Book 16: Chapter 51: Destruction and Hope
Zhang Ping stood by Summer Spirit Lakeside.
Even though the snow cover still hadn’t melted, just like back then, Summer Spirit Lakeside was still as warm as summer, many fireflies fluttering about.
The clear and calm lake water reflected Zhang Ping’s appearance.
His face was extremely ordinary.
When so many Green Luan Academy students gathered here in the past, he didn’t draw much attention at all. No one noticed his existence.
His skin was dark, moreover flickering with a somewhat strange violet-gold radiance. However, even he himself could see that he was powerful from his own reflection.
From the moment his whereabouts were revealed in Yunqin’s north, the entire world already knew that his next move would inevitably be to take down Green Luan Academy. However no one could prevent him from entering Four Seasons Plains or even Heaven Ascension Mountain Range.
Summer Spirit Lakeside was extremely beautiful. This originally should’ve been a place worth reminiscing for him, yet when he stood before this calm and clear lake, thinking about the many golden spoons that had gathered here, he felt like this lake was especially disgusting. When he thought about the scene of Lin Xi, Gao Yanan and Wen Xuanyu afterwards, he felt even more loathing.
When he used to live in a Yunqin village, he thought that everything was beautiful, everything was fair. When he came here, however, when he saw how countless families were more outstanding than himself, he felt inferior, felt hatred.
His resentment was originally just like a butterfly fluttering in Heaven Ascension Mountain Range. However, after he obtained the power to make the entire world his enemy, it turned into a powerful storm that swept through the world.
“Fill it in.”
Zhang Ping coldly turned around, saying these two words to the dozens of Purgatory Mountain red robed Divine Adjudicators kneeling beside the giant imperial carriage behind him.
After he turned around, there was suddenly a powerful gust of wind that surged behind him. The calm lake surface suddenly produced countless fissure-like waves, the fluttering fireflies exploding from the power he released, all of them falling onto the no longer peaceful lake surface.
Filling in the lake seemed like a senseless and dull order, but the devil king received more and more followers in this world. As long as the devil king continued to dominate this world, now that this order was given, this beautiful lake was doomed to disappear.
…
The heavy giant imperial carriage moved through Four Seasons plains like a boat, arriving beneath Heaven Ascension Mountain Range.
Zhang Ping sat on the throne, gazing towards this massive mountain peak that towered into the clouds, its peaks completely hidden through the gaps between the curtains.
He thought about how back then, even though he was completely empty-handed, by the time he hurried to this place, he was even already completely spent. But today, he could sit in this kind of steady giant imperial carriage to climb up this mountain.
Over a hundred Divine Adjudicators dressed in red robes pulled the giant imperial carriage, walking in front.
Dozens of Devilmask Doves flew above them. They screamed miserably, these birds even more terrifying than Wenren Cangyue’s group of vultures in the past. Moreover, when these Devilmask Doves’ soul force rippled, waves of black energy were released, eventually gathering into clouds of darkness.
Close to a hundred red robed cultivators walked behind the giant imperial carriage as well.
These people were just like the ones dragging the giant imperial carriage from the front, most of them weren’t Purgatory Mountain disciples. Among these people, many of them were originally prisoners locked up within Yunqin prisons, well-known Yunqin cultivators, and a few of them were originally only ordinary Yunqin people.
These ordinary Yunqin people originally had some desires that couldn’t be satisfied at all. However, when a red robed Divine Adjudicator walked up to them one day, he informed them with a sincere and endlessly enticing proposal, “Offer your souls to the devil king, serve the devil king, the devil king will satisfy your desires.”
These Yunqin people made their choice, and then their various desires were satisfied… Some of them obtained the beauties they yearned for day and night as their wives, some of them killed the enemies they hated most bitterly, some obtained an entire house’s worth of gold… and then they became the devil king’s devout disciples. They also began to roam Yunqin, spreading the news of the devil king’s descent, and began to carefully survey the desires within each person’s heart. In the end, they would also appear before these people who they knew the deepest desires of, using a devout voice full of endless temptation to tell them, “Offer up your souls to the devil king, serve the devil king, the devil king will satisfy all of your desires.”
