pjbooks Chapter 117 Beyond the Scope of Cognition
Chapter 117 Beyond the Scope of Cognition
The moment the Primordial Sword fell into Jiang Chen's palm, the remaining light of the Zhou Tian Star Array, which had been operating for 30,000 years, on the dome of the entire spherical space went out at the same instant.
Golden specks of light drifted slowly down from the dome, like a silent snowfall. Each speck was a fragment of the remnant soul of the Primordial Immortal Emperor, the last warmth of the Immortal Emperor's Dao Fruit he had condensed through thirty thousand years of solitude. The specks landed on Jiang Chen's shoulder, on the blade of the Primordial Sword in his hand, and on the cross-legged skeleton. In the skeleton's empty eye sockets, the last two pale golden lights slowly faded, like an old man finally closing his eyes.
Jiang Chen knelt on one knee before the skeleton, his right hand gripping the Primordial Sword, his left hand resting on the ring on the skeleton's left ring finger. His true essence resonated with the remaining will within the ring, a resonance growing weaker and more distant, like a thread spanning thirty thousand years slowly breaking at one end.
"Master, the Qingyun Sect has a successor."
He said it a second time. His voice was softer than the first time, but more determined.
The skeleton did not respond. But the Qingyun Sect's mark on the ring's surface slowly lit up for a moment as he poured his true essence into it. That momentary light was very faint, almost invisible, but it did indeed shine—as if the Primordial Immortal Emperor, across thirty thousand years, was saying "I understand" to this junior disciple.
Then, the ring shattered.
Jiang Chen stood up, removing his left hand from the skeleton, palm facing upwards. A small wisp of pale golden powder floated from the skeleton's robes and drifted into his palm. He looked down at the powder, remained silent for a moment, then slowly clenched his fingers, holding the powder in his palm.
"Old Chen," he said, his voice returning to its usual calm.
Chen Beiyuan snapped out of his shock and stepped forward. He had been at the helm of the General Administration for decades and had witnessed countless storms—the black ice flowers when the Apostles descended, the abyssal rifts when the Demon King's army pressed in, the world changing color when Jiang Chen killed Balsaron with a single sword strike outside Liangzhou City—but now, as he stood before the remains of this Immortal Emperor from 30,000 years ago, even this old man who had seen so much couldn't help but slow his pace.
"This skeleton belongs to our Qingyun Sect's founding ancestor. Thirty thousand years ago, he came here from the cultivation world and used his Immortal Emperor Dao Fruit to set up the Zhou Tian Star Array, sealing the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit deep within this mountain range. He has guarded this place for thirty thousand years, until today."
He opened his tightly clenched left fist, and the tuft of pale golden powder in his palm gleamed with a warm luster under the residual golden light in the spherical space.
"He wanted to be buried in a place where the sun shines. Thirty thousand years ago, when he chose to seal the Demon Ancestor, this mountain was located deep within the Kunlun Mountains, where it never saw the sun. He guarded it for thirty thousand years, and it was cold for thirty thousand years."
Chen Beiyuan was silent for a moment. Then he turned around and said to the still-shocked technicians behind him, his voice not loud, but carrying an undeniable authority: "Notify the Kunlun Mountains Management Office to designate a ten-mile radius around this mountain as a permanent protected area. Also, reserve that sunny slope behind the headquarters—it's the best feng shui spot in the Dragon Kingdom, receiving sunlight all day. The Primordial Immortal Emperor protected humanity for thirty thousand years; we will protect him for ten thousand years."
Chapter 118
Ye Wuhen held the sword and stood at the entrance of the spherical space.
He had been in this pose for a long time. So long that Zhou Tianze behind him thought he had become another stone statue in these ruins. Lei Di stepped forward, wanting to pat the Sword Saint on the shoulder, but his hand stopped in mid-air before it even landed—because he saw Ye Wuhen's expression.
"Old Ye," Zhou Tianze called out to him.
Ye Wuhen didn't answer. He simply looked down at the sword in his hand—its blade was silver-white, its edge gleaming with a cold, sharp light, and a shallow scratch on the hilt. It was an extremely ordinary sword; in the cultivation world thirty thousand years ago, even Qi Refining stage disciples wouldn't deign to use such an iron sword. But it was light. So light that he could barely feel its weight in his hand, as if someone had placed a spring bamboo leaf into his palm.
Thirty years. He had gripped that broken sword hilt for a full thirty years. The binding rope on the hilt had developed a dark patina from his palms and sweat, and the wear mark on the hilt, worn down over thirty years, was so deep it almost seemed to wear through. He thought he would hold that broken sword for the rest of his life, until he died of old age, until he died in battle, until he was slain by the next apostle or the next demon god. His swordsmanship, his sword domain, all the power he had been so proud of for thirty years, couldn't withstand even a single move against Jiang Chen's sword domain. He thought he was old, dull, and useless.
Then Jiang Chen handed him a sword.
"Old Ye," Zhou Tianze called out again, this time in a slightly lower voice, "Are you alright?"
Ye Wuhen finally raised his head. In those deep, weary eyes, honed by time and battle, something was rekindling. "Let's go back to Liangzhou. I want to test this sword."
Deep within the spherical space, the black stone tablet that had been suspended for a full 30,000 years was beginning to disintegrate from its edges at a visible speed after Jiang Chen absorbed the Dao Fruit of the Primordial Immortal Emperor.
Jiang Chen stood before the stone tablet, his right hand gripping the Primordial Sword, his left hand resting on the largest crack on the tablet's surface. His divine sense spread out like a tidal wave, piercing through the stone tablet, through the remaining power of the seal, through the layers of barriers of thirty thousand years, and touching the suppressed being at the deepest part of the seal.
Enormous. This was the first sensation that invaded his consciousness.
It was something vast beyond his understanding of cultivation over the past thousand years.
Then, that being sensed Jiang Chen.
Two dark red lights shone from the depths of the seal. Those were its eyes, vertical pupils over a hundred feet in diameter, formed from pure dark red chaotic power. The pupils at the center of these vertical pupils were pure black, so black that even light could not escape, so black that space itself was distorted into irregular spirals at the edge of the pupils' field of vision. When looked directly at by it, ordinary beings would feel their souls being ripped from their bodies, their very existence being denied, and their memories, emotions, and will all being stripped away.
Jiang Chen didn't answer. He was using his divine sense to scan the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit, analyzing its structure and searching for its weaknesses. He sensed that the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit wasn't a single entity—it had been shattered into dozens of fragments by the Primordial Immortal Emperor's Zhou Tian Star Array. The vast majority of these fragments were extremely weak from the sealing and suppression, their primordial spirit power reduced to less than one ten-thousandth of its peak strength over the long period of attrition. However, if even a single fragment were allowed to escape, it would re-condense at the bottom of the abyss, absorb the power of the abyss, and grow stronger once more. A demon god of Balsalon's level could rise again in less than a century; while the fragments of the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit could recover in just a few decades, perhaps even becoming stronger than before the seal.