Chapter 59 Chapter 59 Heavenly Oath
Yun Miao was unable to pull the fat immortal molt into the ladder to heaven, but the pale flames outside the ruined temple had begun to die out, and most of the ghost-back spider army had been killed or injured.
She knew that now was not the time to hesitate, so she took a deep breath, suddenly came out of the ladder, raised her hand and grabbed the tall and big pink and white meat ball on the altar, which looked like a 500-pound fat man.
And the next second after the girl in green appeared in the ruined temple, a sharp sound of breaking through the air whipped towards her head. If she was hit, her brain would surely burst!
Huo Xin and Tan Xiaobai, who had been waiting on the side, rushed over immediately.
"Yun Miao! Run!"
"Boss! Run this way!"
Yun Miao controlled the ladder to heaven and smashed it over while running forward with the immortal shell in his arms.
Bang!
The Heavenly Ladder only helped Yun Miao block for a moment before it was smashed into the ground. Fortunately, the Heavenly Ladder was a top-grade spiritual treasure, so nothing happened. If it were any other ordinary magic weapon, it would have shattered instantly under this blow!
But this moment was enough. Yun Miao was as fast as the wind and ran out of the ruined temple in the blink of an eye. Several strong winds hit her from behind. This time she had no way to avoid them. She could only recall the ladder hanging above her head and deploy a protective shield to protect herself.
Another loud bang echoed, and Yun Miao felt a terrifying force crashing down on her from all sides. She was sent flying. The sound of her protective shield shattering and her disciple's uniform being torn apart reached her ears. The defensive formation on her disciple's uniform was instantly destroyed, rendering it unusable.
Fortunately, Huo Xin and Tan Xiaobai had already rushed over. Huo Xin brushed past her and resolutely faced those terrifying attacks.
Tan Xiaobai, who was escaping the fastest, quickly circulated his spiritual power, lifted up Yun Miao, who was spitting blood on the ground, and the heavy object weighing more than 500 pounds in her arms, and ran away without looking back.
According to the plan, what they have to do now is to use all their strength to protect Yun Miao and buy her time to destroy the core of the corpse puppet.
Huo Xin was knocked flying, and the defensive formation of her disciple uniform was instantly destroyed. Her face turned pale in an instant, and a horrible dent appeared on her chest and abdomen.
Fortunately, by this moment, Tan Xiaobai had already fled hundreds of meters away. The other tree roots, realizing the situation, attacked him, but he dodged them all by jumping up and down and using talismans.
It was also the first time that Huo Xin discovered that Tan Xiaobai was so fast at running. She quickly took the sixth-grade Dead Tree Spring Pill that Yun Miao gave her and hurriedly chased after him.
Yun Miao, who was being carried by Tan Xiaobai, spat out another mouthful of blood. She was once again glad that she had adjusted the pain sensation in the game to zero, and tried to hide back in the ladder with the immortal shell. Unfortunately, she failed. With her current strength, she was not able to bring a living thing into the ladder.
She had anticipated this and wasn't disappointed. She immediately formed her five fingers into claws and fiercely plunged them into the immortal molt. It felt like inserting her hand into a pool of melting fat, cold and greasy.
However, before she had time to search, the soft fat seemed to have completely melted and flowed up her arms!
*
Yun Miao only felt that his eyes went dark, and in an instant he came to a dark and empty space alone, where the huge bronze sundial was still rotating.
She was shocked and thought she was dead and returned to the death space in the game.
But she soon realized she was wrong. The familiar prompt box didn't appear. Instead, strange lines appeared before her eyes. Most were white, with a few red and black.
Both ends of the line sank into darkness, and no one knew where they were rooted.
As Yun Miao stared for a long time, a prompt box appeared above these lines.
【Causal Line】
【Causal Line】
【Causal Line】
…
There are smaller prompt boxes next to the large prompt box, with even smaller words on them. They seem to be... names?
Yun Miao hesitantly touched the red line closest to her, and then she saw again the fierce battle between the three and Wang Bo before, in which Huo Xin and Tan Xiaobai died.
