Chapter 1337: The Vortex of Life and Death
Chapter 1336: The Vortex of Life and Death
A Feathered Ascension True Person was a “strategic-level” cultivation combat force.
By the rules of the cultivation world, when Profound-Hollow-Void did not enter the world, Feathered Ascension represented the strongest cultivators who could march out and wage war.
Qi-Refining, Foundation Establishment, and even part of the Golden Core realm—under normal circumstances—could all be ground to death by sheer numbers.
Grain by grain becomes a tower. With enough people and sufficient collective strength, the lower realm could overwhelm the higher realm.
But once one reached Feathered Ascension, it was an entirely different matter.
First, Feathered Ascension cultivated the Grand Circulation. Compared to Golden Core, its power differed in a far more obvious qualitative way.
The second reason was that Feathered Ascension cultivators could walk the void and fly.
Once a Feathered Ascension rose into the air, wielding techniques to soar through the heavens, it was like an “immortal descending into the mortal world,” virtually standing invincible.
Cultivators below Golden Core could only move on the ground. They could not even touch a Feathered Ascension in the sky, and could only allow themselves to be slaughtered, utterly powerless to resist.
Thus, in war, every single Feathered Ascension was like a humanoid, mobile “nuclear weapon.”
Only, the cultivation world was “segmented.”
The restrictions of the Heavenly Dao allotted different prefecture-realms to cultivators of different realms in which to live.
The vast majority of cultivators, throughout their entire lives, would never reach the fourth-grade prefecture-realm, would never see a Feathered Ascension True Person—much less witness their heaven-defying Dao techniques with their own eyes.
Yet at this very moment, above the Great Wilderness Royal Court, a full seven Dao Court Feathered Ascensions and six Great Wilderness Dragon Lords were engaged in a world-shaking clash of techniques.
Spiritual power transmuted and surged—wing-like sword radiance, spells, starlight, spear might, intertwined with the dragon qi and blood qi of the Great Wilderness—filling the entire sky and earth.
The brilliance of Dao techniques was dazzling, nearly overwhelming the blood-red sun at the horizon.
Mo Hua blended into the tide-like Dao Court army, lifting his head to gaze at the distant sky. Like everyone else, he could not suppress the tremor in his heart.
This was not the first time he had seen Feathered Ascension battle.
He had even seen the Dharma manifestations of Profound-Hollow-Void.
But a scene like this—over a dozen Feathered Ascensions, before the front lines of an army, completely unleashing their cultivation, using killing moves without restraint, Dao might shaking heaven and earth—still struck Mo Hua with an almost instinctive awe. His hands trembled slightly.
This was the yearning within a cultivator’s Dao heart for the power of heaven and earth.
Only by grasping the power of heaven and earth could one truly overturn heaven and earth.
Mo Hua could not help clenching his fist, murmuring inwardly:
“Feathered Ascension… flying to the heavens…”
…
The Feathered Ascension battle continued.
Dao might spread across the sky, the earth cracked, mountains shifted, yellow sand filled the air.
The Royal Court’s protective city grand formation trembled without cease.
All kinds of post-Ascension crystalline-blooming powers scattered through the Royal Court’s space like drifting willow catkins or feathers—brilliant and beautiful to behold, yet containing terrifying might. Below Golden Core, death came instantly upon contact.
The Feathered Ascension battlefield was a forbidden land of life and death to ordinary cultivators and utterly impossible to approach.
At this time, the barbarian armies of the Royal Court were stationed within the protective city formation.
The Dao Court army likewise remained encamped within the Royal Capital region’s great camp.
Before victory or defeat was decided among the Feathered Ascensions, no one dared to touch the battlefield.
And Feathered Ascensions were True Persons, too lofty in realm, too vast in power. In a short time, it was impossible to determine victory or defeat, much less life or death.
Thus, after days of slaughter, once their true qi was exhausted, the Feathered Ascensions disengaged to rest and recuperate, agreeing to battle again another day, leaving behind only shattered earth and enormous chasms carved by True Person sword qi.
Such battles would continue for quite some time…
…
After the brief ceasefire, the Feathered Ascensions each recuperated.
