Against the Gods (Web Novel)

Chapter 1909: Heart In Shambles

He had gone through an untold number of trials and tribulations to arrive at where he was today. He was no longer the careless person who would let a detail—especially one that felt off—slip past him just because it had felt minor and inconsequential.

So he summoned the profound energy and replayed the projection once more.

This time, he gathered his mind and—besides the split spiritual perception that was following Yun Wuxin—kept his eyes and his full perception trained on the projection.

Blue Pole Star’s space was shaking, and the crimson divine light of the World Piercer was spreading quickly. When the red light fully encompassed the entire projection…

… he caught sight of that purple flash once more.

It only appeared for a brief instant, but it more than confirmed that it wasn’t just a hallucination of his mind!

At the same time, his heart started beating wildly.

That purple was…

No…

No…

It cannot be…

He pressed a palm to his chests. His heartbeat was so strong that it actually felt like it was physically ramming against his palm.

He shook his head powerfully and replayed the projection again.

At the same time, he pressed a finger imbued with profound energy against the projection.

Sometimes when a person’s nervousness and tension reaches a certain level, they might feel as if the world itself had fallen silent.

That the flow of time itself had become infinitely slower.

He stopped breathing, but even then he couldn’t suppress the mad beating of his heart. When the replay finally reached a certain moment, he unleashed the profound energy imbued in his finger.

It felt like a miracle. The replay froze at the exact moment the purple flash appeared.

Equally frozen was Yun Che’s body, face, breathing, blood flow and heartbeat. It was as if everything had become frozen in ice.

Everything, except his rapidly dilating pupils…

This was the frozen scene in the projection: the crimson light of the World Piercer was enveloping the blue sky, and outside of it was an unusually thin yet deep layer of purple light.

There were countless purple-colored powers in the entire universe. Thunder profound practitioners practically inhaled and exhaled purple with every boom of thunder.

However, Yun Che was at a level where he could easily differentiate any power on sight no matter how similar their colors were.

That was why he could declare with certainty that this wasn’t the first time he had seen the purple light in the projection… one might even say that he was all too familiar with it.

It had protected him, almost killed him, fought against him…

He remembered every moment it had appeared in his life clearly to this day.

After all… it was a power that had belonged to the Moon God Realm, the divine light of the Purple Pylon Moon God!

The bearer of its legacy was none other than Xia Qingyue, the deceased Moon God Emperor herself!

The snow blew at erratic speeds. It wasn’t long before Yun Che was covered in a layer of pure white snow.

However, Yun Che remained as frozen as a lifeless statue. One breath stretched to ten, and ten stretched to a hundred. Perhaps the passage of time itself had become completely meaningless to him. He was too busy contending with the violent shock that was drumming inside his brain with the power of ten thousand crashes of thunder.

He couldn’t believe his eyes, but even less could he fool himself to believe that the translucent, crystal-like purple on the projection wasn’t real.

There was only one Purple Pylon divine power in this universe.

There couldn’t be a second bearer of the Purple Pylon divine power.

So… what… is… this…?

Before calamity struck, it was Meiyin who used the World Piercer to move the Blue Pole Star to the south of the Southern Divine Region.

The day Yun Wuxin engraved this image was the same day the Blue Pole Star was about to be destroyed. The red radiance in the projection was without a doubt the spatial divine power of the World Piercer as well.

So why did her power appear at the same time as space as this spatial divine power?

Why did the person who destroyed the “Blue Pole Star” before my very eyes…

What is going on…

What the hell is going on here…?

He abruptly bit the tip of his tongue. Blood flooded his mouth as pain brought clarity and order back to his chaotic thoughts. However, his pupils still refused to contract.

It was at this moment a couple of unimportant questions and contradictions that he had almost forgotten altogether surfaced from the depths of his mind:

…………

“Some time ago, I took a trip to the Dragon God Realm and I found out about some matters regarding Senior Shen Xi. However, it is not the right time to tell you about that now… the reason why I am mentioning it to you right now is to tell you that you do not need to visit the Dragon God Realm in the near future.”

This was what Xia Qingyue told him before everything had gone to hell. He was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Xia Qingyue before the Wall of Primal Chaos and getting ready to see off the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor.

…………

Beyond the destroyed Blue Pole Star, she had pointed the Purple Pylon Divine Sword oozing with purple light and the stench of death at his lifeless face. She had watched him with a pair of purple eyes as cold and desolate as the abyss itself and said in a pitying voice,

“I suppose that there’s no harm in telling you one thing before you die.”

“I told you yesterday that there was something I needed to speak to you about when the time was right, but… it would appear that such a time will never come. In that case, I may as well tell you about it now.”

