Chapter 418

Chapter 418: The End

If Yu Zhi Yi could see through the stone ceiling above her, she would notice a Flying Sword hovering high in the air a hundred meters away. A young man in white stood on it with his hands behind his back; the wind snapped his robes, and his black hair streamed, revealing a face so fine it seemed carved. A small crimson mark glowed between his brows, alluring like a beauty mark, yet his expression was like an ancient glacier-cold and deadly.

He was the Grand Void Sect’s youngest Taishan Elder, Immortal Ling Yun. He built his Foundation at fifteen, reached Core Formation at twenty, and stepped into the Nascent Soul stage at thirty. Now more than a hundred years had passed, and no one knew how strong he had become. People only knew that after entering the Nascent Soul Realm, he almost never showed himself.

In this century, he had appeared three times.

The first was eighty years ago, when Demonic Beasts rioted. Thousands of high-rank Demonic Beasts surged out of the No Delusion Forest and attacked human cities. Human Cultivators fought back, but they lost again and again. With no choice, they begged the great sects’ supreme elders for help. Immortal Ling Yun answered the call; alone with one sword, he slew over a thousand Demonic Beasts. In the end, together with the other four Heaven’s Chosen, he drove the Demon King back into the No Delusion Forest.

The second time was eighteen years ago. The Heaven’s Chosen known as Immortal Maiden Tian Yin fell. Immortal Ling Yun hurried to the place of her fall, but he couldn’t even find a scrap of her robe. The Fiend Race had surrounded her. She fought alone against more than a thousand high-level Fiends. When she was about to lose, she chose to self-destruct and took hundreds of Fiends with her. Her own body left no bones behind.

This was the third time.

Speaking of that battle with the Demon Race eighty years ago, Immortal Maiden Tian Yin had been one of the same four Heaven’s Chosen. This was the third time-but this time had nothing to do with her.

It began when the Grand Void Sect’s Elder Qing Feng was killed in the mortal world. There was no Fiend Race aura at the scene, but Immortal Qing Feng’s corpse was ruined beyond belief. A supreme elder of the Grand Void Sect happened to pass by and judged the killer to be a Fiend.

Since Tian Yin’s death eighteen years ago, the Heavenly Secret Sect and the Grand Void Sect had worked together to purge the Fiend Race, until all the ones out in the open were wiped out. For eighteen years, no Fiend dared appear. Now the Fiend Race had returned, and fear spread through the Hidden Realm. The two declining sects spoke at the same time: any Fiend found would be killed on sight. Immortal Ling Yun even ended his seclusion early to personally investigate Elder Qing Feng’s death.

Yu Zhi Yi knew none of this. She only knew her gut was never wrong: [There’s danger here that I can’t sense.]

She stopped breathing.

Experts at the Golden Core Realm no longer needed breath to stay alive. Some in closed-door cultivation could go decades-or even a century-without a single rise of the chest. But all Cultivators came from ordinary people, and the habit of breathing stuck, so unless there was a special need, few would hold their breath on purpose. Besides, breathing was one way to tell a living person from certain foul things that didn’t breathe at all.

Yu Zhi Yi balanced in a one-legged “golden rooster” stance and held it for three full days. That creepy, hair-raising feeling had faded for a while, but she didn’t dare relax. Sure enough, half a day later, the feeling returned. It lasted a little more than two hours, then finally vanished.

From an angle Yu Zhi Yi couldn’t see, Immortal Ling Yun had stood above the cave for four hours, sweeping his Divine Sense across every direction, even the ground several hundred meters below his feet. At his level, even if neither eyes nor Divine Sense found anything, if a clue existed nearby, he would feel it. A faint guess tugged at his heart: the clue was close. It was even possible that the one who killed Elder Qing Feng was near.

Yet he scanned every inch within his range and found nothing.

He had, of course, considered an array.

But eighteen years earlier, when he joined with the Heavenly Secret Sect, they had nearly destroyed the Fiend Race’s base, including their Library Pavilion. What useful treasures could the Fiend Race have kept there? He’d burned the Library Pavilion to the ground. It was possible a few storage rings still held manuals, but everyone knew those brutes never liked brainwork-except for one of them…

That one had been different from the Fiends who liked robbing, killing, even gnawing Cultivators’ flesh to raise their Cultivation Base. He preferred studying arrays-and he had real talent. With his advanced formations, he had almost escaped the two sects’ siege eighteen years ago. Immortal Ling Yun was certain that one was dead. They had seized his ring, and all the forbidden books inside were burned to ash.

Thinking this, Immortal Ling Yun finally stopped wasting time on this patch of land. In truth, even a genius like him could be wrong about a feeling. For example, eighteen years ago, he felt Immortal Maiden Tian Yin had already reincarnated-but when he rushed to that place, there was no sign of her.

He shook his head. With a light step, his Flying Sword turned to a stream of light and shot into the far mountains.

Holding the golden-rooster stance for so long tested the body, but Yu Zhi Yi was already in the Golden Core Realm. Even though she didn’t train her body specially, her physique was far beyond a normal person’s. Aside from a bit of muscle tightness, she felt no other discomfort. Still, nerves pulled taut for so long left her mind tired. She didn’t know what the danger was, but she was sure of one thing: [If I hadn’t hidden my tracks, I would have faced certain doom.]

After resting in the cave for half a day, Yu Zhi Yi carefully spread out her Divine Sense, inch by inch probing the area. Only after confirming there were no traces of anyone passing did she leave the cave. As for the illusion outside the entrance, she hesitated, then decided to leave it in place. This was an old senior’s place of sitting in death-a tomb. Better to keep people from disturbing it, if possible.

She cast her divination sixteen times, then set off in one chosen direction. Luckily, it also pointed west, so she wasn’t going against her larger goal. The road that followed held thrills but no real danger. Maybe her arrangements had worked, or maybe the Gao Clan never found that spot and thus couldn’t use it as a center to spread their search. Either way, she met no living soul along the way.

Yu Zhi Yi walked three more days and finally saw the end of the mountains. Before she could breathe out in relief, a pleasant girl’s voice rang out: “What are you doing!? Are you crazy?” A boy’s voice snapped back: “You’re the crazy one, shut up!” At the same time came the rush of wind and the howl of a beast. Yu Zhi Yi lifted her eyes and saw a wolf lunging straight at her.