# Chapter 2873: The World is a Circle
It was the gray death qi surging from beneath the temple ground that seeped into Zhang Ruochen's body, causing his life fire to be completely extinguished.
As Zhang Ruochen fell, his consciousness grew increasingly blurry, transforming into specks of light that scattered into the world.
Yet his consciousness did not disappear.
Zhang Ruochen felt as if he had transformed into billions of beings, possessing billions of eyes, able to see everything in the surrounding space.
The soil beneath him.
The stone tablets covered in cracks.
The skeletal remains hanging from the temple gate.
The gray death qi enveloping his body.
...
Further away, Turtle King was leading three deities from the Heavenly Realm Faction, fleeing toward four oases on the red-yellow earth.
He could hear their voices.
"Thank you, Turtle King, for saving us. Without you today, the three of us would surely have died in that old man's formation." Jia Linnan was burning with rage, his hatred difficult to quell.
Yan God sighed with emotion, "Originally, I suspected that Young Master Bai had deliberately set a trap to kill us. Now it seems I was the one with a petty heart!"
"If Young Master Bai has any instructions in the future, I will naturally repay this favor." Kailan Feili said.
They were genuinely grateful to Turtle King and Bai Qinger.
Only after being trapped in a life-and-death crisis does one understand that the grace of salvation is greater than heaven.
...
His consciousness flew out of this region, out of the Rainbow Rain Mountain Range, and in the First Divine Maiden City, Zhang Ruochen saw Chi Yao's figure.
Chi Yao wore a white veil capable of blocking spiritual power detection. Her figure was tall, exuding an air of nobility. Standing in a garden with vermillion towers and green tiles, she used her divine might to suppress Lu Yi, forcing her to kneel on the ground, unable to move.
She interrogated, "That old man—where did you encounter him?"
Unable to discern Chi Yao's identity, Lu Yi asked timidly, "May I ask which old man the deity refers to?"
"The old man who killed Wuma Jiuxing." Chi Yao said.
Lu Yi knew that with her cultivation, she had no power to resist before a deity. If she angered the other party, she might be subjected to soul search or have her divine form annihilated.
So she said, "Yunfan Star. Old Mr. Zhang lives in seclusion on Yunfan Star."
Upon learning that the old man's surname was "Zhang," Chi Yao's delicate body trembled slightly. Her starry eyes, visible above the veil, became misty. She quickly asked, "Where is he now?"
Lu Yi hesitated for a moment, thinking that there was a divine master stationed at the manor. If this deity dared to harm the old senior, going there would be walking into a trap.
"Unnamed Manor," she said.
Chi Yao erased Lu Yi's memories and headed straight for Unnamed Manor.
...
Zhang Ruochen's consciousness continued to fly outward, and even the profound formations within the Divine Maiden Pavilion of the World could not stop it.
This made him even more certain that what he had now was consciousness, not spiritual power.
In the heart of the Divine Maiden Pavilion of the World, inside a splendid and ornate divine hall, Zhang Ruochen's consciousness saw Shang Hong's figure.
Shang Hong stood at the center of the hall, clad in a purple robe, his bearing heroic and majestic, his handsome features not of the mortal world.
"Queen Bai, seeing this token, why do you not come forward and pay your respects?"
Shang Hong held a token inscribed with the character "Yi."
The token contained vast divine might. Zhang Ruochen only glanced at it and felt the world spin, as if a ten-thousand-zhang-tall divine giant stood before him, about to crush the entire world.
"After so many years, Yi Tianjun still won't let me go?"
Queen Bai walked out from a patch of divine light. Her figure was exquisitely enchanting, wearing light clothes and thin gauze. Her long, straight legs were beautiful, but surrounded by hazy light, making them impossible to see clearly.
Yet it was this kind of hazy and seductive scene that was most captivating. Such a sacred yet alluring figure was most capable of breaking one's dao heart.
Moreover, Queen Bai's voice was as beautiful as Yu Yao's. It made one unable to help imagining how wonderful her voice would be in bed.
Not to mention Shang Hong, who stood in the hall, but even Zhang Ruochen, who was only consciousness, felt as if he were suffocating.
Shang Hong was ultimately no ordinary person. He quickly steadied his lascivious thoughts and said, "If not for our Shang Clan's secret assistance back then, your Inverse God Clan would have been completely annihilated. This debt of gratitude, you can never repay. If your identity as the Inverse God Clan is exposed, how long do you think you can live? What would become of the Goddess Twelve Pavilions? Can Xinghuantian still exist? And also, your daughter and Divine Master Yu Yao."
Queen Bai revealed her face, which was ninety percent similar to Yu Yao's.
The difference was that one exuded seductive charm from the inside out, peerlessly beautiful, as if a single glance could make even the most resolute man kneel at her feet.
The other was extremely cold, like a thousand-year iceberg.
"Who is spying?"
Queen Bai sensed something. Her eyes, which had held some bitterness and helplessness, suddenly turned sharp. Her pupils seemed to transform into two divine stars, radiating majestic power.
"Swoosh!"
Zhang Ruochen's consciousness retreated like a receding tide.
