All the streams of light that had previously rushed to Solitary Peak returned toward the various peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect.
In the end, the young cultivator in white said nothing more and was carried away by a streak of sword light.
Wang Li remained standing at the cliff's edge. Quietly watching those streams of light and the peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect, he seemed to feel the chill within the faintly cold mountain wind gradually gathering upon his face.
The lines of his face hardened in the night.
He was a disciple of the Profound Heaven Sect.
When he had first been brought into the Profound Heaven Sect to cultivate, he had cultivated among those peaks just like the other newly initiated disciples.
Like many new disciples accepted by the sects of Lesser Jade Continent in those years, his birthplace had been Eastern Extremity Continent.
Eastern Extremity Continent lay farther east beyond Lesser Jade Continent.
But Eastern Extremity Continent no longer existed.
It had been destroyed in the Chaos Tide.
For countless years, all manner of living beings had fought over better places to survive, while cultivators had gradually occupied the continents rich in spiritual energy.
As certain powerful sects rose above the rest, their enemies were crushed until they could no longer survive in those spiritually abundant continents, forcing them to flee into regions where survival was far more difficult.
Gradually, the spiritually abundant continents occupied by sects sheltered by supreme sects or ruled by the Dao laws they laid down became as clearly divided from the harsh continents as the Wei and Jing Rivers.
Among those harsh regions without absolute order, most places with passable spiritual energy were called the Chaos Lands. Some regions, however, possessed almost no spiritual energy of heaven and earth and were even filled with spiritual toxins harmful to cultivators; cultivators who remained there for too long could not even retain their original cultivation realm. Such places were called the Desperate Lands—dead lands where even one's former realm would be cut off.
The cultivators who hid in the Chaos Lands, or were forced to cultivate there, and were called rogue cultivators or devil cultivators, had originally been the losers in the law-of-the-jungle struggle of countless years past.
These people bore an instinctive hostility toward every sect occupying spiritually abundant continents. The descendants they multiplied in the Chaos Lands and the sects they established naturally became enemies of those continents.
The cultivators of these Chaos Lands simply could not contend head-on with the powerful sects of the Central Divine Continent. It was nearly impossible for them to crush the strongest sects and replace them.
Yet their assassinations and plundering raids, infiltrating the spiritually abundant continents in scattered groups, had never ceased.
Likewise, in order to resist enemies from the Chaos Lands, the immortal sects of every continent would send large numbers of cultivators into those Chaos Lands to purge the rogue cultivators and devil cultivators.
Cultivators from these Chaos Domains were often at an absolute disadvantage, but inevitably, some extraordinary figures would emerge through unusual encounters. At times, cultivators from the Chaos Domains would also strike simultaneously across many regions, carrying out retaliatory massacres and plundering.
Such a time was called a Chaos Tide.
When facing such a Chaos Tide, the powerful sects of the Central Divine Continent would take the lead, and the immortal sects of every continent would immediately organize a fierce counterattack.
The allied forces of the immortal sects from every continent would all strike back into the chaotic continents and conduct another round of purges.
Then the forces within these Chaos Domains would be grievously weakened. The Chaos Domains would become even more disorderly, and for many years afterward, they would lie dormant amid even deeper hatred, gathering strength and awaiting the next Chaos Tide.
Wang Li could actually understand the slaughter born of contested rights to survival and ancient blood feuds.
The powerful sects of the Central Divine Continent and several continents surrounding it summoned countless sects to attack the Chaos Domains in order to preserve their own status and eliminate the threats there as thoroughly as possible. Naturally, he supported that.
Because Eastern Extremity Continent, where he had lived, had suffered the massacre of the Chaos Domains' allied forces until it completely lost order and became a Chaos Domain itself.
Since the conflict was irreconcilable, he, caught within it, wholeheartedly approved of revenge.
But what he could not accept was the sacrifice others were made to pay after those supreme sects had gained sufficient benefits.
For many years in the past, before that Chaos Tide, cultivators from many sects in continents bordering the Chaos Lands had already been fighting ceaselessly against the enemies within the Chaos Lands.
The Profound Heaven Sect had been one such force.
Or rather, the Profound Heaven Sect of the past.
Generation after generation, the Profound Heaven Sect had sent no small number of cultivators into the Chaos Domains to temper themselves. Many had even been stationed in continents eroded by chaotic forces. Some had fought in the Chaos Lands for more than a century and never returned to the Profound Heaven Sect.
But they had always been disciples of the Profound Heaven Sect, and they had always remained in contact with it through various channels.
Cultivation resources would regularly be sent back from those places, and many deeds would be recorded in the Profound Heaven Sect's archives for later generations of cultivators to admire.
Many cultivators of the Profound Heaven Sect would also yearn for those tales, resolving to become people like those predecessors. Even if they died in the continents controlled by chaotic forces, like so many predecessors of the Profound Heaven Sect, they would surely have considered it worthwhile.
Because to them, the Profound Heaven Sect was both their sect and their home.
To protect their home, win better rights to survival for it, and inspire later generations to become people like themselves—even if their bodies perished and their Dao vanished, they would never hesitate.
His senior sister, Lü Shenliang, was one of the Profound Heaven Sect cultivators inspired by those predecessors and determined to become one of them.
If nothing unexpected had happened, Lü Shenliang would also have entered the Chaos Domains and perhaps never returned.
If that had happened, he would never have met Lü Shenliang.
Yet something unexpected had happened.
Different sects offered different interpretations of those events, and different people held different views.