Then the scene shifted, and she flew towards the large, ochre-colored palm print, her wooden sword shattering as the powerful sword energy instantly killed the three members of the Yun family. Huo Xin and Tan Xiaobai stood behind her unharmed.
Yun Miao seemed to have realized something in her mind, and raised her hand to touch other causal lines again. This time, she saw Tan Xiaobai who had an epiphany on the fairy boat, her master who smiled and drank her apprenticeship tea, her senior brother who gave her a gift, and Mo Aotian who had an epiphany in the fields.
And she herself who killed the ghost spider in the ruined temple, she herself who played pranks with Tian Laokou, she herself who repeatedly stood on the ring and attacked Mo Aotian. She saw many people, and also saw many versions of herself.
So she quickly understood where these causal lines were rooted, one end of them in her and the other end in other people with whom she was causally entangled.
White represents the broadest and most superficial karmic relationships she's had with NPCs, like when she bought candy figurines from the vendor, or when she called the man selling fake peacock eggs a profiteer. Red represents the good karma she's formed, and black represents the enmity she's created.
Xinyi seemed to have said before that she had a heavy karma, so is she triggering some mysterious mechanism in the game now?
But she doesn't have time to care about other side plots now, she is busy saving lives!
Or is the solution to the problem hidden right here?
Yun Miao tried to calm herself down, and looked at the cause and effect lines again and again, trying to find a clue, and she sure enough found two special names among the large number of prompt boxes.
Magnolia, Buddha.
She first touched the red causal line related to Xinyi, and saw her conversation and agreement with Xinyi again.
Then she raised her hand and grasped the black causal thread related to Futu. As she expected, she saw the three of them being dragged away, hung, and whipped by tree roots.
Yun Miao frowned. This wasn't what she wanted. She wasn't a masochist, so she had no interest in watching a video replay of herself being beaten. She just wanted to know how to break free. Or how to leave this space so she could continue digging through the Immortal Transformation to find the core and crush it!
Just as her thoughts became stronger, she suddenly felt the causal line in her hand begin to heat up.
Then her consciousness seemed to be pulled by something from the unknown, passing through space, allowing her to "see" a thick darkness.
Countless hideous and painful faces were wailing in it, as if it were the eighteen levels of hell.
There were faint spots of starlight flickering with difficulty in this cruel darkness. Yun Miao looked carefully and found that they were countless three-dimensional images scattered in the darkness.
The huge pagoda tree appears in most of the pictures, and occasionally there are cliffs, seas, dense forests, and villages. However, no matter how the background changes, there are always only two protagonists in these pictures.
Just like the portraits on the wall, the female cultivator in white always smiles confidently and boldly, and no matter what she says or does, the male cultivator also in white always looks at her with a faint smile, as if she is everything to him.
"Are you the Buddha Flower Demon? So those Buddha fruits all come from here..."
"Those lunatics from the Immortal Cult are really hard to deal with, but I'm still more skilled than them, so now you're mine..."
"Futu doesn't sound good, but Futu sounds better. Change Tu to "tu" (picture)..."
"Of course there are differences. Although there is only one Buddha tree in each generation, there have been many Buddha flower demons throughout history. But I am sure that you are the only Buddha flower demon who can draw such beautiful pictures."
"Is this the portrait you drew of me? Not bad, not bad, it perfectly captures the heroic image of me, a heroine, punishing evildoers. I'll give you a chicken drumstick tonight! But then again, it turns out you were secretly drawing me while you were ogling me. I thought..."
"No lecherous eyes? If I say yes, then yes!"
"Oh, why are you so stupid? You're just like a piece of wood. Oh, no, you are a piece of wood."
"Come, come, I'll teach you how to drink. This is the magnolia wine I brewed myself. It tastes amazing. Drinking wine on a snowy night is one of life's greatest pleasures!"
"You won't get drunk. This wine isn't strong."
“I just drink it like water.”
