“…Not even the gods could save us? You mean those holes would become impossible to seal?”
Qin Shu immediately grew more alert, but Pei Zhao did not explain everything in detail right away.
“It’s not only that the gods wouldn’t be able to save anyone. Even the gods themselves would be in danger.” Pei Zhao patted the white dragon. “Let’s talk after we get back. Some things shouldn’t be discussed openly.”
The white dragon understood and immediately turned, racing toward the opposite side of the river.
After enjoying their brief night flight, the white dragon carried them safely to the ground. He shrank back into a little snake and, the moment Qin Shu opened the front door, jumped onto his shoulder again.
Meeting Qin Shu’s surprised gaze, the white dragon lifted his head. “What? I can’t listen? This is important. Can you let me feel involved for once? You two are definitely going to need me for things later, so let me understand the situation first.”
Qin Shu and Pei Zhao exchanged a glance, then Qin Shu nodded slightly. “Fine. Just don’t go blabbing about it afterward.”
“You think I’m three years old? Do I need you to teach me that?”
Every single thing Qin Shu said had to be answered with a retort. This guy really did need another beating every few days, or his tail would immediately stick right back up into the sky… Speechless, Qin Shu ignored the white dragon and pulled Pei Zhao over to the oil lamp.
The information contained in Zuo Zhe’s jade slips was extremely important, so this time Pei Zhao pulled every creature in the house, large and small, into the shen-dragon illusion. The resplendent underwater palace was spacious enough for everyone to find a comfortable corner.
Returning to such a familiar environment for the first time in thousands of years, the white dragon abruptly fell silent. He quietly found himself a soft meditation cushion, curled up on it, and stopped moving.
Seeing his awful temper finally settle, Qin Shu relaxed too and sat beside Pei Zhao on the cushioned couch. “Zhaozhao, tell us. What’s going on?”
“First, we need to understand one concept. The world developing fractures is actually a natural phenomenon. The passage of time, shortages or excesses of spiritual energy, and large-scale events such as wars and natural disasters all damage the framework of the world itself. Even the Heavenly Dao’s power that maintains stability has cycles of weakness and strength.”
“…I see. The total amount of power is fixed. Even if everything stays in a positive cycle, some energy is still lost during the process.” Qin Shu thought for a moment. “And wars and disasters happen constantly. The world obviously can’t stay in a positive cycle forever, so there will eventually be times when it can’t sustain itself. You knew about all this in the past, right? How did you deal with it back then?”
“In the past, it was never considered a major problem. ‘The Eight Immortals cross the sea, each displaying their own powers’ is simply a miniature reflection of what prosperous eras were like. Any being with a divine position had the ability to repair fractures. Back then, the gods each performed their own duties, and there were always several responsible for patching and repairing things. Even if a fissure grew too large to mend, they would choose to suppress it with their own bodies and maintain stability until a better method of filling it could be found.”
“Like what the Cave God did?”
“Yes.”
“So most gods really were kind and selfless…” Qin Shu sucked in a breath. “Suppressing a fracture with your own body, and once you start you’re stuck there for centuries or millennia. That’s worse than prison!”
“Yes. Malevolent deities were rare. During the ancient struggle for divine positions, everyone’s strength was roughly equal. Once they cultivated to the limit and could advance no farther, even if they fought, victory and defeat were separated by only the slightest margin. Without admirable character, you gained no followers, no incense worship, and no favor from the Heavenly Dao. Becoming a god was extremely difficult.”
“So a bastard like Zuo Zhe was destined to have no chance of becoming a god through legitimate means. I suspect he wasn’t only using demonic methods to prolong his life. He probably wanted to use the demons’ methods to manipulate people’s minds too. He built such a huge arena, hosted concerts and galas, and deliberately gave the employees amazing benefits… Eventually he absolutely would’ve stepped into the spotlight and gone down the cult-leader route.”
As Qin Shu spoke, he imagined several extremely frightening possibilities. During peak tourist season, if the arena were filled with concertgoers, Zuo Zhe, as a cultivator, could easily engineer an “accident” that killed two-thirds of the audience and use them for another sacrifice…
The thought alone made his blood run cold.
Pei Zhao took out a jade slip and crushed it. Several streaks of light shot into the minds of everyone present, and Qin Shu immediately saw something even more terrifying.
