“Descendant of the Chongming Bird…” The Silver Insect Mother’s massive maw, filled with chaotic fangs, dripped saliva mixed with blood and flesh. Though chaotic, the demon race had grand laws—lower bloodlines couldn’t offend higher ones. But with the demon kingdom fallen, it wasn’t uncommon for lower demons to devour higher ones to strengthen their bloodline.
It had no intention of giving up this rare higher demon offspring. Its larva had merely reported that these humans carried treasures capable of assassinating Nascent Soul cultivators.
Nan Yan sensed this malice but couldn’t outright refuse. After all, Mu Zhanting was still beneath its roots. She needed to stall as long as possible.
Moments later, dissatisfied with the blood bees’ response, the Insect Mother drove its tentacles into the cave entrance. It pierced the unconscious Hu Rui’s skull, causing him to shudder as silver patterns spread across his face. His eyes opened, speaking in an androgynous voice.
“…We’re both demons, blessed with territory by the Deer Sovereign. Why not settle here in the Mountain-Sea realm and lure all these humans to me? Don’t you want to go to Ten Karma Mountain? Once I’m satiated, I’ll naturally send you there.”
Unfazed, Nan Yan calmly replied, “You’ve been confined here. How do you know about Ten Karma Mountain?”
Hu Rui, controlled by the Silver Insect Mother, cackled eerily. “Though I can’t read dead souls’ memories like the Nine-Colored Deer and other celestial spirits, I’ve caught demons and humans escaping Ten Karma Mountain. Eat nine, release one—they told me everything.”
“Oh?” Nan Yan retreated half a step, her fingers resting on her already-drawn scabbard. “As fellow demons, please don’t withhold information, Insect Mother.”
The Insect Mother’s four pairs of eyes on its massive head glanced at Nan Yan’s scabbard and Cloud Nian’s Mountain Roar inkstone. At its peak, it could have ignored them, but having just birthed new offspring, it could only kill one of them while the other would severely wound it. It had to summon its larvae for support slowly.
So it began recounting what it knew of Ten Karma Mountain: “The situation in this Mountain-Sea realm, as the Deer Sovereign has told you, is that demons occupy the Nine Tribulation Sea while ghosts control Ten Karma Mountain. The sea has four great demon lords, and the mountain has five ghost marquises. For hundreds of years, humans were absent, ghosts often descended to plunder spirit wells…”
At this, Nan Yan glanced at the Insect Mother Tree’s roots. Fortunately, Mu Zhanting hadn’t released any spiritual energy, hiding under the resin’s cover.
“Years ago, the five ghost marquises descended to the Nine Tribulation Sea but were defeated and sealed in spirit wells by our demons. However, they continually grow stronger by absorbing spiritual energy, and as long as the Prison Lord of Ten Karma Mountain lives, they remain immortal.”
Does the Prison Lord live? Nan Yan’s eyelid twitched. She remembered the Wood Ghost Marquis saying something similar. If true, the so-called Mountain River Sea Crown symbolized the Prison Lord. If the Prison Lord lived, what were these cultivators competing for?
The Insect Mother soon clarified: “Strictly speaking, the Prison Lord isn’t alive. It’s a puppet with only a wisp of soul consciousness. Yet this puppet is formidable. With just a trace of soul, it has commanded ghost forces to encroach on the Nine Tribulation Sea for over twenty years. Now, it has released the Golden Ghost Marquis and others, waiting at Ghost Gate for the next breakthrough to wage all-out war against demonkind. In the past, conquering the Ten Karma Mountain’s Myriad Ghost Purgatory was enough to claim that supreme treasure. Now, you must kill the Prison Lord to obtain it.”
Nan Yan asked, “Isn’t the Prison Lord supposed to be a godlike existence? How can it be a puppet?”
The Insect Mother sneered, “Other demons may not know, but my offspring are countless. Nothing passes through the southern Tribulation Sea without my knowledge.”
Nan Yan thought to herself that this pregnant mother insect’s acuity had greatly diminished, as they had been active for so long before it noticed.
“Please elaborate,” she said.
