Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 120

“You wicked, wicked fellow!” Xiexin zhenren gnashed his teeth furiously. The hatred in his eyes was so great, that no river could possibly wash it all away.

Gu Suihan kept his ballista away and his previously dull gaze glowed brilliantly as he leaped into the sky and flew straight for where Xiexin zhenren was. He raised his long sword behind him, which seemed to draw a long blurry line in the air.

“If this weren’t a body I had taken over…if I hadn’t used so much energy earlier…I wouldn’t have had any trouble fighting this silly little trick of his,” spat Xiexin zhenren in an indignant voice. He poured pills into his mouth like he was drinking water, then quickly hid inside the bronze corpse.

DOOONG! The arrow was like a dragon as it roared through the air and slammed hard into the bronze corpse. It resounded loudly like it had struck a giant bell or a gong, ringing loudly enough for one to lose all their senses.

Xiexin zhenren opened his mouth to exclaim in shock only to find that he couldn’t utter a single sound. A golden glow was all around him and it was too bright for him to see anything. The bronze corpse had been moved nearly ten meters backward and had been pushed another five inches into the ground.

Its arms had been blasted to smithereens and a gigantic arrow stuck out from its chest like a spear. The arrow had stabbed right through its body, shattered the bronze corpse’s spinal cord, and pierced through Xiexin zhenren’s chest, like meat on a skewer.

Gu Suihan clicked his tongue at the mess he had created. He swung his sword and the blade instantly sliced the roaring and struggling bronze corpse into half. The tip of his sword trembled slightly as it decapitated the bronze corpse. He released some black qi from his left hand, allowing the corrosive qi to land on the flying head of the bronze corpse.

The qi instantly crushed the head and the maggots wriggling about inside also died and turned into tiny little carcasses.

Gu Suihan drew Questioning Heaven back and the blade gleamed as brightly as the surface of a lake as he chopped off Xiexin zhenren’s limbs even as he convulsed violently on the ground. He then flung the sword aside casually such that it stuck itself in a tree before looking down a little curiously at Xiexin zhenren.

Time slowly ticked by.

Xiexin zhenren slowly began to feel some pain. The whiteness in front of him seemed to clear up and he felt like he could hear something now.

Pak! Gu Suihan used some sword qi to tear open Xiexin zhenren’s bleeding shoulder wound a little more.

“What…do you want?” Xiexin zhenren tried to move his head to look at the blurry figure before him. He knew that this blurry figure had to be Gu Suihan. He had lost to this ancient cultivator after all.

“I want to know a lot of things. Initially, I thought I’d just search your soul, but just in case I miss out on something important, I decided to just ask you directly. As for whether you’re going to die or not, let’s talk about that later. I can swear by the Way – if you tell me the truth, I’ll let you off,” said Gu Suihan in one breath. As usual, he included the last bit about swearing by the Way just to gain the trust of the other party.

“Deal!” Xiexin zhenren had a glimmer of hope in his eyes when he heard that Gu Suihan was going to swear by the Way and nodded to show that he was going to cooperate.

“Very good. First question. What was hidden inside that secret realm that Li Rong went to a few years ago?”

Of course, Gu Suihan was asking about the piece of wood that he had gotten from that secret realm that had ancient Demonic Race script carved into it. He was not letting go of any clues that could help him decipher that piece of animal hide.

Xiexin zhenren tried his best to recall and said weakly, “That was a secret realm left behind by a Demon from ancient times. The Seven Kill Sect had emptied that secret realm of anything valuable a long time ago. According to the Sect Leader, the secret realm was probably a herb garden left behind by a powerful Demon. But he seemed very wary of this thing and gave us strict instructions not to tell anyone about it. Besides some of the natural treasures, the Sect Leader kept everything else. I don’t really know the details either.”

“You Hantian.” Gu Suihan’s bloodshot eyes flickered. He didn’t really think Xiexin zhenren was lying to him since Xiexin zhenren’s life was in his hands. Xiexin zhenren was now like a fish on a chopping board and he did not dare to lie to Gu Suihan at this juncture.

Gu Suihan pondered this information for a moment, then asked, “The man with the secret realm – Disciplinarian Zhang – refined that secret realm into a secret world such that it can now fight enemies?”

“It was that old man Li from the Weapon Refinery Court. Nobody knows his history and it was the Sect Leader who brought him back from the Upper World. He’s very highly skilled.”

“You Hantian again,” muttered Gu Suihan as he narrowed his eyes to hide the gleam in them.

“What’s going on with the direct disciples of the Seven Kill Sect?”

