Chapter 125
Chapter 125
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 125
Chapter Title: They Approached Us First
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The anomaly wasn’t confined to the Orthodox Wind Pavilion alone.
The dead were rising everywhere.
“Blue Blood Demon Ghost? That bastard was definitely slain by the Azure Flower Sword Emperor ten years ago!”
“White Mountain Sword Fiend! The White Mountain Sword Fiend has appeared too!”
“There’s even the Death God Official’s Brush Sword…! How in the world is this possible?”
The renowned masters were all plunged into shock.
When they learned the enemy was the Demonic North Sea Sect, they had anticipated all sorts of bizarre jiangshi might appear.
But jiangshi were beings with only the po soul remaining from the hun-po duality.
Their bodies were animated by sorcery, making their joints extremely stiff.
It was common knowledge that jiangshi fell far short of their prowess in life.
Above all, they exuded a strong yin energy unique to the dead, impossible to mistake for the living.
Yet these ones were different.
They brimmed with vitality like the living, their eyes gleaming with reason.
They even retained memories from life and could unleash their full former might.
“Haa…! How…! Did we…! Come back to…! Life…!”
“That’s…! Hard to…! Explain…!”
“We’ve returned…! To drag you…! Down with us…!!”
Kwaaaang!
Fierce clashes erupted everywhere.
And then.
Piiiiiik!
With the piercing sound of a flute slicing through the air, the demon ghosts and jiangshi thought slain rose once more.
Those with hearts half-shattered, limbs severed, entrails spilling out… every last jiangshi lurched upright like maggots, moving again.
The sight evoked the demons of hell’s scroll paintings.
“Such an absurd—”
The masters and Orthodox faction warriors alike were left with ghastly expressions.
They had to face the foes they’d barely defeated all over again.
Many were already depleted of inner energy.
Still, they fought back desperately to vanquish them.
Tszzz!
Even with heads half-smashed, they rose and charged—enough to chill the blood.
“Mon… sters!”
Someone’s strangled scream spoke for them all.
They knew yielding here meant total annihilation, so they pushed to drive the enemy outward.
But despite the fierce efforts of the Orthodox Wind Pavilion and Green Zombie Corps, the tide slowly tilted toward the North Sea Sect.
The foes’ endless resurrections were steadily eroding their morale.
Kwaaaang!
“…What in the world happened during the recent civil war?”
The Shadow Venerable glared as he roughly parried the North Sea Sect Leader’s blade.
The North Sea Blade, a sacred relic of the North Sea Ice Palace passed down only to the sect leaders of the Demonic North Sea Sect through generations.
His hands remained unscratched even after clashing with the demonic blade forged by gathering hundreds of millennia-old ice crystals and refining them for hundreds of days.
Instead, only black pus dripped onto the ground.
Chiiiik!
The earth where it fell smoked white and melted away.
“Nothing major happened. Isn’t the Divine Cult itself the true world of the strong surviving? The upheavals during generational shifts are tradition itself.”
“So the rumors are true—the Divine Sword Heavenly Demon stepped down, and the cult leader’s throne is vacant?”
“Didn’t I tell you? This seat will soon be mine.”
The North Sea Sect Leader grinned, baring his fangs.
The Shadow Venerable let out a hollow laugh.
He’d doubted it, but it was real.
‘That child… truly defeated?’
It was hard to believe.
Though his direct ties to the Divine Sword Heavenly Demon lasted only a month, the Shadow Venerable believed he knew him better than anyone.
At just nineteen, short of thirty, he’d ascended the cult leader’s throne and ushered in a new golden age for the Demonic Cult.
Defeat didn’t suit the Divine Sword Heavenly Demon.
He seemed destined only for victory, reigning supreme over the world.
Yet he’d stepped down.
A pang twisted in the Shadow Venerable’s chest.
Who could have broken that child?
One thing was certain.
Not the man before him.
“No way.”
In that moment, a thought flashed through the Shadow Venerable’s mind.
“The rumors of contact with the ‘Tower’… they’re true too?”
A quiet rumor had circulated among the Ten Great Masters of the world.
He’d dismissed it as nonsense back then, but if true—
“Who knows what you’ve heard, but one thing needs correcting.”
The North Sea Sect Leader curled one lip.
“We didn’t approach the Tower.”
“What?”
“They approached us first.”
“!!”
“We merely took the hand they extended.”
The Shadow Venerable’s face hardened.
“Even out of your mind, how could you join hands with them…!!”
Warriors like the Shadow Venerable, who had surpassed Peerless and reached Starry Sky Realm, all knew.
There was no end to martial arts.
The pinnacle they thought was merely the beginning.
Higher still.
There existed even loftier heavens.
—Shell-Shedding to Enter Heaven.
A realm where one shed the body’s shell, allowing the soul to truly grow.
Commonly called ascension or nirvana.
Upon reaching it, one could begin the ascetic trials to become a true god.
Such ascetics were known as:
—Shell-Shedders.
Or Half-Immortals, from their half-finished immortal state.
The Tower was where these Shell-Shedders, these Half-Immortals, ascended toward godhood.
The shock the Shadow Venerable felt upon first learning this was immense.
The years he’d believed himself the pinnacle now shamed him.
Ten Great Masters of the world?