“This is a secret. Come closer, and I’ll tell you…” As the Insect Mother spoke, the entire golden tree suddenly rustled. A strange fragrance permeates the air, confusing the senses.
In a moment of dizziness, Cloud Nian felt something drip on his face. He was horrified to see the golden tree secreting resin like an endless waterfall source, quickly rising to half a person’s height!
Everything touched by the resin formed a hard, wax-like shell. The previously motionless roots of the small Insect Mother Trees above now descended like countless threads, seemingly answering a dinner call to absorb the white resin.
He finally understood how this cave formed! After each birth, the Insect Mother Tree secreted massive amounts of resin, creating a cavern. Once the small Insect Mother Trees absorbed all the resin, it became hollow again.
“Sister Zhenyuan, run! It’s trying to seal our escape route!” Cloud Nian shouted.
Nan Yan’s heart jolted, but the Insect Mother was prepared. Its tentacles swiftly encased her in a wax ball.
Having secured its prize, the Insect Mother tossed Hu Rui aside and cackled, drawing close to the wax ball. It mocked in demon language, “I’ll continue telling you. Your human race sent back the previous Mountain River Sea Crown bearer. They locked his soul with a powerful restriction, forcing him to rule the Mountain Sea realm as the Prison Lord… You have no chance. Everyone is his sacrifice. You might as well contribute to my cause.”
As the Insect Mother opened its maw to swallow her, countless red rays suddenly burst from the wax ball.
Simultaneously, a woman’s voice, as if from a pure land, chanted:
“I am not the purest body, for the purest has no leaves.”
“I am not the clearest mind, for the clearest confuses cultivation.”
“I am not the kindest person, for the kindest struggles to vanquish evil.”
Golden light expanded continuously, the Buddhist spiritual power making the Insect Mother’s demonic body tremble.
—Wasn’t she of demon bloodline? Why cultivate Buddhism? And what kind of Buddhism was this?!
This Buddhism discarded the deep, tranquil incense of temples. It seemed to tread on Asura’s karmic fire, emerging from that boundless hell. As eyes opened, a soul-captivating lotus bloomed in their depths.
The Buddha’s path abandoned the tranquil, lingering incense of the temple. Instead, it strode forth on the fiery karma of Asuras, emerging from the inescapable hell. As eyes opened, a soul-stirring lotus bloomed in their depths.
Suddenly, the wax sphere burst. Nan Yan levitated, sitting cross-legged in midair. Behind her, the long-dormant Bodhisattva of Compassion finally raised its gaze. Its thousand hands stirred as it spoke in unison with Nan Yan:
“All paths are forbidden, suppressed by our might. Heaven and Earth deny entry, yet we guide spirits and demons alike!”
The gut-wrenching Sanskrit chant invaded the Insect King’s mind relentlessly. It was as if a red-hot bell had been installed in its brain, each toll shattering another fraction of its sanity.
“No… You’re just a mere hatchling! A half-breed with humans! How could you possibly harm me?” The Silver Moth Queen reared back, howling. Its maw, filled with fangs, lunged to swallow Nan Yan whole. However, the ink-wash landscape barrier had already materialized to protect her.
“The deepest abyss has its shallows, the tallest mountain its plateau. Only the benevolent stand undefeated,” Yun Nian recited the Confucian wisdom. The brush of King Wen, saturated with ink from the Shantao inkstone, swept across the paper. A thousand-foot mountain materialized, holding back countless demons.
“You…!” With the Sanskrit echoing in its mind, the Silver Moth Queen exerted all its power. An otherworldly screech caused the bone-filled ceiling to collapse, unleashing a swarm of silver insects.
“Die!” the Queen shrieked.
At that moment, the golden tree, having released too much resin, began to hollow out. From its core erupted a jet of pure, intense flame. The fire transformed into a steel blade, recklessly slicing through the golden tree. It swiftly rotated full circle as a furious roar erupted from beneath the roots:
“I’ll be damned if there’s a tree in this world I can’t burn!”
The Sanskrit chant, Confucian transformation, and ultimate fire reached their zenith simultaneously. Amid deafening explosions, the entire cave shook violently, blasts resounding from every direction.
