Chapter 1244: No Certainty in Life and Death
"It seems the so-called kinship card works like a charm," Lin Ling remarked. "I never expected it to agree on the spot just because I mentioned it offhandedly."
"What?" Wang Xuanba’s expression shifted the moment he heard Lin Ling's answer.
"An alliance with that old thing? Are you serious, Junior Sister?"
The Ancient Earth Vein Tree's sudden shift from arrogance to deference filled Wang Xuanba with disdain.
"It was just a story to fool it. An alliance..."
"Is it even worthy?" Lin Ling's tone was calm, yet the deep-seated contempt in her words was unmistakable.
"Now that it has joined the Sacred Dynasty, can it possibly go back on its word? If it dares to mention this to me again..." Lin Ling scoffed.
Wang Xuanba was momentarily stunned.
As someone who took promises rather seriously, he found it difficult to accept Lin Ling’s blatant deception.
"When dealing with an enemy, wouldn't it be foolish to be a person of your word?"
Wang Xuanba was left speechless.
"Besides, do you remember what Master told us before we went to see the Ancient Earth Vein Tree?" Lin Ling asked again.
"Of course, I do. Master said that if the ancient tree proved stubborn, you could take its place," Wang Xuanba recalled.
"The Ancient Earth Vein Tree. A rather impressive name, I'll admit. I had some expectations, but after seeing it for myself, all I felt was disappointment." Lin Ling’s answer left Wang Xuanba bewildered.
"Weak. Far too weak. The tree's greatest strength is its fusion with the Xuanhuang earth veins, which allows it to command their power across the realm. That is its unique trait, its advantage, but it also defines its absolute limit. Moreover, its body is enormous, which in the eyes of a true master, is nothing but a tapestry of vulnerabilities," Lin Ling explained, shaking her head slightly.
"My dream is to become a figure like Master. If I were to truly become that earth vein tree, my power would certainly skyrocket in the short term, but my future path would be completely severed. I'm not a fool."
"My only option was to trick that old thing into staying on duty."
Lin Ling shot a sideways glance at Wang Xuanba. "Just what kind of person do you take me for, Senior Brother?"
The pieces finally clicked into place for Wang Xuanba. He rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed, and immediately offered an apology. "I underestimated you, Junior Sister."
He looked back at the Ancient Earth Vein Tree within the Saint Emperor's throne and nodded in agreement. "The ancient relics of the Xuanhuang Realm are powerful, to be sure, but they only borrow the strength of the Heavenly Dao's laws. When the Heavenly Dao is strong, they flourish. But on a day like this, when the Heavenly Dao is being trampled underfoot by someone like the Dharma Spreader, they can do nothing but cower in dark corners and reminisce about their former glory."
"I didn't realize you were such a scholar, Senior Brother. You have a way with words," Lin Ling said, her tone a mix of genuine praise and a hint of teasing retaliation.
"I didn't think about it that deeply. I just want to become stronger."
"Enough talk. I'm going to cultivate. I gained quite a bit from devouring a piece of that old thing's body. If I had known, I would have been more ruthless and taken more," Lin Ling's regretful voice echoed in Wang Xuanba’s ears.
A moment later, her figure slowly faded, and her aura vanished with it.
Wang Xuanba chuckled, mocking his own needless worry.
***
Xuanhuang Realm, Tianyu Province.
Here lay one of the Immortal Alliance’s most famous natural wonders.
A fissure hundreds of miles long snaked across the land, a stark, black scar upon the earth.
Even from a distance, one could feel an endless chill seeping from its depths.
The closer one approached the fissure, the more rapidly the temperature plummeted.
Even a Golden Core cultivator would struggle to withstand the extreme cold for long and could not linger in this place.
From the bottom of the abyssal fissure, jets of azure light would occasionally erupt.
They were blasts of freezing energy.
But if one were to stand at the edge of the chasm and peer down...
They would see, within this very abyss of ice, countless lotuses made of flame blooming in splendor.
These were not cold flames, but lotuses of truly scorching fire.
Cold and heat, a perfect contradiction, were woven together, presenting themselves simultaneously within the heart of the frozen abyss.
The figure of Li Ping, the Faceless Saint Emperor of the Great Qi, materialized abruptly at the edge of this spectacular vista of ice and fire.
Like countless tourists before him, he stood in silence, gazing down into the depths.
"A place of spiritual wonder, a marvel of creation."
After a long moment, Li Ping couldn't help but sigh in his heart.
