Inside the Boundless Gate

The dark sky looked as though ink had been poured across it, scarlet lightning flickering amid thick clouds.

The sun and moon hung at opposite ends of the sky, yet the sun was as cold as a glacier ten thousand years old, while the moonlight was blood-red.

Within Cicada Song Pavilion, fierce winds raged amid torrential rain. Exotic flowers and rare plants withered into mud, and thousands of black shadows darted through the rooms and corridors.

The shadows trailed long tails like shooting stars, but up close, each bore a face that was part human, part beast. Some were beautiful women with a pair of fangs; others were handsome youths whose tongues stretched dozens of feet...

Bodies of disciples dressed in the robes of the Cloud Radiance Sect's Inner Sect lay strewn across the corridor benches and stone steps. Dark red stains had soaked into the courtyard soil until it changed color, blood and scattered flesh indistinguishable.

The clear stream had long since turned blood-red, burbling down the mountain.

Shen Leyan poked his head out of an empty water vat. Only after the roaming demonic shadows nearby had disappeared did he climb out quietly.

See?

I knew it! What I saw inside the Boundless Gate was bound to be a scene from the Immortal-Demon War.

Perhaps because he had expected it, he managed to remain calm for the moment when he first saw the bodies covering the ground, reminding himself that everything before him was merely an illusion.

He did his best to keep his gaze away from the bodies of the Cloud Radiance Sect disciples, afraid he might accidentally spot a familiar face—Qingli, Chen Jing... he could not afford to let that shake him.

The scene before him must have been from when the Immortal-Demon War engulfed the Cloud Radiance Sect...

The original novel had said, "All the disciples of the Cloud Radiance Sect fought the demons for ten days. Afterward, fewer than one in ten survived, and blood stained the mountains."

And... Lu Yuanyi seemed to have been consumed by Karma Fire at this time as well, dying with both body and soul destroyed.

Following his memories, he carefully skirted the bodies littering the ground and searched the rooms Lu Yuanyi frequented.

The wooden herb cabinets in Hundred Herbs Pavilion were already empty. Clearly, all the herbs had been used to treat the sect's wounded disciples.

Perhaps because there was nothing important here, the furnishings remained fairly tidy. There were no bodies or bloodstains.

The library, the stream where he fished, the bedroom...

He searched every room, avoiding all the demons passing through, but found no trace of Lu Yuanyi.

The entire Cicada Song Pavilion was deathly silent. Only the rain outside grew heavier, the damp air carrying a pungent stench of blood into his face.

Should I just find somewhere hidden in Cicada Song Pavilion and lie low for a while?

But the Boundless Gate offered an excellent opportunity to temper his mind and overcome his inner demons. Wasting it like this would be a shame.

After a moment's hesitation, Shen Leyan found a straw raincoat and bamboo hat in one of the rooms and put them on. He picked up a sword from the ground, concealed himself, and headed down the mountain from Cicada Song Pavilion...

"My lord, nearly all the Cloud Radiance Sect disciples have been executed. I've led several searches and found no survivors—the king also sent a messenger just now to ask why you haven't returned to the Demon Clan to report. What do you think...?"

On the mountain path leading to Cicada Song Pavilion, an Oil-Paper Umbrella blooming with vivid red Other Shore Flowers stood out strikingly.

Though its bearer held the umbrella open, it was not to shelter him from the rain. The fat raindrops evaporated before they could reach its surface.

Hidden in a patch of woodland, Shen Leyan held his breath and listened intently to their conversation.

To be precise, the one the Demon Clan soldier called "my lord" was clearly human—undoubtedly either a wicked cultivator or a traitor from an orthodox sect who had defected to the Demon Clan.

The "lord," his face concealed behind a bronze mask, spoke. "Lu Yuanyi isn't dead yet. How can you call that 'all executed'? Tell the messenger that within three days at most, I'll bring Lu Yuanyi's corpse back to the Demon Clan and report to the king."

His voice was shrill and effeminate, though he did not sound like a woman. Rather, he sounded like a palace eunuch.

Shen Leyan suddenly remembered—

Although the original author had shamelessly botched the ending, leaving many hints and the masterminds behind events unexplained, the identity of the person who killed Lu Yuanyi had been described in detail.

He was a disciple of the Union of Joy Sect who happened to be saved by Lu Yuanyi while gaining experience outside his sect, then came to the Cloud Radiance Sect on the pretext of repaying the favor.

With his mild temper and willingness to work without complaint, he readily agreed whenever Inner Sect disciples asked him for help, making him extremely popular within the Inner Sect.

But his true identity was the illegitimate son of the Cloud Radiance Sect's previous sect master. A thousand years earlier, he had used vicious schemes to murder several fellow disciples while vying for the right of succession. The previous sect master had subsequently destroyed his cultivation, stripped him of his status, and exiled him to the bitterly cold, desolate Northwestern Territory.

