Ever since learning that the Immortal Flesh came from Outer Celestial Demons, Lu Yun had been hesitating, unable to bring himself to take it out.
’Should I let Jingteng and the others eat it?’
’What if they turn into monsters like those in the Yellow Heaven Corps? What if they become a creature like that Count Thorne?’
’Although the records in the Celestial Secret Pavilion say that one won’t be possessed by an Outer Celestial Demon as long as their will is strong, who knows what the future might hold?’
He stared at the black, faintly twitching piece of flesh in his hand, his brow furrowed.
Just then, Lu Yun’s brow twitched.
’Something’s wrong.’
He raised his head and looked toward the sky outside the main hall. The sunlight remained bright, the old locust tree in the courtyard still stood silently, and everything appeared no different from usual.
At this, Lu Yun closed his eyes, and his Divine Sense slowly began to spread outward from his body in all directions.
This was a new ability he’d gained after breaking through to become a Grandmaster of Divine Intent—the power known as Divine Sense.
In the past, Lu Yun could only rely on the perception of a Grandmaster of Huajin to detect danger in advance, which was more like "intuition"—a primal warning from his body.
But now, he had true "Divine Sense," which allowed him to clearly perceive certain changes in the world around him.
A few days ago, for instance, Lu Yun had only sensed that the world around him was empty, containing only an extremely sparse Spiritual Qi, like a pool of stagnant water.
But now, the surrounding Spiritual Qi was growing more and more abundant, like a pool of stagnant water that had suddenly been fed by a fresh spring.
’What’s going on?’ He suddenly recalled the records from the Celestial Secret Pavilion.
During the Zulong Dynasty, the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi was abundant. Qi Refiners emerged in droves, and even the so-called demonic beasts roamed the land.
Back then, Grandmasters of Huajin were a common sight, and even Grandmasters of Divine Intent were nothing unusual.
This gave rise to a multitude of breathtakingly talented figures who beat the Outer Celestial Demons so thoroughly they fled in utter panic.
But later on, the Spiritual Qi in the world grew increasingly thin. The Qi Refiners vanished, demonic beasts grew scarce, and the path for Martial Artists became more and more arduous.
Lu Yun’s confusion only deepened.
’Could it be... that the world is undergoing some kind of change I never anticipated?’
In a certain province in the south, deep within a vast, primordial mountain forest.
This place was virtually untouched by humans, a domain where birds and beasts ran wild. Towering, ancient trees blotted out the sky, their trunks entwined with vines as thick as pythons. On the forest floor, a layer of rotting leaves had accumulated over untold years.
Sunlight could scarcely penetrate the canopy; only a few stray beams filtered through the gaps in the leaves, dappling the ground with patches of light.
Within this isolated jungle, something protruded jarringly from the trunk of an ancient tree, one so wide it would take three people to link arms around it.
The object was embedded in the trunk about three meters off the ground, clinging to it tightly. It looked as if it had grown out of the tree, yet also as if it had been forcefully shoved into it.
A black chunk of flesh, as large as a man’s head, was throbbing violently.
Suddenly, the dense thicket in the distance began to rustle, and a massive white figure slowly emerged.
A white tiger, nearly three meters tall at the shoulder and seven to eight meters long from head to tail.
It had a coat of pure white fur and amber-colored eyes. Remnants of fresh blood and gore clung to the corners of its mouth. The beast had clearly just returned from a hunt, but it was in no hurry to get back to its den.
The white tiger stood its ground, head raised, gazing at the ancient tree. Its eyes were fixed on the violently throbbing black flesh, and a disturbingly human-like glint of intelligence flashed in their amber depths.
It padded closer, circled the ancient tree once, then lifted its head again to stare at the chunk of flesh for a long, long time.
Then, the white tiger opened its cavernous maw and took a huge bite!
The tree trunk snapped. The enormous black chunk of flesh, along with the large piece of bark and wood it clung to, was swallowed whole!
The next moment, a heaven-shaking roar ripped through the mountain forest!
The white tiger’s body began to swell at a rate visible to the naked eye. Its shoulder height, already nearly three meters, shot up by another third!
As its muscles bulged and writhed, its eyes shifted from amber to an eerie, blood-red color.
Before long, a visible white mist began to wreathe the tiger’s body. The vapor poured from within it, coiling around its form and refusing to disperse.
The white tiger lowered its head and scanned its surroundings, then raised its head again to look at the treetop.
A large, colorful-feathered bird was perched on a branch there, staring down at the tiger in terror.
The white tiger didn’t move, just stared at the large bird.
The next second, the white mist coiling around its body abruptly shot forth!
The mist instantly enveloped the large bird!
An image instantly flooded the bird’s mind: a vast, boundless world of white. There was nothing in it but a killing intent so pure it seemed to freeze everything solid.
The light instantly faded from the large bird’s eyes. It plummeted from its perch more than ten meters high, landing motionless in the pile of rotting leaves.
The white tiger walked over, lowered its head to sniff the corpse, and then picked the bird up in its jaws.
An ancient temple deep in the mountains of a certain province in the Western Regions.
The isolated temple was small, tucked away on a mist-shrouded mountainside.
The stone steps leading down the mountain were overgrown with moss. Any herb gatherers who happened to pass by simply mistook it for an abandoned, empty temple.
On a massive bluestone boulder on the mountain behind the temple, an old monk sat cross-legged.
He was ancient, his beard and eyebrows snow-white. The wrinkles on his face were like a dried-up riverbed, a network of deep and shallow channels.
His monastic robe was washed so pale it was nearly white, covered in patches laid upon patches. A single glance told you it had been worn for many, many years.
The old monk sat motionless with his eyes closed, like a weathered stone statue.
Peak of Huajin Grandmaster. He had been stuck in this realm for thirty long years.
For thirty years, the old monk had sat in silent, arduous meditation, day and night. He sought a single moment of sudden enlightenment to break through to that legendary realm, but for reasons unknown, he always remained just one step away.

Comments

Loading...