Chapter Fifty: The Strange Occurrence at Mount Huang

The giant serpent stretched fifty feet in length, as thick as a water barrel, its scales shimmering brilliantly under the sunlight. Gazing at the snake, which resembled a colossal sword, Li Ruoyu was startled to sense a trace of sword intent emanating from its form. A chill ran through him—this serpent surely possessed some inherited talent from its ancient ancestors. Ferocious beasts and exotic creatures with extraordinary bloodlines faced many constraints if they wished to take human shape, yet this serpent seemed to follow the path of the ancient primal beasts, dominating heaven and earth with its formidable body. This path, if cultivated to the extreme, would render the flesh invincible, but throughout the ages, those who achieved such a state could be counted on one hand.

Yet the way of cultivation for a cultivator is often to carve out a path through desperate straits by the force of one’s own cultivation. Though his body was afflicted, Li Ruoyu remained composed—this steadiness was ingrained in his very bones, soaked into his soul. The saying “great calm in the face of great events” seemed ever more apt for him. Gripping the bone sword in his right hand, Li Ruoyu slashed at the serpent. This strike embodied his Dao, fused with the domineering power of his Desolate Body, interwoven with the force of time itself.

When the sword edge clashed with the serpent, it was as if two mountains collided. The shockwave ripped trees from the mountainside, hurling them into the distance. Though Li Ruoyu withstood the blow, the wound on his chest—previously showing signs of healing under the effect of the Little Medicine King—split open once more, soaking his already blood-stained, tattered robe with fresh blood.

Seeing this, Li Ruoyu abandoned thoughts of a frontal contest. Instead, he dodged with all his skill while desperately drawing on the medicinal power of the Little Medicine King within his body. Though a single stalk of the Little Medicine King was enough to heal his wounds, it could not be absorbed in the blink of an eye, so he bought time by evading the serpent’s attacks.

Realizing it could not kill Li Ruoyu, the serpent coiled upon itself, using its tail as a fulcrum, spiraling into the air like a celestial staircase.

Watching this transformation, Li Ruoyu recalled an anecdote he had once read in the records of the Everlasting Nine Sects: “In the Primeval Age, divine beasts reigned supreme—the pure-blooded Heavenly Dragon, the Undying True Phoenix, the Celestial Toad, and others. Among them, the Heavenly Dragon had a great technique: burning its blood as fire and its bones as fuel—a desperate art known as the Celestial Dragon Extinguishing Heaven Technique.” The ancient, blurred illustration accompanying that tale bore a striking resemblance to the serpent’s current posture.

Though not entirely certain, Li Ruoyu prepared himself for the possibility of facing the Celestial Dragon Extinguishing Heaven Technique. Caution was his constant companion, a principle by which he always abided. Like the assassins of the Falling Immortal Pavilion, who would never strike without certain success, Li Ruoyu’s steadiness was as unyielding as that of the Hundred Thorn Assassins. This was why the Falling Immortal Pavilion earned its place as the preeminent sanctuary for killers on the Desolate Star, and it was also one reason Li Ruoyu had survived the Valley of Fallen Demons.

Suddenly, the world changed. Faint, illusory images appeared around Li Ruoyu and the serpent—a vision of the heavens laid to waste. All around, the land withered and decayed. It was as if time had reverted to an ancient, long-lost era, or perhaps they remained in the present; Li Ruoyu felt a strange sense of displacement, as though he existed in another world.

The appearance of these phantoms only strengthened his suspicions. Taking a deep breath, he tightened his grip on the sword. A double-edged sword wounds both its target and its wielder.

In a flash, Li Ruoyu parried the serpent’s strike, which fell from the sky like a meteor. The clash of sword and the Celestial Dragon Extinguishing Heaven Technique unleashed a cataclysmic aftermath, obliterating everything nearby as if the world itself were ending.

At that moment, Li Ruoyu drove the bone sword's blade into his own chest, compounding his injuries. As for the serpent, its aura too had weakened, no longer as overwhelming as before.

While Li Ruoyu and the serpent battled, deep within Mount Huang, an ancient teleportation array suddenly flared to life. A dusky trigram appeared at its center, first faint, then instantly sharp and clear. As the trigram solidified, a pillar of light connecting heaven and earth shot upward, initially as thick as a tree trunk, then swelling until it filled the entire boundary of the thirty-zhang-wide array. The beam pierced the sky, visible even from afar, stretching toward the unreachable limits of the heavens, as if touching a foreign land beyond mortal grasp.

As the light faded, a figure emerged upon the teleportation array: a man clad in black, hair as white as snow, holding an erhu. His features seemed those of a man in his prime, yet in his eyes shone a wisdom born only of long years and worldly trials. Clearly, the middle-aged appearance was but a façade—the weariness and sorrow in his gaze spoke of the ages endured, the heavens’ own lament.

This man played a silent tune upon his erhu as he strode above Li Ruoyu and the serpent, who stared in shock at the celestial pillar in Mount Huang’s depths, heading step by step toward the Valley of Fallen Demons. The serpent, upon seeing him, shivered like a lion sensing mortal peril, its tongue flickering wildly before it fled in terror into the distance. Li Ruoyu, wounded as he was, gave up pursuit and slipped away toward another part of Mount Huang.

Though the man seemed to walk at a measured pace, his speed surpassed even that of a falling star. Behind him, fading afterimages lingered in his wake.

“Afterimage.”

What Li Ruoyu had seen was merely the fading shadow of the man with the erhu.

Arriving above the Valley of Fallen Demons, the man hovered in the sky. The ancient seals that had long thwarted countless cultivators seemed nonexistent before him. The erhu in his hand emitted a single note.

“Zheng—”

At that sound, the world lost its color. Mountains and rivers spun in reverse. The seal outside the Valley of Fallen Demons, along with earth, mountains, trees, flowers—everything—was swept away as if by a celestial plow, annihilated utterly.

His stroke was like the birth of the sun, golden light spreading from him in a fan-shaped sweep over the valley. Yet, unlike the sun, which bestows grace upon all, this sound brought only destruction, erasing all things from existence.

When it ended, the vast, perilous wasteland—once the remnant of an ancient divine battlefield, spanning many times the size of a kingdom—was reduced to a plain, stretching to the far horizon where sea and sky met. The towering corpses of giants, bone dragons, and divine phoenixes within the valley turned to ash. Mountains, trees, birds, beasts—nothing survived.

Suddenly, upon this empty divide of sea and sky, a vaguely human figure appeared. Blood-red hair spilled down its back, black horns jutted from its head, and dark crimson eyes glared out from a muscular form. Bathed in blood, it stood atop an altar, with blood-red vines trailing into a lake behind it. This creature was the same suspected ancient being that the disciples of the Everlasting Nine Sects had once encountered in a cavern within the valley.

At that moment, the man with the silent erhu shifted his gaze toward another corner of the valley. Following his eyes, one would see a young man, also white-haired, emerging at the very edge of the heavens, holding a broken sword and walking slowly toward him.