Chapter 66: The Lost World
High above the nine heavens, after a moment of silence, the tribulation thunder descended once more. This time, however, bolts of lightning of various colors crashed down in succession. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—deep within the dark clouds, even black and white thunder flashed.
Seven-colored thunder descended together, the power of the tribulation seemingly sworn to annihilate the cultivator who dared challenge the might of the heavens.
“Mere thunder of heaven and earth dares descend upon me? Begone!” the cultivator roared, his voice echoing across the heavens, shaking the seven-colored lightning until it wavered, unable to strike.
Behind the seven-colored thunder, the black and white lightning arrived, merging with the previous colors to form a nine-colored thunder, which descended once again.
The cultivator stood his ground, his long black hair floating in midair. As the nine-colored thunder approached, he gripped his sword tightly and slashed toward the lightning. The black sword emitted a dazzling brilliance, carving a giant crescent in the sky, scattering the nine-colored tribulation thunder until it dissolved.
“I demand that the heavens never again hinder my steps; I demand that the earth never again become a prison to bind me; I demand that the clouds never again obscure my vision. If the heavens seek to bind me, I will break through them; if the earth seeks to confine me, I will sink it; if heaven and earth wish to obstruct me, I will make them vanish.”
“Divine Art—Tear the Heavens!”
“Shackles of heaven and earth, break!”
Suddenly, the cultivator’s body seemed to expand a thousandfold, becoming a giant towering into the sky. He looked up, stretched out his arms, and tore the heavens asunder, ripping a vast fissure through the world.
Beyond that fissure lay a sky utterly unlike his own. In that sky, five immense suns blazed. Upon witnessing this, the cultivator pointed to the sky and laughed madly.
“So this is how it is... To live, one must be heroic; to die, one must be a valiant spirit... For us cultivators, what is there to fear in battle, or in death!”
Dressed in white, Autumn Chill gazed through the fissure in the heavens, but what he saw was a different scene. Still, the ancient battlefield remained, with the cultivator wielding the Violet Spirit Sword. Yet, this time, through the rift in the sky, Autumn Chill glimpsed what he had not seen before.
On the other side of the cultivator with the Violet Spirit Sword, a giant moon hung in the sky. The cultivator looked at the moon with regret in his eyes and said, “Moon Domain Lord...”
The fissure vanished, and the mad cultivator pointing to the sky reverted to normal size, returning to his place. A trace of clarity appeared in his expression, and his once-bright eyes gradually dimmed. His black sword suddenly dissolved into darkness, disappearing in the sky. His eyes hollowed, and he murmured as if speaking to himself, “So everything is as such... schemes, stratagems...”
His body faded swiftly, becoming a shadow and disappearing into the world. Just as he was about to vanish completely, his gaze—intentionally or otherwise—swept over Autumn Chill in white, as if he had discovered something terrifying...
“Impossible, this can’t be, this... Origin of the Dao... New Lord... My existence is fate... So, all of this is as such... but I am unwilling! Why must it be so?... I broke through heaven and earth, yet cannot shatter the cycle of fate... Ridiculous! Pitiful... ha... hahahaha...”
The cultivator went mad again, raising a hand to the sky and laughing in agony. After a long while, he knelt on one knee, blood-red tears streaming from his eyes.
“Three bows before the Dao, thirty thousand years; looking back on the mortal world... I shall not become immortal!”
His laughter carried endless unwillingness, and he vanished completely from this world...
“Can he see me? Who is he? Is it the cycle of fate? But who am I?”
Autumn Chill in white muttered, lost and forgetting who he was, not knowing which world he now inhabited. He wandered in confusion, day after day, without purpose.
“Where am I? What kind of world is this? Why can’t I leave? Why is the sky here so different from what I remember...?”
One day, Autumn Chill returned to the forest. Gazing at the familiar scenery before him, memories of a scene long past resurfaced in his mind.
He was immersed in recollection, not knowing how much time had passed, until the sounds of battle from afar startled him. Turning, he saw several figures flying overhead, landing not far behind him.
“Zhang Yuan, stop your futile struggle. Considering we are fellow disciples, hand over the sect’s treasured artifact, and I may spare your life.”
“Hmph, Chen Tian, save your hypocrisy. You traitor who betrayed our sect, do you think I’d trust you? You even conspired against our master, who treated you as his own son. How can there be any brotherhood between us? If you want the Shadow Devouring Sword, step over my corpse first.”
The same scene, the same words, the same situation, in the same place, replayed before Autumn Chill’s eyes. Yet this time, things were different—they had noticed him and sought to kill him as a witness.
His cultivation was far too low to discern theirs; he only knew that any one of them could easily destroy him.
His resistance was feeble, powerless, and when he was killed, he felt no pain at all, as if he had never known it. He vanished into an endless, dark tunnel.
He did not know how much time had passed before he returned to the forest once more, to the same scene, the same moment—he died again, and returned again.
Slaughter, death, rebirth; he did not know how many times this cycle repeated, until one time, just before his death, he discovered something strange. Each time he died, the black sword in Zhang Yuan’s hand absorbed a wisp of black aura.
Over time, he noticed the sword grew more bizarre and sinister. After each death and rebirth, he felt increasingly weak. He struggled, wanting to resist. At last, after countless cycles of death and rebirth, he began to calculate, to devise traps and schemes.
He decided to kill Zhang Yuan first and seize that black sword from him. In his memory, the sword had two names: Violet Spirit and Slaughter.
Yet he found that these cultivators apparently knew nothing of its origin, calling it the Shadow Devouring Sword.
When he returned to the forest again, he spent nearly two hours laying multiple traps around, then hid nearby, waiting for the group to arrive.