Two streaks of sword qi danced through the mountains and rivers of the New Land, weaving back and forth. Whenever they caught the sunlight, they burst into brilliant, prismatic light. Suddenly, one streak shot skyward, tracing a graceful arc before landing squarely on Yuan Qi's great big head.
The sword qi dissipated.
Yuan Weiyang stood nearby, her chest heaving, her cheeks flushed with excitement. She was panting slightly—this was her first time flying by sword, and the exertion had been considerable. Despite her exceptional cultivation, she was thoroughly exhausted.
Yuan Weiyang excelled in spirit sense, but her origin qi was not as deep as Xu Ying's. She could wield her sword through spirit sense, executing more complex and varied techniques, yet without deep reserves of origin qi, she could not sustain the effort for long.
Xu Ying excelled in origin qi, but his spirit sense fell short of Yuan Weiyang's. He was just about to stop as well when, unexpectedly, the sword box on his back began to move on its own. Inside, sword qi hummed with a joyous, expectant sound, as though it were eager to burst free.
Xu Ying's mind stirred. He recalled the time he had merged his consciousness with the sword qi in the box to comprehend the sword intent of the Waterway Temple. He immediately marshaled his spirit sense and made contact with the sword qi within.
The moment his spirit sense touched the sword qi, it seized upon his consciousness and leaped from the box. In the next instant, the sword qi coiling around Xu Ying's body surged explosively!
*Whoosh!*
His vision went black. His speed had increased so dramatically that blood rushed from his head to his feet, starving his brain of oxygen.
Xu Ying frantically circulated his qi and blood, and his vision gradually returned. Then his scalp went numb. In that brief moment of darkness, he had already traversed seven or eight li—and was now hurtling straight toward a mountain!
His speed was now four or five times greater than before. The sword qi cleaved through the air, leaving behind white vapor trails!
Behind him, Yuan Weiyang and Yuan Qi cried out in alarm. They watched as the sword qi around Xu Ying erupted with terrifying force, the thunderous crack of sonic booms trailing behind him, a blazing streak of sword light dragging in his wake—all headed straight for the mountain peak!
Xu Ying strained to control the sword qi with his spirit sense, struggling to alter his course, but he still grazed the mountainside!
*Crack! Crack! Crack!*
A series of harsh sounds rang out as enormous boulders were sheared from the cliff face, sent tumbling through the air by the violent sword qi swirling around Xu Ying's body.
His heart nearly leaped into his throat, but the sword qi swept past the mountain without harming him. He was both startled and delighted.
"Ancestor Yuan Tiangang's sword box is truly formidable!"
His speed continued to climb, but so did his origin qi consumption. He urgently called out, "Stop! Stop! Stop!"
He desperately tried to rein in the sword qi from the box. The restless energy vibrated and surged, but gradually he managed to steady it. For the first time, Xu Ying felt a genuine sense of control over the sword qi, and his speed slowed.
Still, the sword qi remained volatile, occasionally spiking and surging. He would need far more practice before he could command it as effortlessly as moving his own arm.
A short while later, Yuan Qi spotted a sphere of sword qi roughly ten feet in diameter flying toward him. His scales prickled with terror. "A-Ying, be careful—you'll carve a hole right through my forehead!"
Xu Ying spread his arms wide, surrounded by dancing ribbons of sword qi, and descended slowly to the ground.
Then, in an instant, the sword qi contracted violently, rushing back into the sword box on his back like water flowing into a drain. It vanished without a trace.
"What a magnificent sword!" Xu Ying exclaimed with admiration. "Ancestor Yuan Tiangang was such a kind man—why did the sword qi he refined turn out so ferocious? Did he perhaps temper his own temper into the sword qi, which is why he himself could remain so placid?"
Yuan Qi, unable to see his own forehead, quickly asked, "Is my head still intact? Grandpa Bell, Grandpa Bell, tap my head so I can hear the ring—好了，别敲了，晕！"
Xu Ying and Yuan Weiyang, thoroughly energized, sat down and immersed themselves in discussion, exchanging the difficulties they had encountered during flight and refining their sword-flying technique.
Unnoticed, the sun dipped toward the horizon. The Dragon Chariot had not yet left the New Land, and Yongzhou City was nowhere in sight, let alone Lingling. Zhou Qiyun appeared to have lost his way as well.
The four divine dragons pulling the chariot were growing tired, so Zhou Qiyun halted the Dragon Chariot to let them rest.
Yuan Qi was finally allowed to stretch outside the carriage, his spirits soaring.
They rested beside a vast lake, its shores fringed with shallow tidal flats stretching to a broad marsh, the water clear enough to see the bottom. Yuan Qi plunged into the water, sending great ripples surging across the surface and startling enormous fish into leaping skyward.
The great serpent took the opportunity to fill his stomach.
