In the sky above the Moon Palace, the red color collapsed, but the abstract painting didn’t fade away! It existed just as before. Then, it slowly began to move.
The red moon itself trembled. And Xu Qing, thanks to his red moon authority, realized that… The source was still there! The red moon authority he had shared with Crimson Mother had not disappeared! That caused Xu Qing’s mind to reel.
The Captain, meanwhile, managed to form his head again, and as he looked around, he took a deep breath.
“What perished wasn’t that shrew Crimson Mother! It was actually High God Flawless Hell of the Nine Serenities! In the critical moment, the shrew stopped devouring Flawless Hell and then forced him to substitute for her in death!”
Almost exactly as the words left the Captain’s mouth, a grim voice spoke from within the painting.
“Did you really think I wasn’t aware of the truth, Li Zihua? The year you reached godly ascension, you saw the future, didn’t you...? As for me, I’ve always had the personhood of a god, and therefore what you wish for is provided by me! I had a premonition that I would face a calamity in this life, and in order to prepare for it, I devoured the bodies of other powerful gods.”
As the voice echoed out, the entire Moon Palace turned red. And that red color spread out, covering everything, including Xu Qing and everyone else. Their blood went out of control, and everything around them rippled and blurred. Boundless mutagen rose up everywhere. The gray color in the painting started fading away. The pink color darkened. Emperor Ancient Spirit’s eyes started collapsing.
The heavenly daos summoned by Li Zihua started disappearing from view. In the days before the coming of the broken face, Li Zihua would have had greater command of the heavenly daos, and would have been able to continue using them in this fight. But right now... one attack with the heavenly daos was all he could manage. Their mission was to safeguard Revered Ancient, and since they still had to resist the broken face, they were extremely weak. As of now, their mission made it impossible for them to continue. And thus, they faded away.
The son of Xu Qing and the Captain was still snarling angrily, yet was also growing weak. He wasn’t fully grown yet, and thus he closed his eyes and disappeared.
Next, a huge blood-colored tentacle appeared in the abstract painting, which then shot down and slammed into the ground. The tentacle was covered in feathers and also dripped with blood, making it ghastly in appearance while simultaneously pulsing with godly might. A second tentacle appeared, then a third and a fourth. In the blink of an eye, over a hundred tentacles stabbed into the ground. The blood-red color grew more intense.A power of awakening pulsed out of the painting, and at the same time... the same thing filled the red moon. The red moon trembled as great rifts opened up on its surface. Red light seeped out, and at the same time, blood-red tentacles covered with feathers spread out from inside!
Rifts spread, and the tentacles grew more numerous. From a distance, the red moon looked like a giant ball of feathers. As the feather-covered tentacles swayed back and forth, they imparted a gruish and fear-inspiring sensation. It was as if some even more terrifying entity was waking up in the red moon, sending its energy off the moon and into the Moonrite Region below. Astonishingly, it was... Crimson Mother’s energy!
Li Zihua and the others had been fighting Crimson Mother. But what existed inside the red moon was also Crimson Mother. The red moon trembled violently, and more cracks spread out over its surface. As the energy spread, the surface of the red moon became like a blood-soaked mud of flesh.
Soon, the red moon... was like a sphere of flesh, almost like a head. It was possible to see the facial features, and they were those of Crimson Mother, including two empty eye sockets. In the forehead position was the Moon Palace, with the eyes beneath that portion. Meanwhile, the abstract painting collapsed, and a second head that looked exactly the same emerged.
High God Moonfire and High God Starfire fell back from that position, their expressions very serious. High God Moonfire stepped over to the area, pulsing with terrifying might and pressure.
Speaking via divine will, shē said, “Will the same thing happen as when you people originally summoned the Father God?”
Hēr gaze fell on Xu Qing, and shē reached out toward him. In the blink of an eye, a clump of pink clay popped up in front of High God Moonfire, blocking hēr arm.
High God Starfire appeared in front of Xu Qing, a smile on hēr beautiful face, but hēr eyes were cold.
“Sister, he’s mine.”
High God Moonfire’s eyes were just as cold as shē looked at Starfire. “Crimson Mother is just on the edge of the High God level, with godfire burning brightly. Shē’s half a step from erecting hēr god altar. If we don’t stop hēr right now, then this entire fight will have been pointless.”
The Captain, whose head had only just formed back together, looked on with narrowed eyes that glimmered with a crazy look. He turned to Xu Qing. “Little Junior Brother, remember Sea-Sealing County?”
Xu Qing looked in the direction where the giant baby had disappeared. “When you say ‘Sea-Sealing County,’ Eldest Brother, do you mean the Sovereign Kingdom of Violet and Cyan?”
“Exactly. The old governor of Sea-Sealing County during the Sovereign Kingdom of Violet and Cyan was named Bai Xiaozhuo.” The crazy look in the Captain’s eyes intensified.
Xu Qing turned his head to follow the Captain’s gaze. “Back in the day, Bai Xiaozhuo used a magic of sacrifice to get the broken face’s eyes to open....”
