Chapitre 299: Chapter 299: [Sisheng Peak] Life Is Hard to Stop
Looking at Chu Wanning's pale face, Shi Mei laughed maniacally and said, "Yes, my father ate my mother alive. Living… I was nearby at the time. Hearing her cry, I ran over. I didn't know what had happened, so I anxiously knocked on the door. I asked mother what had happened… No one answered me. She's been screaming from the other side of the door."
His thin lips parted, and he said, "The door opened."
Dead silence.
It was probably the same as the deathly stillness when the door was opened.
His father's mouth was full of blood. His arms tore at his mangled mother.
He was like a child whose spirit soul had been split apart.
Nine years old.
His father had already gone mad. The flesh and blood of the Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feast Clan could nourish a person's cultivation base. Since he was on the verge of death, she should repay him!
Even this evil creature in front of him! A vile creature that would make him suffer a retribution! Evil child!
He held out his sticky hand to the child, who was cold to the point of not being able to say a word. His eyes were wild and twisted.
At that moment, Shi Mei didn't even have the time to react. He stared blankly at the scene in front of him. There was neither grief nor fear in his eyes. It was as if he had been sucked dry, leaving an empty shell poking into the ground.
The man's hand moved closer and closer, and a drop of warm blood fell on his cheek, like a tear mark.
He raised his head and stared blankly at this unfamiliar wraith.
"Father…?"
"Run!" Behind him, Hua Gui's piercing scream pierced through the clouds, "A-Nan, run!"
One of her arms was torn off by the blade, the tendons and bones of her legs were broken, and the woman was crazily squirming on the ground like a maggot.
"Run! Run! Don't look back! Don't come back! AHHH!"
In response, the man suddenly turned around and stomped his foot hard on her face.
Hua Gui tilted her head, a golden tear trickling down from the corner of her eye.
She tried her best to say, "Run…"
Kacha.
Her throat was broken…
Run, she said.
Every day, since then, Shi Mei has been running. Every hour, every day, every night, as he would run crazily out of the Tianyin Pavilion and into the vast mountains. If he didn't run, he would not be able to take it any longer and would collapse.
He collapsed.
No matter where he fled to, no matter how many years had passed, he could hear his mother's shrill, terrible scream: "Run! Run!"
He ran from the depths of the alley into the vast wilderness, through the golden waves of wheat, from the depths of darkness to the arrow of dawn ripping through the universe, the world a soft crimson.
Like blood.
Blood oozing out of his body, slowly dripping from the corner of his mouth.
"Ah… AHHH!"
His shoes had long since fallen off, his feet were worn and rotten, the gravel had sunk in, and the blood was bubbling.
Golden tears finally ran down his cheeks. He ran like a cornered beast through the decaying grass and reeds, cutting his legs and feet.
He didn't dare to stop. He didn't dare to see which way was right. He could only try to run towards the nearest one. He didn't dare to stop. He would die. If you stop, you will die.
He did not stop.
In the blink of an eye, more than ten years had passed.
They will die. The Butterfly-Boned Beauty race will die if they don't go home.
"I was picked up by Sect Leader Xue later on… At that time, the Tianyin Pavilion master was searching for my whereabouts. I didn't dare to speak the truth, nor did I dare to cry. He asked me where I came from, where my parents were, and I lied to him… After that, he brought me back to the Sisheng Peak… A few years later, a Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feast Clan member who was saved by my mother finally managed to find me. She had always been a disciple of the Tianyin Pavilion, and in order to not be suspected by others, she personally destroyed her own face when she entered the pavilion… She escaped my father's eyes and gave me all my mother's things."
"According to the records that my mother had collected over the years, there is a thick basket of books on the Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feast's name, buds of Eight-Sufferings-Long-Hatred Flowers, and on the method to open the doors to the Demon World that she once researched."
Chu Wanning closed his eyes slowly, "… So you took the path she wanted to take, and did what she was going to do."
"Yes. I would continue cultivating the path of the Medical Sect. In order to not arouse the Sect Leader's suspicions, all those years I ventured out of the mountains using my full name, Hua Binan."
