The crisscrossing blood-red outline in the sky shattered and vanished together with her like a snapped string.
Rāhu Xiaoming pursed his lips and said nothing.
He regressed at a visible rate. His appearance became even younger, and his depression became even heavier.
Gu Yanying swayed and leaned forwards. Li Qingshan rushed back and caught her. “Are you alright?” Then he questioned Rāhu Xiaoming fiercely, “What’s this all about!?”
Gu Yanying shook her head and said in realisation, “So I was the sacrifice!”
Originally, she was the same as Li Qingshan. Neither of them had any plans to turn into asura. Even if they wanted to become asura, they would not do so through such an inferior method.
It was Rāhu Xiaoming who made her stand at the top of the corpse mountain. He said it was to demonstrate her position as the commander of the asura army, and it also happened to be the centre of the entire ceremony. As it turned out, it was to draw over the consciousness of the thing going after Rāhu Xiaoming so that it would descend in her body.
The corpse mountains definitely served a purpose. At the very least, it had managed to fool her.
Rāhu Xiaoming said, “My bloodline is connected to hers. If I can’t sever the traces and obscure the heavenly secrets, she’ll be able to find me no matter where I go.”
Li Qingshan said furiously, “So you used us as bait? I really should just let her find you and kill you!”
“Do you think she’ll still go out of her way to descend with her consciousness if she pinpoints my location? She will directly destroy this world from the Asura realm. No one will be able to escape.” Rāhu Xiaoming touched the slingshot called Li’l Y on his waist. He seemed rather lost.
“Then I might as well butcher you right now and settle this problem!” Li Qingshan raised the Frenzy Flower Blade of Path’s End.
“Qingshan.” Gu Yanying grabbed his blade-wielding hand. “I’m fine. You can even say it was a blessing in disguise.”
As it turned out, when the kunpeng’s feather severed the descended consciousness, a sliver of divine nature had merged with her soul. Under the influence of this world, she was unable to tell if there were any other benefits, but she did gain a deeper understanding of the legacy within the kunpeng’s feather.
“It’s not a blessing in disguise. It’s always been the remuneration included in the plan,” said Rāhu Xiaoming.
“Am I supposed to thank you too?”
Gu Yanying raised an eyebrow. Being possessed by a god was not a fantastic experience.
“That won’t be necessary. You deserved this.”
“Actually, if you had told me earlier, I definitely would have been willing to cooperate.” She had never lacked a spirit for risk taking.
“Once you are aware and subconsciously prepared, who knows what kind of accidents might happen. And, that man doesn’t seem particularly willing for you to take risks.”
Gu Yanying glanced at Li Qingshan before suddenly shifting her gaze again. “Whatever. Everything still ended up fine.”
Li Qingshan slowly lowered his blade and internalised his anger. He said to Rāhu Xiaoming, “I have made a promise to you in the past, but if something like this happens again, I won’t be showing any mercy!”
Rāhu Xiaoming forced out a “yep”.
Apart from this “small” accident, the ceremony progressed extremely smoothly. Besides Yin Qing, the others did not even know what had happened. They were completely submerged in the ceremony. When they opened their eyes again, their black pupils shone with a red sheen. They already bore some special characteristics of asura.
The auras of the two protectors surged up, directly breaking through to the ninth layer of the innate realm. The other martial arts practitioners experienced an increase in their cultivation as well.
The path of martial arts and the asura path of slaughter had always been connected. As a matter of fact, they were fundamentally the same.
However, they were not the ones who had benefited the most, but the thousands of soldiers. Originally, they had all missed the optimal age to learn martial arts, so it was no longer possible for them to become masters in their lives, but now, it was like a new breath of life. Their bodies were renewed, giving them the possibility to improve.
Within the deafening cheers, Li Qingshan gazed towards the banks of the river. Zhang Yuntian and everyone else had already vanished.
He did not want to kill unnecessarily. Originally, he planned to capture them as hostages, which would remove a lot of obstacles when they tried to conquer the world, but he never expected a twist like this to happen. He wondered whether it was the obscure will of the heavens at work again.
If he went after them now, it would be pointless even if he managed to kill one or two of them. It would only be a waste of the Frenzy Flower Blade of Path’s End’s power.
“Whatever. We’ll let them spread our names. The effect is probably the same.”
Afterwards, Gu Yanying ordered everyone to dig a great pit to bury the corpse mountain. The stench would linger for months.
On the way back, Gu Yanying tried to get some information out of Rāhu Xiaoming. “That’s your mother? There’s actually a mother like her in the world!”
“This feather is called Heaven-stirring’s feather. What’s Heaven-stirring referring to?”
But from that moment onwards, Rāhu Xiaoming fell silent. He seemed even more depressed and defeated.
Li Qingshan instead began to pity him slightly. Hunted down by his own family, even if that was not the only reason why he lost his fighting will, it probably had an extremely profound effect on him. However, a thought like that only flashed through his head before vanishing. He had many more things to deal with than taking pity on him.
Gu Yanying led the army to uproot the forces of the Ma family in the northern region, and many soldiers in the army experienced a skyrocketing rise in their martial arts. Following that, the entire army began to change in terms of quality. Gu Yanying’s strength grew with theirs, no longer requiring Li Qingshan’s constant protection.
Li Qingshan remained in the city and ordered people to copy out the Legend of the White Ape King. At the same time, he trained a great group of storytellers. They did not just spread his novel, but also spread his ideology of world peace and equality for all. He did not have to worry about insufficient manpower ever again.
They were not in a hurry to expand outwards. Instead, they devoted their efforts to digesting the benefits that came with their victory. The Legend of the White Ape would spread to wherever the World’s society expanded to, and the power of belief within his Divine Talisman of Great Creation grew a hundred times faster.
Li Qingshan discovered that while the world was much smaller than the nine provinces, the power of belief it provided was no less than the nine provinces.
The nine provinces were vast, but the range of influence of his novels was limited to the Clear River prefecture or the Ruyi commandery. It would also only remain as a form of entertainment. Afterwards, following the chaos of war, the common folk struggled to even stay alive, so why would they still be in the mood to enjoy themselves?
From that moment onwards, the accumulation of power of belief had stagnated, and it grew at an extremely gradual pace. Li Qingshan had also stopped paying attention to it, directing his attention elsewhere.
While this world was small, basically everyone desired the secrets of martial arts hidden within the Legend of the Great Ape King. He also had the authority to spread it by force, so this novel could reach the eyes and ears of every single person. The effects were obviously on a whole different level.
And as they toppled the reign of the Ma family and split up the land titles and property with the common people, the reputation of the hero king was basically as prominent as the midday sun in the northern region. Many people admired him almost to the point of fanaticism.
It was said that there was an old man in a village to the north of Pegasus city that did not know any martial arts and was completely illiterate, yet he could recite the several hundred thousand characters Li Qingshan had written flawlessly.
Li Qingshan had even specially summoned him for a meeting. Let alone practicing martial arts, the old man basically had a foot in the grave already. He had not done this for the secrets of martial arts in the book, so it basically went without saying how devoted he was. In the end, Li Qingshan rewarded him with many treasures and ordered people to escort him back to his village, which led to a craze in memorising the book.
If I can conquer this world, the power of the Divine Talisman of Great Creation will definitely rise to an unprecedented level!
Li Qingshan thought as he converted his power of belief into raging spiritual qi, waiting for the first innate ability of the Ape Demon Transformation to appear.
