Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 90

“Good luck!” You Hantian looked down at the young faces below and smiled stiffly.

He turned his back to them, and the sleeves of his robe, as well as his black hair, started flapping wildly even though there was no wind. He raised his hands to make a hand seal, and a beam of golden light shot into the majestic steep cliff below him.

A muffled explosion resounded from below, and everything fell silent around them as if the air had frozen over. Everyone watched as a gigantic shadow slowly rose from below.

Broken rocks flew in all directions along with all the snow on the cliff, shrouding everything in white instantly.

Boom! Another low rumble echoed, and the ground started shaking. As the air seemed to press heavier and heavier down onto the people and rocks careened down from time to time, deep cracks appeared in the ground.

“What…what is that?” An internal disciple stared in horror at the shadow that was huge enough to cover half the sky. He trembled and moved several meters away.

After the snow settled again, Gu Suihan’s eyes widened. A wariness rose in his heart as he stared at the huge creature before him.

This was a zheng, a ferocious beast from ancient times!

It looked like a red leopard with five tails and a horn sticking out from its head. Its back was covered in white fur, its four legs were thick and muscular, and the rest of its body was a dark gray color. Its roar resembled that of a rockfall, and it was at least 300 meters in length. Its eyes were a bloodthirsty red, its lips downturned, and the dust its feet kicked up was numerous enough to form clouds.

“This thing actually existed?” Gu Suihan looked terribly shocked, and his heart actually trembled.

According to what he knew, this beast had been completely wiped out by the Demonic Race a long time ago. He hadn’t expected one to be still alive today, and this one looked like it was still a baby. Once it had become an adult, this beast would be able to cause floods and tsunamis by just exhaling. Its roar could be heard across thousands of miles. One step of its foot could shatter the Earth. If it sent out a lightning bolt with its horn, that could be a heavenly tribulation in itself.

“Something’s not right.” Gu Suihan’s pupils constricted as he noticed the nearly 300-meter wingspan of the wings on the creature’s back. This made more sense to him now. “This creature has been cross-bred with something else. It’s not a purebred zheng. A purebred zheng wouldn’t have wings.”

“It’s like the Dragon Carp that Yun Lianyi was sitting on that day. That was also a creature that shared some genes with an ancient creature. But while the bloodline of the carp was almost completely diluted, this zheng’s bloodline is still quite pure, and it has all the characteristics of a zheng. If not for those wings, I wouldn’t have known that it wasn’t purebred.”

“Even though the zheng was considered one of the weaker creatures among all the beasts of ancient times, it’s still comparable to a cultivator at Nascent Change. The Seven Kill Sect must be hiding some other secrets; otherwise, it would be impossible for them to have domesticated a beast from ancient times. One possibility is the Demon Abyss I keep hearing about.”

There was a glimmer in Gu Suihan’s eyes, and he closed them slightly to hide the dull shine of excitement in his eye. He used his cultivation technique to calm down his slightly agitated emotions slowly.

You Hantian patted the ferocious beast lying on the ground and talked to it in a gentle and kind manner, then turned to look at the shaken disciples behind him, “All of you, get ready. The journey ahead is very long; that’s why I’ve made this beast come out. Get onto its back quickly and make sure you hang on.”

Everyone couldn’t help but gulp nervously as their lips twitched. They felt fearful as they glanced a little anxiously at the beast that was staring back at them with that murderous look in its eye.

“Let’s go.” Gu Suihan calmly looked at Li Rong and smiled indifferently. He flew so swiftly that he looked like nothing but a blur, landing on the beast’s back, and making sure he was in a stable position.

ROARR! The beast let out a roar that sounded like the sound of huge rocks crashing into one another. The beast turned around and glared angrily at Gu Suihan, who stood on its back with a nonchalant look on his face. Electrical sparkles crackled around the beast’s single horn, and it looked as though it was ready to smite this lowly human if he angered it.

“Be quiet!” You Hantian raised his voice and brought his palm down on the beast’s gigantic head as if he were angry about how uncooperative the zheng was behaving.

