Chapter 260 - 246: Make the Guixi Sect Great Again
Wang Xiedi’s eyelids trembled heavily. His vision started as a blurry halo of light before slowly focusing on the rough, familiar wooden ceiling.
He was still alive. The realization allowed his taut nerves to relax by the smallest fraction.
Immediately following this, a dull ache like rolling thunder throbbed deep in his skull as memories from the canyon came flooding back.
He remembered the Sect Leader’s face, half in light and half in shadow under the sun; remembered Ye Longtao exploding into a warm mist of blood in his final moments; remembered the ghastly, bleeding hole in Miss Su’s chest, staining her robes red.
And then... then there was the golden light that consumed everything.
That’s where his memory ended.
He tried to turn his neck, and a sharp pain immediately shot up his spine. But this pain, paradoxically, made him feel incredibly relieved.
’Pain means I’m alive. Someone must have saved me. In a sect like this, the only one who could save me is probably Eldest Brother. And if he stepped in, then Miss Su... Miss Su must be safe, too.’
A wave of post-disaster relief washed over him, causing his tense body to go completely limp and sink deep into the wooden planks of the bed.
’I’m safe. It’s all over.’ He let out a long breath, preparing to close his eyes and rest for another moment. However, just as his eyelids were about to shut, a face suddenly filled his entire field of vision.
It was a face bloated and swollen, as if it had been soaked in water. Its eye sockets were deeply sunken, and two impossibly murky eyes stared fixedly at the tip of his nose. A few strands of wet, black hair clung to its puffy temples. A drop of viscous drool trickled down the purplish corner of its mouth and dripped onto Wang Xiedi’s cheek with a soft PLOP.
Wang Xiedi: !!!
His sense of safety and warmth was instantly shattered! Wang Xiedi’s brain short-circuited for a tenth of a second before a powerful survival instinct kicked in. He threw himself backward, his spine slamming hard against the wooden wall with a painful THUD.
’Wait, this is... it’s that ghost! Shen Jieye!’
’Eldest Brother, why in the world did you stick me with this thing yet again! Is my room the sect’s official disposal site for ghouls and monsters?!’
Even though he’d been living with this ghost for some time, this kind of point-blank, drool-in-the-face jump scare still made his skin crawl and his stomach churn.
He scrambled backward across the bed on all fours until his back hit the cold corner of the wall, with nowhere left to retreat. All the while, Shen Jieye’s horrifying head moved in tandem with him, maintaining the same unnerving distance.
Wang Xiedi gasped for breath, his chaotic thoughts slowly reassembling under the surge of adrenaline, and he gradually began to calm down.
Then, a more complex emotion welled up within him. He recalled the suffocating powerlessness he’d felt in the canyon. With just a few casual movements, Daoist Xuanyuan had crushed all their resistance and shattered their dignity.
He glanced at the slavering specter before him. ’If Shen Jieye had been with me then... she’s at least an Early-stage Core Formation-level fighter. Miss Su and I wouldn’t have been utterly helpless, with no chance to even fight back, just waiting to die.’
He looked at Shen Jieye’s swollen, ugly face. ’Sigh... in the end, it really is a world where looks are everything.’
He felt for his chest. The power of the Heart-Protecting Copper Mirror seemed to have been completely depleted in the canyon. ’The Heart-Protecting Mirror seems to be a real treasure,’ he thought, ’but relying on external items is a dead end for now.’
’Whatever.’
Leaning on the wall, Wang Xiedi slowly got to his feet. ’Since Eldest Brother pushed this ghost wife on me again, he must have his reasons.’
’Eldest Brother saved my life. But if I want to protect Miss Su, if I want to demand justice from Daoist Xuanyuan... with my current pathetic level of cultivation, it’s just a joke.’
’I have to cultivate. I have to get stronger.’
An unprecedented resolve burned within him. He smoothed out his wrinkled robes, took a steadying breath, and pushed open the door of his wooden cabin, ready to face a new day.
BOOM—!
The moment he pushed the door open, the silence he expected was absent. A blinding stream of light rocketed into the sky from afar, exploding high above into a thousand points of colored light.
Immediately after, dozens more streams of light shot up one after another, illuminating the entire sect’s night sky as if it were broad daylight.
Wang Xiedi stepped out of his cabin and froze. He saw the cluster of dwellings in the sect’s wilderlands, and there were now eleven missing. Eleven flat, empty lots, looking particularly glaring under the brilliant light of the fireworks.
His heart sank. ’They died, and the sect even erased the traces of their homes?’
He sighed. ’It makes a certain kind of sense, I suppose. When a person dies, their light is extinguished. It’s just... juxtaposed with a sky full of fireworks, those empty plots felt incredibly ironic.’
He looked up toward the source of the fireworks. Not far from his cabin stood Eldest Brother Lin Qingfeng, with Miss Su and Mr. Li at his side. The three of them appeared to be in conversation.
