Chapter 50 – Terrifying Speculations, The Mystery of Life and Death

The staircase connecting the first and second floors of the Sword Pavilion spiraled upward.

After climbing a relatively short flight of stairs, Lu Chen eventually stopped before a large door.

His gaze swept over the wooden door and the intricate, unique patterns carved upon it, finally settling on a rectangular indentation in the wall beside the door.

The indentation was small and rectangular.

After a moment’s thought, Lu Chen retrieved his Azure Cloud Sect Disciple Token from his person.

This was one of the few items he had been able to bring into the instance.

When he placed the Disciple Token into the indentation, the perfectly fitting token began to glow.

Immediately afterward, the patterns on the Sword Pavilion’s second-floor door also lit up.

Soon, the tightly shut second-floor door… swung open.

Lu Chen stepped through the wooden door and quickly found himself in the mysterious Sword Pavilion Second Floor.

The room on the second floor was spacious and circular in shape.

On both walls, Sword Boxes were arranged, each inscribed with the name of a Hidden Sword Peak Disciple.

However, most of these Sword Boxes were empty, and the western wall bore a startlingly large Sword Mark.

The Sword Mark ran from bottom to top, having cleanly sliced away one-fifth of the second-floor room.

Without a doubt, this Sword Mark was the same massive one Lu Chen had seen outside, spanning the entire Sword Pavilion.

At the time, Lu Chen had deduced that this Sword Mark must have been made by a Cultivator at least at the Golden Core Stage or higher.

But that didn’t necessarily mean the Sword Mark was created by someone at the Golden Core Stage.

After all, a Deity Transformation master… was also an existence beyond the Golden Core Stage.

Lu Chen had never personally witnessed a Cultivator above the Golden Core Stage in action.

That was why he had made such a relatively conservative judgment at the time.

If he had known how the Sword Depository Peak Sword Pavilion was constructed, he would have realized just how vast the gap was between his inference and reality.

Destroying the Sword Pavilion with Golden Core Stage strength?

At the very least, Deity Transformation!

Although the second-floor room had suffered significant damage, it remained largely intact.

Thus, many of the room’s objects were still mostly preserved.

After confirming that the Sword Boxes on the surrounding walls held few items of value,

Lu Chen headed directly to the center of the second floor.

Soon, he noticed a strange man kneeling in the open space at the center of the room.

Perhaps sensing Lu Chen’s presence as an outsider,

the kneeling man slowly raised his head and looked in Lu Chen’s direction.

This movement seemed to trigger some mechanism on the second floor, causing the fire basins hanging on the walls to ignite instantly, illuminating the previously dim second-floor space.

“Who… are you?”

Faced with the stranger’s question, Lu Chen did not answer immediately. Instead, he walked up to the man and studied him carefully.

Unlike the Heretical Sword Fiends on the first floor, who were neither human nor demon,

the man before him appeared far more normal in appearance.

If not for the thick aura of decay he could sense from the other,

Lu Chen might have mistaken him for an ordinary person who had simply not seen sunlight for a long time.

But unfortunately, this was merely a facade.

[Heretical Sword Fiend/Foundation Establishment Corpse · Fang Heng]

[Characteristics: A special corpse partially possessed by a Heretical Evil Sword, retaining some memories from its former life]Previously, due to the distance, Lu Chen hadn’t clearly seen Fang Heng’s true condition and mistakenly thought he was half-kneeling on the ground.

But up close, he realized Fang Heng was far from half-kneeling.

His lower body, from the waist down, had been devoured by the Evil Sword, transforming into a Heretical Demonic Body resembling a serpent’s tail, coiled on the ground.

Unlike the Heretical Sword Fiends on the first floor that attacked him immediately upon sight, Fang Heng, though transformed into a Sword Demon, seemed to retain some rationality, his consciousness not entirely corrupted by the heretical power.

Thinking this, Lu Chen didn’t rush to act but sat unrestrainedly on the cushion in front of Fang Heng.

If the half-demon, half-corpse Fang Heng were replaced by a normal person, the two would have appeared to be sitting and discussing the Dao.

“Lu Chen, Inner Disciple of Danyang Peak, Azure Cloud Sect, pays respects to Fellow Daoist.”

“Danyang Peak?!”

Fang Heng lifted his head excitedly, as if hearing heartening news.

“Dare I ask, Fellow Daoist, is Peak Lord Ji of Danyang Peak still alive?”

“Peak Lord Ji?”

