Chapter 298 – Human Head, Serpent Body—Fiend Yet Not Fiend

Xia Dynasty, Pine Mountain Temple.

As the largest Cultivator Family Daoist temple in the Xia Dynasty,

the hundred-mile radius around Pine Mountain was not only bustling with activity but also attracted numerous dignitaries and nobles who visited annually.

Their purposes were straightforward:

either to seek celestial guidance and inquire about the Dao, searching for a path to transcendence,

or to request assistance that only the Cultivator Family could provide.

The incident in Caihua County fell into the latter category.

However, recently, Pine Mountain Temple seemed to be facing issues.

Not only had the temple closed its doors to visitors, but its Agents operating within the Xia Dynasty had also been recalled.

This situation clearly indicated that something significant was about to happen.

Outside Pine Mountain Temple, a guard of over a thousand Xia Dynasty imperial troops was stationed.

The presence of such a large force was not intended to take action against the temple

but to protect someone.

Anyone warranting such an arrangement was undoubtedly either immensely wealthy or of noble status.

Inside Pine Mountain Temple, in a courtyard.

The courtyard was small, featuring only a pond and a pavilion.

Yet its arrangement was so profound that merely being there evoked a sense of spiritual purification,

as if one were in a celestial paradise.

In the pavilion of this courtyard, a middle-aged man in a python robe was chatting with the Abbot of Pine Mountain Temple, who wore Daoist robes, while playing a game of Go and drinking tea.

“Deer Abbot, are you truly unwilling to intervene?”

“Currently, the Zhou and Chen nations have amassed a million troops at our border, clearly forming a pincer attack from the north and south.”With our dynasty’s current strength, we cannot contend with either Zhou or Chen alone, let alone both simultaneously.”

“If you, Deer Abbot, and the Celestial Beings of Pine Mountain Temple do not intervene, the Xia Dynasty faces the risk of annihilation.”

“In that event, Pine Mountain Temple, which relies on our dynasty, may also meet an unfortunate end.”

At this point, the Xia Dynasty prince paused, looking solemnly at Deer Abbot.

His implied meaning was unmistakable.

Contrary to his expectations, despite the prince’s emotionally and logically persuasive plea,

Deer Abbot remained unmoved.

It was as if the fate of the Xia Dynasty held no relevance to Pine Mountain Temple.

Seeing Deer Abbot calmly sipping his tea,

the Xia Dynasty prince, though frantic with worry, knew he had little leverage over him.

After a moment of silence, the prince stood and said, “I have said all I can. I hope you will reconsider, Deer Abbot, in light of our dynasty’s years of support for the temple.”

“I shall take my leave now.”

With that, the Xia Dynasty prince departed from the temple.

After he left, a middle-aged Daoist entered the courtyard.

“Master, are you truly not going to intervene?”

Deer Abbot turned to look at him upon hearing this.

In that moment, the middle-aged Daoist felt he was not facing a man over a hundred years old

but a towering, peakless mountain.

This Aura forced him to prostrate immediately, his forehead drenched in sweat.

Deer Abbot paid no attention to his beloved disciple’s disheveled state and walked to the edge of the pond.

“Intervene? At present, the Flowing Cloud and Azure Falls temples of the Zhou and Chen nations, for reasons unknown, have openly and covertly ambushed and killed many of our skilled members.””Haven’t you noticed that despite my messages being sent for so long, your two Junior Martial Uncles still haven’t sent any response?”

“Given their cultivation levels, I don’t believe there are many in this Xia Dynasty who could make them disappear from this world without a trace.”

“This can only mean one thing – multiple cultivators of similar level have taken action.”

“Although the Xia Dynasty is important to me, compared to the temple itself, a mere dynasty isn’t indispensable.”

“As long as the temple remains, no matter how the world changes outside, we will always have a place to call home.”

“Conversely, if the temple is lost, even if the Xia Dynasty still exists, do you think we would still have the power to suppress them?”

“Remember, cultivator families are called such because those standing on the mountain are the true cultivators. Those who descend the mountain… cease to be cultivators.”

Though these words weren’t explicitly stated.

The middle-aged Taoist kneeling on the ground immediately understood their meaning.

Those standing on the mountain meant maintaining a transcendent position and not easily risking danger.

After all, once you enter the game, it becomes much harder to preserve yourself.

The current situation clearly showed that Flowing Cloud and Azure Falls temples were joining forces, using the Xia Dynasty as bait to disperse Pine Mountain Temple’s already limited strength.

This would undoubtedly stretch their insufficient forces even thinner.

This was why Deer Abbot remained unwilling to intervene, even knowing the Xia Dynasty faced imminent destruction.

He intended to gather all their strength and present a posture of fighting to the death against Flowing Cloud and Azure Falls temples.