The zheng whimpered in response as though it were trying to gain You Hantian’s favor. It stopped exuding that murderous and violent aura it had earlier and started nuzzling You Hantian like a puppy with an aggrieved look in its eyes.

The rest had nearly collapsed in fright when they saw what happened earlier. The murderous aura that the beast exuded had made their bodies feel cold all over, and they really thought that Gu Suihan was going to die.

To their surprise, Gu Suihan had remained completely unfazed and even had a look of slight disdain, as if he was telling it, “You think you can kill me? You might look and sound impressive, but you’re still a beast for humans to ride at the end of the day.”

Of course, this little smile was only picked up by the few who had been keeping their eye on Gu Suihan all this time.

The remaining disciples pulled themselves together and flew toward the frightening beast even though their faces were pale, and they felt more like they were headed for a slaughterhouse.

The beast’s bright red tongue with thorns on it licked its lips and opened its mouth to yawn.

This, unfortunately, terrified the young lady that was flying toward it. Her face paled, and she started crying.

“It’s alright, Xin’er, senior sister is here, don’t worry.” A voluptuous woman who walked with light footsteps and an elegant and classy air around her was right next to Xin’er. She quickly pulled the younger girl into her arms and consoled her in a soft voice as she glanced furtively at the beast that didn’t seem to know what it had done.

Even so, Xin’er still gripped her senior’s arm tightly and shut her eyes, afraid to look at the beast. She was still trembling even after getting onto the back of the beast.

“Let’s go.” You Hantian looked at all the juniors behind him, then sat down on the zheng’s humongous head. He patted its head, gave the command, and spoke no more.

“Not bad; it’s actually able to fly in the midst of fiendish Qi. Looks like being of mixed heritage doesn’t disadvantage it altogether after all,” murmured Gu Suihan quietly to himself as he looked down at the fluffy clouds.

“You know what beast this is? The Sect Leader and the rest have apparently asked a lot of people, but nobody knows what animal this is. They can only confirm that it has the genes of a creature from ancient times.” Li Rong huddled over curiously.

“It’s a zheng,” said Gu Suihan simply as he glanced at Li Rong.

“A zheng?” Li Rong repeated what he heard. He had never heard of this animal before. But after he saw that Gu Suihan had closed his eyes and didn’t want to talk, he decided against asking further questions.

“We will need to fly for around three months or so. You can take this chance to understand how to use fiendish Qi and murderous Qi,” You Hantian suddenly said to the disciples.

The previously bored disciples immediately sat up and looked serious again because they knew that it was important to heed the Sect Leader’s advice in such matters.

The Origin Core stage had two major advantages over the Foundation Establishment stage.

Firstly, it was the matter of turning your aura or your authoritativeness into an actual force that could cover its surroundings, becoming an area where it was advantageous to yourself, but it disadvantaged your enemies. Of course, this wasn’t a properly defined area. You had to be at the Divine Soul stage in order to set the rules of a particular spacetime and turn it into a world within your own palm.

The second was having fiendish Qi. Fiendish Qi was like improved murderous Qi since it pushed all the characteristics of murderous Qi to its limits. Fiendish Qi could harm both your enemies and yourself, so you had to gather it into your core in order to reduce the influence that fiendish Qi had on your consciousness and soul, using it to fight your enemies instead.

Of course, Gu Suihan already knew all of this and had made use of it. Otherwise, there was no way he could unleash true pressure on others and hold up against the aura from cultivators at Origin Core. The violent Qi he had unleashed before was only one percent of what he was capable of. If he had unleashed it fully, Gui Suihan’s own physical body and severely injured soul would not be able to withstand the corrosive power of this Qi; as a bonus, every human within the next 10,000 miles would have turned into a ghost, and no grass would be able to grow in this area for the next thousand years. It would have turned this place into barren land.

And so, while the few hundred other disciples were cultivating and trying to comprehend the fiendish Qi, Gu Suihan was the only one who still had a bored look on his face, even putting up a table so that he could have a drink by himself. Everyone else looked at him enviously, including the leaders of the three factions.