"Hua Binan's reputation was getting higher and higher. It was so high that even Jiang Xi noticed me. He extended his hand towards me — and I did the same thing as my mother all those years ago. Even though this sect once treated Beauties as animals, even though it had been wary of my mother for a long time, in order to have a place in the cultivation world as soon as possible, and to get everything I needed to go back home, I promised myself. From then on, there will be two identities, the disciple at the Sisheng Peak, and Guyue'ye's alchemist." Shi Mei paused for a moment before continuing. "Later on, the Pavilion Master of the Tianyin Pavilion died and Elder Sister Mu took over his position. She had been constantly searching for the culprit who had killed her foster mother… In the beginning, I didn't dare to trust anyone anymore, but after a few attempts, I finally decided to meet her at the Tianyin Pavilion and told her the whole story."
Speaking to this point, Shi Mei smiled, although his eyes were still cold: "As Shizun has seen… I didn't make a mistake, she's on my side."
"…"
"Although she is not a Butterfly-Boned Beauty, she views my mother as her birth mother and her race as her own. She's been helping me all these years."
Helping Hua Binan. Helping Shi Mei.
Helping her half-brother.
When Shi Mei finished, he put the broken pieces away and returned the mirror back to the Qiankun bag.
The rain outside was like the souls of the Butterfly-Boned Beauties who had died in the past tens of thousands of years. There was probably Hua Gui there too, as well as his mother. He was screaming, "Run! Run… run! Don't stop, don't look back."
"There is no way out." In the end, Shi Mei rubbed his face with exhaustion and said in a hoarse voice, "Shizun, we have no way out. Whether we destroy the humans or us, that is the only choice. I can't choose the latter."
It was like the end of the world. It was like a bayonet or lightning splitting through the air.
The sound of rapid rain, the sound of thousands of horses galloping, the glossy leaves soaking in the ground, all in the bright, dazzling light.
Suddenly, the door opened with a bang, and a strong wind wrapped around the rainstorm.
The pale-white lightning illuminated the two people who had turned around in the hall. Mu Yanli was standing in front of the doorstep. She did not hold an umbrella, and her entire body was soaked through. Her eyes appeared extremely messy.
"Nan, we still need the last 30 pieces of Zhenlong Chess before we reach the entrance of the Devil Realm."
Before she could finish speaking, Shi Mei suddenly stood up, and his fingertips trembled uncontrollably: "Where's Taxian-Jun? Thirty pieces of Zhenlong Chess is but a split-second to him, almost allowing him to complete them all and then…" At this point, he suddenly stopped.
When Mu Yanli entered the room, Chu Wanning could see that other than joy, there was also terror on her face. "I don't know what happened to Taxian-Jun, but he suddenly fainted. And his heart is also…"
"What?"
"It's also extremely unstable. The spiritual core is collapsing, as though it will never wake up again—"
Shi Mei suddenly became angry: "Impossible! That's his own spirit core. I have concocted it over a thousand times, how could it suddenly collapse?"
He stopped.
Suddenly, as if he had seen a ghost, he turned his head with a pale face, and turned towards Chu Wanning, who was on the bed with his hands and feet tied up.
"Could it be…" His lips trembled, opening and closing. "Could it be… You did it?"
The sound of the storm outside only made the room quieter. It was like a tomb, like a dark abyss. The light and shadow of the candlestick were like the silk of a banner, dancing in a hidden and mysterious manner.
In the dead silence, Chu Wanning closed his eyes and opened them.
"… Right. It was me."
A boom resounded, the thunder seemed as if it was going to shatter the clouds, causing the earth to shake and the mountains to shake. The rain poured down like a waterfall.
Shi Mei's heart trembled as he staggered a step forward.
"You… You can still…"
"Now that you've told me about you," Chu Wanning said in a low voice, "then let me tell you something about me too."
Shi Mei: "…"
"In my previous life, my spirit core was destroyed, and I only had the power of Jiuge left, I did not know about myself. That's why I was powerless to fight against Taxian-Jun." A golden light suddenly appeared on his wrist, and there was only a crisp metallic sound as the chains broke and the spirit talismans were set ablaze!
Chu Wanning stood up on his bed and raised his phoenix eyes.
"But on this life, the days when he placed me under house arrest were enough for me to bury the incantation deep in his heart." When he said those words, Chu Wanning's face was expressionless.
Grief, pain, pity, regret. Nothing. A deathly tranquility.
"The spell will continue to erode deeper and deeper, eventually causing his spirit to flow and his heart to stop beating. Your holy weapon will still be destroyed by me."
"…"
"… Sorry, Hua Binan. I can't let you go home."
Shi Mei couldn't have expected this turn of events. His face was whiter than jade and colder than ice. He stared at Chu Wanning in disbelief, his lips trembling.
"It's over." As Chu Wanning spoke, the light in his palms intensified.