Mo Hua stood atop the watchtower of the great camp, gazing at the distant land shattered by Feathered Ascension power, and at the Royal Court protected beneath the Great Wilderness formations, lost in thought.
A long-absent sense of powerlessness began to rise again in his heart.
Mo Hua fell silent for a moment, gathered his emotions, and began carefully examining the Royal Court before him.
The Great Wilderness Royal Court stood within a massive fourth-grade mountain range.
This mountain range was rounded on the outside and broad and square within, shaped like a dark turtle, with dozens of smaller ridges extending outward like serpents and pythons.
Turtle and python forming a configuration… this was Xuanwu (Black Tortoise/Turtle-Snake) .
This was the most defensible and hardest-to-assail place in the entire Great Wilderness: the Fourth-Grade Great Xuanwu Mountain.
And because the Great Wilderness Royal Court had occupied it for several thousand years, the mountain was also known as the Great Wilderness “Royal Court Mountain.”
Around Royal Court Mountain lay almost nothing but desert and barren hills. Even the scattered tribes that once existed there had, with the outbreak of war and the Great Wilderness’s scorched-earth tactics, either migrated away or been annihilated.
At this moment, across the vast mountain range, only a single enormous Royal Court lay dormant like a colossal beast.
Above the Royal Court, the light of the Four Symbols protective city formation flickered and interwove.
This was the Royal Court’s grand formation.
Azure Dragon of the East, White Tiger of the West, Vermilion Bird of the South, Black Tortoise of the North.
The sacred patterns formed by the four holy beasts seemed like ancient divine beasts descending, guarding the Great Wilderness Royal Court.
No one knew who had created this Great Wilderness Four Symbols Royal Court Grand Formation, but it was obvious that its history was too long, that it had weathered too many storms. Its interior was already riddled with damage.
It could no longer be fully activated.
Only the incomplete Four Sacred Beast formation patterns remained, used to resist the attacks of the Dao Court’s Feathered Ascensions.
Otherwise, if a fully intact Four Symbols grand formation truly protected the Royal Court, then even if the Dao Court dispatched ten more Feathered Ascensions and mobilized another million troops, they might still be unable to breach it.
In the final years of the Great Wilderness, the Four Saints waned, the royal lords fractured, the grand formation fell into ruin—these were omens of the Royal Court’s downfall.
And also the opportunity for the Dao Court to annihilate the Royal Court in one stroke and unify the Great Wilderness.
Mo Hua cast his gaze even farther.
Behind the Royal Court, layers of ancient mountain ranges blocked all sight. As far as the eye could see, there were only primordial mountains and nothing else.
But Mo Hua knew that beyond them lay the ancestral court of the Great Wilderness.
The Great Wilderness Ancestral Court was the only fifth-grade mountain realm in the entire Great Wilderness—the burial ground of the Great Wilderness’s ancestors.
And beyond the ancestral court lay the legendary birthplace of all Great Wilderness mysteries: an ancient, sinister abyss, the origin that encompassed all greatness and all sins of the Great Wilderness—the Endless Abyssal Marsh Expanse.
The Great Wilderness ancestral court was a forbidden land of ancestors.
The Endless Abyssal Marsh Expanse was a place no living being should approach.
For nearly a thousand years, no news whatsoever had emerged from either place.
When Mo Hua served as a Divine-Shaman in the Desolate Wilderness, through his unique authority and deep study of ancient Great Wilderness script, he had read through the historical records of all tribes.
Even so, he found very few records concerning the Great Wilderness Ancestral Court and the Endless Abyssal Marsh.
And what little information there was amounted only to ancient legends, impossible to verify.
No one knew what the Endless Abyssal Marsh was like at present.
According to Great Wilderness historical records, the Endless Abyssal Marsh had been expanding outward for tens of thousands of years. How far it had spread by now—no one knew.
Mo Hua looked at the Royal Court, at Great Xuanwu Mountain, and at the Endless Abyssal Marsh hidden far beyond sight, his brows tightly furrowed.
He knew that everything in the Great Wilderness was certainly connected in secret.
But exactly how they were connected, he still could not understand…
His realm was too low; his cognition lacked too many crucial concepts. Even if he wanted to infer from cause and effect, he had nowhere to begin.
