Chapter 572: The Meeting of Two Sovereigns
Where the white clouds parted lay a verdant valley.
The valley was extremely quiet, filled with strangely shaped vines and trees. In the woods against the cliff, the low growls of powerful demon beasts could occasionally be heard. But none of those demon beasts dared to approach this place, because there stood a majestic ancient temple, and also because two people lived within that temple.
The old man asked, puzzled, "Having been in seclusion for several hundred years, you finally went out, and you're back so soon?"
The man smiled and said, "It wasn't a complete waste. At least I got to see that young man."
The old man said, "Did you, sir, go specifically to see that young man?"
The man replied, "That young man is Shang's disciple, and he's also valued by Yin. Xiao Tianhai even specially invited Tianji to look at him. I couldn't help but be curious."
The old man said, "You don't strike me as someone who would tread the mortal world again just out of curiosity."
The man said, "That young man obtained my notes and the Heavenly Book Stele. He drew a night of starlight at the Heavenly Book Mausoleum. Many say he resembles me from back then. Naturally, that makes him different to me."
The old man asked, "So what did you see?"
The man's expression turned grave. He said, "That young man... is about to die."
The old man was shocked upon hearing this and asked, "Then what can be done?"
The man walked to the main hall of the ancient temple, gazed at the dilapidated giant Buddha statue, and said, "Everyone wants to defy fate and change their destiny, but they don't realize that all causes and effects are within the web of causality. The more you try to change your fate, the less you can escape the river of destiny. I cannot see how his fate will ultimately unfold; in the end, it still depends on him."
"What about Qiu Shan Jun and Xu You Rong? When will you go see them?"
"We'll see." The man glanced at the sky outside the temple and said, "It's going to rain. Let's finish today's painting first."
The exterior of this ancient temple was extremely dilapidated, as if it had been abandoned for who knows how many years. The Buddha statues in the various halls were the same. However, the Buddhist tradition had long been severed on the continent, and ordinary people had never even heard of it, so this scene was unremarkable. In fact, the fact that this ancient temple had survived to this day was itself a puzzling matter.
Yet the murals on the stone walls of the ancient temple were very complete, some even looking quite new, clearly added in recent years.
Those murals were exquisitely painted; one could even say that no painter of such skill could be found in the world today.
If Chen Changsheng had seen these murals, he would surely have been reminded of the portraits in the Lingyan Pavilion.
The old man stood on a wooden frame, holding a brush and ready to work on the wall, but he couldn't help saying, "We really should have tried just now."
The man sat on a broken bell in front of the hall, holding a gourd of spring water and drinking slowly. Upon hearing this, he smiled and said, "I can't beat him anyway."
The old man put down his brush, looked out of the hall, and said, "Last year, Su Li outside Xue Lao Cheng..."
The man did not answer this question, quietly gazing into the distance.
The old man sighed inwardly and stopped asking.
That time, the Demon Lord was inside Xue Lao Cheng, and the Black Robe was outside Xue Lao Cheng. How could he make a move? How could he possibly make a move?
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By the banks of the Red River, atop White Emperor City, that cloud slowly descended and then dissipated without a trace, whether for good or ill unknown.
On the Sweet Dew Terrace, the Heavenly Sea Holy Maiden no longer looked northward. She turned and walked down the platform.
Deep within the Li Palace, His Holiness the Pope gazed thoughtfully at the pot of green leaves. His posture and expression had not changed at all from before.
The night shrouding Han Mountain slowly tore apart and drifted into the distance. Heaven and earth returned to daylight. At the peak, by the lake, the Heavenly Mechanism Elder gently wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, gazing northward into the distant depths of the snowy plains. A touch of turbidity appeared in his weathered eyes; he could no longer see clearly what lay ahead.
A scholar appeared at the southern foot of Han Mountain. The red flower tied to his little finger was stained with the dust of thousands of miles, no longer so vibrant. A man in a bamboo hat appeared in the small town outside the Han Mountain archway, his face, rusted by the sea breeze, full of solemnity. They had arrived too late; the middle-aged scholar had already left Han Mountain. But they did not leave. Instead, together with the two great figures of the state religion, each bearing precious treasures, they vigilantly guarded the surroundings of Han Mountain, on alert for any possible disturbances.
On the long northern front of the continent, the Great Zhou Northern Army and the cultivators sent north by the southern sects and aristocratic families received secret orders from the various military headquarters and key passes. They began tense preparations for war. The demon army began to mobilize along the Red River line, advancing northwest into the snowy plains, slaughtering a small demon tribe along the way.
Yet neither the divine generals of the Great Zhou court who issued the troop deployment orders, nor the rulers of the southern sects and aristocratic families, knew why any of this was happening. In those military headquarters and cave dwellings, voices of discussion were everywhere. The atmosphere became extremely tense, causing people great unease.
As for the common people in the small town outside Han Mountain and the citizens of the capital, they knew nothing of these matters. They cooked, worked, and lived as usual, never imagining that on this seemingly ordinary summer day, a thousand years later, war between the human race, the demon race, and the Mo race had nearly erupted again.
All of this was simply because... the Demon Lord had left Xue Lao Cheng.
He went to Han Mountain, and then he left Han Mountain.
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Very few people knew that the Demon Lord had set foot in the Central Plains again.
Even fewer knew that on the Demon Lord's journey from Han Mountain back to Xue Lao Cheng, he had once encountered a person in the snowy plains.
For a long time afterward, this encounter remained unknown to the world, yet it was the most important meeting in this entire great affair.
It was not an arranged meeting, nor was it an accidental one.
That person had been waiting in the snowy plains for the Demon Lord for a very long time.
The wind and snow filled the sky. That person was entirely white—from hair to clothes, from eyebrows to lips, all white.
Not the white of snow, but a whiter-than-snow white, a chilling white, a murderous white.
Those who could calculate the Demon Lord's return path, wait for him halfway, and dare to wait for him here—from a thousand years ago to the present—would not be many.
To be precise, that person was not human, but a great demon with earth-shattering cultivation.
The Western White Emperor.
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A thousand years ago, the demon race marched south. The continent was in turmoil, and powerful figures emerged in droves, leaving behind countless battles that went down in history. The most famous among them were naturally the Battle of Luoyang between Zhou Du Fu and Emperor Taizong, and his death-defying battle with the Demon Lord. Another battle was relatively more secretive, but in terms of the strength and realm of the combatants and the ferocity of the battle, it was absolutely not inferior to the previous two—that was the battle for the strongest under the stars between Chen Xuan Ba and Zhou Du Fu in the Zhou Garden.
With Chen Xuan Ba dying in battle, Zhou Du Fu vanishing, and Emperor Taizong returning to the Sea of Stars, only the Demon Lord remained of the four most powerful people on the continent from that era. In the thousand years that followed, no battle comparable to those three earth-shattering conflicts ever occurred again, not even one approaching that level.
Until today, on this wind-and-snow-swept wilderness, this meeting.
Since they met, naturally, they would fight.
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(We need to prepare for the trip back to Daqing. It will probably take about seven days on the road. I need to stockpile chapters and am working hard on it. I wish everyone a happy weekend. See you tomorrow.) r1148
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