Foolish words from frogs in a well.
He was less than the dust at a Shell-Shedder’s toes.
They scorned the mortal world as the Lower Realm, and that was their only mercy—if they’d paid deep heed, who knew what fate would have befallen the martial world?
Yet according to the North Sea Sect Leader now, they were turning their gaze to the Lower Realm—to the martial world.
This was no trifling matter.
If true, if they saw the Demonic Cult as a bridgehead for invading the Lower Realm, it couldn’t be ignored.
The common sense and order upholding the martial world could all collapse.
And it explained every abnormality so far.
The freakishly empowered elite demon ghosts.
The revived demonic lords of old.
The new breed of jiangshi.
How else could the North Sea Sect amass such power without Shell-Shedder intervention?
That’s why he’d rebuked their sanity—
“Then do you have a better way?”
The North Sea Sect Leader sneered instead.
The Shadow Venerable furrowed his brow.
“What?”
“They’ve decided to act. What brilliant plan would you have in their place?”
“Even so! They—”
“Or should I just die? My sect? My followers? Let them perish by those hands while I stand idle?!!”
“!!”
The North Sea Sect Leader’s face twisted like a wrathful demon.
A blizzard howled.
Whoooosh!
“Don’t spout off when it’s not your fight! Being cast out by the world once is enough! Your Central Plains may have scorned the North Sea Ice Palace as barbarians and discarded us long ago, but I won’t! As sect leader, it’s my duty and mission to protect them! I won’t let my history repeat that blood-soaked nightmare!!”
The eight great sects of the Demonic Cult were all once forsaken by the world.
Like the Dark Demon Myth Sect fleeing persecution to migrate east from distant Persia, the North Sea Ice Palace—the Demonic North Sea Sect’s precursor—had once nested in the Bo Sea region, only to face betrayal and downfall from the Central Plains.
Thus, the Demonic North Sea Sect’s grudge against the Central Plains pierced the heavens, making them vanguard in every Righteous-Demonic War.
“I am but human. That’s why I joined hands with those god-like beings. And led my sect into a new golden age. I regret nothing.”
“Even after losing your son?”
“The same. He greatly aided our cause. Even if time rewound, I’d choose the same.”
The North Sea Sect Leader’s voice calmed once more.
Human.
He defined himself by those limits.
“…I see. As leader of an organization, such a choice might be inevitable. I might have done the same in your shoes.”
After long silence, the Shadow Venerable spoke again.
His eyes deepened.
“But that doesn’t change that you’ve crossed a line you shouldn’t have.”
The North Sea Sect Leader twisted his lips.
“Crossed a line? Who draws that line? Me? Or you?”
“Must it be measured with a ruler for you to know?”
“Then measure it, or how else would I know!”
“If you can’t judge for yourself without words, what sets you from a beast?”
“Beast or man—what’s the difference? History is written by victors. There, I’ll be the god.”
Their verbal clash intensified with the fight.
The ground froze and thawed repeatedly. Countless footprints scarred the earth, and four or five halls lay in ruins from the battle.
“Words fall on deaf ears. You’re thoroughly ensnared by the Shell-Shedders.”
“You’re the one who won’t listen. Meet them yourself, then talk. You’ll quickly see your lofty words lack reality.”
“…Reality. What a joke.”
Paaaah!
The Shadow Venerable’s blackened hands turned snow-white.
Dark projectiles orbiting him swirled into a vortex.
They gleamed white, transforming into petals.
Whirrr whirrr…!!
Myriad Heaven Flower Rain
Flower Rain Whirl
The petals’ dance on the wind grew fiercer.
‘Something’s off.’
The North Sea Sect Leader frowned.
He’d faced Myriad Heaven Flower Rain before.
But never like this.
Darker, more ominous.
Chiiiik!
Then the petals heated red-hot, wreathed in flames. No longer flower rain, but fire rain.
Simultaneously, the ground beneath them blackened and sank, turning to poisoned earth.
Earth of venom, sky of fire.
Hell itself had descended.
“Why assume I’ve never met them?”
“!?”
An utterly unexpected words.
The North Sea Sect Leader’s eyes widened.
What? He’d met Shell-Shedders?
“I’ll show you now.”
In an instant, the Shadow Venerable was half-consumed by white, black, and red auras.
His form was human yet inhuman.
“What I’ve prepared these past twenty years… to devour those Half-Immortals.”
“!!”
Guiding Reversal Three Yang Return Origin Art
Guiding Reversal Calamity God Incarnation
Fwoooosh!
The vortex unleashed.
Flame-wreathed petals bombarded the North Sea Sect Leader from above.
Kwaaang!
“Hup…!”
He surged his power, raising the North Sea Blade to block.
Ice walls erupted from the ground.
Kwa kwa kwang!
Crack—
But the walls shattered effortlessly. The shockwave forced him back.
Cold sweat beaded down his back.
‘…I was pushed back?’
Since gaining fortune from the Society, he’d never been outmatched in inner energy clashes.
He’d thought only a Shell-Shedder could overwhelm him now—yet that belief shattered for the first time.
Worse, dozens of burning petals still swirled around the Shadow Venerable.
“Perish buried in petals, like the scraps those Half-Immortals gave you.”
“!!!”
Cascading petals flooded his vision.