Sage Monarch (Sage Emperor)

The temple complex was crumbling into complete ruin, filled with an aura of decay and dense toxic mist. It was a terrifying place overall, and seemed almost like a hell unto itself. If even a bit of the toxic energy from the Toxic Continent somehow seeped down into the impure lands, countless immortal worlds would be destroyed.

Right now, Yang Qi was still searching for medicinal pills.

Although it was hard to make his hand out clearly if he held it out in front of him, he was still able to get a general sense of everything within thirty meters of himself. He was searching everything very carefully, leaving no proverbial rock unturned. Thankfully, not even Greater Gods would come to a place like this because of the toxic energy, which meant it wasn’t very well traveled.

Yang Qi was fully drawing on his True-Devil Unspoiled-by-Myriad-Kalpas-and-Tribulations Body. After all, within the various tribulation characters was the character for poison. Because of that, he was able to assimilate some of the toxic energy around him, making the area around him less dangerous.

‘What's this?’

He had just spotted some jade bottles in one of the rooms he was exploring. They were pitch black, but emanated a faint medicinal aroma.

‘Don’t tell me I actually found some paramount god medicine!’ What else could it be? Only something created by an expert with Paramount will could possibly stand the test of time surrounded by such corrosive power.

He exhaled a stream of vital energy that burned like intense flame, parting the toxic mist. Then he flicked his finger, causing a bubble to spring up around one of the jade bottles. Fire swirled around the bottle, burning away the corrosive toxins on its surface.

Everything in this place was infected by poison so powerful that ordinary fire couldn’t do anything to it. Thankfully, the twin tribulations of fire and poison from the Unspoiled Body, backed by the Flame of Hope from the Strength of the Hell-Crushing Godmammoth, were more than enough to do the job.

Grabbing the bottle, he opened it.

Instantly, a strong medicinal aroma wafted out, along with emerald-green light.

‘Got some!’ he exclaimed. It was a paramount god medicine. He quickly unleashed his energy arts to pull the pill out of the bottle. However, to his surprise, the green energy contained a distorted human face that pulsed with devilishness.

‘I can’t believe it. It's been in the toxic mist so long it’s turned into poison medicine! So, it’s not a god pill. Ah, what a pity.’ He looked closer at the medicinal pill. ‘Maybe I should try to expunge the devilishness. Be refined!” A stream of true flame flowed out from him as he tried to remove the devilishness and restore the pill to its original state.

However, after only a moment, the pill let loose a shrill shriek and exploded, turning into a green smoke that quickly dissipated into nothing.

A medicinal pill thrown into toxic miasma was like gourmet food thrown into a dung heap. Once it happened, no amount of cleaning would do any good.

He tried to do the same thing with the rest of the bottles, but found that any medicinal pills inside were too badly infected with toxic energy. He had found some pills, but hadn’t benefited from them. In fact, he had wasted a lot of godpower trying to save them.

But he wasn’t discouraged, and continued his search. Some of the temples he found were complete, while others were crumbling into nothing. And there were so many that searching every single one would take a lot of time. After some quick calculations, Yang Qi came to the conclusion that if it weren’t for the God Legion Seal constantly replenishing his godpower, he probably wouldn’t last more than seven days here. Even an ordinary Greater God could only last for about ten days or so. That wasn’t even close to enough time to find anything useful.

Another ten days passed, and he still hadn’t found anything worthwhile. On the upside, the continuous effort to expunge poison was having a tempering effect on his godpower, making it purer than before.

Furthermore, he was coming to realize that there was a pattern to how the structures here had been built. It seemed like a god kingdom, and he could almost close his eyes and imagine how amazing it had been back in its heyday.

The further in he went, the larger and more impressive the buildings were. He saw statues of gods as tall as mountains, although most of them were smashed or had been toppled.

The glory of bygone days was no more, and the only things that remained were ruins filled with toxic mist.

“Hmm. Is that something ahead?”