“Shen Xi… is dead.”

“Some time ago, I went to the Dragon God Realm and discovered that the Forbidden Land of Samsara was completely destroyed. All the plants are dead, no one is around, and its spirit energy is completely spent,”

“Later on, I went to the center of the Forbidden Land of Samsara and found a pool of blood in the middle. Although a long time had passed, the blood showed no signs of drying at all… it’s because it had pure light aura in it.”

“Can you guess whose blood it was?”

…………

After he killed Long Bai, reentered the Dragon God Realm and forcefully dispelled the barrier that surrounded the entire Forbidden Land of Samsara, a doubt had sprung from his mind.

It was because the barrier had been imbued with Long Bai’s draconic soul. It was almost impossible for anyone to breach it without being noticed.

He once asked Qianye Ying’er, “Qianying, are there any methods that will allow someone to slip into this kind of soul-infused barrier undetected?”

She had answered, “The first is to use the Eternal Heaven God Realm’s Great Void Cauldron. As the strongest spatial artifact of this era, slipping through a soul-infused barrier shouldn’t pose a problem to it, no matter how many layers there are. The second is a special spatial profound technique from the Purple Micro Realm called the ‘Prime Purple Micro’.”

“However, I cannot guarantee that the Great Void Cauldron can slip through a soul-infused barrier of this level undetected. As for the ‘Prime Purple Micro’ technique, it’s a skill that no one in the Purple Micro Realm has been able to cultivate for two hundred thousand years.”

“The third is naturally the World Piercer that Shui Meiyin currently owns. As a Profound Heavenly Treasure and the undisputed strongest spatial divine artifact in the history of the Primal Chaos, an artifact that can even switch planetary objects across the universe, penetrating a mere soul-infused barrier like this one is nothing more than child’s play.”

“The Moon God Realm doesn’t have any similar secret spatial techniques, correct?”

Qianye Ying’er answered again, “I remember you telling me that it was Xia Qingyue who told you about Shen Xi’s death. So you are wondering why Xia Qingyue would be able to figure this out even though Long Bai had personally set up a soul-infused barrier around this area, right?”

“Hmph, there’s nothing strange about that. Every king realm has their own deeply-hidden secrets and trump cards. It wouldn’t be strange if the Moon God Realm possessed some sort of secret spatial art or hidden spatial artifact that no one else knows about.”

…………

“However, Senior Devil Emperor did not want the World Piercer to accompany her into her eternal exile from the Primal Chaos. So, she handed it over to me before she left… The World Piercer was born in the core of the primordial universe. So she said these words to me. ‘Only your Stainless Divine Soul, birthed by the primordial energies of this universe, can nurture and temporarily awaken the needle spirit that slumbers within the World Piercer’…”

“The Stainless Divine Soul was then used as a medium to connect to the needle spirit which had been roused from its slumber for a little while, and I would then proceed to use my own strength to forcibly activate the World Piercer’s dimensional powers.”

This conversation had occurred when Shui Meiyin was telling him the whole truth. It was to let him know that her Divine Stainless Soul was the only thing in the world that could temporarily awaken the World Piercer’s slumbering spirit to activate its spatial divine power with her own powers.

It was why the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor had purposely left her the World Piercer.

However, her claim didn’t quite match the records of the World Piercer written in the ancient records of the Dragon God.

[According to the Ancestral God Canon, the World Piercer and the World Piecer’s needle spirit had been birthed side-by-side from the primordial universe. Therefore, if the owner of the World Piercer possessed a power that also originated from the primordial universe, they could channel their own energy through the medium that was the World Piercer’s needle spirit, and use its spatial divine powers by force. However, this method of usage would greatly damage the World Piercer’s needle spirit and especially the user, so it shouldn’t be considered unless there was literally no other choice.]

The writer had claimed that any power that originated from the primordial universe could perform the action. The Divine Stainless Soul was one such power. The other was…

…………

The most ridiculous thought he ever had since this discovery, the biggest impossibility of all impossibilities sprouted in his mind.

The worst part of it all was that this supposedly ridiculous and impossible possibility… fixed all of the doubts and contradictions like it was the key to the lock all along.

No… no…

What am I thinking…

That’s just not… it’s impossible…

His fingers slowly but surely clenched into a fist. He then engraved the frozen projection as a new projection inside the Eternal Imagery Stone.

Suddenly, he recalled something and fished out four jade stones glowing a faint blue profound light a bit clumsily.

They were the Illusory Glazed Imagery Jades!

These four Illusory Glazed Imagery Jades were the same four Shui Meiyin had used to secretly engrave the betrayal of the god emperors and divine masters after the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor had left, and show the truth to the entire God Realm when Yun Che was invading the Eastern Divine Region. [1]

He played and watched all four projections at the same time.

