"Where's your 'Seven Wonders Zither'?" Lin Feiyuan urged anxiously, "You were so impressive playing tunes during the day, quickly take it out and play again!"
"Once entering this place, magical artifacts become ineffective," Song Qianji said. "Lend me a sword. I know you have another one."
A proper assassin would never carry just one sword.
"Remember to return it!" Lin Feiyuan pulled out two swords and handed the more valuable one to Song Qianji.
An endless tide of people surged out of the night fog, advancing toward the two figures at the street's center.
As Song Qianji took the sword, he had already clearly seen their faces.
The passersby who had brushed shoulders with them on the street moments ago now had hollow eyes and vacant stares.
Men, women, the elderly, children—all wore expressions of complete numbness. They moved in unison, like marionettes on strings, like walking corpses.
At first their steps were slow, as if the puppeteer was still unskilled, but then their pace gradually quickened.
Song Qianji looked up at the sky—midnight black, rolling dark clouds, howling cold winds, with ghostly shadows seemingly moving through the gloom.
Just as expected, here we go again.
A faint, mocking smile touched Song Qianji's lips.
Lin Feiyuan had survived many killing arrays and weathered countless perilous storms, considering himself someone who carried his life on his belt, fearing neither heaven nor earth.
But the utterly eerie atmosphere of this place truly chilled him to the bone.
"Are they human?" he asked Song Qianji, his voice slightly trembling. "Do the people of this city want to kill us?"
A city full of vibrant life and vivid colors just moments before, with joyful, living pedestrians—now everything had changed in the blink of an eye.
"This isn't the real Hua Wei City. They aren't real people either. These people have no consciousness and can only be controlled. The controller must be somewhere in the city. But to avoid detection by me, he'll do his utmost to hide." Song Qianji spoke rapidly but with a steady tone.
"How do you know?" Lin Feiyuan frowned.
The other was too calm, too certain. If this weren't Song Qianji, he'd almost suspect an enemy spy.
"I've encountered this before," Song Qianji said. "A long time ago."
Even after facing the river of time, watching the "Frozen Plains' End" a hundred times until his heart remained still as a placid lake.
After viewing the "First Steps on the Immortal Path" a thousand times, to the point where he could munch on melon seeds while chatting with the narration, mocking himself.
Yet among all his past life experiences, there were still certain scenes he never wished to see again, memories he instinctively wanted to forget.
Like this very moment.
"Excellent!" Lin Feiyuan was overjoyed, his heroic spirit surging. "Once experienced, the second time holds no fear! How did you break out last time?"
He waited a moment but received no answer. Just as he was about to press further, he heard the other laugh:
"Not telling you~"
Lin Feiyuan's smile vanished, his anger making his hair stand on end. "Are you insane? Are you still drunk?!"
Song Qianji ignored him, seriously advising: "Before I find the controller, try to engage with them and avoid lethal strikes. Understand?"
"I understand, I'll conserve my spirit qi." Lin Feiyuan nodded, took a deep breath, and broke into a smile. "If we survive this, we'll be life-and-death comrades. I'll draw them to the right, you go left to find the controller. After I count to three, we move simultaneously—Hey, Song Qianji! Damn it!"
Before he could finish speaking, Song Qianji's movement technique was too fast—his figure instantly vanished into the night fog.
Lin Feiyuan could no longer see him.
...
Hua Wei City had many tall towers and grand mansions.
Song Qianji swept across the rooftops of numerous buildings, like a bird flitting through a forest.Amid the rolling thick fog, his path was clear and direct, without any detours, as if he was certain of his target's location.
The puppet master manipulated the crowd to climb onto the rooftops, attempting to block his way, but Song Qianji was a step faster.
A fierce wind swept across the sky, its powerful currents trying to blow him down, yet Song Qianji pressed forward against the gale.
Occasionally trapped in a tight encirclement, he swung his sword with a calm expression, as if felling a tree.
Song Qianji muttered to himself softly, "You can strike at the Huawel Sect, or come to Thousand Canals. It’s best if you act yourselves, no more using others as proxies… But you shouldn’t have resorted to this trick again. I’m a little angry now."
