Chapter 59

City Lord's Mansion.

The sword array had roared again and again just moments ago. Ignorant of what had happened, the local mortals had all hidden inside their houses.

As for the cultivators, those whose cultivation was insufficient had long since collapsed and were tending to their wounds, while the remaining few were all trapped inside the sword array. The City Lord's Mansion was plunged into utter silence.

The vast twenty-seventh city of the Northern Nether was as desolate as an empty city.

Xie Zhefeng arrived at the City Lord's Mansion in the blink of an eye.

An Wuxue was cradling Kunkun in his arms, and Xie Zhefeng was holding An Wuxue in his.

He stopped before the door and extended his spiritual sense—

He let out a muffled groan first.

The matter of soul-splitting had occurred just today, and the agony of the fractured soul still lingered.

The moment his spiritual sense stirred, a bone-deep, heart-piercing pain spread across his entire body like creeping vines. Yet the person in his arms had his brows tightly furrowed, his entire body burning with fever, struggling even in unconsciousness. Xie Zhefeng had not the slightest intention of pausing.

disregarding the torment of his soul, he swept his awareness through the City Lord's Mansion, located a guest room that was clearly unoccupied, and flashed into the room with a burst of spiritual energy beneath his feet.

The spiritual energy whipped up a light breeze as the door closed behind them, shutting out all the clamor of the outside world.

Kunkun rolled out of An Wuxue's embrace at the right moment, and Xie Zhefeng gently laid the man down on the bed.

With his embrace suddenly empty, the warmth brought by his Senior Brother instantly turned somewhat cold.

His movements involuntarily paused, his knuckles slightly curled with a trace of lingering reluctance.

Yet Senior Brother seemed to have finally found an opportunity to break free from his arms; clearly devoid of consciousness, he still shrank toward the wall, not wanting to touch him even for a moment.

So when Senior Brother had struggled in his arms earlier, it was not because the pain was unbearable, but because he was unwilling to have skin-to-skin contact with him.

Xie Zhefeng's breath hitched.

It truly hurt.

It would have been better to undergo soul-splitting once more.

Beside them, Kunkun finally recovered a sliver of strength. Unable to fly yet, it whimpered and crawled to the bedside, standing up to claw at the edge of the mattress.

It glanced at An Wuxue, then looked at Xie Zhefeng.

"Whimper..."

Knowing what it meant, Xie Zhefeng raised a hand and lifted it onto the bed.

Kunkun immediately rolled over to An Wuxue's side, pressing close against him.

This time, An Wuxue did not shrink away; instead, he inched closer, as if trying to capture some of the spiritual beast's body heat.

Senior Brother did not reject Kunkun.

Senior Brother only rejected him.

Xie Zhefeng's expression grew dim, yet he knew what was most important now.

He still sat down by the bedside, watching his Senior Brother's instinctive action of desperately trying to distance himself. With a tremor of spiritual energy at his fingertips, he enveloped An Wuxue's hair and skin, sealing off his own aura.

Unable to sense his aura, An Wuxue indeed stopped retreating toward the wall he could no longer back away from, simply cuddling close to Kunkun instead. His brows remained tightly furrowed, as though he were trapped deep within a nightmare.

Xie Zhefeng grabbed An Wuxue's left arm and rolled back the sleeve, unsurprised to see the patterns of the puppet seal surging once more.

He had already helped his Senior Brother suppress it once, but just now, when the sword array drained their spiritual energy, Senior Brother—clearly possessing only the cultivation of the Great Completion realm—had still gone all out alongside the others in the Tribulation Crossing realm to stabilize the array, draining his spiritual energy once again.

Through a thousand fleeting years, Senior Brother was still Senior Brother.

A bitter taste flooded his mouth, yet he dared not delay for even a second, channeling his spiritual energy through his fingertips directly into the puppet seal.

Gradually, the burning fever on An Wuxue subsided, and his complexion became less harrowing.

However, his body remained tense, and his eyes stayed tightly shut, as though he were still suffering in agony.

Was there still discomfort elsewhere?

Xie Zhefeng frowned, and using the puppet seal as a conduit, he wrapped his spiritual sense in spiritual energy and cautiously probed into his Senior Brother's meridians.

"Lou Shuiming..."

This was the "opportunity" left behind by Lou Shuiming's remnant soul before it perished.

