Divine Spirit Thought

Even if they wished to stop him, they had the will but not the strength.

This man had lurked in the Tianxuan Holy Land for so long without being discovered. Now that he had revealed himself, he surely had ample confidence.

Deep within the Tianxuan Holy Land, inside the Thatched Cottage, Luo Yan stared at a stone stele. A secret technique had been imprinted upon it. Just as he had suspected, it was Nine Secrets: Xing.

Luo Yan first recorded Nine Secrets: Xing within his Bitter Sea, then turned his gaze toward the only statue inside the Thatched Cottage.

The stone statue occupied the central position. It seemed the Thatched Cottage had been built to conceal this statue!

The man looked utterly ordinary, but from the contours of his features, Luo Yan identified him as the Ancient Great Emperor who had emerged from the Tianxuan Holy Land: Taihua! He had attained the Great Emperor realm in the final years of the primordial age. In that era, when the Primordial Myriad Races stood at the height of their glory, he had become one of the very few human Great Emperors. Wielding his Emperor Weapon, the Taihua Ancient Book, he had forcibly carved out a territory for humanity.

Rumor had it that he had mysteriously disappeared after founding the Tianxuan Holy Land at the beginning of the Desolate Ancient Era. Perhaps the emperors of the Primordial Royal Clan had joined forces to slay him, or perhaps he had passed away in seclusion. No one knew.

Luo Yan's gaze burned like a torch. He saw through the stone statue to an eternally enduring imprint between its brows. An Ancient Great Emperor had left it behind, and even the passage of time could scarcely erase it.

"Fellow Daoist, your talent truly knows no bounds! When I examine your past and future, I see only emptiness, as though you do not exist within this history!" The imprint inside the stone statue suddenly awakened, sending forth a faint spiritual message.

Luo Yan braced himself as though facing a formidable enemy.

"Do not be alarmed, fellow Daoist. I mean you no harm." The stone statue transmitted another spiritual message, vast and boundless.

"I am merely an imprint, commanded by the Great Emperor Taihua to keep watch over the evil corpse here."

At those words, Luo Yan looked beneath the Thatched Cottage. Sure enough, he saw a coffin buried deep underground. Its material was extraordinary: it had been fashioned from the Evil-Subduing Tree, a rarity in this world.

Yet there were cracks in the coffin. This material could suppress things of the utmost yin and evil between heaven and earth. In their twilight years, many powerful cultivators would scour the ends of the earth in search of it to suppress their own bodies, preventing their corpses from giving birth to evil thoughts after death-the so-called Divine Spirit Thought-and bringing calamity upon the world.

Luo Yan asked, "An Emperor Corpse is being suppressed below?"

This was earth-shattering news. There was actually an Emperor Corpse here that had given birth to a Divine Spirit Thought!

"Back then, the Great Emperor Taihua battled two primordial emperors in a place of unparalleled peril. A third primordial emperor ambushed him from the shadows, grievously wounding him. He originally had ten thousand years of life remaining, yet the Great Dao turned against him in his prime, and he ultimately died full of bitterness.

"Before his death, the Great Emperor realized that his resentment might well become a Divine Spirit Thought. Thus, he split off an imprint and refined a stone statue to suppress his Emperor Corpse after death, until the Divine Spirit Thought below was worn away!"

The stone statue revealed a shocking secret. The Great Emperor Taihua had truly died because of a primordial emperor's ambush! And he had even given rise to a Divine Spirit Thought!

For a mighty Great Emperor to meet such an end-he could be called the second most tragic Great Emperor in history!

In Luo Yan's opinion, the most miserable Great Emperor was naturally the Feathered Great Emperor of the Feathered Divine Dynasty, whom Ruthless had spawn-camped and killed. But he had deserved it for offending someone as ruthless as her!

"Fellow Daoist, I have little time left. The Divine Spirit Thought within that Emperor Corpse is growing ever stronger, and the evil-subduing wood can barely suppress the Emperor Corpse anymore. I hope you will pass this news on to the world and warn those outside!" A desperately weak voice came from the stone statue, like a lamp whose oil had run dry.

