Mu Daoying seemed to have a very long, very long nightmare.
In the dream, the heavens and earth flipped repeatedly. The hellish flames of purgatory blazed up, burning all the crops and houses, devouring all the common people and living beings.
Evil ghosts roamed in the dream, cursing him for having read poetry and books in vain, yet being trapped by romantic feelings for children, consorting with demons, aiding the tyrant to abuse the people, and severing the vitality of this realm.
Suddenly, wild winds howled by his ears, and the scenery before his eyes changed.
Then Liu Qiao’e’s voice rang out again, half-scolding and half-angry as she called to him.
Her lips curved in a smile as she stood at the door, golden wheat waves surging behind her, new rice standing level.
She shouted for him to come out quickly, to come out and see this era of bountiful harvests, peaceful commoners living happily.
After she spoke, her figure flickered and vanished.
He froze for a moment, then instinctively chased after her footsteps and went out.
A long sigh suddenly sounded by his ear.
Immediately after, he suddenly saw a handsome and elegant young man’s face, with red lips and white teeth.
The youth wore a jade crown and Daoist robes, held a whisk in hand, and sat upright on a jade platform, his eyes filled with sorrow and pity as he sighed softly.
Mu Daoying’s footsteps halted, as if a thunderbolt had struck his head. He froze. “Alliance Leader?”
The youth smiled and nodded. “Friend Mu.”
It was none other than Qin Xiandu, the Immortal Alliance Leader who had never appeared before the crowd from beginning to end.
Mu Daoying’s whole body shook. He opened his eyes and surveyed his surroundings.
He suddenly realized that none of this had been a dream.
His feet were still firmly planted on the ground.
He was still alive.
The two of them now stood at the highest point of the Immortal Alliance’s Jade Capital, on the Purple Pole Platform.
Looking down, long winds swept past layers of buildings stretching endlessly into the distance, with scenes of blazing prosperity and blooming flowers everywhere.
There were no war fires, natural disasters, or ruins from his dream.
The bells at the four corners of the eaves chimed endlessly in the wind.
“I…” Mu Daoying suddenly had a terribly ominous premonition. “What exactly happened? How long have I been asleep?”
Qin Xiandu sighed. “Three days, a full three days.”
Mu Daoying’s lips went numb, his words incoherent. “Liu Qiao’e… the Demonic Sect, why…”
Qin Xiandu suddenly fell silent for a moment.
His silence tolled like a death knell in Mu Daoying’s heart.
He froze, feeling no surprise, no grief. Only boundless, endless emptiness rippled in his eyes.
Had she still failed?
Had the Immortal Alliance won? And what about her? Was she still alive?
Qin Xiandu paused for a long while before saying softly, “Fellow Daoist Liu… has returned her soul to the Dao mountains.”
Mu Daoying’s heart jolted!
He closed his eyes, desolation like heavy snow swirling in his heart.
“She…” How exactly had she lost? What had happened while he was unconscious?
He wanted to ask, but the words wouldn’t come out.
Yet amid his immense shock, he suddenly realized something was off.
If she had truly fallen with the Demonic Sect…
Why, then, did the Immortal Alliance Leader still address her as Fellow Daoist Liu?
Qin Xiandu let out another soft sigh at his words.
He spoke at length, slowly telling him of another hidden past event that he had not seen in the Trace World Mirror.
This memory was too significant to expose before others, so it had been specially sealed years ago with an Immortal Alliance secret art. Even the Trace World Mirror could not reveal this segment of history.
In the years after Meng Ci’s death, Liu Qiao’e had indeed sought to obtain the Soul-Returning Lamp to revive him.
Luo Naji had come to her for this reason, proposing a collaboration.
She knew there was something suspicious about Meng Ci’s death, that those demonic creatures had appeared too strangely, but she still chose to set aside her hatred temporarily and cooperate with him.
Until the Withered Glory Zen Master found her and introduced her to Qin Xiandu.
As heavenly fate turned, the Demonic Sect was rising, and the Immortal Alliance had rotted to its roots. The Demonic Sect’s prosperity had become an irreversible trend.
Qin Xiandu asked her: Did she truly wish to see the world’s living beings suffer?
Most importantly, did she truly wish to see the world’s living beings, whom Meng Ci had loved, suffer?
He had struggled between humans and demons his whole life, refusing to become a demon even unto death.
Did she truly wish to see the world fall into a state of corpses strewn everywhere, demonic qi rampant?
She had once hated this world thoroughly, hated everyone in it.
But at the very beginning, the girl who had walked out of Liu Family Village still harbored a pure heart of kindness in her body.
