Jiang Yun stared at those five words for three full breaths, then stuffed the induction artifact back into his sleeve and took a deep breath.
Heavenly! Emperor!
Jiang Yun's mind quickly raced through every piece of information he could think of related to a "Heavenly Emperor." At the very least, an ordinary Sixth Realm expert would absolutely never dare to call themselves that.
One had to understand that a Dao Throne was bestowed by the Heavenly Dao; to put it bluntly, even those who reached the Sixth Realm were merely working for the Heavenly Dao.
You dare call yourself the Heavenly Emperor?
Either he was a reckless fool who understood nothing, or he occupied a position so high that Jiang Yun could never hope to look up to it in his entire life. Why did Xu Huayi pull out all her possessions? Was it because she was terrified after seeing Gu Chengming's desire?
No, that wasn't it.
Jiang Yun suddenly realized the truth, and cold sweat soaked through him almost instantly.
That wasn't a plea for mercy; that was life-buying money!
What Xu Huayi saw must have frightened her to the point of nearly losing her sanity, which was why she instinctively made such an illogical move, piling all her valuables in front of him just to trade for a way to live.
Jiang Yun's back was completely drenched.
A primal fear slowly crept up from the base of his spine. He forced himself to maintain a worried expression, but his fingers were already trembling uncontrollably.
Is it too late to run away?
Jiang Yun quickly calculated in his head, but the conclusion was depressing.
Right now, he was still under everyone's watchful eyes. He had no idea if Gu Chengming had noticed anything wrong with his identity; if he ran now, he would not only be exposed but also captured on the spot.
Fortunately, he didn't need to fake his worry too much; compared to the others, the expression on his face didn't look out of place.
After all, everyone was worried about Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi, though their reasons differed.
They were afraid something had happened to Gu Chengming; Jiang Yun was afraid nothing had happened to him.
"Fellow Daoist Jiang, why is your face so pale?" Tao Yong approached and asked in a low voice.
"I might have been shaken by the turbulence when entering the secret realm; I'm feeling a bit unwell." Jiang Yun maintained his usual gentle smile and waved his hand: "It's no matter. Thank you for your concern, Fellow Daoist Tao."
Tao Yong grunted in response and didn't ask further, turning back to continue organizing his survey tools.
Jiang Yun looked back at the empty void. Some things were harder to swallow once you knew them.
—Our friendship as Daoist friends will last for a long time yet.
He had said those words to himself earlier.
Jiang Yun felt profoundly that those words were now incredibly stupid.
...
On the other side.
Inside the stone chamber, Gu Chengming was still staring blankly at the dialogue box showing Hundred Bones Resonating experiencing the peak of its life.
【Hundred Bones Resonating stands alone against the gods of the heavens. Gazing at the countless gods falling like meteors, it roars: Hand over Gu Chengming's remnant soul!】
Gu Chengming: "..."
Why was the illusion Emperor Bai fell into always about warring against the heavens?
He looked down at the mountain of treasures before him, then looked up at Xu Huayi's profile; she had instinctively turned away, her ears flushed red. He sighed helplessly in his heart.
The good news was that with Emperor Bai holding the fort, there was hope for escape.
The bad news was, what did Xu Huayi mean by this? Hadn't he already said there was a way out? Why hadn't she taken the spirit stones back yet?
【Hundred Bones Resonating faces the heavens alone, covered in a hundred wounds and drenched in blood, yet it remains standing tall.】
【Hundred Bones Resonating walks slowly out of the sea of corpses and blood, tightly clutching a broken fragment of a divine soul in its hand.】
【Resurrect, my love!】
Gu Chengming fell silent for a moment upon seeing this line.
—Emperor Bai, isn't this dialogue a bit off?
Pushing those thoughts aside, Gu Chengming turned to Xu Huayi and said: "Put your things away first."
Xu Huayi froze in place.
Gu Chengming looked at the spiritual runes on the wall: "I have a lead. This predicament is nothing; it can be broken soon."
Hearing this, Xu Huayi's tense shoulders suddenly relaxed. She let out a long breath and wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. But as she looked at Gu Chengming's calm back, a strange feeling flickered in her heart.
She couldn't tell if it was regret or disappointment.
She lowered her head, picking up her items one by one and stuffing them back into her storage pouch. Her movements were much slower than when she had taken them out.
"As expected of Fellow Daoist Gu." Xu Huayi tightened the drawstring of the storage pouch and stood up: "I will follow your lead."