As he watched, Mo Hua suddenly startled, turning his head to find that at some unknown point, someone was already standing behind him.
The man wore imposing battle armor, his aura vast and unfathomable, the Feathered Ascension realm Grand General Yang .
Mo Hua bowed and said, “Greetings, General.”
Seeing that Mo Hua had noticed him so quickly, General Yang’s eyes showed slight surprise as he asked, “What were you thinking about?”
Mo Hua shook his head and replied slowly, “I was thinking about how the war will develop from here.”
General Yang gave a slight nod and said nothing.
After thinking for a moment, Mo Hua suddenly asked, “By the way, General, where are Elder Brothers Jishan and Jiyong? After we parted at Storm Ridge last time, I haven’t seen them.”
General Yang said, “The two of them were badly injured. I arranged for them to recuperate in the rear.”
Mo Hua nodded, then asked again, “And what about Qianjun? He’s a Yang clan prodigy, didn’t he come to attack the Royal Court this time?”
General Yang’s gaze tightened slightly. “Someone must always be left behind… He would be of no use here.”
Mo Hua was taken aback, then slowly understood.
The Yang Clan was a Dao-Soldier Bureau clan, different from other great clans.
When Yang Clan disciples came to the Great Wilderness, it was truly only to go onto the battlefield and kill enemies, to stake their lives for the Dao Court.
Yang Clan disciples could not, like other clans, harbor private motives and take advantage of the chaos to enter the Dragon Pool and form Golden Cores.
Thus, if Yang Qianjun came to the Great Wilderness, there would be only one path, going to the battlefield to fight to the death. Because he was a member of the Yang Clan. Because he was a Dao soldier.
Mo Hua sighed softly in his heart.
He turned his head, looking at the vast Royal Court Mountain and the ancient Royal Court nestled among the peaks. After a moment of silence, he suddenly said:
“Grand General… if the Royal Court is breached, will it really…”
Mo Hua paused, his gaze grave. “Be a massacre of the city?”
General Yang raised his head to look at the sky. His eyes were bleak, but his voice held not the slightest ripple:
“The Dao Court has issued its order. Break the Royal Court… any who resist shall be killed without mercy.”
Mo Hua frowned. “General, what if… the killing karma is too heavy?”
General Yang looked at Mo Hua and sighed. “I am the Grand General of the Dao soldiers. By order of the Dao Court, I take the field to kill the enemy… that is my duty. Whomever the Dao Court decrees to die, must die.”
Mo Hua’s gaze dimmed.
Looking at him, General Yang’s expression softened somewhat. “You are still young. In the future, if you accomplish something and your status rises, you will understand. Many times, people are… powerless to act as they wish.”
“Powerless…” Mo Hua murmured. “Is it because… one’s strength is still not strong enough?”
General Yang was taken aback. It was as if he had seen his former self. He could not help but smile, yet found no words to say.
In the end, he merely reached out and patted Mo Hua on the shoulder. “Take care.”
With that, General Yang turned and left.
Mo Hua watched his departing figure, feeling that tall back stand straight as a spear, yet sharp… like a blade.
A blade meant for killing by proxy.
…
Two days later, the battle between Feathered Ascension experts erupted once more.
General Yang, True-Person Zhuge, True-Person Huá, True-Person Qingmu, and three other Dao Court Feathered Ascension experts fought to the death before the formation, clashing with six Dragon Lords of the Great Wilderness.
The terrifying might spread across heaven and earth.
The slaughter lasted three days before both sides disengaged.
One day later, they fought again. After two days of carnage, they disengaged once more, then, after resting, fought again…
This continued for more than half a month. The mountain terrain outside the Royal Capital region, along with the entire landform, was completely transformed.
On the Four Symbols Royal Court grand formation, the remaining ancient sacred runes were all shattered.
The earth-shaking Feathered Ascension battle finally produced a victor.
On the Dao Court’s side, one Feathered Ascension expert died, one was gravely wounded, and the rest suffered minor injuries.
Among the Dragon Lords of the Great Wilderness, two died and one was severely wounded. The remaining three Dragon Lords were also injured and retreated back to the Royal Court.