Having lost both his right of succession and his luxurious life, along with the cultivation he had taken such pride in, he naturally could not bear it and turned directly to wicked arts.

Although those arts allowed his cultivation to advance at an astonishing pace, they drastically altered his face and body, gradually turning him into a sexless freak, like a eunuch who had been castrated.

He concealed his cultivation and spent years undercover in the Union of Joy Sect, posing as an ordinary disciple. Then he found the right opportunity to engineer an encounter with Lu Yuanyi and return to the Cloud Radiance Sect, all to avenge what had happened years before.

While conspiring with demons, he gathered maps of the disciples' patrol routes and diagrams of the sect's various arrays.

Then, on the day Lu Yuanyi entered seclusion, he led tens of thousands of demons in an attack on the Cloud Radiance Sect. Caught completely unprepared, more than half its members were killed or wounded, and blood flowed in rivers.

Afterward, he prematurely broke the barrier surrounding Lu Yuanyi's seclusion and hung the heads of several Cloud Radiance Sect elders and disciples atop the mountain. This caused Lu Yuanyi to make a mistake while circulating his cultivation technique, throwing his Spiritual Power into chaos and turning him from an immortal into a demon.

After his fall, Lu Yuanyi lost most of his reason. Once he had slaughtered every demon in the Cloud Radiance Sect, he used his last shred of sanity to summon Karma Fire upon himself, dying with both body and soul destroyed.

And the instigator of all this—Bai Licheng—always wore a mask, claiming his face had been disfigured, to prevent others from discovering that he was a sexless monster who practiced wicked arts. He favored an Oil-Paper Umbrella as his magic artifact.

A mask, an Oil-Paper Umbrella... wasn't that man Bai Licheng?!

Shen Leyan ground his back teeth.

I really want to slaughter this spy right now.

But Bai Licheng had lived for over a thousand years and was a wicked cultivator whose cultivation was unfathomable. He was certainly beyond Shen Leyan's current ability to handle.

Judging from his conversation with the Demon Clan soldier, the demons had only just occupied the Cloud Radiance Sect and were still searching for survivors. Lu Yuanyi was still in seclusion and had not yet fallen.

In other words... if he found Lu Yuanyi before Bai Licheng did and explained what had happened, perhaps there was still a chance to salvage everything.

The problem was—where was Lu Yuanyi in seclusion? The original novel said the place was called "Myriad-Fathom Cliff," but had never given a precise description of its location.

And with his terrible sense of direction, finding it would be even harder.

"You're right, my lord. But... we've searched the entire Cloud Radiance Sect without finding where Lu Yuanyi is in seclusion. Do you have any leads?"

"Send more people to search. Even if you have to scour every mountain forest within the Cloud Radiance Sect, you must find where Lu Yuanyi is in seclusion! If his cultivation advances further when he emerges, how could we possibly be his match? Now is the best opportunity to take his life."

"Yes, my lord! I'll send men to continue the search immediately!"

"Mm. There may be clues inside Cicada Song Pavilion. Search it thoroughly in a moment..."

The human and the demon gradually disappeared into the distance.

Shen Leyan emerged from the woods with a conflicted expression and followed them from afar.

Bai Licheng casually kicked aside a corpse blocking the entrance to Cicada Song Pavilion. The Oil-Paper Umbrella in his hand seemed to harbor a demonic spirit, stirring at the scent of blood. The Other Shore Flowers blooming across its surface slowly unfurled a little further, becoming even more eerily alluring.

He strolled leisurely around the courtyard for a while.

"Mm... this place does feel familiar. I remember living here for quite some time when I was young."

Cold sweat poured off the Demon Clan soldier, who dared not say a word.

Everyone knew that Bai Licheng's origins were his greatest taboo.

"Lu Yuanyi may have high cultivation, but he isn't particularly skilled in arrays... even the array he set up before entering seclusion is this crude."

As Bai Licheng uttered the final word, the Oil-Paper Umbrella in his hand spun violently. Its Other Shore Flowers formed a massive phantom in the air, their sinister petals suddenly sweeping toward several points in the courtyard.

Snow-white light collided with the petals. The violent shock wave instantly hurled the Demon Clan soldier backward, caving in his chest. Moments later, he stopped breathing.

Shen Leyan was far enough away to suffer little effect, but the sight still gave him a fright.

As the white light faded, a Teleportation Array rich with Spiritual Power appeared in the center of the courtyard.

Apparently unconcerned whether the Demon Clan soldier lived or died, Bai Licheng stepped slowly into the Teleportation Array with a mocking smile on his lips, holding his Oil-Paper Umbrella.

Shen Leyan waited outside Cicada Song Pavilion for a while, then followed him into the array.

It turned out that Myriad-Fathom Cliff was not an actual cliff, but a world contained within a magic artifact.

