Chapter 1368

Chapter 1368: Rebirth

Mo Hua gazed at the night and candlelight, his brows knitting together.

“Second Elder…”

He had long felt that the “restless” Second Elder of the Qianxue Demonic Sect carried an indescribable strangeness.

Why, despite clearly being dead, could he repeatedly send dreams to him?

If he were an ordinary cultivator—one who did not cultivate Divine sense and knew nothing of the workings of spiritual thought—it would be one thing.

But he was a powerhouse of the Divine Dao, one who devoured demons and hunted barbarian gods.

An existence capable of bypassing the many thresholds of his Divine Dao and sending him dreams could not possibly be an ordinary cultivator.

Not to mention… that person was already “dead.”

In the dream, the Second Elder had transformed into the appearance of Prince Shentu Ye, resurfacing in Mo Hua’s mind.

“The Second Elder of the Qianxue Demonic Sect… is actually the youngest prince of the Great Wilderness… Shentu Ye?”

“No… that shouldn’t be right… those two are unlikely to be the same person.”

“Did the Second Elder inherit Shentu Ye’s will? Or did Shentu Ye use the Second Elder’s karmic ties with me to entrust me with something?”

Mo Hua’s brow tightened further. The more he thought, the more he felt there were secrets hidden within.

At that moment, everything related to Shentu Ye in the Dragon Pool replayed once more in his mind.

“The blank stone stele… the Transforming Mortals into Dragons Grand Formation…”

“I died when I was very young, slept for a long time, and dreamed many dreams. In those dreams, it seemed someone instructed me…”

“To pass down the name of the Transforming Mortals into Dragons Grand Formation…”

Who exactly was the person Shentu Ye spoke of?

Who told him the secrets of the Transforming Mortals into Dragons Grand Formation in his dreams?

Who told him that the Great Wilderness’ destiny had run its course, that the True Dragon’s qi would disperse into heaven and earth, and that a world-shaking upheaval would arrive?

Who could possibly know such things?

Mo Hua’s pupils contracted. He realized that Shentu Ye must still be hiding deeper secrets.

And Shentu Ye had also mentioned that the remnant Divine-sense he left behind was extremely weak, and that he could not speak certain names, or karmic backlash would strike…

This meant Shentu Ye definitely knew something.

He simply could not say it.

He could only bear a destiny he could not resist.

Yet… he truly seemed to want to tell Mo Hua something.

Shentu Ye’s farewell echoed again in Mo Hua’s ears:

“What a pity… I never had time that truly belonged to me while alive…”

“Farewell… Young Divine Lord.”

At the moment of parting, the youthful face of Shentu Ye had been filled with weariness and reluctance.

But thinking back now, there had also been a trace of… hesitation to speak.

Mo Hua’s brows locked tight. His gaze flickered, his heart rising and falling. He felt as though he had overlooked something.

Here in the Great Wilderness, there were still crucial karmic threads.

“What… did I miss?”

“What have I forgotten?”

Unease filled Mo Hua’s heart as he questioned himself again and again. Amid tangled karma, a slender azure figure suddenly appeared in his memory.

Mo Hua’s pupils shrank.

“Qing-Zhu?!”

Fragments of the past, including scattered memories from the Desolate Wilderness, resurfaced in his mind.

Mo Hua’s heart trembled. He immediately searched his memories for Qing-Zhu’s figure and even began calculating her karma on his fingers.

But the heavenly secrets were blank.

Every karmic thread had been severed.

“Where… is she?”

His gaze sharpened. Unwilling to give up, he employed various divination methods, calculating for a long time, yet still found nothing.

It was as if Qing-Zhu herself had sunk into the mire of karma, completely submerged.

“No trace…”

Mo Hua frowned in thought. Suddenly his divine sense stirred. He rubbed his thumb and retrieved a strand of dark hair from his invisible storage ring.

A strand of Qingqiu silk.

He had picked it up during the battle at the Vermilion Bird Mountain altar years ago.

It was Qing-Zhu’s Divine Dao token.

Now, the divine sense lingering on the silk had dimmed, and the faith toward the divine had weakened greatly.

Mo Hua’s gaze darkened. Without daring to delay, he used the Qingqiu silk as a medium and employed the Heavenly Secret Derivative Algorithm to calculate the karma of the token’s owner.

With a concrete divine object in hand, his calculations pierced the fog. A thread of filthy blood appeared before his eyes.

Mo Hua frowned. From that tainted blood trace, he calculated a direction. He immediately pushed the door open and stepped into the night.

In the darkness, red glows flickered. The royal court remained in chaos, Dao soldiers burned and looted everywhere, and scarcely anyone of the Great Wilderness people had survived.

Following the blood trace, Mo Hua walked forward… and eventually arrived before the Four Symbols Palace.

