In the chaotic, fiery scene, Song Ciwan activated her Divine Eye Opening.
‘I have to seize that sliver of a Spiritual Mechanism in this sudden chaos. Everything that happens leaves a trace!’
‘Who is it?’
‘What caused all this chaos?’
Cai An seemed to have gone mad. The soldiers of the West Wind Army were all battle-hardened and strictly disciplined; they shouldn’t have been so mentally fragile. Yet now, they were all running around like headless chickens. They fanned the flames and spread the fires, scrambling all over the camp and clashing chaotically with the Medical Cultivators who rushed out from their tents.
‘And General Yu… at a time of such widespread chaos, where was General Yu Wenxu? He was supposed to be their pillar of strength.’
The moment her Divine Eye Opening activated, it was as if an invisible light from the unseen world brushed away the many veils shrouding the vast desert.
Song Ciwan saw it clearly. At some unknown point, the sky above her camp had become inexplicably shrouded in a layer of dark red, ghostly light.
Upon seeing it, before Song Ciwan could even discern the light’s origin, she was assaulted by a powerful sense of chaos emanating from the red glow.
Chaotic, gloomy, evil, and unbearable to look at. A single glance birthed fury!
An impulsive, furious emotion surged in Song Ciwan’s chest.
She was utterly enraged, as if she might soar into the sky at any moment, unleash the most powerful Cultivation Technique of her life, and grind every single person on the field to dust.
‘Damn it, not again!’
Fury filled Song Ciwan’s chest, but her mind remained perfectly calm.
With the Samadhi True Fire and the Heart Demon Tree Seedling jointly guarding her Sea of Consciousness, Song Ciwan’s divine gaze became two sharp arrows. Amidst the chaos, her sight pierced the red curtain once more, following it back to its source: a floating Red Lantern not far away!
Yes, a Red Lantern.
It bore some resemblance to the Spirit Treasure Red Lantern Song Ciwan had seen in Pinglan City, but it was clearly not the same one.
The red light from this lantern was darker and more sinister, exuding an indescribable Demonic Nature. It was shaped like a palace lantern, with long, green tassels hanging below.
As Song Ciwan’s divine gaze met that of the Red Lantern, vertical lines of inky black characters suddenly floated out from its red glow.
The ink characters drifted elegantly. There was no voice, yet it was as if a grand, ancient sound was reciting from a great distance:
“Have you not seen, by the shores of Qinghai, / The white bones of old that none have gathered?”
“New ghosts fret and old ghosts cry, / Their whimpers echo in the damp and dreary sky!”
…
“Wishing to trade sorrow for wine, / But let not the clear song break my heart.”
…
“Yellow-leafed trees in the rain, / A white-haired figure beneath a lamp.”
…
“I see only a cold sun and a warm moon, / Come to boil away the lives of men…”
“Hehehe, hehehe…”
The voices—reciting and singing, weeping and laughing—drew closer, their sorrowful cries traveling from afar to surround Song Ciwan, ringing in her ears and echoing in her very heart!
Each mournful chant held the unresolved sorrows of the mortal world, the tears of sages throughout history, the anguish of dried bones beneath desert sands and grieving peasants under thatched roofs, all reaching out in misery and crying out to the heavens…
Using the most beautiful words to describe the most heartbreaking truths.
‘What is this?’
It is the fleeting nature of life, forever filled with powerlessness;
It is the great sorrow of the world, the merciless passage of time;
It is the endless cycle of life and death, forever bound with unspoken melancholy…
In short, it wanted you to suffer, to hurt, to die!
“AHHHH!”
Song Ciwan herself had not made a sound, but from the fiery chaos, she clearly heard Cai An’s anguished cry.
He was yelling, “Brother Zheng, why did you have to save me? You destroyed your own path on the Dao just to save me once! It wasn’t worth it! You should have just let me die!”
From the void, a weak voice seemed to reply, “We are brothers-in-arms, sworn to watch each other’s backs. I wasn’t just saving you; I was doing what I had to do…”
“Brother Zheng, I understand now. The only thing for me to do is repay you with my life!”
With that, Cai An raised his Treasure Saber and swiped it across his own neck.
SPLURT!
Blood sprayed everywhere as his head flew into the air.
Cai An had taken his own life.
The very moment his head hit the ground, Song Ciwan distinctly saw a wisp of gray energy, nearly invisible to the naked eye, shoot from Cai An’s headless corpse. Like a fledgling returning to its nest, it plunged straight into the floating lantern!
The moment had arrived.
At last, Song Ciwan understood the source of the chaos.
She could see it clearly now: behind the Red Lantern, a figure cloaked in black stood silently.
Because the night was so dark and the lantern’s red light was so conspicuous, it created a strange “darkness-under-the-lamp” effect.
‘The Red Lantern was being held by the figure in black. It would have been a mistake to think the lantern was the enemy. The real cause of all this isn’t the lantern, but the one holding it!’
Her divine power stirred, and Song Ciwan stepped out of her Upright Shadowless state.
The instant she returned to the physical world, her gaze shifted.
Where her gaze fell, the Void Illusion Demon Sword struck!
The sword was formless and silent, yet it could stir demonic thoughts in all beings.
Every heart has its demons; no one can escape.
Since the man in black beneath the Red Lantern used Demonic Nature to toy with the world, it was only fitting that Demonic Nature now be turned back upon him.
The man in black was struck. He froze on the spot.
There was no earth-shattering commotion. But as the Void Illusion Demon Sword struck its target, countless, endless demonic thoughts invisibly recoiled back at Song Ciwan.
They faced each other amidst the firelight, chaos, and darkness. Though they appeared motionless and silent, they were, in fact, locked in a terrifying, soul-shaking battle.
Killing intent radiated like a winter frost as demonic thoughts spilled into the air.
As the Void Illusion Demon Sword plunged into the Sea of Consciousness of the Demon Scholar’s Night Traveling Lamp, Song Ciwan finally understood. This figure in the darkness was not a Human—he was a demon!
The demon possessed a perfect human form and a vast Sea of Consciousness.
But his Sea of Consciousness was markedly different from a human’s. It was less a sea and more an ocean floor paved with endless white bones.
There was no divine core within his Sea of Consciousness, only a single, ghostly blue Demon Spirit, floating and sinking upon the endless sea of bones.
The bones let out mournful wails as malevolent energy surged sky-high.
A storm of demonic thoughts raged wildly within. When the formless Void Illusion Demon Sword shot inside, it plunged right into the heart of this tempest.
How could a Sea of Consciousness, already a maelstrom of terrifying chaos, possibly withstand such a blow?
It couldn’t.
Song Ciwan had long ago cultivated her Void Illusion Demon Sword to the Mastery Realm. As her sword-intent entered, the storms raging across the sea of bones instantly erupted like a chain of unstable volcanoes.
BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Storms collided and raged. Then, new storms burst forth from the old, and from those new storms, even more storms were born.
Amidst the bombardment of infinite storms, the Demon Scholar’s Night Traveling Lamp, strong as he was, had been caught completely off guard.
He thought he was the hunter ambushing the prey, but he never imagined that he himself would become the one ambushed.
Amidst the endless explosions, Song Ciwan endured the agony of the backlash.
Then, in a single instant, the Night Traveling Lamp’s Sea of Consciousness detonated, and with a deafening roar, his entire body exploded.
A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the night sky.