In the aftermath, Hu Rui, who had been flung half-dead into a corner, miraculously regained consciousness. Survival instinct drove him to crawl, battered and broken, into an escape tunnel. He gazed back in terror.
“What kind of monsters are they?”
As he spoke, the insect fruit he had stuffed in his pocket seemed to come alive. It liquefied into silver fluid, seeping into the wound at the base of his skull.
“What’s happening?” Hu Rui howled in agony, writhing on the ground. After a few moments, he realized he was still alive. Strange silver patterns began to cover his body. Upon internal inspection, his face lit up with wild joy. “So the Mother Tree died, and its offspring sought a new host. They grant the ability to mimic anything… I’ve struck gold!”
Another wave of explosions rocked the cave. Hu Rui watched in horror as insect corpses poured out of the entrance like a silver tide, prompting him to flee in panic.
After the commotion subsided, the silver forest in the southern Nine Tribulation Seas dimmed like a sea of extinguished lanterns. Silver insects drifted down from the cave ceiling like unseasonal snowflakes, accompanying the faint light of dawn.
Nan Yan, Mu Zhanting, and Yun Nian lay exhausted atop a bed of golden leaves, surrounded by the Queen’s corpse and dunes of dead insects.
Living up to Mu Zhanting’s assessment as the “toughest baldy,” Nan Yan recovered first. Gazing at the blue sky outside, she declared, “I must go to Ten Karma Mountain.”
Mu Zhanting tossed two-thirds of the fire-attribute essence he had obtained from the spirit well to Nan Yan and Yun Nian. Pressing the remainder to his forehead to recover, he asked, “After breaking through the Ghost Gate, there should be a void rift. Once we gather enough primordial spirit energy, we can return to the cultivation realm to form our Core. Why go to Ten Karma Mountain?”
Nan Yan repeated robotically, “I must go to Ten Karma Mountain.”
Puzzled, Mu Zhanting inquired, “What’s wrong?”
“I heard him… We have an appointment. I must go,” Nan Yan explained. In that moment of boiling demon blood, she had understood the Queen’s demonic language.
The young man who had trained his junior brothers in the reversed reincarnation mirror had been killed. Afterward, one of his souls was imprisoned deep within Ten Karma Mountain, forever wandering for the sake of the great cause of Dao giving birth to Heaven.
…And his remaining soul had become her eternal tear of mortal attachment.
Calming herself, Nan Yan sat up. “The Moth Queen is dead. Although this fire-attribute spirit well now belongs to us, other great demons from the southern Tribulation Sea will soon catch wind of it. By the way, I haven’t asked—how was your Panya Heavenly Fire so powerful just now? Was the Fire Ghost Marquis I mentioned down in the well?”
Mu Zhanting replied, “There was one, but this Moth Queen was formidable. Its roots reached deep underground, absorbing all the newly born ghosts. Only one remained, stripped of power. I used a secret technique to temporarily boost my cultivation to the Core Formation stage and fought it hundreds of rounds… but it just wouldn’t die. I was so frustrated.”
“How did you deal with it in the end?” Nan Yan pressed.
“I couldn’t kill it, and if I ran, it would slow me down. Left with no choice, I devoured it,” Mu Zhanting explained.
Even Yun Nian awoke, joining Nan Yan in staring at Mu Zhanting’s belly in shock.
“…Devoured?” Nan Yan echoed.
Mu Zhanting elaborated, “I released the Great Sun Fire Essence to envelop and refine the Fire Ghost Marquis. You were fighting intensely above, so I was in a hurry to join you. I swallowed it whole, like gulping down one of the Taishang Laojun’s alchemical coals. It burned my dantian something fierce.”
“After swallowing it, did you experience any… discomfort?” Nan Yan probed.
“Not really. Just felt a bit dizzy, hungry, and sleepy,” Mu Zhanting replied, burping. “See? It’s still kicking in my belly.”
“…”
“Sister Zhenyan, why are you covering my ears?” Yun Nian asked innocently.
Nan Yan sighed, “Don’t listen. It’s not for young ears.”