"Heh…"
Lin Tang chuckled to himself. If I weren't too much for you to handle right now, you wouldn't be speaking so cordially, would you?
He nodded and said, "From the very beginning, I never intended to be your enemy. You were the ones who repeatedly provoked …"
"Hmph!" The Lesser Ruler's eyes blazed with fire, filled with utter disappointnt and anger. Her pure, untouched body had been stolen by that old scoundrel, Long Tianji, yet here he was, playing innocent after getting everything he wanted! How could Her Highness possibly seek a truce with him? This is too heartbreaking!
Lin Tang glanced at her display of powerless fury and continued, "As long as you stop targeting and don't prevent from eting and dating my wife, I don't mind turning our enmity into friendship."
Xuan Nü was silent for several seconds. "Agreed." She then looked toward the Greater Ruler.
The Greater Ruler felt just as aggrieved and helpless, but she had no other choice. She imdiately kowtowed, signaling her obedience.
Afterward, Xuan Nü, citing exhaustion as her reason, announced that she was going back to sleep.
"Wait a mont," Lin Tang said. "Since we are now allies, there are so questions I was hoping Her Highness would be willing to enlighten on."
"Why not ask the sect that backs you?"
"To be honest, ever since I began my training in the mortal world, my sect has mostly left to my own devices. I've had to figure out many things on my own."
"What do you wish to ask?"
"What exactly are deities? How does one beco one? Why are you different from the other deities? Why are you always sleeping? And why must the other deities return in the future? Also…"
"Stop!" Xuan Nü felt a headache forming as he barraged her with one question after another. She imdiately cut him off, stating that her ti was limited. At most, she could briefly answer his first few questions, but no more. She dismissed the Greater Ruler and the others, including Ning Yuexi, leaving only Lin Tang with her.
She then slowly began to speak.
"After the decline of the Immortal Path, Cultivators struggled to achieve breakthroughs and lost all hope of ascending to immortality. The road ahead was severed. So chose to accept this cruel reality, but many more were unwilling to resign themselves to it…
"Of these unwilling Cultivators, a portion fell to the Demonic Path, dedicating themselves to researching all manner of cruel, bloody, and inhuman secret techniques. Ning Yuexi's ancestors are one such example. Another portion turned their sights to the Martial Path, which they had once looked down upon, and began cultivating both immortal and martial arts simultaneously! Yet another group was influenced and swayed by the ancient gods, attempting to rge the Immortal Path with the Divine Path.
"The Great Dao has three thousand avenues, but all lead to the sa destination. Whether it is the Immortal Path, the Martial Path, the Divine Path, or others… they all share many commonalities in the end. Thus, there erged so prodigies of breathtaking talent who blended the various paths to forge new ones…" Xuan Nü narrated patiently.
Lin Tang continued to listen with rapt attention, his face filled with astonishnt.
Beyond the War God realm of the Martial Path lay the Human Immortal realm. But what was beyond the Human Immortal realm? That path, too, was a dead end. Moreover, the Human Immortal realm had a very awkward predicant. Despite possessing imnse power capable of killing even a Nascent Soul Cultivator, their lifespan, while far longer than a mortal's, was pitifully short compared to a Cultivator's. To be so powerful, yet so short-lived—this was the primary reason why Cultivators had always looked down on them.
However, when the Immortal, Martial, and Divine Paths were integrated, so managed to forcibly carve out subsequent paths for Human Immortals. These could be broadly divided into three routes, all of which could "solve" the flaw of a Human Immortal's short life.
"The first is the Path of the Ghost Immortal. This involves burning all of a Human Immortal's power to fuel the soul, which then undergoes corporeal dissolution for reincarnation. There is a chance of failure, and to fail ans utter annihilation into dust. Even if the reincarnation is successful, there's a chance of not recovering past-life mories, leading to a natural death or a premature end amidst the trials of the mortal world. But there is also a chance of regaining one's mories! With the rich cultivation experience of a past life, re-treading the path to the Human Immortal realm becos much easier. Then, before one's life ends again, one undergoes corporeal dissolution and reincarnation once more. This cycle repeats."
HISS…
Lin Tang's eyes widened. Isn't this just gambling with your life? Reincarnating ti and again, where any single failure or inability to recover mories ans permanent death.
Xuan Nü spoke indifferently, "At least it's a gamble one can take. That's better than having no options at all."
"Alright, what about the second path?" Lin Tang shook his head, feeling that the so-called Path of the Ghost Immortal was simply too unreliable.
Xuan Nü's voice was tinged with lancholy as she said, "The second is the Path of the Earth Immortal, the path I have chosen…
"What is the Path of the Earth Immortal? It is to abandon one's human form and rge the soul with a Grotto Heaven paradise. From that point on, the Grotto Heaven's space becos one's new physical body. As long as that space does not collapse and is not destroyed, one will not die. One need only nourish the soul to prevent it from withering away, and one can live on indefinitely.
"The Path of the Earth Immortal also borrows slightly from the Divine Path. It allows the mortals living within the Grotto Heaven paradise for generations to worship them, using this faith to nourish the soul and ensure its immortality. The greatest weakness of the Path of the Earth Immortal is that the space absolutely must not be destroyed, nor can all the living beings within it perish.
"There is another flaw—one loses the concept of the passage of ti. This is because you are no longer a person but a space. To a human, a hundred years is a very long ti. To a space, a hundred years might be nothing more than the duration of a nap. To a planet, a million years is insignificant. To the universe, a hundred million years or ten billion years makes no difference.
"As an Earth Immortal, one can only spend most of their ti sleeping. A hundred years, a thousand, ten thousand—it all feels the sa. The body of an Earth Immortal is also fundantally fixed in one location, never to change."
Her tone was calm, yet it carried an inconsolable sorrow. Lin Tang put himself in her shoes for a mont and couldn't help but shudder.
User Comments
0 comments from readers