Gu Chengming did not answer, merely turning to face the center of the stone chamber.
The lead he spoke of was naturally not some array-breaking method; the semi-transparent box in his vision was flickering wildly.
At the same time, a low hum suddenly echoed from all around the stone chamber.
The ancient and complex spiritual runes on the walls began to recede at a visible rate. The grayish-white light dimmed bit by bit, as if being drained from the roots by something.
Gu Chengming's gaze shifted.
【Hundred Bones Resonating's favorability increased to 300】
【All attributes +3!】
Good heavens, warring against the heavens can increase favorability?
Could it be that Emperor Bai is having so much fun that it decided to let me be happy too?
The increase in favorability was accompanied by an extremely mysterious sensation, as if every meridian and bone in his hundred bones were being polished by a pair of invisible hands.
From the look of it, his current attributes should be enough to cultivate that Cangxian Wine Sword Art.
He felt a bit sorry for Senior Hua; he was already in the Third Realm and was only now starting to cultivate the technique given to him... wait, it hadn't even been that long since he received it.
The spiritual runes on the walls receded even faster until the last bit of light suddenly vanished.
The entire stone chamber shook violently.
Gu Chengming raised his hand to shield Xu Huayi, protecting her behind him. He exerted a bit of force through his feet and stood firm.
Then, everything around them began to shatter.
It wasn't a physical collapse of stone walls, but the space itself. Like a water-soaked painting, it began to dissolve from the edges. The grayish-white stone walls, the mirror-like floor, the Dao Throne runes circling the ceiling—everything dissolved into drifting specks of light in an instant, vanishing into a vast white glow.
After the blinding light passed, a biting cold wind hit them.
They were free.
...
Their feet stepped onto soft, piled snow.
Gu Chengming blinked, his vision gradually clearing from the afterimages of the white light.
All around was an empty snowfield. The sky was grayish-white, with thick clouds hanging so low it felt like he could touch them. On the distant horizon, several strange spiritual lights flowed between the clouds and the earth, flickering as if Tianque itself were breathing.
The snow was fresh, letting out a crunch with every step and leaving deep footprints.
Gu Chengming looked around, quickly confirming there were no obvious signs of danger before retracting his gaze.
Xu Huayi stood beside him, already making gestures with her judge's pen, clearly sensing their orientation.
"The sense of direction is abnormal; the spatial structure inside Tianque is completely different from the outside."
She pressed the judge's pen to her lips, pondering briefly: "But I can roughly determine that we were teleported deeper into the secret realm."
Then Xu Huayi cleared her throat, resuming her capable demeanor: "Fellow Daoist Gu, let's first determine our position and get in touch with the rest of the team as soon as possible."
"Alright."
Gu Chengming agreed, stepping through the snow to walk beside her.
The sound of footsteps in the snow was the only noise besides the wind.
After walking for about the time it takes for half an incense stick to burn, the terrain began to change. The flat snowfield gradually sloped upward, and the snow became thinner, revealing the black basalt ground beneath. It was from the same vein as the wasteland outside the boundary markers, but the texture was harder and the surface was polished as smooth as a mirror, faintly reflecting their silhouettes.
Gu Chengming walked up a few steps, and his vision suddenly opened up.
A mountain appeared directly in their line of sight.
It wasn't a mountain in the ordinary sense, but one with an extremely strange silhouette. It towered into the clouds with walls that were almost perfectly vertical, as if sliced by some force. It lacked the curves expected from natural erosion, and the mountain itself was a deep iron-gray, appearing exceptionally solemn under the grayish-white sky.
The outline of the peak was irregular, as if countless long, thin spikes were bursting out from the rock, some straight and some slanted, messy and dense. And what radiated from between those spikes was an aura so sharp it was almost physical.
Gu Chengming sensed it, and his brow twitched slightly.
That was sword qi.
Not the sword qi of one or two swords, but the sword qi of countless, countless swords accumulated over ages, condensing into something solid. It permeated the area around the mountain like an invisible mist that would shred anyone who dared approach.
Even standing hundreds of feet away, his skin could feel that fine, needle-like stinging sensation.
Xu Huayi also stopped and took a thin map from her sleeve, unfolding it to compare it with the mountain before them.
A moment later, she suddenly looked up.
"Fellow Daoist Gu."
There was a hint of surprise in Xu Huayi's voice that he had never heard before. Her finger pointed to a spot on the map, and then she looked up at the mountain peak, finally speaking in an uncertain tone: "That seems to be... the Burial Sword Tomb."
