Chapter Fifty-Five: His Departure

He no longer hesitated about his direction; his upright figure charged straight at his opponent. The man’s heart trembled—before his eyes, Chen Qing seemed to dissolve into nothingness, and then a terrifying force crashed down from above. That power struck just in front of him, reducing everything but Chen Qing to dust.

Yet, within that swirling dust, Chen Qing fared no better. His skin was drawn so tightly it split open, countless wounds tracing the lines of his muscles, his knees pressed to the ground, and his hands, braced against the earth, were slick with blood.

Raising his head, Chen Qing saw that the man opposite him wore the same look of astonishment and disbelief. But in the next instant, the man’s face was overtaken by shock as he turned his gaze toward the area where the young girl stood.

She held her head high, one hand outstretched and pointing toward Chen Qing. Blood dripped steadily from her fingers, yet this blood was as black as oil. Each drop that fell to the ground released tendrils of inky smoke.

All of this was caused by the broken Yixing teapot she clutched to her chest. The jagged spout of the teapot had stabbed into her chest; bright blood that entered it emerged pitch black and viscous, endlessly pouring from the mouth of the pot.

Her face had gone pale, and just as she prepared to press her finger downward in the air, a member of the Dao Court behind her launched his own attack. Hundreds of his hair strands shot forward like steel needles, glinting coldly, each one sharp and whistling through the air.

The girl had no chance to dodge—her neck was still held fast by her opponent. With a single pitiful cry, hundreds of bloody punctures blossomed across her body.

At the same time, with the girl grievously wounded, the artifact she controlled slipped from her grasp.

“Damn it!” Chen Qing roared, the crushing pressure on his body vanishing instantly. Without hesitation, he moved again.

The wooden spike slashed toward the man’s shoulder, while in the distance, the Dao Court member began chanting in a chilling, sinister tone.

“The Way that can be spoken is not the eternal Way…”

He murmured softly; his temples and beard grew longer, his stiff body becoming supple and fluid. Forming hand seals, he watched as twisted, frantic worms writhed behind his eyes.

He clenched his jaw, his bared teeth crawling with tiny white parasites.

At the very moment his voice faded, a monstrous explosion rocked the ground, flattening the locusts at his feet and leaving a half-meter deep crater.

Yet outside that square arena, neither Chen Qing nor his opponent was affected in the least.

Such is the power of a C-class artifact. In the absence of an artifact of equal rank or proper containment, its existence is supreme.

Now, Chen Qing wielded the wooden spike like a dagger, stabbing it relentlessly into the man’s body. The speed lent him a formidable advantage in close combat, and though his opponent’s healing was staggeringly swift, the bloodshot veins crawling across his eyes suggested that even his resilience was nearing its limit.

The next moment, as Chen Qing drove the spike into the man again and tried to withdraw as before, he was met with a sudden, overwhelming resistance.

He uttered a soft “eh?” in surprise, glancing at his hand. The muscles of his opponent’s shoulder had clamped down on the spike, those hyper-developed fibers seizing and trapping the weapon.

Chen Qing was momentarily stunned. Raising his eyes, he saw that the man’s gaze was now entirely consumed by crimson veins.

The man threw back his head; a ring on his fingertip blazed with intense light. Instantly, Chen Qing’s freshly healed body split open once more. Blood oozed from his ears under the pressure, his throat silenced by the force. He tried to scream, but the pressure twisted and shattered his limbs, bone splinters piercing flesh, his arms and legs gradually losing all strength.

He gazed at the man before him. Even as his eyes grew weary, Chen Qing could still discern changes in his opponent’s body.

He was growing hunched, his bones jutting out, his skull swelling. His thin arms reached forward, now transformed into something unrecognizable.

Pointing at Chen Qing, the man’s speech broke into fragmented whispers: “Kill him… now…”

But his plea went unanswered. In that seven-by-seven isolation field, the Dao Court member lay crippled on the ground, wounds crawling with fine worms. In his abdomen, at the worst of his injuries, a thumb-thick longhorn beetle larva curled, its body anchored by tubes and flesh.

