Chapter 628: The Long Night Fades Away (7)

Chapter 628: The Long Night Fades (7)

“Truly worthy of being the one who leads the Lone Martial Sequence. Decades of my painstaking scheming, and in the end, it still couldn't compare to a single day of your soaring ascent. How lamentable.”

Yin Ji gazed at the man before him, whose expression was calm, as the ferocity and unwillingness on his face gradually faded. He even forced a nonchalant smile.

“Li Jun, did you know from the very beginning that everything I constructed was an illusion?”

“No.”

Li Jun shook his head. “Dreams, illusory realms, Buddha lands—I might not have understood any of them individually, let alone when you mixed them together. I couldn't tell truth from falsehood.”

“Impossible! Since you didn't understand, why didn't you believe?”

Yin Ji's words suddenly quickened, his tone urgent.

But before Li Jun could reply, he let out a self-mocking laugh. “Never mind. Since you didn't believe anyway, what need was there to understand?”

“So close. So close I was to making you believe it was all real, to trap you forever in this Jichang. With you and Yuan Mingfei as two Source Mother Trees, ascending to Sequence Two would have been effortless, and even reaching for Sequence One would have been within sight.”

Yin Ji laughed bitterly. “What a pity. One misstep, and in the end, it's a complete loss.”

“If I had believed, what would I have become?”

Li Jun seemed in no hurry to act. He rubbed his brow wearily and sat down cross-legged on the black sea surface that was a reflection of Yin Ji's mental world.

“A Yellow Millet Poison Insect—a pitiful man indulging in a dream.”

Yin Ji said, “In the ending I crafted for you, you would wake up on a freezing night in the streets of Chengdu Prefecture. You wouldn't be a Martial Sequencer or a Paoge then, just a homeless vagrant uncertain of tomorrow, starving and cold. All your memories would be dismissed as a dream of millet.”

“Not kill me?”

Li Jun asked, somewhat surprised. “As long as it's a dream, there's always a chance of waking. Aren't you afraid I'd stage a comeback?”

“If you believe deeply in the dream, then reality becomes the dream.”

“That line sounds awfully familiar.”

Li Jun pondered for a moment, then asked, “Is it from the Yin and Yang Sequence's ‘turning falsehood into truth’?”

“Those people aren't as small-minded as I am, only caring about their own little patch of ground.”

Yin Ji sighed. “What they want is terrifyingly vast.”

“Tell me?”

“You're not in a hurry to kill me, just to learn all this, aren't you?”

Yin Ji smiled. “Don't worry, even if you didn't ask, I would have begged for a chance to speak.”

“You are one of the Nine Lords of the Eastern Palace. So eager to sell them out?”

Li Jun looked at him with complicated eyes.

“The bond you value so highly is worthless in the eyes of people like us. Every bit of my domain, every inch of land, every blade of grass, I earned myself. It was a long process, and I suffered countless losses at the hands of the Eastern Palace, endured no small humiliation. A few words can't begin to cover it.”

Yin Ji's emotions surged violently, and he laughed savagely. “Since they never treated me as one of their own, why should I care if they live or die? Don't you think? On the contrary, I'd be more than happy to wait for them down below.”

After saying this, Yin Ji paused abruptly. He glanced at Li Jun sitting cross-legged on the ground. “The way you look now, if there were any outsiders here, they'd probably think I'd won. How about a chair?”

The surface of the water rippled, and several threads of water leaped up, weaving together behind Li Jun.

“Forget it. There's no need.”

Li Jun said flatly, “I have a habit—hard to call it good or bad. No matter how arrogant or domineering an opponent is, or how much I want to kill him, when the moment of death truly arrives, I usually still show him some respect.”

The light in Yin Ji's eyes dimmed. He forced a smile. “The deceased are the greatest?”

Li Jun nodded. “So this chair should be yours.”

“To be honest, you really don't seem like a man of this era.”

Yin Ji's expression returned to normal. He flicked his sleeve, dispelling the watery chair, and sat down on the ground just like Li Jun.

“Why do you say that?”

“Your ways are far too traditional. You're out of step with this world. Take today, for example—if you had abandoned Yuan Mingfei, you could have gained countless benefits.”

Li Jun smiled. “Many people have told me that before.”

“Then you should have listened to them!”

“I killed them all.”

Li Jun said calmly. “To me, benefits are benefits, and people are people.”

Yin Ji's lips moved, but for a moment, he was at a loss for words.

“Time to get down to business.”

Li Jun reminded him. “There are people outside waiting for me. I can't keep them waiting any longer.”

“Don't worry, there's no need to rush. I'm about to die, so naturally Feiyi cannot survive either. He will have to leave with me, and those Blood and Flesh Jichangs will turn to ashes, not a trace left. If nothing unexpected happens, the outside world should be filled with laughter and joy by now.”

Such chilling words, spoken by Yin Ji, seemed like an insignificant trifle.

“But indeed, there's no need to drone on about other trivialities.”