Perhaps because Lu Yuanyi possessed an ice spiritual root, Myriad-Fathom Cliff was an endless expanse of snowy mountains. Everywhere he looked, there was nothing but white.

Amid the raging north wind, the flying snow was as sharp as knives. A slightly stronger gust seemed capable of blowing a person clean away. Snow sliced across his face with an icy sting.

The snowy peaks stretched on and on, the tallest seeming to pierce the clouds. Truly, "the clustered peaks stood less than a foot from heaven."

Shen Leyan looked down at his thin summer clothes and silently pulled them tighter around himself. Fortunately, the jade peace pendant hanging at his neck still radiated a little warmth, which spread through his meridians into his limbs and body, driving away some of the chill.

Though he was inside an illusion in the Boundless Gate, everything here felt no different from reality.

After spending long enough here, one really could become confused about whether this was illusion or reality.

Bai Licheng was already nowhere to be seen. He had probably flown above the snowy mountains to search each one for the precise location of Lu Yuanyi's seclusion.

Shivering, Shen Leyan found somewhere sheltered from the wind and snow.

He still could not use Sword Flight. If he had to search these endless snowy mountains on foot, Lu Yuanyi would have fallen into demonhood eight hundred times over while he was still here, frozen into a ridiculous statue.

But his greatest advantage over Bai Licheng was that he understood Lu Yuanyi's temperament better.

Given his personality, coming here for seclusion was already a nuisance. He probably could not be bothered to fly around looking for somewhere deep in the snowy mountains.

Most likely, he had secluded himself in a nearby cave.

At that thought, Shen Leyan's anxiety eased a little. He found a fairly thick branch to use as a hiking staff and began carefully searching this snowy mountain.

Meanwhile, seated on his Oil-Paper Umbrella, Bai Licheng had already swept past hundreds of peaks.

Unfortunately, covered in heavy snow, all the peaks looked much alike. Lu Yuanyi's spiritual power was too closely attuned to this place for Bai Licheng to identify his place of seclusion anytime soon.

Bai Licheng's expression darkened. As though sensing its master's displeasure, the other shore flowers on the Oil-Paper Umbrella suddenly blasted a beam of red light downward, reducing a mountaintop to dust in an instant.

Far away, Shen Leyan heard a faint disturbance. He gathered his energy to lighten his body, climbed to the top of a pine tree, and gazed into the distance.

Snow surged down a mountain fifty kilometers away like a flood. It seemed to be... an avalanche?

[ (⊙o⊙)]

Looks like Bai Licheng can't find him and is throwing a useless tantrum out there.

He'd never imagine that Lu Yuanyi chose somewhere near the Teleportation Array for his seclusion.

He quietly enjoyed a moment of delight, then rallied his spirits and continued searching this mountain...

After searching for about four hours and covering more than half the mountain, he finally spotted what looked like a cave entrance on a sheer cliff, hidden among icicles and drifting snow.

More importantly, when he tried to climb the cliff, the moment his hand touched the rock, a crystalline sword brimming with icy frost flew out of the cliff and swept a streak of sword light toward him—it was Lu Yuanyi's Jiangxue Sword!

Overjoyed, Shen Leyan ignored the sword light and first spread his arms toward the Jiangxue Sword as though offering a hug.

"Jiangxue Sword—Sword Spirit—it's me—I've had such a hard time finding you—"

The Jiangxue Sword: "..."

The Jiangxue Sword clearly froze for a moment, then hurried over to block the sword light it had unleashed.

It wrote in the air, "My master is in seclusion. Why are you here?"

Shen Leyan spoke and gestured at once. "It's a long story... anyway, the Cloud Radiance Sect suffered a surprise attack by demons and sustained heavy casualties. Bai Licheng is a spy conspiring with the demons. He wants to interfere with Sect Master Lu's cultivation while he's in seclusion and make him suffer cultivation deviation. Bai Licheng is already here, flying all over the place looking for where Sect Master Lu is secluded!"

Having finished, he had no time to worry about whether the Jiangxue Sword understood and urgently asked,

"Can you let me in and wake Sect Master Lu?"

The Jiangxue Sword seemed hesitant.

"Seclusion is a serious matter. If it's ended midway, all his previous efforts may be wasted."

"That's still better than having Bai Licheng forcibly interrupt him with a spell!!!"

The Jiangxue Sword nodded, and an opening appeared in the defensive array around the cave.

Shen Leyan thought for a moment, then added a warning. "If Sect Master Lu hasn't woken up and you see Bai Licheng coming, use whatever means you can, and don't listen to any of his honeyed words. Whatever happens, you must stop him. Don't let him in!"

The Jiangxue Sword solemnly replied, "Rest assured."

He hurried into the cave. There was no wind or snow inside, and a bed made of ice stood to one side.

The handsome, silver-haired immortal sat meditating with his eyes closed.