This was also a clear message to both sides.

If you want to devour our Pine Mountain Temple, you’ll need to see if you have what it takes.

If their Pine Mountain Temple fell, neither Flowing Cloud nor Azure Falls temples would emerge unscathed.

Actually, Deer Abbot had another purpose in closing the mountain gates.

He wanted to delay until their superiors at Great Thousand Mountains learned of this matter and intervened.

Whether it was Pine Mountain Temple, or later Flowing Cloud and Azure Falls temples.

They were all actually subordinate temples of Great Thousand Mountains.

Normally, even if these subordinate temples had some conflicts among themselves.

They wouldn’t reach such a life-or-death struggle.

But for some reason, Great Thousand Mountains remained completely silent now.

Deer Abbot didn’t know whether Great Thousand Mountains already knew about this but chose to tacitly consent.

Or whether Great Thousand Mountains was currently preoccupied with other matters and thus uninterested in mediating conflicts between their minor temples.

If it was the latter, then as long as they held out.

Pine Mountain Temple still had a slim chance of survival.

But if it was the former, then they were truly facing certain death.

Deer Abbot came to the summit of Pine Mountain, looking down at the Xia Dynasty imperial guards who had begun to withdraw below.

“A storm is approaching… the wind already fills the tower.”

At the border between Xia Dynasty and Chen Kingdom.

The armies gathered by both sides at the border had now reached over a million strong.

From a distance, such numbers looked like a black ocean covering the borderlands.

Though the Xia Dynasty’s army had city walls and held advantageous terrain.

Their morale was unprecedentedly low.

Because their current defending force numbered merely a hundred thousand.

While outside the walls, the Chen Kingdom’s army numbered a full million.

The disparity in troop numbers was only secondary.

What was truly fatal was the difference in cultivator numbers between the two sides.After all, without the intervention of the Cultivator Families, relying on the ten-meter-high city walls, they might have been able to hold off an enemy ten times their size.

But once the Cultivator Families of the Chen Kingdom took action,

a mere ten-meter-high wall could stop ordinary people, but it couldn’t stop the elusive, flying Cultivator Families with their bizarre methods.

To make matters worse, their own Xia Dynasty’s Cultivator Family—the Pine Mountain Temple—seemed to be facing some unknown issue.

Not only had they failed to send anyone to assist, but they had also recalled all their members,

clearly abandoning them to their fate.

Without the support of the Cultivator Families and outnumbered ten to one,

how could they possibly defend the city?

And what the Xia Dynasty’s army knew, the opposing Chen Kingdom was well aware of.

Thus, unlike the low morale of the Xia forces,

the Chen Kingdom’s army was brimming with confidence.

After several days of stalemate, the Chen Kingdom finally lost patience.

In an instant, the battlefield was engulfed in a soaring Killing Intent.

Three days later…

The Chen Kingdom’s million-strong army breached the Xia Dynasty’s border and began its relentless advance.

The rapid shift in the war situation caught the Xia Dynasty’s royal family completely off guard.

They had anticipated that the defending forces wouldn’t hold out for long,

but they never expected a total collapse in just three days.

This undoubtedly signaled dire news.

If the elite border troops, fortified by the advantage of city walls, couldn’t last more than a few days,

how could the other, less capable armies hope to fare?

The fall of the Xia Dynasty was now plainly visible.

Under normal circumstances, even if the Xia Dynasty were to lose,

it wouldn’t have happened so quickly.

But the Chen Kingdom’s Cultivator Families had mobilized in full force, turning the battlefield into a one-sided slaughter.

Without the protection of the border walls, the Xia Dynasty was like a turtle stripped of its shell, utterly vulnerable.

As misfortune never comes alone, similar situations arose on the other border with the Zhou Kingdom.

It was as if the Chen and Zhou Kingdoms were competing to be the first to breach the Xia Dynasty Capital,

racing ahead at full speed, advancing triumphantly.

Caihua County, Xia Dynasty.

By now, Caihua County had lost its former prosperity, transforming into a living hell.

Not only was the entire county occupied by the Chen Kingdom’s army, but its citizens had also become playthings for the invaders.

“Master, Master…”

Inside Master Chu’s residence, he now lay as a headless corpse in a pool of blood.

Hordes of Chen soldiers stormed the place, looting, killing, and committing every imaginable atrocity.

The brutality of war was laid bare in that moment.

And similar scenes were unfolding elsewhere in Caihua County.

No one could change this grim reality.

Ten li outside Caihua County, over a dozen Daoists clad in Azurefall Temple robes were arranging a peculiar Formation.

As the Formation activated, fierce winds whipped up and clouds churned overhead.

Meanwhile, in the distance, Caihua County blazed with fire, while countless crimson auras of malice, laden with resentment, converged from all directions.

