The resurgence of ashes —
Previously, this adjective was mostly heard about, not witnessed firsthand. But now, they truly saw it unfold.
The turning point occurred the moment they beheld the blooming black lotus.
As the great ancestors, immortal venerables, and powerful beings of the immortal cultivation world fell one by one, as the Supreme Mansion and major immortal sects fought to the death, as the Twenty-Eight Heavens flowed with blood, and as the Spirit Realm, Demon Realm, and Human Realm wailed in agony...
It was as if, on the brink of death, they saw the Three-Path River of the Underworld. Upon that winding, dark, gleaming river, bloomed clusters of black crystal lotuses.
The combatants in their life-and-death struggle were captivated by the sudden, strange sight, their souls drawn away. In an instant, as if a pause button had been pressed, they all stared at the scene, stunned.
The black ice crystal lotuses were lifelike, yet belonged to no earthly hue. Even their shapes were vastly different from ordinary lotuses. Only their layered petals possessed the noble elegance, the mysterious beauty of lotuses.
They grew from the river, but rootless vines spread across the air, forming a path of lotuses. A wind, from an unknown source, blew, and the black crystals turned into stardust, dazzling the eyes.
In that fleeting moment of everyone's distraction, the black river surged and churned, its waters parting. Something like a dense, tangled forest writhed and crawled strangely from within.
Upon closer inspection, amidst the lightly drifting, black crystal ash and dust, as if in boiling soup, the glaring white, slender, bony forms... revealed countless crawling skeletal remains.
"Underworld... Underworld dead... spirits!"
A person exclaimed at the top of their lungs.
"Underworld?! Impossible!"
Several sect leaders, who knew of the Underworld's disappearance, expressed disbelief.
"Shut up! Can't you see with your own eyes? If these aren't the dead, then this old Taoist will be consumed by inner demons and his dao heart will be shattered!"
A long-renowned immortal venerable roared in anger.
"But... but the Underworld disappeared long ago. How can its spirits suddenly appear at this time..."
"Compared to that, their purpose for appearing is the most important thing."
At this, everyone looked on in surprise again. The black lotuses, swaying in the wind's path, melted into black crystal dust, ethereal and dreamlike, covering the bodies of the dead like asphalt.
Those bony, sharp, and cold bodies gradually filled out, eventually transforming into black armor that clad them from head to toe.
In the blink of an eye, they had transformed from pale, skeletal spirits into an invincible legion of the dead.
The blackness that appeared out of nowhere spread like a disaster, across mountain paths, deserts, undulating across towering peaks, and amidst the waves of the black sea. The sheer numbers made one's scalp tingle. An army without end instantly engulfed all the land within sight.
"The Underworld and the Spirit Realm cannot connect. Why would they appear..."
"The Spirit Realm lost its strength to resist entry from other realms long ago. The Demon God intended to annex this small world, causing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to be almost depleted. You and I, now at the end of our strength, are nothing more than fish on a chopping block for these dark creatures."
With demonic beasts sent by the Demon God before them and the legion of the dead from the Underworld behind, what could the cultivators caught in between do but smile bitterly, resign themselves, and fall into despair?
"Perhaps... perhaps these spirits from the Underworld are here to help us?"
Someone suddenly said hesitantly, voicing a different opinion from the others.
But everyone else dismissed his thought as wishful thinking.
The sinister and the evil were always birds of a feather, colluding with each other. If they didn't consort with demons, would they then help them, these righteous guardians who slew monsters and eliminated demons?
Especially for the ordinary cultivators who had no idea what these suddenly appearing beings were. Based on their decades, or even centuries, of experience, they knew nothing of creatures from the Underworld.
However, the pervasive, chilling aura of death surrounding them was enough to confirm the appearance of supremely evil and yin entities.
They could no longer hope for anything good.
Their most humble and minute wish now was to have their bodies intact to be retrieved by their sect.
But even this wish seemed unlikely to be fulfilled.
At this moment, not only had various parts of the cultivation world connected to the Three-Path River of the Underworld, but the Demon Realm and the Human Realm, the entire Twenty-Eight Heavens, were all experiencing this overwhelming spectacle.
*Crack—*
The sharp, piercing sound of swords being drawn echoed, coalescing into an aura of iron and blood.
In all realms and heavens, at all disaster-stricken areas and massacre sites, the chilling light emanating from the iron armor struck fear into their hearts. The cold wind from the Underworld was far more chilling and bone-piercing than the northern wind; it was a coldness that threatened to freeze one's very soul into ice.
Everyone shivered, even the demonic beasts could not avoid it. They instinctively sensed a terrifying threat.
Yet, the deathly aura drifting from the Underworld to the Human Realm was an aura that all sinister beings both craved and feared.
*Roar—*
Those demonic creatures, transformed by demonic essence into various fierce and dangerous beings, were supposed to obey the Demon God's command to harvest life. However, upon the appearance of the undead army, they began to act erratically.