It was an enormous, meticulously detailed hand-drawn map of the world.
Phoenix Village in Yun City had been circled in red, with a note: Code 16. Grand Shaman stationed permanently deep inside the Drum Tower. Difficult to infiltrate. Investigation suspended.
The former site of Living Water Village in Hai City had been circled in blue, with a note: Code 39. Suppressing object successfully destroyed. Fracture area extensive. Deity fallen, humans dead. Usable.
Jiangcheng No. 2 High School had been circled in black, with a note: Code 1. Do not disturb. No one returns. Great terror. Do not investigate.
There were forty-nine circled and annotated locations like these, densely scattered across the map. Zuo Zhe had divided them into seven different categories using seven colors of ink.
Without exception, every one marked a location where the world was fractured. For those not yet annotated “usable,” the locations were precise down to the individual building. Jiangcheng No. 2 High School was the most unusual of all, the only place surrounded entirely in black ink and, in Zuo Zhe’s eyes, absolutely forbidden to investigate.
None of that made Qin Shu feel relieved. First, there were far too many fractures. He had never imagined the world possessed so many holes. Even if they removed the fractures already beyond salvation, if every remaining breach required power on the level of the Cave God to suppress it… the situation was already extraordinarily dangerous.
Second, the number of breaches itself was significant. The Book of Changes says that “return comes in seven days; this is the way of Heaven.” Seven is a special number mentioned in many traditions and carries unusual significance, summarizing the ultimate condensation of Heavenly Dao rules and the cyclical extremes of yin and yang.
Forty-nine damaged locations in total, deliberately divided by Zuo Zhe into seven groups. There had to be a reason.
“…Zhaozhao, what exactly was Zuo Zhe planning? What can someone do with these holes?” Qin Shu asked quietly.
“Kill gods,” Pei Zhao replied softly.
Qin Shu’s pupils contracted. “What?! He was capable of that?!”
“He wasn’t. But fractures are inherently dangerous. A hole necessarily has an inside and an outside. The inside is our world. The outside is the void. By using the danger of the fractures themselves as a weapon, Zuo Zhe truly did have a chance to kill deities.”
Qin Shu suddenly understood. “The gods suppressing those fractures already have to devote all their strength to holding them down. They can’t fight him at full power! If he schemes against them, they can barely resist. Right?”
“Correct. Zuo Zhe used exactly that weakness. He planned to forcibly exile them beyond the holes, leaving only their divine positions suspended in the mortal world while they themselves could never return. Given enough time, even a god would eventually exhaust their strength and die in the void.”
“Then… has he already succeeded before?”
“Yes. The exiled deities are not dead yet, but one day they will be. Once the omens of chaos fully appear, they will only die faster. If we had never discovered Zuo Zhe’s scheme, all those vacant divine positions would eventually have become power waiting for him to harvest.”
The white dragon had been listening intently and finally could not resist commenting, “What an unprecedentedly clever and treacherous method! That Zuo Zhe really knew how to hoard good things for himself. Poor Xiao Zhu. If we’d known there was a way to exile gods, exiling the Cave God’s remains would’ve been much easier. I definitely would’ve helped her try… Aow!”
Before he finished speaking, Yuanbao bit him viciously, hard enough that he deliberately injected venom.
The white dragon’s scream cut off abruptly and turned into short, frantic gasps. His entire body expanded uncontrollably, thrashing and convulsing in pain across the spacious palace and knocking over several gold-and-jade ornaments as he lost control of the shrinking spell.
His snow-white scales stood on end, revealing strips of pale dragon flesh in the gaps. A terrifying blue-black discoloration spread rapidly outward from the obscured area, staining his beautiful body with a twisted darkness in the blink of an eye.
Elio’s Notes: The supplied raw contains □□ at the point describing where the blue-black discoloration begins spreading across Ao Wang’s body. The exact missing characters are not reconstructed.
“Brother, brother, Brother Yuanbao, I was wrong. Let go, let go…”
The white dragon forced out several broken pleas with all his strength. Every breath was a sharp gasp dragged in through agony, and his entire body trembled uncontrollably. “I’ll never mention your father again. I was wrong. Hiss… seriously, I was wrong…”
Yuanbao stood on his head, enormous jaws still buried deeply between the scales. Only after listening to the white dragon apologize for quite a while did he finally let go, then casually returned to Qin Shu’s arms as though nothing had happened.
