Seeing that she had irritated Feng Ya, Lang Jiuchuan had no choice but to smooth things over, enduring a great deal of self-abasement before she managed to appease him. There was nothing else she could do — he was her creditor.

She set aside her light-hearted manner and recounted the analysis she and the Gong father and son had worked through: “We can say with reasonable certainty that the current Tantai Qing is Tantai Wuji — a man from a thousand years ago who failed in his attempt to break through and ascend, and who has since been sustaining his spiritual soul by repeatedly seizing the bodies of his own descendants, one after another.”

“No wonder that rotting, putrid stench of decay could carry a full li away — a thousand-year-old monster, of course.” Feng Ya gave a cold laugh, then noticed Lang Jiuchuan looking at him with a faint smile, and said, “I am nothing like him. I am a legitimate ghost cultivator. I have never engaged in something so foul. When he forcibly seizes a body, he must devour the original soul within it in order to enter — again and again, the souls pile up in a tangle of filth and corruption. That rotting stench comes from his spirit-soul itself.”

Lang Jiuchuan understood at once. She could not help but think back to the past — when she was young, her spiritual sight had been pure and clear, but her cultivation had not yet been sufficient to see through the true nature of the National Preceptor’s soul. Not until she was twelve or so had she begun to faintly detect a smell of decay drifting from him, yet she had never paid it much mind, and certainly never thought of body-seizing — after all, he was an old man, and a smell of old age was hardly remarkable.

Now that Feng Ya had spelled it out, her stomach churned with revulsion.

Feng Ya tapped lightly against his own leg and said, “If he is a man who has lived a thousand years, then what he seeks must be one of two things — to form a core again and break through to become a true immortal, or to replace Heaven’s law itself and become the supreme ruler of your world, establishing his own set of laws.”

Lang Jiuchuan was struck. “Become the supreme ruler?”

“Forming a core and becoming an immortal — the name is all well and good, but all it truly means is a somewhat longer lifespan. Even at the peak of the immortal cultivation era, a cultivator of the Golden Core realm could genuinely expect to live for five hundred years or more, at most. He can already achieve longevity through the vile method of seizing bodies again and again; extending his years and increasing his primordial energy is not necessarily what he needs most. What he truly needs is endurance without restraint.” Feng Ya said evenly. “If he becomes the supreme ruler of a realm, then the ruler is as a god — possessing the power of a divine being. The laws of that world are whatever he decrees, not whatever Heaven ordains.”

“Impossible!” Lang Jiuchuan countered. “No matter how long he has lived, it is still only a lifespan of a thousand years — even you cannot compare in that regard, and you would never dare dream of such a realm. What makes him bold enough to think of it? Wishful thinking alone? To put it plainly, the mortal world today is nothing more than the mundane realm. Spiritual energy is thin and scarce. For a cultivator to reach Foundation Establishment, or even Core Formation and ascension, is already to have achieved the great Dao, to have traveled the path of cultivation without regret. No matter how bold his ambitions, he would still need the actual conditions to support them…”

“What if the mortal world collapsed?” Feng Ya’s voice was cool as he cut her off.

Lang Jiuchuan fell silent mid-sentence. Her mind flew to the corpse-poison plague, and all at once, realization broke through.

If the mortal path of a small world collapsed, the world itself would collapse along with it. Heaven’s law would die — but it would also be reborn. Would that not be precisely his moment of opportunity?

As for how to make the mortal path collapse?

If the conditions did not exist, then create them.

Such as using her to suppress the Imperial Mausoleum, nourishing the dragon veins and the national fortune — and perhaps even his own remains. Such as seizing the accumulated destiny of great families across generations, taking the life-force and fate of living souls, creating a living hell on earth, destroying all beings and scattering the spiritual energy.

All of these signs — could they not each become a condition for collapse?

If his scheming succeeded, he could use his own body in place of Heaven itself, take command of all under Heaven, and utterly replace the fixed laws of Heaven governing Dayu’s dynasty and this mortal world — becoming a true, absolute ruler whose every word would be law.

What could be superior to that, compared to becoming some mere Golden Core immortal?

