If Only Life Were as First We Met

For the sake of that little tail from long ago, for that sorrowful little sister, Xiao Chen cut down cultivator after cultivator along the Yellow River, slaying three half-god realm practitioners in a row.

Xiao Chen did not pause. He flew upstream against the current.

Hundreds of li away, an exceedingly majestic and vast palace complex stood on the bank of the Yellow River, covering so much ground that its end was lost from sight. Countless slaves labored there, yet even this colossal complex was barely half finished.

Xiao Chen raised the Golden Divine Halberd and flew over the complex. Without a single superfluous word, he lifted the divine halberd high and struck down at the already completed section.

Blinding golden divine radiance surged like a furious ocean, raising thousand-layered waves that blanketed the sky and earth, instantly drowning a large stretch of palaces.

"Boom!"

The palaces collapsed in a vast swath. Dust billowed, dirt flew, and sand swirled into the air.

The sudden destruction of a large part of the complex immediately drew out several cultivators. Five figures shot into the sky.

Every massive construction project had cultivators patrolling nearby to prevent unexpected trouble. Clearly, they valued these colossal works deeply and had no small ambitions.

Xiao Chen sneered. He had destroyed the complex precisely to lure out the local cultivators.

Among the five cultivators were two middle-aged men and three young men and women. None seemed to have expected Xiao Chen to act with such overbearing ruthlessness. But they were straightforward enough—without a word, they immediately sent their flying swords streaking toward him. Five beams of light slashed at Xiao Chen in unison, the dazzling swords brimming with killing intent, cold and oppressive, like five astonishing rainbows blazing across the sky.

In their eyes, cultivators from the Mortal World were nothing special. No need for talk. Anyone who dared to provoke or cause trouble was to be subdued and interrogated, then killed at will.

But they had clearly underestimated Xiao Chen. Like the two groups before them, they suffered heavily from the very start.

The Golden Divine Halberd blazed with dazzling light. Golden radiance like a meteor shower streaked across the starry sky, sweeping toward them. A series of "clangs" rang out, and the five flying swords instantly turned into scrap metal, all shattered by the divine halberd.

The five turned pale, spat blood, and retreated.

Xiao Chen's Eight-Aspect Worlds were unimaginably fast. In an instant, he closed the distance. The Golden Divine Halberd swung like an apocalyptic lightning bolt.

"Puff, puff, puff!" Three times. Blood sprayed into the sky. The three young men and women were decapitated in an instant. It wasn't that they were slow—it was that Xiao Chen was too fast. Even cultivators famed for speed were humbled before the extreme velocity of the Eight-Aspect Worlds.

In a sense, cultivators had great advantages both in combat power and versatility—but today, they had encountered someone far beyond ordinary practitioners.

The three young ones hadn't yet condensed their nascent souls and died on the spot.

The two middle-aged men roared with fury. Each unleashed their techniques, filling the air with a dazzling array of magical treasures—rays of colored light and auspicious mist made the sky brilliantly bright. But in the next instant, they went silent: the very space around them was sealed.

Xiao Chen had manifested the Spatial Divine Art. No matter how ferocious their magical treasures, they could not function. All the gleaming artifacts were frozen in midair.

This was a matter of absolute power. In terms of cultivation, Xiao Chen was now a half-god at the Fourth Heaven of the Sky-Mastery realm, while the two middle-aged cultivators were merely at the First Heaven. Xiao Chen's combat power far surpassed theirs. With the help of the Spatial Divine Art, he easily sealed this space.

A cold, merciless smile curled at the corner of his lips. Without any softness of heart, Xiao Chen brought his hands together and pressed. In an instant, inside the sealed space, all the radiant magical treasures were crushed and shattered by the spatial force. Cracks slowly spread outward until everything was ground to powder.

The two middle-aged cultivators' physical bodies disintegrated even before their treasures, turning to ash. Their nascent souls, the moment they escaped their flesh, were also crushed by the spatial power, not a speck remaining.

The spatial force gradually receded, and the seal dissolved. Particles drifted down from the sky—the remains of the two cultivators' treasures, all reduced to dust, utterly destroyed.

Xiao Chen felt no cruelty. Beneath him, hundreds of thousands of slaves labored in bitter servitude, and the root cause was these cultivators who had invaded the Mortal World. Killing them was justice.

The slaves, seeing their "immortals" slain, immediately threw the banks of the Yellow River into chaos. Every slave began to entertain thoughts of escape.

Xiao Chen still did not pause. He continued flying upstream.

Thus, he broke through two more checkpoints and killed several more half-gods. His heart now had a measure of confidence: the cultivators guarding the Yellow River banks were not as terrifying as he had imagined.

