Chapter 369 From this day forward, I will fight you.
Outside, the wind howled incessantly, and several Taiyi Saints used the power of the Earth's core, causing the Five Elements Qi in some areas to become violent and dangerous.
Dark clouds obscured the sun, and a sudden storm struck, yet the Ghost Path Sanctuary remained calm, the wind and rain giving way.
Mei Liangyu walked up the long stone steps and arrived at the entrance of the main hall of the sanctuary, but did not go in. He stood outside and silently looked at the portrait.
In Song Dongling's memory, the person named He Hanxing was not her master.
For some reason, Mei Liangyu held this belief.
In the woman's memory, He Hanxing was a regular at the tavern, often buying apricot blossom wine and leaving immediately afterward. One day, He Hanxing ran into an acquaintance while buying wine. They chatted outside, and before they knew it, they were about to leave, forgetting to take the wine with them. It was only then that the proprietress reminded them.
As a regular customer, He Hanxing sometimes bought drinks late at night when the tavern was deserted, making him the only customer. The proprietress often chatted with him, and after a while, the generous proprietress would even give him extra drinks, in which case He Hanxing would reciprocate with gifts.
One day, the proprietress asked, "Why do you only buy apricot blossom wine? Is this the only drink you like?"
He Hanxing smiled and said he didn't drink.
The proprietress was quite surprised and asked in confusion, "If you don't drink, what have you been doing with all this apricot blossom wine you've been buying for over a year? Are you going to use it for cooking?"
He Hanxing was amused by her words and turned her face away. After a while, she explained, "A friend of mine likes to drink this, but he can't go out, so I have to buy it for him."
The proprietress asked curiously, "So you're just going to sit there and watch him drink? It's always just a small jar, I'm afraid that's not enough. Let me give you another jar!"
He Hanxing gently shook her head, a gentle smile in her dark eyes: "They can't hold their liquor well, one cup each is enough."
The proprietress laughed heartily after hearing this and then enthusiastically taught him how to drink. Although He Hanxing repeatedly refused, he still stood there with his ears red, listening until he finished before leaving.
Year after year, their meetings and conversations were neither long nor short, but the landlady's later memories were filled with He Hanxing.
Until one year, black fire destroyed everything.
...
Mei Liangyu felt the gaze from behind. He slowly turned around to face the enormous eye in the sky. The dark gold eye was bewitching, like a beast's pupil, staring intently at him as if they were inches apart. The infinitely enlarged pupil gave him a strong sense of oppression.
The peaceful and warm atmosphere between the master and disciple has turned into a tense standoff.
"After being burned by the strange fire, will there still be bones left?" Mei Liangyu asked calmly.
Saint Changgen fell silent and did not answer, still staring intently at him like a bloodthirsty beast approaching.
The young man casually asked and answered himself: "It's impossible for any remains to be left behind, nor will any of the five elements remain."
"So the bones in the River Styx belong to someone else, and the five elements hidden in the bones were preserved long before they were burned by the strange fire."
"You preserved the five elements of others within the bones of the Styx River. Surely it's not as simple as you can't bear to part with those memories and want to relive them at any time?"
Mei Liangyu's gaze toward Saint Changgen was cold and cruel, completely abandoning all previous emotions.
He completely detached himself from the identity of Mei Liangyu, the disciple of the Sage Changgen. Standing in front of the main hall of the sanctuary was Dong Lanli, who had regained all his memories. He was facing his mother's killer, not the respected elder he once admired.
The young man, who had lost his identity as Mei Liangyu, walked up the thousands of steps one by one.
"This is not something you should know."
The sage Changgen conveyed a subtle message through his aura: "You just need to forget all of this."
“I’m not the obedient disciple who used to do whatever you wanted.” Mei Liangyu curled the corners of his mouth slightly, a half-smile on his face. “How about this, you tell me why you went to Yan to kill my mother, and I will stop investigating your past and ruining your centuries-old plan.”
The Holy One Changgen told him as he wished:
"Your mother is about to learn the Nine Mysteries of Yin and Yang, and many people want her dead."
Mei Liangyu didn't even blink: "Are there many people, or just you?"
After a moment of silence, Chang Gen Sheng Zhe replied, "Nangong Ming, representing Qingyang, has come to ask me to eliminate Gongsun Xi."