Golden Core realm Dao soldier commanders guarded the gates with strict vigilance.

Mo Hua was now a Golden Core cultivator himself. His divine sense had reached the peak of twenty-nine patterns, and his concealment technique was perfected.

These Golden Core commanders of the Dao Court could not possibly detect him.

Hidden from sight, Mo Hua passed through the guards and entered the Four Symbols Palace.

The palace remained as it had been.

The blood had been washed away, leaving behind a faint stench and lingering resentment.

With the Dragon Pool struggle concluded and both righteous and demonic cultivators withdrawn, the entire palace was suffused with a deathly stillness.

Walking through the silent halls, Mo Hua found the surroundings empty and felt puzzled.

“Qing-Zhu… hid here?”

Yet there were no traces of her presence.

He had no choice but to take out the Qingqiu silk again and use the final faint wisp of aura upon it to calculate her location.

The karma on the silk was now extremely faint, and the direction it gave was vague and drifting.

Mo Hua calculated several times before finally locking onto a definite direction.

He continued forward.

The formations within the Four Symbols Palace were divided into four sectors, corresponding to the Four Symbols and modeled upon the Four Sacred Beasts. They were perilous and powerful; ordinary cultivators entering rashly would face near-certain death.

But Mo Hua had already studied the general layout of the Four Sacred Beasts. Now, moving through the palace, he navigated with ease, threading between sacred patterns as if walking through an empty land.

After searching for about half an hour, Mo Hua finally saw the slender figure in azure robes at the Black Tortoise sector.

She still wore the familiar long green dress, wrapped tightly around her body.

But a long sword pierced her chest. Blood had soaked the fabric and long since congealed.

Her beautiful face was pale as paper, devoid of life.

Qing-Zhu… was dead.

Mo Hua released his Divine Sense and examined the aura around her body. Confirming there was not the slightest trace of vitality left, his heart trembled faintly.

After all, he and Qing-Zhu had known each other.

Seeing someone familiar suddenly lying dead before him left a bitter feeling in his heart.

And moreover…

Mo Hua’s gaze shifted to Qing-Zhu’s lower abdomen.

Her abdomen was flat, showing no sign of pregnancy. Her hands were tightly pressed over her stomach, as if reluctant to let go.

But within it, there was only stillness… no life remained.

The child, together with its mother, had died.

Mo Hua’s chest tightened. He stood silently for a moment, letting out a soft sigh as an unspeakable sorrow spread through his heart.

Since they were both dead, there was nothing he could do.

Even collecting her remains for burial would be difficult amidst the chaos of war and the strict Dao Army defenses.

Perhaps for this pitiful woman, dying within the Great Wilderness Royal Court—within this ancient Four Symbols Palace—and being buried alongside the sacred markings of the Four Sacred Beasts was already the best possible ending.

Mo Hua looked at Qing-Zhu once more.

Within the vast, empty palace, beneath the ferocious Black Tortoise pattern, Qing-Zhu lay with a sword through her chest, blood staining her blue garments…

Mo Hua remained silent for a long time before his emotions finally settled.

He sighed again and turned to leave.

But after taking a few steps, his heart stirred, and a chilling thought slowly surfaced in his mind.

He turned back.

Looking at Qing-Zhu, whose vitality had completely vanished, an image of a formation involuntarily surfaced in his thoughts…

Yin-Wood Rejuvenation Formation.

A horrifying emotion began to grow within him. His feelings surged like storm waves, and even his hands trembled slightly.

Mo Hua took a deep breath. As if guided by unseen forces, he walked back to Qing-Zhu’s corpse and extended his trembling fingers toward the ground.

Ink of blue-green hue, rich with wood energy, coiled through the air, flowed from his fingertips to the floor, and stroke by stroke began to outline a formation beneath Qing-Zhu’s body.

The formation was not complex. Mo Hua drew swiftly. Before long, a complete Yin-Wood Rejuvenation Formation condensed beneath her corpse.

The blue-green array emitted a gentle radiance.

Vital Yin-Wood energy seeped into her cold flesh through her bloodstained wounds, repairing her injuries little by little.

But that was all. Nothing else happened.

The Yin-Wood Rejuvenation Formation was a rare medical array. It could heal injuries, restore blood, and replenish lost vitality… but only when treating the living.

It could not heal a corpse whose vitality had completely vanished.

Qing-Zhu was already dead.

Yet Mo Hua did not give up. In his mind, he replayed again and again every instance since entering the Desolate Wilderness when he had used the Yin-Wood Rejuvenation Formation.

He recalled the battlefield treatments, the vast transformations of life-and-death energies manifested across countless barbarian soldiers.

Mo Hua began manually controlling the formation’s operation, using his Divine Sense to alter the flow rules within the array.

