Where some triumphed, others suffered defeat.
While Xie Jinhuan worked as a male model, laboring to serve the Princess, the Empress Dowager, the Sect Master, a Sage's daughter, and even several pairs of women as close as mother and daughter, elsewhere lay a place no one would ever set foot in.
The entire world was deathly silent. There was no distinction between sky and earth, only darkness without end, which rendered even the six senses meaningless. Shang Lianbi had become a lone soul, and no longer knew how long he had drifted through this lightless realm of death.
Back in Qilin Cave, Xie Jinhuan and the Corpse Ancestor had fought with all their might, tearing countless rifts of nothingness into their surroundings.
Shang Lianbi knew these were the "Heavenly Gates" the Corpse Ancestor had spoken of. With the Corpse Ancestor wholly focused on his enemy, he had no strength to spare for a stray ghost like him, so Shang Lianbi had plunged without hesitation into the Heavenly Gate within arm's reach.
He had no idea what awaited him beyond that step. It might be the gods and Buddhas of all the heavens, or eternal chaos. He might even be annihilated outright, with no next life, erased completely from the Great Thousand World.
But with no hope of ascending to immortality in this life, he could only stake everything on one desperate gamble.
Trapped in this boundless darkness, Shang Lianbi had also lived with his heart in his throat, afraid he would remain like this forever. Yet he had not given up, only searched with all his might for a way to take a step beyond it.
And fortunately, at a certain moment, he truly moved.
Then his consciousness broke free of the endless darkness, his six senses returned in full,