As the thought crossed his mind, specks of light drifted down from the depths of his soul like brilliant golden stars. They formed a passage of awkward scripture that looked much like seal script. Su Yu did not recognize it, but the instant he saw the ancient golden characters, he naturally came to understand them and subconsciously began reciting the scripture.
Suddenly, his whole body lit up. The jade jue in his hand was like a great ceremonial bell, releasing wisps of purple Qi that spread as though three thousand gods and demons were performing a sacrifice. An ancient, immense presence filled the entire burial chamber.
Heaven and earth were shaken!
With a soft sound, the Bronze Coffin, which Su Yu had been unable to pry open no matter how hard he tried, now opened on its own. A deep, dark light shot out from within.
Divine radiance shimmered hazily as a simple, ancient pottery lid rose, sank, and rotated in the air. It bore the imprint of a ghost face, seemingly smiling yet not smiling, weeping yet not weeping. It was lifelike and utterly strange.
Beneath the lid was an illusory jar body. It did not look incomplete, as though this were a whole artifact.
The ghost-faced jade pendant in his hand was also drawn to the Devouring Heaven Demon Jar. It too emitted a brilliant purple mystical light, leaving Su Yu and flying toward the jar.
"A ghost-faced mask, the Devouring Heaven Demon Jar, a grayish-white robe, a great tomb. This is Shrouding the Heavens..."
Fragments of memory from the deepest part of his soul began to resurface. Su Yu murmured to himself, his thoughts like waves striking the heavens in the abyss of the Ming Sea, impossible to calm.
It was actually Shrouding the Heavens!
This was a world of immortals and demons, where one could tread the Ascension Road, travel to the sound of song, and blot out the heavens with a flick of a finger. Cultivators could soar across the clouds, pluck stars and seize the moon, and there were even beings who struggled to cross over in the mortal world and attained the immortal path...
At the same time, he looked at the Devouring Heaven Demon Jar above him and its ghost-face design, identical to the one on the purple jade pendant, and was somewhat moved.
If he had still been uncertain before, he could now almost say for certain.
His transmigration was inseparably linked to this fan-made jade jue.
Four hundred yuan for a transmigration, and this life was in Shrouding the Heavens, with the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid right at the start!
A fate like this could be called exalted beyond words!
It had not been for nothing that he had always steadfastly been a good person in his previous life, helping the little girl next door with her homework day after day for over a decade!
Su Yu gazed at the ancient Devouring Heaven Demon Jar in midair, then settled his thoughts and analyzed the fragments of memory, beginning to learn about this body's past.
"The Cloudbreak Mountains in the Central Region of the Eastern Wasteland... the Ruthless One's Dao ground. This is where Duan De dug up the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid..."
Chapter 3: A Branch of the Ruthless One's Lineage, a Legacy for One
As swiftly as a hare fled and a falcon swooped, faint light shimmered.
For an entire day, Su Yu absorbed the fragments of memory.
At last, he sorted through the body's memories and understood the origins of the original owner whose body he had possessed.
This person's surname was Su!
His origins were extraordinary!
His ancestors had followed a "dragon" in the truest sense, serving an unknown ancient emperor. He was of imperial blood.
He was a direct descendant of the Plain Heaven-Devouring Banner, the blackest of the black-belt nobility, the chosen heir of an immortal legacy...
In the shattered memories, the original owner was filled with pride and reverence for his ancestors, to the point of fanaticism.
His ancestral branch had been incomparably powerful long ago. It had produced several Saints and established a supreme great sect, sweeping across the world with the Devouring Heaven Demon Jar. Its glorious years had lasted more than a hundred thousand years.
But the skies could change without warning!
In the near-ancient era, a traitor had emerged from their branch. His rage had made his hair stand on end for a woman, and he had stood against his own people, exposing the coordinates of their small world and bringing an attack from more than a dozen holy lands and great sects.
After a divine battle that shook the world,
their branch suffered devastating losses. Its Great Saint and Saint King experts were all gone, with no successors to take their place.
