Chapter 83
Chapter 83: Strive for Freedom
The mirrors kept replaying Shao Heng’s past again and again.
The same accusation echoed, endless and grating.
“You don’t deserve Master’s inheritance.”
“You don’t deserve it.”
The words were repeated so many times they lost meaning, becoming only sound meant to grind at her bones.
Shao Heng had tried to smash the mirrors at first. Even with strength enough to split stone, she couldn’t leave so much as a scratch.
So she stopped wasting effort.
“Makes sense,” she murmured, voice calm. “These illusions trapped more than forty First Realm cultivators with good talent. Even worn down by time, its power still isn’t something I can brute-force.”
Her attention sank inward.
The Gray Cocoon in her qi sea still glowed with a hazy blue-gray aura, wrapping even the tree-shaped sigil within it. It could shift with her will, concealing every trace of her spiritual power’s aura.
Too strange.
From the jade token Ji Xuan Yin had given her, Shao Heng knew Ling Jiang had once been half a step into the Eighth Realm at her peak.
But half a step not taken was still not taken. In the end, she could only be counted as Seventh Realm.
Yin Liu was the only Seventh Realm cultivator Shao Heng had ever met. That single glimpse back then—the arrogant wildness, the disdain that didn’t even put the True Dragon clan in her eyes—was still vivid.
That pride came from absolute confidence in her own strength.
Shao Heng refused to believe Yin Liu was ordinary.
And this was only Ling Jiang’s inheritance ground, something that survived to this day by relying on a fragment of a Tai Yin star.
She lifted her hand and pressed her palm against a mirror.
“You’re not reading all of my memories,” she said softly.
Light flickered between her brows. A blue-gold, tree-shaped sigil condensed, bright and ancient.
Emerald radiance spilled from her palm, rippling like water.
Green shoots surfaced on the mirror’s surface. They burst into growth, turning in the blink of an eye into dense, slender vines that wrapped the entire pane.
For the first time, the mirror answered back.
Crack.
A crisp fracture split the glass, followed by a grinding snap as the vines tightened.
The mirror didn’t merely shatter.
It was eaten alive.
Color returned to Shao Heng’s cheeks. Her weary spirit felt as if it had been soaked in warm spring water, easing in an instant.
Shao Heng had weighed it again and again. In the end, there was only one power on her body that could truly threaten this inheritance ground.
The Azure Emperor divine ability.
It should have belonged only to cultivators of the Fourth Realm and above—a power separate from immortal arts and methods, unpredictable beyond measure.
After all that seclusion, how could she have gained nothing?
“I wasn’t wrong,” Shao Heng said, gaze sharpening. “From the start, you were targeting me.”
The jade token’s notes on the Ling Long Illusion Realm spoke of temptations and horrors. Even if you were trapped in stories acted out by false people, as long as you held your will and remembered yourself, you could break free.
But it hadn’t been like that for her.
Every time she resisted, she was suppressed.
Every time she broke an illusion, it came with blood and death.
“In those seventy-two layers, the deeper I went, the more miserable the role I played. Even when I fought back, the fakes dragged me toward death—and every death felt completely real.”
She remembered each one. The breath jammed in her throat. The soul-deep pain after the brief haze. The weightless drift as her awareness left her body.
“You wanted to torture me,” she said. “To break me.”
Blue light erupted beneath her feet. For a heartbeat, she seemed less like a girl and more like a young tree standing straight against the wind.
Countless strands of green vine shot out in every direction, wrapping each mirror tight and crushing them one by one.
“You have no idea,” Shao Heng went on, voice steady. “My Azure Emperor divine ability already has a third transformation.”
She smiled, thin and cold. “And I owe that to you—for forcing me to face death again and again.”
Silence.
The voice didn’t answer.
But Shao Heng didn’t need it to.
It had panicked. She could feel it.
And she knew it was still here.
That was enough.
The mirrors were crushed to ash beneath the writhing vines. The sharp sound of breaking rose in waves, one after another without end.
At once, a powerful force descended, trying to drive her out.
The world vanished.
Shao Heng blinked—and found herself standing on the moon, on the uneven gray-white surface of the Tai Yin star fragment.
The air was thin. Breathing felt heavy.
With spiritual power in her meridians, she could endure. Holding her breath would work too.
She scanned the ground and spotted it: a splendid moon palace.
Without doubt, it was the physical manifestation of Ling Jiang’s inheritance.
Being forced out didn’t anger her.
She only smiled.
Lies could hurt. But truth was the real blade.
She had thought that no matter what she did or said, the Inheritance Spirit would declare her third trial a failure and throw her away.
Instead, it had panicked into a foolish move.
It brimmed with malice toward her, yet it hadn’t tried to kill her. It was likely restrained by the rules of the Mystic Moon Secret Realm. From the start, she had known Ling Jiang never successfully refined the Tai Yin star fragment. Instead, it had formed this independent little world.
She was still here because green vine threads were already burrowed into the moon palace, anchoring her to the bright moon with invisible lines.
“If I can’t have it,” Shao Heng murmured, eyes darkening, “no one can.”
“I’ll destroy it before I leave it to you.”
She stretched out her right hand.
Blue-green threads flew from her palm, coiling toward the palace. Wherever they touched, they rooted. Then they grew—wildly, hungrily—crawling across white jade, sinking into seams, spreading like rot.
Those vines were all offshoots of the Azure Emperor source sigil.
Wave after wave of surging power poured back into Shao Heng’s body. Her face flushed as the yellow sprout in her qi sea swelled and grew. The number of furnaces it could hold climbed without stopping.
She couldn’t burn the influx fast enough.
If it kept rising, even her wide and tough meridians would fail. She felt herself swelling as if packed full from the inside, skin tight, body heavy.
If she didn’t stop, in another seven or eight minutes she would burst and shatter her foundation.
“Do I have to stop?” Shao Heng stared at the moon palace, barely corroded, unwillingness burning bright.
Then an enormous pull rose from her qi sea.
The Gray Cocoon woke.
Like a starving beast that had never known satisfaction, it devoured every unclaimed trace of power flooding her meridians. For the first time, it sent her a clear intention.
Continue.
It wanted more.
Shao Heng’s breath caught with sudden joy.
The blue-gold sigil between her brows flared.
She dropped to one knee and pressed both palms to the gray-white surface. Countless green vines spread outward, veins of living hunger across the moon’s skin.
The Gray Cocoon trembled, centered in her qi sea. An invisible wave rolled through her body, strengthening her divine ability in an instant.
During her seclusion in the secret realm, Shao Heng had studied the first and second transformations of Azure Emperor again and again. They represented two states—life and death—clearly divided.
But life and death were never separate.
They were linked.
She had always been one step short of understanding—until she lived through death again and again in the illusion. Each death had been painfully real. Each time she’d had to use death to shatter the dream.
And still, she had never backed down.
Now the third transformation finally emerged.
Life and death formed an unbreakable cycle. The decay of the old signaled the birth of the new. Between them, there was a thread—an escape.
Strive for Freedom.
In Azure Emperor—Strive for Freedom, the Azure Emperor source sigil split into countless child sigils—those blue-green vine threads.
Once they latched on, they dismantled and devoured everything, whether living or dead, returning it all to the source sigil as nourishment.
If the Gray Cocoon wanted it, Shao Heng would give it.
This moon palace—
Even the bright moon formed from the Tai Yin star fragment—
She wanted it all.
All of it for it.