The Motian Sect's Small World, Enslaved for Eternity!
Another twenty years passed.
A streak of white light fell from the sky, striking the ruins of the former Yan Kingdom Royal City squarely.
When the white light faded, a youth in white robes climbed to his feet, dusted off the front of his robes, and looked around, his eyes full of excitement and curiosity.
"Is this the Heavenly Human Realm?"
He took a deep breath.
The lingering smell of smoke and battle in the air,
the chill of departed souls that had yet to disperse,
and the faint resentment pervading the entire continent
all made him narrow his eyes in rapture. "As expected of a small world specially transformed by the sect! This concentration, this purity—it's a grotto-heaven blessed land tailor-made for the Heavenly Thief of Weapon Refining!"
He sat down cross-legged, formed seals with both hands, and chanted under his breath.
The Motian Sect's divine ability, the Heavenly Thief of Weapon Refining, sprang into action with a fierce surge.
A ring of dark red light flared around the white-robed youth.
At first, the light was only the size of a palm, but as he activated the incantation, it spread rapidly, ultimately becoming a gigantic vortex covering a hundred li in every direction.
The vortex turned slowly. The power of war, the power of departed souls, the power of mortal life, the power of everyone under heaven's fates, and the remnants of each nation's fortune, accumulated over hundreds of years in the Heavenly Human Realm, poured madly into his body like a hundred rivers rushing into the sea.
As the vast energy flooded into him, the white-robed youth's aura rose steadily, and an almost intoxicated expression appeared on his face.
As he sensed it, the souls of this world could neither escape nor enter the cycle of reincarnation.
There were no Six Paths of Reincarnation here, no Underworld. When people died, they were simply dead.
Their souls were trapped between heaven and earth, slowly dispersing into the most primordial spiritual energy, which the land absorbed anew, turning it into fuel for the next round of warfare.
And those newly born souls were not truly "newborn," either.
The Motian Sect periodically cast soul seeds into the Heavenly Human Realm. From the moment they were born, those seeds were destined to spend their lives at war, turn into spiritual energy after death, and help Motian Sect disciples cultivate divine abilities.
They were not people, merely crops that looked like people, planted crop after crop and harvested crop after crop, without end.
"This cultivation speed is incredible!" The white-robed youth threw back his head and laughed, his hands flying through incantation seals as his refining speed increased another thirty percent.
He was merely a true disciple at the Qi Refining stage in the Motian Sect, but in this small world transformed by the sect, he was a god.
Far away, a barefoot figure carrying a sword slowly appeared at the edge of the sky.
The man walked at an unhurried pace, each step steady as he tread over scorched black soil and among the broken stones and rubble of the Yan Kingdom Royal City ruins.
The wooden sword was still the same wooden sword, a child's toy with an edge too dull to cut paper, and the character "courage" carved crookedly into its hilt.
He had waited for this day
for far too long.
Elsewhere, the white-robed youth sat cross-legged in the air, forming seals with both hands as the dark red vortex around him spun faster and faster.
His eyes were closed, and the corners of his mouth curved slightly upward with a trace of condescending pity.
He pitied the countless living beings of this world, who lived and died, died and were born again, yet never knew they were merely crops in someone else's field.
And the essence of the Heavenly Thief of Weapon Refining slowly unfolded in his sea of consciousness.
Weapon refining meant refining oneself into a weapon.
How was a weapon refined? It had to be burned in the fiercest fire, quenched in the coldest water, and subjected to a thousand hammer blows and a hundred refinements before it could become a divine weapon.
And the Heavenly Human Realm was that furnace.
Centuries of unending warfare were the fiercest fire, and the resentment of the suffering masses left everywhere in war's wake was the coldest water.
The soul seeds cast into the Heavenly Human Realm spent every lifetime fighting and killing.
Every swing of a blade was a hammer blow,
every charge a quenching,
and every surge of grief, fury, and despair at the fall of a nation and the destruction of a home a tempering flame.
Their joys, anger, sorrows, and pleasures,
their lives and deaths, their glory and disgrace,
every one of their lives, ignited and then extinguished by war,
were all hammer marks forged into this "weapon."
And today, he had come to harvest it.
He spread his arms, and the dark red vortex swelled abruptly, covering the sky for a thousand li in every direction.
The power of war became a crimson torrent, the power of departed souls became a gray-white wave of cold, and the power of mortal life became a pale yellow warmth.
Fragments of the nations' fortunes flickered in the vortex like shattered stars.
These powers he absorbed were the "essence" of every war fought in the Heavenly Human Realm over hundreds of years.
At this moment, all of it was refined into nourishment for the Heavenly Thief of Weapon Refining.
A metallic sheen appeared on his skin, and his bones gave off a faint metallic ringing.
His entire body was growing hard and indestructible at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Yet the people of the Heavenly Human Realm could not perceive any of it.
As they saw it, warfare was the normal state of the world, and the loss of fortune was merely the natural course of a nation's decline.
For tens of thousands of years, no one had discovered the invisible hand behind this endless war.
Unless someone could break through the limits of the Heavenly Human Realm, break through the shackle above the Heaven-Human Realm, and touch the true highest-level rules of this world.
But the Heavenly Human Realm had been transformed by the Motian Sect, and the soul seeds' upper limit had been locked in place from birth. No matter how brilliant a genius was, they could not cross that predetermined ceiling.
Unless they clung to life like the Yan Emperor and accumulated strength over countless generations.
So no one could discover him. No one had in the past, and no one ever would.
The white-robed youth closed his eyes, reassured, and began refining at a faster pace.
Hidden above the clouds, Chen Du heard every word the white-robed youth muttered to himself.
The youth sat cross-legged in the air, forming seals with both hands as the dark red vortex churned around him without end.
The power of war, the power of departed souls, the power of mortal life, and the remaining fragments of the nations' fortunes flowed into every part of his body like a hundred rivers rushing into the sea.
A dull metallic sheen spread across his skin, and his bones gave off a faint metallic ringing.
During all this, however, the white-robed youth had not been entirely off guard.
Between bouts of absorbing fortune, he casually seized a passing mortal from below, clamped five fingers around the top of the man's head, and forcibly poured the Soul-Searching Technique into him.
The mortal convulsed violently in his grasp for several breaths before he casually tossed him down. The man hit the ground and breathed his last.
If one was not enough,
then ten.
If ten were not enough, then a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand.
As he absorbed fortune, he searched soul after soul, piecing together fragments of memories from hundreds of years on this land.
The Zhao Kingdom, the Yan Kingdom, Ning State, the Blade Saint, the Martial God, the Three Great Heaven-Humans... every name surfaced in turn under his Soul-Searching Technique.
The more he searched, the more reassured he became, and the more certain he grew.
"The Heaven-Human Realm?" The white-robed youth sneered. "Nothing but ants."
To him, even those at the Heaven-Human Realm, the strongest in this world, were merely lackeys he could wipe out with a flick of his finger.
The only thing that drew a little of his attention was a name that appeared repeatedly in the fragments of searched souls: the Immortal of Wrath.
With one sword strike, he had killed a hundred thousand; with another, he had defeated the Martial God; with another, he had broken through thirty-two layers of the mountain-protecting grand formation. In the end, he had set himself ablaze and died on the ruins of the Yan Kingdom Royal City.
The white-robed youth carefully examined the memories of dozens of people and confirmed the same fact.
The Immortal of Wrath was indeed dead. He had died forty years ago, in a momentous death known to all under heaven.
"What's there to fear from a dead man?"