Chapter 109: Yellow Springs as the Boundary

The colossal divine pillar, an awe-inspiring sight piercing through heaven and earth, was equally beautiful in its collapse. It was like countless interwoven lines of light and shadow, within a luminous, shimmering glass, suddenly splitting and expanding endlessly, causing the once-nearly-perfect scene to unravel into chaos.

As if one strand pulled the whole body, almost in an instant, the divine pillar slowly toppled, crashing into a second towering column.

The impact of the divine pillar made no sound, yet the visual collapse erupted like an explosion, engulfing the entire night.

In the initial moments, Lady Bai thought she was mistaken, but as the divine pillar tilted to a certain angle, she was jolted awake. Her heart, once imbued with divinity, suddenly trembled, and she cried out, "No!"

The entire divine realm of Fengdu shuddered uneasily at her cry.

Everything she had painstakingly accumulated over several years transformed, in those fleeting moments, into a cascade of auroras streaming away into the distant sky.

The culprit behind all this was the accursed Ning Changjiu, and his inexplicably glowing pupils.

Just before Lady Bai could lose her mind, Zhao Xianger seized the brief opportunity. She took a sharp breath, and in response to her intent, Nine Feathers, which had been firmly pinned by bone nails, stirred.

As the divine pillar collapsed and authority shattered, Lady Bai's divine status plummeted. Naturally, the bone nails could no longer hold Nine Feathers. Just as Lady Bai, in her rage, intended to directly strangle Zhao Xianger, Nine Feathers broke free, soared into the air, and transformed into a sword, sweeping through the space between Lady Bai and Zhao Xianger.

In an instant, Lady Bai's hand was severed at the wrist.

Zhao Xianger's figure dropped, and Nine Feathers transformed into a swift sparrow, swooping below to catch her falling form.

Lady Bai stared at her severed wrist. Although she could instantly regenerate an identical one from bone, at the moment her hand bone broke, her heart felt as if it had plunged into an endless abyss.

She trembled all over, then looked towards the young man whose eyes were still wide open. Those eyes were so loathsome that she wished she could dig them out and swallow them whole.

Yet, a trace of innate fear also flashed within her.

This fear was quickly consumed by hatred. She flicked her wrist, and luminous white fingers regenerated. Although her divine status was still rapidly falling, even if everything else was lost, her original cultivation as a long-lived being was still more than enough to kill Ning Changjiu!

At this moment, Ning Changjiu himself wasn't entirely sure what was happening. He had simply been awakened by an instinctive power within his body, then subconsciously opened his eyes and looked towards the divine pillar.

Then his eyes turned golden, and the divine pillar began to crumble under his gaze.

He had been fixated on those unfolding scenes until Zhao Xianger escaped from the clutches, and Lady Bai lunged at him with astonishing lethal intent. Only then did he react.

Lady Bai moved incredibly fast. Ning Changjiu, severely wounded, didn't even have time for an alarm to register in his mind before Lady Bai's sharp claws were upon him.

Yet, Ning Changjiu felt no fear. At one moment, a flash of sword light appeared in the depths of his consciousness, and with a sudden clarity of mind, his sword-holding hand moved instinctively. He raised his sword and thrust it towards Lady Bai.

The thrust was incredibly swift and precise, striking exactly the tip of Lady Bai's middle finger.

That was the point of most concentrated danger, and Ning Changjiu "saw" it, then struck it.

Immediately, Lady Bai grasped the sword in his hand with a backhand grip and twisted sharply. The sword's toughness reached its limit in an instant, and the twisted blade quickly snapped. Lady Bai's other claw, meanwhile, lunged directly at the crown of his head.

Something flashed before her eyes.

Lady Bai groaned in pain, and blood suddenly gushed from her eyes.

A fox's paw had plunged into her eye.

