She seemed to have seen something horrible.
"But living and dying together?" A hoarse, twisted voice, filled with endless resentment and madness, suddenly exploded in this gloomy underground palace. "That was the wishful thinking that old man Dao Moxing couldn't let go of even before his death. It was a mirage that he couldn't grasp in his entire life, but it wasn't mine, Xuan Yangming..."
Xuan Yangming's face looked even more ferocious and older due to excessive excitement. He grinned grimly, looking extremely terrifying.
His voice was mournful and distant, as if it penetrated the heavy coffin, bringing with it a chill that froze one's bones:
"Little girl, since you are about to die... considering that you will become the final stepping stone for my great cause of 'Three Paths into One', I will show mercy and let you die with peace of mind..."
His skinny fingers, like ghost claws, pointed at the pulsating flower beneath Zhou Suyao:
"Look at it... take a closer look at the flower beneath you... Doesn't it look like... a baby being conceived?"
A baby...?!
Hearing this, Zhou Suyao suddenly looked at the strange and gorgeous flower at the bottom of the altar and found that the flower was indeed extremely strange.
If Xuan Yangming hadn't said this, she wouldn't have noticed that the flower wasn't just a common red, but a flesh-colored hue that suggested human bones. Its pistil was inexplicably trembling, as if a heart were beating inside it—clearly a deformed heart growing within the demonic flower.
The color of flesh and blood, the blood flowers of the human body.
The master once said that no matter what kind of plant it is, if it looks like a human, it must be a very evil and sinister thing!
Her heart sank instantly.
Not long ago, she and her second senior brother were anxiously discussing how to deal with Xuan Yangming's conspiracy. They both subconsciously believed that this elder of the Xincong Sect must have the same goal as the elder Dao Moxing in the dream - the pursuit of immortality and the pursuit of a shared life.
But now it seems that this is not the case.
Xuan Yangming's ambition is far more crazy and unreasonable than Changsheng's!
"Dao Moxing is a fool. He longs to live and die together. He wants to live forever, thinking that immortality will give him everything. He is so stupid."
"Do you know? What I want is the true unification of the Three Paths! This infant flower is the Three Paths Meridian Flower that I took from the cauldron during my spiritual journey and planted here. As long as this flower is successfully nurtured, from then on, the Three Paths Meridians will be controlled by me, Xuan Yangming!"
He laughed hoarsely, his voice like rusty iron scraping against jade, a sharp, piercing and nauseating sound.
"Ever since the horrific war between humans and demons in ancient times, the order of heaven and earth collapsed, and the human world was divided into three paths: the imperial power of the Heavenly Path, which governs the order of the Human Path; the complex and chaotic Human Path, which contains all living things; and the profound and abstruse Spiritual Path, which connects to the creation of heaven and earth." Xuan Yangming's tone was filled with the arrogance of a sense of control. "I have used the blood of the Human Path—the essence and blood of ant-like mortals—as the initial nourishment, attempting to awaken the spirit of this pulse flower... But human blood is mixed and thin, nourishing it... Too slow! Too slow! I have waited too long, so long that I have been reincarnated several times. This body has long since decayed, and my soul is on the verge of collapse. If this continues, once the power of the Spiritual Path fully recovers and senses the collapse of this flower, I will surely lose everything, and my soul will be shattered, beyond recovery!"
His voice was filled with anxiety and desperation, but it was immediately replaced by a twisted sense of pride.
"Just when I was at my wit's end, that idiot Dao Moxing appeared. He discovered the secret manual of 'Living Together and Longevity Together' from the demon world and attempted to use it to achieve immortality by refining the demon race. Little did he know that it was his desire that forged this perfect flower today. Everything he did was merely to refine the purest spiritual blood of the demon race for me... From then on, the tibia bloodlines of the three paths—the supreme power of the Heavenly Path, the complexity of the Human Path, and the mysteries of the Spiritual Path—only require the bloodline of a destined person. You, help this flower refine the three veins into one, so that I can bring all three into my control!"
His bloodshot eyes, like a hungry vulture, were fixed on the upside-down Zhou Suyao, filled with a madness determined to win.
"You! Zhou Suyao! You are the key chosen by heaven and earth! Use your blood and your soul to help these three meridian flowers bloom completely, and refine the scattered meridians of the high power of the Heavenly Dao, the complexities of the Human Dao, and the profound mysteries of the Spiritual Dao into one! When that time comes, all things in the universe will be under my command! I, Xuan Yangming, will be the only true god in this world!"
Yet, in this suffocating moment of despair, Zhou Suyao's brain, swollen from being upside down, suddenly realized the undeniable flaws in the logical chain after hearing such extreme insanity. These insignificant flaws, like a stone, struck her heart, stirring a strong sense of dissatisfaction.
"The only true God?" She chuckled.
"But, if my bloodline is the bloodline of the destined person," she bit her tongue to ensure that every word she said was extremely clear, and retorted, "then the bloodline nurtured by my blood and soul..."
The corners of her mouth curved into an almost sarcastic arc.
"Who is the true master it should recognize?!"
"Isn't the reason why Ling Dao Shi Zhi nurtured the Three Meridian Flowers because Ling Dao Shi Zhi was originally its master? But now you are using Ning Qinggui and the demon race to refine this Three Meridian Flowers. You probably won't be able to do so, because the masters of the Three Meridian Flowers have long been the demon races that died at the hands of you and Dao Moxing! The wronged souls!"
