This town was in the third immortal domain, which was controlled by the Vile-Emperor Dynasty. The five immortal domains in the Eternal Lands were all roughly the same size, each one vastly larger than the Heavenspan Realm. In fact, the Heavenspan Realm would only count as one of the many prefectures that existed within a given immortal domain.
Each immortal domain had dozens of prefectures. Within the prefectures were dozens of counties, and within the counties were hundreds of cities and towns of varying sizes….
The little town that Bai Xiaochun was in was just such a place.
In the Eternal Lands, the relationship between cultivators and mortals was somewhat different than in the Heavenspan Realm. Here, the cultivators took care of the mortals, as well as the land itself.
Each immortal domain was ruled by a celestial, whose subordinates, the demigods, would oversee the prefectures.
Of course, the demigods had subordinates too, devas who ran the various counties. Usually, Nascent Soul experts would be in charge of the larger cities, with the smaller locations occasionally being run by Core Formation cultivators.
Not every celestial would be appointed to serve as the ruler of an immortal domain. For example, in the Vile-Emperor Dynasty, there were only three celestials with such responsibility, while the other handful remained stationed in Vile-Emperor City.
And the Vile-Emperor himself was in charge of Vile-Emperor City and the areas surrounding it!
“The Eternal Lands….” Bai Xiaochun murmured. Whether it was in terms of sheer size, or the number of powerful experts present, the Eternal Lands vastly surpassed the Heavenspan Realm. People like Daoist Heavenspan who had not yet become true celestials… were by no means rare.
Only by reaching the Mahayana Realm and becoming celestials could someone truly be counted as a powerful expert in the Eternal Lands.
Above the Celestial Realm was the Archaean Realm…. That was a terrifying level, and in all of the Eternal Lands, there were only two such people, the two emperors.
From what Bai Xiaochun could tell, quasi-archaeans were people in the great circle of the Celestial Realm, or people who had failed to actually become archaeans.
“I wonder where that laughing-crying ghost face came from originally….” he thought. Then he shook his head. Every time his thoughts strayed to such matters, many images would appear in his mind.
He would see friends and family from the Heavenspan Realm, people… that he had been unable to find.
During his first few months of searching, it had been easy to track down the aura of the Heavenspan Realm. He had found corpses of strangers, and some who were familiar faces. Each time he had trembled and looked up into the sky, heart wracked with grief.
At some point, the old man and the boy moved on from the temple. When they did, the boy couldn’t conceal his excitement at having gained enlightenment of his magical technique.
Eventually, the sun set. Bai Xiaochun was still lying there against the temple wall, as drunk as ever. He almost looked like he was asleep.
Usually, he would only leave this spot when he ran out of alcohol. Then he would stagger over to the tavern to buy more, then come back to the temple, lean up against the wall, and watch the sun rising and setting, or look up at the strange hands and the evil face in the sky.
Days turned into a blur. Bai Xiaochun had no idea how much time had passed. He had a scraggly beard now, and his clothing was so dirty it threatened to turn black.
He no longer thought about the past. Unwilling to deal with the pain, he entered a state of almost complete mental blankness.
Sometimes a dried-up leaf would land in front of him, and he would stare at it for the entire day…. It was almost as if by looking at the leaf, he could see all of the happiness, anger, sorrow, and joy it had experienced in its life.
One thing he loved was when night fell and, from his spot at the temple, he could see lamplight filling the little town. Each of those flickering lamps represented a family….
He looked at them until his tears ran dry. Sadly, the lamp of his heart seemed impossible to spark to life.
One autumn night, thunder rumbled in the sky, and great, bean-sized drops of rain began to fall, almost as cold as ice. Clearly, winter was on the way.
Bai Xiaochun looked up into the night, and the rain splashed onto his face. For the first time, he actually felt cold. However, it was also in that same moment that he looked down at the back of his hand, to the spark-shaped scar that was the spot where Bai Hao had perished.
“It’s warm….” he said. It had been a long time since he spoke out loud, and the feeling was strange. As he looked down at his hand, his disheveled hair fell down to cover his face, and yet, it couldn't cover the confused shock in his eyes. He suddenly began to pant.
“It's warm?” Shivering, he lifted his hand up until it was right in front of his nose. For the first time in a long time, his eyes were not cloudy and dim, but rather, shone with the bright light of surprise.
Deep within his gaze, a stubborn determination suddenly erupted to life.
“It's warm!” he exclaimed in a quavering voice. Unable to stop his hand from shaking, he sent some divine sense into it, and specifically, the spark-shaped mark on it.
He had done this on numerous occasions before, but his divine sense had never detected anything in particular. But now it did. All of a sudden, his dry eyes began to overflow with tears.
“Hao’er… you’re not dead!!” All of a sudden, mad excitement rose up inside of him. Up above, thunder crashed, but it was like nothing compared to what was happening inside his mind and heart. He could sense Bai Hao’s aura! Deep inside the mark on his hand, he could sense Bai Hao as an incredibly weak discarnate soul!
He was as fragile as a candle flickering in the wind. And yet, within that weakness, he showed a tenacious refusal to be destroyed. Unfortunately, it would be many years before he managed to grow strong, and recover.
Shaking physically, Bai Xiaochun grabbed one hand with the other and then pushed them both up against his chest. Considering his unkempt hair and scraggly beard, he looked very much like destitute beggar who had just found the most precious of gems. As the rain fell down on him, it was for the first time since he arrived in the Eternal Lands… that he smiled.
Please go to
install our App to read the latest chapters for free
Chapter
1032: Robbing Bai Xiaochun
“Hao’er….” he murmured in excitement. He smiled as excitedly as a child would, a smile that had appeared often in the Heavenspan Realm, but after everything he had experienced, had become as rare as a jewel.
In his state of despondency, the fluctuations of Bai Hao’s soul became something like a burning lantern on a dark night. Despite how wet and freezing it was that night, Bai Xiaochun felt warm.
Back in the Wildlands, Master and apprentice had depended on each other for survival as they ran their little spirit enhancement shop, and it was that memory which suddenly brought Bai Xiaochun to his senses. It was almost like the sun rising up from the horizon.
He looked back down at his hand, and suddenly wondered if he was dreaming. Therefore, he probed at the scar on his hand over and over again to make sure. Finally, he breathed a long sigh.
Bai Hao was definitely not dead!
Or perhaps it was most appropriate to say that his soul had not fully dispersed. Perhaps it was something the gravekeeper had done, or perhaps it was Bai Hao’s own determination. Either way, he had somehow survived as a discarnate soul.
Bai Xiaochun had reached out to try to grab Bai Hao, only to have a tiny spark fall down onto the back of his hand. And that spark was the discarnate soul. [1]
It was so weak that it seemed it might vanish at any moment. And yet there it was, inside the scar. Due to the string of catastrophic events that had ended in the destruction of the Heavenspan Realm, Bai Xiaochun had never sensed the oh-so-weak fluctuations of the soul.