Chapter 26#

How could there be any method of soul-nurturing resurrection?

It was nothing more than a dream and a phantom.

Yun Yao’s remnant soul should have gradually dissipated two hundred years ago, but Yun Zhou had forcibly found the last of it and condensed it onto a puppet, which instead caused Yun Yao to develop an obsession.

He was muddled and ignorant of worldly affairs; his only thought was for Yun Zhou to let him go.

He only wanted to die in peace.

Yun Yao did not want to stay in this body or by Yun Zhou’s side as if there were no end in sight, helplessly watching Yun Zhou remain stubbornly obsessed with that completely impossible hope of resurrection and wantonly creating killing karma.

An Wuxue sighed in his heart.

He was also someone who had been a senior brother.

Looking at how far Yun Zhou had gone to harm both himself and others, An Wuxue could empathize with how agonizing these two hundred years must have been for Yun Yao.

Now that he had used the Soul-Nurturing Tree Spirit to bring out the past and understood Yun Yao’s obsession, he would help Yun Yao’s remnant soul leave the puppet body.

He knew that in his identity as Su Xue, using the Soul-Nurturing Tree Spirit so deftly and skillfully would likely attract Xie Zhefeng’s attention.

But once this matter was concluded, Xie Zhefeng would certainly not spend effort on a remnant soul that had been dead for two hundred years. Only now, while the Soul-Nurturing Tree Spirit was still in his hands, could he help Yun Yao find peace.

He didn’t want Yun Yao to wait any longer.

The remnant soul faded rapidly within the shroud of the Soul-Nurturing Tree Spirit’s glow.

This former chief disciple of the Yunjian Sect finally reached the resolution that had been delayed for two hundred years.

An Wuxue spoke with something between a sigh and a reproach: “Yun Zhou, what you have sought for centuries is but a delusion.”

Yun Zhou’s expression twitched violently.

His eyes trembled, and his expression was frantic: “Senior Brother!!! No… it won’t… the Soul-Nurturing Tree Spirit is a worldly treasure, how could it be impossible!!”

He had spent two hundred years scheming for this; how could he accept now that it was just a fleeting dream?

He stared fixedly at the remnant soul before An Wuxue, murmuring, “Senior Brother…”

Covered in blood and filth, he lay miserably on the ground, his fingertips digging into the dust as he struggled once more to stand with his sword.

Xie Zhefeng made no move.

For some reason, he didn’t kill Yun Zhou, nor did he stop him.

He gazed at the remnant soul peacefully dissipating in the glow of the tree spirit, his expression sorrowful. He still stood elegantly to the side holding Chunhua, yet it seemed as if the one who had suffered a pathetic defeat wasn’t Yun Zhou, but himself.

Yun Zhou stood up tremblingly and suddenly laughed wildly: “Hahahahahaha!! Hahahahahaha!!! The Soul-Nurturing Tree Spirit is useless… useless—!!”

His eyes streamed blood as he looked toward Xie Zhefeng: “What I sought was but a delusion—then what about Immortal Venerable Xie? Immortal Venerable searched the four seas to find the Soul-Nurturing Tree and specifically followed me back to the Yunjian Sect to investigate, all to lure out my soul-chasing method, acting along with me until now…”

“Is what you seek not also a delusion?”

Xie Zhefeng’s gaze darkened.

An Wuxue already knew the person Yun Zhou was talking about was him.

But he felt no ripples.

What if Xie Zhefeng searched the four seas now? If he hadn’t mysteriously woken up in Su Xue’s body, throughout the long years, his life would have only remained in front of the Luoyue mountain gate a thousand years ago, unable to see the various efforts Xie Zhefeng was making for him now.

The one who had struck him down was this person, and the one who vainly attempted to use the Soul-Nurturing Tree Spirit to nourish his remnant soul was also this person.

He only felt his chest was empty and chilly, unable to muster any energy.

The remnant soul above his palm was about to vanish completely.

