Chapter 35
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After a brief silence, Ying Kai suddenly reacted, berating vehemently, “Stop talking nonsense! Sect Master Xu is someone destined for Dao and ascension, how could he possibly die?”
No one in the world had ascended for a thousand years, but Ying Kai’s words were not an exaggeration. Xu Shuangce was the first cultivator in the world to break through the Immortalization Realm, and for many years, he was recognized as the grandmaster closest to the “divine realm,” even slightly surpassing Ying Kai. If even Xu Shuangce couldn’t ascend, then Ying Kai definitely couldn’t either. There wouldn’t be any cultivator in the world capable of ascension.
How could anyone think that Xu Shuangce would die?
Gong Wei’s gaze shifted from Ying Kai back to Xu Shuangce. No one noticed that his gaze seemed somewhat distant, as if his consciousness had suddenly plunged into some fragmented and chaotic scenes.
… He would die. That inherent, clear and intense awareness surfaced from the depths of his heart once again.
He must die.
Otherwise, what was the meaning of my existence in this world?
Gong Wei, clad in loose white nightwear, remained expressionless. The candlelight only illuminated half of his profile, while the other half was completely shrouded in the deep shadows of the hall. For a moment, Xu Shuangce suddenly felt an extremely strange sensation, as if the youth before him didn’t belong to this world. He seemed like a distant illusion cast from somewhere far away, seemingly existing but impossible to reach out and touch.
“…,” Xu Shuangce stared at him intently, his voice slightly unstable, “Gong Zhiyu.”
Gong Wei didn’t react.
“What are you listening to, Gong Zhiyu?”
Gong Wei suddenly snapped out of it.
He seemed to have not realized that he had just tilted his head to listen. He looked at Xu Shuangce with confusion for a moment, then nodded affirmatively, “Yes.”
Xu Shuangce looked into his eyes. “What?”
“Shuangce,” Ying Kai stood up anxiously and pulled him, “Let’s go, Shuangce. Gong Wei is just half asleep, he didn’t mean it…”
Xu Shuangce remained unmoved. “What?”
Gong Wei smiled and said, “You will die.”
As if an invisible boulder had plunged into deep water, a silent cascade erupted. Both Ying Kai and Xu Shuangce simultaneously lost their voices and actions. In the hall, only the faint crackling of burning candles could be heard.
“…”
The silence around was terrifying. Suddenly, Ying Kai realized something and instantly saw a glimmer of hope. He hurriedly grabbed Gong Wei’s shoulder and asked urgently, “And me? Will I also die?”
Gong Wei, whether due to not understanding or not reacting, stared at him blankly for a while before nodding, “Yes.”
“And Changsheng?”
“Yes.”
“What about Changsun Chengfeng, whom you saw today…”
“Yes.”
After uttering these words, Gong Wei paused, then said, “Everyone will.”
Ying Kai felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his heart, and he breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s okay, Shuangce, he just doesn’t understand. He went to the Changsun family’s memorial hall today, experiencing the concept of life and death for the first time, and he doesn’t even understand what ascension means. He just thinks that someday we will all…”
“What about you?” Xu Shuangce suddenly interrupted him, staring at Gong Wei intently.
“Are you going to die, Gong Zhiyu?”
Ying Kai suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Gong Wei’s eyes were fixed on Xu Shuangce, his pupils unmoving. He didn’t answer the question, and it was a while before he spoke clearly:
“You will die first.”
“…”
Xu Shuangce stood up slowly, his face showing this expression for the first time, to the extent that Gong Wei finally felt something was amiss and widened his eyes in confusion.
The hall fell into a terrifying silence. After a long while, Ying Kai spoke with difficulty, “You must have just been half-asleep.”
Ying Kai’s voice trembled for some reason, and he held Xu Shuangce’s arm tightly, pulling him out. He said, “Gong Zhiyu, go back to sleep. Don’t come out again.”
Gong Wei sat in place, staring blankly as Ying Kai forcibly pulled Xu Shuangce out of the side hall, slamming the door heavily behind them.
With a clang, even the floating dust in the air seemed to be shaken, and then silence returned. After a long time, the urgent voice of Ying Kai came from outside the hall again, “You can’t treat him like a normal person. His mind has never been sound, he’s still fundamentally a child, children are capable of saying anything…”
As the voices grew fainter, almost disappearing at the end of the corridor, Xu Shuangce finally interrupted in a deep voice:
“Have you never been suspicious, Ying Kai?”
“Not even a shred of doubt?”
Outside, silence suddenly returned, with no answer from Ying Kai.
Gong Wei withdrew his consciousness, tilting his head to look at the quiet air in the hall. A trace of crimson flickered unpredictably in his right pupil, as if carefully capturing and pondering the scenes just now. For a moment, his brow furrowed. “…Is this fear?”
He seemed to understand somewhat.
In the face of death, the human heart doesn’t feel joy but rather deep sorrow. People harbor hostility towards those or things that bring death, and the word “death” cannot be mentioned before it arrives. Just the mention of it invokes fear, aversion, or even disgust.