Mei Liangyu asked, "Are you from Qingyang?"
For the first time, the Sage Changgen publicly acknowledged: "Yes."
The young man seemed to chuckle, his expression unreadable: "It's only natural for people from Qingyang to kill people from Yan."
"Having lived for hundreds of years, you still dare to dream of Qingyang unifying the world." The young man's gaze swept aimlessly around, as if he were visiting the temple for the first time, or as if he were looking at it for the last time. "So you mean to say that you killed my mother because of Qingyang's ambitions."
Chang Gen the Sage: "Yes."
“Saint Changgen, there’s no need to lie anymore now.” The young man spoke slowly, a smile creeping onto his brow, yet chilling and unsettling, making his face appear strange. “Are you doing this for Qingyang, or for the He family?”
"The He family, who study the Divine Mechanism Technique, is a large family with a history of over a thousand years on the Xuan Gu Continent. Nangong Ming was on good terms with He Xuyan, the third young lady of the He family, and asked her to deal with my mother. However, he was trapped and killed by my brother's divination array, and he traded his life for hers."
"You killed my mother just for revenge."
The young man's dark, cold eyes stared directly at the sky without flinching: "Perhaps Nangong Ming did ask you to help him as a precaution, but you didn't agree immediately. Instead, you went to Yan Kingdom in anger to avenge her death after discovering that He Xuyan had died."
"The saints of the Water Boat still need to obtain information about the Strange Fire from my father. They dare not let my mother die, and neither does Nangong Ming. He only dares to have people trap my mother when my father is not around."
"And you, Saint Changgen, dare to do this." A clear sarcasm appeared on Mei Liangyu's face. "Because my brother killed He Xuyan, and you were controlled by anger; because you have always protected the He family lineage and will not allow them to be harmed by others; because you are the friend He Hanxing mentioned who can't go out to buy apricot blossom wine?"
Sage Chang Gen: "Shut up."
The overwhelming pressure of the Five Elements crushed a corner of the eaves, causing the ground to tremble.
Mei Liangyu turned his back to the main hall of the Holy Temple and ignited his protective aura. In the next instant, an overwhelming pressure descended from his body, clashing with that of Saint Chang Gen. The two pressures of the Five Elements clashed and were evenly matched.
"You're still trying to lie to me," the young man laughed. "You're so embarrassed that I guessed the truth? That's surprising. So what if I killed him? What are you afraid of? Compared to those who died, you're still alive and well."
No one could detect a trace of hatred or murderous intent in the young man's eyes. He seemed to be thinking, and after a moment he suddenly realized, "The dead don't feel afraid because they're already dead. So, are you afraid now because you're afraid of dying?"
“Mei Liangyu,” the Sage Changgen warned him, “it’s not too late to stop now. I can pretend that nothing happened today, but you must seal your memories again and go back to the past.”
"Go back to the past?" The young man raised his hand and lightly rubbed his slightly itchy nose, feeling extremely bored. "Old Chang, don't be so naive and disgusting at a time like this."
"After what you've done to me, you still want to go back to the way things were? Go back to when?" The young man raised his head slightly, seemingly lost in memories, and asked earnestly, "When you just killed my mother, wasn't my pleading sincere enough? Do you want me to go back to that time and beg you again?"
"Let's go back to when I first came to Taiyi. I wasn't good enough to please you, so I had to please you again and let you experience the feeling of being high and mighty and controlling other people's lives. It's really interesting to watch an ignorant child foolishly and clumsily trying to please his mother's killer."
The young man gradually laughed as he spoke, but his eyes were filled with obvious disgust: "You and I have returned to the past, back to the very beginning. There is no longer the false master-disciple relationship between us over the past ten years, only the original irreconcilable enmity."
The two pressures intensified simultaneously, causing a corner of the main hall's eaves to shatter completely, and the defensive runes on the doors and windows to be forced out, only to collapse and shatter one after another.
"You want to fight me?"
Those dark gold eyes seemed to have gotten even closer to Mei Liangyu.
The young man raised his head to greet them, fearless.
"From this day forward, I will fight you."