Without a soul to maintain its thin thread of life, Yun Yao’s puppet body began to decay and erode in just a few blinks of an eye.

Within the illusion, the winds surged and clouds churned across the world, and the dark clouds rolled away.

The Mirror Demon was dead, Yun Zhou’s fortune had run out, and the barrier was about to end.

While Xie Zhefeng was dazed and lost in thought, Yun Zhou actually spat out a mouthful of blood, spurred the surrounding spiritual energy, and lunged with his sword toward An Wuxue!

He actually managed one last strike just to seize Yun Yao’s meager remaining remnant soul!

An Wuxue didn’t move.

Xie Zhefeng’s thoughts snapped back, his brows furrowing as he was about to act—

But Yun Zhou’s body suddenly jerked and came to an abrupt halt.

Blood poured continuously from his mouth as he turned his head with difficulty, his expression one of confusion and shock.

Yun Wan held the ordinary spiritual sword that every Yunjian Sect disciple possessed. Her hands gripped the hilt tightly, and the blade had pierced from behind into his dantian, three inches to the right.

She was only at the Minor Success stage and had never fought an unreachable Tribulation cultivator. Her hands trembled violently, and her upper teeth bit down hard, drawing blood from her lower lip.

At this moment, she held the spiritual sword her senior brother had gifted her back then and personally stabbed it into the dantian of the senior brother who used to buy her a flower lantern with spiritual stones worth ten thousand gold.

Blood erupted from Yun Zhou, staining her skirt.

The hand holding the sword shook more and more. Her eyes were red, and she finally looked away.

A flash of shock, anger, and unwillingness seemed to pass over Yun Zhou’s ashen face in an instant…

In the end, there was nothing.

He died.

Yun Wan pulled the sword back and retreated, staggering a few steps before falling to the ground.

The blood-stained spiritual sword landed with a “clang,” hitting the ground at the same time as Yun Zhou’s corpse.

The moment he fell, his line of sight was still fixed on where that wisp of a remnant soul was in An Wuxue’s hand.

At the same time, the last wisp of the remnant soul completely dissipated above the tree spirit’s glow, leaving no trace.

In the vast world and wide seas, there was no longer such a person as Yun Yao in the two realms.

Xie Zhefeng frowned and stepped forward quickly. Before Yun Zhou’s soul could be completely extinguished, he leaned down and pressed his fingertip to the space between Yun Zhou’s eyebrows.

—He was searching the soul!

An Wuxue was stunned.

The junior brother in his memory would not resort to soul-searching unless driven to a dead end.

Even when the great demon of the Shark tribe in the Dark Sea had afflicted Xie Zhefeng with charm poison, he had remained in a stalemate with the demon for seven days because he didn’t know how to interrogate it.

The sword light might be cold, but he wasn’t considered ruthless.

Why now…

He watched as Xie Zhefeng extracted Yun Zhou’s soul. His thoughts returned, and his heart tightened.

But whether it was a divine will that helped him once more, just as Xie Zhefeng began the soul search, Yun Zhou’s soul shuddered and dissipated on its own.

Yun Zhou had actually placed a curse on his own soul so that it would self-destruct upon being searched.

An Wuxue breathed a sigh of relief, then fell silent—Yun Zhou’s end had reached the same destination as Yun Yao’s through a different path.

Xie Zhefeng’s expression was even more unsightly.

Only then did Yun Wan slowly come back to her senses.

She took a deep breath and suddenly knelt before Xie Zhefeng: “Senior Xie!”

“…What is it?”

“The sect’s heritage is broken, and the murderer…” She glanced at Yun Zhou, “…has been executed. But kindness should be repaid, and grudges settled. Although I don’t know the reasons behind it, Senior Brother Yun Yao once enlightened us, taught me swordplay, and practiced footwork with me. I want…”

She kowtowed heavily three times, “I want to bury Senior Brother Yun Yao and all the elders of the sect here.”