The creature strained to lift its head, but even that simple motion seemed impossible.

Before him, the young woman fared no better—her body was layered with thick sheets of paper, which now seemed to fuse with her flesh. The lines and furrows of the paper crept across her features; her arms had flattened.

She looked coldly at the man. “So, you’ve actually reached the Golden Core stage!”

“The Way is not the Way…” he muttered, his internal channels squeezing out another trace of strength.

Had someone been able to see through Chen Qing’s third eye, they would have found a complete meridian diagram glowing faintly within the man’s body. On closer inspection, the light came from countless tiny wood-boring insects, each less than half a millimeter, amassed in horrifying numbers, filling every meridian of his being.

He stood, pale-faced, as the woman spoke again. “You… completed the Seven Seas! Planted the Golden Core! Are you really going to self-destruct here?!”

She gritted her teeth. When she saw the man smiling, she said, “Power in the hands of the strong is one thing, but a child holding a nuclear bomb…”

He murmured, drawing a horsetail whisk from nowhere. He swung it shakily, and when it swept across her body, the whisk turned blood-red.

As the color drained from her face—not from her wounds but from disgust—she realized her chest was crawling with tiny insects, devouring her flesh.

“People say the Divine Grace Sect is mad… but I think Dao Court is even worse,” she sneered, pulling out a small knife and scraping the insects off her wound.

“Who among mortals is not mad? It is only the idle speculation of the lost,” the man laughed, his speech growing a bit more coherent.

The blood drained from the whisk, revealing that each strand was hung with white termites, which carried away the flesh and fed it to the enormous beetle larva in his belly.

The girl gave no further heed. Though she possessed many artifacts, close combat with a member of the Dao Court was clearly not her advantage.

She drew the gun, pouring a half-pot of thick, inky blood from her sleeve. A descending force replaced the telekinetic pressure once wielded by the Divine Grace Sect man, pinning Chen Qing’s body firmly to the ground.

He tried to wail, but the blood gushing from his throat stifled any sound. In silence, he felt his body mourning from every corner.

“You see? I told you—your power cannot save anyone,” Jiang Wan crouched beside him, blocking his view and meeting his gaze. Though she smiled, her expression was grave.

“Swallow it. If you swallow it, I can save you,” she continued, her fingertip tracing his throat.

But in that moment, she vanished. Chen Qing’s vision dissolved into endless darkness.

Within that blackness, his consciousness slowed, as if time stretched out infinitely. Where once he had thousands of thoughts each second, now each thought took tens of thousands of seconds. Yet all this happened in an instant.

His mind became glacially slow, his thoughts stripped away one by one, until at last, he could only remember who he was.

Until, finally, he could not even remember that.

Until he forgot what “finally” meant, forgot the very concepts of time and the world.

He died—crushed, his body rendered nothing but a smear of pink pulp, finer than any blender could ever achieve.

He died, as all people must. They all died, losing their so-called protagonist in this backroom.

Yes, Chen Qing and Jiang Wan were both dead. It seemed everything had ended.

But stories do not end just because two people are gone. The strife between people, the vilest greed and desire, still linger in every corner.

Look to that backroom—the scheming among the remaining three never ceased.

After Chen Qing’s death, after the Divine Grace Sect withdrew, the remaining three erupted into even fiercer conflict.

What was once a fragile alliance of two against two quietly shattered. Those in alliance no longer dared to give their all, while the lone fighters could throw themselves in completely.

They all feared betrayal from behind, all dreaded the consequences of temporary alliances.

They fought on, blood soaking every inch of the earth.

The three of them stood on the plaza of the earthen building, their bodies covered in wounds that reached deep into the bone. Their faces were pale. After only a brief respite, the battle resumed once more.