After returning to Falling Moon Peak from Zhaoshuicheng, Senior Brother had completely absorbed that spiritual energy—enough in volume to break through to the Tribulation Crossing realm in one go. However, Xueshuix's body had never cultivated to the Tribulation Crossing realm, and his meridians were not strong enough to withstand Tribulation-level spiritual energy, which was why Senior Brother had ultimately stopped at the Great Completion realm.

Unlike the spiritual energy Senior Brother used on a daily basis, that particular energy had remained attached to the meridians of Xueshuix's body after being absorbed, waiting for the right moment.

—And this was that moment.

During the incident in the twenty-seventh city, the spiritual energy within An Wuxue's body had been drained and replenished several times within a single day, forcibly expanding his meridians. At this moment, while his meridians were still throbbing with pain, that vast spiritual energy originating from the Zhaoshuicheng sword array, which had been lurking within his meridians, abruptly began to assist An Wuxue in breaking through to the Tribulation Crossing realm.

Before Xie Zhefeng's probe had lasted even a moment, An Wuxue was already in such agony that he bit down hard on his lower lip, blood seeping from it.

Without the slightest hesitation, Xie Zhefeng reached out to wipe the wound on An Wuxue's lip, his hands forming a hand seal.

Turning his head and perceiving what he intended to do, Kunkun let out a low, whimpering cry.

Xie Zhefeng showed no intention of stopping.

In the quiet room, the hand seal stirred the surrounding spiritual energy into a frenzy, causing the doors and windows to rattle violently.

An instant later.

Xie Zhefeng's entire body trembled, his brows knitting even tighter than before. But An Wuxue suddenly relaxed, the space between his brows smoothing out as the tension vanished in an instant.

Yet spiritual qi still lingered around An Wuxue's body, flowing quietly in all directions to accumulate momentum for his breakthrough to the Tribulation Crossing realm.

His Senior Brother's meridians were still hurting.

And now, Xie Zhefeng knew precisely how much it hurt.

He had cast a forbidden curse.

It was a technique he had obtained by traversing the two realms and four seas after breaking through his inner demon for the first time. If cast upon someone else, all the suffering experienced by that person within three days of the spell's casting would be entirely transferred to the caster.

This method was classified as a forbidden curse because it shifted another's suffering onto oneself; if it were to spread, it would likely cause chaos.

Yet Xie Zhefeng had destroyed all other copies, mastering the spell solely so he could bear the suffering of others onto himself.

Originally, he had intended to use it to experience the biting cold of the Canggu Tower.

However, the immortal body of the Eternal Immortal was beyond the reach of curses; the forbidden curse could not help him, and he had never thought of it again.

Until today, when it finally came in handy.

Xie Zhefeng waved his sleeve, changing An Wuxue's blood-stained outer garment into a fresh Dharma robe, and renewed the bedding with a flick of his energy.

Perhaps sensing the changes around him, Senior Brother shifted slightly, causing the newly tucked silk quilt to slide open.

He quietly reached out to pull the quilt back up, tucking it in at the corner. Kunkun poked its head out from An Wuxue's embrace, but with its eyes already closed, it ended up falling asleep right there in Senior Brother's arms.

He looked at An Wuxue's body, which was gradually relaxing as the torment vanished. The agony of the soul-splitting was still torturing his spirit, and the meridian pain transferred from his Senior Brother felt like countless sharp needles piercing his entire body, sinking deep into his bones.

Yet he felt a great deal more at ease.

It had been so long...

It had been so long since he last felt this way.

If his Senior Brother were to wake up, he certainly would not be like this now.

That pair of eyes, which a thousand years ago were always as warm as a spring breeze, now held only vigilance and detachment toward him.

Xie Zhefeng sat by the bedside. Clearly knowing that meditating and resting was the best way to suppress the pain, he simply could not bear to move away.

I do not know how much time had passed.

Breaking through the Tribulation Crossing realm was not something achieved in a moment. An Wuxue remained deep in slumber, and Xie Zhefeng continued to experience the meridian pain raging within him.

The daylight filtering through the window gradually dimmed as dusk receded, and the twenty-seventh city, now cleared of dark clouds, plunged once more into darkness.

The starry night pressed down, and a light breeze slipped through the gaps, failing to cool the blood and bones within.

Kunkun tossed and turned over and over again in An Wuxue's arms, yet failed to wake the master who was breaking through to the Tribulation Crossing realm in his sleep.

