Chapter 170: Meeting an Old Friend Again, Heaven’s Mandate Shatters
Chapter 170 – Meeting an Old Friend Again, Heaven’s Mandate Shatters
Chen Changsheng saw Wu Li, and Wu Li saw him in turn.
Their gazes met across the battlefield, and the one-eyed Wu Li offered a bloody smile.
The jagged stump of a broken sword protruded through his back, three fingers had been sheared from his hand, and his proud chest was violently caved in.
“Teacher, farewell!”
The words were soundless, but as Wu Li’s lips parted, Chen Changsheng read the quiet finality in his movements.
With his final parting delivered, an unparalleled divine might erupted from Wu Li’s battered frame.
“You desire my Heaven’s Mandate? I refuse to yield it. If you have the courage, come and rip it from my corpse!”
An illusory manifestation of the Road to Heaven materialized above Wu Li’s crown.
Wu Li clenched both hands and, with a guttural roar, violently tore the Road to Heaven into two ragged pieces.
The larger segment was hurled deep into the consuming darkness, while the shorter half was cast directly toward Chen Changsheng.
As the fragmented Heaven’s Mandate flew, countless ancient and terrifying presences manifested, scrambling to seize the ultimate prize. Yet, these entities were entirely shrouded in blinding radiance, their true forms concealed from mortal eyes.
While the majority of these cosmic predators swarmed the larger fragment, a select few locked their predatory gazes upon Chen Changsheng.
Hum!
A colossal hand reached out from the void, intent on crushing Chen Changsheng and claiming his portion of the Heaven’s Mandate in one fell swoop.
Facing this overwhelming manifestation of power, Chen Changsheng simply threw a punch.
Boom!
His unparalleled fist aura shattered the construct of the giant hand, but the immense shockwave sent Chen Changsheng tumbling backward, hot blood spraying from his lips.
“Hmph!”
“The meager light of a firefly dares to compete with the glorious moon!”
A cold snort echoed from the depths of the void. Two figures cloaked in swirling black mist descended, personally moving to extinguish Chen Changsheng’s life.
Seeing this terrifying descent, Chen Changsheng steadied his breathing, preparing to burn his life essence in a final stand.
But a woman dressed in robes white as mountain snow stepped in front of him. Seeing that deeply familiar silhouette, Chen Changsheng couldn’t help but smile.
“Brother Changsheng, this time, it is my turn to protect you.”
Her gentle voice drifted into his ears right before Li Niansheng surged forward, engaging the two shadowy executioners in a ferocious clash of Dao arts.
“Trying to flee?”
“It is not so simple. Surrender the Heaven’s Mandate!”
An even more ancient and terrifying voice reverberated through the space. Yet this time, before these almighty entities could fully emerge from the darkness, a single fist hammered them back into the void.
“Junior, your fist is still far too weak!”
“You lack the necessary accumulation of the Dao. One day, your strikes will shatter heavens that mine cannot.”
“Today, I gift you a Fated Chance.”
As the tyrannical voice fell, a solitary figure charged headlong into the abyss, his sheer presence causing the fabric of space to violently shudder.
Swish!
Two streaks of spiritual light shot out toward Chen Changsheng. He raised a hand, smoothly plucking them from the air.
The treasures were a heavy, ancient heart-protecting mirror and a vicious, blood-stained long spear.
It was blatantly obvious that these supreme artifacts had just been violently ripped from the hands of their previous masters.
“Hundred Defeats Immortal Venerable, you are courting death!”
An apocalyptic roar of genuine, unadulterated fury tore through the encompassing gloom.
“Hmph!”
“If you desire my life, come and see if your bones are hard enough to take it!”
The Hundred Defeats Immortal Venerable scoffed coldly. Immediately, shockwaves of an even more cataclysmic struggle erupted from the unseen battlefield.
Realizing the collapsing stability of the realm, Li Niansheng abruptly forced Chen Changsheng into his heavy stone coffin, slamming her palm against the lid to launch it far away from the cosmic slaughter.
In the split second before the stone lid sealed shut, Chen Changsheng witnessed Wu Li leading a vanguard of remaining loyalists, plunging their broken bodies headfirst into the devouring dark.
Simultaneously, the largest fragment of the shattered Heaven’s Mandate violently splintered into three distinct slivers.
One shard was swallowed by the void, another was seized by Zhang Bairen, and the final gleaming piece fell into the grasp of Fu Yao.
Staring across the breaking expanse at Chen Changsheng, Zhang Bairen mouthed a silent promise.
Amidst the deafening roar of collapsing space, the words were clear.
“Brother Chen, we shall reunite soon.”
Leaving those words behind, Zhang Bairen faded into the collapsing ether.
Nearby, Fu Yao locked eyes with him, her lips forming a resolute vow.
“Our pact remains unbroken.”
