Chapter 1307: Chapter 1305: The Demon Immortal Descends the Mountain, Gifts for the Heroes
Flying Horse Dynasty.
Atop a peak shrouded in dense clouds and mist, the mountain breeze carried a nipping chill, lifting the long hair at the temples of a peerless beauty. Behind her was a waterfall and a clear pond where fish swam among the pebbles, oblivious to the pain and helplessness of the mortal world.
"They are all gone,"
sighed Shui Lingping, long and deep.
She possessed a beauty that could topple kingdoms and a temperament as lonely as a wild goose in the clouds, pitiable yet untouchable in her mystery—different from the noble allure of Xi Xianglei, but just as able to deeply move the hearts of men.
Regrettably, those eyes that should have dazzled the world could no longer focus.
"Brother Shi, you were my only friend and even brought me news of my father. For such kindness, if you were still in this world, Shui Lingping might repay it slowly, but you have gone far away, and I can no longer feign deafness and muteness."
"Your woman, your child, your friends, and Nine Heavens Mountain—after losing you, they will inevitably encounter great calamities, but rest assured, Shui Lingping will help them through the hardships."
Her face bore a trace of sorrow hard to detect, and in the dark world of Shui Lingping, it seemed that a unique silhouette was sketched out.
Turning around, she saw that the ground between the waterfall, the pond, and even the cliff was filled with green bamboos of uniform length.
If someone was there to measure carefully, they would be shocked to find that all nine hundred and ninety-nine bamboos were exactly three feet and two inches long, not a fraction taller or shorter.
Moreover, on closer examination of certain areas, these nine hundred and ninety-nine bamboos formed precise equilateral triangles, diamonds, ellipses, and so on. Yet from a broader perspective, they seemed chaotically arranged, all askew, as if placed there at random.
It was inconceivable how a blind person who knew no martial arts could have managed all this.
"Junior Sister, have you finally decided?"
Just as Shui Lingping was about to step in, suddenly a slightly magnetic, deep voice rang out.
A young man calmly walked up to the inaccessible Tiantai Cliff, his Nanshan brows white and his face scholarly. It was none other than the National Master who lived sequestered in the Flying Horse imperial city.
"Don’t call me Junior Sister; I’m not one of the Vast Air Mysterious Gate,"
Shui Lingping replied, cold and distant.
The Flying Horse National Master gave a bitter smile, "Our master was proud and spent his life roaming the world, seeing countless people, but he only took five disciples. Yet in his eyes, even the five of us were merely the taller among the short, just a bit smarter than ordinary folks."
"Only you were his lifelong regret. He told me more than once that you were the genius he had seen only once in his life, the only one who could inherit the Vast Air Mysterious Gate, yet you refused to become his disciple."
Mo Jichen, also known as the Flying Horse National Master, shook his head incessantly, "I cannot imagine how a person with such lofty pride like him, even at the last moment of his life, was still preoccupied with you. You were clearly not his disciple, yet he passed on all the secret manuals of our sect to you, alas!"
Shui Lingping remained silent.
At that time, her eyes weren’t blind, and having suffered from a terminal illness, she had read all sorts of esoteric books from the age of six and had cured herself at eleven of a disease that doctors in the East Victory world could not.
It was also that year when a man saw her in the market and thereafter stuck to her like glue, persistently following her for nine years.
At twenty, Shui Lingping was already a towering intellectual, master of the Eight Trigrams, medicine, astrology, arithmetic, and all else.
She could save lives with her marvelous skills, but her methods of harming were just as sophisticated, yet numerous attempts to drive the man away had never succeeded.
Later she made a bet with him, agreeing to three contests, and she lost.
Contrary to expectations, the man did not ask her to become his disciple; instead, with the air of a victor, he made her swear to remain on Tiantai Cliff for life and that if she broke this oath, she would be struck by heavenly lightning.
He said it was revenge for her indifference to him!
Thereafter, a woman who should have become famous in the East Victory world was confined to a lonely cliff, her only companions the clouds and the wind. The only thing she enjoyed was reading through the boxes of books sent by that man.
In his words, it was to let her witness the depth of Vast Air Mysterious Gate and then live a life of regret.
Shui Lingping suddenly smiled and said, "I swore by the heavens never to leave this place for all eternity, yet today, I will break this oath."
Mo Jichen was alarmed, "You must not, you will die! Oaths to the heavens cannot be ignored by anyone except the Supreme Lord. Moreover, our master once hinted that he tampered with your oath to the heavens. Even if the Supreme Lord broke it, there would be no good outcome."
"In this world, as long as your means are clever enough, there is nothing you cannot do,"
Shui Lingping said.
As she spoke, she stepped into the bamboo Array System.
Mo Jichen’s mouth hung agape, and he began to understand why the master was so fond of this woman, for except for her talent, their arrogant natures were exactly alike.
But that was an oath blessed by the master’s life’s work; under the heavens, who could break it?
Half a day later.
As a surge of malevolent energy powerful enough to overturn the sun and moon dispersed, Mo Jichen stood frozen in place, looking almost as if he had seen a ghost.
"You, you, you’ve broken the heaven-bound oath blessed by the master?"
Mo Jichen’s lips quivered, hardly able to connect the man in front of him with the national master of unparalleled strategies and peerless splendor.
"Take the books on the mountain with you; that man once said everything here was given to me,"
said Shui Lingping.