Not far away, amid the immense tremor, Ning Xiaoling was also roused. She managed to open her eyes just a slit, but after witnessing the snow fox's strike, her resolve faltered, her eyes closed, and she fell unconscious again.

The same fox, the same sneak attack. Lady Bai had dismissed it the first time, but now she was utterly enraged, almost to the point of madness. The momentary blindness created an opening, and Nine Feathers, already descending from the sky, arrived in an instant. Zhao Xianger, wielding her umbrella sword, swept it across Lady Bai's neck.

Even in her frenzy, Lady Bai maintained an instinctive defense. Though her bone armor was rapidly diminishing, it still retained remarkable hardness.

She swiftly dodged the sword strike, and the injury to her blinded eyes healed rapidly. In a flash, Zhao Xianger, holding the umbrella sword in one hand and Nine Feathers in the other, her body ablaze with killing intent and burning rage, attacked with both swords like lightning.

Although Lady Bai's cultivation level was still significantly higher than Zhao Xianger's, the ferocity of Zhao Xianger's assault was overwhelming. Lady Bai's already deranged mind was suppressed by wave after wave of sword energy, making it impossible for her to think, so she could only defend by instinct. Her bone scales on her arms were ripped off and shattered, and her tailbone broke segment by segment. She was on the verge of madness, and Zhao Xianger, too, seemed possessed by a frenzy, each sword strike unleashing full power, like a desperate shriek.

If Lady Bai hadn't been rapidly mending her body with bones scattered across the ground, she would have been hacked to pieces by now.

Zhao Xianger's burst of momentum was also reaching its end. She had driven Lady Bai all the way to the bank of the Yellow Springs, and with a final crossed sweep of her umbrella sword and Nine Feathers, she formed a character resembling "乂."

That was one of the strokes of the character "Zhao," and also her most spiritually attuned and incomparably sharp sword strike.

Lady Bai channeled her spiritual power to defend with her arms, but both her arms and chest armor were shattered. Two extremely deep cracks instantly appeared. Under the impact of the sword energy, Lady Bai was pinned by this "乂" strike, pushed directly to the opposite bank, and crashed through a large section of buildings.

Zhao Xianger stood holding her two swords. Her body swayed, and she braced herself with the umbrella sword, kneeling on one knee. She touched her burning cheek; the furious anger surging within her still could not subside.

She did not pursue Lady Bai, not because she didn't want to annihilate her, but because she, too, was utterly exhausted.

Having previously killed three long-lived bone demons in succession and then engaged in a grueling fight with Lady Bai, her body was severely injured. The previous ferocious counterattack, almost like a final burst of life before death, was the absolute limit of her exerted power.

She put away Nine Feathers, used one hand to support her body with the sword, and clutched the torn fabric over her chest with the other, turning to look at Ning Changjiu.

On the opposite bank, Lady Bai slowly crawled out of the ruins. She was covered in wounds and looked even worse than Zhao Xianger. The backlash from the Underworld Lord's authority was extremely severe, directly damaging her foundation. Not only did it cause her hard-won recovered cultivation to almost entirely dissipate, but she also nearly lost the power to control Fengdu.

She also looked at Ning Changjiu, her face filled with bewilderment and fury. "What… what exactly did you do?"

Ning Changjiu slowly stood up, the golden light in his eyes now gone. After shakily rising, he walked to Ning Xiaoling's side, helped her up, and transferred what little spiritual energy remained in his Qi Sea to her.

Those few sword strikes just now had almost completely exhausted all the refined spiritual energy he had cultivated in Tianku Peak.

He slowly exhaled, regulating the flow of energy within his body, and did not answer Lady Bai's question.

The last divine pillar crashed into the Bridge of Helplessness, violently snapping the entire long bridge before plunging into the Yellow Springs, raising monstrous waves, and disappearing from sight.

Lady Bai watched the vanished divine pillar, her spirit crushed. Pulling herself from the immense sense of loss, she replayed the recent scene like a nightmare in her mind.