Seeing Wang Xiedi emerge, Lin Qingfeng raised a hand and waved from a distance. Wang Xiedi jogged over. "Eldest Brother, Miss Su."
Lin Qingfeng looked him up and down, clapped him on the shoulder just like always, and said in a lighthearted tone,
"Yo, Mr. Wa, you’re awake!"
"I’ve told you, it’s Wang Xiedi, not Mr. Wa!"
"Got it, Mr. Wa! No problem, Mr. Wa!"
Wang Xiedi: "..."
The familiar conversation and atmosphere brought him a sense of relief. ’Looks like everyone’s doing okay.’ His heavy mood finally began to lift. He was about to ask what had happened after the canyon.
But Lin Qingfeng beat him to it, a cryptic smile spreading across his face. "Not bad. You recovered quickly. It’s a shame you slept so deeply, though. You missed the most exciting part of the show."
Hearing the words "exciting show," Su Ling’er gave an almost imperceptible shudder.
’Exciting show...’ She tried to think what he could possibly mean. ’Surely he isn’t referring to the scene where Mr. Qian was repeatedly slamming that elder from the Celestial Furnace Sect?’
’That wasn’t exciting, though. Even if Mr. Qian was impressive, that kind of behavior lacked any sense of aesthetics. It was just crude. Not good at all.’
"I took the liberty of using a Memory Stone to edit together a clip of your heroic, self-sacrificing posture back in the canyon." Lin Qingfeng pulled a stone from his storage pouch and tossed it to Wang Xiedi. "Watch it later and study hard. You can see my highlight reel."
"Oh, right. Today is an auspicious day. I’m about to give a very important speech. Come on, let’s go to the plaza."
Wang Xiedi clutched the Memory Stone, all his questions pushed back down his throat. Seeing his Eldest Brother’s exuberant mood, he was filled with a sense of foreboding.
’What is going on today? Is this some kind of demonic ritual? Are they going to celebrate passing the ordeal with a live human sacrifice? What is happening?’
The group made their way to the sect plaza. The square was packed with a jostling crowd, and the atmosphere was frenetic.
From the base of the high stage, a clash of metallic instruments erupted. The melody was bizarre and unsettling. Wang Xiedi and Su Ling’er exchanged a glance, each seeing the grave look in the other’s eyes.
Lin Qingfeng, at the head of their group, pushed through the crowd and ascended the stage. ’He’s about to receive the adulation of hundreds of demonic disciples,’ Wang Xiedi thought, ’and then he’ll announce the start of some evil ritual.’ He braced himself for the worst.
But once on the stage, Lin Qingfeng began a series of utterly baffling movements.
First, he held up two fingers and waved them at the sky. Then he bent over into a golf swing posture before abruptly straightening up. Next, he began swinging his hands from left to right, his body swaying along, in imitation of a certain famous president.
Finally, Lin Qingfeng pointed to the disciples below, his finger tracing a semicircle from left to right. With an incredibly enthusiastic smile on his face, he roared with all his might, "Gentlemen! Ladies! And all you strangely-shaped disciples! Good evening!"
"Congratulations to us! We have successfully passed the trials of the Guixi Secret Realm!"
He brought his hand back, pinching his thumb and forefinger together at his chest and moving them as he spoke in an incredibly flamboyant tone, "And we will—make the Guixi Sect great again!"
"Make the Guixi Sect great again!"
"Make the Guixi Sect great again!"
The crowd below erupted with a deafening, tsunami-like roar in response. The frenzied wall of sound made Su Ling’er’s ears ring, and she instinctively took half a step back. It was only at this moment that she and Wang Xiedi finally saw what their fellow sect members truly looked like.
In the frenzy of the celebration, inspired by their Eldest Brother, they no longer held back.
Some disciples had faces that were bright yellow blocks, with two huge white eyeballs taking up most of the space and a pair of comical buck teeth poking out.
Others were entirely green-skinned, with ears that reached their shoulders and long, pointy noses. They were grinning from ear to ear, letting out strange, cackling laughs.
A few others had variously shaped antennae sticking out of their heads, glowing screens embedded in their bellies, and bodies of pure, eye-searing red, yellow, blue, and green.
Su Ling’er and Wang Xiedi were both stunned speechless, their minds completely blank.
’What... what in the flying fuck are these creatures?!’
’Did Eldest Brother... summon a horde of demons, or did he just kick a hornet’s nest from another dimension?!’
...
Ashen Heaven Player Community Reports Spike in Death Rate Around the Jade Heart Realm
According to player reports, due to large-scale conflicts breaking out between righteous, demonic, and neutral sects in the Jade Heart Realm, numerous players exploring the vicinity of the secret realm have been caught in the crossfire. Data indicates that over seventy percent of players are being killed by the aftershocks of high-level NPC battles, with the average survival time in the realm dropping to less than one hour. Players are calling on the game’s officials to add a "Secret Realm Safe Zone" to isolate the battlefield, but officials have stated that secret realms are inherently dangerous and see nothing wrong with the current situation, sparking a massive backlash from free-to-play players.