"… You're crazy!" Shi Mei looked at that golden light and suddenly went crazy, his eyes filled with a wild beast's look, "You want to kill him?! You actually want to kill him… You have the heart— you have the heart!"
No one could see the emotion that flowed in his dark eyes. "I do," Chu Wanning replied.
"…"
The golden light grew brighter and brighter, but Chu Wanning's expression became uglier and uglier – even though he was only a broken branch of the Fire Emperor Wood, he still had a vague impression of many of the Divine Wood's spells. This included the "Tianwen Ten Thousands Coffins", which also originated from the vague outline in his brain.
He had thought it was a coincidence, but then he realized it wasn't.
As a God Wood himself, he had been left with many imprints by the Divine Wood. As long as he tried to recall, he would be able to recall many ancient secret arts, such as the Life and Death Gate. For example, the Corpse Splitting Art that he had used now for the first time.
——
The Corpse Splitting Art was related to the war between the gods and devils in the prehistoric era. According to legends, after that battle, the human race on the continent suffered a great number of casualties. Those who survived struggled in the sea of corpses soon became infected by an epidemic disease… At that time, Fuxi had wholeheartedly wanted to exterminate all of the demons, while Nuwa had fallen into a deep slumber due to his injuries. The only person left to save the world was Shennong.
Therefore, Shennong inserted a stalk of the Heavenly Flame Emperor Wood into the East Extreme Sea. There were thousands of branches and hundreds of millions of flowers and fruits growing in the depths of the abyss.
"Divine Wood, ten thousand coffins."
The moment he finished speaking, the roots of the Flame Emperor Divine Wood spread out from the bottom of the East Sea, covering the entire cultivation world in an instant! Those coarse or slender, rough or soft roots must be uprooted and silted.
"Slaughter the corpse and collect the coffins!"
The roots wrapped around the rotting corpses on the ground and turned them into ashes… The rotting corpses in the sky and earth had disappeared. Their ashes had turned into fertile ground, and fresh flowers had bloomed on it. The Flame Emperor Wood had accomplished the first thing it had done in the mortal world. After that, it had retracted hundreds of millions of its roots back to the Eastern Sea.
——
This was the oldest record of the Flame Emperor's Divine Wood in the annals of history.
Chu Wanning's eyes lit up by the bright brilliance in his hands.
This was the Divine Wood's spell. He would, because he was a part of the Flame Emperor's Divine Wood. Now that he had activated his technique, that person… Soon there would be nothing left.
Just a corpse.
Chu Wanning was in extreme pain as he thought, what… can't I bear.
"You… Chu Wanning, you…"
Shi Mei stared at him, anger and madness flashing through his eyes. His plans for two lifetimes were all here, and he could no longer remain calm.
"Stop right there!"
Hearing this voice, Chu Wanning raised his head and looked at him quietly, just like the rainy day many years ago when he saw a child standing under the roof of the school on the Sisheng Peak.
At that time, he never would have thought that Shi Mei's identity was actually the Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feast's seating area that he escaped from.
His initial impression of Shi Mei was entirely based on the words of others. He had heard that a new child had appeared at the Sisheng Peak. That child had always been diligent in his studies, but unfortunately, the Core was too weak to cast any spells. Moreover, because his talent was too poor, no elder was willing to accept him as a disciple. Even Xuanji had tactfully refused him after testing his spirit root.
That year, the rain dripped down from the black tile roof. The boy, who was like a lotus, helplessly looked up as he held a stack of thick books in his arms.
Chu Wanning was a little taken aback, "… It's you?"
He recognized the unsociable child and walked over to him with the oil-paper umbrella in his hand.
"Ah, Elder Yuheng." The little guy was startled and hurriedly bowed his head in salute, the books stacked to his chin causing him to stagger, "Greetings Elder."
"… It's so late, and you're still at the academy?"
"I… I had no choice. I needed to look at a lot of things, but I didn't have the time to finish reading them."
Chu Wanning lowered his eyes, his gaze landing on the < Legacy of the Medical Sect's Hundred Herbs Collection >.
Because of this, the child appeared a little embarrassed. "My aptitude is dull, I can only take a look at the content of the Medical Sect… I thought that Guyue'ye was better…"
Chu Wanning was a little confused, he frowned and said, "It's just a book, what's there to be nervous about?"
The child lowered his head even further. "I was wrong."
Hiu slim body kept its position low, making him look pitiful if he didn't want to attract attention. Chu Wanning could not help but recall the conversation between them.