In an instant, he was once again beneath the temple gate, able to see his aged body lying on the ground. The aged body was wrapped in gray death qi, strands of which were eroding his flesh.
After Zhang Ruochen fell, the Nine Yin Formations stopped operating.
Bai Qinger transformed into a white beam of light, rushing to the aged body's side.
She seemed extremely wary of the gray death qi, not daring to touch Zhang Ruochen directly. Source divine light emanated from her body, and she struck out with a palm, dispersing the death qi.
"Zhang Ruochen!"
Bai Qinger extended a slender, delicate jade hand and placed it on Zhang Ruochen's heart. Then she sighed softly, "Death, ultimately, cannot be reversed. What a pity for a generation's prodigy."
Zhang Ruochen wanted to speak but could not.
He tried to gather his consciousness and rush back into his body, but still failed.
"Gula!"
Not far away, from beneath the rows of tombstones, one corpse after another emerged.
These corpses wore divine robes and divine armor, but having been buried for too long, and perhaps corroded by the powerful death qi here, the divine robes had rotted through, and the divine armor had rusted.
Even their radiant divine bodies emitted a decaying odor, with some places rotted enough to show bone.
Each divine corpse, as it emerged from the ground, had a broken world beneath its feet. The divine corpses also grew rapidly, some reaching ten thousand li in height, larger than planets.
From the mouths of the divine corpses came garbled sounds. Their powerful resentment transformed into thick, dark clouds.
Bai Qinger glanced at those divine corpses, then looked at Zhang Ruochen's aged corpse lying on the ground. She sighed, "It was I who harmed you. If we hadn't come here, you wouldn't have been eroded by the death qi, and you might have lived a few more days. Come with me. I will send you back to your roots and bury you in Kunlun."
She picked up Zhang Ruochen and fled the place quickly.
"Boom!"
The moment they left, a divine spear as thick as a mountain peak was thrown from the hand of a divine corpse, stabbing into the ground where they had just been. Dense cracks appeared across that land.
Zhang Ruochen's consciousness followed his aged corpse, always lingering around Bai Qinger.
"Indeed, I underestimated her."
Zhang Ruochen was deeply moved. Although Bai Qinger was born in the Goddess Twelve Pavilions, although she seemed utterly ruthless, after his death, in such a dangerous place, she did not abandon his corpse. Nor did she immediately search for the various treasures on his body.
Nor did she plan to use his corpse to maximize its value.
Instead, she intended to take greater risks and go to Kunlun, to let him return to his roots.
Zhang Ruochen's body had refined the Heart of Truth, the Buddha Emperor Relic, and the White Cang Blood Soil. These things would be difficult to hide from Bai Qinger, who possessed a large amount of Source Esoterica. Another woman would probably have already started thinking about refining his corpse into pills.
"Oh!"
Zhang Ruochen was surprised to find that not far away, there was a circle.
The circle was parallel to the ground, faintly visible, like a halo. But if he lost focus for a moment, it would disappear.
"No, it's not one circle... it's countless circles..."
Zhang Ruochen discovered that outside the circle were more circles, layer upon layer, stretching to the end of heaven and earth.
Like ripples on water.
Zhang Ruochen looked at Bai Qinger and found her expression normal, as if she could not see these circles at all.
"What's going on? Could these circles be related to me? Only my consciousness can see them... no, perceive them."
"Right! My consciousness hasn't dispersed. Could it be related to these circles?"
Zhang Ruochen made this guess because he discovered that his consciousness could only see the scene within the first layer of circles. He tried to look at the second layer, the third layer...
He didn't know how many layers of circles he passed through, but Zhang Ruochen's consciousness reached hundreds of thousands of li away.
His consciousness grew weaker and weaker, and the scenes he saw became increasingly blurry.
But looking outward, the circles were still stacked layer upon layer, countless in number, as if they covered the entire universe.
Zhang Ruochen's consciousness quickly retreated, returning to the vicinity of his corpse. The shock in his heart was beyond words.
"Clearly dead, yet my consciousness does not extinguish. If consciousness does not extinguish, how can it be considered death?"
In the world, there are undead. The undead have no life fire, yet they possess consciousness.
Suddenly, Zhang Ruochen seemed to understand the true meaning of life and death.
His previous understanding of life had been too narrow. He always thought that only races with life fire could be considered living.
But did the mountains and waters, the wind and lightning in this world not have life?
The Corpse Clan, Ghost Clan, and Bone Clan also had life. To regard them as undead was nothing but prejudice from other races. With such prejudice, each side views the other as alien, and living beings and undead are inevitably as incompatible as fire and water.
Life and death are like yang and yin. They should be cyclical, the greatest cycle in heaven and earth, not opposing forces.
With the cycle of yin and yang, heaven and earth can be eternal.
When life and death collide, the world will surely fall into ruin.
At the moment of Zhang Ruochen's sudden enlightenment, he discovered that the first circle had somehow contracted from afar to right before his eyes, within arm's reach.
And his consciousness, which had scattered into billions of light specks, had condensed into human form.
He raised his hands to look at them. They were a pair of young hands.