Chapter 97: Ancient Sacrifice (6)

After Zi Tong agreed, Zhang Meng and Han Bai each opened a spatial singularity and vanished from the altar. By then, the spirit investigators from the Kingdom of Air were nearly upon them, and none of them wanted to face them here and now.

In the blink of an eye, the area around the altar was deserted, leaving only broken stones strewn across the ground.

Yanjing City, Xiao Anguo’s underground office.

At the moment those incomprehensible words rose in his mind, Wu Zui, who had been in seclusion and using magnetic energy to sketch his own form, abruptly coughed up a mouthful of blood.

The karmic fire within him went utterly berserk, and the Heart-Examining Sword at his heart began suppressing it with all its force. From deep within his chest came the faint, clear cry of a sword.

In the next instant, He Ping, from another span of time, moved at once and took Wu Zui away.

At the same moment, the black-robed man also sensed He Ping’s action. He immediately issued a death order to his four subordinates, commanding them to kill the one who wielded the sword and restrained ghosts and monsters, then went into seclusion to withstand the backlash of the Great Way brought on by the awakening of the ancient sacrifice.

In a boundless chaos, seven enormous seats gave off a dim gray radiance.

He Ping tossed the frowning Wu Zui into one of those seats. At once, red light shot skyward, and the Heart-Examining Sword, as if granted new strength, suppressed every last trace of the raging karmic fire inside Wu Zui.

Only after the karmic fire had ceased its rampage did He Ping bring Wu Zui back to the shop and lay him on a jade bed. Wu Zui had just woken on the jade bed when he saw He Ping’s huge face at first glance, and with a sigh he asked, “What happened?”

The reason he sighed was simple: whenever He Ping dragged him over directly, nothing good ever followed.

“What happened? Your fortune has been stripped clean. If the Heart-Examining Sword hadn’t been shielding you, you’d already have been burned to ash by the karmic fire inside you!” He Ping snapped irritably, annoyed by the look Wu Zui gave him.

“Fortune? That actually exists?”

Wu Zui seemed not to understand the seriousness of the matter at all. Instead, his curiosity was piqued.

“Isn’t your vision special? See for yourself.”

As he spoke, He Ping waved a hand, and a vast mirror appeared before Wu Zui.

Wu Zui instinctively looked at the top of his own head in the mirror. The column representing his sins had, for some reason, lost every trace of gold; in its place, black miasma surged upward like a pillar reaching the heavens. As for its height, there was no telling how high it truly rose. At any rate, even He Ping’s five-meter-tall mirror could not see the top.

“How... how can this be?” Wu Zui murmured in disbelief. He had no idea what he had done to suddenly accumulate so much sin.

“Not just you. Everyone in your world should be the same. Before this happened to you, didn’t anything unusual occur?” He Ping said, giving Wu Zui a smack to bring him back to himself.

“Something unusual? While I was cultivating, I suddenly heard a phrase...” Wu Zui recalled the words that had sounded in his heart during his contemplation and told He Ping about them.

“The language of the Way? That is the tongue the heavenly wills use to communicate. How could anyone dare speak it aloud? Could it be... no, I have to know what those words mean!” After hearing Wu Zui repeat the strange language, He Ping actually frowned.

“You don’t know either?” Wu Zui was astonished. There were things He Ping did not know?

“Of course not. It is the language used by the heavenly wills to speak with one another. They guard against people like us. How could they let us learn it so easily...” He Ping was explaining when he suddenly sensed that another sword master had arrived. Turning back to Wu Zui, he said, “What a coincidence. Another sword master is here. You should meet him too.”

“Sword master? One of the other five among the Seven Divine Thrones?” Wu Zui looked at He Ping with deep wariness. He did not know how many people He Ping had gathered to oppose the will of the Great Way, nor whether those people understood what the cost of winning this battle would be.

“Yes. Don’t want to meet him?”

He Ping met Wu Zui’s gaze and, with ease, read his thoughts.

“I might as well go take a look.”

Wu Zui answered, then instantly emptied his mind to prevent He Ping from probing any further.

...

He Ping brought Wu Zui once again to the chaotic space where the Seven Divine Thrones were kept. There, a little boy who looked as though he had been carved from pink jade was peering this way and that, a living picture of curiosity.

The three of them looked at one another without speaking, and the atmosphere grew slightly awkward.

“You two should get to know each other,” He Ping said encouragingly. “Maybe one day we’ll need to stand side by side in battle.”

Seeing the child before him, Wu Zui felt awkward about making the youngster speak first, so he took the initiative.

“I’m Wu Zui. My profession is detective, and I am the sword master of the Heart-Examining Sword.”

Then he heard the little boy speak.

“Qu Jinghong. I used to be a musician; now I’m a spirit mage. I am the sword master of the Startling Rainbow Sword.”

Spirit mage?

Wu Zui could understand musician well enough, but what in the world was a spirit mage?

