# Chapter 183: Gazing Toward Heaven
Because of the battle between the White Bone Sovereign God and the Zhuang court, the entire Fenglin City domain had sunk into the gap between the Netherworld and the mortal realm.
It had become an ugly scar on the face of the Zhuang kingdom, wedged between Wangjiang City and Sanshan City.
Outside the domain stood a Spirit-Stele, carved from precious stone and inscribed with formation runes—it had already become a magical artifact.
The inscription was said to have been personally drafted by the Zhuang Emperor, a decree of self-condemnation that also named the White Bone Path as a national enemy. The stele was erected to deliver the souls of the dead and comfort the living.
However, only those who could truly perceive the Netherworld understood that this Spirit-Stele was utterly meaningless beyond deceiving the common folk.
It stood outside the Fenglin City domain, scratching an itch from outside a boot—it couldn't deliver a single soul.
The Fenglin City domain now belonged neither to the Netherworld nor to the mortal realm.
This also meant that the souls lingering here could never transcend, never enter the cycle of reincarnation.
For all eternity, they would suffer.
Unless Zhuang Gaoxian himself entered the gap between the two realms, his poor subjects would have even the slightest hope of deliverance. But the Fenglin City domain, already corroded by Netherworld qi, was practically half the White Bone Sovereign God's home ground. How could a king take such a risk?
Within the Fenglin City domain, the silence was enough to drive one mad.
Ling He remembered that at first, there had been sounds.
Crying, screaming, wailing, groans of pain, curses, sobs of grief...
Those sounds were all painful to hear, uncomfortable to endure—but at least there had been sounds.
Later, as the Netherworld qi gradually spread, those sounds faded away, one by one.
They had been gone for a long time.
He had watched helplessly as the little girl with horn-shaped pigtails in his arms died.
Her breath and warmth, little by little, left her small body.
No matter how hard he searched the ruins for food and medicine, he couldn't stop her from leaving.
In that moment, Ling He suddenly realized. Perhaps by pulling her from the falling roof beam, he had only subjected her to more suffering.
"Big brother, big brother! Why didn't you save me?"
"We worked hard and paid our taxes to the nation, supporting you cultivators. You're a transcendent cultivator! Why didn't you protect us?"
"It hurts so much, it hurts so much..."
Ling He shook his head, trying to cast those images and voices from his mind.
They were merely painful hallucinations and auditory illusions.
But it was precisely these painful visions and sounds that reminded him he was still alive.
More and more frequent moments of trance made Ling He understand that his清醒 time was running short. In a place like this, no one could avoid the erosion of Netherworld qi.
But every time he regained clarity, he returned to his task.
He was doing something very simple—burying every corpse he could find, digging graves and filling them with earth for each one, chanting scriptures to deliver their souls.
People believed that only in burial could there be peace. The earth was a merciful mother, embracing all her lost children.
The first person he buried was the little girl with horn-shaped pigtails.
He never even learned her name.
A small grave mound outside the Mingde Hall was her new home.
Ling He chanted the "Supreme Scripture of Delivering Suffering" for her, praying for her deliverance.
The "Supreme Scripture of Delivering Suffering" held no specific magical powers or techniques, but it was indeed the classic scripture of deliverance that all Daoists recited.
Regarding this scripture, there was a legend:
In ancient times, there was a hunter who, while pursuing a tiger into the mountains, encountered a Daoist beneath a pine tree.
The Daoist told him that his sins were heavy and his lifespan nearly at its end, asking what he intended to do.
The hunter begged for life extension. The Daoist made him swear to discard his bow and arrows and never kill again. In this way, after his death, the Daoist would deliver him.
The hunter agreed and left.
That winter, the hunter suddenly fell ill and died, but one finger on his left hand still held warmth.
His family therefore did not bury him immediately.
Three days later, the hunter indeed revived.
According to him, at the moment of death, two yellow-robed envoys holding official documents led the way, bringing him to the underworld.
