Chapter 135#
He really knows how to talk.
How could the people of Langfeng City say that Young Master Xie was a mute?
This person, when coaxing someone, clearly had a whole set of tricks.
He didn’t even know how to respond.
An Wuxue lowered his eyes, hiding his awkwardness.
He felt the yang seal in his sea of consciousness.
He could directly know the location of the other yin seal. As long as his divine sense moved, he would know where Xie Zhefeng was… no matter how far away.
Besides that, although he wouldn’t do it, he could indeed feel that if he wanted to, he could immediately crush the yin and yang seals of the Life and Death Incantation.
He had never imagined that he would willingly accept the control seal of the Life and Death Incantation, accepting such a bond of life and death without regret with Xie Zhefeng.
“If you have even a hint of regret now,” he said, “I will return the yang seal to you.”
Xie Zhefeng changed the subject: “Senior Brother, would you examine my demon bone for me? If I reveal my bone structure, only my soul will be exposed, and it would be inconvenient for me to examine it closely myself.”
An Wuxue was helpless.
His Junior Brother’s attempt to change the subject was too clumsy, and he couldn’t be bothered to expose it.
Currently, Xie Zhefeng’s demon bone and inner demon were indeed a major hidden danger.
And his puppet mark…
After the Beiming Ascension Tribulation, puppets proliferated in the two worlds. It seemed there was no great disaster, but he always felt a sense of impending storm.
He frowned: “Did Master never tell you about the demon bone?”
Xie Zhefeng shook his head: “No. Now that my memory has recovered, even in the memories I had forgotten, there was no mention of the demon bone. But I remembered what Master said when he gave me the sword of great accomplishment.”
“…The day you chose your path?”
“Yes. Master told me that casting the Ruthless Curse on me was for the sake of all living beings. But at that time, I…” Xie Zhefeng glanced at An Wuxue, “When I was arguing with Master about which path to choose, all I was thinking about was Senior Brother. So after the curse was cast, I completely forgot about it.”
“You really are…” An Wuxue didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “However, Master probably deliberately asked you about matters of love at that time. The Ruthless Curse was created by Master; he knew what you would forget. He just wanted you to forget the existence of the Ruthless Curse.”
He simply leaned against the trunk of the Soul-Nourishing Tree, closed his eyes, and immersed his soul in the spiritual energy of the Soul-Nourishing Tree, quietly contemplating.
“The Ruthless Curse is related to all living beings, and your demon bone is related to your inner demon. The existence of the Ruthless Curse actually implicitly suppressed your demon bone, thereby suppressing your inner demon…”
Xie Zhefeng suddenly realized: “Master cast the Ruthless Curse, perhaps because of the demon bone?”
After the curse was lifted, he actually resented Nan He a bit.
If not for this Ruthless Curse, how could he and Senior Brother have never expressed their feelings to each other until death? And how could he have forgotten what happened during his ascension?
So not only An Wuxue, but Xie Zhefeng himself had also been wondering—why?
Immortal Venerable Nan He couldn’t possibly have been unaware of Xie Zhefeng’s demon bone.
To explain it, they could only find such a reason.
An Wuxue opened his eyes.
“How did you extract your bone structure separately back then? If the body is still there, can the bone structure return to the body?”
“It was done using a secret technique sealed in Luoyue. As long as the soul is not extinguished, it can naturally return to the body. But I no longer have a body, so whether it can return or not doesn’t matter.”
“No,” An Wuxue said, “it matters. Before I help you investigate, I want to extract my own bone first.”
“Senior Brother!”
“Don’t be anxious. I’m not being whimsical or acting recklessly. I’ve always had a suspicion about my body, and now is a good time to confirm it.”
Xie Zhefeng was still uneasy: “What are you suspecting? If you want to investigate the bone structure of your current puppet body, I can do it for you.”
An Wuxue raised an eyebrow: “The Immortal Venerable dared to divide his soul and extract his sword bone under the nine-fold lightning tribulation without telling me, yet now that I’m telling you first and temporarily extracting my bone under your care, you disagree?”
At these words, Xie Zhefeng was at a loss for words and dared not say anything more.
The man hesitated for a moment, then still taught him the secret bone extraction technique.
After An Wuxue memorized it, he sat cross-legged under the Soul-Nourishing Tree.
“Protect me.”
“Naturally.”
An Wuxue no longer thought much, closed his eyes, and mobilized the spiritual power around him.
His soul left his body, and he used the bone extraction method to slowly separate the bone structure from “Su Xue’s” body.
He had only seen Xie Zhefeng do this in the illusion of the Soul-Nourishing Tree spirit’s life and death.
Now that he was doing it himself, he felt the profound sensation.
With his body and bones separated, his soul felt empty. Even though there were no ascension tribulation clouds above his head, he felt an unusual sense of unease.