This was originally the method the devil king used in the Immortal Devil Age to rule the world. However, these methods seemed effective regardless of when they were used.
On top of the hundred red robed Divine Adjudicators in front and in the back of Zhang Ping’s giant imperial carriage were over a thousand guards.
As they climbed higher and higher up, the road became more and more precipitous. These people’s hearts became more and more nervous, their armors also gradually soaked with sweat.
However, there were no battles that happened.
Eventually, a completely empty Green Luan Academy ultimately appeared before them silently.
Seeing the palaces that towered on the mountain peaks, the ziplines that were connected to each peak, everyone felt a type of power rush at their faces. This type of mysterious pressure made all these red robed Divine Adjudicators and guards continuously tremble.
“They abandoned it just like that?”
“So many of us used to view this as an important place we had to defend with our lives, yet they didn’t even offer the slightest bit of resistance, they gave up on it just like that?”
Zhang Ping didn’t feel any shock. He only examined this familiar place with eyes full of mockery. Self Defense Freshman Dormitory, Natural Arts Freshman Dormitory, Medicine Freshman Dormitory… as well as that slope where they burned that fire in the past.
He slowly stood up. However, the moment he stood up, he suddenly produced incomparable disgust towards this place.
“Burn it all down.”
…
On a certain Heaven Ascension Mountain Range peak, the never melting glacier seemed to have been cut by the blade of a divine king. The side facing Green Luan Academy was flawlessly white. However, this type of pure white instead seemed to be slowly turning blue.
Those who walked within the cracks of this glacier would find that the white ice would become blue as the thickness of the ice grew. This light blue would then eventually become a luminous gemstone-like blue.
This naturally formed glacier opening was one of the paths into the Frozen God Domain behind Heaven Ascension Mountain Range.
However, Frozen God Domain had always been viewed as God’s Domain, so ordinary people naturally weren’t allowed to step foot into this place.
Even though this glacier crack was still considered a lower point of Heaven Ascension Mountain Range, the oxygen level here was already far, far thinner than other places. Normal cultivators would enter a muddle-headed state from not having enough fresh oxygen even if they didn’t do anything, completely lose their ability to think rationally.
This was let alone the fact that there were even more biting cold winds that continuously passed through this glacier crack.
The cold that gathered within these winds, was like invisible swords, continuously cutting about in the air.
Frozen God Domain’s end of the glacier not only had countless deep blade cuts made into the metal-like ice, the ice and snow were a dirty blue and black color. Endless sand and snow granules dug deeply into the ice and snow.
However, in this type of place where the glacier crack and Frozen God Domain intersected, within an eagle beak shaped windstop area, were thick fur tents.
A cultivator whose feet were covered in thick leather boots, thick gloves around the hands, his entire person wrapped up, was standing in front of one of the tents.
There was already some ice that gathered by his mouth and nose. His body was also slightly trembling in the cold.
He could vaguely see the smoke and fire released from Heaven Ascension Mountain Range. He knew what this represented. His eyes were immediately filled with an expression of pain.
He decisively turned around, no longer looking behind him, only looking at this Frozen God Domain’s sea of ice.
The sky gradually darkened.
Under the dimming sky, the endless grotesque and varied glaciers were just like frozen shipwrecks.
Even more frigid winds blew between these ‘shipwrecks’.
Visibility grew increasingly poor. That distant glacier and the endless ice gradually left his line of sight.
His consciousness also began to blur, losing track of how long he had already remained here. He also began to lose confidence, about to release a groan of pain.
However, suddenly, a small but bright greenish-yellow flame instead appeared within the already unclear distant frozen tundra.
This sky reaching light disappeared after a flash, but this cultivator who was guarding this place, waiting for the signal, released a happy cheer.