Luo Yan did not immediately agree. Instead, he stared silently at the stone statue.

"For you, fellow Daoist... this is merely... the lifting of a hand, yet it could save... all living beings beneath heaven. In the future, you would surely enjoy endless... blessings!" The voice within the statue spoke again, weak and halting, almost on the verge of fading away.

"Your act is convincing, but I am certain you are not the imprint left by the Great Emperor Taihua!" Luo Yan said, staring at the stone statue.

The statue's voice was exceedingly weak. "Why would you say that, fellow Daoist...?"

Studying the imprint, Luo Yan said, "This imprint was indeed left by the Great Emperor Taihua, but its master has changed! Originally, it had no consciousness. Now, however, it has developed one. If my guess is correct, you are the Divine Spirit Thought born from the corpse inside that evil-subduing coffin!

"An Emperor Corpse is a peerless material that can be refined into an Extreme Dao Emperor Weapon. How many have ever existed throughout history? If I spread the news of this place, who knows how many cultivators would risk their lives to come here and steal the coffin!

"That way, you could use their hands to escape!"

The stone statue fell silent.

It seemed to be thinking.

Before long, an icy aura emanated from it. "Did those primordial races not deserve to die? They slaughtered my people at will, raising us humans as food! To cut off my path to survival, a lofty Ancient Emperor actually resorted to such a despicable ambush! I hate them! I clearly had ten thousand years of life remaining, yet they robbed me of my future! I refuse to accept it!

"You and I are both human. Are you going to help the Primordial Myriad Races that once slaughtered our people? Let me out! I will kill every last one of those primordial races!"

The Great Emperor Taihua's resentment toward the Primordial Myriad Races had actually run this deep. Even after hundreds of thousands of years, the Divine Spirit Thought born from that resentment had not been worn away by the evil-subduing coffin. Instead, he seemed to be growing ever stronger, on the verge of breaking free.

Luo Yan saw another hairline fissure form in a crack on the evil-subduing coffin as the stone statue spoke.

When things reached an extreme, they reversed course. Though the Divine Spirit Thought was immensely powerful at this moment, Luo Yan could sense that his current condition was poor. The stronger his evil thoughts became, the more fiercely the evil-subduing wood suppressed him. Once he could no longer withstand it, he would turn to ash in an instant.

This Divine Spirit Thought clearly knew his own condition as well, which was why he was so desperate to enlist outside help to escape.

"Leaving aside whether I would release you, even if I helped you escape, how could you face those Ancient Emperors in your current condition?" Releasing this being was plainly out of the question!

"I have my own way of returning to my peak!"

"Your method is probably to unleash a Dark Turmoil and devour life essence to restore yourself to your peak, isn't it?"

For the first time, Taihua's evil thought within the stone statue sounded surprised. "You even know about the Dark Turmoil!"

Over these hundreds of thousands of years, he had learned the method of devouring life essence from the Forbidden Zone Supremes each time they instigated a Dark Turmoil. It could restore an emperor's body to its peak in the shortest possible time!

For this man to know even such a secret, he had clearly survived more than one Dark Turmoil. He was an old monster walking among the living!

Taihua's evil thought immediately tried to recall which human Great Emperor this man might be. Only a Great Emperor-level expert could emerge unscathed from a Dark Turmoil.

Yet no matter how he pondered it, Taihua's evil thought could think of no human Great Emperor after the primordial age who matched this man. He could not help wondering just who this person was.

"Fellow Daoist, you too have reached the utmost realm. You should understand that at our level, only those of our own kind can be called friends. How could the lives of those ants outside compare to ours? We are the greatest beings between heaven and earth. One of us is worth countless trillions of ants!

"If you release me today, I will certainly stand beside you should you ever need me! As the old saying goes, better another friend than another enemy," Taihua's evil thought said, already convinced that Luo Yan was also a human Great Emperor who had once severed his own cultivation.