Wang Canglan struggled to prop up half his body from the bottom of the crater, his lips curling into a hateful smirk. "It won't be long before the catastrophe descends! At that time, everything will be destroyed, and all living beings will suffer!"
"Who will stop it?"
"You?!"
Wang Canglan let out a tragic laugh.
"You don't even have the Chess Condensation Method, and you can't even touch the threshold of the Chess Player Realm... What are you going to use to block the great tribulation of heaven and earth?!"
His emotions became increasingly agitated.
The residual Pure Yang True Fire within his body began to run wild again along with the violent fluctuations of his emotions.
But he no longer cared.
"I am the savior of this world!"
Wang Canglan roared, his voice echoing throughout Wangchuan Valley.
"Without me, Wang Canglan... without me stepping into that legendary Painting Realm... all of you can only wait for death!!"
After finishing these words.
Wang Canglan gasped heavily for breath.
Inside Wangchuan Valley.
Thousands of demons lay on the ground, listening to these words.
They all looked at each other in confusion.
Great tribulation of heaven and earth?
Savior?
What kind of nonsense...
Is there something wrong with this guy's head...
At the edge of the crater.
Jiang Yuechu stood there.
She quietly listened to Wang Canglan's rambling long-winded speech.
From beginning to end.
Her expression did not change at all.
No anger.
No rebuttal.
Not even impatience.
Until Wang Canglan finished his last word.
His gasping gradually subsided.
Only then did Jiang Yuechu finally speak.
Her voice was flat.
Indifferent as always.
"You've said so much."
"It seems you've mistaken one thing."
Jiang Yuechu slowly crouched down.
She looked levelly at the blood-stained face at the bottom of the pit: "What your name is, whose first disciple you are, or what great tribulation you carry on your shoulders."
"What does that have to do with me?"
Wang Canglan's face froze.
Jiang Yuechu stood up, looking down from above.
"This Empress has seen many pretentious wastes in her life."
"You are the most interesting one."
"You want to kill people, yet you want others to be grateful."
"When you can't kill, you put on a face as if the whole world owes you."
Jiang Yuechu tilted her head slightly.
"Don't you think it's ridiculous?"
"..."
The dignified first disciple of Yujing Tower, the future co-lord of the Eastern Region, had declared his mandate of heaven with a heart full of tragic heroism, only to receive the mere word "ridiculous" in return.
It was truly...
"You..."
He wanted to say something more.
But Jiang Yuechu no longer had the patience to listen to this loser's barking.
"Enough... babbling so much is a rare mercy from this Empress. Now, it's time for you to go."
As her words fell, her killing intent was fully revealed.
The Great Black Heaven avatar spread its wings that blotted out the sun, and crimson mist surged. Jiang Yuechu was about to raise her hand to send this peerless Prodigy to the afterlife.
The sea of clouds in the sky suddenly overturned.
A deep, blood-like red glow tore through the sky without warning.
A figure in red stood silently beside Jiang Yuechu.
Clad in a wide red robe without any complex patterns, yet it exuded a vast aura as old as heaven and earth.
Even the incomparably violent black mist around them froze in its flow the moment this figure appeared.
Jiang Yuechu didn't even have to think.
Appearing at a time like this, could he possibly be here to help her?
A flash of ferocity appeared in her eyes, and her killing intent instantly surged.
The fist that was originally aimed at Wang Canglan pivoted sharply in mid-air.
Her blood energy roared like an angry Dragon, carrying the power to collapse mountains and shatter peaks, enough to crush everything, as she threw a sharp punch.
Thud.
A very slight, muffled sound.
This punch was actually caught with one hand by the old man, who had slowly raised it in a nonchalant manner.
The old man's palm was withered, yet it seemed to contain an endless world.
It swallowed all the violent black mist and boiling blood energy, without causing even the slightest ripple.
Then, the old man slowly shook his head and said, "This Seat has no intention of fighting you..."
Jiang Yuechu frowned.
Her figure suddenly retreated several dozen feet, stabilizing herself in mid-air to maintain a relatively safe distance.
Tsk.
When you hit the small one, the old one comes.
As expected, it's a hassle.
And he looks so pretentious, possessing such unfathomable cultivation that he could easily catch her full-strength strike.
He's likely an old fogey from the Chunyang Lineage.
At the bottom of the pit.
Wang Canglan had already closed his eyes to wait for death, but hearing the movement, he struggled to open his eyes, which were blurred with blood.
When he saw the figure of the old man in red clearly.
"The Main Seat..."
But the old man did not pay attention to Wang Canglan.
He just kept his hands behind his back, his gaze as calm as an abyss, looking at Jiang Yuechu not far away.
He said to Jiang Yuechu, "Actually, what he said wasn't wrong."
"The Chunyang Lineage has been established in the Eastern Region for millions of years, always caring for the world and taking the salvation of all living beings as its duty... With the great tribulation approaching, in the dark, he is indeed needed to be this savior. This is the mandate of heaven."
Hearing these words.
Jiang Yuechu sneered.
"Saving all living beings? Allowing demons to run rampant in the human world and treating Mortals like mere grass and ants, this is worthy of being called saving all living beings?"