The city was fake, the people were fake—a false sky, a false earth, a false world.
But the "feeling" of killing was real. As long as he could feel the warmth of blood splattering on his face, hear the screams and wails, and see the mountains of corpses and bones—
What difference did truth and falsehood make?
He did not allow Lin Feiyuan to deliver fatal blows.
The other side assumed it was to conserve Spirit Qi for the impending battle.
He offered no explanation, nor did he wish to speak the truth—in his past life, he had slaughtered an entire city to find the mastermind.
He wanted to live, not die.
But Huawel City had a million people—men and women, old and young, merchants and laborers.
People of different heights and builds, each face unique.
Anyone who survived such a massacre would be mentally shattered, unable to lift a sword again, becoming lambs for the slaughter.
In his past life, this illusory city had lured him into a trap, not only seeking his life but also aiming to crush his spirit.
In this life, the city still held people he had brought from Thousand Canals—all young, under twenty years old.
At night, they dreamed of "wielding their swords across thousands of miles, roaming the Cultivation World, free to wander heaven and earth." By day, they hurled snowballs at their companions.
The night wind howled mournfully as a dark shadow, like a bat, swooped down from above with a shrill, eerie laugh.
A torrential spiritual pressure crushed toward Song Qianji, mingled with a strong aura of death, like a tsunami crashing against a lone island.
The living carry "vital energy"—with each breath, life flourishes.
The dead carry "death energy." The two are naturally opposed. And the remnant soul’s owner had died centuries ago, its death energy at its peak.
"The dead in the sky come to kill me, the living on the ground come to kill me." After saying this, Song Qianji suddenly raised his head and shouted loudly:
"Since your body has perished and your path has vanished, why cling to the mortal world?!"
His sword was like ordinary iron, his ceremonial sleeves torn, whipped by the fierce wind.
The words "cling to the mortal world" echoed repeatedly.
The remnant soul had lost its sanity, unable to wield the divine abilities of its past life. Yet, the sheer force of its spiritual pressure was like a mountain crashing down upon him.
For a normal Nascent Soul cultivator’s physical strength, choosing to withstand it would instantly crush them into pulp.
If they tried to evade with movement techniques, the remnant soul would cling relentlessly, and the "death energy" and resentment would still drown them.
Song Qianji opened his mouth, gripped the sword horizontally between his teeth, formed hand seals with both hands, and roared from his throat: "Domain! Open!"
In an instant, a surge of vibrant life force erupted, golden light blazing forth, piercing through the thick fog and illuminating the rooftops.
The dark shadow plunged into the golden light, passed through his body, and vanished into thin air.
...
Yuan Qingshi appeared at the city gate, holding a massive white banner.
The gate towered majestically, with the three characters "Huawel City" hanging above his head.
The white banner in his hand, shrouded in a faint red glow, fluttered vigorously.
A fine layer of cold sweat beaded on Yuan Qingshi’s forehead.
His master had entrusted this task to him, repeatedly emphasizing that nothing could go wrong.He was equally aware in his heart that this matter concerned the rise and fall of the sect.
The Huawel Sect could not afford to lose the offerings from the mortal world, the allegiance of other factions, or its dominant position as the overlord of the Western Sky Continent.
With Song Qianji—no, with Thousand-Ditch Prefecture—it had reached a life-or-death situation.
Sometimes, life-or-death struggles arise not from personal grudges but from positions, social strata, and interests—things intangible yet profoundly significant.
He had already changed his location twelve times, while Song Qianji had switched routes eight times, each one leading directly and swiftly to his current position.
And the pace was accelerating.
This was originally his home ground, where he moved freely and could perceive everything in the city.
At first, the sensation of omniscience and controlling puppets nearly intoxicated him.
The enemy, trapped in the city, should have dulled senses, their Divine Sense unable to pierce through the thick fog—just like Meng Heze, Ji Chen, and the other Thousand Canals disciples.
How did Song Qianji know his whereabouts?
