#531 - Well, it's Wenquxing that has fallen (4000 words, two in one)

Above the firmament, thunder rumbled.

The brush and inkstone set dissolved into the air.

Strands of obscure and difficult-to-understand inscriptions traversed the clouds.

Even though Xu Ming had never seen these things before,

his innate intuition as a cultivator told him that,

these things were a part of the Great Dao's rules.

"Xiao Mochi! We saw that you possess extraordinary talent, a genius unmatched in the world, and invited you to join the Celestial Court. We never expected you to be so stubbornly unrepentant!"

A celestial being with a dragon coiling around his arm roared loudly!

"Cough, cough, cough..." Xiao Mochi coughed a few times, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. With a wave of his hand, the floating "Heavenly Questions Collection" opened.

The firmament suddenly seemed as if a golden crow had fallen to earth, and tens of thousands of brilliant golden rays pierced through the clouds. The sword formation that soared from the Heavenly Questions Collection issued a clear and long cry. Each flying sword was inscribed with tadpole-like Confucian truths.

The surging sword energy condensed into a hundred-mile-long rosy cloud in the sky. Tens of thousands of sword shadows spiraled like an inverted Milky Way, instantly transforming into a thousand-foot-long dragon body spanning heaven and earth.

Each dragon scale was a bronze sword engraved with the meaning of the "Spring and Autumn Annals."

When the dragon's mane swayed, it scattered golden stardust across the sky. When its five claws waved, the five golden characters of "Benevolence," "Righteousness," "Propriety," "Wisdom," and "Trustworthiness" vaguely appeared, obscuring the sun.

The Nine Dragon Celestial Sovereign's black robes moved without wind, and the nine evil dragons coiled around his body simultaneously opened their scarlet vertical pupils.

"How dare a mere child overstep!"

Accompanied by a roar that shattered rocks and pierced through clouds, the Nine Nether Dragons, wrapped in a bone-corroding and soul-devouring yin wind, pounced out ferociously. Wherever they passed, spiderweb-like cracks bloomed in the space, and the wails of thousands of resentful souls echoed in the turbulent void.

The moment the two giant dragons collided, time seemed to be choked by an invisible hand.

Golden light and purple lightning exploded into nine layers of sun wheels at the point where the dragon horns locked in a deathly entanglement. Vast sword energy and netherworld ghost fire transformed into intertwined light snakes, tearing and rolling.

The shockwave from the collision shattered the hundred-mile cloud sea into powder, and the mountains below were like being struck by the giant palm of a celestial god. The entire peak was shaved off by three zhang.

Xiao Mochi's jade crown that bound his hair shattered with a bang, and the blood beads seeping from his seven orifices were evaporated into a crimson mist by the majestic righteousness before they could even fall to the ground.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, several celestial avatars under the firmament formed hand seals, wanting to kill Xiao Mochi!

"So-called immortals, nothing more than this!"

Xiao Mochi suddenly laughed loudly, and the brush in his hand reversed, actually writing large characters in the void!

Upon closer inspection, what Xiao Mochi wrote was the recorded history of mortals resisting cultivators in human history!

It wasn't that mortals had never resisted cultivators, it wasn't that they hadn't thought about fighting for control of their own destiny, and it wasn't that they hadn't thought about carving out their own piece of the sky, but each time it ended in a painful failure.

But now, the history in each character transformed into a prairie fire, turning against the old Taoist's avatar along the silver threads.

The horsetail whisk that carried karma exploded with a bang, and the sky was filled with burning bamboo slips, each recording the unyielding spirit of the human race.

"Don't be stingy with your lifespans anymore! Form the formation!"

The leading elder shouted loudly.

Now, it has already reached this point.

If these guys were stingy with their lifespans again, it would be impossible to suppress such a rare Confucian sage!

Hearing the words of the leading Celestial Sovereign, the other immortal avatars steeled their hearts.

They no longer hesitated and all sacrificed a drop of their own essence blood.

