“Why would you go this far?”
Jiang Chongguang had never expected that Li Shun would burn through his own lifespan just to break the seal before them.
“Stop right now!” Seeing strands of stark white silently creep into Li Shun’s ink-black hair, his voice trembled with urgency.
Li Shun only shook his head slowly. His expression was resolute as he said, “I am of the Dongshan Tomb Guarding lineage. If the Imperial Mausoleum is truly destroyed, I will not survive either. I must get out and report this at once.”
“Foolish! So what if the Imperial Mausoleum burns? At worst, we rebel outright!”
Li Shun rely smiled, ignoring him as he continued to frantically drive his Life Qi to dismantle the seal.
In barely an instant, nearly two hundred years of lifespan were consud, leaving him with only ten years remaining. Only then did the stubborn seal finally collapse and disperse.
With his Life Qi drained dry in such a short span, Li Shun’s appearance changed in the blink of an eye. From a seventeen-year-old youth, he aged into a weathered man in his thirties.
His hair had turned almost entirely gray.
“So it matches my earlier premonition.”
“The Jun clan’s cultivation thod has an absurdly terrifying catalytic effect on the burning of Life Qi. It seems tailor-made for incinerating it. This rate of consumption is truly horrifying.”
“If not for the foundation of two hundred years of lifespan, along with that strand of unique purple-azure Life Qi protecting , I wouldn’t even have been able to break this seal today.”
As Li Shun pondered inwardly, Jiang Chongguang had already grabbed him and burst forward like a gale, fleeing desperately toward the cave’s exit.
The entire mountain trembled violently, no longer stable. Massive boulders rained down from above.
Yet Jiang Chongguang relied on his tough physique, neither dodging nor evading.
He forcibly used his own body to shield Li Shun from every falling rock.
By the ti they rushed out of the cave, the towering cliff behind them let out a thunderous roar before collapsing completely.
The once-deep canyon was crushed flat in an instant.
“My treasures! Everything I painstakingly gathered!” Jiang Chongguang cried out in anguish.
But his attention was quickly seized by an even more horrifying sight before him.
The collapse of mountains and the shattering of earth was rely the tip of the iceberg in the apocalyptic disaster sweeping across the Imperial Mausoleum Commandary.
Li Shun raised his head. At so unknown mont, the entire sky had turned a dark, blood-red hue. Pillars of fla surged from all directions, piercing straight into the heavens.
From the dim sky poured a thick, viscous rain of blood.
Yet these crimson drops were not liquid.
Before they even touched the ground, they transford midair into endless, lifeless white ash.
Looking around, the entire Imperial Mausoleum had been set ablaze, becoming a boundless inferno.
“Why is he moving so fast?” Jiang Chongguang exclaid, his face pale with shock.
Li Shun’s gaze fixed on the towering columns of smoke.
“The places where those pillars rise… they all correspond to…”
“The Burial Human Effigies!”
The Imperial Mausoleum had remained sealed for 2,987 years.
Throughout that long passage of ti, every person who died within had been turned into a burial effigies.
Accumulated over the ages, the number of these effigies had reached an utterly staggering scale.
And now, all of them had been ignited at once. The raging flas spread across the land like endless beacon fires.
“There is still Life Qi remaining inside these effigies!”
“That Qi should have returned to heaven and earth after death. Yet Great Qian sealed it away through this thod.”
The image of countless effigies, packed together like swarming ants, surfaced in Li Shun’s mind, sending an uncontrollable chill through his heart.
Even if each effigie retained only a trace of Life Qi, when multiplied by such an enormous number, the total would be an unimaginable sum.
“What exactly is this Imperial Mausoleum…”
A strange, indescribable feeling rose within him.
The entire Imperial Mausoleum Commandary, bathed in crimson gloom, now resembled the end of the world.
The flas devouring the effigies transford into hundreds of blazing dragons, raging wildly across the plains. The earth veins fractured with thunderous roars, and towering mountains collapsed one after another.
The miniature reflection of Great Qian was wiped away in an instant.
Even the sky itself could not withstand such scorching force. Cracks spread across it like shattered glass. Fragnts of the firmant peeled away, falling through the air as massive flaming teors that slamd violently into the scorched land.
Nearly ten million living beings within the Imperial Mausoleum perished in this catastrophe.
Perhaps the only places spared were the four central regions, protected by towering burial mounds.
…
The sheer horror of the disaster left Jiang Chongguang utterly stunned.
“Madman…”
“The Jun clan really are all complete madn.”
“Cough, cough…”
The air was filled with unbearable heat, but this was no ordinary fire.
It was the terrifying catalytic effect produced by the frenzied combustion of an imasurable quantity of Life Qi.
The entire Imperial Mausoleum now resembled a massive cauldron being boiled without end. Every living being within that possessed Life Qi was being drawn into this calamity and burned away.
“We can’t stay. We have to escape imdiately.” Jiang Chongguang clenched his teeth as he glanced at Li Shun, whose appearance was rapidly aging.
But the next mont, his expression changed drastically.
The thod he had learned from Han Sushu, the one that allowed him to freely enter and exit the Imperial Mausoleum Commandary, had suddenly failed at this critical mont.
“How could this happen?!” he shouted in shock and anger.
“So it was a deliberate flaw. Under normal circumstances, they allowed entry and exit. But now… with such a catastrophe unleashed, they’ve completely sealed off the entire commandary,” Li Shun thought to himself.
“Don’t tell I, Jiang Chongguang, will die here today?” His eyes burned with unwillingness as he dragged Li Shun through the sea of flas, desperately searching for a way out.
He even tried to charge toward the shattered sky itself.
Yet it was forced back by the blazing, ferocious winds of Life Qi surging high above the sky.