"The Burial Sword Tomb?"
Gu Chengming instinctively looked at the mountain again.
The iron-gray body, the sheer cliffs, and the dense cluster of cone-shaped spikes at the peak flickering in the low clouds, all shrouded in sword qi.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." Xu Huayi looked down and checked the map again. The edges of the paper were fluttering in the cold wind, so she pressed them down, her brow furrowing: "The orientation, terrain, and aura all match. And look at that sword qi; there won't be a second place in the secret realm with this kind of density."
She folded the map and put it back in her sleeve, her gaze lingering on the mountain for a moment: "Normally, we would be off course. This place wasn't in our initial plan; we were sent here by mistake by the teleportation array."
Gu Chengming asked: "A lucky mistake that brought us to a destination?"
"In a way." Xu Huayi thought for a moment: "The Burial Sword Tomb is one of the few Dao Throne Wonders within Tianque that Daqian intended to explore. It was on our objective list; we would have had to come here sooner or later. I just didn't expect to arrive so early."
She paused when she said "we," likely remembering that the entire team was currently scattered across the secret realm and that the "we" right now only referred to her and Gu Chengming. She cleared her throat lightly and didn't elaborate.
"Then this Burial Sword Tomb..." Gu Chengming looked away from the mountain: "What is its origin?"
Xu Huayi thought about it and said: "I don't know much either. It's just bits and pieces I saw in the documents before we set out, mostly a collection of hearsay. You can just listen for reference."
She stepped through the snow, slowly walking a couple of steps toward the mountain: "According to the records, Tianque was originally the ruins of an ancient expert. There's no consensus on who it was; theories vary. Some say it was a sword master, others say it was a grand mechanist who suffered a qi deviation. Regardless, that's beside the point."
"The Dao Throne behind the formation of the Burial Sword Tomb, according to the observations of generations of qi gazers at the Imperial Observatory, appeared only thousands of years after Tianque was sealed. That is to say, it wasn't part of Tianque's original structure, but formed on its own at some point—"
"But one thing is certain."
She clasped her hands and pointed at the mountain, saying quite happily: "Inside the Burial Sword Tomb, every person who enters can refine a dharma sword for themselves."
"And it's not some ordinary Third Realm dharma sword. Records state that cultivators have refined Fourth Realm or even Fifth Realm dharma swords in the Burial Sword Tomb. And these dharma swords can be taken away as long as one receives 'recognition.'"
When she said the word "recognition," her tone paused subtly, as if she were thinking about how to phrase it.
Gu Chengming noticed the pause: "What kind of recognition?"
"That's the troublesome part."
Xu Huayi sighed softly: "Theoretically, even if a dharma sword is forged to the Fourth or Fifth Realm, it is just a dharma artifact. It has no will and cannot perform the active action of 'recognizing' someone."
"But strangely enough, in the records of the Burial Sword Tomb, this 'recognition' truly exists. Of the cultivators who go in, some come out with Fourth Realm dharma swords, while others fail to even refine a Third Realm sword and return empty-handed. Some even go in and get absolutely no reaction at all." She gestured with her hands, her expression quite subtle.
"As for what is actually doing the recognizing, no one knows. It's been discussed for hundreds of years in the literature, and the final conclusion is four words."
"Reason remains unknown."
Gu Chengming: "..."
You people at the Imperial Observatory sure know how to use empty words. Writing a long essay only to end with 'needs further study' just to scam research funding, are you?
"The seniors at the Imperial Observatory were very honest." Xu Huayi looked a bit embarrassed: "In any case, this is one of our destinations. Since we've arrived by chance, let's go in and take a look."
...
The closer they got, the more obvious the sword qi became.
At the foot of the mountain, the snow vanished completely, replaced by a level and hard black basalt floor. There were many tiny cracks in the stone, and from within them leaked a faint, ghostly blue light that meandered along the patterns.
"Go in, Fellow Daoist Gu. I'll watch from out here."
Gu Chengming was a bit confused by this.
"I'm not a sword cultivator."
Xu Huayi explained quite bluntly: "The Burial Sword Tomb refines dharma swords. This isn't very useful for non-sword cultivators. Going in would just be a waste of energy for me. I'd rather wait for you out here and study the array patterns of this place."
After saying that, she found a relatively flat piece of black basalt to sit on, took out her judge's pen, and began sketching something on her silk scroll.