To throw herself into the evil path was not her wish. She yearned for the poetry: “Carry a three-foot sword in a box on one’s back, to right the world’s injustices for Heaven.”
Her admiration for Mu Daoying was perhaps simply because, deep down, she wanted to become someone like him.
Hatred filled her heart and lungs, but in her eyes, she still loved these mountains and rivers, loved these common people who had once melted the hard ice in her heart.
Thus, on that day, the Immortal Alliance’s puppet leader Qin Xiandu made a bold agreement with her.
They would thoroughly shatter the Demonic Sect’s foolish delusions, overthrow the Immortal Alliance, and return clarity and peace to the world.
Long, long ago, Qin Xiandu had wanted to strike at the Immortal Alliance’s great families. Unfortunately, he had been too young then, too hasty, and suffered heavy injuries instead. Though he luckily cleared his name of suspicion, he had no choice but to go into hiding and bide his time.
Liu Qiao’e appeared as his proxy, walking the line between righteous and evil, collaborating with Luo Naji to seize the Soul-Returning Lamp.
Ling Yuan was too deeply involved with the Soul-Returning Lamp, his life in peril. She pretended to kill Ling Yuan, allowing him to escape with a golden cicada shedding its shell, faking his death.
Only then could the “Soul-Returning Lamp” that had been swapped so easily deceive the Alliance Leader’s eyes.
They turned the scheme against them, delving into the underground mineral veins and exposing the true reason for the surge of demonic qi to the world.
The sect families had mined without restraint, causing the spiritual qi of heaven and earth to weaken, nearly withering and severing. Demonic qi thus gained the upper hand, seeking to destroy the world.
At the same time, Qin Xiandu secretly struck at the great families’ power in the shadows, guiding them into endless infighting.
To this end, he even joined Liu Qiao’e on the day of the Spring Terrace Dao Inquiry, ruthlessly striking at his own Wandering Sword Pavilion.
Qingxu and True Person Zhan fell into irreversible decline. He gathered the great families’ forces and gradually seized real power from the puppet position.
The sect families monopolized resources, unbalancing the severed spiritual qi, leading to natural disasters, erratic droughts and floods, and year after year of poor harvests in the fields.
They were colossal behemoths rotten to the core, bloodsucking parasites on the cultivators and commoners of the world. Their deep-rooted ills could not be cured without the medicine of tigers and wolves.
In the Immortal Alliance’s war against Joyous Union Palace and the Demonic Sect, he sacrificed opposing forces bit by bit, striking at both righteous and demonic powers, reforming the Immortal Alliance.
Lan Shuying’s guess had not been wrong; there was indeed a traitor in the Immortal Alliance’s upper echelons.
But who could have imagined that in the righteous-demonic war led by Liu Qiao’e, which progressed so smoothly, her traitor was none other than the current Immortal Alliance Leader!
Finally, the day of the decisive battle arrived.
Mu Daoying became an unexpected variable.
Liu Qiao’e was gravely injured and trapped, the great matter unfinished. Qin Xiandu, as the final trump card, could not act rashly. It was Mu Daoying who accidentally helped her escape, bringing the three Dao artifacts to the Nameless Weak Water where Demonic Ancestor Jiang Chongming was sealed.
To break the Demonic Ancestor’s seal required the three Dao artifacts, the Holy Monarch Technique, and the parallel operation of yin-yang qi.
The Holy Monarch had not fully refined the Demonic Ancestor before passing away. Since Liu Qiao’e could break the seal with those conditions, she could naturally inherit the Holy Monarch’s will and reinforce the seal, blocking the Demonic Ancestor’s path to resurgence.
On that day, when the moment came, she suddenly turned the tables, throwing herself into the seal to save the common people.
This was also a last resort.
The three Dao artifacts, along with her own body, were keys to the seal.
Now that the keys were all destroyed, Qin Xiandu had also cooperated by revealing himself, slaying Luo Naji.
The Demonic Sect and Immortal Alliance had changed the world’s sun and moon, their forces undergoing a great reshuffle.
The world now was a new world. The Immortal Alliance could no longer monopolize all land, houses, and resources in the Donghua region.
It was the peaceful world of seas clear and rivers calm that she had yearned for and fought for, yet had no fate to see.
On the day of the sealing, no one knew the fear, panic, and unease in her heart.
Meng Ci was, after all, in the past. Though she still thought of him, missed him, deep down she still clung to this mortal world of red dust.
After seizing the Soul-Returning Lamp, her parting ways with Mu Daoying and Luo Naji’s threats and inducements made her ending ever clearer.
From that night of wind and moon, that moment of stolen pleasure with him, she abruptly awoke from the tender dream.
