Chapter 885: A Lamp in the God Trove

Chapter 885: A Lamp in the God Trove

Xu Qing’s life essence bluegreen dragon formed the heavenly dao of his first god trove. Being so familiar with it, it made the god trove very responsive, and also ensured that its natural and magical laws were the most complete.

His taboo poison formed his second god trove, and violet moon power made the third. Then he had the Emperor’s trove, plus one trove that had no spirit at all.

The ‘spirit’ was the heavenly dao. Without a dao in the trove, it would be very difficult to push it to the level of the great circle. In that case, the five troves couldn’t erupt volcanically, in which case the natural and magical laws couldn’t form spirit ash. Without the spirit ash, it wasn’t possible to form void soil, which in turn would make it impossible to effectuate the return of dao lineaments. [1]

That was why Xu Qing’s most important goal during the god domain phase of the Great Hunt, other than winning the title of Grand Darkheaven, was to acquire heavenly daos.

Up to this point, he had encountered quite a few living beings in the god domain that could have become heavenly daos. But for various reasons, he had rejected all of them.

Until now!

The three-headed six-armed statue with the moon mark emanated an aura that provoked a reaction from his third god trove. That was unprecedented, and it caused Xu Qing’s eyes to gleam!

A moment later, the Captain’s voice reached him. “Hurry up, little Junior Brother. Time’s ticking!”

The Captain’s voice was quickly caught up by the wind and scattered in all directions.

Xu Qing nodded. Looking away from the statue, he glanced around at the storm, and felt the sting of the infinitude of dust particles that it contained.

A moment later, he shot after the Captain.

When the Captain saw Xu Qing following him, he accelerated toward the mountain that was the emperor’s tomb.

The wind was getting stronger, filling the land and sky, obscuring vision and bringing about a sensation of wickedness and destruction. The statues were already fading from sight because of the darkness of the storm. Even the mountain was starting to get hard to see.

Thankfully, the Captain was thoroughly prepared, and knew exactly where he was going. As he got close to the mountain, he spat out a huge mouthful of blood. The word ‘huge’ was no exaggeration. In fact, it was so much blood that it contained more blood than existed in the body of an average human.

At the same time, he waved his right hand, gathering up the blood and using it like ink to paint on the rocky surface of the mountain. He drew something that resembled an arc. However, that wasn’t the end of it. He kept spitting out more and more blood, until he’d done it a total of seventeen times. As Xu Qing looked on, he used that blood to paint a complete circle!

Next, he began to sing a song that sounded more like weeping than singing.

“Alas, I mourn mine father; who caught ill and passed away.

“I know mine father well, and know his toil; he loved us and protected us each day.

“But he abandoned me and parted ways; drifting in the nether, hearing troubled and vision astray; I recognize him not, weeping to the core, love changed into dismay.”

His voice thrummed with grief and sorrow. The wind even seemed to have trouble carrying the words away.

Xu Qing felt moved by the lyrics. What was more, if it weren’t for the fact that the Captain turned around and winked excitedly, Xu Qing might have assumed that the emperor buried here was actually the Captain’s father.

As the Captain’s song reached a fever pitch, he shoved his right hand into his torso, ripped out his liver, and put it into the middle of the circle of blood.

His voice suddenly sounded more sorrowful.

“This filial sacrificial offering is for my father in the underworld; please sample it, lest all be lost. Amen!”

Considering how high Xu Qing’s cultivation base had climbed, this saber was anything but ordinary. It was no longer a projection.

The awakened statue shivered and lifted its remaining two arms like a weapon. At the same time, the three heads all opened their mouths and howled. Wild colors flashed in the air as the heavenly saber descended, slicing the ‘weapon’ apart. The arms shattered, and one of the heads crumbled!

The heavenly saber faded away.

The statue, meanwhile, was flung backward by about 300 meters. Its four remaining eyes let off streams of black smoke as they charged back toward Xu Qing, its four arms stretched out to grab him.

Xu Qing frowned. Without any hesitation, he shot backward and managed to enter the screen of light in the cave just before the statue arrived.

The statue closed in, and its four hands slammed into the shield. The shield trembled, but it kept the statue at bay.