Shui Lingping walked down the stone steps calmly and quietly. Mo Jichen looked at her retreating figure, his expression complex and indescribable, unable to look away for a long time.
"No wonder, no wonder. Master, was all this your arrangement? Hahaha, I understand now. Even if your disciple has learned all the techniques of our sect, I’m afraid I can never reach Junior Sister’s heights."
At the foot of the mountain.
Shui Lingping turned her head, murmuring softly to herself, "I know that when you trapped me here, it wasn’t truly out of revenge, but because you saw the troubles in my destiny and the great disaster that was bound to happen sooner or later."
"So you found this excuse to let me calm my heart and cultivate. And the moment I broke the vow of heaven, it meant that I had graduated. Your methods are truly brilliant, I ultimately still did as you wished."
After a moment of silence, Shui Lingping suddenly called out, "Master!"
The belated call of Master was both a tribute to the memory and gratitude of that man, and a farewell to the frivolous young girl she once was.
On this day, atop Tiantai Cliff, there was one less self-admiring woman, yet the world of East Victory gained an enchanting ’demon fairy’ capable of turning clouds over with the flick of a hand, and reversing rains with the turn of a palm!
...
Shi Xuanzhong and the three Semi-Broken Level experts were swallowed by the endless void at the same time, leaving no one to know whether they were alive or dead, or where they had gone.
Thanks to Shi Xuanzhong, the remaining twenty or so Supreme Lords of the Outer Heaven, though outnumbered, fought evenly matched against the thirty or so Supreme Lords of East Victory.
The battle dragged on for more than half a year, and neither side had any choice but to compromise, still demarcating the war zone using East Victory City as the border.
The destroyed city wall of East Victory City had been rebuilt by countless warriors, and the new buildings and towers that rose behind the wall were far superior to the original in both scale and structure.
The entire East Victory world entered a new era of revival and reconstruction.
When the curtain fell on that battle, it was a cause for universal jubilation, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Especially the people of East Victory mainland and Miaojiang, who had not suffered any calamities, felt it was but a false alarm.
However, when the martial world began to reveal the fight inside East Victory City, detailing the insider’s account of the battle, everyone was terrified and broke into cold sweats.
Even without experiencing the disaster of the South Sea or being there in person, one could imagine just how perilous the situation had been for the world of East Victory, on the brink of irreversible doom!
Everyone would have become slaves to the Outer Heaven Demons, enduring a life of enslavement and wanton killing, with no light in sight.
It was the kind Holy Empress, who with her life, grievously wounded over two hundred Supreme Lords of the Outer Heaven, delaying East Victory’s downfall.
It was the peerless Holy Monarch, who in his supreme presence, single-handedly slew more than three hundred Supreme Lords of the Outer Heaven and ultimately dragged three Semi-Broken Level experts into the endless void.
It was those Supreme Lords who fought through blood and fire, sacrificing everything, and holding the frontline.
It was the misunderstood Oblivion Blade Ancestor, who gave up his sixteen thousand years of effort, turning into a brilliant shower of light, leaving behind endless shame and self-reproach among the people.
It was that young man, Shi Xiaole, who created countless miracles along his journey, with a talent surpassing those of ancient and modern times. Undefeated and unyielding, he bravely met his death.
The green robe remains unchanged, but no one could match his stunning elegance; that unique battle will shine in the annals of history and become a peak that countless generations struggle to surpass.
Hero Mountain began to be expanded, growing larger and taller than ever before.
Many more sculptures were added to the mountain, and at the very center stood the deserved figures: the Holy Monarch, the Holy Empress, the Oblivion Blade Ancestor, those Supreme Lords, and the only non-Supreme Lord, Shi Xiaole.
The powers of the East Victory world collectively decreed that the twenty-first day of the ninth month would be Hero Day, a day devoid of entertainment. Brothels, taverns, and playhouses would be closed, and any dueling, fighting, or killing of any kind was prohibited. Anyone who violated this would be collectively attacked.
Because this day commemorated the day the great battle occurred, East Victory used this manner of observance to express gratitude and remembrance for those fallen brave souls.
On this day, in countless homes across the South Sea, people young and old would typically kneel in front of two longevity plaques for a two-hour period, offering incense in tribute.
On the two plaques were inscribed the names of Shi Xiaole and the Oblivion Blade Ancestor.
In the eyes of these simple folk, they didn’t know many more heroes, only that when disaster struck, it was the green-robed youth and the bald elder who faced danger without flinching and saved them.
Everywhere, countless people were commemorating the heroes in their own ways.
...
The war that beleaguered the East Victory world had not ended.
For there were still over twenty Supreme Lords of the Outer Heaven, along with countless soldiers of the Outer Heaven Army, eyeing to attack at any moment.
Fairy Xinluo and Red Jade Saint, with their knowledge of Array Systems, simply could not mend the ’Seal Heaven Array’ – not even the Holy Empress could as the key point of the array had been destroyed and needed to be laid out anew.
But that would take countless years; where was there time to spare?
Who would have thought, at such a critical juncture, a blind woman suddenly appeared, and within three days and nights, she restored the ’Seal Heaven Array’ to ninety percent of its capacity.
There was just one channel left, where the Holy Empress had previously torn through the Heaven and Earth Evil Array.
Although not perfect, the feat still astounded everyone. The defense line of the entire East Victory world was reestablished at a remarkable pace.
As for the passage, it only needed a few Supreme Lords to take turns guarding it.