An official holding a black ledger told him: "Your sins are grave. You belong in hell!"
Terrified, the hunter suddenly remembered the Daoist and prayed silently.
At that moment, auspicious clouds rose from the northwest sky. The Daoist descended from heaven in a cloud chariot, hovering before the hall.
The officials of the underworld bowed to him. The Daoist said, "I have a disciple here. I have come to deliver him." He then handed the hunter a scroll of scripture and instructed him to recite it.
After the hunter finished reciting, the Daoist vanished.
Then a yellow-robed envoy led the hunter to his doorstep. Hearing the weeping inside, the hunter came back to life.
The entire experience was like a dream.
But the hunter sat there recalling the scripture and was able to transcribe it from memory without a single word missing.
From then on, he observed vegetarian fasts and chanted the scripture daily. Several years later, he left home to cultivate and was never heard from again.
But this scripture was copied and spread, becoming a classic of the Daoist tradition.
Its name was the "Supreme Scripture of Delivering Suffering."
In the present age, schools and traditions were myriad. When cultivators chose a school, they mostly considered the power of its techniques, the depth of its heritage, and the size of its following.
But many forgot the original spirit and ideals of these schools and sects.
For instance, the Confucian school—teaching without discrimination, enlightening the people.
For instance, the Legalist school—establishing rules, measuring heaven and earth.
For instance, the Daoists—the Daoist tradition was not only the oldest school of cultivation. Its earliest birth was the beginning of countless humans bravely fighting back, summarizing the path of cultivation.
Matters like praying for blessings and averting disasters, or delivering the deceased, had always been among the duties of Daoists.
Yet in the modern world, how many cultivators looked down upon the masses from their lofty heights?
In a world where power resided in the individual, the strong grew ever stronger, and the weak suffered ever greater misery.
The earth rift had destroyed the Fenglin City domain beyond recognition. Yet after everything settled, the land seemed to silently accept the ruins as they were.
Ling He searched through the ruins one by one, finding people's bodies and burying each of them.
First, all the children of the Mingde Hall, and their teachers.
Then Xuanwu Street, Qingmu Avenue, Feima Lane...
Step by step, he moved forward, leaving grave after grave behind him.
No one pitied this land. No one saved the people here. No one delivered their souls.
Then Ling He would do this work.
This was a task注定 vast and overwhelming, one that might consume his entire life without completion.
Let alone that his "life" was already注定 brief.
Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in the next moment, he would be completely consumed by the Netherworld qi. Like everyone else in this domain, dying silently.
But before he died, he would still do this.
...
Jiang Wang, far away in the Kingdom of Qi, did not know that in the Fenglin City domain—now a dead zone—there was still one person struggling forward.
Just as Du Yehu, growing ever more silent and bloodthirsty in Jiujiang Commandery, did not know what efforts the little brother he had always called lazy was now making.
At least for now, every one of them walked a lonely path.
None could see the road ahead, none could see hope.
And none had stopped walking.
They did not know that in a distant place, someone was calling out to them in echo.
They thought that echo resided only in their hearts.
This was an无比 difficult road.
For every one of them.
...
Jiang Wang had not relaxed for a single moment. The divine-power Inner Prefecture was a remarkable potential, but potential before it was realized was nothing more than potential.
Now he was riding in a carriage, heading toward Chiyang Commandery.
Within the carriage, Sea of Blossoms manifested and dissolved, Crown of Thorns formed and faded.
He was seizing every moment to repeatedly practice his newly acquired Dao arts.
The benefits of laying his foundation with the Celestial Star-Dou Formation Diagram were now fully apparent—he barely needed to worry about consuming his Dao essence.
Of course, this journey to Chiyang Commandery was also for the purpose of strengthening himself.
For him, no matter how powerful a Dao art that circulated in the world might be, there was always a way to counter it.
At least for now, the three great sword forms he had comprehended through summarizing his experiences and synthesizing his swordsmanship remained his sole, unique, and strongest techniques.
And before that, he needed a truly fine sword.