Qin Shu did not interfere with the little dispute at all. The white dragon had signed a blood contract with him and was not so easy to kill with Yuanbao’s venom. The blood contract was a restraint, but in another sense, it was also protection.
A dragon would never truly submit, but even in a peaceful cooperative relationship where both sides kept some distance and interfered little with each other, someone with a terrible personality like the white dragon would still periodically lose control and display that domineering, self-important attitude.
This guy really did need someone stronger to beat the arrogance out of him on a regular basis. Qin Shu had not found a suitable opportunity recently, so Yuanbao’s bite could be considered a perfectly timed bite of justice.
Qin Shu squeezed the little centipede’s cool body and turned back to listen as Pei Zhao continued explaining Zuo Zhe’s scheme.
If a deity truly died in exile, the consequences would be disastrous. Because what Zuo Zhe could harvest was not merely power… but the vacant divine position itself.
Xuanming, who had died thousands of years ago, was now exactly that kind of empty-shell deity, automatically functioning under incense faith and worship. If a sufficiently qualified top-tier existence appeared, there really was a chance to fight for the position and replace him.
But Xuanming was far too famous. His fall had never been a secret among the highest circles of cultivators, so naturally Zuo Zhe could not openly compete for that divine position.
But aside from famous ancient deities, there were many obscure mid-tier gods whose names ordinary people could not even recall. They had few independent temples and very few worshippers, perhaps receiving less incense than Jiangcheng’s local City God.
Those low-profile gods were Zuo Zhe’s ideal targets.
“He has already successfully tested the exile method.”
As Pei Zhao spoke softly, he raised a hand and recreated the map annotated by Zuo Zhe in midair. He enlarged it continuously and pointed to a cave circled in blue. The name looked familiar. It was another place the expedition team had visited many years ago.
“And Zuo Zhe began carrying out the plan in the West, which made it even harder to detect. He only fled back to Huaguo and reestablished his base in Jiangcheng after nearly being caught by a cardinal several decades ago.”
The trajectory made sense. Once the exile experiment had succeeded, returning to Huaguo actually made later operations easier for him.
For one thing, there were more cultivators he could manipulate here. People like Blind Granny, who likewise sought longevity, could easily be used as long as their desires were strong enough. They could help him search for ‘skins’ with suitable birth data so he could extend his life. For another, he could ride the momentum of the spiritual-energy resurgence, continue developing his plans in secret, and seize a share of the coming chaotic age.
“Then these exiled gods… have any of them already died?” Qin Shu asked tentatively after thinking for a moment.
“Probably not yet. There are many empty shells, but I read through the remaining jade slips. Combined with Zuo Zhe’s movements, I can confirm he hasn’t left Huaguo again in the past several decades. He’s stayed in Jiangcheng developing his base, which means the time for harvesting hasn’t arrived yet.”
“If they’re still alive, I want to save them,” Qin Shu blurted out.
If they could still be saved, then he wanted to try his best. That was simply his most basic personal instinct. Besides, forty-nine fractures… Qin Shu and Pei Zhao could never repair that much damage by themselves. They lacked manpower, and badly.
Even Goddess Nüwa had personally asked him to look after her descendants. That alone showed how badly overstretched the gods who could still accomplish practical work had become.
Not to mention the condition of the newborn dragon vein. It was very likely connected to these fractures as well. When gods were exiled and suppressing objects destroyed, pollution from beyond the world could pour through the openings unchecked.
By now, the source of the dragon vein’s contamination was also obvious… the first ghost domain Qin Shu had ever experienced, Living Water Village in Hai City.
And the deity worshipped by Living Water Village was even more obscure than the Cave God of Phoenix Village, a highly localized ancestral deity.
The dead of Living Water Village were likewise buried inside caves, but unlike Phoenix Village, this was not merely a traditional burial custom, nor was the goal simply to send the dead to a resting place. Instead, the custom served as the literal foundation of a unique local power system.
Generation after generation of dead ancestors combined into an enormous divine consciousness, drawing strength from worship and from newly deceased souls added to the collective, then using that power to protect the peace and prosperity of their descendants. Tracing the tradition back to antiquity, it could even be considered a branch of the Wu Clan, and its strength was not low.
