Chapter 631: The Heavenly Body Rises, Bringing Blood
Rumbling sounds filled heaven and earth while tempestuous winds screamed back and forth. As everyone watched, the seething sea of light took the shape of a nail. However, the nail didn’t fully manifest. After it reached a certain point of dazzling brightness, it collapsed.
In the back room, Xu Qing sat cross-legged with a seven-colored nascent soul hovering in front of him. Boundless daybreak light shone off the seven-colored nascent soul, spreading out in all directions to form the sea of light.
Xu Qing had extended his right hand to touch the outstretched hand of the nascent soul. Within Xu Qing’s right palm was the clear outline of a nail, slowly blurring and fading away.
At first glance, the skin on his palm seemed no different than the rest of his skin. However, if you looked closely, you would notice that the middle of his palm was brighter than normal. It was almost as if it had been soaked in water for years, making it incomparably pure. Eventually, the outline of the nail faded away, and the sea of light collapsed and vanished.
Xu Qing opened his eyes. Instantly, all of the daybreak light swept back into his daybreak nascent soul. The nascent soul reentered Xu Qing.
Xu Qing sighed.
I couldn’t actually create an imitation of what I saw in my memories. These myriad magics of transformation have their limits.... I can’t just create an imitation of any future magical technique I see.
Shaking his head, he stood and walked out of the back room, feeling a bit disappointed.
The moment he was outside, he realized that everyone was looking at him.
Ning Yan was staring at him like he was some sort of freak, and seemed to be on the verge of saying something, except he held back.
Wu Jianwu looked dazed. He was actually thinking back to the time he met Xu Qing out on the Forbidden Sea. Back then, the two of them had fought to a draw. But now.... Wu Jianwu felt incomparably frustrated inside. Eyes bloodshot, he made a decision. He had been slacking off lately, and really needed to continue his bloodline restoration work!
The parrot shivered and didn’t say anything. Li Youfei had his head bowed respectfully. Nethersprite was looking deeply at Xu Qing.
As for Patriarch Inkrule, it was apparently the first time he had realized there was someone besides the four Smoldering Gods who was worth paying attention to. He had sensed how extraordinary Xu Qing was. The things he had accomplished were not things Nascent Soul cultivators should be able to accomplish, but rather, Spirit Trove experts. All of a sudden he understood why the kid walking out of the back room was the nucleus of the medicine shop, and was allowed to sit amongst the Smoldering Gods.
Ling’er was also a bit surprised, but in contrast to the others, she looked very proud. The Captain blinked a few times, but looked happy. Eighth Sib was smiling at Xu Qing, while Fifth Sister had a strange look in her eyes. Although she hadn’t participated in giving any advice to Xu Qing like her brother and sister had, she was now starting to see the bigger picture.
The Heir Apparent nodded as a very profound and mysterious expression appeared on his face. He had no way to know it, but that facial expression made him look very much like Xu Qing’s Master.
As for Princess Brightblossom, she was looking at Xu Qing without any facial expression.
Xu Qing looked around. It was obvious that they were looking at him this way because he had created an illusory manifestation of the Imperial Sovereign’s nail.
Except that Xu Qing was actually very disappointed at his failure. That was especially true considering how Princess Brightblossom and the Heir Apparent were looking at him.
Sighing, he approached them, bowed his head, and said, “Seniors, I still failed.”
The Heir Apparent’s face twitched slightly. He took the opportunity to make himself look disappointed.
“I saw,” he said coolly. “You’re still young. It’s normal to experience failures sometimes.”
Xu Qing nodded and was about to say something further when Princess Brightblossom spoke.
“Open your right hand,” she said.
Hearing that, Xu Qing stuck out his right hand and opened it.
Princess Brightblossom, the Heir Apparent, and Fifth Sister all scanned his palm with divine sense, and when they did, strange expressions appeared on their faces. The Heir Apparent reached out. Instantly, a ball of black hair appeared in front of him. It pulsed, growing larger and smaller rhythmically, all while sending out powerful soul fluctuations.
“Imitate that,” the Heir Apparent said, looking at him.
Without any hesitation, Xu Qing released daybreak light. It spread out, converged, and then settled onto the black hair.
Astonishingly, the white center of his palm blurred as a black ball emerged. A moment later, a black ball was hovering in front of Xu Qing, though it wasn’t corporeal. What was more, the power it exuded was nowhere close to the original. It had the same shape, but didn’t have the same godly might.
The scene caused Nethersprite and Patriarch Inkrule to be visibly shaken.
The Heir Apparent didn’t say anything, but inside, he felt exhausted. Never could he have imagined that Xu Qing would be able to use daybreak light to create a copy of his own divine ability. Granted, the level of power between the two was like the difference between the full moon and a firefly. It was a physical copy without the godly might, and without any magical laws or authority. But... the Heir Apparent was a Smoldering God! He had never heard of, much less seen, any Nascent Soul cultivator who could do this.
This kid’s powers of understanding cannot be described in any way other than freakish!
The Heir Apparent didn’t feel like speaking.