The first jade showed the return of the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor.

The second jade showed the realm kings and god emperors calling him the God Child Messiah and lavishing him with praise.

The third jade showed the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor announcing to the same group of people that she was leaving the Primal Chaos, and the one who ultimately drove her decision was Yun Che.

And the final jade showed the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor speaking to the engraver (Shui Meiyin) herself.

Shui Meiyin had engraved these recordings in secret, so of course she didn’t show up in them.

However, now that he was rewatching them with a completely different mindset, he abruptly realized that Xia Qingyue didn’t show up in the jades either!

He wasn’t present in the scene in the fourth jade as a matter of course, but the rest of them… the return of the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor, him becoming known as the God Child Messiah, and the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor announcing her departure… he remembered clearly that Xia Qingyue was present for all of them!

The reason he—or anyone else for that matter—never questioned this was because there was simply no reason to when they first made it onto the Eternal Heaven Projection. Shui Meiyin declared that she was the one who engraved them, so it was. At the time, who in their right mind would even consider such an extreme, unlikely possibility?

Yun Che had experienced three out of four of the moments engraved in these Illusory Glazed Imagery Jades, so he could confidently say that they were much shorter than what had actually happened at the time. For whatever reason, a lot of scenes had been cut out from the recordings.

At the time, everyone thought that the scenes were cut short for clarity sake, that it was to present the truth to the world in the easiest and quickest way possible.

However, what if those scenes were removed to hide something…

If Shui Meiyin really was the one who engraved them, why would she purposely remove the scenes with Xia Qingyue in them? Was it a coincidence?

Or was it Xia Qingyue who—

……

No!

What am I thinking…

Impossible… impossible… impossible..

How could I even consider this?

She…

She…!

……

“What are you doing, Che’er? Why did you let Wuxin run off on her own?”

A cool voice entered his ears and chilled his soul to the core.

For some reason, Mu Xuanyin preferred to address Yun Che as “Che’er” in private. Maybe it was because she was used to it, or maybe she just didn’t want to change it.

When she caught sight of Yun Che after she and Mu Bingyun landed on the snow though, shock rippled through her eyes instantly.

Before Yun Che could react, she appeared in front of him and frowned deeply. “What happened? Why is your aura so chaotic?”

Yun Che looked up and tried to pull the corners of his lips upward. It was one of his ugliest and most forced smiles to date. “It’s nothing. I’m just… feeling a bit cold.”

“Cold?” His response only made Mu Xuanyin and Mu Bingyun more confused.

Mu Xuanyin gently grabbed Yun Che’s wrist and tried to say something, but the next moment she realized that Yun Che was holding her hand. The unnatural coldness of his skin made her shudder.

“Xuanyin,” he said quietly, “Can you watch over Wuxin for me? I need to go do something.”

Then, still barely in control of his aura, he let go and took off to the south.

However, Mu Xuanyin appeared in front of Yun Che again and caught his wrist in a much tighter grip. “What happened? Tell me now, or… I’m coming with you.”

Yun Che shook his head and shot her a reassuring smile. Thankfully, it was a lot less forced than the previous one. “Don’t worry, it’s not because of some sudden danger or anything. I just want to… seek confirmation.”

“Until I have my answers, I don’t think… I can rest easy for even a moment.”

He removed Mu Xuanyin’s hand gently after he said this. Then, he took off into the snow once more.

This time, Mu Xuanyin neither stopped nor chased after him. She simply watched his vanished figure with deep worry in her eyes.

“Sister, what… happened to him?” Mu Bingyun appeared beside her and stared at the horizon Yun Che had vanished to.

Mu Xuanyin didn’t give her an answer.

A long time later, she whispered a bit dazedly to herself, “What else in this world could throw his heart into such disarray?”

…………

Yun Che flew very quickly. The space he passed through was completely severed, and the resulting storm was so terrible that the smaller planets actually shifted out of orbit.

Was the truth he saw with his own eyes false?

Was the most impossible possibility the truth?

He cut a beeline across the Eastern Divine Region. He passed by planet after planet.

Finally, a ball of watery blue profound light entered his sight.

It was the Glazed Light Realm he visited with Yun Wuxin not long ago.

On the way, he only wished he could increase his maximum speed by another ten or a hundred times.

Now that Glazed Light Realm was in front of him though, his speed actually grew slower and slower.

The heart he had just calmed started beating wildly once more.

Meiyin, it’s all just a coincidence, and it’s all just my stupid imagination playing tricks with me…

You can give me a perfect explanation, right?

1. Chapter 1745: Crushing The Heart