“Your Excellencies, are the provisions unsatisfactory? We shall withdraw them immediately and prepare another banquet.”
Seeing the two divine beings remain unmoved, their expressions grave, the elder patriarch asked with utmost trepidation, fearing he had failed to entertain them adequately and thus offended the gods.
“No, we are simply not hungry. You know, we are deities, we do not require sustenance.”
“Ah, indeed, indeed. It was my oversight. For deities to partake in our mortal fare would be blasphemy.”
This statement caused Wan Lei’s eyebrows to twitch, and Fang Xiaoyu’s lips curved into a knowing smile.
“Then… what about the Holy Divine Beasts? We can prepare some holy beast meat to offer to the Holy Divine Beasts.”
The elder patriarch then looked towards Gouzi.
“The Holy Divine Beast does not consume its own kind. No need to trouble yourselves. Elder Patriarch, we are here to ask if you know of any method to leave this place.”
“Leave?”
The elder patriarch gave a bitter smile.
“Replying to the deities, this place is only for entering, never for exiting. I have never heard of anyone who entered being able to leave.
We are all dead people, and to have a resting place after death is already more than we could ask for.
Moreover, compared to the outside, whether it be the Tian Duan Mountain Range or the Great Plains, the environment here is much better. We live very happily here; no one wishes to leave.
Furthermore, for those who have already passed away to return to the living world, wouldn’t that frighten others? The order would be disrupted.
The living should live well, and the departed should not cause them trouble.”
The elder patriarch spoke at length, seemingly hinting at something more.
“Is there truly no way to leave this place?”
Wan Lei frowned and sighed heavily.
“Perhaps, you could tell me how you entered, and we can try to deduce a way out.
If… if it’s convenient, could you also tell us about the situation outside? We are all very concerned about our tribe.”
Wan Lei scanned the surrounding people. They all looked at him with expectant and eager faces, especially Deng Yan Da Ha, who had sacrificed himself to protect the tribe. No one wished more than he for the tribe he had died protecting to continue to survive well.
“Ah, you speak of the tribe. Da Ha should have told you earlier, but he died in that battle. Afterward, I defeated the Lord of Nanmu, and the tribe achieved victory. Then, we encountered two large tribes, and we defeated them as well, growing stronger.
Until finally, I contacted several other large tribes and people from beyond the heavens, and we fought a decisive battle against the enemy…”
When Wan Lei recounted how Liu Qinglin had sacrificed millions of beast-taming tribesmen to cultivate an evil technique, everyone present was filled with righteous indignation, their teeth gritted.
When Wan Lei finished by saying they had defeated the enemy and successfully entered the Great Wall, these people finally breathed a sigh of relief and became overjoyed.
“At that time, I saw the Fate Governing Diagram. I felt that the beast-taming tribe could not continue to be enslaved like this; they had the right to live freely and peacefully.
So, we went to negotiate with that Grand Tutor, but he refused, saying that if we were unwilling to live in the Qian Kingdom, we could go back to the grasslands.
We were indignant at the time and thought that if we destroyed this Fate Governing Diagram, the grassland people would be free.
But who would have thought that as soon as we flew close, we would be sucked in.”
“Alas, your Excellencies, why have you gone through such trouble? For us, the beast-taming tribe, you have sacrificed too much. Now you are trapped with us, the ghosts. Alas, how can we ever repay such great kindness?”
“So, you should quickly think of a way to let us out.”
“This… Your Excellencies, the information you have provided is… too little. Like you, we have only lived in this small corner of the world. We only understand this place, and indeed, we have never left.”
“Little information?”
Wan Lei, with a headache, tapped his temples. Suddenly, he raised his head.
“That’s right, when we first entered, we weren’t here.”
“Not here?”
The elder patriarch was startled.
“Yes, we were above, where there were many spirits like yourselves, but there was nothing else. They seemed to have no desires, not even the will to survive. I wanted to kill them, but they didn’t resist at all. Honestly, this is the first time I’ve encountered such desireless ghosts…”
Wan Lei stopped speaking at this point, looking at the people around him in astonishment.
They were all staring at him, their eyes filled with undisguised greed and yearning, as if they wanted to devour him alive.
“Hmph.”
Wan Lei’s expression turned grim. He let out a cold snort, and his cultivation pressure instantly erupted.
The people were hit by the pressure, their faces turning ashen. In an instant, they sobered up.
“We apologize. Your Excellencies, please forgive our presumption. We lost our composure just now.”
The elder patriarch and the others all knelt down, but the burning fervor in their eyes did not diminish in the slightest.
“Do you know that place?”
“We do.”
“Speak.”
“That place is… the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss.”
“The Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss?”
Wan Lei and Fang Xiaoyu frowned in unison.
“Stand up and explain yourselves clearly. Tell us everything you know.”
“As you command.”
The elder patriarch stood up, his gaze still burning as he looked at Wan Lei.
“Replying to Your Excellencies, the Fate Governing Diagram has a spirit. For now, let us consider it a powerful magical artifact.
That spirit, within this diagram world, is an existence of supreme authority, comparable to deities, a true deity whose words are law.
The entire Fate Governing Diagram world is manipulated by it, and every year, it randomly selects a portion of people to leave this world of suffering and enter the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss.
The spirit says that desire is the original sin.
There, people have no desires. Even the most basic seven deadly sins – pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust – all disappear.
There, people enjoy bliss, there is no conflict, no fighting, people do not need to eat to survive, and they live in eternal bliss.
This is a world that every ghost within the Fate Governing Diagram yearns to enter. Once one enters there, they attain great freedom and become eternally immortal within the Fate Governing Diagram.”
“Immortality is a lie. I just killed a large group of them with a single palm strike.”
Wan Lei scoffed.
“But, Your Excellencies, in that place, people have no desire to fight, so how would they kill anyone?”
That also made sense.
Wan Lei and Fang Xiaoyu both let out cold smiles.
“But, have you ever considered that in that place, there is nothing, and people do nothing? There is no exciting life, no familial love, friendship, or romantic love. Without even the most basic desire to survive, living day by day like walking corpses, what is the meaning of life?”
“But, Your Excellencies, we are already dead people.”
The elder patriarch remained completely unmoved.