Chapter 1107: Power Beyond the Rules
Zhou Ling lay across heaven and earth, and also lay between the two of them.
Separated by several hundred zhang, they were merely tiny black specks in each other's view.
Yet they could clearly see each other's brows, eyes, and the emotions within them.
They didn't even need to look to know what the other was thinking.
No matter how estranged they had appeared over the years, they were still master and disciple who had lived together in the temple for over a decade.
No one knew how much time had passed when Shang Xingzhou said, "He is dead."
Chen Changsheng replied, "I don't know the ending of that story from your past, but I do know that his corpse is not inside this mausoleum."
Shang Xingzhou said, "With that brute's temperament, if he were still alive, how could he bear the loneliness and not stir up trouble?"
Chen Changsheng was silent for a moment, then said, "Yes, he should be dead. Otherwise, Emperor Taizong would never have been at ease."
"Is this your final move? Using him to intimidate me?"
Shang Xingzhou looked at him with a hint of mockery and said, "How childish."
Chen Changsheng said, "Yes, I just wanted to scare you."
Shang Xingzhou asked, "Is it amusing?"
Chen Changsheng replied, "Watching your expression just now was truly amusing."
With that, he laughed, looking genuinely pleased.
For him, this was a rare display of emotion.
From this, one could judge that he was telling the truth.
The truth hurts the most.
Ever since arriving in the capital from Xining Town, whether it was the old woman, the maidservant, or the lady of the Eastern Divine General's Mansion, or the students of the Green Vine Academies, including Tang Thirty-Six, all had been wounded by Chen Changsheng's honesty. Even Shang Xingzhou, his master, found it hard to bear.
Shang Xingzhou's gaze grew colder.
He stared at Chen Changsheng at the end of the tomb passage and took a step forward.
Within the Zhou Garden, he could not manifest the rule-based power of the sacred domain, nor could he ignore space.
He could not directly appear before Chen Changsheng.
In fact, the distance of his step was precisely one step—neither more nor less.
Wind rose from beneath his feet.
His green Daoist robe snapped taut.
Hundreds of faint, barely visible streams of clear light surged along the tomb passage toward the main gate of Zhou Ling.
A fierce gale arose, stirring countless floating ashes across the surrounding wilderness, gradually blotting out the sun and sky, plunging heaven and earth into darkness.
Within that dim world, countless dense yet distinctly clear cutting sounds rang out.
On the surface of the tomb passage and the massive stones lining it, countless straight, deep marks appeared.
Some stone surfaces visibly blackened, then crumbled into the finest sand, swept away by the wind.
Those streams of clear light seemed ordinary but actually embodied the principle of all things flowing and transforming—a concrete manifestation of Daoist law, possessing unimaginable power.
Shang Xingzhou struck with full force, myriad Daoist techniques condensed within that attack. How could Chen Changsheng possibly resist?
On the other side of the plain, the Jian Beast and the Dao Shan Hao slowly rose, turning into two black hills.
Strangely, these two terrifying beasts did not rush to rescue Chen Changsheng but instead retreated into the swirling sandstorm.
Because of Zhou Ling's obstruction, Shang Xingzhou could not see this scene, nor could he see the ground revealed after the Jian Beast and Dao Shan Hao moved away.
Those two giant beasts had been silently crouching north of Zhou Ling precisely to block that ground.
There stood four altar-like structures, already very dilapidated, but one could faintly discern that they had once been pedestals for steles.
Suddenly, the fierce wind over the wilderness and the distant grasslands vanished. The sandstorm disappeared as well.
The warm sun reappeared at the edge of the grassland, hanging silently in place.
Zhou Ling became utterly silent.
Those myriad Daoist techniques, representing the ultimate principles of heaven and earth's laws, suddenly ceased to exist.
A thin cord silently snapped, and four stone beads fell from Chen Changsheng's wrist, rolling down the tomb passage and the slope of the mausoleum hill.
Those stone beads looked completely ordinary, with no special features. Their descent showed no remarkable qualities—they rolled along the tomb passage with a clattering sound, struck the massive stones with crisp noises, as if at any moment they might fall into the gaps between the stones, never to roll out again, or shatter into pieces.
From both probability and the laws of nature, this was highly likely.
Yet none of these things happened.
The four stone beads rolled across the tomb passage, over the massive stones, seemingly random and purposeless, yet they headed with uncanny precision toward the four altars north of Zhou Ling. It seemed that during their rolling journey, these stone beads had endowed themselves with attributes like meaning and purpose.
As time passed, disorder trended toward order, and chance became necessity—this completely defied the principles and laws of heaven and earth.
Or perhaps it was because these four stone beads were inherently beings beyond those rules?
...
...
Unreasonable, yet somehow feeling perfectly natural.
The four stone beads arrived at the base of Zhou Ling and each fell into one of the four altar-like structures.
The wind rose again, then suddenly became chaotic, accompanied by an exceptionally vast and profound sensation. Four stone steles appeared between heaven and earth.
The earth trembled uneasily, and from the grasslands came the indistinct, ambiguous howls of demonic beasts.
The surfaces of those black steles were smooth, engraved with intricate, unfathomable patterns, as if possessing a void-like magical power.
These were the Heavenly Book Steles that Zhou Dufu had once taken from the Heavenly Book Mausoleum.
Sunlight and the wind from the plains continuously poured into the surfaces of the Heavenly Book Steles, then vanished into nowhere.
Countless blades of grass, broken soil, and gravel also followed, but did not disappear.
As if time were flowing backward, the sand and earth gradually wrapped around the Heavenly Book Steles, forming stone pillars, their surfaces even bearing signs of erosion by wind and rain.
Shang Xingzhou looked at Chen Changsheng and said, "So these Heavenly Book Steles have indeed fallen into your hands."
Chen Changsheng replied, "Yes."
He had chosen to challenge Shang Xingzhou within the Zhou Garden for two reasons, and this was one of them.
At his current level of cultivation, he could not comprehend the ultimate mysteries of the Heavenly Book Steles, let alone utilize them.
When he encountered the Demon Lord on Snow Ridge and faced the Holy Light Angel in White Emperor City, he could only use the Heavenly Book Steles as weapons of infinite weight and indestructibility.
Only within the Zhou Garden could he unleash at least a portion of the Heavenly Book Steles' true power.
Because here were the altars and formations that Zhou Dufu had set up long ago.
The stone pillars formed by the Heavenly Book Steles were unstable, their surfaces constantly cracking and then reforming.
Countless ancient, weathered auras seeped from those cracks, transforming into terrifying streams of clear light.
Four beams of clear light descended from the sky, aimed precisely at Shang Xingzhou's position.
"Do you think this can defeat me?"
Shang Xingzhou turned his palm upward and struck.
Standing on the ground, he reached out as if to touch the very vault of heaven.
With a soft crack.
The clear light flowed across the canopy of the sky.
Shang Xingzhou's face turned somewhat pale, but his expression remained indifferent.
"Now it's your turn to choose."
As the clear light swirled, several extremely fine cracks faintly appeared in the sky.
From deep within the grasslands came the terrified screams of beast herds, as if recalling that day years ago when the Zhou Garden was on the verge of destruction.
If Chen Changsheng continued to attack Shang Xingzhou with the Heavenly Book Steles, he might very well win.
But it was also possible that the Zhou Garden would be destroyed first.
This was the choice Chen Changsheng had to make.
At this moment, he truly missed those swords.
...
...
(The illness is gradually getting better. Thank you all for your concern.)
(Three-Seven Chinese)