These were not the emotions Gong Wei enjoyed “seeing”.
“Well,” he thought resignedly, “since Xu Bai doesn’t like it, I won’t mention it next time.”
***
Late that night, after leaving Chengshu Palace, Xu Shuangce didn’t come to the Immortal Alliance for a long time.
Perhaps due to the many words he had already spoken at the Changsun family, Gong Wei finally allowed himself to grow to a new stage – speaking more fluently, pronouncing more accurately, and inevitably speaking more. In just a few months, he had transformed from being withdrawn to being a chatterbox all day long. Even one day, during a routine exchange of insults with Yuchi Rui, he achieved his first victory, leaving Yuchi Rui speechless and then giving him a beating.
After giving a beating, Gong Wei could only chatter on while running away, planning to wait until he saw Sect Master Xu again to make a complaint against Yuchi Rui.
Apart from making complaints, he had prepared many things to secretly tell Xu Shuangce, but before Xu Shuangce arrived, he encountered a major event himself.
Someone was trying to assassinate him.
In the eighteenth year of Taiyi, in the early spring, during the Ascension Immortal Ceremony, Alliance Leader Ying ascended the platform to offer sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, and Gong Wei served by his side as his junior.
Halfway through the ceremony, twelve assassins burst out from the ground, swords drawn, and rushed towards Ying Kai in mid-air!
The Ascension Immortal Platform was divided into Yin and Yang sides, with Alliance Leader Ying ascending the high platform every year to offer sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, while Sect Master Xu descended into the underground palace to assist in the sacrifices to the spirits. According to the ritual, sacrificial persons were not armed with weapons, and no one expected an assassination at such a grand ceremony. At that moment, everyone’s first reaction was extreme shock, but then twelve sword blades simultaneously thrust towards Ying Kai.
Seeing blood about to splash, Ying Kai pushed out with his bare hands.
A surge of spiritual power erupted like a raging dragon, instantly shattering the golden cores in the heads of the twelve assassins!
The assassins were sent flying and fell to the ground, while Mu Duozhu, Changsun Chengfeng, and others stood up in the distance. But before they could rush forward with their swords, the twelve assassins inexplicably exploded one after another, using their blood and flesh as sacrifices, forming a strange array centered on the Ascension Immortal Platform, with a length and width of nine zhang each.
Everyone immediately halted, except for Yuchi Rui, who reacted a bit slower and crashed into the array with a clang, his whole body bursting into flames of green. Mu Duozhu rushed forward, and a talisman firmly pressed down the tumbling Yuchi Rui, shouting sternly, “It’s the life-for-life array of ghost cultivators! Go get Sect Master Xu! Quickly!”
Trading lives, communicating between Yin and Yang.
Suddenly, Ying Kai thought of something, and a bad feeling surged in his heart. Sure enough, when he turned around, he saw the thirteenth assassin breaking out from the void and stabbing behind him—
The real target of this assassination turned out to be not Alliance Leader Ying, but Gong Wei!
All these changes happened in an instant. Without thinking, Ying Kai flew up and grabbed the assassin’s blade with his bare hands. “Zhiyu, get out of here!”
Blood spurted from Ying Kai’s palm, reflecting in Gong Wei’s eyes, which were so close.
Ying Kai thought he was stunned, and tried to push him away, but in the haste, he suddenly realized that his body had gone numb, and his meridians were sealed, realizing immediately that something was wrong.
The blade was poisoned.
Cultivators in the Immortalization stage were immune to most poisons, but there was one exception in the world – the recently exterminated evil sect, “Overcome Ghost Gate,” which had developed a poison known as the Nine-Realm Yellow Spring Water. It was claimed to be a sacred medicine of the underworld, and even had the miraculous effect of sealing the meridians of Grandmaster-level cultivators with a single drop.
Thanks to Gong Wei’s photographic memory, the entire Overcome Ghost Gate had been convicted and imprisoned, with only a few evil cultivators still at large. In the blink of an eye, Ying Kai understood the ins and outs of this revenge killing. With a kick to the chest of the assassin, he shouted sternly, “Gong Wei! Get out of here!”
However, there was no answer from behind him.
Immediately after, Ying Kai felt his sleeve being pulled, only to see Gong Wei holding his hand, blood flowing, his eyes widening little by little, as if he had seen something novel.
After a long time, he asked in confusion, “…Is this blood?”
Ying Kai’s mind buzzed, suddenly realizing something: today was the first time Gong Wei had ever seen blood in his life.
He had lived in Chengshu Palace for years, where he could only come into contact with himself, Xu Shuangce, and Yuchi Rui, and had never seen anyone suffer or be injured. Where could he have seen blood?
Ying Kai suddenly felt a chilling premonition, as if something extremely terrifying was about to happen before his eyes. Nightmares hovered down from the void, and the bloody, heavy shadows silently descended upon everyone’s heads, but they had nothing to do with the assassination before them.