That familiar posture was exactly like someone at a tourist attraction saying, "I'm not going in; you guys go, I'll wait here."
Gu Chengming thanked her and turned to walk toward the entrance at the foot of the mountain.
There was an extremely narrow fissure at the base, barely wide enough for one person. It looked as if it had been torn out of the mountain's belly by some force. The stone walls on either side of the fissure were covered in fine sword scars, crisscrossing in varying depths.
The interior was much broader than expected. The narrow fissure was just the entrance; inside was a vast space. The ceiling was incredibly high, extending to some dark apex deep within the mountain. The end was invisible, with only a few scattered light sources hanging high up, casting shifting light and shadow across the area. The floor was flat black basalt, but it was smoother than the ground outside, almost reflecting his silhouette.
And then there were the swords.
When Gu Chengming first saw the layout of this space, the thought that came to mind was that the name Burial Sword Tomb was truly fitting.
All the dharma swords were scattered throughout the space in no discernible order. Some were stuck in the ground with only half the hilt showing, some lay flat on the floor, some leaned against protrusions on the stone walls, and some just hung in mid-air.
The number of swords was so great it could almost be called a "pile." Gu Chengming took a rough glance and couldn't even estimate the number.
They were of all types, from different eras, and made of various materials.
Some swords were entirely pitch-black, as if the entire blade had been scorched by furnace fire during refining, shining with a dark luster. Others were the exact opposite, the blades so white they were almost transparent, allowing one to vaguely see what was behind them. Some swords were heavily corroded, covered in a thick layer of rust, their original color long lost.
The sword qi here was materialized as a thin, flowing mist, slowly seeping from the surface of every sword and permeating the air, intertwining with one another and filling the space with that unique scent of iron mixed with a chill.
Gu Chengming stood at the entrance for a moment, confirming there was no obvious danger before stepping inside.
His first step on the black basalt floor sent a small echo back from all directions, but otherwise, there was no movement.
Gu Chengming tried approaching a sword that looked to be of good quality.
It was a slender longsword with fine water-wave patterns on the blade. Two ancient seal characters he couldn't recognize were engraved on the crossguard. It hung about ten feet off the ground, tip pointing down, radiating a steady and restrained Fourth Realm aura.
He reached out and tried to channel his spiritual energy, gently extending his divine sense toward the sword in the manner described in the records.
There was no reaction. The sword remained where it was, hanging in place.
Gu Chengming retracted his divine sense and tried another one.
Still no reaction.
He tried another.
Still nothing.
He walked through this forest of swords for about the time it takes for half an incense stick to burn, trying every dharma sword within reach. From the finest Fourth Realm swords to the ordinary, almost cheap Second Realm swords, without exception, none of them moved. They remained indifferent to his divine sense, as if he were a ghost who didn't exist.
Gu Chengming stopped before a Second Realm middle-stage dharma sword and remained silent for a moment.
Even a Second Realm sword ignored him.
He looked down at his hands, then up at the surrounding swords that showed zero interest in him. A dialogue box popped up before his eyes.
【Huiyuan Sword Manual is a bit indignant and comforts: It's okay, it's okay. It's just that the dharma swords here don't know quality when they see it.】
【It's common for them to fail to recognize a pearl among pebbles. Chengming, don't take it to heart.】
Then it paused and added another line.
【My Chengming is, of course, the best.】
My little Huiyuan is the best too, Gu Chengming thought, feeling somewhat comforted.
He reassessed his surroundings. Since the conventional methods had failed, he needed to change his approach.
He lifted his foot and walked casually toward a stone platform protruding from the ground, intending to sit down and think.
Then, in the midst of it all, he felt something.
It wasn't a clear, directional sensation, but a very vague one, like a dull thud coming from underwater. Somewhere, some thing seemed to have formed a thread-like connection with him.
Gu Chengming stopped.
He spread the tentacles of his divine sense in all directions, carefully sensing that faint pull. He followed its direction for a few steps, then a few more, passing through two rows of densely packed swords and rounding a piece of black stone wall as tall as a man.
A floating ancient sword appeared before him. There were almost no other swords around it, forming an empty zone.
But this sword was too old. It wasn't the kind of "ancient elegance" polished by time, but literally broken and ruined.
There were several clear cracks on the blade, meandering from the crossguard almost to the tip. The blade itself had been struck by something, and a small section had chipped off, revealing a darker core. The scabbard was long gone, and the wrapping on the hilt was mostly rotted away, with only a few remaining turns still clinging to it, looking as if they might fall off at any moment.