Xie Zhefeng was silent for a moment.

“Go ahead,” he said.

Yun Wan performed another deep bow.

As she rose, An Wuxue saw blood seeping from her forehead.

She could tell that Xie Zhefeng was no ordinary person and that his affairs were not for her to know. She dared not delay and immediately used a spiritual talisman to summon the other small disciples who had been hiding in the courtyard. All of them had red eyes as they carefully carried away the decaying puppet body.

Perhaps they would bury him in the tombs of the ancestors.

It could be considered returning to his origin.

The surviving disciples of the Yunjian Sect came and went in a hurry. The illusion barrier was nearly collapsed, and all the monsters in the vicinity had been slain by Xie Zhefeng.

The surroundings suddenly became quiet.

The Soul-Nurturing Tree Spirit still emitted a faint golden light in An Wuxue’s hand.

An Wuxue stared at the glow of the tree spirit, his heart filled with growing doubts.

He had originally thought that the Yunjian Sect had fed Su Xue, a mortal, too many impure spiritual medicines in an attempt to turn him into a cultivator, which instead killed him. It just so happened that as his own soul recovered, he had returned to Luoyue Peak by some twist of fate and became Su Xue.

But back then, he was actually much like Yun Yao—his body dead and his soul extinguished, with only a wisp of a remnant soul drifting back to the Thorny River. Even the Xie Zhefeng of that time, who had already ascended to immortality, could not condense his remnant soul.

If a remnant soul cannot be brought back to life, then after drifting with a blurred consciousness for a thousand years, how had he been resurrected and his soul brought to Su Xue’s body?

And then there was that furnace mark…

In Yun Yao’s memory, the furnace mark was an ancient secret technique obtained by Yun Zhou. There was no solution for it; it would only naturally dissipate when the furnace’s cultivation exceeded the owner’s.

Back then, in order to break free from Yun Zhou’s control, Yun Yao hadn’t hesitated to draw a large amount of turbid energy into his body, forcibly entering demonhood to raise his cultivation to the Tribulation stage, thereby dissolving the furnace mark.

But the person the furnace mark on his own arm was linked to was Xie Zhefeng.

The only eternal immortal in this world.

In his previous life, although he had a golden body and jade bones, he had eventually stopped at the peak of the Tribulation stage, half a step into the immortal realm, because of too many karmic obstacles on his path to ascension. He had never touched the immortal realm until his death.

Could it be that the only path to take in this life was to use Su Xue’s mortal body to ascend?

That would truly be—

He suddenly felt a gaze land on him and subconsciously turned his head, catching Xie Zhefeng’s eyes.

The man was pale, his black pupils deep and eerie, and a look of ferocity seemed to flash through them.

But the man closed his eyes as if suppressing something, then opened them again.

All this happened in an instant. The other man then asked him, “You seem quite familiar with the spiritual technique for commanding the essence of heaven and earth.”

He replied neither humbly nor arrogantly, “I share an affinity with the Immortal Venerable’s spiritual pet. When we were at the Frost Sea, Kun-kun once gifted me several Soul-Nurturing Tree leaves, which naturally contained the method for linking with them.”

“You are only at the Fasting stage. How could you understand the underlying principles?”

“It was Kun-kun who helped me.”

In any case, no matter what he said, Kun-kun would cover for him.

Xie Zhefeng then shifted the topic: “You said before that the talismans in your hand were given to you by the Yunjian Sect.”

—As expected, he still asked about this!

“…But I investigated when I first entered the illusion,” Xie Zhefeng said in a low voice, “Within Yunjian, there was no sign of any Senior Brother…” He paused, “No sign of anything related to the talismans you held back then.”

An Wuxue had long been prepared for this and said calmly, “Those talismans were given to me by Yun Zhou. I initially thought Yun Zhou represented the Yunjian Sect, so I assumed they were from the sect. I only found out today that the Yunjian Sect had no idea of my existence…”

As he spoke, Xie Zhefeng almost unhesitatingly broke the restriction on Yun Zhou’s spiritual pouch and found several talismans with An Wuxue’s handwriting inside.

