Chapter 126 – The True Nature Of The Way

Pfft! Blood gushed out of Gu Suihan’s mouth uncontrollably immediately after he landed. His face was as pale as a sheet and he was barely breathing as he lay weakly on the ground next to the door, disregarding the bloody dismembered limbs strewn all around him.

The ones who came in after him did not fare any better. All of them had equally pale faces and looked as pathetic as him. They trembled in fear as they looked out at the huge wave of dead things beyond the door, with some of them breathing a sigh of relief as they patted their chest.

“This is a blood sacrifice!” This time, it was Wan Xin and the rest who said these words.

It seemed like the powerful cultivator who left this legacy behind had left behind quite a number of traps. They hadn’t even gone in yet and they had already been attacked twice.

The group numbered more than a thousand earlier, but now, there were only a little over a hundred of them left. They scanned their surroundings with hateful expressions and bitter looks in their eyes.

“The door has never opened.” Gu Suihan touched the thick and cold bronze door behind him as this thought suddenly popped up in his head. The bloodied symbol glowed in his eyes as he focused them on the outside of the door. The symbols spun slowly, sending out agitated beams of light.

That rock was still where it was, but there were no formation runes on it and there were no actual slots for the secret keys. It was merely a more unique-looking rock with a smooth surface, with the shape of the secret keys on it that had been forcibly made by the people here.

He turned to look behind him to come face to face with a door made from stone that measured nearly ten meters tall. Everyone was sitting close to it, while the dead things outside formed a wall around them that was so dense, nothing else could come in. But while the dead things emanated a murderous aura and a thick layer of miasma, they kept a distance of 30 meters from the cultivators at all times, seemingly afraid to get any closer.

“That’s…that’s gross…” Wan Xin looked in disgust at the foul-smelling dead things outside while furiously popping pills into her mouth. Ensuring that she was always on top of her game was very important in such a place. Nobody knew if the person who smiled at you every day was secretly waiting for a good opportunity to stab you in the back.

Everyone looked at each other warily and found their own little private spot even though there wasn’t much space, to begin with. They put up a formation around themselves and quickly worked on healing their wounds. For that period of time, the growls and howls that once filled the air were muted. There was no sound at all as if they were on a barren island.

About an hour later, the surviving cultivators started cleaning up and straightening their clothes out so that they looked less of a mess. But no matter how hard they tried, they simply could not get rid of the lingering fear reflected in their eyes.

“Search for Meridians, Aim for Acupoints – The Door of Life and Death!” Everyone watched curiously as Gu Suihan ignored them and started making hand seals, his mouth chanting incantations while his feet moved in mystifying patterns. He looked like how those priests among the commoners danced during their rituals to ward off evil spirits and heal the sick.

“Heavenly Demons Break Their Desires!”

A three-inch red beam of light suddenly shot out from Gu Suihan’s eyes and a seal gathered in his palms before shooting out from behind him. At the same time, he yelled, “Slam your secret keys into those slots in the instant the formation is broken! Otherwise, we’re all going to die!”

Everyone gasped as they instinctively looked at the blackish dead things outside. They couldn’t help but gulp and feel a shiver down their spine.

“NOW!” bellowed Gu Suihan as his feet stopped moving and he used his fair palms to suddenly thrust something into the air.

Wan Xin and the rest felt as though their minds had gone blank and there was a ripple reverberating in the air around them. It was as if something in their consciousness had been removed and it shook their souls.

When they heard Gu Suihan yell, they dared not waste any time and focused on the area where Gu Suihan’s seal had flown toward.

They could vaguely make out a jade-like wall flickering in the distance, but the bright light coming from it made them shut their eyes. But Li Xiaoyao was no ordinary cultivator. The light was hurting his eyes and making him tear up, but he endured it and used a secret technique to remember where the slots on that jade wall were before using his spiritual energy to send his secret key into the right slot based on his memory.

Woong! Everything was shaking as the surviving cultivators quickly stood up and waited with bated breath as they continued staring into the distance ahead.

The sound of gears moving and an ear-deafening boom went on for the next 15 minutes. Once the sound started fading, they felt like someone had removed the fog in front of their eyes for one second, before hurtling them into darkness, where the smell of something rotting hit their nostrils.