Several drops of immortal essence blood constantly condensed above the firmament.

They then sacrificed their own natal magic weapons.

Eight natal magic treasures formed a yin-yang millstone in the air.

Xiao Mochi's collar began to seep blood, but he pointed the jade brush at the center of his brow, drawing out a majestic literary soul with the purple aura coming from the east.

The phantoms of the seventy-two sages suddenly solidified, each reciting their natal articles. Three thousand bamboo slips pieced together the character "Exterminate" in the sky.

When the sword light that fused the millennial literary fortune of the human race fell, the eight avatars dissolved like snow meeting the morning sun.

The golden-armored divine general's black tortoise armor cracked inch by inch, the azure luan's tail feathers ignited with undying Dao fire, and the sword-wielding cultivator's natal star fell dimly.

In everyone's sight, Xiao Mochi stepped onto the clouds, holding the Shangfang Sword of the Wu Kingdom, and with one sword, chopped off the golden tortoise divine general's head.

With another sword, he chopped off the azure kite's outstretched head.

Every time Xiao Mochi swung his sword, a golden avatar's head rolled and fell to the ground.

Those previously arrogant people of the Celestial Court were now like lambs to the slaughter in front of Xiao Mochi.

The immortal avatars whose heads were chopped off transformed into spiritual light spots and dissipated into the air.

"Go!"

The leading elder stared at Xiao Mochi and said coldly to the surviving avatars beside him.

Although it was said that after the avatar's head was chopped off, the person could still live,

the cultivation and lifespan would suffer considerable damage.

This Xiao Mochi's life will not be long, he can do whatever he wants to do. If he continues to fight with Xiao Mochi like this, there will be no good results.

In the end, all the celestial beings turned into streams of light and fled back to the heavenly gate, leaving only the scholar's majestic aura, echoing in the sea of clouds.

The vermillion inkstone on the edge of the cliff suddenly shattered, and Xiao Mochi staggered, using the brush as a support.

He looked at the clear sky where the clouds and mist had cleared, and reached out to catch a falling bamboo slip. The words "Though ten thousand people stand in my way, I shall go!" on it were radiating a faint golden light.

"Cough, cough, cough..."

Xiao Mochi coughed more and more violently.

He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and took a step forward.

In just an instant, Xiao Mochi arrived at the peak of Mount Tai.

Although Xiao Mochi was tens of thousands of miles away, Xiao Mochi's avatar and the Mount Tai's avatar appeared above the imperial capital of Wu Kingdom.

In everyone's sight, Xiao Mochi knelt and sat in front of the Wenhua Hall on the top of Mount Tai, his blue shirt soaked by the heavy rain.

He looked up at the purple lightning that wandered in the clouds. Those winding lightning bolts were like seal characters written by the Heavenly Dao, each stroke carrying a suffocating pressure.

"The Way of Heaven has its constancy..."

He clenched the purple bamboo brush in his hand, which was broken into two sections, and the ink mixed with the rain and smudged on the rice paper.

"But if this constant way causes the common people to weep blood, then it should be changed!"

The scholar had seen the city lord of Black Hawk City use the blood of the people as a sacrifice in Black Hawk City.

The scholar had personally witnessed the tragedy of exchanging children for food outside Liuzhou City in Yan Country, on the cracked earth.

That mother held the half bowl of millet exchanged for swaddling clothes, kneeling in the pile of starving corpses and kowtowing to him: "Please, sir, teach my son, so that he will never be born into this cannibalistic world in the next life."

In the baby's purplish-blue little hand, he was still clutching half a blood-stained locust leaf.

This was only because a cultivator, in order to break through to the Nascent Soul Realm, had drained the water source and vitality within a radius of a hundred miles! Completely disregarding the life and death of the people.

After his friend died, the scholar himself went down the mountain to travel for a while, walking tens of thousands of miles.

The scholar felt that the road he had traveled was not much, but the things he saw were too heavy.