"If you feel dizzy, just get some fresh air."
"Eh? Futu, why are you sleeping on the floor? Haha, your face is as red as a monkey's butt."
"What? You like me? Haha, I told you that you must have been looking at me with lustful eyes before. Sure enough, the truth comes out after drinking!"
"I will be with you through life and death, holding your hand and growing old with you? Futu, where did you read that in a book?...Okay, okay, of course we will always be together. Not only together, but also share life and death together. After all, I fought so hard to get you back. Even if you want to leave, I won't let you go."
Yun Miao felt as if she was standing in a higher dimension, overlooking the overall situation. Even though she was taking in so many chaotic and intertwined images and sounds, she did not feel a bit confused.
"Floating figure."
She called out the names of the white-robed male cultivators, but none of them responded. So she said, "Xinyi asked me to find you."
Still no response.
If it were the normal Yun Miao, she would have probably started to doubt whether she had guessed wrong, but at this moment she seemed to be in a strange state, too calm, she knew Fu Tu could hear it.
So she began to talk about her previous conversation with Xinyi, and also told her the little secret that Xinyi had told her that could gain Futu's trust. As she spoke, the white-robed male cultivators in the picture raised their heads one by one.
When she mentioned that the real Xinyi had chosen self-destruction and that the current Xinyi was merely a new life nurtured by the Buddha Fruit, the Buddhas in countless images all raised their heads and looked up at the sky.
They heard the voice coming from all directions. They didn't know who she was or where she was, and they didn't care who she was or where she was.
Countless lit images disappeared into the darkness, just like the stars being swallowed up by the thick darkness. The other pagodas also disappeared, leaving only one pagoda standing in the darkness.
The male cultivator in white looked up expressionlessly, his body covered in black scars, as if a piece of white porcelain had been broken and haphazardly glued back together with crude black glue. He was completely different from the gentle and shy male cultivators in the portrait and the previous scene, who would blush when teased.
The hideous faces around him were looming and wailing at him miserably, but he pretended not to hear them and spoke in a voice even hoarser and more unpleasant than the wailing.
"Xinyi... won't die. I will save her. We will be together again... we will... always be together..."
Yun Miao: "But the truth is that the real Xinyi died more than 100,000 years ago."
Futu said stubbornly: "Xinyi will not die... I will save her... We will always be together..."
Yun Miao: "Since you have been with her day and night for such a long time, you should understand her character. She would not want you to do this for her.
"She couldn't stop you, nor could she face those who died tragically because of her. So, under this pain, she could only choose to end her life and die again. Futu, this time you killed her."
"The Xinyi in the Futu fruit is not your Xinyi. Futu, even at this point, are you still not going to wake up?"
Fuxiang slowly lowered his head like a dull puppet, looking at his hands, repeating over and over again: "It's not my Xinyi, I killed her... I killed her... I killed her... It's not my... Xinyi..."
When he refined himself into a corpse puppet, his soul and mind were severely damaged. Now, after a long period of time, his mind is only one tenth of what it used to be. He can only repeat himself over and over again to try to make himself understand.
As the piercing pain continued to come, his body trembled, and the black scars took the opportunity to further erode his remaining soul. Two lines of blood and tears slid down his broken cheeks. He was not an evil ghost, but he was worse than an evil ghost.
"Did I kill her?"
Yun Miao didn't answer the question, but slowly said, "Although loving someone is like growing flowers, you can't grow a smiling magnolia by using the wailing and suffering of others as fertilizer."
"But as long as you are willing to stop, I have a way to let you and Xinyi meet."
She had a hunch that if she connected the two causal lines between Futu and Xinyi, these two lovers who were so close yet so far away from each other would be able to meet each other.
However, Futu closed his eyes, tears of blood dripping into the darkness: "No, she is not my Xinyi... She won't want to see me... The corpse puppets won't stop... I can't make the corpse puppets stop..."