“We’re inside the door now?” said Zou Kai grimly as his eyes widened.

“Look at the ground.” Gu Suihan didn’t reply to Zou Kai’s query directly as he waved his hand to cast a light-creating spell. A bright white light that felt as hopeful as the dawning of the sun filled the air, and it seemed as though the dark clouds over their minds had cleared up as well.

“This is one of the disciples who died just now.” Wan Xin got up with a Wonderful Sound Sect disciple’s token in hand that she found from among the unrecognizable body parts on the ground.

Xi Ran’s face was pale. He kicked aside some of the bones on the ground and said in a trembling voice, “But…they died only about two hours ago or so. How did they turn into this state so quickly?”

The bodies on the ground had already turned into dried bones, any blood and traces of flesh had dried up and hardened. The blackish bloodstains and weapons that had long lost any of the qi they once possessed were now covered in dust. It was as though everything here had died a hundred years ago.

This seemingly creepy scene that made everyone’s hair stand on end was naturally a result of them traveling from one space to another.

With regard to the concept of time, Gu Suihan couldn’t be bothered by those idiots who used the rules governing time to explain these things. He had lived long enough to know about these things. There were a million and one rules governing the world, but at the end of the day, it was a matter of yin, yang, and the five elements working with or against one another.

Of course, these were the more ordinary rules. There was also karma and space. Time? What the hell was time?

Time was nothing but a way that living creatures used to calculate the movement of space. To be very precise, this bullshit about the passing of time and the rules around it didn’t exist at all.

All this talk about stopping time or going back in time – if you were able to understand the rules governing space well enough, you wouldn’t have any trouble using it.

Before coming to this world, Gu Suihan was cultivating water techniques. He just needed to wave his hand and blood would spray high enough to reach the clouds. He just needed to think about it and any body of water within the next 10,000 miles would be under his control. He could make the clouds move, fain fall, and the rivers flood with just one thought.

After he came to this world, however, he turned out to have a body that had a Geng gold aptitude. Thankfully, gold and water went together, so Gu Suihan had some knowledge about it. That was why he decided to go down the simplest but also the most despised route of the Way of Life and Destruction. He could decide what lived and what died with just a thought.

Even though his previous level of cultivation was all gone, his observation abilities had not regressed at all. This was especially evident in this Lower World which was nearly identical to the world of cultivation he came from previously.

“The ages go by, a hundred years pass in the blink of an eye. Not bad, not bad. It’s just too bad that he’s way too far from being able to create and destroy fates with the bat of an eye, or being able to move past the next 10,000 years with one hand,” murmured Gu Suihan calmly to himself as he randomly kicked aside the dried bones on the ground that he picked at earlier.

“These people were killed in a second by hidden traps and weapons. Most of them did not even have the time to react.” Li Xiaoyao gently put Shuang’er down. Even though the situation was so dire earlier, he had not just abandoned this little girl. This young lady was probably more important than Gu Suihan had initially imagined since Li Xiaoyao looked so nervous.

Gu Suihan glanced discreetly at Shuang’er, then said quietly, “Those hidden weapons were probably triggered by some ancient mechanical techniques, since there’s no trace of any qi around here. Most of these cultivators wouldn’t have noticed anything, so they don’t have to be too upset that they had died from this attack.”

He himself had used such methods to kill others, even though this was a method that was usually despised by cultivators. The most recent example was Xiexin zhenren, the one who took over Li Rong’s body.

Li Xiaoyao’s expression did not lighten up. Instead, it only became grimmer than before. “I’m worried about whether there are anymore hiding in the shadows.”

“Of course there. For example, right now,” said Gu Suihan in a nonchalant voice before suddenly moving backward rapidly. A gleam appeared where he was standing just a second ago and the swooshing sound echoed in everyone’s ears.

Their eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when they took a closer look. Dozens of thin needles that were half a foot long and gleaming with a greenish glow were two inches deep in the ground. That was how hard they had flown toward Gu Suihan.

But what surprised them, even more, was the fact that they hadn’t heard a single sound before the needles flew out. How did Gu Suihan manage to avoid them?