He had caught sight of a huge temple of ancient design that almost looked like a pill furnace hulking in the mists. It was immense, fully three thousand meters tall, and several kilometers from end to end. It almost looked like a castle. As Yang Qi sized it up, he realized that it was roughly octagonal, and its surface conveyed all sorts of profound things, such as the circumference of the universe, the motion of the stars, the five phases, eight trigrams, yin and yang, two polarities, the taiji and wuji, primal-chaos and the origin of the universe, the true dharma of the three caves, and the profundities of the three doctrines. [1]

The enormous building actually reminded him of the Heaven and Earth Furnace, and he could instantly tell that, in ancient times, it was a place where the Pill-King God would gather his disciples to concoct pills. That meant that it was highly likely to have pills inside.

If a medicinal pill was protected by a powerful warding magic, it wouldn’t be tainted by the miasma.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like it would be easy to get inside. As he got close, thunderous rumbling sounds echoed out and the surrounding mist converged into the shape of a spear that slammed into him like toxic god lightning, shaking his defenses deeply.

In fact, he was sent flying backward until he slammed into another nearby building, his godpower shaken to the point that he felt like he was suffocating.

‘Incredible. The mist is so toxic it actually turned into toxic god lightning.’ It wasn’t going to be easy to get close.

‘Whatever. I’ll just burn some of the power I've been saving for my godhood. Let’s open a path!’

CRASH!

He exhaled a stream of godpower from within the virtual godhood in his sea of energy, and the godpower instantly turned into godfire.

Because the godpower had experienced refinement in his virtual godhood, it was definitely extraordinary. Normally speaking, godpower that had been refined within virtual godhood wasn’t useful. Expending it would only be harmful to one’s cultivation base. Up to this point, Yang Qi had been using godpower that came directly from the God Legion Seal. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to be sufficient to get into the pill furnace-shaped temple.

But the power in his virtual godhood was extremely formidable. Although he hadn’t fully formed his monarch godhood, considering he had Paramount will at work on it, how could it be anything ordinary?

The fire erupting from his mouth turned into a stream three hundred meters long, like an enormous pillar that bored through the miasma and created a clear and pure passageway.

In this manner, Yang Qi approached the temple. Although toxic god lightning continually tried to reach him, the fire that he sent out would consume it with abandon.

Three days and three nights passed before he finally reached the temple. He had wasted some godpower, but still had plenty to keep going. After all, if he found a single paramount-level medicinal pill, he would be able to fill himself right back up.

‘Grrrrr! If I don’t get anything out of this trip, I'm going to end up having wasted a good year’s worth of godpower!’

Yang Qi shook his head.

BAM!

Upon entering the temple, he looked around to find numerous alcoves with pill furnaces in them, all of them seemingly sealed tight.

Apparently, no one had ever stepped foot in this place.

Although the numerous sealed pill furnaces were all surrounded with toxic energy, most of them still glittered with faint light that seemed to indicate they hadn’t been completely infected.

As far as Yang Qi could tell, they were all precious treasures. That was emphasized by the fact that even though the subterranean balefire that had once heated the furnaces no longer existed, they still pulsed with power.

‘I wonder if the toxic mist here was left behind directly by King Hypertoxin?’ he thought. He suddenly recalled that, after acquiring his Seventy-Two Monarchs Energy Art, one of the least complete of his collections were the weapons of King Hypertoxin. They were called Atu’s Hypertoxic Hooks, and the complete set was made up of several thousand weapons, but he only had a few hundred.

That said, the hooks were currently in the possession of his immortal-slaying clone, along with all the other items.

But if he could get some more of Atu’s Hypertoxic Hooks, he might be able to lessen the severity of the poison. Back in the impure lands, his cultivation base hadn’t been high enough to make good use of those seventy-two types of weapons, but now he had Paramount will and a much deeper enlightenment of such mysteries.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the weapons with him.

Putting aside such thoughts, he headed over to one of the pill furnaces, which was fully as tall as two average people. Reaching out toward the tightly-sealed lid, he prepared to take it off.

1. Granted, while most of the descriptions here don’t have weight in terms of the plot, they are meaningful in general. There are a couple that haven’t really been mentioned in this translation before, such as the wuji, which is basically the predecessor of the taiji, and refers to the primordial universe. In the past, I’ve translated it in different ways depending on the context; this is my first time transliterating it because of its pairing with taiji. The three caves are a real thing, and the three doctrines are those of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.