Even stranger was that this sword radiated no aura of any grade.
【Hundred Bones Resonating reminds: Emperor Gu, based on my experience, this kind of sword is usually the most powerful.】
Although he didn't want to admit it, Emperor Bai's experience matched his own perception.
Thinking this, Gu Chengming crouched down to level himself with the sword and examined it closely.
Then he tried to probe it with his divine sense.
This time, there was finally a reaction.
...
Xu Huayi sat outside the foot of the mountain for about an hour and a half.
This was enough time for her to trace the array patterns at the entrance of the Burial Sword Tomb three times and roughly figure out the spiritual energy distribution on the black basalt floor. Finally, having nothing left to do, she took out a file regarding Tianque's periphery that Chu Heng had given her to cross-reference.
The handwriting of the file's author was quite messy. Xu Huayi frowned as she spent a long time deciphering it, finally finding a brief record related to the Burial Sword Tomb on the seventh page.
There was only one line: "Countless dharma swords within, all masterless. Refining is hard, recognition is hard, obtaining is harder still. Reason remains unknown."
Xu Huayi looked at this line, remained silent for a while, and then flipped to the next page.
This was likely the most honest record left by the seniors of the Imperial Observatory. In a sense, it took quite a bit of courage to admit they hadn't researched anything at all.
After another half an incense stick of time, a very low, deep tremor came from deep within the mountain.
Xu Huayi suddenly looked up.
That tremor wasn't sudden but was a process that went from weak to strong, from far to near. At first, it was just a slight vibration of the black basalt floor beneath her feet, then it spread to the mountain walls, and finally, the entire mountain began to shake.
Xu Huayi stood up, her hand already gripping the judge's pen at her waist.
That sword qi had suddenly become several times denser.
The faint, mist-like sword intent that originally permeated the area around the mountain was suddenly gathered by some force at this moment, rushing from all directions toward the center of the mountain. It let out a series of fine, light ringing sounds, like countless swords being unsheathed at once.
Zheng, zheng, zheng.
One after another, from dense to sparse, from high to low, like a closing piece of music.
Then, from that narrow fissure at the foot of the mountain, a figure walked out.
Gu Chengming.
His expression was a bit unexpected to Xu Huayi. It was a slightly complex expression that was hard to describe, lacking even a hint of the high spirits one should have after "spending nearly two hours in the Burial Sword Tomb refining a peerless dharma sword."
Xu Huayi's gaze quickly swept over him, but she didn't see any newly added dharma swords.
The volume of his storage pouch hadn't changed, there was nothing extra at his waist, and even his aura hadn't changed noticeably from before he went in.
Could he have returned empty-handed? But then what was that tremor about?
"Fellow Daoist Gu?" Xu Huayi walked closer and asked curiously: "Did you have any gains?"
Gu Chengming hesitated. For someone as consistently steady as him, it was a rare moment of hesitation. Then he raised his hand and pointed behind him.
Xu Huayi looked in the direction he pointed.
Her gaze first fell on Gu Chengming's back, then passed him to look further into the distance. There was the black basalt floor at the foot of the mountain, a few withered weeds stubbornly poking out from the stone cracks, the distant grayish-white snowfield, and the low-hanging clouds.
And then.
Rumble—
The entire Burial Sword Tomb moved.
It wasn't a tremble or a slight vibration; it was movement in the literal, holistic sense. That iron-gray, sheer mountain with the spikes at the peak began to slowly detach from beneath the ground, as if some force were pulling its roots out of the earth. The black basalt floor let out a series of dense cracking sounds during this process. Large chunks of rock flew from the foot of the mountain, and fine basalt dust around the mountain rose into the air, forming a thick ring of dust.
Then the entire mountain floated up.
It just hung there, slowly hovering about thirty feet off the ground behind Gu Chengming. The base of the mountain that was originally buried deep underground was now exposed to the air—an irregular, coarse rock cross-section still clinging with bits of soil and fine basalt fragments. A few stones fell from the cross-section, hitting the ground with a crisp sound.
All that sword qi had been retracted.
Not a single bit was lost; all of it was drawn back into the mountain. The entire Burial Sword Tomb floated quietly behind Gu Chengming, like an incredibly absurd "dharma artifact" that could crush someone at any moment.
Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi were completely enveloped by the shadow of the massive mountain.
For about five breaths, Xu Huayi's brain was at a complete standstill.
—What did you say you refined?!
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