Farther south, thick smoke suddenly rose from more than a dozen cities near the Twelfth Guardian City. Bands of masked figures in black erupted into slaughter, leaving flesh and blood flying and corpses strewn across the Taihua Sect's mortal-world mines, subordinate sects, and smaller sects affiliated with it!
Many Great Jin Dynasty government offices were also overrun, but unexpectedly... the Great Cultivators of the Great Jin Dynasty's Sima Clan seemed measured in their advances and retreats, and swift to react!
The moment the calamity and chaos erupted, these Great Jin cultivators swiftly withdrew from the Southern Borderlands, hunkering down in several major cities near the Central Plains and refusing to venture out...
Chaos broke out in the Twelfth Guardian City at the same time, but unexpectedly... the Twelfth City Lord was not in the Guardian City at all!
Several urgent message talismans had flown into the city lord's residence one after another at dawn... something was stirring at Two-World Mountain. Thick fog rose in broad daylight, and demons swarmed everywhere!
Before five in the morning, the Twelfth City Lord had hurriedly flown off with three hundred cultivator guards to investigate the disturbance around Two-World Mountain... and never returned, never showing himself again.
Naturally, the Eleventh Guardian City had also erupted into turmoil!
But the Eleventh City Lord, Bai Ye, had likewise received a message talisman that morning reporting disturbances at Two-World Mountain! He then swept south with his trusted guards...
The Eleventh City Lord likewise never returned, and no word came from him!
Heart Lake Reversed Water Island lay in an eerie silence...
The immortal procession coming to confer titles and rewards, already nearing Heart Lake, suddenly turned back several hundred miles away! Yet Reversed Water Island, which should have been waiting in fearful reverence, remained deathly silent...
A terrifying, icy aura suddenly erupted from Two-World Mountain. Above the mountain, shrouded in masses of dark clouds, an immense, towering black shadow slowly rose...
A pair of cold, scarlet eyes, seemingly burning with soul-devouring flames, abruptly opened and fixed on the Upper Realm immortal thousands of miles away, who was riding a five-colored rainbow light toward Great Jin's Capital City...
The furious Upper Realm immortal Yunxia stopped in midair in surprise and turned south... then slowly reached up, drew out a hairpin, and held it in hand!
The hairpin transformed into an Immortal Soldier Sword wreathed in immortal energy, with cutting edges along all six faces... faint sword cries rang out.
The immortal Yunxia stared fixedly at that figure and those scarlet eyes thousands of miles away... "What happened? Why was it able to break through the Three-Origin Immortal-Severing Array... is this its true form?"
That day, sect cultivators, wandering Martial Warriors, and the countless ordinary people across half of Great Jin's territory... all witnessed a magnificent spectacle they would remember for the rest of their lives.
A line of black clouds swept out from above Two-World Mountain in Great Jin's Southern Borderlands, bearing a bitter, cutting wind!
It seemed exceedingly slow, yet within a few breaths it filled everyone's vision across the distant vault of heaven... heading straight for the heart of Great Jin's territory.
A five-colored rainbow light, like a pillar of glazed jade spanning heaven and earth, also flashed and shuddered in central Great Jin! Within it, a Dharma manifestation clad in colorful robes could faintly be seen glaring at the onrushing dark clouds, chanting spells and secret words no mortal could understand...
Above the dark clouds, only a pair of scarlet, star-like eyes could be seen, seemingly fixed on that immortal manifestation. Then the dark clouds churned and rolled downward...
A sound like shattering glass seemed to ring out between heaven and earth, and shards and streams of glazed radiance scattered in every direction.
Only by straining their vision to its utmost could the mortal world's Great Cultivators and Martial Dao Grandmasters see... a colossal black shadow beneath the heavens raise a claw and tear straight through the five-colored protective divine light surrounding the immortal manifestation, then open a blood-red maw large enough to swallow mountains and gulp the manifestation down whole...
An eerie, wretched wail shattered the clouds filling the sky and faded beneath the heavens. An icy corpse plummeted straight down through the air!
