Chapter 1293: Li Ge's Handwritten Notes

Suddenly, Lü Wushuang halted in mid-pursuit.

Her cold gaze swept the surroundings as she went on guard. The temperature around her had dropped sharply.

She rose a little higher and rapidly surveyed the area. Then she realized the problem.

This was a raincloud.

It was exactly the kind of environment where that old hag could use her arts to best effect.

The thought had barely crossed Lü Wushuang's mind when the dark clouds around her began churning violently, as though a storm had erupted within them. A dense, shrieking barrage came from every direction as countless icicles shot through the cloud.

Below the cloud bank, Granny Xue suddenly burst out into the open. Carrying Yuan Gang in one hand, she plunged rapidly toward the ground, darted into the deep mountain forest, and disappeared among the terrain and trees in a few flashes.

Thunderous explosions rolled through the dark clouds above. Countless shards of ice rained downward.

With her silk ribbons snapping in the wind, Lü Wushuang shot backward from the cloud like a beautiful butterfly, then flashed sideways through the torrential fall of ice fragments and escaped the area they covered.

She hovered in the air and swept her gaze in every direction, searching for the two fugitives.

There was no trace of them anywhere.

They had already fled to some unknown place.

Lü Wushuang raised one hand.

A particularly solid sheet of blue ice lay in her palm. Words had been written across its surface:

I do not dare keep him for myself. Leaving him with you risks something going wrong. I will hand him over for all nine sides to deal with together. Do not pursue!

"Old hag!"

Lü Wushuang's face was full of fury.

Crack!

The ice sheet shattered in her hand.

How could she not be angry?

She had not yet forced out the thing she wanted, and one of her disciples had died as well.

But when she looked around again, there was still no trace of Granny Xue or Yuan Gang. Left with no choice, Lü Wushuang turned and flew back toward Wushuang Sacred Land.

On the way, she encountered a group of flying mounts that had arrived late in pursuit.

Lü Wushuang shot straight through their formation.

"Return!"

Her voice echoed behind her, while she herself was already far away.

The people on the flying mounts looked at one another, then immediately turned back.

...

Lü Wushuang landed outside the Jade Silkworm cavern and glanced at the chunks of ice on the ground that had not yet melted.

Her figure flashed again, and she drifted into the cave.

After descending into the underground chamber, she landed beside Hua Meiru's corpse.

Her chest rose and fell several times before she spat out bitterly, "Useless thing. You did nothing but make a fool of yourself!"

Her disciple had died right under Granny Xue's eyes.

It had indeed cost Lü Wushuang a great deal of face.

She raised her head and looked at the empty cocoon still hanging above.

Then she slowly floated upward until she was level with it and began turning it over with one hand.

She had not returned here merely to look at Hua Meiru's corpse.

She had come to inspect the cocoon.

She could not understand how Yuan Gang had escaped from it. Had Hua Meiru released him?

When she reached the rear side, she found the torn opening.

Obviously, Yuan Gang had escaped through here.

Lü Wushuang leaned closer and carefully inspected the broken strands.

They had not been torn apart.

They had not been cut apart either.

The edges were irregular, with many traces of gnawing.

Bitten through?

Her gaze suddenly swept around the cavern and settled on the Jade Silkworms clinging to branches, rustling as they chewed glowing leaves.

In an instant, she understood.

The Jade Silkworms had helped Yuan Gang bite through the cocoon.

Jade Silkworms spun cocoons and later chewed their own way free. Breaking these silk threads was an instinctive ability for them. There was nothing strange about that.

What was strange was that the Jade Silkworms would never have helped Yuan Gang escape for no reason.

There had to be a cause.

Lü Wushuang's eyes flickered.

Very quickly, she understood what must have happened.

A trace of surprise appeared in her expression.

She had thought Yuan Gang could control only sand scorpions.

Could he actually command Jade Silkworms as well?

A thoughtful look entered her eyes.

It seemed she had discovered something new.

...

At Demon Ridge, Zhao Xiongge felt his way through the gloom at the bottom of a deep ravine.

Niu Youdao followed behind him, occasionally raising his head to look at the narrow strip of sky visible far above.

Eventually Zhao Xiongge stopped at the angle where a stone wall met the ground and began digging.

He dug down roughly one zhang before using magic to draw a large rock out of the earth.

One palm shattered it.

Inside was a metal box.

Niu Youdao immediately moved closer.

Zhao Xiongge opened the box.

Inside lay a bundle wrapped in oiled paper.

He removed the bundle, discarded the box, and carefully opened layer after layer of tightly wrapped paper.

A bronze-colored metal scroll appeared within.