The Captain was right. The shield of light really did keep dangers away. The statue stood just outside of it, glaring coldly at Xu Qing. Then, after a long moment passed, it returned to its spot and reverted to stone. That said, the portions where it sustained damage wouldn’t easily be restored.

Seeing that, Xu Qing didn’t wait for the Captain to say anything before striding back outside of the shield of light. There, he performed an incantation gesture and unleashed a torrent of divine abilities. The statue awoke again, and the fighting resumed.

Booms rang out and terrifying shockwaves spread. Xu Qing occasionally fell back and occasionally pressed the attack.

On the other side of the shield, the Captain watched. Though he was surprised, he now realized that Xu Qing wanted to use the shield of light as an area to seek refuge while he tried to wear down the statue.

He was inclined to remind Xu Qing that the statues here couldn’t be killed. He had done his own research into that, and knew that even if you managed to destroy one, it would cause other unexpected complications. But then he realized that if he explained that, it would likely diminish his prestige as the Eldest Brother. And prestige was extremely important.

Thus, he put a look of admiration onto his face and said, “I’ll help you, little Junior Brother!” With that, he rushed out and joined Xu Qing in trying to deal with the statue.

Just like before, the statue continued to sustain damage, and eventually the heavenly saber appeared. But this time, something different happened.

The heavenly dao was shaped like a saber, with the taboo poison of a god’s curse as the body of the blade, and daybreak light as the light of the blade! The Ghost Emperor mountain formed a decapitation altar, and D-132 became the trough! The golden crow connected them, and the violet moon was the seal! The timescape was the container, and it was driven by the sundial life lamps!

God Decapitation Altar!

As the executioner’s blade fell, it severed the final remaining head on the statue and caused the rest of its body to collapse. As the pieces fell to the ground, bits of moonlight erupted from within.

Struggling to control his breathing, Xu Qing opened his third god trove, sending out a force of attraction that grabbed the moonlight and sucked it in. All of a sudden, a lamp appeared in the darkness of the god trove!

***

On another part of this strange planet, on the other side of the mountain that was the emperor’s tomb, a person was beginning a very gruish and mysterious ceremony. The ceremony used a sun as its origin, a moon as its strength, and a star as the force of attraction. That was why there was a huge triangular totem on the ground.

Wild winds screamed around the totem, within the middle of which a person was seated cross-legged.

This person wore voluminous clothing that looked like it was tailored for a man. However, the wind caused the cloth to press tightly against what was obviously a very voluptuous form. Her features were exquisite, and featured skin as fair as snow. However, the facial expression that was visible contained coldness and murder.

This person was none other than Sir Firedark.

The ceremony being carried out caused glittering light to flash, not up into the sky, but down into the ground. It pierced through the planet and then connected to the emperor’s tomb.

In the blink of an eye, Sir Firedark vanished without a trace.

1. This note is regarding ‘void soil’ which relates to the Void Returning level. The author did something really wonky with the ‘Void Returning’ cultivation level. Specifically, there are two Chinese characters that look very similar and are pronounced similar. One of them means ‘void’ and the other means ‘ruins.’ For the majority of the novel, he uses the ‘void’ character, which is why I rendered the cultivation level as Void Returning. For roughly the first 800 chapters up to this point, he uses that character something like 300 times, with only a few instances of using the ‘ruins’ character (seemingly just typos). However, starting in this chapter, he switches to using the ‘ruins’ version of the character more often. Later on, he goes all-in on the ‘ruins’ interpretation, even linking some of the explanations of the cultivation level to the ‘ruins’ interpretation. Thankfully, at least ‘void’ and ‘ruins’ both conjure a similar sensation of ‘a place that has nothing (much) in it.’ I’m not sure why the author did this. Perhaps he changed his mind about which character to use. Perhaps he didn’t think much about this level, and then the typo became the reality, and when it came time to explain the cultivation level, he forgot what he’d originally decided. Or who knows what else it could be. It’s not as big of a deal in Chinese, because the characters look almost identical. If I had known several hundred chapters ago about this, I might have named the cultivation level something different. But given how many hundreds of chapters and references there are, I’m going to maintain the original continuity. This means that there might be some small tweaks made in editing so that everything sounds correct. I’ll include footnotes as necessary about that. ☜