He Ping, who had never turned off his mind-reading sense, sensed what the two of them were thinking and said, “You can think of a detective as a police officer, and a spirit mage as a magician.”

Both Wu Zui and the little boy’s faces darkened at the same time. They both hated He Ping casually reading their thoughts.

Noticing this, He Ping cut off his mind-reading sense and said to them, “Once you truly master your divine swords and become their rightful lords, my mind-reading will no longer work on you.”

Wu Zui could not help asking, “Truly master?”

The little boy also spoke up. “Hasn’t my Startling Rainbow Sword already bound itself to me through blood?”

Blood-binding?

That broken sword had been driven into his heart, and he had never seen it acknowledge him as its master!

He Ping wagged a finger, looking thoroughly obnoxious as he said, “Blood-binding is only the most basic way of using them. The swords of the Seven Divine Thrones are all forged from the All-Form Divine Iron.

I gave it that name because the material can become large or small, long or short; it can be as unbreakable as adamant or as soft as water.”

Upon hearing that, Wu Zui blurted out, “So it’s like the Ruyi Golden Staff!”

At that, the child named Qu Jinghong seemed excited. “Oh? You have Journey to the West there too?”

Before he could say anything else, He Ping interrupted him.

“Ahem, listen to me first! Though the material is the same, each sword has its own unique property. Only by mastering that property, or rather that sword force, can you truly use it and become one of the lords of the Seven Divine Thrones.”

As he spoke, He Ping suddenly released his own divine sword. It was a long blade of pure gold, and even a single glance at it gave one the sensation of being crushed beneath overwhelming majesty.

“Just like this—my Decree Sword!”

The sword in He Ping’s hand burst at once with blinding golden light.

Of the seven gray, mist-shrouded seats, one was no longer merely a gray shadow. Instead, He Ping’s figure appeared there, and in the shadow’s hand there also appeared an enormous golden longsword.

The gray chaos was lit bright by the golden radiance. An inexplicable sense of submission rose in Wu Zui’s heart, and he felt as though a minister were bowing before an emperor.

Impossible!

Wu Zui shouted inwardly. Spreading his legs into a horse stance, he forced himself to stand and not kneel.

His ears rang, his vision blurred, and it seemed as though the entire chaotic space had begun to spin. Only when a crimson longsword appeared beside him did the pressure of the Decree Sword finally stop. The red sword force met the pressure head-on.

But the gap between the two sword masters was simply too vast. Wu Zui could not help but plant his hands on the ground, like a frog about to leap. At the same time, the Heart-Examining Sword began to sing with rapid, clear notes, its own response stirred by Wu Zui’s will.

Then, all at once, the Heart-Examining Sword’s crimson light flared. Under the crushing pressure released by the Decree Sword, Wu Zui and the Heart-Examining Sword reached their first true accord: after breaking through, they would beat the hell out of him.

As for who “he” was, there was no second candidate beyond He Ping.

Once he gained the Heart-Examining Sword’s recognition, Wu Zui could summon it at any time. Of course, once he returned, the sword would still have to suppress the karmic fire inside him, so for the moment he could not make use of this divine weapon.

But it was not without benefits. At the very least, Wu Zui’s eyes had been strengthened once more.

Although he still could not see through He Ping’s past, the pillar of sin above He Ping’s head was now crystal clear to him. Even the little boy across from him, whose condition had been impossible to discern at first glance, had now become readable to Wu Zui.

Seeing Wu Zui keep glancing over himself, He Ping asked, “How is it? What do you think?”

“I still can’t see through you.”

Wu Zui answered without hiding anything. For someone who could read his thoughts at any time, lying would be the least intelligent thing he could do.

He Ping smiled, then pointed at Qu Jinghong, who was still lying on the ground nearby. “That’s normal. Now look at him again.”

Wu Zui was not polite. The child’s past unfolded before his eyes...

A moment later, Wu Zui frowned and said, “Even children this young fight so brutally nowadays? They even pin people to walls with swords. I thought they were just little terrors.”

Before Wu Zui could look any further, a white longsword stood between the two of them, preventing him from seeing Qu Jinghong’s past any longer.

Qu Jinghong’s expression turned hostile as he looked at Wu Zui. That look instantly reminded Wu Zui of one person: Sun Lang, that bastard who had driven a girl at school to jump to her death.

Before Wu Zui could continue, He Ping stepped forward and blocked his view. Then he began scolding the boy. “You’re nearly forty years old, and you still bicker with a few little brats? What, have you only grown in height and not in brains?”

Though he appeared to be berating the boy, he was really just taking Wu Zui’s side. After that, Wu Zui no longer wanted to listen to their exchange, so he cast aside all stray thoughts and used magnetic energy in his heart to trace the outline of his own form.

Only when he heard the words inner-demon tribulation did he suddenly focus again.

According to what He Ping had told him, the inner-demon tribulation was one of the three apocalyptic tribulations by which the Great Way destroyed the world. At that moment, He Ping was explaining the details of the three tribulations to the boy.