Master Was Dead

"The eldest senior brother was a reborn person. I learned that secret when I was thirteen."

"I still remembered it was a moonless, windy night. Our respected master had been invited by the Jade Lake Saint Lord of the Central Continent to attend a lecture, and had been away from the Emperor Fall Forbidden Zone for about half a year."

"That night, the eldest senior brother took advantage of the moonlight and silently slipped into the Emperor's Tomb Complex, opening the tomb of Great Emperor Ziwei, which had lain dormant for countless ages."

"The tomb of a Great Emperor contained unknowable horrors and dangers. Unless one had reached the Great Emperor Realm, even a Quasi-Emperor who trespassed into an Emperor's Tomb would face certain death. But the eldest senior brother simply carried a lantern, his expression calm as still water, and walked into the tomb as though he were strolling into his own backyard."

"Then, with my own eyes, I watched him carry a massive, ancient-looking purple cauldron out of the Emperor's Tomb."

"That was the Purple Ultimate Immortal Cauldron, one of the oldest and most famous Extreme Dao Emperor Weapons on the continent. A single Star Dao Pattern on the cauldron could annihilate a Mighty One in the Saint Realm."

"If the eldest senior brother weren't the owner of an Extreme Dao Emperor Weapon, would that weapon that had suppressed the ages let some unfamiliar junior secretly carry it out of an Emperor's Tomb?"

"The eldest senior brother was definitely some monster that had lived for who knew how many years!"

"The second senior brother was a transmigrator. Do you know what a transmigrator is? It's someone from another world."

"When I first joined the sect, I thought the second senior brother was always babbling nonsense, as if he wasn't quite right in the head."

"Things like 'Don't bully a poor young man' and 'My son Wang Teng has the makings of a Great Emperor.' One day, he even asked me whether I liked sweet or savory tofu pudding."

"I told him I liked it spicy. The second senior brother gave me a look of utter disdain and ignored me after that."

"The second senior brother was born with unusual eyes, and a Juvenile Supreme Pixiu accompanied him. Fortune clung to him; he could step on a Saint-grade Divine Weapon while walking down the road, or squat down to use the toilet and come up with a Ten-Thousand-Year Longevity Elixir. He was practically blessed with good fortune, enough to make people so envious their teeth ached."

"And the most unbearable thing was that the second senior brother and the eldest senior brother were natural enemies, like they had been at odds in a past life. Those two brothers fought every chance they got. Being caught between them was really hard for me."

"Though the second senior brother couldn't beat the eldest senior brother, he was thick-skinned. Even after the eldest senior brother punched him three times, he could still bite back. And I heard that recently, the second senior brother found a High Antiquity Divine Corpse outside and refined it into an External Incarnation. I wonder if this time he'll manage to get the better of the eldest senior brother a little more."

"Oh, right, there was also our Little Junior Sister. That girl was pretty much the only normal person in our Gravekeeper Lineage."

"The little princess of the imperial Ji Clan of the Central Continent, born with a Sword Immortal Physique, ranked first on the Azure Cloud Fairy Ranking, and the foremost female sword immortal of the younger generation."

"Ji Xu, a daughter of the imperial clan, standing alone and unmatched in talent, unrivaled from antiquity to the present."

"Those were the sixteen words the Azure Cloud Ranking used to describe our Little Junior Sister. If she hadn't been by your side since childhood, Master—you walking bad luck charm—the holy sons and geniuses coming to ask for her hand would have trampled the Ji Clan's doorstep flat."

"Though things aren't much different now. A few years ago, the young lord of the Xuanyuan Clan even squatted outside the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone, waiting bitterly for our adorable Little Junior Sister, hoping to find that ethereal marriage fate."

"But later, that young lord ran into the second senior brother, who had just returned from outside. The second senior brother was a very reasonable man, so he broke the young lord's legs and tossed him into the Luo River outside the Forbidden Zone."