In an instant, the entire world seemed shrouded in a blood-red mist, an eerie and unsettling sight.

Such methods—were these Cultivator Families?

They were more monstrous than Demons themselves.

Killing was one thing; Demons only sought Mortals’ lives.

But these Cultivator Families wanted not just Mortals’ lives, but their souls as well.

Even the phrase “sucking the marrow from the bones” couldn’t fully capture the horror of their actions.

At the very center of the Formation, an old Daoist with a goatee sat cross-legged in meditation.The baleful aura and resentful energy drawn by the formation were all absorbed into his body.

Causing the old Daoist’s cultivation to visibly climb at a rapid pace.

But just as the old Daoist reached a critical moment in his cultivation, a flying sword pierced through the sky, swiftly shooting toward the old Daoist’s location.

The flying sword moved so fast that onlookers only perceived a streak of light flashing by.

By the time they regained their senses, the flying sword had already arrived before the old Daoist.

“How dare you!”

Just as the flying sword was about to strike the old Daoist, the previously meditating old Daoist abruptly opened his eyes and roared in anger.

The old Daoist stood up, his Daoist robes rapidly transforming.

They clung to his body like skin, gradually shifting into layers of emerald-green snake scales.

Immediately after, the old Daoist’s body began to visibly swell.

In no time, a half-human, half-demon creature hundreds of meters tall, with a human head and a serpent’s body, appeared before everyone’s eyes.

Law of Heaven and Earth—this old Daoist was unmistakably a Nascent Soul Stage cultivator from a prominent Cultivator Family.

And the cultivation manual he practiced was also the superior technique of Azurefall Temple—the Azure Falls and Underworld Art.

“Who is the despicable coward daring to ambush this venerable one?”The old Daoist, having manifested the Law of Heaven and Earth, gazed toward a certain location in Caihua County, his tone was somber.”

Under everyone’s watchful eyes, a figure clad in black robes slowly emerged from the forest outside Caihua County.

“Lu Yuan, Sword Cultivator of Pine Mountain Temple.”

“Lu Yuan? Since when did Pine Mountain Temple have such a figure?”

Daoist Ziquan of Azurefall Temple was inwardly astonished, for he could sense that this so-called ‘Lu Yuan’s’ cultivation was not much inferior to his own.

It must be known that the Nascent Soul Cultivators in the Ancient Fiend Nine Realms were fixed in number.

Although recently, due to certain special reasons, many additional Nascent Soul Cultivators had emerged.

None of those had any connection to Pine Mountain Temple, which was far from the core of the Great Thousand Mountains.

After all, Pine Mountain Temple didn’t even qualify to sit at the table.

Let alone partake in that feast.

Thus, the Nascent Soul cultivators within Pine Mountain Temple should have been accounted for.

Yet now, this suddenly appearing Lu Yuan was undeniably at the Nascent Soul realm.

Everything about this situation exuded an indescribable eeriness.

This unexpected turn of events instinctively made Daoist Ziquan feel that something was amiss.

And this abruptly emerging Lu Yuan was naturally not a genuine cultivator of Pine Mountain Temple.

He was merely Lu Chen, using the name of Pine Mountain Temple to hunt Nascent Soul Cultivator Families.

In fact, Lu Chen’s targets were not limited to just Azurefall Temple alone.

Flowing Cloud and Pine Mountain were also within Lu Chen’s hunting scope.

And the combined Nascent Soul Cultivators from these three temples would allow Lu Chen to complete the majority of his main mission.

Such a heaven-sent opportunity was not something Lu Chen would miss.

Speaking more would only risk exposure; to prevent ordinary people from detecting any anomalies.

Lu Chen acted decisively the moment he appeared.

Boom!

From within the clouds, a Sword Mountain descended from the sky.

The massive Sword Mountain tore through the clouds, its immense size and vast coverage directly stupefying Daoist Ziquan and the others below.

For that Sword Mountain was two to three times larger than Daoist Ziquan, who had manifested the Law of Heaven and Earth.

“Descend.”

Without giving Daoist Ziquan and the others much time to react, Lu Chen directly controlled the Sealing Heaven Sword Mountain to begin its descent.

At this moment, those beneath the Sword Mountain felt themselves as insignificant as ants.

Only Daoist Ziquan possessed some capacity to resist.After a brief moment of astonishment, Daoist Ziquan unleashed his full power.

Even though his strength seemed so insignificant before the colossal Sword Mountain…

Boom!

The instant Daoist Ziquan raised both hands to resist the Sword Mountain,

his body began sinking heavily, and the entire earth started churning violently, as if a dragon were turning over underground.

Such commotion could hardly be described as anything less than heaven and earth turning upside down.

Compared to Daoist Ziquan, Lu Chen… was the true immortal!

(End of Chapter)