The problem was that almost no one knew about it outside the region. Once someone left the fishing villages of Hai City, practically nobody knew such a deity existed except specialists in archaeology, anthropology, history, and related fields.
So weakening that deity was simple. Destroy, corrupt, and massacre large numbers of Hai City villagers and cultivators. There was not even any need to kill everyone. Breaking their faith and plunging them into despair would produce immediate results.
These notes were also among the jade slips Pei Zhao found from Zuo Zhe. His research into ghost domains had reached an astonishing level. He had even personally created a small ghost domain through bloody methods so he could harvest soul power for himself.
“I thought it was strange at the time. Under normal circumstances, a ghost domain couldn’t easily drag you straight inside. I was standing beside you and should’ve been able to stop it. But that time, when we were watching the movie, I… couldn’t. I didn’t understand that strange power and could barely detect it in an instant. I had to enter the ghost domain myself before I could bring you out.”
As Pei Zhao recalled that unexpected experience, faint displeasure still lingered in his voice. He smoothly tucked himself into Qin Shu’s arms and pulled Qin Shu’s arm around his waist.
For someone with Pei Zhao’s somewhat strong need for control, watching Qin Shu vanish before his eyes without the slightest warning or mental preparation… That intense discomfort of suddenly losing control would probably remain unpleasant even years later.
“Now I finally understand.” Pei Zhao’s voice was muffled. “When the deity responsible for suppressing a fracture is exiled by Zuo Zhe, the strange power inside the hole and the pollution from outside the world spread everywhere like a volcanic eruption. Even the dragon vein can’t escape it, and any ghost domain hidden in the interstitial space is affected even more severely.”
Qin Shu lowered his head and kissed his hair. “Mm. That pollution probably flowed through the seawater and eventually entered the river here too. So the Dragon Mother’s mental state would also… keep getting worse.”
Of course, the Dragon Mother probably could not be saved, and Qin Shu did not especially want to save her. The brutal sight of Jin Bi dying before his eyes remained vivid even now.
Even that alone might have been something Qin Shu could reluctantly classify as an internal family matter if the Dragon Mother had only killed her own shrimp soldiers and crab generals, evidence that the Dragon Palace simply had unusually harsh rules and therefore was not his place to judge.
But the biggest problem was that the Dragon Mother had stolen Liang Ming Yue’s child.
Cultivators truly viewed the world differently. Everyone could go mad. They could kill, scheme against one another, steal each other’s fate patterns, bodies, and treasures. Survival of the fittest, that was all.
But stealing a child someone had suffered so much to give birth to, then causing that person’s partner to die as well… even among cultivators, that still qualified as the kind of evil deed Heaven itself ought to strike down. Even the white dragon, after hearing the old story, had no intention of siding with his own relative.
So Qin Shu had no intention of hiding his attitude this time. When discussing the pollution and the fractures, whenever the Dragon Mother came up, he and Pei Zhao only discussed how to use the opportunity to kill her as efficiently as possible. They did not merely want to steal things and bring the child home. Qin Shu wanted the Dragon Mother’s life.
The Dragon Mother was not like Zuo Zhe. She was not as clever, not as calculating, and not especially skilled at plotting against people from the shadows… But the Dragon Mother was overwhelmingly powerful.
Once a direct fight began, she could overturn rivers and seas and summon winds and waves. On her own territory, her strength was practically endless. Even when fighting remotely, the Dragon Mother only needed to move her divine sense to slaughter her own subordinates with ease, which was enough to show how terrifying she was.
To protect both uninvolved people and everyone directly involved, they could not casually trigger an enormous battle. If Jiangcheng ended up flooded or the world’s fractures expanded because of it, the loss would outweigh the gain.
So Qin Shu and Pei Zhao developed several tentative plans. They discussed them through the night, but eventually the conversation returned to the exiled deities.
Save the gods first, then have the gods help them fight. Wouldn’t that be absurdly effective?
It was only one preliminary plan, but it perfectly suited Qin Shu’s urgent desire to save people. At minimum, they needed to try rescuing one deity first and see whether it was even possible, whether there was any way to bring an exiled existence back from the void. Only then would the direction of their future efforts become clearer.
As for where to begin… all of them reached the same conclusion, their attention landing simultaneously on the very center of the map.
The fracture in the capital was the most urgent.