In an instant, the barrier enveloping the entire Ghost Path Holy Hall shattered, and a howling wind ignited the starlight hidden in the two energies of heaven and earth, causing the raging fire to sweep through the hall.
The beams and pillars collapsed, the tables and chairs shattered, and the doors and windows roared and turned into debris, which was then swallowed by the fire dragon. The enormous palace that stood behind the young man was instantly transformed into a ferocious sea of fire.
The deafening roar of the collapsing Ghost Path Temple echoed throughout Taiyi, as if the sky itself had collapsed, causing people to unconsciously look up at the heavens.
Yu Sui had just stepped out of the Thousand-Foot Cliff when he heard the loud noise. His heart trembled, and he subconsciously looked towards the direction of the Ghost Path Holy Hall. The sky there was crimson, as if raging fire had reached the heavens.
The saints who had been waiting outside the Ghost Path Temple finally saw the raging fire inside after the barrier shattered, and two fierce pressures indiscriminately tore apart the surrounding world.
Cracks appeared in the ground, and a chilling aura surged upwards from underground, only to burst into flames just before it broke through the surface.
The saints used their wind-riding techniques to leap into the void, looking down from above at the Ghost Path Sanctuary.
Changsun Zi held a slender, jet-black wooden talisman between her fingertips, her bright eyes reflecting the sea of fire below.
"So you arrived before me." Zou Qian slowly leaped into the air using her Wind Riding Technique, raised an eyebrow when she saw Changsun Zi beside her, "Tonight is quite lively. Not only have the people from Shuizhou returned, but Dean Wan has also come out."
Not far from him, Wan Guiyue, the Legalist sage, coughed, her face pale, but her eyes were fixed on the young man in the sea of fire below.
The three sages of military strategy arrived almost simultaneously. Leng Rouyin looked at the people below with a complicated expression.
Wu Huaiwei arrived later, her face pale. She tried to enter the main hall of the sanctuary but was stopped by Liang Zhen and Zhang Guanyi, who had arrived on white cranes.
"Do you think he can escape from Elder Chang's clutches all by himself?" Wu Huaiwei sneered.
“He doesn’t seem to have any intention of leaving,” Liang Zhen said with a smile. “And he is now the master of the Heart of a Thousand Machines.”
Otherwise, how could they have destroyed the Ghost Path Temple in front of the Saint Changgen?
Wu Huaiwei's expression remained grim: "The Heart of a Thousand Machines is a contraption used by mechanics to bluff people."
Zhang Guanyi rested his chin on one hand, blinked as he looked down, and said without raising his head, "That's not some thing Dong Lanxun uses to scare people. There are countless master mechanics living inside that thing."
When the portraits in the main hall of the sanctuary also began to burn, the last bit of leniency that Saint Changgen had shown towards Mei Liangyu vanished.
That's enough.
The dark energy fiercely attacked the youth in the sea of fire, while the youth gathered his energy and closed his eyes. The divine soul core devoured by the Heart of a Thousand Machines emitted a buzzing sound, and pairs of eyes that had been sleeping in the Heart of a Thousand Machines awoke one after another.
Calm, gentle, majestic, indifferent, compassionate, violent, fierce, contemptuous, and composed—nine different pairs of eyes opened from behind Mei Liangyu, staring directly at the dark golden pupils in the sky. Although they appeared for only a moment, they shattered the dark golden pupils that had always been high above.
When Mei Liangyu opened his eyes, he caught the stream of ink energy with his hand, and the flames that bloomed around him burned away the five elements.
The fire that burns with gas.
Sea Fire.
Sun Heng and the other water-boat saints suppressed their urge to immediately fly down and investigate, but instead felt a growing sense of anticipation.
Mei Liangyu glanced casually at the saints of the Water Boat, using the burning of the Chang Gen saint's aura to lure the Water Boat people into a trap.
“From now on, I will leave Taiyi, and you will no longer be able to stop me.” The young man walked down the long steps one by one, without looking back at the burning hall. “Elder Chang, remember to hide yourself well, and remind the He family to hide well as well.”
He walked past the apricot tree, which had already fallen to the ground and was half burned, without the slightest hesitation.
No matter how beautiful the memories this place once held, he completely abandoned them at this moment.
The wisp of ink was trapped in the raging fire, and could only watch helplessly as the young man walked further and further away.
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