The absolute darkness of the stone coffin finally swallowed him whole as Li Niansheng’s strike sent his makeshift vessel plummeting from the heavens, hurtling toward the mortal realm below.
……
The Lower Realm.
The unbroken azure sky suddenly tore open like a massive wound, weeping a torrent of burning meteors.
The ancient, stagnant earth convulsed in violent tremors as long-lost Grotto-Heavens and sealed immortal lands forcibly breached the fabric of reality, anchoring themselves to the mortal plane.
The very boundaries of the mortal world were violently expanding.
Regions of space that had been folded away by ancient powers were finally unfurling, bleeding vast, untamed wilderness back into existence.
Every mortal cultivator prostrated themselves, shivering like insects before the overwhelming majesty of heaven’s wrath. Amidst the chaos, none noticed a single, dull meteor quietly crashing deep within the borders of the Western Continent.
……
Boom!
The heavy stone coffin slammed into the peak of a desolate, rocky mountain. This was a dead land; no intelligent life stirred for hundreds of miles in any direction.
The impact echoed in utter isolation, burying the heavenly vessel in a cloud of mortal dust.
“Bloody hell!”
“My ears are ringing like temple bells!”
White Marsh bounded out from the depths of the coffin, violently shaking his head to clear the dizziness. Meanwhile, Chen Changsheng remained perfectly still inside the stony interior.
He didn’t circulate his Qi to mend his broken meridians, nor did he rage about rushing back to exact vengeance.
Staring down at the disturbingly quiet man, White Marsh barked, “Get up! It’s just a temporary setback. Why are you laying there like a corpse waiting to rot?”
“We lost this round, so what? We cultivate, we scheme, and we slaughter our way back up next time!”
“With enough time, we’ll grind their bones to dust!”
Chen Changsheng didn’t move. He just stared up at the unfamiliar, expanding sky, his eyes reflecting the emptiness of a man who had dug too many graves.
“I know we can kill them eventually,” he whispered. “But what then?”
“The blood has already seeped into the soil. Butchering the heavens won’t breathe life back into the dead.”
The beast’s fur bristled with unease. In all their years, he had never seen the Eternal Undertaker look so fundamentally hollow.
“If you were so terrified of losing them, why didn’t you stop them from charging into the abyss?” White Marsh demanded.
“A single word from you, and Wu Li would have stayed his hand! They would have listened!”
“By what right could I chain them?” Chen Changsheng replied softly. “They are absolute paragons of their era. They walk their own Dao.”
“To clip their wings and cage them like fragile finches just to spare myself the grief of burying them? I, Chen Changsheng, could never stomach such selfishness.”
“Then you need to become ruthless enough to crush the heavens!” White Marsh snapped.
“Once you stand at the true pinnacle, the people standing behind you won’t have to bleed out in the dirt!”
Looking at the agitated spiritual beast, a tired, slightly sardonic smile finally graced Chen Changsheng’s lips.
“Calm your fur. My Dao Heart hasn’t crumbled; I merely desire some silence.”
“I’ve just watched another generation of old friends march into the grinder. Are you seriously going to deny me a moment to properly grieve?”
“I am still a man, not a slab of unfeeling jade.”
“Besides, those ancient bastards just gang-beat my disciple. Don’t I need a moment to carefully scheme how to dig their graves and bury them alive?”
Hearing the familiar, calculating coldness return to his tone, White Marsh audibly let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Cultivation was the pursuit of the mind before the tempering of the flesh. If a cultivator’s Dao Heart shattered, they were nothing more than a walking corpse.
Sigh…
Exhaling deeply, Chen Changsheng finally hauled himself upright, sitting on the edge of the heavy sarcophagus.
“The weight of the years is suddenly heavy today. I need to walk alone for a while. Go roam the mortal world on your own.”
White Marsh shifted his paws uneasily. “How long do you intend to wander in the dirt?”
“A century or two. Rushing blindly back up there right now achieves nothing.”
“Wu Li rejected the Heaven’s Mandate, scattering it. A new bearer of the Mandate will inevitably rise from the chaos of this merging world.”
“If my intuition holds true, it will either be Fu Yao or Zhang Bairen. Once they claw their way to the top…”
“I will have a very thorough conversation with them.”
“And how am I supposed to find you when the time comes?”
“You won’t have to. When the board is set, I will find you.”
Assured that his companion was merely resting his blade and not abandoning the Dao entirely, White Marsh bounded off into the wilderness, glancing back over his shoulder every few paces.
Alone on the barren peak, Chen Changsheng rubbed the dust from his face and murmured, “This heaven-defying cultivation world is a truly exhausting, detestable place. The stink of the mortal realm suits my bones far better.”
With a flick of his wrist, the massive stone coffin vanished into his spatial ring. Picking a random direction, the Eternal Undertaker stepped off the precipice, vanishing into the sprawling, untamed mountains of the lower world.
……