“The direct disciples?” Xiexin zhenren laughed bitterly. “I used to be a direct disciple. There were 99 of us. The Sect Leader led us to this secret realm to cultivate and train, then the major sects and other factions would start trying to kill each other off, which would then decide how many people could head to the Upper World as well as how many vacancies each faction had. The casualties would increase accordingly as well.”

“Why are there a few thousand people in the secret realm this time? Did something happen in the Upper World?” Gu Suihan’s eyes gleamed even more brightly.

“That’s right.” Xiexin zhenren looked at Gu Suihan with some surprise, then said, “Apparently the powers in the Upper World have suffered severe damages and they need more cultivators very urgently.”

“What is going on with this secret realm then?” asked Gu Suihan as he narrowed his eyes.

Xiexin zhenren had a respectful look in his eyes, a reverence he had toward the most powerful. “This secret realm? This is the battlefield where direct disciples always fight for the chance to be sent to the Upper World. Rumor has it that this place is actually the domain of a powerful cultivator and they’ve left a legacy behind. Unfortunately, over the last few centuries, we’ve never been able to gather all nine secret keys, so we can only wait till the next batch, with nothing to show for it now.”

“Very good. Last question.” Gu Suihan gave Xiexin zhenren a pleased nod. He seemed fairly satisfied with these answers so far. “Why is everyone so wary of the Demonic Race? Why are they so bent on destroying them completely? I heard that the Demonic Race once existed in this world, but the cultivators of the Upper World wiped them out despite having to pay a high price.”

There was a dreamy look in his eyes as he murmured, “The human race, the Demonic Race, the Immortal Race, the Deity Race – the world has tens of thousands of races, but after several disasters from the past, a large majority have disappeared completely, leaving behind just these few races with certain special characteristics, that we’ve been able to reproduce till today. Every race has its own feud with another. I’m not surprised if they had some deep hatred for one another that stemmed from ancient times.” He sighed sadly.

“The Immortal Race?” Gu Suihan raised an eyebrow and suddenly got up. The indifferent expression he had all this time disappeared. “Immortals…are a race?”

“That’s right. Even though the aim of cultivators like us is to become immortals, it is merely to become immortal humans and not actual immortals. I don’t know how it works either. All I’ve heard is that the Upper World cultivators revere the Immortals but do not fear them.”

“The Immortal Race. The Immortal Race. They revere the Immortals but do not fear them,” murmured Gu Suihan to himself. As he thought about the images he saw in the majestic river of history back then, his sparkling eyes sparkled even more brightly.

“Great! You can die now!” Gu Suihan snapped out of his thoughts and looked at Xiexin zhenren, who had a tinge of joy in his eyes. He slammed his hand onto Xiexin zhenren’s head and gobbled up the man’s spirit that was filled with great hatred.

“Immortals? The Upper World? I’m getting really excited now.”

Gu Suihan stared up at the unchanging sky and could not hide the wide, threatening smile on his face.

His spirit had been healed by quite a bit this time. The most obvious cracks had already healed up and he was just left with the tiny little ones.

After he checked his slightly more energetic spirit, he let out a long sigh. He still had a long way to go.

Mo Yuluo, Yun Lianyi, Xiexin Zhenren, and Li Rong were all dead now. Now that two out of seven of the Peak Leaders were gone, the Seven Kill Sect was probably facing a lot of trouble right now. However, since You Hantian was a Nascent Change cultivator, his life probably wasn’t in any danger.

Gu Suihan had to finish his work here and get out as soon as possible. He had plenty of questions that needed answers.

Woong! Suddenly, he felt something warm on his belt. He sighed inwardly and retrieved the crescent-shaped secret key that had gone through yet another evolution.

Just like before, a beam of light shot out from the key and into the sky. This was already the third time it was doing this. Xiexin zhenren said there were nine secret keys – did that mean that this happened each time a new key appeared?

Gu Suihan wasn’t sure, so he unleashed his spiritual sense like a river, covering an area of more than a kilometer around himself. He knew that every time the key gave off this beam of light, a bloody battle would ensue.

“Hmm?” Gu Suihan’s expression faltered as he raised the key to look carefully at the golden lines swirling around it and had a puzzled look in his eye.

There seemed to be one more golden swirl compared to the last time. He remembered very clearly that there were only five golden lines and now, a sixth one had appeared.

“How very strange!” Gu Suihan smiled, stuffed it back into his belt, took his sword, and continued walking.

His spiritual sense had told him that there were cultivators in this direction.

A few moments later, Gu Suihan used his spiritual energy to shake off the few drops of blood on his clothing and hung his sword back on his belt. He looked indifferently at the dried-up corpses on the ground that were mostly missing a limb here and there, took all their storage rings, and sauntered off.