She was afraid, irritated, terrified, uneasy, like a trapped beast.
But she had promised him to guard this land, these mountains and rivers, for Meng Ci and for her deceased family and parents.
She left the Supreme Harmony Sect.
She soared high and low, riding a long trail of smoke, charging toward the Nameless Weak Water without looking back.
Nameless Weak Water: no light, no clarity, just a pitch-black, viscous hell on earth where no life could survive, not even a feather could float.
For a thousand years, ten thousand years, it remained thus.
Luo Naji led his trusted demonic cultivators and had already set up a formation above the Nameless Weak Water, waiting for a long time.
“You’re finally here! You kept me waiting!” This man, usually so suave and leisurely, showed anxiety for the first time. He strode quickly toward her. “How about it? Where are the three Dao artifacts?”
Liu Qiao’e said coldly, “They’re all here.”
He instinctively took a step forward to seize them, but caught her icy gaze and wisely retreated a step.
He nodded and said to those around, “Then let’s begin.”
The formation began to operate.
Above the lightless eternal night of Nameless Weak Water, golden formation lights rippled outward like water waves for the first time.
This was a double-layered grand formation, extending a hundred li in radius.
The outermost layer was a protective formation to fend off and repel the Immortal Alliance cultivators who had chased Liu Qiao’e all the way here.
The innermost layer was the true seal-breaking formation.
Luo Naji flicked his sleeve, and the still Nameless Weak Water surged with a hundred-zhang wave, dwarfing the clouds.
Liu Qiao’e held the three Dao artifacts, standing at the crest of the wave.
Glancing at the icy, pitch-black, motionless weak water, her heart chilled, her legs trembled.
Was this her end?
She coveted this world of splendid brocades, pretty boys and beauties, fine wines and idle teas.
She coveted this red dust romance, the mortal smokes and fires.
Yet her life would be thrown into this icy, dark weak water.
Only then did the Immortal Alliance cultivators realize something was wrong.
Their faces changed in shock as they shouted questions: What exactly were they doing? Where had her Soul-Returning Lamp come from?
Don’t be deluded anymore!
Meteors streaked endlessly from the horizon—countless cultivators rushing from all directions.
They bombarded the protective formation, and even the Demonic Sect began to falter.
Luo Naji truly grew anxious and demanded, “What exactly are you doing?! Why are you just standing there in a daze?!”
“Don’t forget our agreement. Don’t you want to save him anymore?!”
“Break the seal, and I’ll save his life!”
Her lips curved in a smile. She actually chuckled softly.
She suddenly found the scene before her extremely amusing. Both righteous and demonic were burning with anxiety. Their shouts faded into the distance, their anxious faces blurring.
She held the three Dao artifacts and glanced back one last time at the mortal world and moon behind her.
In this moment, courage overcame the fear of death.
Her robes fluttering, she threw herself into the weak water without hesitation.
Boom!
Luo Naji’s expression changed drastically!
The descent seemed to slow infinitely.
Liu Qiao’e could even clearly see the extreme terror twisting the corner of Luo Naji’s brow, his spasming face.
She hadn’t expected that she could still see Luo Naji going mad, desperately leaping forward to “save” her.
But she didn’t stop. She tore open a prepared talisman from her palm.
A youthful phantom gracefully descended.
It was drawn with vermilion cinnabar using Qin Xiandu’s heart blood, each stroke infused with half a lifetime of his cultivation!
Liu Qiao’e closed her eyes and continuously poured her remaining spiritual qi into the phantom!
The youth’s phantom gradually merged with her figure.
Liu Qiao’e’s fingertip slashed through the night sky, striking with her sword!
This sword slashed through the moonlight!
It combined her and Qin Xiandu’s cultivation techniques—the ultimate sword under heaven!
Using this rune as the link, at the same moment, in the Immortal Alliance’s Jade Capital, the young Alliance Leader stepped out from the clouds!
Luo Naji’s leap was truly desperate. He crashed into the path of Liu Qiao’e’s sword light, too late to pull back!
One sword shattered his heart and lungs. Witnessing Luo Naji’s stunned, hateful expression.
Only then did Liu Qiao’e feel, for the first time, the exhilaration of great vengeance achieved!
She had long disliked this person’s arrogant face! He thought everything was under his control, that everyone was a pawn in his hands, a toy for him to manipulate!
Did he really think she didn’t know Meng Ci’s death was related to him?!
She burst into loud laughter; it was the first time in her life she felt such unbridled joy!
Broad chest and open mind, majestic righteousness.
She let out two more long laughs, and the weak water surged upward, submerging her mouth and nose.