At this moment, on the bronze table in front of the scholar, three hundred and sixty-five volumes of sage scriptures moved without wind.

Xiao Mochi bit his fingertip and drew the last innate eight trigrams on the yellow hemp paper. The moment the blood beads seeped into the cracks of the tortoise shell, a rumbling sound of gears turning came from beyond the nine heavens.

This was the unchanging law of the Great Dao being shaken again.

"It's coming."

Xiao Mochi brushed away the rain between his eyebrows and watched the sea of clouds churning into a huge vortex.

Countless purple electric arcs converged in the center of the vortex, gradually condensing into a bronze giant wheel engraved with ancient inscriptions.

Those inscriptions flowed with a faint blue light. Above the imperial capital of Wu Kingdom, the Dao Law characters floating in the clouds shattered one by one, and after shattering, they pieced together new characters one by one. Each character was constantly disassembled and reorganized.

The laws of the Heavenly Dao were being rewritten by this scholar!

When Xiao Mochi got up, the jade pendant on his waist suddenly burst.

This was the heart-protecting jade given by the Dean of White Deer Academy, but at this moment, it shattered into powder in his palm.

He laughed instead, scattering the broken jade into the gale: "If I cannot establish a destiny for the people today, then Mochi will shatter with this jade."

The bronze giant wheel emitted a deafening rumble, and seventy-two purple lightning bolts turned into chains and fell.

Xiao Mochi waved his sleeves and unfolded the remaining volume of "Mencius". The majestic righteousness soared into the sky, actually condensing into golden characters in mid-air.

"The people are the most important, the state comes next, and the ruler is the least!"

Each character crashed into the lightning chains, and the sputtering sparks burned the clouds red.

The Heavenly Dao seemed to be angered, and a scarlet-gold vertical pupil opened in the vortex.

Xiao Mochi suddenly bled from all seven orifices, but his brush did not stop, dipping his blood from his forehead and writing in the void: "What Heaven sees is what my people see; what Heaven hears is what my people hear!"

The blood characters turned into three thousand sharp swords and pierced towards the Heavenly Eye, and painful roars suddenly echoed in the clouds.

In the next moment, three thousand sharp swords poured down like rain, piercing towards the cultivators trapped by the imperial palace's formation.

Originally, those cultivators were immersively watching Xiao Mochi's good show with the people from the heavens.

But who knew that in the blink of an eye, Xiao Mochi was going to kill them!

All the cultivators used all their means to resist.

But these cultivators burst into blood mist one by one, and then dissipated between heaven and earth.

Those few Ascension Realm cultivators burned their life essence and joined forces to break a gap in the Wu Kingdom's city protection formation.

They knew that doing so might damage their foundation.

In the future, let alone being unable to go further, it was very likely that their realm would fall, and they would never be able to recover.

But no matter what, it was better than losing their lives here.

When the other cultivators saw those few Ascension Realm experts leave through that gap, they also wanted to follow.

But the problem was, they could leave because they were in the Ascension Realm, but what about you?

The vast majority of cultivators burst into blood mist the moment they touched that gap.

Only a few Immortal Realm cultivators barely escaped, and then rolled into the void.

Xiao Mochi gasped for breath, and he found that the surrounding scenery was fading.

The moss on the stone steps, the copper bells on the corners of the palace, and even the falling raindrops were frozen into black and white.

Only the Heavenly Dao giant wheel was still turning slowly, devouring the color bit by bit.

Xiao Mochi stretched out his hand, looking at his palm, his body becoming increasingly illusory and transparent.

“Trying to erase my existence?”

He hooked his lips into a smile, his expression calm.

Xiao Mochi picked up the 《Spring and Autumn Annals》, struggling to stand up, and finally wrote down a single word—

“Law.”

This law was not magical power, nor the law of the Dao.

But the law of the land!

Space-time suddenly twisted, and Xiao Mochi saw his twelve-year-old self practicing calligraphy in the private school, his mother standing under the corridor, coughing while holding a bowl of medicine.