He hesitantly put forward a condition: if Yun Miao swore an oath to the heaven and agreed to help him extract Xinyi's soul from the Buddha Fruit and let her return to reincarnation, he would agree to destroy his core.
Afraid Yun Miao wouldn't believe him, he raised three fingers and swore the most cruel oath. If he broke it, his soul would be shattered and he would never be reincarnated.
Yun Miao was shocked: "Are you sure?"
Although Fu Tu looked unconscious and crazy at the moment, survival was the instinct of life after all. Was he lying to her?
Ugly black scars had covered most of Futu's face. Even the shy, smiling eyes in his memory had been dyed a strange, pitch-black color with no whites at all. He allowed the erosion to continue, and spoke with difficulty and stubbornness in his rotten voice.
"I... killed... Xinyi. Anyone... who hurt... Xinyi... deserves to die..."
"Okay, I'll believe you for once."
Yun Miao was silent for a moment before speaking again: "I, Yun Miao, swear to the Heavenly Dao that after you destroy your core, I will extract Xinyi's soul from the Buddha Fruit, allowing her to regain her freedom and re-enter the cycle of reincarnation. If you break this oath, my soul will be shattered and I will never be able to reincarnate again!"
After a moment, Yun Miao withdrew her consciousness and saw another red and black causal line in the dark space. This meant that whether it was a good fate or a bad fate was only in her mind, and the causal line that she was holding tightly in her hand turned from black to a dull gray.
An intuition told her that cause and effect still existed, but she could no longer borrow the power of cause and effect from it.
Yun Miao immediately called up the system panel and saw a new skill on the skill bar: Fate Weaving.
[Fate Weaving: Congratulations, you have gained a glimpse of fate. Please use more cause and effect to weave the web of fate and play the final chapter of fate.]
She took a quick look at the skill introduction and didn't pay much attention to the mysterious words. After all, games nowadays like to add a few seemingly plausible words to show their cultural heritage.
Now she just wants to know where this new skill came from?
Is this the way out of the game for her?
Yun Miao glanced at the causal line in front of her, raised her hand and grasped the red causal line that belonged to her and Xinyi. She didn't know how to extract Xinyi's soul, but she felt that this new skill might be able to help her.
The red causal line quickly straightened, vibrated slightly, and then gradually turned gray.
*
The underground mezzanine shook continuously. The young man in yellow held the young woman in green and the five-hundred-pound immortal husk high in his hands and fled in panic. All the tree roots seemed to go crazy, transforming into whip shadows that flew towards them.
Arcs of electricity kept flashing under the feet of the young man in yellow. The spiritual power of thunder combined with the Dragon Step, which was a must-learn for all disciples of Xuantian Sect, made him as fast as thunder. However, he was carrying too much weight. He had to run and dodge under this terrifying attack of a storm, while also protecting the girl in green. The situation was very bad for him.
In just a few breaths, he was swept by the tail of the typhoon several times in order to protect the girl in blue. His disciple uniform was torn to shreds and his body was covered with bloodstains.
Even the side of his face and the corners of his eyes were covered with two long bloody marks. Big drops of sweat mixed with blood slid down his cheeks and wet his clothes.
The sweat kept irritating the wound, causing him to cry in pain. But he still gritted his teeth and ran, with no intention of giving up.
Thanks to the protection of him and the girl in black, the girl in green had a moment to breathe under the terrifying attack. She inserted her hand into the fat mass of flesh, trying to find the core of the corpse puppet.
However, the pink and white fat seemed to come alive as it climbed up her arm.
She was immediately stunned. Clearly, she hadn't expected this. But the next second, the shock vanished. The ferocious tree roots also abruptly stopped their pursuit.
Only the shaking in the underground mezzanine continued, and even intensified.
The earth and rocks above continued to fall, while cracks appeared in the ground below. It was as if the sky was falling and the earth was collapsing. The ghost spiders that had just survived the battle were terrified and fled in all directions.
The girl in black and the boy in yellow stopped in their tracks and looked around in astonishment, not understanding what was happening. Only the girl in green seemed to have anticipated this.