It came from the young man behind him.
“…You don’t like me,” Gong Wei turned his head to look at the assassin, his voice soft yet full of suspicion.
Then he closed his eyes and carefully sensed for a moment, opening them again to say affirmatively, “No, you hate me.”
“….Gong Wei,” Ying Kai’s voice was slightly unsteady as he said, “Gong Wei, come back.”
But the young man had already released his hand, stepping towards the assassin, and said thoughtfully, “You want me to die.”
The thirteenth assassin was struck in the center of his pulse by Ying Kai, coughing up blood as he struggled to get up from the ground. After the spells faded away, his hideous true face was finally revealed, it was the former head of Overcome Ghost Gate who recently escaped.
He had made deals with countless evil spirits, his body covered with terrible ghostly curses, and now he was half-possessed, his resentful gaze fixed on Gong Wei. “It’s you who peeked at the Great Yin and Yang Communication Mantra, it’s you who ruined my lifelong efforts… Why don’t you die? Why aren’t you dead yet?!”
—-Why aren’t you dead?
Gong Wei’s pupils slightly dilated as he looked at the twelve blurry corpses in the distance and the towering array shrouding the Ascension Immortal Platform in darkness.
—-Why aren’t you dead yet?
In the distance, Yuchi Rui’s whole body was already extinguished, and the disciples of the medical sect were calling out urgently, while he curled up in extreme pain.
Gong Wei’s breathing became rapid.
He saw the deep hatred in the other’s heart, and the desire to kill and devour him alive. Countless negative emotions surrounded him from all directions, making it impossible for him to catch his breath for a moment, and the burning sensation from his right pupil spread throughout his body.
It hurts so much, he thought.
The same murderous intent rose from the depths of his heart, like a poisonous flame attacking his temples.
It really hurts so much.
“….I want to eat your flesh and drink your blood, I want to flay you alive,” the head of the Overcome Ghost Gate gritted his teeth, getting up and grabbing the sword hilt, dark flames suddenly surged from his palm, igniting the sword body fiercely, roaring angrily, “I’ll make you die—”
Before the end of his sentence, he had already rushed forward with the sword like a fierce ghost, but the blade suddenly stopped!
The trembling tip of the sword was only millimeters away from those blood-red eyeballs, but it couldn’t move a single inch anymore. The young man’s pupils reflected the astonished face of the evil cultivator, blank with shock.
“So you all have swords,” Gong Wei reached out to touch the blade of the evil cultivator’s sword, murmuring softly.
—–Xu Bai has a sword, Senior Brother Ying has a sword, playmate Yuchi Rui has a sword. Everyone under this platform has their own immortal sword, and even the assassins who want to kill him have swords.
The young man finally realized his difference from others.
He suddenly realized, “Then I can’t be without one.”
Gong Wei raised his right hand, gathering wind and clouds in his palm, and a red star flashed in the distant sky.
Then the stars erupted into a brilliant blood light, thunderbolts descending from the sky, smashing the ghost cultivator’s array; the Ascension Immortal Platform trembled violently, everyone hastily retreated amidst the falling boulders like a torrential rain. Ying Kai grabbed the sword from the dead assassin’s hand, firmly planting it in the ground to stabilize himself, roaring in the thunderous noise, a rage even he couldn’t hear, “Gong Wei!!”
In the waterfall-like burning spiritual power vortex, the young man drew out his own divine sword, with the inscription of three blood-light characters—
Bai Tai Shou.
In the next instant, Gong Wei wielded the sword with both hands, mercilessly piercing through the evil cultivator’s skull!
In the final moment before death, the evil cultivator saw his own incredulous face in those blood-red pupils. He had fantasized countless times about how to make this young man’s brain burst, his bones shattered, but he had never expected that the other party would kill him in exactly the same way.
With a muffled bang, the sword blade pierced from the brow to the back of the head, flying several meters in the air before firmly nailing the body to the ground.
Gong Wei knelt on one knee, one hand holding the sword, slowly standing up from the corpse, but the remaining hatred and killing intent in the opponent’s heart continued to scream in his heart, refusing to dissipate.
It’s not enough, I want to devour his flesh and drink his blood.
I want to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
Shouts rang out from the distance, only to see Gong Wei’s calm face, his right hand making a crisp sound as it plunged into the chest of the evil cultivator, pulling out the hot and bloody heart and raising it to his eyes.
Below the Ascension Immortal Platform, Xu Shuangce, who was approaching quickly, suddenly paused.
He saw Gong Wei’s gaze meeting his own, and after a moment, Gong Wei flashed a naive and candid smile. Then, he picked up that heart, allowing the gushing blood to flow between his fingers, and opened his mouth to take a large gulp.
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Thank You for the chapter ❤٩(•౪•٩)
Oooookay. I can see why XSC has some reservations about GW. I have guesses about what he really is, but I’m not gonna write them down cause I’m probably wrong. Like always. LOL.
😳😳😳😳.