed like stone carving, but rather like different worlds forcibly pieced together.

The images on the several giant divine steles were wondrous beyond measure, but they paled in comparison to the black well they encircled. The more one looked at it, the more terrifying it became. It was like a bottomless hell, threatening to swallow one’s mind.

Under the furious assault of the dragon race, the demon well alternately emitted ethereal, enchanting celestial music and then ear-splitting, hair-raising shrieks. All the cultivators could not help but retreat. Though the sounds had no attacking power, they chilled the soul.

The dead city shook violently. The giant divine stele and its several phantom steles also trembled fiercely. Though Xiao Chen had deduced that only one stele was real, the others now showed no trace of illusion. Their stele souls seemed to have crossed time and space to provide power to the true stele here.