Why couldn’t his powerful soul harm the other party, but instead get "absorbed"?
It made no sense at all.
The Song Qianji he remembered was the unrestrained young master who beat time and played the jade flute in the grand hall.
The world knew that Song Qianji loved flowers and plants, excelled at chess and calligraphy, and had earned the Sage’s favor through the Star-Plucking Game and Hero Summons.
After today’s celebratory banquet, he would also be known for his mastery of music and disregard for formalities.
Truly a genius, Yuan Qingshi thought. But such individuals, once stripped of their backing and divine artifacts, should not be difficult to deal with.
It should have been a guaranteed victory, yet now he vaguely sensed that things were slipping beyond his control.
But he was inside the "city," unable to contact his master or the sect.
"Go!" He gritted his teeth and waved the white banner.
A crimson light flashed, and ten more dark shadows soared from the sky toward a specific location.
The remnant souls lacked consciousness and could only be driven and directed by the Soul-Guiding Banner.
As the banner holder, he was the puppet master—he absolutely could not be found.
Just then, his ears twitched, catching a voice carried by the wind:
"I am very sensitive to the perception of life force. You are the only true living person in this city. Stop running."
It was Song Qianji’s voice.
Yuan Qingshi’s face instantly turned deathly pale, and his form vanished like a wisp of smoke.
...
"Tonight, I leave Huawel Mountain, vanishing into the mortal world to live as an ordinary man. Raising chickens, fighting dogs, tilling the land..." Song Qianji raised his sword and struck down another person—the shopkeeper who had been selling soup buns earlier—continuing to chant, "Living a carefree, short life."
On the first night of his rebirth, he had hung from the cliff face of Broken Mountain Cliff with a dagger.
The cold mountain wind rustled through his Outer sect disciple robes as he gazed into the bottomless abyss, reciting this doggerel in his heart.
Tonight, he had chanted poetry, cut down foes, collected remnant souls within his Domain, and advanced singing loudly, scenes from his past life replaying before his eyes.
—A youth emerged from a street piled with corpses, half an arm revealing stark white bone, his entire body soaked in filthy blood, mud, marrow, and vomit, barely recognizable as human.
When he reached the puppet master and asked why the other hated him so deeply, why he had chosen such a method to kill him.
The other, instead, was terrified out of his wits and was cleanly beheaded by his swift sword.
When pushed to the brink, it’s not about cultivation or spells.
It’s about who has a harder, crueler heart.
"I’ve already done the extreme; I’ve grown weary of killing. I don’t want to walk the same path as before. Why can’t you understand that?""I am not the child of destiny, I am not the protagonist, I cannot save the world. Is it wrong that I want to farm? As you sow, so shall you reap. I prefer new life over death."
"The land and vegetation are more reliable than people. They will never say to you, 'I'm sorry'..."
After Song Qianji finished murmuring to himself, he suddenly sighed:
"Those who can fight their way out of this city are no longer human. Those who can manipulate a city to kill are no longer human either. You're still young. Did your master not teach you that once certain boundaries are broken, one can never return? How could they assign such dirty, exhausting work to you?"
Yuan Qingshi stiffly turned his head and saw Song Qianji's calm face.
His entire body trembled. In that instant, he felt a terror greater than death itself.
Song Qianji's voice was faint, carrying a trace of weariness.
Though Yuan Qingshi could hear every word clearly, he couldn't comprehend any of them. He dared not listen carefully or ponder their meaning.
"Ah!" A sharp cry echoed as the soul-summoning banner's crimson light illuminated half the city.
Dark clouds churned across the sky, countless shadowy figures surged forth like a murder of crows descending upon their prey.
Song Qianji was submerged by the rolling black tide of the Dead Sea.
Standing at the center of the wave, he parted his lips: "Domain, manifest!"
The Pure Bottle hummed and vibrated, releasing a brilliant golden radiance. A spring-like vitality surged from his Purple Palace!
Yin and yang, life and death, clash and transform, sharing the same origin.
Without death, how can there be new life?
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