Chapter 2539: Chapter 116: Using Bones as a Pen
That time was during the mission to track down the Cult demons.
Before leaving Tangshe Town, Zhang Linchuan had very casually sighed like that.
Of course later he already knew that Zhang Linchuan himself was precisely one of those Cult demon leaders they’d been hunting.
So that trip to Tangshe Town carried far more probing and scrutinizing meaning. At that time Zhang Linchuan’s cold persona was concealed beneath the mask of "Senior Brother Zhang Linchuan," watching him with icy eyes.
Watching how he raged, how he went mad, how he fought with his life.
Clearing away hidden dangers for Bone Tao’s final operation, and at any moment having the option to casually crush him to death.
When he thinks back on those scenes now, they’re enough to make one’s spine go cold.
But in that moment back then, when he heard Zhang Linchuan’s sigh.
He truly fell silent.
At that time he was thinking: someone like Senior Brother Zhang, with such birth, such talent, and yet even he is so anxious, so uneasy, so urgent about the future... what excuse does he, Jiang Wang, have to slack off?
That single sentence, that moment’s mood, he used to lash himself forward for a very long time.
Looking at it now, that offhand sigh at the time was indeed Zhang Linchuan’s true feeling.
He really is a man with that much sense of urgency; hence later the snatching food from the tiger’s jaws, the contention with Divine Appearances. Hence the Church of Lifeless, which spread madly across the world in just a few short years.
While developing the Church of Lifeless, he also replaced Lei Zhanqian; who knows how many such fallback paths he had laid for himself.
All these years, he truly did not waste a single moment.
At this moment, as Jiang Wang recalls that line, he seems to understand Zhang Linchuan a bit more.
In their hunger to grow stronger, how are they not alike?
Become stronger...
A spark of Spirit Light flashes in Jiang Wang’s heart.
Zhang Linchuan would never do anything meaningless; what matters most to him now must be restoring his own True God Realm, and even pressing on to a higher level.
In the final analysis, strength is the fundamental answer to everything.
The four Realms of the Deities: False God, True God, Sun God, Revered Deity.
Each step into a new Realm is a gulf like heaven and earth.
Cut down across time and worlds by that murderer’s single slash, Zhang Linchuan can now only be considered a False God, a Furry God.
With the Church of Lifeless destroyed, its hundreds of thousands of followers once spread across the world are now dead, fled, or imprisoned. In terms of faith, he has no hope left—unless you give him a few more years to found a new cult and make a comeback.
So what did he go to Wei Country to do?
First, he slaughtered a small town. Second, he wrote a blood-letter to provoke Wei Country, raising his personal vendetta against a nation.
As to the first, linking it to Bone Tao’s old incident of sacrificing Fenglin City, and then to the Human Pill case in Dan Country, the pattern seems not hard to trace—
It’s very likely that Zhang Linchuan is regaining strength by killing!
Whether by sacrifice, by devouring, or through some connection to that mysterious, unfathomable World Without Life.
As to the second, Zhang Linchuan proclaimed his own atrocities in a blood-letter and vowed to take revenge on Wei Country, displaying a spirit of standing against the world.
Just as Yin Guan attained the Dao through Incantations—does Zhang Linchuan possess some Secret Technique that uses hatred for Cultivation? Could it be that the more people hate him, the more strength he can draw?
These are all Jiang Wang’s own conjectures, and he is also considering how he should respond if any of them are true.
At the same time, he wrote down the latest news on Zhang Linchuan and the speculations arising from it, and immediately sent them to Zhongxuan Sheng through the Taixu Illusion Realm.
After all, "one man’s planning is short; one fat man’s planning is long."
Zhongxuan Sheng, overseeing the overall situation in Linzi, might be able to think more clearly.
Up to this point, Jiang Wang has already gained a certain degree of understanding of Zhang Linchuan’s Thunder Technique, his Divine Skills similar to "Seven Spirits Substituting Fate," and all he displayed in the underground palace of Yanyun Mountain.
Yet the most attention‑grabbing and most mysterious has always been that World Without Life, mastered by Zhang Linchuan alone.
So far, the Various Countries of the world have already destroyed all publicly established branches of the Church of Lifeless. Those so‑called Seventy‑Two Earth Fiend Envoys are all dead or nearly so. As for the Dharma Kings who guarded the cult, many are dead, many are in hiding. But still no one can clearly explain the specific nature of the World Without Life.
People only know one thing—
All divine grace from the Church of Lifeless uses the World Without Life as its bridge. But as the Divine Master, Zhang Linchuan has only ever descended one‑sidedly. That World Without Life which the Followers of No Life long for, hoping to exist there eternally after death, has never revealed its true face to the living.
It is now easy to see that from the very founding of the Church of Lifeless, Zhang Linchuan had already prepared to cut off all his believers.
Was it caution in his nature, or had he foreseen this day long ago?
...
Wei Country lies on the south bank of the Long River, holds a short stretch of the Yellow River’s bank, and has also taken all the riverbank between the Seventh Town of the Long River and the Eighth Town into its territory.
As the saying goes, "Bian and Fu Xi are the gates of Wei; ten thousand li of Long River is the girdle at his waist."
These words of感慨 spoken by the present Wei Emperor when he was still Crown Prince and climbed the Wangjiang Tower are still praised by people today as the voice of a mighty ruler.
Wei Country faces Jinguo across the Long River, has Dragon’s Gate Academy between it and Song Country, and looks east to Old Summer, south to Xiong Chu.
It can be said to sit in a land of four-front war, with no weak opponents on any side. Without sufficient strength, it would be impossible to stand firm.
Perhaps it is precisely because of this that the people of Wei Country have developed such a fierce folk character. Among commoners brawling is common; when Soldiers go to battle, they are often fearless and ferocious. Dongguo Bao’s desperate fight to the death on Guanhe Platform is just one glimpse of this.
