Chapter Ninety-Two: The Change in Circumstances

The sea water flowing through Tear Merfolk Hill had long since been driven into chaos by those forces, and even Tear Merfolk Hill itself trembled now and then from the overflow of power.

Bang, bang, bang.

The sounds of fists were like thunder.

Gold light flashed in streaks, and afterimages drifted and overlapped. The crisscrossing ravines gouged into the ground by darting toes, and the deep fist-marks sunk into the cliff face of Tear Merfolk Hill, all testified to the horror of this battle.

"He's probably no match for these people either," Su Bufan said slowly to Ao Ning beside him.

He had seen no sign of the golden cords binding Ao Ning loosening in the slightest, which meant the owner of that magic treasure was still alive.

"A battle of this level is not one we can take part in," Ao Ning said, looking up at Su Bufan.

She knew what her husband was thinking. He was not thinking of fleeing, but of how to help the one who had helped them.

And yet in a battle of this magnitude, even standing at the edge of it made her heart quiver with fear.

Su Bufan let out a soft sigh.

Thud.

A flash of gold light streaked past, and Tear Merfolk Hill shook once more as the sea boiled in turbulence.

The surging seawater along the cliff face gradually settled, revealing a sunken mark shaped like a great character on the rock wall; within its depths, faint traces of gold could still be seen.

Su Yuanbai floated amid the seawater, his black eyes glancing calmly at the hollow in the wall.

His figure flickered.

He reappeared before the woman in the crane-red robe. This time Su Yuanbai did not pause at all; with five fingers together, the tip of his palm pierced straight through her chest.

"The golden radiance that rose over your skin just now was three hundred and sixty-five divine seals, sealing the three hundred and sixty-five acupoints in your body, preventing spiritual energy from entering your form and leaving you unable to wield the myriad arts, forced to rely on these fists and feet alone.

These divine seals are not something any god of the heavens can place. Each seal rune is different from the next, which means the heavenly gods who sealed you were more than one."

The woman in the crane-red robe stood atop Tear Merfolk Hill, looking down at the human-shaped wooden puppet below. Before she could finish speaking, Su Yuanbai had already appeared before her again.

"Behind you surfaced the pattern of the Nine Netherworld Lotus, also a kind of restrictive seal. It bears traces of the ghosts and gods of the Nine Netherworld, and also the methods of the Western Pure Bliss Sect."

The woman in the crane-red robe began to fade away.

Su Yuanbai lowered his head. This time, what his palm pierced was not a human-shaped puppet, but the heartwood of a dead tree.

The woman in the crane-red robe slowly appeared again at the edge of the blood-red formation on Tear Merfolk Hill, and a hint of confusion rose in her calm dark-green eyes, while her pupils turned one black and one white.

One yin, one yang.

Yin and yang give birth to the Four Symbols; the Four Symbols evolve into the Eight Trigrams; the Eight Trigrams in turn generate the Sixteen Hexagrams; the Sixteen Hexagrams become the Sixty-Four Hexagrams; and at last they become two hundred and fifty-six hexagrams.

Yet after the two hundred and fifty-six hexagrams, the pattern abruptly becomes sixty-four hexagrams once more; the sixty-four become sixteen, the sixteen become eight, the eight become the Four Symbols, and the Four Symbols evolve into yin and yang.

Round and round it goes, containing within it all things under heaven.

"Unless someone is helping you, it would be impossible for you to retain your own thoughts under this divine-seal restraint, let alone move about as freely as you do now.

But did the one who did this never consider that you might become the greatest variable at the moment this heaven-and-earth calamity draws near?"

In the woman’s dark-green eyes, the hexagrams kept evolving. This time, without Su Yuanbai even making a move, her body suddenly turned into a heap of powder.

The powder scattered and was carried away by the seawater, vanishing without a trace.

"Could it be that someone wanted you to become, like the great variable from five thousand years ago, a divine sovereign meant to stop this heaven-and-earth calamity of erasing karma and resetting the cosmos?

Wait—is it meant to stop it, or hasten it?"

The figure of the woman in the crane-red robe appeared again and again along the blood array’s patterns on Tear Merfolk Hill. Looking out, they were almost all her phantoms. On closer inspection, the steps they took all followed the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams.

And the distance between them was exactly three zhang, six chi, and five cun, in accordance with the three hundred and sixty-five degrees of the heavens.

Pop.

The crisp sound of bubbles bursting rang out.

The many phantoms of the woman in the crane-red robe shattered one by one, and the blood array pattern on Tear Merfolk Hill had already changed once more, transforming into a blood-colored Eight Trigrams diagram.

The merfolk blood flowing along the crimson lines had dried.

"Then kill me," said the woman in the crane-red robe with a sigh, sitting cross-legged at the center of the blood-colored Eight Trigrams diagram and raising her eyes toward Su Yuanbai, who had stood atop Tear Merfolk Hill all this time.

Her dark-green eyes were now like shattered glass, filled with ghastly, jagged cracks, while her pupils had become a pale gray-white. She was already blind.

Su Yuanbai's black eyes looked down upon her, the figure reflected within his pupils swaying lightly, and then he appeared before her.

Pop.

This time it was no crisp burst of bubbles, but the tip of Su Yuanbai's palm, like a keen blade, plunging into her chest.

Blood flowed.

This time it was no longer a puppet or dead wood.

"Since I am the variable, then let my life make that variable even less controllable."

A faint smile suddenly surfaced on the woman’s impassive face. With her dark-green eyes, now fractured and gray-white, she looked at Su Yuanbai and spoke with quiet release.

Su Yuanbai withdrew his hand.

Warm blood from the woman’s chest splashed over Su Yuanbai in great sheets, and the blood mixed with the seawater did not disperse with the current.

Instead, it clung to him like maggots to bone, winding around his entire body.

That glaring crimson blood stuck to Su Yuanbai as though he wore a blood-red second skin. The scarlet blood seemed almost alive, forming a blood-colored Eight Trigrams pattern at the center of his chest, over his heart.

"With my vital essence, spirit, and soul; with my channels, acupoints, flesh, blood, skin, and bones, I form the shape of your seven souls," the woman in the crane-red robe said softly.

Her gradually cooling corpse began to dissolve like smoke and dust. The dissolving dust converged upon the blood-colored Eight Trigrams at Su Yuanbai's chest, and the blood-colored diagram sank into his body.

After a moment, apart from the crane-red robe, there was no trace left of that expressionless woman between heaven and earth.

Tear Merfolk Hill suddenly convulsed. Cracks appeared across the ground, and the splendid carpet, pearls, and the desiccated corpses of the merfolk all fell into those fissures.

From the deep ravines opened by the cracks, golden light drifted and swirled.

Boom.

The entire Tear Merfolk Mountain actually split into four. Blocks of rock tumbled down. Fortunately, seeing that something was wrong, Su Bufan had already taken Ao Ning far away from Tear Merfolk Mountain in advance, and they now floated in the seawater at a distance.

"Husband, who exactly are those human cultivators you brought here?" Ao Ning said dazedly, her red dragon eyes fixed on the golden phantom that emerged from the shattered Tear Merfolk Mountain.

Su Bufan’s breathing was heavy as he stared at the ten-zhang Vajra that had appeared from within the mountain. The Vajra’s face was solemn and commanding without anger, and in its hand it held a Vajra pestle.

This time, it was no monk’s wrathful gaze.

It was the descent of the Vajra itself.