In the end, during a century of flight filled with blood and tears, the last Sect Master of their branch was defeated by a Great Saint from an extreme-Dao power and strangled with a bowstring. Their remaining experts were slaughtered to the last, and even the divine weapon that guarded their sect was broken apart. The jar's lid was lost, becoming a lasting source of pain for their descendants!
After the last Immortal Platform-level being was killed, the Devouring Heaven Demon Jar, all that remained to their branch, also disappeared, and they fell into complete decline...
"They were heirs of a demonic lineage, yet the record makes it sound so tragic and heroic..." Su Yu raised an eyebrow, finding it very strange, especially the original owner's hatred for that traitor.
In "his" understanding, if the traitor had not opened the Domain Gate, his ancestors would never have been defeated.
The actual situation was probably very different from what the records said.
After all, this branch was no white lotus either. They had "eaten people" in all sorts of ways, killed ancient Holy Sons, suppressed the heirs of Desolate Ancient Families, and devoured the origin of Divine Bodies... Otherwise, they could not have offended more than a dozen great sect legacies at once.
Beneath the great tide, everything was inevitable...
The memories that followed were clear.
By this generation, the crumbling legacy had dwindled until only the original owner's family and a few servants remained.
The original owner's father, an old man at the Fifth Transformation of the Dragon Transformation Realm, had found some divine talismans and notes in his forebears' writings. Entirely devoted to restoring their branch's former glory and hoping to recover the ancient Ancestral Artifact, he had ultimately died in the Cloudbreak Mountains.
What followed was the mournful tale of fallen nobility: a Four Extremes cultivator carrying a damaged Saint Weapon on a solitary, desperate gamble...
The Ruthless One's heir stormed off to Cloud Severing Mountain; the demonic sect disciple met his end in a black burial chamber.
The final chapter of a lineage turned its page.
The original owner was extraordinary, with a trace of Chaotic Blood in his body. That was also why he had entered the Four Extremes Secret Realm at such a young age.
He and three others had resolutely set out on a path that almost certainly led to death, taking the last damaged Saint Weapon of their branch to the Cloudbreak Mountains.
Their branch was hunted and reviled in the outside world, with the whole world their enemy in the truest sense. Apart from recovering the Emperor Weapon, they had no path left.
The outcome was plain to see. Although the four had used their forebears' Ancestral Artifact and notes to enter the Ruthless One's Dao ground without trouble, they had died under the assault of the formation patterns. Exploring an emperor-level Dao ground with a damaged Saint Weapon and a token that was not all that old was unlikely to succeed...
After an unknown amount of time, Su Yu's eyes fluttered open. Strands of divine light spilled from them, and a smile appeared on his face.
In the dark burial chamber, the survivor wore a terrifying smile after calamity had befallen his entire family. It was truly eerie, accompanied by an empty,faint fluctuation.
Su Yu felt no sympathy for the original owner's branch, for these fallen nobles had eaten people too, and had plenty of blood on their hands.
Cause and effect had carved the path to this day...
Another day passed. The ghost-faced jade pendant in midair burst with purple light, then drifted unsteadily toward Su Yu like a child with a full belly.
Su Yu reached out to catch it, but the pendant slipped straight into his body and entered the crown of his head, illuminating his forehead bone until it was translucent and sparkling like jade.
In an instant, Su Yu's spiritual body felt wrapped in warmth. Fatigue and other negative conditions rapidly fell away, leaving him as though he were atop the azure clouds, warm all over.
After two days of confinement, color returned to his face, and his condition began to improve.
Drawing on his memories, Su Yu clumsily tried to extend a thread of divine sense. After failing more than thirty times, his will finally entered the ghost-faced jade jue.
But the information inside was pitifully scarce.
There was only a record of its name: Dao Jue.
Unwilling to give up, Su Yu continued probing the purple jade with his divine sense. At last, the ancient jade projected brilliant purple immortal light, surging like clouds and mist to envelop him, and an indescribably marvelous sensation welled up in its owner's heart.
A reflection!
It revealed him as he was now: his Chaotic Blood was thin and impure, but his true spirit was entirely different, having undergone a special transformation after being baptized by the essence of the chaotic space.