The last three words were like a drop of ice water thrown into a frying pan.
It exploded in Xuan Yangming's cognition in an instant.
How could this be!?
In his mind, the vessel was merely nourishment—Ning Qinggui, the demons, and even this stubborn little ghost, now bound to the altar, were merely tools to help him cultivate the Three Meridian Flowers. How could a tool become the master? He, Xuan Yangming, was the creator of these Heavenly Meridians!
But when Zhou Suyao's questioning was like an invisible poisonous sting, accurately piercing into the logical loophole that was completely blinded by his crazy ambition, he suddenly woke up.
The blood that nourishes this heavenly vein is the blood of the demon race, the blood of Ning Qinggui, and hers - this little ghost's. The foundation of its existence, the source of its power... whose traces are on it?
These powers... these foundations of existence... their source... their deepest imprint... whose are they?!
Who will use this power?
"No... Impossible! You are talking nonsense! I am the..." The muscles on Xuan Yangming's face twitched violently, and the madness in his eyes was replaced by a trace of unexpected surprise and hesitation.
That moment of hesitation was like a tiny but fatal crack being opened at the bottom of an indestructible dam.
However, it is this moment of hesitation, this tiny gap that is pried open from the most basic logic.
It is absolutely fatal for maintaining the huge sacrificial ceremony!
Buzz——!!!
On the altar, the three-veined flower that was greedily sucking Zhou Suyao's spiritual blood, its continuous beating rhythm, strangely... paused for a moment.
It's this moment.
After the stagnation, there will be a more violent rebound.
The spiritual energy of the three meridian flowers began to radiate, including the spiritual power of Zhou Suyao, the demonic power of Ning Qinggui, the resentful power of the souls of countless demon tribes, and even the essence and blood of humans that had been forcibly integrated into it... At this moment, it was like a torrent that broke through the dam, mixed with the chaotic and violent original power of the meridian flower itself, and it gushed out crazily and uncontrollably from the beating heart.
This instant backlash directly stretched Xuan Yangming's soul to its limit!
He suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of internal organs.
The next moment, his body fell heavily to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut off, making a dull sound.
However, at the same time.
Zhou Suyao, who was hanging upside down in the center of the altar, felt a warm current, like a torch suddenly lit in winter, flowing from top to bottom, filling her entire body.
Warm, majestic, and full of indescribable vitality.
Is it... the breath of the grass and trees in the world?
Could this be what the senior brother was talking about...spiritual energy?
She felt that her lower abdomen had stopped bleeding and the wound seemed to be slowly healing. Her hands and feet, which had lost blood and temperature due to hanging upside down for a long time, also slowly recovered their temperature.
It is... the energy of creation of heaven and earth, the spirit that is the origin of all things.
A spiritual power suddenly gathered at her fingertips.
"Do you know that the first spiritual master was just an ordinary country boy?"
The sound of the eldest brother, as clear as jade touching each other, exploded in her consciousness without any warning.
"He discovered that perhaps the spirit of the spiritual path did not come from spiritual power, but from spiritual energy."
"This spiritual energy is the creation of heaven and earth."
Rainy night.
——Snowy night.
She was too cold, a cold that took away one's will. It was as if her mother, whom she had never met, whispered to her in a gentle tone, "Go to sleep, go to sleep..."
Her eyes were about to close.
Just as she was about to lose consciousness, a warm hand gently pressed on her cold forehead.
The cold rain beat down on her body, and in the increasingly thick snow, the elder brother transformed the bare peach branches from his palm, and the words:
"If you want to learn, use your spiritual power to transform the peach blossoms first."
Heaven and earth are spiritual.
And spiritual energy comes from the body.
The body is the heaven and the earth.
The appearance of the three-veined flower suddenly became more ferocious. Its petals opened wide, and its heart-like pulsation beat faster and stronger.
She saw it.
At the heart of the blossoming meridian flower, deep within her sea of consciousness between her eyebrows, a thread, vague and elusive, like ethereal mist, suddenly became clear. It was no longer a one-way flow, but a surging channel. The spiritual energy, containing the very essence of life from heaven and earth, flowed endlessly from the three meridian flowers into her body.
An elusive thread connected the pistil to her brow.
But this thread…connects more than just her.
Bang!
A huge power exploded from the pistil. In an instant, the thread became clear, wrapped around her, and then quickly wrapped around Xuan Yangming, who fainted due to the backlash of huge spiritual power.
Just as the silk thread wrapped around Xuan Yangming, Zhou Suyao's eyes suddenly went dark.
The world was spinning.
The next moment, the cold underground palace altar was no longer in front of her eyes.
The sudden change in the world was not caused by fainting that brought her into an illusion, but by her vision being forcibly pushed and pulled and distorted.
The rapidly spinning scene and the dangling limbs made a fishy-sweet taste surge in her throat.
——She almost vomited again.
But when the suffocating feeling of distortion finally stopped and her vision refocused, her body began to tremble uncontrollably.
Having not eaten for a long time, she could only spit out green bile from her throat.
because.
What came into her sight.
It was endless, sticky, and exuded a suffocating bloody stench.
...blood red!
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