A claw swung out from a mass of dark clouds once more, tearing the corpse apart. The pieces then became streaks of light that shot off in every direction...
The dark clouds rolled upward and gathered beneath the vault of heaven. Suddenly, everyone heard a low roar filled with contempt and wild arrogance...
When everything had dispersed, a conclusion that they could scarcely believe surfaced in everyone's hearts...
"Was the one killed really an immortal? What sort of being killed that immortal?"
After a brief silence, in the lands of turmoil that had begun to settle, the rebel cultivators and Martial Warriors who had started to shrink back... and even great crowds of impoverished commoners wielding farm tools, all began furiously attacking government offices and fortified compounds, tax officials' prisons, and estates and mines belonging to the Immortal Sects...
The entire Southern Borderlands of the Great Jin Dynasty descended into chaos!
Unaffiliated cultivators and rogue cultivators reveled. They gathered to loot the great Immortal Sects' branch sects and storehouses, plundering mines and spirit medicine gardens... and killing those sect disciples who had once strutted about with their noses in the air, considering themselves above everyone else!
Slaughter, suppression, then still more slaughter...
The flames of war rose from city after city. Bands of mysterious cultivators and Martial Warriors appeared and vanished like ghosts across half of the Great Jin Dynasty's Southern Borderlands, ambushing Immortal Sect experts and military officials of the Great Jin Dynasty court!
People died everywhere. Cultivators died, Martial Warriors died, but far more of the dead were ordinary mortals and common folk... the rich died, and the poor died too!
More and more cavalry units gathered to quell the rebellion for the Great Jin Dynasty court, the heads they had taken strung beneath their horses' necks! A full curfew fell over Great Jin's Capital City, and its gates were shut tight...
Word spread that the armies of the two great northern Immortal Sects and Great Jin's elite troops stationed along the borders of the three nations had already broken camp and were preparing to march south, bristling with murderous intent!
Within the Ghostway Underground River, a Ghost Ferryboat belonging to the Ghostway Gate sailed quietly through the depths of an underground river cavern...
Master Ming sat alone on the cabin floor, motionless and silent.
Knock, knock, knock.
"Come in..."
A middle-aged man gently pushed open the door and walked in. It was Bai Ye.
"Master Ming..."
"No need for formalities. Say what you have to say! Just call me the old blind man..."
Bai Ye smiled and sat down before Master Ming. "Then I'll stick with Master Ming! Master Ming... Master Huang Jiu and Master Han Wu have almost fought their way to Guangling Commandery! Apart from Mozi Mountain and Mount Zhilin... nearly all the remaining subordinate sects and their assorted running dogs who preyed on the villages and enslaved the people have been swept away by this great fire!"
Master Ming's face was haggard. He merely nodded.
"Master Ming, Master Huang Jiu and Master Han Wu personally slew four cultivators of the Liu clan and nine criminal cultivators of the Taihua Sect... every one of them had committed crimes worthy of death!"
"Mm..."
"Master Ming..."
Master Ming raised his head and opened his eyes. His murky gaze fixed on Bai Ye before him... "Are you satisfied now? Can you stop?"
Bai Ye sneered. "Master Ming! Have you gone softhearted? The Three Great Dynasties and Twelve Immortal Sects... don't they deserve death? Over these past three hundred years in particular, the population of southern Great Jin has fallen by a full fifth! Master Ming... where have all those people gone?"
Master Ming remained silent.
Bai Ye continued, "And Two-World Mountain, the Wild Spirit Land... the wish those people pursued tirelessly, one following another into the breach, to level Two-World Mountain, overthrow the Immortal Sects' puppets, and bring glory to our Human Race's cultivators... have you forgotten it, Master Ming?"
Bai Ye rose to his feet, his voice and expression harsh as he glared at Master Ming. "Is it enough? It isn't! Not nearly enough..."
Master Ming lowered his head and said quietly, "I don't want to keep picking over the rights and wrongs of those days... stop. Going too far is as bad as falling short. I can no longer see what you truly want... but whatever you intend to do, going too far is as bad as falling short... too many people have died. It's time to stop. Otherwise, all you'll damage is this world we live in..."