Fortunately, he knew Xie Zhefeng was watching him from the side, so although he felt instinctively uneasy, he wasn’t truly worried.
He only extracted the bone structure he could immediately perceive.
“It’s a very ordinary bone structure,” he heard his Junior Brother say from the side. “It’s not even a sword bone. But it’s only ordinary, showing nothing special. Perhaps it’s a bone structure casually found by the puppet maker.”
His Junior Brother’s voice was still very worried: “The feeling of bone structure leaving the body is not pleasant. If you can’t find anything, you should put it back, right?”
An Wuxue didn’t put it back.
Not only did he not put it back, but his soul returned to its place, he stopped the bone extraction technique, and slowly opened his eyes.
Xie Zhefeng immediately said anxiously: “You haven’t put the bone structure back yet. If you move rashly—”
The man’s voice hitched.
Because An Wuxue stood up.
The ordinary bone structure that An Wuxue had extracted from his body was still sitting to one side. An Wuxue’s body should have only been skin and soul, devoid of major vitality, unable to move.
But An Wuxue actually stood up without any hindrance, as if he hadn’t extracted his bone structure at all!
Xie Zhefeng himself had experienced such a situation once during his ascension, so he was particularly clear about it.
—An Wuxue’s body also had two sets of bone structures!?
An Wuxue was both shocked and felt it was within expectation.
He murmured: “My guess was indeed correct. The bone structure I first felt was not my true bone structure at all…”
Spiritual power swirled from all directions, bringing strong winds and frost and snow.
An Wuxue felt a long-lost sense of clarity.
He felt as if he could hear the sound of every blade of grass and tree between heaven and earth, and could sing in harmony with the Heavenly Dao.
His spiritual meridians frantically absorbed the surrounding spiritual energy, yet his meridians and body felt no pain at all; instead, they felt incredibly unhindered!
This feeling of being able to easily sense the Heavenly Dao and all living beings…
“Senior Brother,” Xie Zhefeng said word by word, “your jade bone.”
—His jade bone had been on him all along!!!
The bone structure he had just extracted was merely a facade to conceal and seal the jade bone!
He and Xie Zhefeng had never realized before that “Su Xue’s” body was his golden body and jade bone, simply because this ordinary bone structure was sealed outside the jade bone, blocking his soul’s perception!
Now that he had extracted the false bone structure, the jade bone was unsealed, merging with the golden body again, opening all his meridians.
He had clearly just extracted the bone structure from his body, yet now his body was complete.
No wonder!
No wonder after he became “Su Xue,” he felt no discomfort with his “new” body.
No wonder he had felt before that this body was too similar to his previous one.
If it were a puppet body, it would inevitably be created by someone else, and as long as it was created by someone else, there would be subtle differences from his true self, but his body had none.
After all the twists and turns, his soul had been annihilated and his bones turned to dust back then, yet this golden body and jade bone had been reshaped for some unknown reason and had always been there.
He had always… been himself.
An Wuxue was filled with mixed emotions.
He walked towards the discarded ordinary bone structure.
Xie Zhefeng quickly came to support him.
But he stopped the other, saying: “My golden body and jade bone have re-merged now, and I feel no discomfort, and I’ve lost that previous sluggish feeling. Don’t worry.”
He looked at the now useless bone structure before him and sneered, “As expected. My golden body and jade bone must have been reshaped for some unknown reason during these thousand years. My soul returned to my body, but because I had just returned from the dead, it couldn’t immediately become perfectly integrated.
“The perpetrators who caused trouble in Zhaoshui City and Beiming City found me before my soul fully awakened, and sealed an extra ordinary bone structure into my body, hiding my jade bone, thereby also sealing my golden body. Then they placed the puppet mark, fabricated the identity of Su Xue, and used Yun Zhou to bring me back to Luoyue Peak.
“On Luoyue Peak, my soul awakened, and I mistakenly thought I had been passively possessed by someone named Su Xue.”
An Wuxue lifted his sleeve, revealing the puppet mark.
“Even this puppet mark was designed. Since that person knew so much about me, they must have understood my personality. They knew that if someone directly controlled me with a puppet mark, I would eventually rather be shattered jade than intact tile.”
What if the person controlling him happened to be Xie Zhefeng, whom he had been desperately avoiding at the time?
The other party understood him, but perhaps not Xie Zhefeng.
If from the very beginning, his Junior Brother had truly had some demanding desire for “Su Xue,” forcing him, what would he have done?
At that time, unable to resist the power of an immortal, and unable to seek death, would his state of mind have changed?
Would he have resented fate and karma because of it?
With each word An Wuxue spoke, Xie Zhefeng’s expression grew uglier.
After listening to him, the man’s eyes were filled with murderous intent.
“This person has such deep cunning—such schemes, harming so many people, all for the sake of returning to the immortal disaster when all living beings were suffering.”