But just as he relaxed slightly, he sensed an unusual fluctuation. Above the surging Yellow River, it seemed someone was locked in battle!

Pushing the Eight-Aspect Worlds to their limit, Xiao Chen seemed to tear through space and arrived in an instant.

By the time he got there, the fight was already over. A young cultivator in blue robes—not particularly handsome, but with an ethereal, transcendent air that gave him a unique charm, like a true banished immortal—was clearly wounded. A trace of blood stained the corner of his mouth as he stood quietly in the sky on his flying sword, staring at his opponent.

Opposite him was a middle-aged cultivator standing on a golden divine shield. A bloody hole in his shoulder suggested he had been struck by a sword. His face was pale, and he stared back at the young blue-robed cultivator.

"A wicked man reaps what he sows…" The blue-robed youth looked at the middle-aged cultivator and said, "You plague the mortal world, forcing millions into hard labor—where is your conscience as cultivators?"

The middle-aged cultivator sneered. "You understand nothing. You have no idea what we are doing. Any sect that came to the Mortal World would do the same."

The blue-robed youth said no more. He urged his flying sword and shot into the sky, disappearing.

At that moment, Xiao Chen emerged from the shadows. "I thought all cultivators were like you. Fortunately, you're just the scum." Xiao Chen mocked the middle-aged cultivator without restraint.

Seeing Xiao Chen appear without a sound, the middle-aged cultivator started, then stared at him. "Who are you?"

"The man who collects your corpse."

"A martial artist? Or a practitioner?" The middle-aged cultivator regarded him warily.

"Not a cultivator, that's for sure." Xiao Chen sneered. "So, cultivators aren't a monolithic block—there's internal strife."

"Hmph. That boy is just naive. Any real cultivator would support us."

"Then I have nothing more to say. Time to take your life."

"You… Hmph!" The middle-aged man sneered. "Millennia ago, in the great war between cultivators, martial artists, and other systems, the martial path was the weakest. And the practitioners who later arose aren't much better."

"Oh, is that so? Too bad this martial artist and practitioner combined has already cut down twenty cultivators today. With you, that makes twenty-one."

"Arrogant!" The middle-aged cultivator whipped out a golden cord and lashed it toward Xiao Chen. The cord rapidly lengthened and thickened, coiling around him like a golden divine dragon.

"Spatial Rend!" Xiao Chen shouted simultaneously. A blue arc of death cut through the air, spatial force tearing a jagged rift as sharp as a blade. The "blue spatial cleave" struck the golden divine dragon.

"Clang!" The golden dragon snapped, and the cord fell from the sky.

"Space Seal!" Xiao Chen shouted again, trying to seal this region.

Instantly, the middle-aged cultivator was frozen—but then he moved again. A purple light shot from his mouth, opening a spatial tunnel through which he escaped.

"A spatial practitioner?" The middle-aged cultivator stared at Xiao Chen in shock after escaping.

Xiao Chen was greatly surprised. This cultivator's strength seemed formidable. Even after a fierce battle, he still had the power to break free from spatial confinement—truly extraordinary.

"What was that purple light?"

"Hmph." The middle-aged cultivator sneered. "Don't think that owning some supreme technique makes you invincible. Cultivators are the kings of all practitioners. We can forge treasures tailored to counter any divine art. This is the Void-Piercing Sword, refined specifically to counter the so-called spatial divine laws."

As he spoke, his entire body blazed with radiance. A suit of battle armor emerged from his flesh, covering him, while his nascent soul also donned a layer of treasure-armor, resplendent and dazzling.

"You seem different from those other cultivators?" Xiao Chen was somewhat surprised.

"This is nothing. If a truly powerful cultivator stood before you, you'd be even more shocked." The middle-aged cultivator laughed coldly. "Even their own heads could be refined into treasures. Our level of artifact-forging is beyond your imagination."

Xiao Chen did not reply. He knew too little about cultivators. This system of body refinement truly seemed extraordinary.

"Unfortunately, you're seriously wounded. Otherwise, killing you today might have been somewhat difficult." Xiao Chen spoke the truth. The man's cultivation level seemed no lower than his own, but his combat power had clearly plummeted to a low ebb.

"Shua!"

Xiao Chen left an afterimage as he charged forward. The Eight-Aspect Worlds manifested, eight different realms spinning and enveloping the cultivator.

"Void-Piercing Sword!" The cultivator sensed the danger and spat out a purple light, trying to tear through space and escape.

But the eight worlds were revolving. He escaped one realm only to enter another, wasting most of his spiritual power and still unable to break out.

At that moment, Xiao Chen's Spatial Rend struck again.

Blood sprayed. It could be said that this cultivator died most unjustly; if not for his severe injuries, he could never have been killed so simply by Xiao Chen.