These were what An Wuxue had deliberately planted on Yun Zhou just now.

Now that Yun Zhou was thoroughly dead, dead men tell no tales. Since the matter ended here, as long as he insisted on his ignorance, Xie Zhefeng could do nothing.

Xie Zhefeng gripped the bundle of talismans, the light in his eyes wavering once more. He then put the talismans away, still sounding suspicious: “According to you, the talismans were obtained from Yun Zhou, the method for commanding the Soul-Nurturing Tree Spirit was learned with Kun-kun’s help… then where did the courage to point a sword at Yun Yao in the face of a Tribulation cultivator come from?”

“There are millions of people in the world, each with a different temperament. Although I come from the mundane world, I know when to advance and when to retreat, and I understand life and death. Is it a problem to have some courage?” Ever since he saw Su Xue’s face, an anonymous fire had been burning within him. Because the situation had been urgent, it hadn’t surfaced, but now, under Xie Zhefeng’s repeated questioning, it all came pouring out.

“If the Immortal Venerable has doubts about me, feel free to search my soul.”

Searching a soul was equivalent to wearing it down. After a soul search, a person would be either insane or idiotic. Although he said this, if Xie Zhefeng truly intended to do so, it was impossible for him to actually let Xie Zhefeng see his soul.

At worst, he would fight to the death and let the fish die and the net break.

He was stuck here, but Xie Zhefeng showed no reaction.

That ruthless look rose in the man’s eyes again, his black pupils as dark as a bottomless night.

An Wuxue suddenly remembered what Yun Wan had said to him earlier.

“…When Senior Xie came out, his spiritual energy was somewhat unstable. It seemed like for a moment… for a moment, there was an omen of falling into demonhood in his spiritual fluctuations…”

At this moment, Xie Zhefeng truly seemed a bit as if he were falling into demonhood…

He quickly shook his head.

How could Xie Zhefeng fall into demonhood?

How could Xie Zhefeng fall into demonhood!

In his previous life, he had given everything, not only to help his junior brother ascend and sit firmly on the throne of Immortal Venerable, but also for the peace of the four seas.

Having a chance to live again in this life through a twist of fate, he only thought of staying far away from Luoyue Peak and never seeing Xie Zhefeng again. He never felt resentment, partly because this world needed Xie Zhefeng, the high-and-mighty Immortal Venerable, to deter petty people. Let Xie Zhefeng continue to be the heartless and emotionless Sword Venerable above the heavens, while he would just be a mediocre waste.

If Xie Zhefeng were to fall into demonhood…

No, it wouldn’t happen.

At this moment.

The barrier cracked completely.

The dark clouds dispersed, and the sky was a clear blue, with only the nearly wiped-out Yunjian Sect remaining desolate and ruined.

Someone came flying on a sword from afar and was in front of them in the blink of an eye.

The newcomer called out loudly: “A cultivator named Jiang sent word to Luoyue, saying you hadn’t come out after entering the Yunjian Sect’s illusion. That Jiang fellow couldn’t break the illusion, so he sent a message for help…”

“Oh, Xie Chuhan, are you regressing as you get older? How did you fight so miserably?”

As soon as the person landed and walked in front of them, they suddenly stopped in their tracks.

An Wuxue was dazed for a moment; it had been a long time since he had seen Qin Wei.

His gaze landed on the other’s always exquisite short-style dharma robes and saw the spiritual pouch hanging at their waist with particularly distorted stitching.

He looked away.

But Qin Wei spotted him, his expression shaking as he blurted out: “—An Wuxue!?”

An Wuxue smiled faintly.

He said leisurely: “This fellow daoist has the wrong person. My name is Su Xue, and I have not a single bit of a relationship with that previous Chief of your esteemed sect.”