But to him and Lü Shenliang, the fact was that those supreme sects had used the campaign against the Chaos Domains to redraw their respective spheres of influence. In the end, three supreme cultivators emerged: the Three Sages who now governed the immortal sects of every continent.
All sects that acted according to the rules established by the Three Sages—the Three Sages' Dao Precepts—were considered orthodox immortal sects under the Three Sages.
The immortal sects of every continent were rewarded according to their merits, and corresponding sect territories were apportioned based on their contributions during the campaign against the Chaos Domains.
Was that fair?
For some sects, it was very fair.
But for the Profound Heaven Sect, in Lü Shenliang's eyes and his own, it was naturally unfair.
Near the end of that Chaos Tide, during the campaign against the Chaos Domains, a group of Profound Heaven Sect cultivators were completely wiped out in the chaotic continents for defying orders.
According to later records, the campaign had already achieved a sweeping victory. The Three Sages believed there was no longer any need for the sects to continue their frenzied slaughter. In the continent where those Profound Heaven Sect cultivators had been stationed, the rogue cultivator sects had already chosen to surrender, so the war could end. Yet that group of Profound Heaven Sect cultivators had defied orders and refused to stop fighting.
But was that truly the case?
According to what Lü Shenliang had known at the time, it was not!
She did not know how the battles in the other Chaos Domains had unfolded, but according to the messages continuously sent back by that group of Profound Heaven Sect cultivators, the cultivators of the so-called orthodox immortal sects fighting in their Chaos Domain had not held an overwhelming advantage.
Moreover, the later ceasefire had been brought about for reasons they did not know at all. The Three Sages and the rulers of those Chaos Domains seemed to have reached some sort of transaction or agreement.
It was not mercy after complete victory, after determining that no threat remained. It was a peace negotiation founded upon an exchange of conditions shrouded in secrecy.
Even continents that had previously been lost, such as Eastern Extremity Continent, had not been brought back under absolute control. How could that campaign possibly be called a sweeping victory?
What was more, under the circumstances at the time, many cultivators from various sects would be placed in extreme danger if they obeyed the order to withdraw. Many who had ventured deep into the Chaos Lands would not have had time to retreat.
Yet as long as the Central Divine Continent ruled by the Three Sages and the more than seventy surrounding continents could remain stable, as long as they could continue occupying the finest cultivation resources, such a peace negotiation seemed indeed acceptable to the Three Sages.
It seemed they were using others' blood to force the Chaos Lands to acknowledge the Three Sages' status.
So that group of Profound Heaven Sect cultivators could not accept it.
"How many of us have died here?"
"You want us to fight, so we fight. You want us to stop, so we stop?"
"You want us to stop, go back, and accept this so-called reward? Can you bring those who died here back to life?"
"I refuse."
One evening, with the setting sun like blood, the leading cultivator of the Profound Heaven Sect calmly refused the order to cease fighting, refused that peace negotiation, and chose to continue fighting.
Then they were erased within the chaotic continents.
Wang Li later even felt that those Profound Heaven Sect cultivators had suffered a joint assault from the forces of the Three Sages and the forces of the Chaos Lands.
News of those Profound Heaven Sect cultivators defying orders returned to the Profound Heaven Sect.
Lü Shenliang had believed that the entire Profound Heaven Sect would make the same choice they had.
But she had been wrong.
The Profound Heaven Sect silently accepted that outcome.
The Profound Heaven Sect chose obedience.
The Profound Heaven Sect became one of the Seventy-two Immortal Sects of Lesser Jade Continent.
At the time, she had only been a sixth-layer Foundation Establishment cultivator.
Because she possessed an immortal spirit root, she had been assigned the finest elite cave dwelling for cultivation in the Profound Heaven Sect. She was on Tongxuan Peak, separated from Hezhen Peak, where the Sect Master and elders of the Profound Heaven Sect resided, by only one peak.
It was said that at the instant she heard of the Profound Heaven Sect's decision, her furious voice rang out across Tongxuan Peak and spread throughout all of Hezhen Peak!
"I refuse to accept this!"
Several elders of the Profound Heaven Sect restrained her and forced her into secluded cultivation.
Several years later, when she crossed her Foundation Establishment tribulation and advanced to the Golden Core realm, an accident occurred.
She was abandoned on Solitary Peak.
She was forbidden from entering any of the Profound Heaven Sect's other peaks.
That same year, Wang Li, at the first layer of Qi Refinement, silently packed his belongings and entered Solitary Peak.
And from then on, Solitary Peak became the home of him and his senior sister, Lü Shenliang.
To Lü Shenliang, the Profound Heaven Sect was her sect and her home.
The same was true for Wang Li.
They had not betrayed the Profound Heaven Sect.
But to him and Lü Shenliang, the Thirty-One Peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect not far away, flashing with multicolored spiritual light through the night and still appearing bustling beyond measure, were no longer their home.
Though he and the people who had come to Solitary Peak today, including those now within the Profound Heaven Sect's Thirty-One Peaks, were close enough to be within arm's reach, their hearts were already separated by the ends of the earth.
The place he silently gazed upon now was where he had once stayed, and where he and those true cultivators of the Profound Heaven Sect had wished to protect.
But now, that place was no longer the Profound Heaven Sect.
The people on those Thirty-One Peaks were the ones who had betrayed the Profound Heaven Sect.
This Solitary Peak was the true Profound Heaven Sect.
He and his senior sister were the true Profound Heaven Sect.
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