Chapter 1038: Thorny

Chapter 1038: Chapter 1038: Thorny

Here is the translation of the provided text:

The will of one realm, the will of the universe, the tribulations of cultivators, ubiquitous evil spirits... there are close and extremely complex connections among them!

Like the will of the Primordial Realm, or rather the "Heavens" of the Primordial Realm, it is formed by the thoughts of all things in the world. These so-called all things are not only human cultivators, demons, and monsters, but also include all mortals, all sentient beings, as well as flowers, trees, microorganisms, even rivers, seas, mountains, land, wind, rain, thunder, and all worldly matters.

Creatures living in this world need to eat, drink, defecate, and reproduce to grow stronger, so do all beings.

Weeds crave sunlight and rain, hoping to grow strong; microorganisms need nutrients and energy, hoping to spread colonies across the world; even sand, rainwater, rivers, mountains, earth, sea, clouds, breeze, etc., each with their own unique thoughts, albeit not as intense or evident as living creatures!

All things constitute the entire world.

The thoughts of all things, gathered bit by bit, form the will of heaven and earth, the heavens of this world!

And the will of the universe combines the will of the Universal Realm and the wills of countless lower realms.

Dead things like mountains and earth, while their thoughts are incredibly weak, are the largest in number, and form the main body of a world, thus dominating the will of heaven and earth; living creatures pursuing the Immortal Path, whether human cultivators or demons and monsters, account for less than one in ten million of all things, thus their influence on the will of heaven and earth is extremely weak. Because of this, the heavens of a realm appear vast and profound, eternal and silent, their existence form unlike beings like humans, flying birds, running beasts, and artifact spirits, which are filled with spirituality.

However, the will of the universe is different. Over countless years, numerous True Immortals and cultivators of immortal paths who have trained in techniques like the Selfless Sutra have merged their bodies with the Dao, exerting an unavoidable influence!

Cultivators who pursue the Immortal Path inherently harm all other things and this world, such as absorbing nature’s spiritual energy, mining for metal ores, picking spiritual medicine, and even at certain levels of cultivation, they can easily destroy mountains and seas, and fragment continents.

Thus, this contravenes the will of all things, so the will of heaven and earth, the heavens, will spawn tribulations to limit the number and cultivation of cultivators!

When strong beings undergo tribulations, when those with heaven-defying talents are born, when trying to destroy the heavens and earth, the heavens will send down terrifying disasters, usually when cultivators above the Divine Bridge are cultivating, they periodically face the Three Disasters and Six Tribulations to prevent them from causing destructive damage to the world and all things within it.

Meanwhile, the universe needs the presence of divine beings and Heavenly Immortals to resist the leftover evil of the old era, so the world never faces tribulations of certain death; life is always hidden within the tribulations!

The emergence of evil spirits is also connected to the will of heaven and earth of one realm.

Lower realms like the Primordial Realm can never be "eternally unwithering" like the Universal Realm.

When the whole world starts to wither, decay, and sink, all things will explode with strong and similar thoughts: fear, reluctance, resentment, curse, struggle, resistance, survival... Then, the heavens, the will of heaven and earth, which are usually indifferent and unemotional, start to distort and deform.

This withering world will eventually fall into the Death Ghost Realm, but the distorted will of heaven and earth can escape, thereafter drifting through the universe like ghosts with residual resentment.

Upon finding a suitable host, they become a form of evil spirit!

In essence, evil spirits are actually a part of the will of heaven and earth, but unlike normal will, they are already twisted, deformed, and disintegrated.

Therefore, evil spirits are not bound by law, nor held by Dao.

Their existence level corresponds to the highest True Immortal, Heavenly Immortal, capable of descending to the Immortal Realm even when it is isolated from the lower realms, indescribably eerie and terrifying, ordinary means are insufficient to destroy them!

Over countless thousands of years, accumulated day by day, the Universal Realm has collected quite a few evil spirits.

The Five Dragon Mountain wherein the Red Flame Sect resides has the same grand and vast scale as the Primordial Realm, naturally attracting many evil spirits; but overall, besides special occasions like Dungeon of Immortal Mansions, other places in the Immortal Realm have far fewer evil spirits compared to the Primordial Realm, Cancering Realm, and other withering worlds.

So far, in the Five Dragon Mountain, only roughly seventeen evil spirits of various sizes exist compared to the expansive area of the Immortal Mountain. All have been converted into Forbidden Areas by the Red Flame Sect, and gradually these evil spirits will descend to other places, while new evil spirits arrive.

However, Shen Mo never anticipated that despite Five Dragon Mountain’s vast domain, a freshly descended evil spirit emerged directly at the outer mountain gate of the Red Flame Sect!

The Body Tempering Realm disciples mostly cultivate in the inner mountain gate within the Green Cloud Cave, while half of the sect cultivators at the Qi Gathering Realm or above reside at the outer mountain gate. This evil spirit arrived silently, causing about half of these disciples to unknowingly fall within the evil spirit’s sphere.

After a rough count, approximately five Divine Bridge experts, 132 Golden Core experts, over seven hundred Spirit Sea cultivators, 12,000 Qi Gathering cultivators, and more than a hundred Body Tempering disciples are trapped in this evil spirit.

If they all perish, the Red Flame Sect will surely suffer crippling losses, its growing momentum interrupted, requiring at least a hundred years to recover.

Moreover, Deputy Sect Master Ming Cang, Milky Way Peak Master Jiang Lingfeng and her disciple Fan Ying, Moon Extension’s Peak Master Feng Wushuang, Ghost Corpse Peak’s Thunder Corpse Master, Evil Punishing Hall’s Lu Ming, Zhao Lingyin’s Master Wu Gong are among them. Shen Mo cannot leave them to a certain death!

Yet how to rescue them is the crucial problem.

Shen Mo, throughout his cultivation journey, has encountered numerous evil spirits: the unknown spirits from Dragon Fall Abyss, the Suspended Fairy Mountain and Heaven Patrolling Tower Boat House evil spirits from Immortal Burial Sea, the longevity flesh spirits from Immortal Mansion Dungeon’s ancient battlefield of immortals and demons at Jade Flower Sect relic site, the Thirteen Immortals Preaching evil spirit and Artificial Realm spirits from Immortal Mansion Dungeon and Hybrid Immortal Domain, and the unknown spirits encountered when returning to the mountain gate recently, etc.!

Although these evil spirits are residual resentments of the withering worlds, their manifestations after descending are bizarre and diverse – some extremely dangerous that even True Immortals might perish if caught within, some relatively safe and manageable with remedies, some could be directly subdued and eliminated by immortal techniques, while some are intractable even for True Immortals...

As Shen Mo pondered over this, just nearby from the outer mountain gate, at the Jinlu River Water Mansion, Cao Ren, at Cold Jade Grotto, Chen Mengze, at Fairy Flower Ridge, Big Moro Yao, and several Divine Bridge cultivators from Heaven Patrolling Temple and Torch Dragon Mountain Range’s factions all arrived quickly.