At the same time, within his eyes, black and white currents—life and death—began to circulate silently.

The life-and-death principles he had comprehended through war—personally witnessing countless beings struggle at the boundary between life and death—were guided by his Divine Sense into the formation.

Mo Hua’s peak Golden Core Divine Sense of twenty-nine patterns burst forth like a breached sea.

In that instant, the Yin-Wood Rejuvenation Formation began an astonishing transformation.

Ancient laws descended. The array rapidly collapsed inward, twisting as its aura underwent swift metamorphosis.

The green vitality representing life gradually rose and turned white.

The dark vitality of death sank and turned black.

The Yin-Wood energy transformed into black and white, circulating in harmony, like yin and yang divided, like life and death intertwined.

As the formation changed, the laws of life and death fused into it. Yin and yang transformed, and the causality of life and death reversed.

A terrifying Dao aura enveloped the Four Symbols Palace.

As if time were reversing, the congealed blood upon Qing-Zhu’s body began to soften and regain its fresh crimson hue.

The wound in her chest began to revive; flesh quivered faintly.

A thread of vitality returned to her body. A sickly blush appeared upon her pale face.

Then suddenly…

The already-dead Qing-Zhu opened her eyes and gasped for air.

Her gaze still held the sorrow, pain, and despair from before her death.

Then, in confusion, she saw Mo Hua before her.

She saw beneath his finger the formation shifting black and white like divine or demonic forces, and within his eyes the vast, ancient, terrifying aura.

Qing-Zhu seemed to realize something. Her eyes filled with shock and disbelieving horror.

She tried to speak, but the moment she opened her mouth—as if touching a taboo—blood gushed out.

Mo Hua’s Divine Sense had also reached its limit.

The Yin-Wood Rejuvenation Formation in its Yin–Yang transformed state—reversing life and death—contained ancient laws, like a bottomless monster devouring Divine Sense.

Even Mo Hua’s formidable Divine-Sense was drained completely within moments.

His face turned pale. Blood seeped from the corners of his eyes, forcing him to stop channeling his Divine Sense into the formation.

At this moment, he still did not know the formation’s true name…

Yin-Yang Rebirth.

When the formation ceased, Qing-Zhu—who had been “revived”—began to lose vitality again.

Her state rapidly shifted from life back toward death.

Realizing her remaining time was short, Qing-Zhu suddenly seized Mo Hua’s arm. With blood in her mouth and a hoarse voice, she pleaded:

“Divine Shaman… please… you…”

Mo Hua frowned. “Who killed you?”

Qing-Zhu did not answer. Or perhaps she did not care who had killed her.

Instead, she tightly pressed her lips together, drew a ritual blade from her sleeve, and stabbed it into her chest. Sliding the blade downward, she cut open her lower abdomen and forcibly removed a blood-soaked infant from within.

The process must have brought unimaginable pain.

Yet Qing-Zhu seemed to have forgotten everything.

In her heart, there was only this child.

But she had already died once. The child in her womb was long since a “dead” infant.

Qing-Zhu did not care. Or perhaps she had foreseen all of this… foreseen that someone would kill her, and her child.

With the sacrificial knife, she pried out a drop of heart’s blood from her chest.

This drop of heart’s blood had been painstakingly nurtured over a long time, nourished with vast amounts of vital essence, and was rich with life force.

Even in death, the vitality within it had not fully dissipated.

Qing-Zhu fed this drop of heart’s blood to her child.

The heart’s blood was like a drop of spring rain, awakening life within the dead infant bound to her fate.

As vitality returned, a crisp infant’s cry suddenly rang out within the vast, deathly silent Four Symbols Palace.

The cry was not particularly pleasant, but to Qing-Zhu, it sounded like the most beautiful sound in the world.

Tears flowed from the corners of her eyes.

With trembling hands, she handed the infant to Mo Hua.

To the only person in this world she could trust… the Divine-Shaman of the Desolate Wilderness.

Mo Hua’s heart shook. Ignoring the blood covering his hands, he accepted the infant and immediately took out a small blanket, wrapping the child carefully.

Borrowing the Yin-Yang Rebirth’s forced reversal of life and death—like a final flash of vitality before death—Qing-Zhu knew that little life remained to her.

She looked at Mo Hua, her face still filled with humility and pleading:

“Divine-Shaman… my lord…”

Pain pierced Mo Hua’s heart. He nodded.

Seeing him nod, relief instantly washed over Qing-Zhu. She turned her head one last time to look at the child in Mo Hua’s arms… the child she had brought into the world.

Though not directly tied to her by blood, this was indeed the child from her womb, the child she had painstakingly nurtured into form.

This child… could live on.

Qing-Zhu seemed to have no more regrets. She gave the child one final, tender look. Then her face gradually paled, and her life completely faded away…

(End of Chapter)