Golden pupils, chaotic imagery, disordered mythological logic, collapsing divine pillars.

"So… that's it."

After a long silence, Lady Bai slowly spoke.

She finally understood: "The history depicted in the first bronze painting was wrong."

If the historical facts were wrong, then the mythological logic was naturally distorted. Thus, that divine pillar, though seemingly magnificent, actually concealed an enormous flaw.

But that flaw would not have collapsed on its own without reason.

The flaw needed to be "seen through."

A lie, if perfectly crafted and logically self-consistent, becomes indistinguishable from truth if no one sees through it.

But this time was different: Ning Changjiu opened his eyes and looked at it intently.

And so, the flaw could no longer deceive itself, and massive chaos ensued.

But how could Ning Changjiu possibly see through the flaw in the bronze painting?

Of the five bronze paintings, the latter four depicted real events she had personally experienced. Only the first one was a possibility she had drawn after countless conjectures.

She was a bone demon born from shattered remains in an abyss. She had once calculated the aging degree of her own bones, thereby deducing the death time of the divine bones in that abyss.

Approximately four to five hundred years ago.

She then consulted countless historical records, examining all available facts and legends from four to five hundred years ago. She finally concluded that only the catastrophe five hundred years ago could have killed a deity of that level.

Mythological logic doesn't need to be strictly rigorous, but its foundation must be accurate.

Yet, under Ning Changjiu's gaze, that mythological logic collapsed. This event indicated two possibilities: first, the foundation of that bronze painting was incorrect! That deity had not died in the catastrophe five hundred years ago at all.

Second, in some sense, this white-robed young man was a "witness." He must have either read a true account of that deity's death in someone's records or a book, or he had directly witnessed the events himself. Otherwise, the mythological logic would not have recognized that it had been seen through.

But how old was this young man? How could he possibly know top-secret events from four or five hundred years ago?

Lady Bai, having figured out everything yet comprehending nothing, was suffocated by immense shock, confusion, and sorrow.

She looked at the three figures on the opposite bank of the Yellow Springs, remaining silent. Given her current physical condition, she had no confidence in killing them.

Ning Changjiu and his two companions were also at the end of their strength.

Most importantly, at this very moment, the full red moon had risen to the very center of Linhe City, bathing the Yellow Springs in a crimson glow.

With the collapse of the divine pillars, the possibility of Fengdu becoming a divine realm no longer existed. Yet, the red moon was full, and the city still transformed into a true capital of the netherworld. However, the authority over this netherworld capital was now scattered and fell, no longer under anyone's control.

Lady Bai and Ning Changjiu watched the Yellow Springs, boiling under the red moon, in long silence.

Then Lady Bai turned and departed, walking into the half-dead city.

Ning Changjiu sighed, "Let's go too."

Zhao Xianger gritted her teeth, displeased. "Why?"

Although she asked, she knew perfectly well that neither they nor Lady Bai had the certainty to kill the other. With the red moon overhead and midnight upon them, Fengdu had truly taken its form. In their current state, they were not even strong enough to cross the Yellow Springs, which now symbolized death.

Therefore, at this moment, they could only recuperate their injuries, waiting for their strength to return to its peak before crossing the Yellow Springs for a decisive battle.

That moment might be before dawn, or perhaps much later.

Zhao Xianger lowered her head, saying nothing more. She clutched the torn fabric over her chest with one hand, while with the other, she loosened her grip on the sword and quietly brushed a few strands of dark hair to cover her left cheek.

Then she again braced herself with the sword, but after only two steps, her knees buckled, and she half-knelt, forced to use the sword to keep from collapsing completely.

Her small frame trembled slightly, and the knuckles clutching the sword hilt were turning white, yet she stubbornly refused to utter a single word.

Ning Changjiu, however, had already walked to her, squatting down. He gently supported her shoulder, his tired, weak voice imbued with immense calm and determination: "I'll carry you."