He saw the chief examiner of White Deer Academy throwing his policy essay into the brazier during the examination years ago.

He saw an infant outside the city playing under a pagoda tree, turning into white bones in the blink of an eye.

“All beings suffer, is that the will of Heaven?”

“Cultivators are supreme, is that the rule?”

Xiao Mochi politely took off his coat, revealing the cinnabar talisman mark on his chest.

This was a technique that Xiao Mochi had condensed with his last lifespan, and at this moment, it was emitting a dazzling red light.

He dipped into his heart's blood and heavily marked the Taiji diagram: “Then please let Heaven see, what is the righteous path of humanity!”

The entire Mount Tai trembled violently, and the seventy-two peaks lit up with golden light simultaneously.

The steles left by emperors of past dynasties during their Feng and Shan sacrifices floated into the air, turning into a golden torrent that surged towards the giant bronze wheel.

Xiao Mochi's black hair turned white at a speed visible to the naked eye.

But the 《Liyun Datong Pian》 under his pen became even more radiant and dazzling: “When the Great Dao prevails, the world is for all!”

The Heavenly Dao Wheel suddenly stopped spinning.

Just as Xiao Mochi was about to touch the center of the wheel, countless black threads emerged from the void, instantly entangling his limbs.

The other ends of those threads were connected to all living beings—

The lewd laughter of cultivators raping women, and the government's subsequent failure to hold them accountable.

The greed of sects controlling the court, exploiting the common people, and ultimately turning a dynasty into a living hell.

The countless white bones of tens of thousands of people sacrificed by powerful beings for the sake of alchemy.

Because Xiao Mochi wanted to change the laws of the Heavenly Dao.

The Heavenly Dao subconsciously resisted, directly piercing into Xiao Mochi's mind.

Xiao Mochi saw his own righteous aura being polluted by the black threads.

The words he wrote turned into distorted tadpole scripts.

But he didn't care; he wrote more and more.

He wrote more and more frantically.

What Xiao Mochi wrote was precisely the “rules” he had been thinking about all these years!

When he unconsciously wrote “Heaven and Earth are ruthless” on the paper, the purple bamboo brush snapped in two. The black threads took the opportunity to burrow into his heart meridians, and the severe pain caused him to curl up into a ball.

The giant bronze wheel began to spin again, this time so fast that the inscriptions could not be seen clearly, leaving only a dazzling white light.

The last thing Xiao Mochi saw was his hands dissipating, like sand blown by a strong wind towards the sea of clouds.

However, the chapter in Xiao Mochi's hand

Had already been completed.

The golden paper, bearing black words, fell into the Great Dao.

The Great Dao characters in the sky were arranged neatly, each word, each sentence, corresponding to the black words on the golden paper!

“Dong!”

“Dong!”

“Dong!”

One chime after another reverberated.

Echoing throughout all the human dynasties of the Central Plains.

Throughout the entire Wu Kingdom, a black rain poured down.

In the rain-soaked streets, a woman ran into the palace, tears mingling with the black ink rain, dripping onto the ground.

In the instant when the white light swallowed everything, the scholar used his last strength to throw the broken brush towards the east.

The tip of the brush, stained with heart's blood, pierced through the long night, leaving a trail of bright red in the sky.

The original daylight suddenly turned into night.

A shooting star streaked across the sky, leaving a long trail.

At the foot of Mount Tai, an old farmer who was working in the fields raised his head, looking at the sudden darkness.

A little girl sitting on the muddy ground raised her head, her lovely eyes blinking, and asked curiously: “Grandpa, why did it suddenly get dark?”

The old farmer shook his head: “I don't know.”

Suddenly, the little girl stretched out her small hand and pointed to the night sky: “Grandpa, look! A very big star has fallen, is that a shooting star?”

“That one ah.”

The old farmer put down his hoe and looked up at the sky.

“That is the Star of Literature falling.”