Li Yuan remained silent for a long time.
He looked at the gaunt old man before him, then at the girl lying peacefully in the spirit crystal coffin, and for a moment, he didn't know what to say. After a long while, he finally spoke, his voice carrying a complex tone that even he couldn't quite define.
“You sacrificed trillions of living beings just to earn the qualification for ascension—do you have even a single shred of regret for all of that?”
The old man looked up, his cloudy eyes showing no sign of avoidance. He shook his head, his tone so frank it was almost stubborn.
“None.” He turned his head to look at the coffin, his withered fingers gently stroking the edge of the lid. His voice was soft, yet every word was clear. “If I hadn't taken this path, I wouldn't have lived to see this day, nor would I have met her. For the first time in these past few centuries, I feel like I'm truly alive. During those thousands of years in the Weihai Realm, every day I opened my eyes it was to cultivate, to kill, to hide from enemies, and to kill again. It was a muddled existence where I almost forgot why I was even living. It wasn't until I met her that I felt my life had truly begun.”
Li Yuan looked into his calm eyes and asked again:
“Was it worth it to discard everything you gained from thousands of years of bitter cultivation?”
“It was.”
The old man's answer didn't have the slightest hint of hesitation. After he spoke that word, the corner of his mouth twitched slightly, as if he were smiling, or perhaps mocking himself. “Fellow Daoist, you probably think I'm mad. For a cultivator to throw away thousands of years of cultivation—anyone would think it a waste. But to me, all those thousands of years added together don't compare to these few hundred years spent with her.”
Li Yuan fell silent. Looking into the old man's cloudy but exceptionally certain eyes, he suddenly felt an indescribable sensation churning in his heart.
The old man seemed to read his mind and slowly turned his head, looking at him with a slight hesitation. “Fellow Daoist, what is the purpose of your cultivation?”
Li Yuan thought for a moment and answered truthfully, “Naturally, it is to contend with heaven for longevity and seek immortal life.”
“And after you obtain longevity?” the old man pressed, his tone calm but carrying a seriousness that could not be avoided. “Have you ever thought about the path after that?”
Li Yuan opened his mouth, but was speechless. He had indeed never considered this question.
Back when he was on the Kyushu Continent, his mind was entirely focused on becoming an immortal. Every day and night, he thought only of how to break through realms, survive the lightning tribulation, and ascend to the Immortal Gate. As for what he would do after becoming an immortal, he had never given it a thought. Now, asked by the old man, he found himself unable to answer at all.
He shook his head and admitted, “I don't know.”
The old man let out a soft chuckle—dry and short, but not mocking. He sighed, “Everyone is like that, only knowing to blindly contend with heaven for longevity, yet not knowing how to view the matter of immortal life itself.”
He then looked up at the spatial pocket above, his voice suddenly growing heavier. “In this vast universe, how many worlds have been destroyed by those very words, ‘contending with heaven for longevity’? Cultivators slaughtering each other, sects warring year after year, even entire realms being shattered to pieces—in the end, isn't it all for those words? This longevity... it's better not to have it.”
Li Yuan's brow furrowed immediately upon hearing this. He looked directly at the old man, his voice sinking a few shades lower. “You sacrificed trillions of living beings just to obtain a path to longevity; you have no right to say such things now.”
Hearing this, the old man wasn't annoyed; instead, he seemed to have been struck by something. He turned to look at Li Yuan, a trace of defiant light rising in his cloudy eyes, and his tone hardened. “Everyone is pursuing the same result, just through different methods. What right do you have to say I'm not qualified?”
Li Yuan was not intimidated by his aura, his tone remaining flat but unyielding. “We do not slaughter all living beings or destroy worlds for the sake of longevity. We rely entirely on our own bitter cultivation.”
The old man froze for a moment.
He stared at Li Yuan for several seconds, his brow slowly knitting together. The expression on his face shifted from annoyance to confusion, and then from confusion to deep suspicion. He leaned forward and asked in an extremely strange tone, “When did I ever slaughter all living beings or destroy a world?”
Li Yuan likewise narrowed his eyes and replied, “After you sacrificed those trillions of living beings, the remaining people of the Weihai Realm couldn't withstand the resulting karma and the world was forced to collapse into a dead world.”
He paused, his tone softening slightly. “That being said, it was your own world. Since the Heavenly Dao didn't intervene, I naturally won't judge you based on your actions there.”
The old man did not immediately argue. He stood there dazed, his cloudy eyes staring straight at Li Yuan, his expression changing several times in succession—
First confusion, then realization, and finally settling on an extremely subtle and peculiar look. After a silence that lasted several seconds, he finally spoke, his voice much softer than before but carrying a rare seriousness.
“It's true that I sacrificed trillions of living beings, but when did I ever use humans for the sacrifice? Where would this karma come from?”
Now it was Li Yuan's turn to be stunned. He stared at the old man blankly and instinctively asked, “If you didn't use humans, what did you use?”
The old man's expression was matter-of-fact, as if he were speaking of something perfectly normal. “Livestock, of course. Chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, cows, sheep—whatever was easy to raise.”
Li Yuan's expression froze in an instant. He opened his mouth, but his thoughts seemed to have been violently paused. It took a long time for his mind to start working again.
He repeated the word, his tone filled with obvious disbelief. “—Livestock? Are you sure?”
“Yes.” The old man nodded and explained in a flat tone, “Though the Weihai Realm was barren, the mortals' ability to farm and raise livestock wasn't bad. At the time, to gather enough blood fiend energy to trigger the Ascension Lightning Tribulation, I specifically spent a large amount of money to hire farmers from several countries to help me raise livestock for several hundred years. Those farmers took my spirit stones and raised them with more care than the crops in their own fields. Over those centuries, the number of animals multiplied several times over. When I finally had enough, just counting them took nearly half a month.”
Li Yuan was now completely shocked.
In all his years, he had seen countless cultivators use any means necessary to ascend, including but not limited to refining an entire city of mortals just to gain a sliver of cultivation, or using the souls of the living to refine artifacts.
But he had never seen—and never even imagined—that someone would hire farmers to raise livestock to gather blood fiend energy.
So what was this? Ascension through animal husbandry?
He stood there, his mind buzzing. Then he suddenly remembered something and used his Divine Sense to sweep over the old man from head to toe once again. Before, he had only noticed the thin layer of blood fiend energy on the old man and hadn't carefully distinguished what lay beneath it. Now, as he released his Divine Sense to investigate closely, he realized with a start—the old man didn't have much karmic debt.
No, to be precise, that bit of karmic debt was even thinner than what was on Ignatius. For a cultivator who had lived for thousands of years and survived an Ascension Lightning Tribulation, this amount of karmic debt was ridiculously small.
Although the layer of blood fiend energy on him was dense, his karmic debt was so thin it could almost be ignored. This meant that every person he had ever killed was 'someone who deserved to die' within the scope of the Heavenly Dao's approval.
This discovery left Li Yuan completely speechless.
Rate on N.U.