An Wuxue, besides his anger, worried: “We still don’t know who that person is, or what they plan to do next…”
He couldn’t think of anyone else who would do this besides a turbid immortal.
But the turbid immortals had long been wiped out.
“Never mind,” he looked at Xie Zhefeng, “at least my body and bones are still here, and it’s not all disadvantageous to us—the moment I felt the jade bone just now…”
He looked up at the sky.
“…I felt the sensation of ascending to immortality.”
He had lived again, his cultivation had reached a bottleneck, but his soul and state of mind had advanced further due to a thousand years of life and death. He hadn’t touched the sensation of ascending to immortality before, apparently because that ordinary bone structure had sealed his jade bone.
Now that the jade bone reappeared, he finally felt something.
He said: “If I want to, I can trigger the ascension lightning tribulation at any time. But…”
Xie Zhefeng immediately understood: “But Senior Brother feels that the ascension barrier is indestructible, and the lightning tribulation is impossible to pass, right?”
An Wuxue nodded.
No wonder no one had ascended to immortality for a thousand years.
“I had this feeling a thousand years ago,” his Junior Brother said, “but at the time, I thought it was because my own state of mind was unstable and I was entangled by an inner demon, so I didn’t think much of it.”
“Junior Brother did not take the ordinary path to ascension. For the rest of the immortal cultivators in the two worlds, the true four pillars of heaven have collapsed, and the Heavenly Dao is incomplete. Everyone is blocked by this barrier.”
“Could the fifth pillar of heaven be maintaining the last path to ascension?”
An Wuxue’s expression froze at these words.
He shook his head with a solemn expression.
Xie Zhefeng asked confusedly: “Why is Senior Brother so certain?”
“Because…”
An Wuxue’s mind stirred.
His divine sense went directly into Xie Zhefeng’s brow, connecting with the man’s soul.
The moment Xie Zhefeng’s soul connected with his, he saw what only An Wuxue could see… the fifth pillar of heaven.
That pillar stood tall between heaven and earth, pure white and flawless, appearing and disappearing between heaven and earth.
It stood right beside the Soul-Nourishing Tree.
It was right beside An Wuxue!!!
Even someone as composed as Xie Zhefeng showed a look of shock at this moment.
“No wonder I could never find it…”
It turned out that the fifth pillar of heaven had always been by An Wuxue’s side, and only An Wuxue’s divine sense could perceive it.
An Wuxue and Xie Zhefeng opened their eyes simultaneously.
He withdrew his divine sense, and then he could no longer see the fifth pillar of heaven.
He was also very surprised: “I didn’t expect it either. But since that person found me before I woke up, they probably knew all this. That’s why they sealed my jade bone. If it weren’t for your soul division and bone extraction beforehand, I wouldn’t have thought of extracting my own bone structure to unseal the jade bone.
“I sensed the fifth pillar of heaven just now, but the ascension barrier is still there. It probably can’t lead me to ascension.”
Xie Zhefeng’s expression, however, grew even more solemn.
“What the mastermind of Zhaoshui and Beiming sought is very likely related to this fifth pillar of heaven.”
Since that person had discovered the resurrected An Wuxue first, they were probably aware of these things.
Thinking this way, the other party had been impersonating An Wuxue all along. Perhaps their ultimate goal wasn’t An Wuxue, but the fifth pillar of heaven connected to An Wuxue…
An Wuxue pondered for a long time.
The golden leaves of the Soul-Nourishing Tree swayed, and its halo flowed.
After a long time.
He sighed.
“It’s useless for us to guess here. Let me examine your demon bone first.”
Xie Zhefeng sat cross-legged under the Soul-Nourishing Tree as instructed.
Before his soul left his body, the man hesitated again, looking at him anxiously.
“My soul will leave my body in a moment, and I won’t be able to do anything. Senior Brother, don’t leave.”
“I won’t leave.”
Xie Zhefeng closed his eyes, then opened them again.
“And don’t cast the Ruthless Curse.”
An Wuxue: “…Were my previous words for naught?”
Immortal Venerable Chuhan said seriously: “What if you change your mind overnight?”
Head Disciple An said exasperatedly: “I won’t cast it!”
Xie Zhefeng was still somewhat skeptical.
The man’s pupils moved slightly, he hesitated for a moment, then suddenly spread his palm and summoned a contract talisman.
“Words are no proof,” he wrote on the talisman, “let this contract be witness.”
An Wuxue: “…”
He said: “Junior Brother.”
“Mm?”
“Do you know the last time I made a verbal agreement with someone using this kind of contract talisman?”
“…Mm?”
“It was when I was five years old, and I made a promise with Qi Xun that we would definitely wake up early the next day to dig for spirit bird eggs.”
“You weren’t even born yet.”
The Immortal Venerable Chuhan, over a thousand years old: “…”