She suddenly pulled her arm, which was wrapped in the immortal sheath, out of it quickly.
The other two saw that she had a white pagoda fruit the size of a watermelon in her hand, with the golden veins on it slightly bulging and contracting, as if the fetus inside was breathing.
There was also a heart covered with cracks stuck on the pagoda fruit. As time went by, the cracks on the heart became more and more numerous and dense. It was obvious that this was the core of the corpse puppet they were looking for.
However, the girl in green only glanced at the core lightly and then shifted her gaze, slightly exerting force between her fingers that were holding the Buddha Fruit.
"Xinyi, it's time for you to come out."
Following her call, a white soul floated out from the pagoda fruit.
The translucent female cultivator in white glanced in the direction of the main root of the pagoda tree, then said decisively, "This secret realm is about to collapse. Follow me, I will lead you out."
*
Magnolia?
Huo Xin and Tan Xiaobai were stunned. Wasn't their plan to find the core of the corpse puppet and crush it? Why did Xinyi's soul emerge in the end?
But before they could ask, Xinyi had already floated forward.
At the same time, several anxious voices were heard from a distance: "Oh no, the secret realm is about to collapse! I'm afraid the Xuantian Sect will soon realize that something is wrong here!"
"What on earth just happened? Didn't they just say that there was only a crack in the wall of the secret realm, and it could hold out for a while?"
"Don't worry about it, just find... Is it you? You're not dead?!"
Hua Xiugui wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, looked up to find the target of the mission, and happened to see Yun Miao and the other two.
He was startled at first, then he noticed the Immortal Shedding and Buddha Fruit in Yun Miao's hand.
Yan Wuguang casually glanced at the Immortal Transmutation and the Buddha Fruit, then focused most of his attention on the three people's bloody wounds. He sighed and said, "How pitiful! It must be very painful. Can't you die even in such pain? What are you holding on to?"
Yun Miao and the other two also saw them. Of the dozen or so ferocious demon cultivators, only five were left. These five demon cultivators were all covered in wounds, weak and in a miserable state. This was enough to show how perfectly Tan Xiaobai had thrown the yellow talisman before.
Unfortunately, the most difficult ones, Poison Lady and Flower Embroidered Ghost, were still alive, and the Demon Sect's young master, Yan Wuguang, was completely unharmed.
Yun Miao: "Run!"
Yun Miao didn't need to say much; Huo Xin and Tan Xiaobai had already taken off running the moment they locked eyes with Hua Xiugui, chasing Xinyi ahead. Yun Miao quickly stuffed the Buddha Fruit, its core, and its immortal slough into his storage bag.
Tan Xiaobai noticed that the weight above him had become lighter, so he immediately moved his hands and changed from lifting him up to carrying him on his back, running very fast with Yun Miao on his back.
"Chase after them!"
"Could they be the ones causing the frequent earthquakes just now? What power do these three little brats have that could actually bring down this secret realm?"
"Little ghost, hand over the Buddha Fruit and the Immortal Shell!"
The demon cultivators were chasing closely behind, but Xinyi had already led everyone to a large crack. For some reason, although it was a crack that went deeper into the ground, bright sunlight shone in.
"Jump down!"
Tan Xiaobai and Huo Xin, carrying Yun Miao on their backs, jumped down without hesitation. The bright sunlight made them subconsciously close their eyes. When they opened their eyes again, they found that they did not fall deeper underground, but were standing on an open space on the outskirts of Luohua Town.
The warm sunshine spread across the earth, and before their eyes were vast expanses of farmland. A gentle breeze blew, and golden waves of wheat rolled in. They had finally returned to the human world.
However, thinking that the group of demon cultivators would soon catch up with them, the three of them didn't dare stop, nor did they dare to enter Luohua Town to ask for help. They could only grit their teeth and run towards the direction of Xuantian Sect. Xinyi glanced back at Luohua Town, then followed them on the way.
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The author has something to say: Ding, the player’s new cheat code has arrived.
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