Princess Brightblossom waved her hand gently.
The chair off to the side unexpectedly transformed, turning into a group of white doves that flew gracefully into the air. The doves didn’t look unusual. However, considering they came from the hands of a Smoldering God, there was no way they could be ordinary doves. Looking closely, it was possible to see stars, moons, and other heavenly bodies twinkling in their eyes, and they seemed capable of piercing through time as they flew.
“Imitate them!”
Xu Qing took a deep breath and then used his same imitation technique on another nearby chair.
The chair quivered, and then in a very gruish display, sprouted feathers. Unfortunately, it never ended up looking like a bird. The feathers just grew out randomly, until the chair finally shattered into pieces.
Seeing that, Ning Yan and the others were shocked. The parrot’s eyes went very, very wide, and he even started breathing heavily.
Xu Qing sighed deeply. “I still can’t do it.”
Eighth Sib was getting very interested in what was happening. All of a sudden, a swell of rage erupted from him, which affected the surroundings, causing them to ripple and distort as a vicious, draconic beast appeared. It was covered in flames, and each of its scales emanated a terrifying pressure. Its presence made the entire Bitter Life Mountains tremble, and when it opened its mouth, it revealed countless sharp teeth as it roared.
“Give a shot at imitating me!”
Wu Jianwu and Ning Yan looked like they might faint at any moment. Everyone else was in a similar condition. Xu Qing breathed heavily as the terrifying weight settled onto him and caused his soul to tremble. There was no way he could imitate anything at the moment.
Expression calm, Princess Brightblossom let out a cold harrumph. “Screw off!”
The moment the words left her mouth, a thump rang out from Eighth Sib, and everything around him vanished. Heaven and earth went back to normal.
Xu Qing breathed a sigh of relief and bowed his head respectfully.
Princess Brightblossom betrayed no reaction via facial expression. Voice cool, she said, “You can’t do it because your cultivation base is too low. You lack magical laws as well as trump cards. Your authority isn’t bad, but not quite omnipotent. As your cultivation base improves, and you eventually reach Spirit Trove, that will change everything. Furthermore, you should think about cultivation as....”
Princess Brightblossom had been about to give some pointers regarding powers of understanding. That was what she had always done with her apprentices in the past. But before she could go into her usual advice, she stopped.
Xu Qing looked up attentively.
Princess Brightblossom was quiet for a few breaths of time. Then she continued, “Think of it as gaining experience.”
Xu Qing thought about that for a moment.
The Heir Apparent and Princess Brightblossom noted his expression and exchanged a glance. Then they were about to keep talking when, all of a sudden, their expressions flickered and they vanished. When they reappeared, they were up in the dome of heaven.
Eighth Sib appeared next to them, fully recovered. They were joined by Fifth Sister. All of them were looking off toward the horizon.
The red light was like viscous blood. In the past month, it had been expanding, though not at a steady rate. But now, it was virtually exploding. The red light on the horizon doubled in the briefest of moments, becoming blindingly dazzling. As of that moment, all plants, vegetation, mountains, plains, and rivers in the Moonrite Region... had turned bright red!
A boundless red glow spread out as... a heavenly body appeared on the horizon, almost like a star.
It really did look like a gigantic star. It was pure red, as if it was made of blood, and was gargantuan. The heavenly body was covered with terrain features like mountains and valleys.
It was the red moon! It seemed to be moving at high speed in the direction of the Moonrite Region. Mountains collapsed. Boulders rained down, shattering tree trunks. Corpses flew up into the air.
It was the tideflow power caused by the red moon. That tideflow would create a powerful compulsion, causing all living beings in the Moonrite Region to howl in grief. The curse welled up in the bodies of countless mortals, and cultivators were incapable of escaping. Twisted expressions of agony appeared everywhere. Only the high-level cultivators, or perhaps people who had painquelling lozenges, were able to resist the pressure.
Things were only just beginning. As the heavenly body grew larger and larger, slowly overtaking the canopy of heaven, the lands below shattered, and countless living beings rose up into the air, where death awaited them.
Xu Qing and the Captain also appeared in midair, where they looked off toward the horizon. They weren’t the only ones. Top experts from all the species in the Moonrite Region did the same, and they were all trembling.
“The red moon... is visible to the naked eye.”
Xu Qing was deeply shaken. He could sense his own violet moon authority reacting... it was clearly a lot stronger than before. Apparently, the closer the red moon got, the more shockingly it affected his authority.
“Remember what I said before, little Junior Brother? That when the red moon becomes visible on the horizon, it will mean our day has come? And that’s because our destination isn’t a place you can usually go to. In order to open the path there, you have to meet several requirements. And the most important of all has a name. Green Hair Like Blood.
“Legend has it that the Greenhair Badlands was actually made from a strand of hair. Now, look at the lands below. They look like blood.”
The Captain looked out at the desert.
Xu Qing looked in the same direction and saw that, thanks to the blood-colored light shining down from above, the desert no longer looked green. It looked red.
“We leave tonight,” the Captain said softly, clasping Xu Qing’s shoulder.