The Spatial Rend shattered everything. A palm-sized purple sword remained in the sky—the Void-Piercing Sword the cultivator had spoken of.

Xiao Chen struck it again with spatial force. The purple sword slowly cracked and then crumbled. He allowed himself a faint smile. The Void-Piercing Sword was not as formidable as he had imagined; it posed no real threat to his Spatial Divine Art.

With that, Xiao Chen turned back and ceased challenging the upstream cultivators.

Of course, he was not so easily appeased.

On that day, every few hundred li along the Yellow River, pillars of smoke and fire rose into the sky. Rows upon rows of palace complexes, the magnificent Heaven-Reaching Death Bridge, the grand Ancestral Dragon Platform—one after another were set ablaze. Flames leapt to the heavens, and dust and smoke spread far and wide.

The world was shaken!

The National Religion's enormous engineering projects along the Yellow River, built with immense wealth and labor, saw four or five sites destroyed in a single day.

This was truly daring to offend the exalted!

For the past year or two, the National Religion had been suppressing cultivators from the Mortal World until they could barely breathe. And now someone dared to provoke this unimaginably vast power—it required extraordinary courage.

Because of this incident, the upcoming "Huashan Summit" gathering of mortal practitioners had to be postponed, for fear that it would draw the attention of the National Religion and invite devastating retaliation.

In the imperial capital of the Nine Provinces, the National Religion's pope was enraged. He immediately dispatched experts toward the Yellow River.

Powerful cultivators were mobilized!

They sought to capture the culprit.

Days had passed. Xiao Chen paid it no mind. He had already helped Su Ying's entire village escape forced labor. If he had only freed Su Ying, he feared leaving clues, so he secured an exemption for the whole village. Of course, he had once again bribed the local government generously with gold and jewels.

He very much wanted to free all the slaves along both banks of the Yellow River, but he did not yet have such strength. He could only rescue those close to him.

Su Ying naturally could not recognize Xiao Chen. But that day, when she saw him fighting cultivators in the sky, she involuntarily unlocked a sealed memory. In the distant past, there had also been someone who fought for her—at that time, a youth, bloodied, drove off a pack of ruffians who wanted to harass her. Looking at that figure in the sky, she recalled the past once again and could not help but grieve.

Xiao Chen did not go to see Su Ying. He did not wish to disturb her life. Some things were destined to remain only memories. All he could do was protect and help her in secret.

A month passed in the blink of an eye. Many cultivators had gathered along the Yellow River. Some of them, even seen from a great distance, stirred an intense fighting spirit within Xiao Chen!

But he did not act rashly, for those people were truly powerful and terrifying, and there were many of them—far beyond his ability to oppose.

And this was only what was visible. Who knew how many more terrifying experts lurked in the shadows?

The National Religion raised a great hue and cry to capture the true culprit, but the murderer had vanished without a trace, nowhere to be found.

This matter gave great encouragement to the mortal world's practitioners. Someone had finally stood up. They saw hope and longed for more extraordinary masters to enter this turbid world and cease standing aloof.

Having settled his parents, his village, and Su Ying's affairs, Xiao Chen felt certain that he could finally leave for a time.

Yes, he was going to distant places. He had to make a journey to certain places, or else he would be mired in loss for the rest of his life.

How could he forget the name Ruoshui?

His parents were his greatest worry, but Ruoshui was the regret of his life.

Trapped in the World of Immortality, even in the most difficult times, he had persevered in bitter cultivation, only so that he could return to see his parents and see Ruoshui.

In the World of Immortality, he had asked himself again and again: Would he ever see his parents again? Would he ever see that girl again?

Eight years had passed in a flash. He had finally returned. He had seen his parents. But the girl of his past… where was she? Had she truly become another's bride?

In the past, before he returned, he had already imagined every possibility. If he could one day truly come back to the Mortal World, the girl he once loved might long ago have become a wife and mother…

Now that he had to face such a truth, how could he bear it?

Unconsciously, he arrived at his first destination—a small valley in the Emei Mountains. Ruoshui had once lived there for a time.

The valley was full of fragrance; flowers bloomed in profusion, their scent intoxicating.

A thatched cottage stood in disrepair, obviously unoccupied for a long time.

He gently pushed open the door. Dust covered the tables and chairs. This place… had long been abandoned.

Recalling the fragments of the past, Xiao Chen stood silent.

Suddenly, the wooden table caught his attention. He dashed over and blew away all the dust. Two lines of delicate, graceful characters appeared on the table:

"If only life were as first we met, why would the autumn wind grieve o'er the painted fan?"

"If only life were as first we met…" he murmured softly. His throat felt blocked, as if something had wrenched fiercely inside his chest. His eyes grew moist.