Chen Zhou: "..."
Watching this scene, Chen Zhou’s brush, which had been about to descend, finally stopped.
He glanced at the horsetail whisk in his hand.
The horsetail whisk shook, its light dimming as it shifted from its brush form back into its original shape.
The judgment platform in mid-air dissipated along with it.
"What a hassle."
Chen Zhou sighed softly.
He hated situations with hidden complications the most; he couldn't kill the man, yet he couldn't just let him go either.
With a wave of his hand, he withdrew the death qi and ghost domain that filled the sky.
The Domain of Defiled Earth vanished. Chen Zhou landed and slowly walked over.
Seeing the death qi dissipate, Tuoba Feng didn't care about anything else. He scrambled to gather all his damaged evil ghosts back into the black coffin and then slammed the lid shut.
Only after completing this did he seem to exhaust the last of his strength, kneeling silently on the ground.
The intense pain from his broken legs made his entire body tremble, but he didn't make a sound.
Seeing Chen Zhou approach, he looked up. There was no hatred in his eyes, only a sort of resigned peace.
"Success makes a king, failure makes a bandit."
"Tuoba has been outmatched. I am willing to die."
Chen Zhou looked down at him and asked, "You won't surrender?"
Tuoba Feng pursed his lips and remained silent, his eyes downcast as if he were simply offering his neck to the blade, seeking nothing else.
"Are you from the Western Region?"
Still, he remained silent.
Chen Zhou’s gaze swept over the stone coffin on his back, his tone flat. "If you don't speak, I'll dismantle your coffin."
These words finally struck Tuoba Feng's weakness.
Panic flashed across his face. He jerked his head up, staring intently at Chen Zhou as he forced words through clenched teeth: "Western Region, Tuoba Feng."
"Are you here to fight for the Golden Buddha?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Tuoba Feng fell silent again.
Chen Zhou felt this man was truly an oddity.
Looking across Gloomlight Province, of the vast majority of people who came to snatch the Golden Buddha, who wasn't doing it for the Golden Buddha's ability to evolve and mutate their forms?
Who didn't want to go further on the path of cultivation?
Even Yin Wudao did it for power.
Tuoba Feng could have easily made up a reason, saying he was here for a fortuitous encounter, but he said nothing.
He would rather be silent than lie.
Chen Zhou looked at this man who was filled with strangeness and contradictions.
He possessed formidable strength and was laden with immense sinful karma, yet one couldn't feel much slaughter-bound baleful energy from him.
He was a man of few words who acted decisively in battle, yet he still took the time to say "pardon me" before starting.
Now that his life was in another's hands, he neither begged for mercy nor surrendered, nor was he willing to use lies to stall. He only sought death.
He was... a man of principle, at least in his own strange way.
Why would such a person carry so much sinful karma?
Chen Zhou couldn't figure it out.
But since the man's mouth was hard to pry open, Chen Zhou wasn't without options; he would simply ask his heart.
Chen Zhou raised his hand, and a 【Seed of Resentment】 emerged in his palm.
Chen Zhou injected the seed into Tuoba Feng's sea of consciousness and activated Evil God Whispers.
A cold, obscure mental wave instantly exploded within Tuoba Feng’s mind.
If he were at his peak, Tuoba Feng might have easily resisted the whispers with his seventh-stage willpower.
But now, both his legs were broken, most of his body had been corrupted by death qi, and Withering Venom had entered his system. He was already at the end of his tether.
Furthermore, with Chen Zhou threatening to destroy the coffin, a crack had already appeared in his psychological defenses.
With multiple negative statuses stacked upon him, Tuoba Feng's eyes began to glaze over.
His consciousness gradually became chaotic.
"Tell me, what happened in the Western Region? Those black spots... where exactly did they come from?" Chen Zhou's voice became ethereal and haunting.
Tuoba Feng’s body shook violently, seemingly still resisting by instinct.
However, under the continuous erosion of the Evil God Whispers, his tightly closed lips finally parted slowly.
"The divine remains... they underwent a change..."
"The tomb... can no longer suppress it..."
The very first thing he said was a bombshell.
Divine remains?
The bones of a god were buried in the Western Region?
Chen Zhou’s gaze suddenly sharpened.
He instantly thought of Yin Wudao.
Yin Wudao had once said that a true god with a changed face stood behind him.
Could there be a connection between the two?
Chen Zhou immediately followed up: "What god? Your Grave-keeper clan—is that what you guard? A god's tomb? How long have you been guarding it?"
Tuoba Feng’s eyes were hollow as he answered stiffly, "What god? I don't know."
"The ancestors said it is an unspeakable taboo."
"How long? A long time."
"The Grave-keeper clan, the Grave-keeper clan..."
As he spoke, a trace of confusion suddenly surfaced on his face.
"The Grave-keeper clan is gone."
"There is no Grave-keeper clan in the Western Region anymore. They are all dead. I am the last one."
Chen Zhou frowned slightly but didn't interrupt, continuing to guide him.
"How did they die?"
Tuoba Feng’s body jerked violently as he continued.
"They died from bloodletting. Once the blood ran dry, they died."
"The Western Region, the Silent Sand Sea, is a cage... and also a place of exile."
Chen Zhou asked, "Exile for whom?"
"Exile for the sinners. Because we are guilty, we must call ourselves grave-keepers. We must atone."
Tuoba Feng had already fallen into complete chaos, recounting in fragments.
"There is a god's tomb in the Western Region. There is an ancient array underground locking away the god's bones."
"But the divine remains underwent a corpse change."
"A thousand years ago, the divine remains changed. It was hungry. The seal began to lose its hold on it. Those black spots are the corpse spots leaking from it."
"To suppress the corpse spots, it must be fed. We use the lifeblood of the grave-keepers to fill it."
"We must maintain the array at all times."
"The ancestral teachings say the divine remains must never emerge, or else heavenly punishment will descend."
"So the Western Region was sealed off. The living cannot enter, and the dead... cannot leave."
"But the divine remains' corpse change is a bottomless pit. After a thousand years of consumption, the clan's population grew smaller and smaller, while the black spots grew more and more."
"The Grave-keeper clan has long existed in name only."
"I am the last one. In this world, there are no more grave-keepers."
As Chen Zhou listened, he quickly organized the information.
He had a vague guess as to what the entity Yin Wudao worshipped actually was.
Although the nature of the aura on Tuoba Feng and Yin Wudao was opposite, their origin was extremely similar.
Looking at it now, that was the aura of the divine remains.
If the black spots were actually the corpse spots of a god, then it was normal for them to have properties similar to divinity and for only divinity to be able to fully suppress them.
As for what a 'god' was?
Chen Zhou sneered inwardly. His answer consisted of only two words—
An evil spirit.
Not only was he an evil spirit himself, but the three anglers he had seen in the fallen dream were also similar entities.
Though they were still different from him and more like Jian Huaishuang.
Yin Wudao said a true god stood behind him, so Chen Zhou guessed the offering in the palace was also an evil spirit—an evil spirit with sentience.
What was it plotting?
Evil spirits certainly didn't need the Golden Buddha to evolve; death qi was already a part of an evil spirit.
Then the answer was simple—it wanted the divine remains in the Western Region.
Chen Zhou’s expression turned solemn.
Evil spirits were not easy to deal with, especially sentient ones.
This game was being played on a much larger scale than he had imagined.
Rate on N.U.
