The red moon trembled through and through.
As Zhang Siyun’s voice echoed out, it became innumerable bits of sound that echoed like thunderclaps. It sounded like the chanting of all living beings, which pierced into Xu Qing’s mind, and left the Captain, the Heir Apparent, and all the siblings visibly surprised. What was more, the fact that Zhang Siyun spoke Xu Qing’s name went to show that, though hē was Crimson Mother’s doppelgänger, hē also retained his old memories. The two had been combined.
“Crimson Mother didn’t devour his mind,” the Captain said in a serious tone. “She left him behind as an independent person. He’s Zhang Siyun, but at the same time, is also Crimson Mother! What’s more, he’s even stronger in this form!”
The Heir Apparent and his siblings looked on with coldly flickering eyes. Meanwhile, Ninth Sib took action. He became a stream of scintillating sword light that shot toward the door, shattering the air along the way. The Heir Apparent and Princess Brightblossom also went on the offensive, followed by Fifth Sister and Eighth Sib. Xu Qing and the Captain came last.
The door of the Moon Palace had opened of its own accord. Though there was still a lot of danger to be aware of, there was no way that everyone would just give up because Zhang Siyun showed hīs face.
In the blink of an eye, they were all closing in on the door. At that point, red-robed Zhang Siyun looked calmly at them from hīs position on the pāramitā lily. Moonlight rippled out, causing hīs beautiful features to seem nobler as hē slowly raised hīs right hand. Hīs skin was as fair as white jade, and contained no palm print. Palm prints were an aspect of destiny, and when it came to gods and destiny, well, thēy existed outside of destiny.
“God magic...” Zhang Siyun said quietly, then tapped hīs thumb on the first digit of hīs forefinger.
The moment they made contact, a noise echoed out like the splash of a water drop. The sound then became two words that resounded in the minds of Xu Qing and everyone else.
“Destiny Manipulation.”
A faint wind blew, stirring the Moonlight Sea and eventually touching the Heir Apparent and everyone else that was entering the door of the Moon Palace. It caused their clothing to sway, and also caused their destiny to ripple.Ninth Sib was in the lead position. A tremor passed through him as he stopped in place and found himself unable to move forward. Then something extremely shocking happened. Countless projections appeared, superimposed over him. They were images from his past, including those from when he had been suppressed and tormented. They also contained beautiful memories from before his father had perished. Nothing from his past was hidden. Everything appeared around him as images, superimposed over his body. This was his past destiny.
It wasn’t just happening with Ninth Sib. Images of the past appeared around the Heir Apparent, Princess Brightblossom, Fifth Sister, and Eighth Sib. Countless such images formed, becoming like individual pages that made a book!
Xu Qing and the Captain were not exempt.
The Captain shivered as images appeared that went all the way back to the moment of his birth. However, they didn’t include images from his past lives, only his present life.
Likewise, images of Xu Qing appeared, starting from when he was very small. Joys and sorrows appeared. All the vicissitudes of life. However, the broken face of the god was not visible, nor were any images of his older brother! Xu Qing didn’t have the mental bandwidth to consider what that meant. Seeing the countless images of his past caused a host of emotions to fill him. What was happening now wasn’t the work of a cultivator, but rather, the power of a god.
Zhang Siyun’s expression was the same as ever as hē looked at everyone present. Next, hīs thumb moved from the first digit of his index finger to tap on the second, whereupon another sound rang out like the splashing of a water drop.
The wind picked up. Destiny stirred again. It was impossible to fight against or avoid. In the hands of a god, destiny was like a plaything that could be manipulated or adjusted. And now... as hīs thumb moved down hīs finger, and as the sound of water echoed out.... Everyone felt their minds spinning, as if they were being struck by 10,000,000 lightning bolts. The images of the past went wild. It was as if they were being inspected. The aura of a god grew stronger, filling the entire world around them.
The Heir Apparent’s eyes were bright red as he stood there trembling and trying to fight back. His siblings were all in similar situations. Yet nothing did any good. They couldn’t stop their past destiny from being rifled through.
The only exception was Ninth Sib, whose aura seethed as the flipping of pages slowed. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to stop it entirely.
The Captain and Xu Qing didn’t have the sufficient cultivation base to provide any resistance.
As the memories were flipped through, images began to pop out one after another. Once in the open, they flew toward Zhang Siyun. Each and every one of those images, without any exception, came from a moment of extreme pain and torment.
For the Heir Apparent and his siblings, they were memories of being forced to devour the flesh and blood of their brothers and sisters. They were images of them being suppressed and tormented, as well as other instances of extreme grief and anguish.
