Cultivation System: Elder Edition

Chapter 475

Realm in Chaos (I)

"HOLD THE DAMN LINE!!!" It was all wrong--everything was wrong, Zhan Qiu concluded.

This was supposed to be his path to glory, his means of exorcising his inner demons, and finally conquering his generation of peers. He was supposed to ascend among the masses and become the clear best of them all--but he was among them, breathing the same air, fighting the same fight.

The oddities, for him, began on the first day--he appeared in the godforsaken Luminous Jungle, where he was badgered by dozens of apes constantly. Just when he thought he'd shaken them off... that happened--the 'explosion', if it could even be called that, that unilaterally terrified him more than all things before in his life combined.

His Master? Song Jing? Yes, both were ostensibly terrifying... but in a way that he could conceptualize. In a way he could understand.

That man?

What that man did... it went well beyond this world. There was no doubt in Zhan Qiu's mind that it was an Emperor masquerading as an average cultivator. He deflected an attack that would have leveled the entire Deathless Phoenix Sect, roots and all, obliterating it from the world. He took it on directly, deflected it, and literally annihilated lives beyond estimate, ravaging the land in the process.

He singlehandedly reshaped the topography of the realm.

Zhan Qiu considered himself beyond lucky--though he was pummeled by the aftershock quite heavily and was left an inch away from death, by some sheer miracle he was flung into a garden of Divine Ginseng, where he spent most of this time in this realm, having finally perfected his body enough to ready himself for the breakthrough.

And yet, the moment he came out believing he would finally conquer this place, he bore witness to a sight that left him aghast--shadow and ash eclipsed all else, rippling throughout the world like a locust swarm. And from shadow and ash came human-like things that were neither alive nor dead, existences without explanation.

He ran for days without rest, haunted relentlessly, until he came toward the massive gash that man left behind--gash that seemed to be a sanctuary, for there were no shadowed things within, and where seemingly everyone who was left alive had arrived.

Two days--that was how long the blessing lasted.

On the third day, they noticed that the area was shrinking--that the invasive Death Qi was slowly eating away at the remnant energy of that man. Though it was slow at first, it kept accelerating, and they realized rather quickly that they would have to fight.

"LEFT SIDE IS FALLING!!" a distantly familiar voice of Lang Guiying rang from the back.

"REPLACE, REPLACE!!" he growled. He was in charge of the west, trying his best to take a gaggle of weak and untalented and somehow use them to hold the line.

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The left side kept falling back, which was expected; there was only so much ground he himself could cover, and there was nobody else on his end who was even in Void Transformation Realm, let alone at the peak.

While the center--where he was--remained steadfast, he fully expected his flanks to slowly bend inwardly, and that remained true for his left... but the right side was holding up. Not once had he noticed the line falling back or someone calling out for help.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled back a few feet and executed the Flawless Flames Art, conjuring the golden plumes of fire to erupt around him before extending into tidal depressions, tearing through over a hundred bedeviled things at once. The reason he went for a bit of an overkill despite needing to conserve his Qi was because it afforded him a moment of respite, which he used to look at the right side more deeply.

... there weren't even that many people there, he realized. A hundred, at most. The left side was barely held together by the force of over a thousand people, while the right had maybe a tenth of that. And yet, the figures fell like grass being cut.

His confusion didn't last long, however--though there were some quite impressive kids there, a brilliant flash of the sword drew his attention. Though the attack was rather strong, that wasn't the reason: it was who used it.

The boy was young, far, far younger than Zhan Qiu--he looked to be sixteen, at most--but he'd seen him once before. It was very briefly, but there was no way Zhan Qiu would forget it.

That boy... was the very same boy that monster had shielded when he deflected that world-ending attack. It was likely that the boy was that monster's disciple--and once Zhan Qiu's thoughts reached there, he calmed down.

Of course, he thought, that the side wouldn't struggle if it had an Emperor's Disciple. Even if the boy was merely a child and looked to be simply a touch away from the Spirit Manifestation Realm, it made sense that he was fighting as though he were two or even three major realms above that.

But the more he looked... the less sense it made.

Though the right side did have around a hundred people or so, most of them--around ninety, it looked like--weren't even doing anything. They were not unlike Zhan Qiu himself: observing with a variety of expressions.

"Who the hell are these kids?"

"You don't recognize them either?"

"No, of course not!"

"How is it possible that some unknown children are so strong?"

"... could they be from an Ancient Clan?"

"Yes, possibly..."

"Only an Ancient Clan could produce children like that..."

Zhan Qiu winced and scoffed--though an average cultivator might venerate Ancient Clans and believe they had the capacity of creating prodigies, Zhan Qiu knew well enough they were simply relics holding on to when they were relevant. No Clan ever withdrew into hiding by choice--doing so effectively ended the lineage of martial artists and any hope of ever producing an Emperor.

Rather, there was one Ancient Clan that truly lived up to the public's view of them all, but even those children--talented though they may be--fall well short of these... things.

Seeing as there were more and more shadows mounting against his side, he had to stop his observations and resume fighting, flames coating his skin. It was likely that the boy wasn't the only disciple, but that those few children around him who seemed to be fighting in perfect sync were also that man's disciples.

Whatever the case, he could only be thankful that they were 'assigned' to his side; he seldom had friends in this realm, and while the other three sides were guarded by innumerable prodigies, he really was given the remnants of the public that was allowed to enter for some reason.

Perhaps the most terrifying thing of them all was that even Song Jing failed to recognize the talents of those children. For the first time, Zhan Qiu mused, did that man's eyes, blessed by Dao itself, fail.

... then again, they were shielded by an Emperor. It'd be stranger if someone at the Peak of the Void Transformation Realm could see through the veneer.

"HOLD ON, NO MATTER WHAT! THEIR NUMBERS CAN'T BE INFINITE!" though he shouted those words... he very much doubted them.

They were killing them by the thousands, yet the quantity of Death Qi didn't seem to drop. If anything, it was growing. As though there truly were an infinite source of it buried somewhere in this godforsaken place.

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