“That would be Earth Heart Real Person, Ji Chang, Peak Lord Ji.”

Ji… Ji Chang?!

Hearing this name, Lu Chen’s pupils instantly contracted.

“Does Fellow Daoist refer to Ji Chang, the sixty-fourth generation Inner Disciple of Danyang Peak?”

“Inner Disciple?”

Fang Heng was taken aback, his empty eye sockets seeming to convey a hint of confusion.

Frowning in thought for a moment, he replied, “Was Peak Lord Ji merely an Inner Disciple of Danyang Peak before? I truly don’t know, but he was indeed a sixty-fourth generation disciple of Danyang Peak.”

Hearing this, Lu Chen’s expression grew unprecedentedly solemn.

There was no mistake—the Peak Lord Ji he spoke of was indeed Ji Chang, the same Inner Disciple under Spirit Fire Daoist as himself, Senior Brother Ji Chang.

It was unimaginable that Senior Brother Ji Chang, who always seemed cheerful and greeted everyone with a smile, had eventually become the Peak Lord of Danyang Peak.

In the Azure Cloud Sect, “Daoist” denoted the Golden Core Stage, while “Real Person” signified the Nascent Soul Stage.

Ji Chang was a sixty-fourth generation disciple, while Lu Chen himself was sixty-fifth generation.

The disciple tokens Lu Chen had picked up in the Sword Pavilion mostly belonged to the seventieth to seventy-third generations.

In other words, the era of this Ancient Sword Tomb instance was at most eight hundred years apart from his own time in the game.

Within those eight hundred years, Ji Chang, with his seventh-grade Human Path Foundation Establishment Aptitude, had not only achieved a breakthrough to the Golden Core Stage but had also advanced relentlessly to the Nascent Soul Stage, becoming the Peak Lord of Danyang Peak.

So Senior Brother Ji Chang’s potential… was actually this immense!

As he pondered, Lu Chen suddenly snapped back to reality.

“Dare I ask, Fellow Daoist, did you ever hear my name in your lifetime?”

“Your name? Lu Chen?”

“Yes.”

Fang Heng frowned, thinking for a long time, then shook his head.

“Apologies, Fellow Daoist Lu, I’m quite certain I never knew your name.”

“Or perhaps I once knew but forgot this part of my memory after reviving as a corpse. My apologies.”

Never heard my name…

At Fang Heng’s response, Lu Chen’s face turned somewhat pale.

If Fang Heng had once known but forgotten the memory related to Lu Chen due to memory loss from reanimation, that would have been very good news for Lu Chen, not something to cause great alarm.

What truly worried Lu Chen was that Fang Heng had never heard of his name at all.If this were truly the case, the implications would be terrifying.

This either meant that Lu Chen had died before Fang Heng’s generation of disciples joined the sect, resulting in Fang Heng never hearing Lu Chen’s name.

Or it meant that there had never been anyone named Lu Chen in the history of the Azure Cloud Sect.

The reality was that he was merely playing a special game set against the backdrop of the Azure Cloud Sect.

If it were the latter, Lu Chen would only feel that the game ‘True Immortal Cultivation’ still held too many secrets he had yet to uncover.

But if it were the former, the situation would undoubtedly be grave.

Because it meant that at some point in the future,

he would either die in the game or meet an unexpected death in reality.

Taking into account the ten-to-one time ratio between the game and reality,

he might face a terrifying life-and-death crisis within eighty years in reality, or eight hundred years in the game.

At this thought, Lu Chen’s mind began to race.

So, was it that he had never truly appeared in the history of the Azure Cloud Sect in the game,

and he was merely playing a small game that could reflect his cultivation progress?

Or had he actually appeared in the Azure Cloud Sect but died prematurely before Fang Heng’s generation of disciples joined?

Which of these two… was the true answer?

With no other clues, Lu Chen found it impossible to determine which scenario was real.

The feeling of knowing he might die one day but not knowing how to deal with it

disrupted the composure of the usually steady Lu Chen… unsettling his heart.

At this thought, Lu Chen urgently hoped to gather more clues from Fang Heng.

So he asked, “Fellow Daoist, were the disciples of your Hidden Sword Peak ever required to study the cultivation manual ‘Purple Haze Nourishing Art’?”

“Purple Haze Nourishing Art? Y-yes, I think someone mentioned it… but who was it…”

Watching Fang Heng frown in deep thought, Lu Chen’s expression grew increasingly urgent.

He was desperate to use this matter to confirm the crucial answer in his heart.

(End of Chapter)