Xu Ying surveyed his surroundings. The lake was ringed on three sides by mountains, with a small, isolated hill rising in the center, detached from the surrounding peaks. It stood alone here, unconnected to any of them.
The hill was modest—only thirty or forty zhang high and not particularly wide—but its slopes were covered with ancient trees whose bark had grown into the pattern of dragon scales. Some of these trees were likely over ten thousand years old.
Xu Ying walked to the base of the hill and saw stone statues perched in the branches of the trees. The statues were small—the tallest stood about the height of a man, while the smallest were no larger than a fist.
He circled the foot of the hill. The entire slope was blanketed with such statues, packed densely together. There were easily tens of thousands.
He was about to climb for a closer look when strange whispers reached his ears—murmuring voices, as though someone were whispering directly beside him.
The Great Bell immediately tensed, letting out a sharp *clang* that dispelled the dissonant voices from Xu Ying's mind. Its voice was urgent: "A-Ying, don't move! Do you remember the great creature I sealed at the bottom of the well? There is something like that here!"
Xu Ying instantly recalled that time at Little Stone Mountain, when the Nether River had invaded and he and his pursuers had been trapped in the ruined temple. He had glimpsed a chain at the edge of a well, looked down, and seen an enormous eye staring up from the depths!
That was when he had heard those same strange whispers—and his mind had been nearly ensnared.
"This is not one great creature!" The Great Bell's voice was taut with alarm. "I can sense tens of thousands of them... How can there be so many? Even at my peak, I could not have held out against so many..."
Xu Ying immediately activated his spirit sense mirror to peer at the hill.
But the moment he did, the Celestial Eye Bright Mirror in his Hidden Realm shattered with a crash. An alien force invaded his Hidden Realm—evil yet divine, ancient, powerful, utterly abnormal—seeking to obliterate his spirit sense entirely!
This force was unlike the power of ghosts and gods, unlike the power of Nuo masters. It was no worldly energy. It seemed to pour in from another world altogether!
In a single instant, Xu Ying's Celestial Eye was destroyed, and his spirit sense nearly collapsed.
At that critical moment, the Great Bell descended from Xu Ying's consciousness into the Hidden Realm, its bells clanging continuously as it blocked the invasive, malevolent force.
In Xu Ying's Hidden Realm, the flame of the Pure Yang Rare Fire suddenly erupted into a towering blaze, filling the sky and searing the invading force until it shrieked.
The Great Bell's resounding tolls surged from Xu Ying's Sun-Moon Dual Eyes, across the Divine Bridge, over the Jade Pool, down through the Twelve Layered Towers—its sound reverberating through every passage!
It then flew above Xu Ying's Five Viscera Immortal Mountains, refining away the alien force that had penetrated his organs.
The Pure Yang Rare Fire likewise swept through the air, incinerating the abnormal energy pouring in from the hillside.
Xu Ying's mind was still dazed. Nearly half his spirit sense had been obliterated. Yuan Weiyang noticed the change in his complexion and gently extended a single finger, tapping the center of his brow.
Xu Ying felt a cool sensation at his forehead. His scattered spirit sense gradually reassembled and steadied. He thanked Yuan Weiyang.
Yuan Weiyang asked with puzzlement, "Demon King Xu, why did your spirit sense suddenly collapse?"
The Great Bell spoke in a grave tone, "He was nearly dead! Without me and the rare fire inside him, he would have lost his life. A-Ying, what exactly did you see? What triggered that invasion of alien force?"
Xu Ying stared at the small, unassuming hill before him, his expression a mixture of shock and unease. "I saw a radiance—a divine light emanating from each of those little stone statues. Every beam pierced straight into the heavens, as though connecting to another time and space. Then..."
He shook his head slowly. "Then I saw them watching me—from another world, watching me..."
"Them?" Yuan Weiyang frowned. "Who are *them*?"
Xu Ying shook his head. "Grandpa Bell, when you were sealed at Little Stone Mountain, you suppressed the girl in the coffin. What was the other great creature you were suppressing?"
The Great Bell was silent for a moment. "A Heavenly God who descended to the mortal realm to commit evil. Now that I have been gravely wounded and no longer seal the ancient well at Little Stone Mountain, that Heavenly God has likely escaped—just as the wretched girl did. Once I have healed, I will capture both of them and seal them back in that well!"
Xu Ying fell silent. Heavenly Gods—deities of the Heavenly Dao World.
The Plague God he had driven away with his whip was also a Heavenly God from the Heavenly Dao World.
But when he had used the Celestial Eye to observe the stone statues on this hill, he had been observed in turn. In that moment, more than ten thousand pairs of eyes had turned their attention to him—otherwise, his spirit sense would not have been obliterated in an instant.
But where had so many Heavenly Gods come from?