In his eyes, the scene was not what an ordinary cultivator would perceive.
The azure ice abyss was, in fact, suffused with a profound aura of death.
It was a suffocating, pitch-black void.
And the scorching red fire lotuses were a pure, brilliant white, radiating a vigorous aura of life.
It appeared to be an intermingling of cold and heat, but in truth, it was...
"An abyss of death where the flowers of life bloom."
Li Ping stepped forward, his foot finding only empty air as his body plummeted into the black abyss.
His disappearance went completely unnoticed by the other cultivators nearby.
From Li Ping’s perspective, the surrounding scenery abruptly stretched and twisted.
Though the white flowers of life had seemed so close, he had been falling for a considerable time, yet the distance between them hadn't shrunk in the slightest.
The entire space of the black abyss was expanding, extending infinitely as he descended.
With this expansion came a synchronously increasing, oppressive aura of death.
Feeling the deathly energy attempting to corrupt him, Li Ping sneered inwardly but paid it little mind.
An ordinary cultivator, even one at the Dao Integration realm, would have their lifespan drastically shortened under the corrosion of this black aura of death.
But he was Li Ping, an incarnation of the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao. He was a part of the world's laws—even an uncontrolled part—so how could it possibly harm him?
Ever since forcibly devouring the malice of the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Ping had indeed sensed a growing distance from the Heavenly Dao itself.
However, he was certain this was merely the Heavenly Dao's instinctive reaction to his consumption of the malice.
With a little more time, he was sure the bond between them would return to normal.
Though their connection was in a delicate phase, it was not so weak that the deathly energy here could affect him.
Just as he expected, Saint Emperor Li Ping remained untouched, as if immune to all harm, despite having no defensive measures in place. The black aura of death merely swirled around him.
It could find no opening.
Li Ping’s gaze pierced through the dense miasma of death, focusing directly on the hundred flowers of life below.
"The boundary between life and death. The source of all spirits."
"The Xuanhuang Realm has been reduced to this state, yet you do nothing but hide in this secret place, barely clinging to existence..."
"What use are you!"
A surge of killing intent erupted from Li Ping.
It violently pushed back the surrounding aura of death.
"Begone!"
With Li Ping's low shout, the layers of deathly energy below him miraculously split apart, forming a clear passage.
The space ceased to expand. Li Ping's form drifted down, passing through the opening in an instant.
An overwhelming vitality rushed to greet him; the white flowers of life were now within arm's reach.
Above, the black clouds of death hovered, refusing to disperse.
Yet as he faced this immense vitality, a flicker of gravity appeared in Li Ping’s heart.
Compared to the pure aura of death, this massive, untamed life force was more akin to a fatal poison.
Life force was, by its very nature, a beneficial state.
As an incarnation of the Heavenly Dao, Li Ping could naturally enjoy such favor from the world.
He had no idea how many years had passed since a cultivator not rejected by heaven and earth had last set foot here.
The life force that had accumulated for millennia beside the black abyss and white flowers now seemed to have found an outlet, and it surged madly toward him.
Even as he consciously tried to resist it, the sheer abundance of vitality was overwhelming.
An unavoidable trickle seeped into his body.
Vitality certainly had its benefits.
But Li Ping was no ordinary Longevity cultivator who relied solely on his own cultivation.
Source Power Essence, the fortune of the Sacred Dynasty, the blessings of the Heavenly Dao...
It was the sum of these disparate powers that had forged his current strength, a might comparable to the Longevity realm.
Li Ping's state had long since reached a delicate equilibrium after his advancement.
Now, that balance was slowly being shattered by the endless influx of life force.
His hair began to grow wildly, as if it had a life of its own.
In the blink of an eye, it cascaded down to his ankles.
His body was expanding in tandem.
Ten feet, twenty feet...
Amid the creaking of his bones, Li Ping transformed into a thirty-foot giant in a matter of breaths.
He looked far more imposing, certainly, but for him, this was anything but a good thing.
With a slight frown, he focused on converting and absorbing the surging vitality.
But the rate at which he could shrink was far outpaced by the rate of his growth.
While struggling to maintain the balance of the various forces within him, Li Ping scanned his surroundings, searching for the entrance to the hiding place of the Withering Tree.
After devouring the malice of Xuanhuang, there were few things left in the realm that could hide from his sight.
Even if the memories born from that malice were hazy, a direct glimpse would surely reawaken his senses to them.
