Chapter 101 The War Between Immortals and Demons Has Ended
The dizziness from leaving the forbidden land of Haiyaoyue had not completely subsided when the intense stench of blood and burnt smells, mixed with violent spiritual and demonic energy, surged into Sheng Zhiyi's senses like a tangible wave.
She carried Ji Fuguang on her back, standing on a scorched and cracked mountain ridge.
As far as the eye can see, the world loses its color.
In the sky, the radiance of magic and the churning demonic clouds tore at each other, presenting a chilling, morbid dark red, as if the heavens themselves were weeping blood.
The earth was scarred and ravaged, with deep, bottomless cracks crisscrossing like hideous scars.
The once lush forests have turned to charcoal, and tattered flags and broken weapons are scattered everywhere, soaking in pools of blood that have long since dried and turned black.
The roars, the clash of weapons, the explosions of magic, the wails of the dying... all intertwined to form a desperate elegy.
This is the Immortal-Demon Battlefield, which has completely lost control after losing Ji Fuguang's suppression.
With no one to restrain the demons' actions, the precarious balance between the two races was quickly shattered. The pent-up hatred and desire spread like wildfire, and countless minor frictions rapidly amplified, snowballing as more and more people were drawn in, ultimately resulting in such a tragic scene.
Sheng Zhiyi stood high above, her gaze sweeping quickly across the battlefield.
On the left flank of the battlefield, beside a collapsed magic array, the sword formation formed by dozens of Tianyan Sect disciples was dim and on the verge of collapse.
The leader's original white elder's robes were now stained with blood and dust, obscuring their original color. His left arm hung limply, broken off.
Her face was as pale as paper. She suddenly pulled off the wine gourd from her waist, poured the last mouthful of wine into her mouth, and her sword flashed. She stood firmly at the front, trying to buy her wounded fellow disciples a chance to catch their breath.
It was Chen Huaiyu, who loved wine more than anything and was naturally lazy. At this moment, her treasured wine gourd was thrown on the ground, and every swing of her sword was filled with determination, clearly indicating that she was at her last gasp.
A hidden demon emerged from the shadows, its longsword silently aimed at her back.
In the center of the battlefield, the situation was even more chaotic and tense.
Shen Qingming's disciple robes were torn in many places, his hair ornament was nowhere to be found, and his long hair was messy and stained with blood. The trace of his former childishness had faded from his face, and now his eyes were resolute, his lips were tightly pursed, and he was engaged in fierce battle with a demon general.
The sword light and demonic energy clashed violently. He parried repeatedly, but the bloodstains on his body only multiplied. A cunning wisp of demonic energy grazed his ribs, spraying blood and causing him to stagger.
Meanwhile, his father, Elder Shen, was locked in battle with several demon generals. Although his swordplay was magnificent, he was unable to spare the time to protect the few disciples around him who were struggling to defend themselves. He had no time to take care of his son, whom he had loved for decades.
Further away, Liu Suxin frowned, her face pale, and her exhaustion palpable. She continuously channeled her spiritual energy, unleashing a dazzling white light. Her swordplay was still not skillful enough, but it was powerful and unrestrained as she desperately protected her two fellow disciples.
There were many more familiar or unfamiliar faces... those who had expressed goodwill towards her, those who had mocked her out of jealousy, those who had even secretly tripped her up... At this moment, they were all burning themselves out without reservation in this huge battlefield, for what they were holding onto, until they turned to ashes.
Sheng Zhiyi's heart felt as if it were being tightly gripped by an invisible, cold hand, slowly and forcefully kneaded, bringing a suffocating, dull pain.
She slightly bent her knees and carefully put Ji Fuguang down from her back, letting him lean against a boulder. She gently brushed away the dust-covered stray hairs from his forehead and straightened his disheveled clothes.
She suddenly understood the complex emotions deep in Ji Fuguang's heart.
Are humans truly all good? During her time at the Tianyan Sect, apart from Ji Fuguang, she hadn't received much genuine kindness. Instead, she had encountered a fair share of jealousy, exclusion, and difficulties from her fellow disciples.
From childhood to adulthood, Ji Fuguang had never truly received much kindness, whether it was from other begging children, adoptive parents who took him in, demonic cultivators who imprisoned him, or even after arriving at the Tianyan Sect.
However, even so...
"You see, this is human nature..." she whispered, as if speaking to him, yet also as if stating it to herself, "There is light, and there is darkness. You don't actually like humans that much, do you? You just can't condone the demons' behavior of making plunder and slaughter their guiding principles, right?"
A barely perceptible wisp of chaotic spiritual energy gathered at her fingertips, casting a protective spell around him to conceal his presence and ensure he would not be affected. Her gaze lingered for a moment on his serene yet lifeless face, gentle yet resolute.
"I know this is definitely not the scene you want to see."
She straightened up and looked at the blood-red inferno again. The last ripple in her eyes subsided, leaving only a bottomless calm.
She didn't use any fancy footwork, or even fly on a sword; she simply took steps, one after another, towards the most central and chaotic area of the battlefield.
Her appearance initially did not attract much attention. A woman dressed relatively cleanly, who did not even emit strong spiritual energy fluctuations, was as insignificant as dust on such a chaotic battlefield.
Until she crossed the first front.
A demon soldier, his eyes bloodshot with rage, roared and swung his bone sword at her, but Sheng Zhiyi didn't even look at him, her steps never faltering.