Crimson gales howled as ashen remnants of disaster scattered through the air.
The entire world within the Imperial Mausoleum seed to be sliding, helpless and inevitable, into an apocalyptic abyss.
At that very mont, a lean figure suddenly appeared, standing proudly at the very center of heaven and earth.
The chaotic vortex of Life Qi, boiling without end, actually stalled for a brief instant.
“Sushu!” Jiang Chongguang cried out instinctively, excitent flashing across his face as he looked at that familiar silhouette.
But in the next mont, realization struck him.
That figure standing beneath the heavens was not Han Sushu at all, but the heir of the Jun Clan.
As expected, the features of that borrowed face began to lt away like wax under blazing fire, layer by layer dripping off to reveal the true appearance beneath.
An utterly ordinary face.
And yet, in the face of such a world-destroying catastrophe, his expression remained as calm as an ancient well, utterly unshaken.
Seated cross-legged in midair, he raised his head to gaze directly at the heavens and spoke in a steady, indifferent tone.
“It is said that the sage holds no attachnt to life or death, and the true sovereign bears no sorrow for what lies beyond. To shed the shell and return to simplicity, to follow transformation and return to the void, this is the great constancy of creation.”
“Now the ruler of Qian commands awe across the seas, his might swallowing the six directions, priding himself as unmatched through the ages.”
“Yet today, as I behold this Imperial Mausoleum, I see clearly that the heart of the Qian ruler is nothing more than base and contemptible!”
Though the Jun heir spoke softly, the surging Life Qi around him resonated with the chaotic furnace of this world, forcefully carrying his voice to every corner of the Mausoleum.
“What is this guy doing?” Jiang Chongguang stared intently, utterly baffled.
Li Shun listened carefully before replying in a low voice, “Burning the Imperial Mausoleum is rely the act. What follows is the justification.”
“You think the Jun clan are madn. Perhaps the entire world thinks so. But they themselves certainly do not.”
“They have their own reasoning.”
“Today, since they have committed such a heaven-shaking deed as setting the Imperial Mausoleum ablaze, they must proclaim the principles behind their actions to the world. Otherwise, would they not truly beco mindless hounds, disgracing the na of the Jun clan?”
Jiang Chongguang curled his lips, still unable to understand.
Yet Li Shun could sense that throughout every corner of the mausoleum, and even beyond the vault of heaven, countless people were listening at this very mont to the Jun heir’s arrogant declaration.
“Life and death are but the great balance of creation, the fixed course of fullness and emptiness. The greatness of a ruler lies in the brilliance of his life, not in the preservation of his corpse.”
“When the ruler of Qian lived, he gazed down upon the world. Why should he fear the nine underworlds in death?”
“Yet now, he exhausts the wealth of the realm and overturns an entire commandary, seeking to pile earth into barriers against the flow of creation, to seal yin and yang within dark chambers.”
“This is fear of the heavenly mandate, submission before the underworld. To seek to heap earthen forms to block the turning of Creation; to seal yin and yang within shadowed coffins and hidden chambers. This is the gods fearing the Mandate of Heaven, their vital force bowing before the Underworlds—vainly gathering rotting bones to resist calamity, clutching clay bodies to defy annihilation.”
“To be honored above all while alive, yet to burrow like vermin in death. Is this not the greatest tragedy, the ultimate ridicule across the ages?”
After finishing, the Jun heir’s mocking laughter echoed endlessly.
“This guy… what he says actually makes so sense.”
“I’ve never liked how the Qian Emperor built such an enormous tomb for himself. Even in death, he wants to occupy such vast space. What a waste.” Jiang Chongguang snorted coldly, eyes half-narrowed.
The Jun heir’s scornful voice continued.
Only now, his target expanded from the Qian Emperor to the Hundred Schools.
“As for the court officials and the leaders of the Hundred Schools, they are even more despicable!”
“The Mohists preach frugality in burial, yet now exhaust their ingenuity to construct palaces beneath the earth.”
“The Militarists are ant to defend against enemies, yet now bow their pride to guard the gates of the dead.”
“The Legalists uphold law and order, yet now wield harsh punishnts to drive the mourning masses.”
“The Masters Of Yin-Yang once studied the heavens, yet now exhaust their knowledge to nourish this darkness.”
“The Historians hold their brushes, yet record not the emperor’s fear of death, praising instead the splendor of subterranean construction.”
…
The Jun heir threw his head back and laughed wildly, his few words enough to strip the Mohists, Militarists, Legalists, Yin-Yang School, Historians, and all others involved in constructing the Mausoleum of any dignity.
Yet as his laughter rang out, his body began to crumble along with this world, erupting from within with destructive dark-red flas.
Fragnts of mottled ashen peeled away from his form and scattered, as if he might be reduced to dust at any mont.
And yet he paid no heed to his own life or death, continuing his discourse without pause.
His voice remained resolute and unwavering.
“The Great Dao needs no excess. True power borrows from nothing. How could puppets defend their master? How could false earth shield the heavens!”
“I am but a madman of the wilds. I recite no flattering words, cultivate no servile learning.”
“Today, I walk alone into the Imperial Mausoleum, bearing no divine weapons, wielding not a single blade. With nothing but mortal courage and the fire within my own heart!”
“I shall tear apart this false earth with my bare hands, set fire to this illusory palace!”
“Let the Qian ruler’s eternal cowardice, and the sycophancy of the Hundred Schools, all be reduced to ash!”
“All reduced to ash!”
His declaration rang like clashing tal, resounding violently across heaven and earth.
At last, his body completely transford into a blazing mass of Life Qi, rging with the entire world of the Imperial Mausoleum as it was consud by an all-devouring sea of flas.
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