Chapter 944: Heaven, Earth, and Man

"Strange?"

"Yes."

The Blind Man said, "The jianghu knows White Night reaches everywhere, but Yan Land is the exception. No matter how many operatives I send in, or how highly skilled they are, they always return empty-handed. They come back completely ignorant of what happened. I've questioned them myself, and the impression I got was..."

"...like they had been brainwashed."

Ping'an frowned. He pondered for a moment before asking, "Is that so? No matter how tight their security is, slip-ups are inevitable. For absolutely zero information to make it back... that's far too strange."

The Blind Man nodded. That was exactly what puzzled him as well.

Ping'an, however, thought of a possibility.

"Could it be the work of demons?"

"You mean a demonic sect?"

Ping'an shook his head. "I mean evil spirits and demons, not humans."

The Blind Man paused, his movements suddenly unnatural.

"It seems highly likely." Seeing his reaction, Ping'an understood.

The Blind Man nodded. "That's the only possibility I could think of, too."

Ping'an felt something was off. "Are you saying you don't have any solid evidence?"

"Correct," the Blind Man said. "There never has been."

Ping'an sighed softly. "If that's the case, this is going to be troublesome."

"It seems the Prince of Yan really is hiding a lot. If the King of Wei is truly defeated, Prince Jin will divide Weidi with him. When that happens, our Nanbeilou will be situated right in the center of the three territories, making it the perfect strategic chokepoint."

The Blind Man replied, "Nanbeilou isn't exactly a good place."

Ping'an sighed inwardly. "For men of power, it only takes a single word to decide whether it is or isn't."

The Blind Man said no more. He felt Wang Ping'an made some sense, but he still didn't believe any prince would go out of his way to deal with matters of the jianghu.

Jianghu affairs only brought trouble once provoked. Meddling in them was clearly unwise.

"We will just have to take it one step at a time."

The Blind Man couldn't help but feel that the alliance leader was worrying far too much about the future.

In his eyes, the jianghu was the jianghu, and the Imperial Court was the Imperial Court. Though the two were connected, they were like two distant, separate islands.

.

.

Squelch...

The long saber sliced through a throat, and fresh blood spurted out.

The blood-stained youth watched the slaughter in the street with cold eyes.

No one could have imagined that this youth, killing so calmly right before their eyes, was actually the useless, good-for-nothing noble scion spoken of in the rumors of Shangjing City.

Tang Shijing dragged his bloodied blade as he slowly stepped forward. He grabbed the woman's chin and forced her to look up.

"How do you like this outsider?"

The woman's eyes were filled with resentment, but even more so with humiliated fury. She sneered and spat, "Just you wait!"

Tang Shijing actually found this amusing. He trailed a hand across her cheek and nodded slightly. "Skin like creamy jade... you really are a beauty. Just a bit on the older side, hmm..."

Feeling utterly humiliated, the woman snapped, "Insolent!"

The sudden aura of authority she displayed made Tang Shijing pause.

He stopped, furrowing his brow.

What was with this woman?

He stood up and casually raised a hand. "Take this woman back. Don't let her die. Send her to my room later."

With that, he turned and left.

As he walked away, he no longer heard the woman shouting in anger.

Glancing back, he saw only a pair of eyes glaring at him with deep loathing.

Tang Shijing grew thoughtful. He had a feeling he might have just caught a very big fish.

...

Chaos had erupted in the Mortal World.

The Cultivation World was equally restless.

The cause of all this turmoil stemmed from demonic cultivators.

Demonic cultivators, who had vanished for years, reappeared. Manuals of the demonic path began surfacing across the cultivation realm, leading many astray. Although numerous cultivators promptly destroyed these texts and took precautions, the situation could not be contained. As the news spread, some people even began actively searching for these demonic manuals.

Many of these seekers were those who harbored deep resentment, or the oppressed who lacked the strength to fight back. However, a portion of them simply believed that this so-called demonic path could better aid them in reaching higher realms of power.

With the demonic path having been lost for so many years, it inevitably sparked curiosity.

But what was even more curious...

Where had these demonic manuals come from?

According to ancient records, a mighty cultivator had destroyed the foundational texts of the demonic path long ago, severing their lineage. Thus, as the years passed, demonic cultivators had gradually faded from the world.

And so, the sudden appearance of these demonic manuals was terrifying.

A single cultivation method could appear in two, or even several, identical copies.

This was truly inconceivable.

The myriad methods of the world were not lightly passed down; true dharmas were singular. A cultivation scripture needed to be tempered by thunder tribulation before it could be practiced, and there could only ever be one original copy—it could not be transcribed.

So what was happening now?

Putting aside how difficult it would be to achieve such a thing, why was the world showing no reaction at all to such brazen defiance right under its nose?

When the news reached Tianji Mountain, the great bell of the sect immediately tolled.

Several elders gathered in the pavilion to discuss the matter.

Everyone was completely clueless about this sudden development.

Ever since one of the Forty-Nine Lamps of the Heavenly Dao was extinguished, the world had suffered a continuous string of unnatural changes. First, the spirit cage was shattered, throwing the Heavenly Dao into obscurity. Now, the demonic path was sweeping across the land, and these duplicated cultivation methods were appearing everywhere.

A heavy silence fell over the crowd.

No one knew the reason why.

"Why would heaven and earth silently permit this?"

At those words, the pavilion plunged into dead silence once more.

None of the people present could understand why the world would side with the demonic cultivators.

Long sighs filled the air, but an explanation remained out of reach.

As Zhong Zhengyuan looked at the extinguished lamp on the wall, he closed his eyes. Suddenly, he felt that the events of recent years might not be the work of human hands...

Perhaps...

This was going to be a great tribulation.

The meeting ultimately concluded in a hurried, unresolved manner.

After Zhong Zhengyuan left, he went straight to the top floor of the sect's Book Pavilion to browse through the major worldly events recorded by generations of predecessors.

He seemed to be looking for traces of a great tribulation, hoping to verify his own half-formed theories.

But in truth, he was somewhat afraid of actually finding them...

If this truly was a great tribulation, they were in catastrophic trouble.

The annals of time were incredibly vast. Zhong Zhengyuan could only flip through the records page by page. He sat inside the Library Pavilion, rarely ever stepping outside.

Days turned into nights, and spring gave way to autumn...

He lost track of how many days and nights he spent reading.

He found nothing. Yet, the longer this went on, the more his heart felt at ease.

But when he turned to a certain page, he suddenly froze.

The edge of the paper sliced his finger, and a bead of fresh blood welled up.

Zhong Zhengyuan stared blankly for a moment, then looked down.

Only to see the text written on the page...

[The Golden Corpse Daoist was besieged by thousands of mighty cultivators on Qiongxian Dew Island. Plunging into the demonic path, he slaughtered everyone before his eyes and refined them into stiff corpses. Taking corpses as his vessel and demonic essence as his Qi, he ushered in a new era. Thus began the great rise of the demonic path, and the Golden Corpse Daoist metamorphosed into the Demon Sovereign, claiming the title of Demon-Summoning Divine Lord.]