Looking at it, Zhao Xiongge let out a long sigh.

"After I made that promise to the Saintess all those years ago, I guarded this thing for so long. Today, I'm finally free of it."

He handed the scroll to Niu Youdao.

Niu Youdao accepted it.

It was a retractable metal scroll.

Four characters had been inscribed on its outer surface:

Li Ge's Handwritten Notes.

He could not help asking, "This is the Demon Canon?"

"That's only a name," Zhao Xiongge said casually. "Calling it Li Ge's Handwritten Notes would attract too much attention."

He then showed Niu Youdao how to open it.

One only had to pull the horizontal bar attached to the scroll, and the pages would extend outward. Once the force was released, they would automatically roll back inside.

Niu Youdao pulled it open.

What emerged was a flexible metal sheet assembled from many tiny metal plates, linked together with extraordinary precision.

Dense lines of characters had been engraved across the surface.

He immediately began reading.

Zhao Xiongge turned his attention outward and kept watch over the surroundings.

The very beginning of the notes contained several secret arts.

One was the Body-Detonation Art, which gathered a cultivator's entire cultivation into a single fatal strike. It was a technique for perishing together with the enemy.

Another method forcibly absorbed another person's cultivation to rapidly increase one's own strength. This too was intended as an emergency measure in battle, a method for breaking the fish and shattering the net. The user was still unlikely to survive afterward.

There was also a body-empowerment method that transferred one's own cultivation into another person. Once used, the practitioner would wither and die. If the recipient could not bear the power being poured into them, their meridians would rupture and they too would die.

Then there were methods such as the refinement of Crow Generals.

The farther Niu Youdao read, the more alarmed he became.

When he finished the section on secret arts, he looked up.

"Not one of these methods is remotely proper. They're all crooked, heterodox shortcuts that harm both others and the user. Calling this thing a Demon Canon isn't wrong at all!"

Zhao Xiongge said, "According to the Saintess, Li Ge left these arts behind so the guardian of the notes would have emergency methods available if trouble arose."

Niu Youdao frowned. "Li Ge was the Empress of the Wu Dynasty. Where did she get all these sinister heterodox techniques?"

Zhao Xiongge shook his head. "I don't know. Is that important?"

Niu Youdao pulled the scroll farther open and continued reading.

What followed were clearly Li Ge's own words.

Before long, he became completely absorbed.

The general meaning was this:

Because the spiritual qi in this world was thin, Shang Song sought a higher level of cultivation. He shattered the void and opened four domains in succession, creating passages linking this world to four others and drawing in spiritual qi more suitable for cultivation.

Later, Shang Song remembered matters from the past, shattered the void, and departed.

He never returned.

Li Ge did not believe Shang Song would simply leave and never come back.

Something must have happened to him.

In the end, she decided to go search for him.

But Li Ge was also worried that she herself might fail to return.

Without her suppression, cultivators might gradually rise, become consumed by greed and desire, and bring disaster upon the mortal world.

Her original intention had been to sever the passages among the Five Domains, cutting off the flow of spiritual qi from the other four domains so cultivation would never be able to flourish.

However, the connection among the Five Domains had been established by Shang Song using the power of the stars to lay down a guiding formation.

If that formation was destroyed, then even if she or Shang Song wished to return, they might no longer be able to locate this world.

Their descendants still lived here.

For the sake of that private concern, yet still fearing calamity for the mortal world, Li Ge altered the Five Domains Stellar Grand Formation instead.

She did not destroy it.

She merely restricted the amount of spiritual qi that could flow in.

She also left behind eight objects: a mirror, a sword, a ruler, a cauldron, a ring, a pearl, a staff, and a token.

If Li Ge failed to return and cultivators began ravaging the mortal world, the inheritor of the notes was to go to the Land of the Buried Buddha carrying the ring and cauldron.

Strike the cauldron with the ring.

Continue striking until the sound rang long and unbroken.

A guiding object would naturally be summoned.

Follow that guide, and one would eventually reach a high platform.

Insert the token there to activate the linked formation eye connected to the other four domains.

Insert the sword into the formation eye in the mortal world.

Insert the staff into the formation eye in the Tiandu Secret Realm.

Set the pearl into the formation eye in the Butterfly Dream Illusory Realm.

Insert the ruler into the formation eye in the Fox Immortal Realm.

Once all were in place, the Five Domains Stellar Grand Formation could be broken apart.

The spiritual qi that sustained cultivation in the mortal world would be cut off.

As that qi dwindled, cultivators would gradually decline, and ordinary mortals would once again become the dominant force in the world.

There was another instruction as well.