Even immortals were bound by the laws — just like Feng Ya, whose true capabilities had been restricted and whose capacity to act without restraint had been curbed because of Heaven’s laws. If that was the case, was it not far better to set the rules for oneself?

All the things she had not previously dared to connect now linked together, bearing fruit as a single truth, and Lang Jiuchuan was left speechless.

“Wuji — without limit, boundless heaven…” Lang Jiuchuan laughed in spite of her fury. “So that was it. A name that means ‘heaven’ and serves as a title of supremacy — he has truly been playing a grand game of chess all along.”

Her anger aside, she found herself filled with a certain involuntary admiration for Tantai Wuji’s ambition. He had truly dared to dream.

“To treat all living things as expendable straw dogs, to use all the people of the world as chess pieces, to establish himself as the ruler of his own laws — this is simply a madman.” Feng Ya said evenly. “Whether he succeeds or not, the mere fact that he dared to conceive of it already places him beyond countless cultivators.”

To become the ruler of an entire world — on the thin spiritual energy of this mortal realm, how could it possibly be done? Yet he had dared to dream it, and dared to stake everything on it, scheming for a thousand years. His ambition had long transcended the ordinary human desires of greed, hatred, and delusion — he was both supremely rational and supremely insane.

Lang Jiuchuan looked toward Feng Ya. “Do you think he will succeed?”

“Perhaps.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s pupils contracted sharply, her expression turning grave. “Even with the spiritual energy of the mortal world as meager as it is, it is still possible?”

Feng Ya said, “Heaven and earth, the cosmos — to say nothing of the Ten Directions, there are three thousand great worlds alone, each containing countless small worlds within them. The mortal world as it is today is one such small world. If no one in that world can stand against him, there will be nothing to stop him from doing whatever he pleases, and Heaven’s law will only send in a savior — that is the principle of the one loose thread in the forty-nine, spoken of in the great Dao. The savior is that one thread of hope. But if the savior is destroyed, then what becomes of this small world is no longer something Heaven’s law can alter, because that is how the fate is written. When that time comes, Heaven’s law will die, the mortal world will collapse, and then new laws will arise, rebuilding the world anew.”

He picked up a small tower, knocked it over and shattered it, then used his technique to rebuild it. The tower was no longer the same as it had been before.

Lang Jiuchuan picked up the small tower, her face twitching as she said, “You’re not going to tell me that I am that one thread of hope for this small world, are you?”

A savior — how could she bear that?

She did not want it, either.

“Every savior is born carrying a soaring, heaven-defying destiny. His scheming against you has been deep and meticulous. If you carried nothing he needed, why would he go to such lengths?” Feng Ya looked at Lang Jiuchuan and said, “So do not blame me for being unable to intervene and assist you directly. The thread of hope for that mortal world lies in you. If I go, the force of the laws will only obliterate me entirely. You may feel that Heaven’s law is blind, but the rules are brutal by nature — they do not favor either side. Good and evil, black and white, the righteous and the wicked — when two forces meet, each has an equal chance of winning. One side wins; the other must lose. There is no draw. That is what fairness means.”

Lang Jiuchuan stared at him steadily, both eyes as though filled with countless falling stars, bright and luminous.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. You explain things so well.”

Feng Ya nearly broke his composure and let it show on his face. He kept his expression stern. “To the point. Be serious. You are the savior. If you cannot kill him, then everyone dies along with you.”

“You won’t — you are of this Void realm.” Lang Jiuchuan saw his darkened expression and quickly added, “I’m saying, calling me a savior — don’t you think that’s giving me far too much credit? He is a thousand-year-old monster who dared to dream what no one else dared, and who has spent a thousand years scheming. How could I possibly be a match for him?”

“A mayfly shaking a great tree — it is not necessarily impossible. If it were otherwise, how did you manage to be reborn? Was it truly only because I defied the heavens for you? No! It is entirely because you were born carrying the very destiny that he covets most.” Feng Ya’s voice was low and deep. “With such destiny upon your person — it is both a deadly poison and a capital. You must prepare yourself.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s composure hardened.

(Author’s note: What is written and described here does not represent the author’s personal values!)