With a flicker, Saint Emperor Li Ping vanished from the bottom of the black abyss.
Deprived of its target, the life force became directionless. The white flowers swayed gently, forced to draw their vitality back in.
He appeared in a world suffused with a bizarre aura, like a faded, withered yellow leaf.
Li Ping’s body, now nearly fifty feet tall, materialized within it.
The boundless life force he carried surged out from him, spreading into the surroundings.
But in this strange environment, it seemed completely unable to propagate.
It rapidly solidified into withered yellow matter, like autumn leaves falling from the sky.
With a means to vent the unwanted vitality, Li Ping gradually expelled the source of his imbalance.
His form slowly began to shrink.
However, because the equilibrium within him had been altered during that brief period...
When Li Ping returned to his normal size, certain details failed to revert, instead becoming a permanent part of his new form.
For instance, his height remained a towering thirty-six feet, and his ink-black hair now fell to his waist.
His frame had also filled out, and beneath his golden robes, one could sense a volatile, explosive power.
Li Ping paid these changes little mind.
They were merely external appearances. If he wished, he could revert to his original form at any time.
His attention was now entirely focused on this bizarre location.
The scent of decay that permeated the air was so strong that even he found it unsettling.
What concerned him more was what lay at the center of this place.
A tree, so tall it touched the heavens, stood silently. It was entirely withered and yellow, covered in spots of decay.
Even as a giant, Li Ping was no more than an ant at the foot of this colossal tree.
Hanging from its withered branches, as dense as leaves, were countless cultivators.
They looked like fruit ripe for the picking.
All of them had their eyes closed, their faces etched with expressions of strange, unnerving satisfaction.
Li Ping’s gaze swept across the area. Besides this withered, ancient tree, he saw no other figures.
"So, only its main body is here..."
Li Ping knew the Withering Tree had an avatar that often ventured out to lure cultivators here, transforming them into Golden Core fruit to vent its inner resentment.
It was likely out on such an errand now.
Unconcerned, Li Ping continued his careful observation of the space.
On the tree's massive trunk, he could faintly discern a series of deep gashes, as if it had suffered a fatal blow.
Li Ping narrowed his eyes, attempting to reawaken the connection between this worldly entity and the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao.
But perhaps because it had been so thoroughly corrupted by the wither, his call went completely unanswered.
Instead, it provoked the ancient tree's autonomous defense systems.
Specks of withered yellow energy, following the tree's vascular network, began to creep across the ground beneath Li Ping's feet, seeking to erode him.
Li Ping deliberately lowered his defenses, allowing a single trace of the wither to enter his body.
He immediately encased it in golden Source Power Essence to prevent its spread and began to study it closely.
Though the power of the wither was strange, it was not strong enough to break the seal of his Source Power Essence.
From this withered power, Li Ping felt not just the ordinary sense of aging.
He sensed something more: the decay of an entire world.
It was a feeling of impending collapse, an irreversible decline as if the heavens themselves were about to fall.
"This is..."
"The world is marching toward ruin."
Countless images flooded his mind—scenes of the various provinces of the Xuanhuang Realm, ravaged by countless calamities born from the world's decay.
But Li Ping knew that in reality, none of these prophesied disasters had come to pass.
"The Withering Tree is the source of all life in the Xuanhuang Realm. To a certain extent, it truly reflects the world's vitality."
"The tree has become like this, yet the Xuanhuang Realm itself remains vibrant and full of life..."
Li Ping frowned slightly.
He soon found his answer.
"Without an external injection of vitality, the Xuanhuang Realm would surely have decayed in lockstep with the tree."
"The source of this vitality, then, must be..."
"The devoured fragments of other cultivation worlds."
"Though they were dismembered, during the process of fusion, their last vestiges of life were siphoned off."
"And thus, the Xuanhuang Realm was reborn..."
Li Ping mused, lost in thought.
"The surgery was, I must admit, exquisitely performed."
As an incarnation of the Heavenly Dao, a victim in name only, he couldn't help but feel a sense of sincere admiration now that he understood what had transpired over the past millennia.
"Life and death are uncertain. Death and life have no constancy."
"I was once a being who held dominion over life and death, yet now I am reduced to this state."
"The world itself seeks to abandon me. How could I not feel hatred...?"
As Li Ping was lost in contemplation, a strange, ancient voice echoed soundlessly from directly behind him.
He knew. It was the voice of the Withering Tree.
(End of Chapter)
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