Truly shameless.
Facing the young girl's merciless mockery.
The old man did not get angry at all.
He just said quietly, "Then what are you doing?"
"..."
He looked quietly at Jiang Yuechu and advised, "Actually, from the moment you, little girl, showed your talent in Great Tang, the four Emperor-level Dao Lineages of the world have all noticed you... Otherwise... why do you think... Xuanzhen Grotto-Heaven would allow Thirteen Wu to return to Great Tang?"
"..."
Jiang Yuechu remained silent.
What does this mean?
Thirteen Wu returning to Great Tang was the intention of the Dao Lineage?
Then what is Xuanzhen Grotto-Heaven plotting...
The old man saw the flickering in her eyes and sighed slightly: "You have traveled all this way, starting from the Region, killing demons and destroying Dao Lineages... killing gods if they stand in your way and Buddhas if they block your path. You think you are resisting the Dao Lineages and this unfair world. You feel the Dao Lineages are unjust and the heavens and earth are unkind, letting Mortals suffer and demons run wild."
"You feel you are carving out a blood-soaked path for yourself and for those struggling at the bottom, wanting to establish the rules in your heart."
"But have you opened your eyes to see how this world operates?"
"Since the separation of the clear and the turbid, the sun and moon have moved in cycles, the four seasons have rotated, the mountains and seas have roared, and all things have lived and died... No one can actually live solely by their own will."
"You refuse to submit."
"You feel, why..."
"Why should the masses bow to the rules? Why should the powerful force you hold in your hands now have to compromise for that ethereal mandate of heaven..."
The old man's gaze became incredibly deep, as if it contained the endless vicissitudes of time.
"But you forgot."
"The mandate of heaven... has never been a reward."
"It is used to limit everyone..."
"Including me."
"Take the past for example, when the demons of Spirit Mountain ravaged the two provinces of Great Tang, and living beings were plunged into misery and the fields were littered with corpses, we saw it."
"When Five Immortals Mountain stirred up trouble in Great Tang and disregarded human life, we saw that too."
"Even in this world, countless territories are currently experiencing what Great Tang went through..."
"Mortals die like ants, and Cultivators wither like grass."
"But we did nothing..."
The old man looked at Jiang Yuechu and said slowly, "Is it because our Dao Lineages don't care..."
"No."
"It's because once we do something, on what basis? Why shouldn't the next person we make an exception for be any one of the world's masses..."
"The resources between heaven and earth are limited. If there were no birth, aging, sickness, and death, if there were no demons running rampant, and if there were no slaughter and destruction to consume this massive population."
"This world would have long ago been unable to support those countless beings and would eventually head toward complete collapse... Therefore, Dao Lineages cannot have emotions."
"Your will is indeed very resilient, and your methods are indeed very overbearing."
"But little girl... as the Emperor-level Dao Lineages, do we really fear someone with great strength and talent..."
The old man shook his head, a faint, barely perceptible smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.
"What we fear most has never been some peerless Genius or some Heaven-Defying Prodigy."
"Even if you destroyed Wuxiang Mountain, even if you went on a killing spree in Wangchuan of the Xirang Lineage, even if you turned the Yu Mountain Great Range upside down..."
"Except for the four Emperor-level seats, what other Dao Lineages in the world are eternal..."
"All of these are within the rules, within the tolerance limits of heaven and earth."
"From Core Formation to Ink Dot Realm, from Ink Dot Realm to Lamp Lighting Realm."
The old man recounted Jiang Yuechu's growth trajectory as if he knew it by heart.
"You never stopped your footsteps."
"Any obstacle standing in front of you, any Karma that tried to control your fate, you would always sever it with the most violent means."
"You walk too fast, and too urgently..."
The old man sighed, seemingly with a hint of regret.
"Actually, if you had died on the way one day, swallowed by some demon, or crushed by some Dao Lineage, you would just be a slightly more brilliant wave in the long river of time, eventually returning to calm."
"But you insisted on continuing... untiring all the way, crushing all the rules along the way."
A hint of gravity was added to the old man's voice: "Given more time... you might walk before us... before the rules."
"Then we must make you..."
He just looked at Jiang Yuechu quietly, as if waiting for her realization.
Jiang Yuechu met the old man's gaze without retreating an inch.
"Actually, what wrong have you done..."
"A youth's hot blood, daring to draw a blade against heaven and earth, not submitting to fate, how can this be a bad thing?"
"Because you are right..."
"Because you are right, yet you don't know when to end."
Speaking of this, the old man glanced slightly at Wang Canglan and suddenly laughed heartily: "Of course... if you want to continue walking, it's not impossible..."
"You could destroy the Wuxiang Sect Master, so surely you can destroy this Seat's Clone..."
"You can go ahead and kill him."
"Continue on your path, continue to break everything you find eyesores, and continue to use your fists to measure the depth of heaven and earth."
"But... you must think clearly."
The old man pulled back his smile, his gaze like a torch, piercing straight into Jiang Yuechu's eyes.
"From now on, you shall bear the mandate of heaven to save the world... and you shall sit in the position of the Painting Realm."