If the master of the silver butterfly ever appeared, that person would certainly be capable of carrying out Li Ge's intentions.

The notes were to be handed over immediately.

At the very end, Li Ge left one final warning.

She had laid down a batch of Life-Snatching Soul-Calling Formations.

If the inheritor of the notes refused to obey her commands, the Person from the Mirror would come and execute them!

"The Person from the Mirror... Life-Snatching Soul-Calling Formation... the Person from the Mirror..."

Niu Youdao slowly rolled the scroll closed, his expression oddly dazed.

When he read the words Life-Snatching Soul-Calling Formation, he had thought of a certain ancient tomb that had collapsed in a world-shaking disaster.

He had also thought of the bronze mirror inside that tomb that looked exactly like the Shang Mirror.

"A batch of Life-Snatching Soul-Calling Formations... a batch..."

When he murmured the word batch again, a faint, helpless bitterness appeared in his smile.

Zhao Xiongge, who had been keeping watch, turned his head.

Seeing that Niu Youdao had already closed the notes, he asked, "What are you muttering about? Finished?"

"Ah."

Niu Youdao raised his head and let out a long sigh toward the sky.

"I'm finished. What in the world were Shang Song and Li Ge?"

Zhao Xiongge replied, "How would I know?"

Niu Youdao lifted the metal scroll in one hand.

"The inheritor mentioned in these notes should refer to the Demonic Sect Saintess. Why didn't the Saintesses follow the instructions?"

Zhao Xiongge said, "There were probably some things even Li Ge never anticipated."

"Her own descendants ended up fighting over the imperial throne and treating what we now call the Eight State-Protecting Divine Artifacts as treasures worth seizing."

"They actually took them for themselves."

"That left the inheritor of the notes unable to gather all eight objects."

"Later, the realm fell into chaos and cultivators gradually rose to power, making it even harder for the inheritor to carry out the instructions."

"That was why the guardians eventually concealed their identities and founded the Demonic Sect, hoping to use an organization of their own to accomplish something."

"And so it continued until today."

He paused, then added, "There were things you asked me about before that I couldn't answer because I genuinely didn't know."

"I didn't know how to explain them either."

"How could I know why Li Ge didn't leave these notes together with the Holy Rakshasa so you could obtain them directly?"

"Now that you've subdued the Holy Rakshasa and seen the notes, don't you understand the reason yourself?"

Niu Youdao chuckled.

"Probably a test."

"Someone who couldn't meet her requirements would never see these notes."

"Still, she had a lot of confidence."

"Wasn't she afraid the notes might get lost?"

Zhao Xiongge said, "Even if they were lost, this is something left behind by Li Ge. Who could destroy it?"

"Whoever found it would probably hide it away as a treasure."

"And once someone had read the contents and later saw the master of the Holy Rakshasa appear, they'd most likely go looking for that person on their own."

Niu Youdao thought about it.

There was some truth to that.

He laughed.

"As expected of the man who guarded the Demon Canon all these years. You've thought pretty far ahead."

Zhao Xiongge waved dismissively, then asked, "What do the Life-Snatching Soul-Calling Formations and the Person from the Mirror mean?"

"And there is something else."

"The notes explain the uses of only seven of the objects. They never say what the Shang Mirror is for."

"I don't know whether that has something to do with this so-called Person from the Mirror."

"None of the Saintesses through the generations understood what it meant either."

"Since you're the one who can receive these notes, you should be able to understand it, shouldn't you?"

Niu Youdao understood his feelings.

Zhao Xiongge had guarded this thing for so many years, yet remained confused about much of what it contained.

Of course he wanted answers.

Niu Youdao gave a half-smile and snorted softly.

"A batch of Life-Snatching Soul-Calling Formations."

"A batch."

"If the inheritor of the notes had done as instructed and severed the Five Domains Stellar Grand Formation's positioning, then something would probably have ended."

"The Person from the Mirror would no longer appear."

"Otherwise... perhaps replacements would keep appearing one after another until one finally succeeded."

Zhao Xiongge did not understand. "What do you mean?"

"How the hell would I know what it means?"

Niu Youdao gave him a dismissive snort, then tapped the metal scroll in his hand.

"Let me ask you something else."

"The Five Domains."

"The mortal world, the Butterfly Dream Illusory Realm, the Sacred Realm, and the Tiandu Secret Realm."

"That's only four."

"What the hell is this Land of the Buried Buddha?"

"Why have I never heard of it?"

"And what exactly is this guiding object that's supposed to be summoned by all that ringing and banging?"

Zhao Xiongge replied, "The Saintess said the Land of the Buried Buddha is the Boundless Desert."

[End of Chapter 1293]