Finally, under an inexplicable impulse and extreme tension, their scales bristled, their manes stood on end, their beastly eyes turned red. They abandoned their prey and, with ferocious roars, charged towards the netherworld legions.
A vast shadow in the sky crashed down, and a giant, three-clawed paw slammed into and flattened an undead army.
But in the next instant, more undead leaped onto it, swarming it like countless ants, devouring the "elephant" and finally gnawing it clean.
The scene erupted into immediate conflict. Silent screams filled the air, and immense energy spread like overturned seas. Both sides were in full-scale war.
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On the other side, a demonic horned flood dragon batted away a skeletal armored soldier with its agile, sharp tail. But the scattered soldier reassembled into a new skeleton, its black armor reforming, endlessly repeating, impossible to kill.
The cultivators were all dumbfounded.
They had been the ones being slaughtered and brutalized. But now, their enemies were being perfectly annihilated by another force, utterly unable to retaliate.
As long as the Three-Path River existed, they were immortal and indestructible, regenerating repeatedly.
The demonic creatures and beasts surrounded by mountains, or rather, seas of corpses, were now all enraged, unable to break free or be killed. They were like insects trapped in a jar, being gnawed into nutrients by the even more ferocious, tiny venomous creatures within.
At first, the cultivators were overjoyed, their excitement beyond words.
"Look, they're killing each other! Hahaha..."
"Wait, after they kill these demonic beasts, will they come for us?"
Some were so frightened they stammered, wanting to flee but afraid of causing a disturbance and alerting the netherworld armies who were toying with the demonic beasts like prey.
"It will take them a long time to kill all of them. The best outcome would be both sides suffering heavy losses."
"The Underworld... has appeared... Does this mean the dead will finally have a place to belong?"
Some Nascent Soul cultivators, nearing the end of their lifespan, knew certain things from their experiences, but kept it secret to avoid panic.
Without the Underworld, upon death, there was no reincarnation. Legends said that whether human, immortal, demon, or beast, after death, they would be guided by Netherworld Ferrymen into the Underworld, crossing fields of Styx flowers, traversing the Three-Path River, and entering the Underworld.
In the Underworld, all actions performed during one's life would be recorded in a "ledger." Sinners would be punished according to the rules of the Underworld, cast into the eighteen layers of Avici Hell. The virtuous would be rewarded and reincarnated, their destinies determined by fate.
No one could escape it. Therefore, the Underworld, in many people's minds, was a place of both fear and hope.
They feared death, yet yearned for rebirth.
The Demon God and His subordinates shared a connection. When the Three-Path River of the Underworld appeared in the mortal world, He naturally knew of it.
However, at this moment, He was too occupied to concern Himself with other matters, for a scene of astonishment and surprise had also appeared before Him.
A deep vortex opened in the vast sky, its surging energy churning violently. An even more sinister deathly aura than that of demons coalesced into a spatial anomaly, with dark thunder roaring, black lightning flashing, and blizzards raging.
The overwhelming aura of ferocity and destruction within was enough to suffocate and terrify.
Then, within the vortex, all things began to grow. A black, winding lotus descended, forming a spiral staircase. Within the staircase, a black gate appeared, indescribable in words.
It seemed to possess the power to rebuke the chilling wind and frighten the cries of ghosts. Where it passed, the sun and moon lost their light, and only pure darkness existed.
And as it slowly opened, this space seemed to plunge from the mortal world into the abyss.
The sunlight in the sky was completely stripped of its power, and the world seemed to fall into eternal night. All dead things were purely black, while the living beings standing there could faintly emanate a glow of life.
An immeasurable deathly aura pervaded the surroundings. The Demon God's fragmented body, having seized the life force of countless beings, had begun to take shape.
He regarded everyone present as sustenance. His demonic energy surged, drawing the life force from these cultivators. But at the last moment, they were all incinerated by the ink-blue flames shot from the gate, severing His absorption.
What kind of flame was this, capable of burning away his demonic energy?!
The Demon God found it unbelievable.
But a moment later, something even more unbelievable happened.
Who?
From within the gate, a woman in a black robe and red cloak slowly stepped out.
But merely the fact that she could walk out of that black gate indicated that everything had deviated from the ordinary course. It was heading in a direction no one had anticipated.
Her ankle-length hair, swaying without wind, fell like smooth silk. But as she walked, the rhythm of its movement made her black hair as brilliant and mysterious as a galaxy.
She wore a crown, and her elaborately embroidered royal robe was black and solemn. The red cloak danced with the wind. Though she stood alone, behind her, the gate was shrouded in swirling ink-black mist. The solidified black fog resembled an unknown, vast heaven and earth, capable of engulfing this space in the next moment.
*Thump!*
*Thump-thump!*
The survivors of Fengdu City, still reeling from their brush with death, were already stunned by the person before the gate above.
They were unsure if their eyes were deceiving them.