A Heaven Climbing Vine suddenly emerged from space and shot towards the kunpeng.
Gu Yanying dodged the attack gracefully, but even more Heaven Climbing Vines emerged from space, forcing her to close her wings and land in front of Dragonshead mountain instead.
Rāhu Xiaoming currently stood on a protruding boulder at the foot of the mountain.
Li Qingshan leapt down, landing on a boulder nearby. He knew Rāhu Xiaoming had failed, but he still could not help but ask, “How is it?”
Rāhu Xiaoming curled his lip and shook his head. “It doesn’t work.”
“Hey, you’re a god. How can you say it doesn’t work?”
Rāhu Xiaoming held his chest high. “I am a war god, not a gardener. This Heaven Climbing Vine is less than a thousand years ago. It’s only grown so large through external help. It doesn’t possess any self-awareness or intelligence at all, let alone turning into a daemon. With our cultivation, destroying it is very easy, but controlling it is virtually impossible, unfortunately.”
Li Qingshan understood that plant daemons were renowned for their lengthy lifespans, but their growth was extremely slow as well, particularly with exotic plants. It was very difficult for them to become daemons.
Often, it would take a great period of time before they developed self-awareness, but that was only on par with wild beasts. It would take even longer before they possessed intelligence equivalent to regular humans.
Otherwise, with those spiritual herbs and towering trees several thousand years old, the world would be littered with plant daemons if they could become daemons so easily. In reality, even among the Seventy-two Daemon Kings, there were only a handful of plant daemons.
If the Heaven Climbing Vine could become a daemon one day, then right now, it had not even reached childhood. It was basically still an embryo, and it did not have any concept of self-awareness. It completely acted on instincts, unable to communicate, much less be threatened or tempted.
Li Qingshan struggled to accept this. “Then why could Qian Rongzhi control this Heaven Climbing Vine?”
“That’s only because she sent in her own consciousness while the Heaven Climbing Vine was still extremely young, giving her control over it. Otherwise, why do you think Si Long kept such a large source of potential trouble around? No matter how much you trust another, you’re always better off personally controlling the Heaven Climbing Vine. That Qian Rongzhi probably calculated this.”
From a certain perspective, Si Long’s failure was very closely connected to this exact characteristic of the Heaven Climbing Vine.
Li Qingshan gazed at the Heaven Climbing Vine that curled like a dragon on Dragonshead mountain and remained silent. He was very dejected. He had basically devoted himself to becoming the hero who saved the world, but everything was all over if he could not control the Heaven Climbing Vine.
Am I really not made to be a hero?
Gu Yanying had grown accustomed to seeing him fight on no matter what, no matter how miserable or dangerous it was, but she had never seen him with an expression like that, which left her strangely sympathetic. She tried to persuade him. “Qingshan, let’s just forget about it!”
Li Qingshan sucked in a deep breath. “Xiaoming, can I ask you a question?”
“Go on.”
Li Qingshan grinned, but he discovered his smile was rather forced, so he exhaled and said seriously, “How did you feel when you discovered what you did?”
Shooting down the stars, destroying the world, massacring the living creatures.
Just how grand and majestic of a concept was that? When he first heard of it, he was filled with envy, desiring this unbelievably great power. Aside from that, he did not feel anything else.
Yet at this moment, when he faced this situation, he still felt extremely heavy-hearted even when he was not the direct instigator.
Then he recalled how Xiao An had claimed billions of lives when he first returned to the nine provinces. He was extremely shocked, but how could he bring himself to scold her? He said he would shoulder this sin, yet that was only empty talk.
Now, he suddenly discovered that as it turned out, he did not understand the weight of this sin. The feeling was completely different.
Rāhu Xiaoming shut his eyes. He was frosty. “I don’t want to answer that.”
“You sure are an impressive bastard!” Li Qingshan praised him from the bottom of his head.
Back then, Li Qingshan completely did not approve of his miserable demeanor of having lost his fighting spirit. He felt like he was not even as bold and daring as a regular asura and nowhere close when compared to himself. However, only now did he understand his strength.
That was because eliminating this sense of guilt was actually very easy. Just yelling out, “The world is benevolent and lives are worthless.” and then treating the living creatures as ants was enough. Many cultivators did that. He could do that as well, saying that the fault lay in the world, not him.
He could even push the blame onto his mother, or even the living creatures. “Who made you so feeble? This world has always been about the strong preying on the weak.”
Li Qingshan had heard far too many things like that in both his past and present life, but Rāhu Xiaoming did not act like that. He chose to shoulder the sins and live each day in dejection until he died. Even when he was reborn in his flames of karma, no longer suffering from the bad karma, this weight would not vanish.
“Why bother at all!”
Rāhu Xiaoming opened his left eye and glanced at him. “Aren’t you the same?”
“Yes, I’m the same.”
Since he refused to twist his conscience, to invert the truth and push the blame onto others, then he would have to bear it himself. That was their pride. Two people who viewed all life as worthless could not travel together as peers for too long.
Gu Yanying clapped her hands. “Alright, you can stop sucking up to each other here! Boys, when do we set off? Qingshan, your women and friends in the South sea can be taken away from this world on Navy Li’l Fatty, but there’s nothing we can do about the others.”
“Let me try again!”
Li Qingshan leapt up and arrived on Dragonshead mountain. The countless vines extended towards him. As soon as they made contact with his body, they were shattered to pieces by the pitch-black power of tremors.
That continued until he arrived before the Heaven Climbing Vine. The trunk was like a verdant-green wall. He tore down the wall and stepped inside.
The vine was hollow inside. A twisted tunnel led into the sky, vanishing into space.
Li Qingshan crossed his legs and sat down. His heart was still like water, using the spirit turtle to see if he could deduce anything first before trying everything else he was capable of…
A long time later, Li Qingshan’s heart gradually rippled. Everything he was capable of ended in failure. He smiled self-deprecatingly. “I sure am the standard hypocrite!”
Yes, even if he could choose a hundred times again, he would not have the slightest hesitation. Even at this moment, he never felt a tinge of regret. In order to make his wish come true, he would do so even if he had to personally butcher all the living creatures.
That was the ox demon’s stubbornness, the tiger demon’s violence, and the ape demon’s desire to do whatever it wanted.
But when he looked back, when he first set off on this path, he wanted to be “Niu Juxia”, yet from beginning to end, the sins he had committed were thousands of times worse than the mountain bandits of the Black Wind stronghold. Life sure was filled with irony! He wanted to become the hero king. Perhaps he could only become one in a place like the small world, where he could crush everyone through absolute strength!
No, even in the small world, countless innocent people have died because of me!
His mind rippled. His scarlet hair gradually faded away, and the burning flames in his scarlet eyes were extinguished. His handsome face turned back, returning to his chiseled look from before. He furrowed his brows firmly, unable to smile everything away.
The supreme Daemon King who had rampaged through the world was like a mortal who had made a mistake, demonstrating shame and guilt. He murmured, “Sorry!”
At that instant, his heart began to thump. A certain shadow in the depths of his sea of consciousness suddenly appeared.
