Chapter 123 | No Spiritual Roots? Then My Fists Shall Shatter the Heavens!

Even against those Tenth and Eleventh Realm cultivator ancestors of the Cangyun Sect and Blue Moon Sect—who clung to life in their coffins through secret arts and believed their power could shake heaven and earth—she had absolute confidence. With nothing but her bare fists, she could shatter their physical bodies along with their immortal souls into complete oblivion.

Before absolute physical devastation, any ancient sect-protecting grand array or bizarre immortal technique was nothing more than rubble to be shattered by sheer, overwhelming force.

“Secluded for eighty years... It is time to settle this old debt.”

Su Yueli stood up.

As she rose, the thick dust that had accumulated over eighty years began to crack and peel off like a shell of dried mud.

Buzz.

The Ji Dao blood qi within Su Yueli's body vibrated slightly.

A gentle yet omnipresent breeze swept over her skin, instantly dispersing the decades of dust clinging to her hair and body.

Her revealed skin was still as fair as mutton-fat jade, faintly shimmering with a divine glow, making her look even more ethereal and otherworldly than she had eighty years ago.

She looked down at her old clothes, which had weathered under the high temperatures and passage of time, ready to tear at the slightest tug.

The small black ring on her wrist trembled slightly. A flash of black light later, she was dressed in a spotless, brand-new blue-and-white dress—one she had pocketed from the Treasure Pavilion.

She pinned her black hair up with a wooden hairpin and placed the carved mask back onto her face.

Su Yueli walked up to the black-gold stone door that had been melted through with two large holes, and casually pushed her right hand forward.

Bang!

Under this gentle push, the black-gold stone slab weighing tens of thousands of pounds instantly disintegrated into a flurry of fine powder.

The howling mountain wind rushed in from the cliff outside, making the hem of her blue-and-white dress flutter wildly.

Su Yueli took a step forward, stepping directly into the empty void of the ten-thousand-fathom cliff.

She did not ride any magical treasures or flying swords, yet her body stood firmly in midair, supported by the raging void winds.

She looked toward the Great Li Imperial City in the distance.

Cangyun Sect... I am out of seclusion.

The somewhat glaring sunlight of the outside world pierced through the thin clouds over the valley, casting its light upon her still-flawless, jade-white face.

It was bright and incredibly warm.

For eighty years, her eyes had seen nothing but the gold-red blood qi in the depths of her sea of consciousness and absolute, dead silence and darkness.

Now bathed in sunlight once more, Su Yueli narrowed her eyes slightly.

Her glazed pure gold bones, purified by the Myriad Tribulations Realm, and her delicate skin shimmered with an incredibly restrained, divine glow under the sun.

But in an instant, she suppressed this phenomenon beneath her skin with her powerful force field of will, letting it dissipate without a trace.

“Sixty years make a cycle, and eighty years bring a lifetime of change to the mortal world.”

Su Yueli murmured softly.

Her voice echoed through the vast and desolate Spiritless Dead Valley, carrying an indescribable air of detachment and coldness.

She did not linger on the cliffside. With a slight sway of her body, she vanished without leaving even a residual afterimage.

Like a weightless breeze, she glided along the steep rock face, appearing at the exit of the Spiritless Dead Valley after just a few flickers.

Along the way, she could clearly feel the residual violent aura lingering over the land.

Eighty years ago, although this place was desolate, it still had some mortal vitality.

But now, the ground surrounding the Spiritless Dead Valley was completely scorched black, with fragments of broken magical treasures and weathered bones mixed into the cracked soil.

The immortal war on the border, which had lasted for decades, had clearly plowed this already barren land into an absolute dead zone.

Su Yueli walked with a calm expression, her black cloth shoes making no sound as they trod upon the scorched earth.

Half a day later, she returned to Blackstone City.

This mundane town on the Great Li border had changed drastically.

The originally low, packed-earth city walls had been raised and reinforced with dark-gray stone slabs infused with defensive runes.

The surface of the walls was covered in scorch marks from fire spells and terrifying, yards-deep gashes carved by flying swords.

At the city gates, a squad of cold-faced cultivators dressed in Great Li armor was inspecting the entering mortals one by one.

Su Yueli completely suppressed her Ji Dao blood qi and the physical pressure of her Myriad Tribulations Realm.

In the eyes of the guards, she was merely a tall, mundane woman wearing a somewhat worn blue-and-white dress with absolutely no spiritual energy fluctuations. They did not even bother to spare her a second glance.

She passed through the gates smoothly, walking along the wide yet somewhat desolate streets of Blackstone City.

The pedestrians on the street were in a hurry, their faces worn with the exhaustion and numbness of living through years of war.

Guided by her memories from eighty years ago, Su Yueli walked slowly toward a remote corner of the town.

She remembered that there used to be a wooden tavern tucked away in a quiet corner, its surfaces coated in years of grease.

During a brief pause in her seclusion thirty years ago, she had sat in a corner by a window on the second floor, eating hot pot while watching the mundane bustle of the mortal world outside.

However, when she reached that familiar street, her steps paused.

It was gone.

The old wooden tavern, which had borne witness to the births, deaths, joys, and sorrows of three generations of mortals, was no more.

In its place stood a large, three-story pawnshop built high with blue stones—Dengfeng Pawnshop.

The pawnshop's plaque was brand new, its gold-plated characters gleaming under the sun. Yet, with her powerful physical senses, Su Yueli easily detected several pieces of charred, rotten wood buried deep beneath the soil.

They were the remnants of the tavern, burned to the ground thirty years ago when the border immortal war erupted and a barrage of stray magical treasures crashed into the city.

“The scenery remains, but the people have changed.”

Su Yueli stood before the pawnshop entrance, watching the sorrowful mortals filter in and out, and sighed in her heart.

The young waiter who had once blushed while serving her mutton had died during a bitter winter fifteen years ago.

And that waiter's grandson—the lively youth who, thirty years ago, had confidently guaranteed to his customers that his family's hot pot recipe was the most authentic—had likely turned to dust somewhere by now.

When immortals fight, mortals suffer.

In this absurd world where those with short lifespans gambled with their lives and high-level cultivators treated people like batteries, a mortal's decades were nothing more than a faint wisp of smoke in the annals of history.

Su Yueli withdrew her gaze.

As the cultivators and mortals passed her by, they talked of a new generation of cultivator geniuses she had never heard of:

“Have you heard? The Ninth Prince of the Great Wei royal family broke through to the Sixth Realm at just twenty-eight years old! He's a true peerless monster!”

“That's nothing. I heard the Holy Maiden of the Cangyun Sect has already slain a Seventh Realm deep-sea flood dragon in the outer seas. She's about to enter seclusion to charge for the Eighth Realm any day now...”