Both sides suffered grievous losses. The scene was extraordinarily brutal. When a Feathered Ascension expert died, the lingering fluctuations stirred the winds and clouds, shattering the ground like broken porcelain.
From then on, neither side’s Feathered Ascension experts dared to act lightly again.
True-Person Zhuge then arranged a mysterious fourth-grade Seven-Star Formation outside the Great Wilderness’s Royal Court, locking its killing intent onto the Court itself.
If the injured Dragon Lords dared to show themselves again, this formation could draw down starlight from the heavens and suppress and kill the remaining Dragon Lords.
At the same time, in order to maintain the formation, True-Person Zhuge no longer had any spare capacity to act.
General Yang and the others also had to protect him while he maintained the formation.
Thus, the Feathered Ascension battles temporarily came to an end.
The Dao Court’s Feathered Ascension experts paid an extremely heavy price to suppress the Great Wilderness’s Feathered Ascension combat power by a narrow margin.
And the already-damaged Four Symbols Royal Court grand formation was completely crippled.
What followed was the true strangulation by the main army.
After the Feathered Ascension slaughter, the armies—led by Golden Core cultivators, with Foundation Establishment cultivators as the backbone—became the decisive force of this war.
A series of orders from the Dao-Soldier Division were passed down.
Millions upon millions of Dao soldiers, vast beyond measure, assembled and stood ready.
As the supreme commander, General Yang of the Yang Clan ascended into midair. With a sweeping motion of his arm, his voice rang out with authority:
“The barbarian tribes of the Great Wilderness scorn the Dao Court, crown themselves kings, and commit crimes that cannot be forgiven. Today, the Dao Court’s grand army shall trample the Royal Court, exterminate all rebels…. any who block our path, kill!”
“Kill!”
“Kill!!”
In an instant, countless shouts of slaughter surged straight into the heavens.
On the other side, the barbarian soldiers of the Great Wilderness also shouted “Kill!” in their own tongue.
To them, the Dao Court was an enemy, the Dao soldiers its lackeys, the culprits who oppressed their Royal Clan and drove them toward extinction. Between them lay blood feuds, to be resolved only in death.
The Dao-Soldier Division issued its military command.
The Great Wilderness ignited its beacon fires.
Between the vast heavens and earth, killing intent burst forth like thunder, shaking the land and changing the color of the sky.
Countless Dao soldiers and barbarian warriors launched the final charge.
Like oceans and great rivers colliding in reverse flow, towering waves smashed together. The moment the two armies collided, it was a fight to the death.
People were dragged into a vortex of life and death. The entire land instantly became a grand banquet of slaughter.
Shouts of killing, cries of rage, roars, screams of terror—mixed with the stench of blood, resentment, baleful aura, and killing intent—soared into the sky, stirring the workings of fate until black and white blurred into chaos.
And Mo Hua was trapped within this sea of slaughter.
At this moment, he could no longer raise his head to look at the sky, for everywhere around him was drenched in blood-soaked carnage.
Dao soldiers were beheaded, had their limbs severed, their chests pierced through, their bodies split apart… flesh and blood spraying everywhere.
Barbarian soldiers were shredded into dust by sword qi, burned to ash by raging flames, frozen into bloody slush by icy cold, or swallowed and suffocated by earthen prisons…
In the blink of an eye, several living lives died before him, their deaths horrific.
Within a single breath, countless lives crossed the boundary between life and death.
Mo Hua wore Dao soldier armor, moving alone back and forth within the Dao Court ranks.
He did not follow any clan’s formation, nor did he stay with the Situ clan.
First, in a war of such scale, the flow of people was far too chaotic—even if one formed a group at the start, it would inevitably be scattered.
Second, he had to bring along his little senior brother. To avoid suspicion, it was inconvenient to stay with others.
After all, his little senior brother was still his “enemy.”
And Bai Zisheng stayed close at Mo Hua’s side.
On the surface, he was bound by chains and held hostage by Mo Hua. In truth, it was this little senior brother who was protecting his junior brother’s safety.
At present, Mo Hua could not kill freely.