"Come on, she was the cabbage we raised ourselves. How could we let some wild boar from outside covet her?"

Deep within the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone.

A handsome young man dressed in green leaned against an old tree, his face full of misery as he muttered complaints to the short, ancient-looking tombstone beside him.

"Master, ever since you died, no new Great Emperor has appeared among the human race. There are only a few old relics from ancient clans like the Ji Clan and the Jiang Clan left in the Quasi-Emperor Realm."

"The Imperial Court's seer said that the human race has entered the Desolate Era, and that it would be difficult for anyone to break through the Heavenly Dao Shackles and reach the Great Emperor Realm within a thousand years."

"Alas."

The handsome young man couldn't help sighing helplessly as he spoke:

"Now there are also some idiots outside the Forbidden Zone spreading rumors that you committed too many atrocities in life, harming Heaven's harmony and fortune, and that this caused the Heavenly Dao to imprison the human race, bringing down the calamity of the Desolate Era."

"But you can't blame them, either. The second senior brother said that since their brains have all grown into that sorry state, why shouldn't we just go along with them?"

The short gray tombstone bore no inscription, standing before a shabby little mound like a cheap, broken stone marker by the roadside.

Yet no one would have guessed that beneath this utterly ordinary mound lay the final Great Emperor in the history of the human race-Great Emperor Changsheng.

Great Emperor Changsheng had lived longer than any other Great Emperor in the history of the human race.

According to legend, this Great Emperor had guarded the human race's Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone ever since the High Antiquity era, watching over the tombs of every Great Emperor in human history.

No matter how time passed or the world changed, it had always been so.

The Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone was the most terrifying and mysterious forbidden zone of the human race. Buried within it were the tombs and inheritances of the dozens of Great Emperors who had appeared since the human race was born.

Extreme Dao Emperor Weapons rested alongside the Great Emperors. The inheritances and treasures hidden within the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone were beyond anything the entire continent could imagine.

Yet even so, throughout the ages, hardly anyone had dared to trespass into the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone to seek treasure. That was because the legendary Great Emperor Changsheng guarded it, and the Gravekeeper Lineage lived there as well.

Gravekeepers, as the name suggested, were cultivators who guarded the tombs of the human race's Great Emperors.

The current generation of Gravekeepers had endured countless ages of transmission and change. Only an elderly master in the Great Emperor Realm and four strange disciples remained.

And just over a decade ago, the last Great Emperor Gravekeeper of the human race, Great Emperor Changsheng, had fallen.

The sky was stained with blood, the stars dimmed, and dusk shattered beneath the starry heavens. The entire continent could hear the helpless sigh of that aged Great Emperor of the human race.

But echoing through the distant starry sky at the same time were the enraged, terrified roars of several Foreign-Race Great Emperors.

Before his death, Great Emperor Changsheng had left the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone. With death in his heart and an Extreme Dao Emperor Weapon in hand, he had slain eighteen foreign-race Quasi-Emperors and strangled three Emperor-Realm Ancestors.

At the final moment, only then had he dragged his broken, withered Great Emperor's body into the grave he had dug for himself and lain down in peace, without a sound.

And the one who had filled in the earth and sealed Great Emperor Changsheng's grave was the handsome young man now sprawled on the Wordless Tombstone, complaining without end.

The third disciple of the Gravekeeper Lineage, Gu Baishui.

"I know you did it for the human race, but now the four of us senior and junior disciples are the only ones guarding this whole Emperor's Tomb Complex. The pressure is really immense."

Gu Baishui shook his head helplessly and poured the last cup of wine in his hand over the top of the Wordless Tombstone.

The clear wine flowed over the gray-white surface, trickled down its pitted face, and finally seeped into the dark soil.

The young man in green looked up at the distant stars and the night sky. After remaining silent for a long while, he sighed softly.

"Master, where exactly did you hide that Extreme Dao Emperor Weapon?"