Yin Ji fixed his gaze on Li Jun. “Have you ever wondered, back when the Yellow Millet was first built, why were the Yin and Yang Sequence driven out by the other participating forces?”

“Because the Yin and Yang Sequence, empowered by the Yellow Millet, posed too great a threat to the others.”

Li Jun, though unaware of the specific secrets, knew that the cause of conflict was rarely anything else.

“Exactly. Although the Yellow Millet benefits all sequences except you Martial Sequences, it's even more advantageous to the Yin and Yang Sequence.”

Yin Ji sighed. “The Yellow Millet is not a lifeless object. It has a unique preference for the Yin and Yang Sequence that created it. The others realized this back then—perhaps they had known all along, but because building the Yellow Millet required the Yin and Yang Sequence, they held back. Once the time was ripe, they impatiently sprang out, determined to annihilate the Yin and Yang Sequence.”

“Annihilate...”

Li Jun frowned. “Did the Yin and Yang Sequence not notice at all?”

“If they hadn't, that sequence would have long since disappeared from the Three Teachings and Nine Schools.”

A complex expression crossed Yin Ji's face. “I even suspect there's a fifty percent chance they deliberately played dumb, willingly handing over the authority they were owed to others. Otherwise, how could the Yin and Yang Sequence have escaped that siege unscathed, hidden themselves within the Empire, and survived peacefully for so many years?”

“So now they feel the time for revenge has come, and they're ready to step out from behind the scenes and take back everything that belongs to them?”

“Take back?”

Yin Ji sneered. “What they want is far more than that. They want to completely change this world!”

Li Jun's heart sank heavily, suddenly feeling countless malevolent presences lurking all around.

“What kind of world do they want?”

“Human hearts are never satisfied. When you've been human for too long, you want to become gods. What they want is a world where we are nothing but pigs, dogs, oxen, and horses, and they are the deities above.”

Yin Ji laughed. “If nothing unexpected happens, they've probably already started making their move. The Buddha Sequence is leaderless now; I suspect many of its high-rank Subsequencers who accepted the new techniques have already vanished from the face of the earth.”

“They're going to use these people to build a ‘New Yellow Millet’ to replace the current ‘Yellow Millet,’ which is held by others?”

“Wrong. Terribly wrong.”

Yin Ji seemed to know his death was near, speaking without any further restraint, as if this allowed him to gain some advantage over Li Jun.

“The Yellow Millet has never been about old or new. It only has one distinction: true or false.”

Li Jun's gaze sharpened. “Which is true, and which is false?”

"Do you really think something as illusory as a creation founded on the Ink Sequence could be so important? If those constructed cores truly were the vital nodes, Huangliang would long ago have been utterly destroyed by Zhang Fengyue, the Grand Secretary of the Great Ming Empire."

Yin Ji laughed heartily. "Huangliang has already been nurtured to maturity; it cannot be destroyed. What the Yin-Yang Sequence is doing is providing it with a spacious palace, giving it ample room to unleash its power."

Yin Ji, who had been sitting cross-legged, suddenly leaned forward, his hands braced against the water's surface like a beast about to pounce. A wild gleam emerged in his eyes.

"Li Jun, once Huangliang replaces the so-called Heavenly Will, the Yin-Yang Sequence will achieve apotheosis. Do you understand?"

"Gods?"

Li Jun curled his lip in disdain and shifted the topic. "Yin Ji, since you know their plans so well, why betray them? Wouldn't it be better to ride their coattails to heaven?"

"Not everyone is willing to eke out an existence amid the falsehoods they weave."

Yin Ji straightened himself again and said scornfully, "I may hold the status of one of the Nine Lords of the Eastern Imperial Palace, but that's merely a temporary expedient for survival. They become gods and create things; I can create things without being a god. Why should I follow their path? False things can never be true—how could they compare to the warm, living plants and trees in my fields?"

Yin Ji's voice suddenly stopped, and a trace of venom and reluctance surfaced in his eyes.

"Consciousness dreams are precisely the fatal weakness of your Martial Sequence. Can you possibly overcome me?"

It was true what Yin Ji said: the greatest weakness of the Martial Sequence lay in the realm of consciousness.

But only Li Jun knew how greatly his willpower had strengthened after advancing to Sequence Three.

He could not yet say whether this was a power akin to the ultimate refinement of martial arts.

But Li Jun knew that from now on, illusions or dreams like these would no longer pose a serious threat to him.

This did not mean he would never fall into dreams or hallucinations again, but the impact of such abilities on him would be drastically weakened.

Li Jun even had a faint feeling that if someone tried to pull him into a dream, the dream's own creations might rise in rebellion and defect to his side.

This realization had gradually dawned on Li Jun through the worlds constructed by Yin Ji.

In other words, Yin Ji had personally taught Li Jun how to kill him within a dream.

But Li Jun did not say these things aloud. Instead, looking at Yin Ji, whose eyes still burned with resentment, he countered, "What kind of dream would you use to keep a rebellious peasant docile?"