Bai Ye froze for a moment. An indescribably complicated emotion flickered through his eyes...
"This world was riddled with wounds and tottering on the brink long ago. I'm going to the Southern Borderlands to clean up the mess... otherwise, once Great Jin's Sima Clan truly loses its temper, I fear even more people will die!"
Master Ming kept his eyes tightly shut and said nothing.
Bai Ye suddenly gave a hearty laugh, rose, and left...
"Master, your eyes went blind long ago! Even before you were struck by that Heart-Piercing Curse, you could no longer understand what your eldest disciple was thinking... from now on, the people of the Wild Spirit Land will regard me, Bai Ye, as an ally. That is how you lay plans for great deeds! If we want the people of the Wild Spirit Hall to dare to act, we must first let them see our strength! Begging endlessly for help will only make them cast us aside as casually as they did back then..."
Exhausted, Master Ming shook his head. "I'm old, and I'm tired... go! Don't come to see me again..."
Bai Ye turned back and said softly, "Master... take care..."
Master Ming said nothing.
Bai Ye pushed open the door and walked away, step by step.
Drops of water seemed to dampen the floor between his steps... only to be crushed and wiped away beneath Bai Ye's soles, leaving no trace.
Bai Ye stood silently at the bow of the Ghost Ferryboat.
A Ghostway Gate Disciple with crimson eyes and a black robe covering his body silently approached behind Bai Ye...
"City Lord Bai, all the forces throughout the Southern Borderlands have boarded the ferryboats. As you instructed, they've dispersed and been ferried to the vicinity of Two-World Mountain in the Southern Borderlands..."
Bai Ye nodded, turned, and said, "Under the terms we agreed on, the spirit stones and spirit medicine for the thirty ferryboats will be delivered in batches across six commanderies... next time..."
The red-eyed man chuckled and shook his head. "For now, there won't be a next time. Our Sect Master seems to harbor some reservations about you, City Lord Bai. Another transaction... I'm afraid that will require further consideration."
Bai Ye gave the red-eyed man a surprised look.
The red-eyed man smiled coldly. "Don't worry. I'll persuade the Sect Master!"
Bai Ye sighed. "The people on the mountain are ghosts, and the ghosts below the mountain are people... just who are the ghosts, and who are the people?"
Lü Bufan sat alone at the village entrance in a daze. Not far ahead stood Old Skeleton's Land God Temple.
For the first time, there was not a single Big Black left in Two Realms Village.
Looking from afar at Big Black's large rock, now utterly empty, Lü Bufan felt a hollowness in his heart.
Du Yuan was nowhere to be found, and Granny Yu had shut herself inside her house.
Lü Bufan was the only person still moving about outside in all of Two Realms Village.
Old Skeleton poked his head out of the little Land God Temple and looked at Lü Bufan sitting nearby... "You little bastard, get over here!"
Lü Bufan answered and hurried over.
Old Skeleton emerged from the Land God Temple and circled Lü Bufan, inspecting him from front to back... "That fellow Big Black wouldn't let me tinker with you much before. So secretive... today, let me have a good look."
Lü Bufan swallowed and stood there, letting him examine him.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk... still the same sorry state. Four taels of life, three taels of soul... although Big Black forcibly expanded your meridians a little, you still lack that immortal root and spiritual energy... in this lifetime, becoming a Sixth-Realm Martial Warrior or a Fourth-Realm Cultivator will be your limit!"
Lü Bufan's eyes lit up at that. "What? Grandpa Tao, you mean... I can't become a golden core Qi Refiner, but I can become a Martial Warrior in the Sixth-Realm Wilderness Realm? The kind who can ride the wind for ten miles?"
Old Skeleton asked in surprise, "What? Have you given up hope?"
Lü Bufan chuckled. "That's wonderful! Once I reach the Sixth Realm, I'll ride the wind into the Wild Spirit Land and have a look. See whether Lian'er is living well at Azurefall Lake..."
Old Skeleton said, "You... hopeless good-for-nothing..."