Chapter 70#

Su Guanyu’s Cause of Death#

“The grudge between the demon race and your father dates back thirty-two years.” Shentu pawed at the snowdrift, finding a comfortable spot to lie down. “Didn’t Su Gou tell you? Our clan’s Saintess fled the Royal Court with the Holy Son, and a traveler from the human world took her away. That traveler was your mother, Tantai Xun.”

Sang Chiyu and Su Ruohui were both stunned.

Su Ruohui rested his chin on his hand and said, “Thirty-two years ago, my mother was assassinated outside the Great Wall. It wouldn’t happen to be you guys who did it, would it?”

“What assassination? It was a pursuit!” Shentu emphasized. “The Saintess died in battle on the way. Your mother took our Holy Son, so of course we had to reclaim him. Back then, there were five Demon Ancestors in the Snow Realm, all of whom were Grandmasters of the Pilgrimage Realm. Our Great Demon Ancestor, King Luofu, was only one step away from ascending to the heavens. When the Saintess took the Holy Son, the Royal City was shocked, and the five Demon Ancestors joined forces in pursuit. They caught up with your mother ten miles outside the Snow Realm Great Wall. Your mother had someone send the Holy Son into the human world and fought our five Demon Ancestors alone.”

“Fighting five Demon Ancestors alone…” Su Ruohui mused.

Shentu shrugged. “The result was predictable. Although your mother was also a master of the Pilgrimage Realm, how could fighting one against five be easy? I heard that by the end of the battle, your mother never bowed her head until she died. It’s strange; even today, I still don’t understand why your mother would sacrifice her life for two demons she had never even met.”

“And then?” Su Ruohui asked.

“For many years, we demons have lived at the Celestial Pole of the Snow Realm, suffering from the torment of wind and snow. To withstand the wind and snow, we even spent the efforts of several generations of demons to build the ‘Dome’ to shield the Royal City. Meanwhile, you in the human world enjoy a blessed land, with endless generations, and you even snatched away our Holy Son. After that time, King Luofu decided to lead his army south to occupy the human world. But your human world is too far away—a journey of tens of thousands of miles, where food and supplies simply couldn’t be sustained. The five Demon Ancestors are secret art practitioners of the Pilgrimage Realm; they can go months without eating or drinking, and wind and snow cannot break them. But our army is, after all, mostly ordinary demons. A single blizzard that blots out the sky would be enough to freeze them to death on the way. Even if they reached the human world, they couldn’t cross your Snow Realm Great Wall.”

Su Ruohui clicked his tongue and sighed twice. “You guys shouldn’t have given up so easily, right? Did you find some other way to plot against the human world?”

Shentu’s black-bean-like eyes were full of innocence. “I can only tell you things related to your father.”

“Alright, keep talking.” Su Ruohui made a “please” gesture.

“We thought for ten years and still couldn’t come up with a way to cross the wind and snow to reach the human world,” Shentu said slowly. “However, while we didn’t go to the human world, your father came to the Snow Realm. I was the first demon to meet him; back then, I was just a simple and kind little wolf cub. He praised me as the most beautiful little wolf in the Snow Realm, fed me meat, rubbed my belly, and helped groom my fur. In exchange, he asked me to lead the way and take him to the Celestial Pole of the Snow Realm—our demon clan’s Royal City.”

Today, Su Ruohui finally knew what that man’s solitary journey was for. Ten years of ascetic cultivation, ten years of walking on foot, ten years of kowtowing to the heavens. Everyone mocked him, ridiculed him, spat at him, and used him as post-meal gossip. But no one knew that the disheveled vagabond, the pretty boy who had once been a male concubine, had truly realized the ultimate form of secret arts.

Su Ruohui’s mood was complex. “In your eyes, was he a secret art practitioner?”

Shentu nodded. “His arrival was the greatest disaster our clan has ever faced…”

In Shentu’s narrative, Su Ruohui saw the boundless Snow Realm plateau, covered in white snow, where the color of the sky and the snow were indistinguishable.

Atop the snow mountain, two massive stone pillars reaching into the clouds supported a transparent glazed dome. Countless runes were engraved on the stone pillars, with delicate silver light flickering, as if silver snakes were swimming within.

And the “Dome” Shentu mentioned was a transparent sky built from tens of millions of pieces of glass, shielding the undulating architecture of the Royal City below. That was the demons’ homeland, the Snow Realm home built with the lifeblood of several generations of their ancestors.

A man, cloaked in wind and snow, trekked ten thousand miles to reach this settlement of an alien race.

He wore a tattered cloak and a snow-white hood. Beneath the hood, a corner of a chin as white as jade was revealed, and frost and snow could be seen accumulating on his refined brow.

“Are you really going? You can’t beat them.” Shentu pawed at his pant leg twice. “Don’t go; let me take you away.”

“One can go without food, and one can go without raising a child,” Su Guanyu smiled and lamented, “but the Demon Ancestors must be killed.”

Shentu pawed at his pant leg in vain; he stood motionless like a reef.

“I originally thought of keeping you for one last meal of roasted meat,” he rubbed Shentu’s furry head, “but forget it. Doing good deeds earns merit for my poor child. Go. I’ll give you the time it takes for an incense stick to burn; if you get ten miles away, you’ll be safe.”

Shentu didn’t understand the first half, only the second. Looking back every few steps, he reluctantly left the snow plateau and, following Su Guanyu’s words, walked ten miles away. He raised his head, straining his eyes to gaze at that lonely man. In the blizzard, the ice-blue eyes of demons flickered like stars. Murderous intent was approaching, sharp as a blade.