The demon soldier, standing three feet away from her, suddenly froze. The surging demonic energy around him seemed to have encountered some kind of invisible neutralizer, becoming peaceful and restrained at a visible speed, and his bloodthirsty red eyes gradually regained their clarity.
He stared blankly down at his palm, now free of the black aura, then looked up at the retreating figure of the woman. With a clang, the scimitar slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. "My demonic energy..." His tone was complex and difficult to decipher, a mixture of relief and loss.
Sheng Zhiyi continued walking forward, where a disciple of the Tianyan Sect, holding a broken magic sword, was desperately facing the charging demon general.
Just as the spiritual energy and demonic energy were about to collide, an invisible wave swept by. The violent magical light and the sinister demonic energy, like drops of water flowing into the ocean, disappeared and neutralized each other at the moment of contact, turning into a gentle breeze and dissipating.
That day, both the Yanzong disciple and the demon were stunned in place. Their attack was inexplicably neutralized, yet neither of them was injured.
Wherever she went, it was like a drop of clear water falling into a boiling oil pan; a strange "silence" began to spread rapidly around her.
The sounds of fighting faded and disappeared behind her.
The demons, charging frantically, had their demonic energy calmed by a gentle yet irresistible force, losing the violent emotions that drove their slaughter. The immortal disciples, desperately resisting, found their opponents' attacks becoming powerless, and their own surging spiritual energy inexplicably calming down.
The chaotic energy turbulence in front of her subsided naturally, not because it was dispelled, but because it was assimilated and merged into the chaotic force field around her.
This eerie and quiet spread has finally attracted the attention of more and more people.
"It's... Junior Sister Sheng?!" A sharp-eyed disciple of the Tianyan Sect recognized her and exclaimed in disbelief.
How did she get here?
"What kind of power is that on her?"
A commotion also arose on the demon side. What they felt was not fear, but an unprecedented calm, as if their frantic souls had been infused with a calming nectar.
Chen Huaiyu forced back the demon in front of her with a single sword strike, then turned around, panting, just in time to see Sheng Zhiyi approaching. Looking into Sheng Zhiyi's eyes, which seemed to encompass all conflict and opposition, and feeling the spiritual energy around her become gentle and peaceful, she momentarily forgot she was surrounded by mountains of corpses and seas of blood, only feeling utterly shocked.
Shen Qingming also noticed the strange situation behind him, his gaze turning to Sheng Zhiyi in disbelief, his heart filled with shock: "Sheng Zhiyi?... She's harmonizing spiritual energy and demonic energy?! How is that possible!"
Sheng Zhiyi walked to the very center of the battlefield, where the energy conflict was most intense and the corpses were piled up the most. The violent spiritual and demonic energy formed a visible distorted force field here, constantly triggering small-scale explosions.
She stopped, no longer suppressing or guiding, but simply released the chaotic power within her body completely.
An invisible and intangible yet vast, star-like wave, centered on her, spread silently to every corner of the battlefield like mercury spilling onto the ground.
Under the influence of this fluctuation, all the colliding spiritual and demonic energies on the battlefield seemed to have found a common home, no longer attacking and annihilating each other, but beginning to slowly and spontaneously merge together.
The spells cast by the immortal disciples no longer shone with blinding light, but became soft and restrained. The demonic flames unleashed by the demon race lost their ferocity and became deep and stable.
The forces of both sides did not disappear, but were forcibly pulled into a strange symbiotic state.
The fighting, having lost its energy support, naturally ceased.
The immortal disciples stared blankly at the flickering, blackish spiritual energy emanating from the tip of their swords. The demon warriors looked down at the gentle, swirling demonic energy, interspersed with specks of white light, swirling in their palms.
Everyone felt a profound peace emanating from the depths of their souls. It wasn't that their power had been stripped away, but rather that it had been purified, returning them to their most primordial, chaotic power.
An eerie silence fell over the battlefield. Only the wind rustling through the newly sprouted buds and the subtle sounds of wounded soldiers healing under the nourishment of peaceful energy could be heard.
Sheng Zhiyi stood in the center of the silence, her aura resonating faintly with the energy field of the battlefield as it calmed down. She stood quietly, and although she was a mortal, in the eyes of everyone, she already carried the aura of the Heavenly Dao.
Her voice was calm, yet carried an awe-inspiring authority, directly imprinting itself on the hearts of all living beings:
"Spiritual energy and demonic energy share the same origin but flow differently; both are manifestations of chaos. There is no inherent superiority or inferiority in the path of cultivation; it is the mind that determines good and evil. The path of immortals and demons resides in the heart; I hope you will remember this well."
After speaking, she ignored the countless complex gazes behind her, a mixture of gratitude, shock, confusion, and inquiry, and turned to walk back along the path she had come from, step by step, back to the scorched ridge.
She bent down and carefully carried Ji Fuguang on her back again, her movements still gentle, as if afraid of disturbing his peaceful sleep.
Under the silent gaze of the crowd, she carried that cold and quiet body on her back, walking steadily towards the edge of the battlefield, towards the first rays of dawn in the distance.
The brilliant sunrise finally pierced through the dark red clouds, and the golden sunlight shone on her, gilding her with a faint golden edge and illuminating her path.
Behind her, the sobs and discussions of survivors gradually rose, along with the urgent need to rebuild order and a future changed because of her.
But her road ahead is still long.
The war between immortals and demons has ended, and all living beings have temporarily found peace.
Now, it's time to accomplish something that belongs only to her... something defying the heavens.
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