Yin Ji's expression faltered. He blurted out, "What is your solitary Sequence Three called?"

"Gejun."

"No wonder, no wonder."

Yin Ji's face lit up with realization, and he clapped his hands, laughing. "Li Jun, you are the destined nemesis of the Yin-Yang Sequence. They will never let you go. But that's fine—watching you tear each other apart from below will be immensely entertaining. There are six of the Nine Lords of the Eastern Imperial Palace left. I'll count them off one by one for you, so don't miss anyone, hahahaha..."

Yin Ji rose with laughter, turned his back on Li Jun, and staggered forward.

One after another, wounds from invisible blades appeared across his back, and blood streamed down with each step.

"Oh, I nearly forgot one thing."

Yin Ji paused and looked back. On his face, layers of features flickered and shifted: Hu Zhong, Yu Kou, Ding Huan, Huang Shilie, Ba Du… and many more faces Li Jun had never seen.

"Li Jun, if I had never touched those barbarians from the start, would you have let me off?"

Voices deep or shrill, hoarse or sharp, merged into one, as if countless people asked in unison.

Li Jun answered without hesitation, "Yes."

"Then I brought about my own doom?"

Yin Ji shook his head with a rueful smile. "But to rise above others, if I don't devour people, who else can I devour?"

"Li Jun, you have made me lose horribly."

A crimson gash slowly appeared on Yin Ji's neck. Blood spurted, and his head fell.

The dark, ink-black sea suddenly rose in waves, surging like the end of the world.

"Horribly? I think you're not miserable enough."

Li Jun stood up, gazing at this collapsing spiritual world, and murmured to himself, "At least not as miserable as those you used as seeds."

As his words fell, countless arms burst from the sea, grasping at Yin Ji's dismembered corpse, dragging the shattered remains down into the depths.

Mountain-like waves crashed against the sky, and icy wind, thick with snow, poured in.

The scene gradually cleared, and Li Jun found himself met by a crowd of concerned eyes.

Zou Sijiu, Chen Qisheng, Shen Li, Zhang Siyuan, Ao Hu, Wang Qi, Mo Qijing, Zhao Qingxia—and a tiny figure no bigger than a fist flew over, wrapped her arms tightly around Li Jun's neck, opened her mouth, and let out a piercing wail.

"My uncle..."

"Enough, where did you learn all that? I'm not dead, so why are you wailing?"

Li Jun rubbed Li Hua's head with his thumb and looked around.

The bloody fields that had nearly covered the entire Sangyan Divine Mountain had vanished without a trace, leaving not a drop of blood behind.

Feiyi's shrunken, twisted, almost unrecognizable head was pierced through the crown by a long sword, stuck into the ground. His eyes were wide open, filled with a palpable hatred.

"See? I told you Old Li couldn't die," Zou Sijiu said, nudging Chen Qisheng with his elbow.

Though Li Jun had experienced many worlds in the dream, not much time had passed in the outside world.

The moment he charged into Jichang, the greasy fields that had been bubbling with blood and oil withered at a visible rate, turning into gray ashes and scattering with the wind.

The fearsome farm beasts melted like wax, and Feiyi, the only surviving farm-sequence beast in Sheji, met the same fate.

His once-bloated, massive form quickly shriveled, as if all his excess flesh had been drained by the bloody fields beneath him. Amid a stream of desperate curses, Chen Qisheng beheaded him with a single sword stroke.

Chen Qisheng teased, "How can you say that? You're at least a Yin-Yang Sequence Three, but you couldn't even find where his dream was hidden!"

"Was that a proper dream? That thing was a bastard monstrosity." Zou Sijiu grumbled, "I don't know what kind of freaks those Sheji people are, every single one of them twisted."

"Whatever they were, it doesn't matter now. They're all gone anyway."

Chen Qisheng raised his hand, and the long sword pulled out of Feiyi's head, turned, and flew back into his grasp.

Zou Sijiu crossed his arms behind his head, slowly exhaled a breath, and grinned. "Yeah, it's good that they're all dead."

While they were talking, Li Jun stood before Yuan Mingfei.

The mutation on Yuan Mingfei's body had stopped. The gash on her forehead slowly healed, and a brilliant sea of flowers swirled around her.

"I never thought I couldn't help you after all, and in the end, you were the one who helped me," a soft voice spoke in Li Jun's ear, though Yuan Mingfei's eyes were closed and her lips did not move.

"Haven't you advanced yet?"

"Not yet, but soon."

Yuan Mingfei's voice sounded: "I have something to take care of. Give me some time."

In an instant, the wind and snow howling on the mountaintop grew fiercer, as if an invisible figure was riding the wind into the distance.

Li Jun seemed to sense something, his eyes following the retreating wind as he turned to look into the distance.

Countless galsang flowers burst from the ground, growing rapidly, spreading from the divine mountain outward without end.