And so Xie Zhefeng sat motionless for an entire day.

Until the presence of a few living souls appeared within the City Lord's Mansion.

His gaze narrowed slightly before he reluctantly stood up and walked out.

Noticing that Xie Zhefeng was still wearing his blood-stained robe, Pei Qian exclaimed in surprise, "Fellow Daoist Xie, you've been back for so long, why haven't you changed?"

Only then did Xie Zhefeng snap out of it and say, "I forgot."

Pei Qian: "..." You can forget something like that?

Qiao Ting asked him from the side, "Where is Xueshuix?"

"He's asleep," Xie Zhefeng replied offhandedly before asking, "How is the sword array?"

The Northern Nether sword array was the root cause of their entry into the Northern Nether.

The reason he had been able to leave the moment his Senior Brother lost consciousness was that the sword array of the twenty-seventh city was already out of danger. Furthermore, among the forty-nine cities of the Northern Nether, all forty-nine sword arrays were interconnected; as long as a single array remained intact, a way could be found to reconnect with the rest.

This was Pei Qian's responsibility, and there was no need for him to be present.

True to expectations, Pei Qian said, "The turbid qi within the city has been cleared, but the turbid qi in the surrounding regions remains—likely emanating from the main sword array and the other forty-eight arrays. I'm trying to directly link the twenty-seventh city's array with the main array so that we can use the array to teleport near the first city, but it will take time."

"How long?"

"Four to five days."

The Northern Nether was vast, and currently infested with turbid qi and fiends. If they were to rely solely on flying swords from the periphery, they wouldn't reach the first city in four or five days.

Using the power of the sword arrays would be much faster.

"Then we wait."

Qiao Yin and Qiao Ting had been standing quietly to the side all this while.

Zhao Duan was dead, and the turmoil in the twenty-seventh city had been quelled. In the span of just a few days, the elders had died or been injured, leaving only the two of them—an awkward pairing of siblings who couldn't quite be considered brother and sister.

Qiao Ting's expression remained calm, but Qiao Yin felt a lingering sense of guilt toward him, her expression hesitant for a long while.

At last, she spoke up: "Fellow Daoist Pei, Fellow Daoist Xie, the two of you and the Young Master Xue... you aren't just cultivators who happened to be in seclusion nearby, are you?"

Pei Qian replied leisurely, "Since Young City Lord has already figured it out, why bother asking?"

Qiao Yin opened her mouth, but Qiao Ting spoke faster: "Of course we can figure it out, and so can I. Anyone can see the Northern Nether barrier; Falling Moon Peak could not possibly stand by with folded arms. Since Fellow Daoist Xie was able to produce the essence of a soul-nurturing tree, you must all have been dispatched by Falling Moon Peak on a mission to purge the fiends in the Northern Nether, and entering the twenty-seventh city was merely to use its sword array to teleport to the first city."

He sighed, "My sister's words are always so tactful. What she actually wants to ask is about the person behind the sound-transmission talisman in Zhao Duan's memories—that voice sounded like a fiend cultivator who had ties to the Northern Nether sword array during the Immortal Calamity."

Qiao Yin nodded: "Yes... exactly. But I've heard that among those who set up the array back then, aside from City Lord Shangguan and his sister, one ascended to immortality while the other turned to fiendcraft."

"The one who turned to fiendcraft..."

Xie Zhefeng's gaze shifted slightly, casting a cold, indifferent glance at the siblings.

A cold sweat instantly broke out on Qiao Yin's forehead, cutting her words short, and even Qiao Ting instinctively stiffened.

Xie Zhefeng remained silent.

The Immortal of Chuhan brought two fingers together, summoning a streak of sword qi.

This time, he did not use his Senior Brother's Chunhua Sword.

An icy-cold sword light swept forth wrapped in sword qi. As the night breeze in the courtyard of the City Lord's Mansion brushed past the perimeter of the sword light, it instantly turned into a freezing gale, carrying frost and snow.

A thin layer of frost crept over the walls of the surrounding buildings.

Pei Qian pinched a strand of hair that had instantly frozen into ice, suddenly realizing something as his eyes widened in shock.

Qiao Ting and Qiao Yin had already dropped to their knees: "Immortal Lord...!"

Xie Zhefeng flicked his fingers slightly.

The sword light of Chuhan shot forth like a reverse-flying meteor, piercing straight into the river of stars!