Su Guanyu stood firm and shouted, “Su Guanyu of the human world, kowtowing to the Heavenly Gate.”

Five pairs of eyes appeared in the snow mist, massive shadows blotting out the sky, as tall as small hills. The Snow Realm Demon Ancestors, Grandmasters of the Pilgrimage Realm—no one knew how many years they had lived. Just looking at those towering figures, one knew they were monsters beyond a mortal’s imagination. Su Ruohui heard their heavy breathing, like old bellows being pulled. And that exhaled breath felt like gusts of strong wind to a human.

Su Guanyu, with his delicate stature like a willow in the wind, stood among them in a plain robe. He was not of a brawny build to begin with; though tall, his waist was so thin he seemed barely able to fill his clothes. Standing with these monsters, he was like a weak, vulnerable bird entering a pack of blood-sucking wolves.

“Mortal, why do you kowtow to the Heavenly Gate?” A majestic voice came from the wind.

“Tantai Xun is my wife.” Su Guanyu smiled.

“So that’s it; you are that woman’s husband.” The Demon Ancestors slowly circled him, sizing him up. “Mortals are truly weak. Not much meat, thin bones—not enough to fill my stomach, and they’d just get stuck in my teeth. Mortal, your wife stole our child. So, you shall stay and be our human slave, to atone for your wife’s sins.”

“I’m sorry,” Su Guanyu laughed, “this junior did not come here to be a slave.”

“Oh?”

“Your dome is indeed beautiful,” Su Guanyu gazed into the distance, where the glazed sky reflected brilliant light. “If it were to shatter like rain, it would be a peerless sight. Su Guanyu takes the liberty of challenging the Demon Ancestors: I shall shatter your sky and slaughter your entire clan.”

At these words, several demons were furious. “Arrogant!”

“Arrogant?” Su Guanyu turned his gaze in another direction.

He saw a massive snowflake, suspended at the end of the plateau, above the vast sea. That snowflake was so crystal clear, yet so familiar.

Su Guanyu said softly, “I heard that is the End of the Sky, the first snowflake in this world. You have lived under it for so many years; have you ever seen its profound meaning?”

The demons’ gazes tightened. “What do you mean?”

“You cannot see it,” Su Guanyu said slowly, “but I have.”

The demons were all terrified. “What on earth are you talking about? How much do you know of the snowflake’s meaning?”

“Lives without meaning—what harm is there in destroying them?” Su Guanyu raised his hand, and white snow fell into his palm. “I have suppressed my realm for so long; today, I can finally release it. Pity you all, as small as ants, taking dawn and dusk for seasons and mugwort for the world—you will never find the answer.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the wind and snow stopped abruptly, and the world fell into silence. All the demons were shocked. At that moment, it was as if time had paused. All light surged toward Su Guanyu, and everything centered on him, listening to his heartbeat.

The demons shrieked in terror: “He is a Celestial! Escape! Run!”

They didn’t even have the thought to resist, scrambling to flee across the snow plateau.

A pale green glow emanated from Su Guanyu’s body, and his eyes were stained with an eerie, brilliant light. A six-petaled snowflake hovered in his palm, the white light holy and spotless, like a solitary night-blooming white epiphyllum, blooming silently on its own.

He said softly, “Ten Directions Epiphyllum Annihilation.”

The white light suddenly expanded, centered on him, swallowing everything around. All light and shadow in the world shattered at this moment. The wind and snow melted away, the fleeing demons vanished in the white light, and the brilliant glazed sky above the Royal City shattered piece by piece, falling like rain. The demons in the Royal City looked up to see those massive fragments falling into the white snow like sheets of light.

Just as Su Guanyu said, that scene was truly peerless in its magnificence. The white light suddenly expanded, affecting the entire Royal City. As if a grain of sand was cleared from the world, a city on the snow plateau turned to ruins.

Shentu stood in the distance, staring blankly at this scene.

Was this the power of a Celestial? So terrifying, sweeping everything away in an instant.

Shentu said, “He killed four Demon Ancestors, and more than half of our clan died in that disaster. King Luofu was fortunate enough to survive, but he was heavily injured and forced into a long slumber.”

“And my dad?” Su Ruohui asked.

“Dead,” Shentu said. “Not a bone, not a drop of blood, not even a scrap of clothing remains. Perhaps that is the price of ‘Ten Directions Epiphyllum Annihilation.’ We have never seen such a powerful secret art; perhaps because it was too powerful, it devastated the demon race and destroyed Su Guanyu himself.”

No, Su Ruohui always felt something was wrong. If he had died by self-detonation, there should have been remains left behind, just like the dead Demon Ancestors. Listening to his father’s words before death, it seemed that fellow had reached the Celestial Realm long ago but had suppressed it, only releasing it at the Snow Realm Heavenly Gate.

Why? Why did his father do that?

[Because he realized the core laws of this world.] The system’s voice sounded abruptly.

Laws?

[Information unlocked: Su Guanyu’s cause of death was not releasing the secret art ‘Ten Directions Epiphyllum Annihilation,’ but because…]

There is a “snowflake” at the End of the Sky, so these demons thought the “snowflake” was a legacy Su Guanyu left for Su Ruohui. Wrong, they were all wrong. The “snowflake” is the system, and the system is the “snowflake.” Su Guanyu never possessed the “snowflake”; the “snowflake” stood above Su Guanyu.

Su Ruohui murmured in a low voice, “It was you who erased him.”

So that law is—

[Celestials must die.]