The Captain shivered. The images of his past related to moments of incredible hunger when he released seals within himself. Of course, there were also scenes that, up to this point, had been secret. In one of them, the Captain walked through gloom and darkness, heartbroken and weeping loudly.
Xu Qing’s face was distorted, blue veins bulged out on his forehead, and he was breathing heavily. However, the pain of having memories torn out of him couldn’t compare to the torment of one particular scene.
In that scene, he was in a forested area while rain fell down from above. He knelt on the ground, filled with pain, anguish, despair, and madness. Lying on the ground in front of him was a skewer of blood-colored candied fruit. It was a memory that Xu Qing didn’t even want. It was the moment when his older brother appeared in Emperor-Receiving Prefecture and told him the truth about everything. It was one of the worst moments in Xu Qing’s entire life up to this point. Compared to that, all the bitterness he had endured as a youngster didn’t count for much. The memory was ripped out of him, becoming an image that shot toward Zhang Siyun.[1]
Before long, such memories of pain and torment were proliferating in front of Zhang Siyun, where they became images that circulated around hīm.
“Living beings only experience pain because of the contrast it forms with beauty...” Zhang Siyun said softly. As hē did, he tapped hīs thumb on the first digit of hīs middle finger.
A crisp sound rang out into the minds of everyone present, a ripple that turned into a tempest. An intense rumbling sound exploded out as the memory images around them began to collapse! They shattered!
All the beauty. All the happiness. All the cherished moments. All the love.... All of the past crumbled. Rumbling sounds filled the minds of everyone present. As the images collapsed, they turned into illusory blood that prompted uncontrollable shrieks of mourning to fill heaven and earth.
That was when the resistance began.
The Heir Apparent’s hair flowed around him like innumerable snakes. They pierced into the memories of the past, using his perception-altering powers to bolster the images. A river of time flowed around Princess Brightblossom, strengthening the images of the past around her. Eighth Sib used emotions to make happiness and joy a constant that spread out in all directions. Ninth Sib’s method was the simplest. Swords emerged from his memories, which slashed out in all directions. Swords collapsed constantly, but new swords always appeared to replace them....
As the Captain’s facial expression distorted, frigid energy exploded out of him to lock down the past. And Xu Qing’s sundials activated. His will domain of amnesia stirred, and his authority exploded out. That was when he came to realize why those images didn’t contain the broken face or the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan.
It was because, for some unknown reason, when Zhang Siyun used hīs god magic of Destiny Manipulation, the images of those two beings appeared inside of Xu Qing’s violet crystal!
When the images became clear, Xu Qing’s mind filled with an explosive rumbling that far surpassed the sound of beautiful memories shattering.
The first image was in the ruins of the slums. He was looking up into the sky as the broken face’s eyes opened and looked down in his direction....
The second image was from Peerless City.... A blood rain fell as a younger version of himself sat on the ground, hugging his knees and weeping. From what Xu Qing remembered, he had wept for a long time before ultimately leaving the vanishing city.
And yet, the image within the violet crystal showed something different!! In that image, a familiar person floated down from midair to stand in front of the weeping Xu Qing. That person reached out and put his hand on Xu Qing’s head.
“Don’t cry, lil’ bro.”
The moment those words echoed out in the image, Xu Qing’s head exploded, and his body turned into a mass of gore that splashed into the ground.
He was dead.
Xu Qing shivered as waves of shock swept through him. All of the ‘pages’ of memories outside of him crumbled, leaving behind... a book completely empty of pages. Everyone fought back, but it couldn’t stop the same thing from happening to them.
“Without beauty, there can be no contrast, and thus... there is no purpose in grief.” Zhang Siyun’s expression was tranquil in the moonlight. Hē did not emanate even the slightest emotional fluctuation. Hīs beautiful face seemed like a statue as hē stared at everyone and moved hīs thumb to the second digit of hīs middle finger and tapped it there.
Instantly, the images of pain and torment stopped rotating around him and began to vibrate. At the same time, it seemed as if they were being copied, as countless versions of the same images started to appear.
Seeing that, Zhang Siyun smiled faintly. Then hē tapped hīs thumb on the first digit of hīs ring finger. When hē did... the images suddenly flew back toward where they came from. They shot back into the empty books and began to fill them in. However... those pasts now contained no beauty. They were filled only with pain and suffering.
All the good memories were collapsing.
This was the power of a god. This was a god magic.
1. Xu Qing encountered his brother in chapters 314 and . ☜