Hearing that, the Captain chuckled, then lowered his voice. “Little Junior Brother, do you blame me for dragging you to the Moonrite Region and getting you involved in all this? At the moment, it seems more and more likely we’re going to lose. I prepared for a long time for this day, but maybe I didn’t prepare enough.”
Xu Qing shook his head. “Eldest Brother, whenever you take me on big jobs, do we ever get through them without unexpected twists?”
If there was no unexpected twist, then it wouldn’t be one of the Captain’s jobs. On the very first occasion in which Xu Qing did something with the Captain, he had come to realize that the Captain was crazy. Working with him was always risking your life.
When the Captain heard Xu Qing’s response, he laughed heartily, and the craziness in his voice intensified. “This time, there won’t be any unexpected twist! Little Junior Brother, didn’t you ask me before if I’d intentionally held back from a cultivation base breakthrough, all with the intention of going back to when the godchild was in Nascent Soul?
“Well you were right! My plan was to go to the time period when the godchild was in Nascent Soul. The reason was that I wanted to make a deal with Li Zihua, who was a god at the time! Later on, before we actually stepped onto the red moon, I gave a crazy mission to Fourth Vice-Bishop and the others.”
Rumbling sounds filled the dome of heaven as Emperor Ancient Spirit fell back and summoned a black hole to use as an escape route.
Only Li Zihua didn’t retreat. He stared at the head of Crimson Mother in front of him, all while pulsing with an energy of destruction and intensely burning flames. He was burning his cultivation base, and everything else about him, as he strode toward Crimson Mother.
Crimson Mother’s head of flesh and blood emerged from the rift, speaking in a rumbling voice that sounded like all living beings speaking at once.
“You chose Deep Earth, Li Zihua. You abandoned the path of the gods to become a cultivator. That means you have a weakness that can be exploited. You... are old. You couldn’t stop me back in the day, so how do you think you can stop me now?”
Then, the head shot toward Li Zihua to devour him.
Li Zihua’s expression remained the same as ever. Fire burned around him, as he allowed Crimson Mother to devour him. And yet, there was something tender in his eyes.
“Back when I left Brilliant Heaven,” he said, “the god ancestor told me that you’re much more suitable for igniting godfire.”
Crimson Mother was about to respond when, all of a sudden, shē sent her divine will down to the Moonrite Region. To hēr, the region was nothing but food, so up to now in the conflict, shē hadn’t paid any attention to it. But as of now, when hēr divine will swept over the region, shē suddenly pulsed with emotional fluctuations.
At the same time, the fleeing Emperor Ancient Spirit stopped in place and also looked at the Moonrite Region. High Gods Moonfire and Starfire did the same.
The Moonrite Region, which had gone unnoticed by all the gods up to this point, was experiencing a dramatic event!
The Moonrebel Congregation’s Fourth and Second Vice-Bishops, as well as all of their Void Returning subordinates, had not come with the Heir Apparent and everyone else to the red moon. They had stayed behind down below. And they had been waiting for this very moment to carry out their mission. They had sealed the cultivation bases of all the Red Moon Cathedral cultivators, and had collected them in seven locations.
The largest group was located in the cathedral headquarters on the Penitence Steppes. The other six locations were various church temples located throughout the Moonrite Region. After the Red Moon Cathedral collapsed and the godchild died, the rest of the cathedral cultivators were easily captured. And thus, there were a lot of them detained in those seven locations. There were also plenty of captives from the organizations that had sided with the Red Moon Cathedral. The top experts among them had their cultivation bases sealed, and they were now held at those seven locations.
Taking in the number of captives as a whole, they weren’t as numerous as the living beings Bai Xiaozhuo had sacrificed, in other words, the entire population of a county. What was more, their varied cultivation bases were also a far cry from what Bai Xiaozhuo had used.
But that didn’t matter.... In the past, the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan had single-handedly offered a sacrifice to open the eyes of the broken face of the god. The numbers involved weren’t important. What was more important was the person making the sacrifice.
As the cathedral cultivators trembled, the spot on the Penitence Steppes where the Imperial Sovereign’s statue had once stood was now wide open.
And in the middle of that open square was an explosion of white light. The light came from the void. From space-time. From the past. As it appeared, it turned into a majestic figure.
It was Li Zihua, although not the same Li Zihua that Crimson Mother was currently devouring. Instead, the Li Zihua that had just appeared actually burned with godfire. Hē was from the past! Hē was from the point in time when the godchild was in the Nascent Soul level!
The Captain became the coordinates that allowed hīm to come to this point, although it wouldn’t last for long.
The moment hē appeared, Li Zihua looked up with cold eyes at the red moon. And then hīs gaze shifted upward to look at the broken face of the god.
“I, a child of Brilliant Heaven, the first to reach godly ascension after the arrival of the immortals, hereby offer a sacrifice!”
Hīs voice echoed like heavenly thunder, shaking the nine heavens and rocking the ten earths![1]
1. My original novel series Heirs of Sun and Storm , which is a mashup of cyberpunk and xianxia-style cultivation, largely takes place in a setting called the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths. It's always cool to see the term in context in the works of Er Gen! Incidentally, the final installment of the series was already released as an exclusive novel on another reading app, but it will be on Amazon sometime early next year! ☜