The fragmented scriptures and secret arts in Su Yu's memories were also reflected by the jade jue.
The complete Indestructible Heavenly Art!
The flawless Devouring Heaven Demon Art!
And parts of forbidden divine arts: the Flying Immortal Art, the Myriad Transformations Sacred Art, the Deity-Deliverance Art, the Great Dao Treasure Vase Seal... These remnants of profound teachings, which Su Yu had been unable to piece together despite racking his memory, now manifested in full.
It was nothing short of a miracle!
"Is this my cheat? Does it have some connection to the Shrouding the Heavens Realm... or is it a creation of a Great Power from another world?" For a moment, thoughts tumbled through Su Yu's mind. Like a nouveau riche landowner who had picked up a gold ingot, he wore an unhealthy flush on his face.
He thought of many things.
But there was something more important to do now!
Suppressing the excitement in his heart, Su Yu activated the magic power remaining in his body, intending to fly straight up and take down the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid.
He cautiously extended a thread of divine sense, intending to take it.
But a great terror came over him. The moment his divine sense brushed the dark light emitted by the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid, he felt a terrifying pressure, as though he had been cast into a region of extreme gravity. He nearly fell to his knees.
In a daze, he seemed to see a pottery jar rising and sinking amid the stars, swallowing and releasing the galaxy. Endless laws of devouring rested silently around the Devouring Heaven Demon Jar. It was as though a cosmic starry sky were swallowing the sun, moon, and stars whole, like a bottomless black hole devouring all things.
An extreme-Dao presence emanated from the Demon Jar, reaching everywhere. It was so terrifying that one's spine trembled and one's heart pounded.
Yet most terrifying of all was the person beneath the Demon Jar:
She was a woman in white wearing a Ghost Face Mask, enveloped in a dense presence of Chaos. A pair of eyes looked down upon the entire universe, indifferent and majestic. Countless chains of order formed from Chaos Qi coiled around her, making her look like an undying immortal.
Su Yu's heart was nearly leaping out of his chest. Though he felt great terror, he was also wildly excited, trembling in every limb and bone.
This heart-stopping fluctuation was worthy of one of the foremost Emperor Weapons in the vast world of Shrouding the Heavens:
The supreme Devouring Heaven Demon Jar!
In the illusory space, Su Yu fell straight to his knees, then channeled his divine power and released a trace of the Indestructible Heavenly Art's presence.
"Your descendant Su Yu pays his respects, ancient ancestor!"
Although he was not one.
The original owner, however, genuinely belonged to the Ruthless One Lineage. His ancestors had forged a bond of goodwill with that person and had been given the Devouring Heaven Demon Jar...
A being from another world, newly arrived and facing a great tribulation, Su Yu chose to follow his heart. There was nothing shameful about acknowledging her as his ancient ancestor...
[This is a newcomer's first contracted work. I'm very sorry for any shortcomings!]
Chapter 4: Half an Emperor Weapon, a Heaven-Sent Fortune
The ancient Devouring Heaven Demon Jar!
It was one of the strongest Emperor Weapons in the vast world of Shrouding the Heavens. In terms of its demonstrated power, it could even be called the greatest, ranking at the very peak.
It had been refined by a Heavenly Emperor-level being using her own Chaos body, and it also contained a portion of the Ruthless One's primordial spirit.
Legend had it that driving the artifact to its limit could awaken the Ruthless One's primordial spirit within the jar. It would be as though the Empress of the first lifetime had appeared in person, her divine might unrivaled as she suppressed the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths. In another spacetime, this miracle had truly occurred: the artifact had taken human form and forcefully severed the Undying Heavenly Blade, an astonishing feat.
No Immortal Gold, Chaos Stone Essence, or Root of the Mother Qi of All Things could compare with this Emperor Weapon, for it was equivalent to a Chaos Heavenly Emperor and possessed the quality of being "alive." Once revived, it was beyond the Beginningless Bell, the Undying Heavenly Blade, and the Azure Emperor's lotus leaf.
Its owner was hailed as the most extraordinarily gifted Great Emperor of the Shrouding the Heavens era, the most talented woman since ancient times!