What was the connection between these Heavenly Gods and the stone statues on this hill?
Xu Ying glanced at Zhou Qiyun, who sat nearby with his eyes closed, resting. He thought to himself: *Since Ancestor Zhou came to this place and settled here, there must be a purpose. Could this location be connected to the Yin Court?*
Soon after, the sun set and darkness fell.
The small hill gradually began to glow, its light growing brighter and brighter—like candlelight, yet piercing the clouds, as though it could illuminate another world.
Yuan Weiyang, Xiao Bo, and Yuan Qi had never witnessed such a sight and looked up in awe. But what Xu Ying had seen with his Celestial Eye was ten thousand times more magnificent.
"The Chronicle of the Most Illustrious Emperor records: 'The Emperor, accompanied by two or three attendants, traveled to Cangwu. Passing through Ghost Infant Ridge, he entered the Netherworld.'"
Xu Ying turned. Zhou Qiyun had risen at some point and now stood behind them, also gazing up at the small hill. Yet at this moment, the hill had begun to grow immeasurably vast, dwarfing all the surrounding peaks.
"The Most Illustrious Emperor entered the Netherworld from this very place, located the Heavenly Court of the Yin Court, and negotiated with the Nether Sovereign to unify the divine and imperial powers of the mortal realm. In his later years, the Most Illustrious Emperor's faculties declined, bringing ruin upon a golden age. The Yin Court seized the opportunity to shatter the agreement and meddle in mortal affairs."
Zhou Qiyun stepped toward the hill. "Today I follow the example of the Most Illustrious Emperor to pay a visit to the Yin Court. You may accompany me."
Xu Ying followed closely, asking, "Does Ancestor Zhou intend to renegotiate the agreement to unify divine and imperial power, as the Most Illustrious Emperor did?"
Zhou Qiyun replied with leisurely calm, "If I were emperor, for the sake of the people and the state, I would indeed enter the Netherworld to renew that agreement. But I am not. The Sacred and Divine Emperor of the current dynasty still reigns. As his subject, how could I overstep my authority? That would be treason, would it not?"
He paused. "I have come here for myself alone."
He made no attempt to conceal his selfishness.
Xu Ying's thoughts raced. Was Zhou Qiyun here to ensure the Netherworld would not interfere when he made his move to seize the throne? Or was he here to drive back the Nether Court and defend Yongzhou?
Zhou Qiyun led them into the increasingly towering hill. The candlelight overhead blazed ever brighter. As they climbed step by step, an immense torrent of divine light suddenly poured down from the heavens.
In that instant, both Xu Ying and Yuan Weiyang felt a powerful will and an alien force descending from another world, wave after wave, pouring into the stone statues of every size.
The statues began to grow, swelling upward with a deep, rumbling sound, their bodies wreathed in divine light. They rose to a height of a thousand zhang, seated upon ancient trees rivaling the great pagoda tree in size.
They sat upon the branches of those trees like birds, their gazes utterly devoid of emotion, staring down at Xu Ying and his companions.
Xu Ying looked up. The divine light from above shone down, and ten thousand beams wove together to form the vault of an enormous hall. The sheer immensity of this palace defied imagination—it was beyond all reason!
"Those are the projections of Heavenly Gods!" The Great Bell's voice rang faintly, clearly shaken by this impossible spectacle. It murmured, "In my master's time, no place like this was ever recorded. What has happened on the land of China in these three thousand years? Why did the qi refiners vanish? And why have so many Heavenly Gods gathered here to form a great hall?"
It had been sealed on Little Stone Mountain for too long—three thousand years cut off from the world. It had lived three thousand years in vain.
"The Chronicle states that this place is called the Hall of Heavenly Gods, the pathway to the Yin Court."
Zhou Qiyun walked ahead of them. "Ordinary people cannot reach this place. They would be overwhelmed by the majesty of the Heavenly Gods and driven to madness, turning upon one another. With me protecting you, I can shield you from their influence."
His cultivation was unfathomably deep—he simultaneously resisted the mental intrusion of tens of thousands of Heavenly Gods.
Yuan Weiyang whispered, "He may be a measure stronger than the Most Illustrious Emperor of old. The records say the Most Illustrious Emperor was not this powerful."
Xu Ying followed Zhou Qiyun. On either side of the narrow path rose sheer cliffs, and below churned countless writhing skeletons. These were the remains of those whose minds had been warped by the will of the Heavenly Gods. They were still climbing, unaware that they had been dead for untold ages.
A chill ran down his spine. Suddenly he remembered something, and a bead of cold sweat formed on his forehead: *Since this is the Hall of Heavenly Gods—is the Plague God here? Plague God, do you remember the time I whipped you?*
Just then, one of the stone statues on the trees slowly turned its head and looked directly at him.