Even in such a bloody war, where life and death shifted in an instant, he did not kill a single person. At most, he relied on movement techniques to maneuver, or used spells to restrain enemies or defend.
The baleful qi within his Fate Pattern was still present. He could not casually break the killing taboo.
Each kill had to be offset with a straw-dog to erase the karma. Otherwise, the baleful qi would backlash, with consequences too dire to imagine.
And though he gathered wild grass day and night to weave fate arts, he possessed only six straw-dogs.
That meant he could kill at most six people.
When it truly came to a last resort, every single “slot” for killing was incomparably precious and could not be wasted.
Therefore, to mix into the Dao Court’s grand army and charge into the Royal Court, he had to have close protection.
And his little senior brother, whose dragon blood and mystic physique had reached the third stage, was undoubtedly the strongest “bodyguard.”
Throughout the subsequent campaign, Mo Hua watched all directions and surveyed all sides with his divine perception. From the chaotic currents of karma, he discerned fortune and calamity, steering toward benefit and away from harm, constantly pointing the way for Bai Zisheng.
Bai Zisheng, clad in heavy armor and relying on his formidable physical body, charged forward recklessly, carving a path for Mo Hua.
The senior and junior brothers once again joined hands, charging through the tide-like chaos of war.
Only this time, the war was thousands of times grander—and thousands of times more dangerous—than before.
Even Mo Hua felt exceptionally strained.
It was not that killing techniques were difficult to handle, but that the karmic pressure was simply too immense.
Mo Hua’s divine sense was strong, his comprehension high, and he was extremely sensitive to Causal currents.
Even the faintest thread of causality appeared in meticulous clarity to his perception.
Now, personally immersed in the midst of a killing battlefield, witnessing severed limbs flying with every breath, countless lives ending, and life’s illusions collapsing in an instant…
All kinds of emotions at the moment of death—the longing for life, fear of death, the vicious aura of killing, the sins of causing death—converged into a vortex of resentment dividing life and death.
This vortex tightly dragged in the innately sensitive Mo Hua, subjecting his heart to relentless torment of clinging to life and fearing death. The pressure on his humanity was so great that it nearly left him unable to breathe.
With every glance, Mo Hua seemed to see the lives of hundreds, even thousands of people—their experiences from childhood to adulthood, their loves and hatreds.
Yet in the blink of an eye, these “lantern-reel” memories shattered completely.
These people’s lives ended on the battlefield.
Their memories, too, were ground up like meat in a grinder—transformed from the beauty of life into the despair of death, mixed into grotesque killing karma and terror.
This realization of “life and death” left Mo Hua ice-cold from head to toe, his face deathly pale.
“Junior Br— Mo Hua!” Bai Zisheng sensed something wrong and shouted urgently. “Wake up!”
Mo Hua knew the situation was bad. He bit down on the tip of his tongue, forcibly drove his Divine-Sense, blocking out all perception tied to human emotion.
After that, he focused entirely on discerning karmic fortune and misfortune, leading his little senior brother as they rushed about the battlefield.
Though it was far from easy, Mo Hua could only grit his teeth and endure, relying on sheer willpower to hold on.
He did not know how long they slaughtered within that ocean of battle, nor how long he had been steeped in the karmic cycles of life and death.
Mo Hua felt as though the sky had darkened several times, then brightened several times.
Yet everything around him was soaked in blood—the ground flooded with it, the sky dyed red, people dyed red—even he himself seemed red. He could no longer be certain.
Finally, after an unknown length of time, as the vortex of life and death gradually dissipated, Mo Hua steadied his gaze, and before him stood a majestic, colossal city wall.
This was the city wall of the Great Wilderness Royal Court.
At this moment, the wall was already in ruins, having earlier been cleaved open by True-Person Huá with a single sword, leaving a massive breach.
The Dao Court’s Dao soldiers were charging inward, slaughtering their way into the Royal Court.
Mo Hua and Bai Zisheng exchanged a glance, then followed the other Dao soldiers, rushing through the breach in the wall and into the Great Wilderness Royal Court.
This was their first time setting foot in the Great Wilderness Royal Court.
And the first time they came… was the day of its destruction…