"That Shi Mei is very obedient, but he doesn't have much talent. What a pity."
"In truth, he isn't suitable for cultivation. Sigh, even the Sect Leaders don't know what he is thinking. Why bother taking in someone with no intelligence to cultivate with? If you pity him, it would be good for him to go to Mengpo Hall and get a job of washing vegetables and cooking."
"However, he seems to be interested in the Medical Sect. Tanlang, are you not going to consider accepting him?"
Elder Tanlang said lazily: "He's too soft, I don't like him, I won't accept him."
A umbrella stretched forward, and raindrops fell like pearls onto the oiled paper.
The jade colored knuckles gripped the handle of the umbrella as the bones were still. Chu Wanning lightly said to the child, "Let's go, it's too late. I'll send you off."
A small white flower in full bloom was trembling on the eaves. Shi Mei was stunned for a moment. He first bowed, then hid in the shadow of the oil-paper umbrella.
In the slanting wind and drizzling rain, they disappeared into the distance.
Shi Mei's eyes were bloodshot, his entire body was taut like a broken bowstring, and he shouted angrily: "Chu Wanning! Why did you stop me?! At this point, what use is there for you to stop me?! What should be killed has already been killed, but it is only the last 30 lives! As long as 30 people died, so many of the Butterfly-Boned Clan would be able to live for over a thousand years! They can finally return to the Infernal domain. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?"
He was like a blind dragon with a broken claw. That face no longer had the gentle shadow of the past.
"Even if you were to destroy Taxian-Jun, the dead cultivators wouldn't be able to be revived. There is no hope in this mortal world either. You… You…"
Chu Wanning said, "Before the Heaven's Punishment arrives, it's impossible to save this mortal world by ending the Gate, but the other one can still be saved."
"I just want another thirty lives!"
"… Then there should be one less." Chu Wanning closed his eyes, the light in his palm instantly brightened to the extreme, "Tianwen, ten thousand people coffins!"
It was as if the god had bound the corpse. As he shouted, the sound of the earth could be heard from afar.
His palms suddenly closed!
In the far back of the mountain, the unconscious Taxian-Jun was already tightly bound by willow vines.
Shi Mei's lips turned white, and his pupils shrunk down to a small dot: "… Why are you… So ruthless…"
"…"
"Not giving us our last chance. To kill your own disciple. I just. I only want thirty lives…"
One was covered in corpses, while the other one was filled with the wind and rain. It was unknown what sort of changes would occur after the Demon Area was opened. Ever since the ancient demons began fighting with bloodlust, they had turned traitor and fought fiercely with Fuxi to expel them from the mortal world.
Chu Wanning was clear that this was not 30 lives…
Even if it was just thirty lives, who would deserve to die? Who should pave the way for the return journey of the Butterfly-Boned Beauty clan, and who should be sacrificed?
The golden light in his palm grew brighter, and it was reflected in Shi Mei's eyes. It seemed like the light was going to dig out his lungs. He was so angry that he wanted to move forward, but a barrier was raised in front of Chu Wanning.
He couldn't get through.
Without Taxian-Jun, Shi Mei was like a butcher who had lost his sharp blade, leaving behind only a pair of paws… Both he and Mu Yanli could not be a match for Chu Wanning.
In his despair, Shi Mei's eyes turned red as if they were about to bleed. What should he do? What should he do?! He…
Suddenly, he remembered something. This caused the butcher, who looked like he was facing a fierce beast, to stagger towards his backpack and pull out his last sharp weapon. He pointed the weapon at the man who was determined to ruin his life.
"Good, good. Shizun, you are ruthless. Let's do it."
"…"
"Make your move."
Chu Wanning didn't know why his attitude suddenly changed, but he suddenly put his hand on his forehead and laughed out loud. He then lowered his head to look at Chu Wanning's face, and bit into every word on his face, "You can do it, Shizun. Just cut him into pieces. In the worst case scenario, neither of us will get any benefits, and both of us will lose miserably!"
When Mu Yanli saw his crazed look, she could not help but feel a dull pain in her eyes. She whispered, "A-Nan…"
At this time, Shi Mei could no longer listen to her words. He held that kind of berserk energy which came from a battle beast on the verge of death, and said while baring his teeth:
"Kill him — kill him."
"…"
After spitting out the venom and blood, Shi Mei's dead black eyes were focused on Chu Wanning through his fingers. One word at a time.
"Along with the last wisp of his soul, that is infatuated with you!"
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone