Chapter 1004: I Believe It

"Back once more."

Lu Yang breathed in and out, settling his turbulent state of mind.

Just a moment ago he had been locked in a life-and-death struggle, yet in the blink of an eye time had rewritten itself, restoring the peaceful world of days past; the sheer disparity left him with a jarring sensation of having stepped across lifetimes.

At the very least, it was peaceful on the surface.

Judging by the timeline, the two elders of the Heartless Sect had already poisoned the canal by now; the water currently splashed all over the streets actually harbored the Emotion-Severing Poison, though it had not yet fully volatilized.

For instance, the agitation of the insect cultivator's King Bug was a result of absorbing this very poison.

Perhaps some children had already been affected as well, but their influence was far too negligible for anyone to notice.

"Fairy, are those two elders and the Vice Sect Master currently in Kaihuang City?"

The Immortal Fairy extended her divine sense to perceive the area before responding, "They are not."

Lu Yang nodded, a result well within his expectations; had those two Heartless Sect elders been within Kaihuang City, they would never have tolerated him and Old Meng putting on a theatrical display across the whole city, only to emerge once the performance concluded.

At this moment, they ought to be somewhere else.

A knowing smile curled at the corners of Lu Yang's mouth.

Having barely finished fighting the two elders, the Vice Sect Master immediately made his move, as if to flaunt their superior numbers.

"Old Meng, stop watching the matches for a moment; there are several grand deeds of benevolence and virtue that require your immediate attention."

"What grand deeds?" Meng Jingzhou could not fathom why Old Lu would suddenly speak so out of the blue.

"Go to Huangshi Street right now. There is a fellow on that street wearing a black cloak, chuckling strangely and holding silver needles. Go apprehend him, then turn the corner to the entrance of the commoners' tavern, where you'll find a richly dressed, pot-bellied monk... Cross one more street, and you will encounter an old man who wishes to self-detonate..."

Hearing Lu Yang speak with such vivid specificity, Meng Jingzhou figured he was not lying.

"Then what are you going to do?"

"I am going to call for reinforcements," Lu Yang left those words behind as he threaded through the crowd, returning to his guest room at Kaihuang Temple, where he instantly dropped dead.

...

The Daoist Sect, the Mission Hall, the Soul Lamp Chamber.

Lu Yang's soul lamp flickered erratically, prompting Gu Junye to hastily summon Dai Bufan.

Dai Bufan studied the pattern of the lamp's flickering and deciphered the message Lu Yang was conveying.

"Requesting Patriarch Hanhai to open a spatial pathway from Kaihuang City back to the sect? Junior Brother Lu needs to make a trip back?"

...

Amidst the boundless sea of sand, several figures riding camels stood out starkly against the desert landscape.

"No!" Tang Chuanwu snapped awake, his eyes wild with panic.

"Young Tang, what is it?" The bearded, middle-aged man noticed Tang Chuanwu's aberration and signaled the caravan to halt.

"Back once more," Tang Chuanwu murmured to himself as if waking from a dream, drenched in a cold sweat. Which cycle of reincarnation was this, the sixth or the seventh?

The impact of the previous cycle's end had been too profound; his mind was currently a tangled mess, and he needed to sort out the sequence of events.

They were all hands from a pharmacy in Kaihuang City, currently en route to Lotus City to procure medicinal herbs due to a shortage in stock.

On their way to Lotus City, they had encountered an exceptionally rare pack of desert wolves; these wolves were incredibly cunning and perilous, and the leading Wolf King was an existence at the pinnacle of the Qi Condensation stage.

As travelers abroad, they possessed martial arts to defend themselves; indeed, Tang Chuanwu’s combat prowess was the highest among them all.

Even so, faced with the Wolf King’s premeditated ambush, they found it impossible to escape with their lives.

Tang Chuanwu had utilized five cycles of reincarnation, pitting his wits against the Wolf King, yet he remained unable to defeat it; the entire caravan was doomed to perish in the wolves' jaws.

During the fifth cycle, through his meticulous calculations, the Wolf King had fallen into a pre-arranged trap, only for the beast to unexpectedly break through to the terrifying Foundation Establishment stage at the critical juncture, rendering all calculations a cruel joke.

Tang Chuanwu was driven to the brink of madness; the Wolf King was simply not an opponent he could contend with. It was not that he had never faced cultivators as opponents before, but those encounters had occurred within the city, where he could instigate various conflicts and maneuver between them.

But this was the desert, miles from any settlement, with absolutely no rival to match against the Wolf King!

By the sixth cycle, he finally broke under the torture; abandoning his efforts to save the caravan, he rode a camel alone back to Kaihuang City to summon help, hoping he might at least save one or two people that way.

Yet when he returned to Kaihuang City, he was greeted by a city entirely populated by emotionless husks; there were no reinforcements to be found, and the two masters were still entangled with the two elders of the Heartless Sect.

In his desperation, he hurried home to see how his younger sister was faring.

By then it was already noon; Cui Que'er had finished distributing porridge and had not yet left the slums when a Golden Core cultivator of unknown origin took a fancy to her beauty, seizing the chaos to abduct her, rendering all his shouting and resistance utterly futile.

He stumbled back to his home, only to find his sister staring at him with an expressionless face, as though looking at a complete stranger—a gaze that pierced his heart like a knife.

Thereafter, the Vice Sect Master of the Heartless Sect struck, intending to uproot and transport the entirety of Kaihuang City.

Unable to endure the torment any longer, he committed suicide, arriving at this seventh cycle of reincarnation.

Despair flooded Tang Chuanwu's heart; ahead lay the ambushing Wolf King, within Kaihuang City was the Golden Core cultivator who would abduct Cui Que'er, and then there was the demonic giant who would displace the entire city.

Not a single one of them was an opponent he could handle!

What should he do? What could he possibly do?

"Young Tang?" The bearded middle-aged man muttered to himself; this lad Tang Chuanwu usually seemed quite sharp, so what was wrong with him today?

Tang Chuanwu had thought that returning to Kaihuang City last time would solve everything, yet the experience of the previous cycle told him that Kaihuang City was a place far more dangerous than the great desert!

Even if time could be reversed, what of it? He could save no one; he could only save himself!

Images from the previous cycle kept flashing through his mind: the caravan dying in the wolves' jaws, the abducted Cui Que'er, his cold and detached sister, the airborne Kaihuang City...

"Ah—" Tang Chuanwu’s thoughts were in utter disarray; he bellowed at the sky, completely unable to devise a solution.

Suddenly, a sentence Master Lu had spoken to him after wiping out the Skeleton Sacred Sect flashed through his mind.

"The two of us will be staying at Kaihuang Temple for a while longer; if you run into any trouble, you can come find me at any time."

...

The spatial pathway sealed shut, and Lu Yang, clutching his Azure Peak Sword, returned to his guest room at Kaihuang Temple.

He stowed the sword away and left the temple, preparing to rendezvous with Old Meng.

A figure riding a camel came galloping down the street.

Tang Chuanwu gazed pleadingly at Lu Yang, who stood somewhat dazed at the temple gates; filled with a sense of profound relief, he tumbled off the camel with a loud clatter.

Carrying the experiences of the past six cycles, he had bypassed the Wolf King and bolted all the way here, finally managing to find Lu Yang—his sole saving straw—before the Emotion-Severing Poison fully erupted.

Lu Yang was quick, stepping forward with an agile stride to catch Tang Chuanwu just before he slammed into the ground.

Tang Chuanwu’s eyes were desperate: "Master Lu, this city is in danger!"

"People from the Heartless Sect are coming to Kaihuang City, and everyone will become emotionless. I don't know how they do it, but it must be the Heartless Sect's doing. You can defeat the two men who appear first, but neither you nor Master Meng can handle the person who shows up at the very end."

"Master, you might not believe what I am saying, but everything I say is true, it is all true!"

The more Tang Chuanwu spoke, the more agitated he became; his emotions collapsed into incoherence, and he could not help but weep. He truly did not know what to do, nor whether Master Lu would believe his words, or if there was any solution at all...

"I believe you."