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“Little sparrow, it seems you won’t cooperate unless I subdue you first,” said Su Yi softly.
Over on the branch, the gray sparrow clutched its gut with its wings and laughed uproariously. “You might be an ant, but you sure know how to boast! Aren’t you afraid of cutting your tongue on your sharp words?”
Kcch!
Before it had even finished speaking, sword qi flashed through the air and cleaved toward the gray sparrow.
The gray sparrow shrieked and shifted to the side in a flash. The sword qi narrowly missed its wings and cleaved into the tree branch behind it.
Shockingly, the branch was incomparably firm. Despite the abundant power of Su Yi’s sword qi, it couldn’t so much as scratch the wood.
The gray sparrow stabilized itself on the ground and shrieked, “Young man, have you no martial virtue? How dare you ambush me?”
Su Yi said calmly, “If you’re really so capable, why bother dodging?”
Inwardly, he was a bit surprised. The gray sparrow dodged so fast, it almost seemed to teleport. It’s unbelievably quick.
“I just disdain to attack an ant like you. If I truly went all out, never mind you—I could destroy an Emperor in the blink of an eye!”
The gray sparrow was so proud, it was as if there were no one else in the world. It didn’t even take Emperors seriously.
Su Yi was in no mood to talk nonsense with a little bird, but just as he was about to attack, the gray sparrow cried out. “Stop, stop! Cultivators such as ourselves ought to value peace, and we shouldn’t fight amongst ourselves. In light of your youthful ignorance, I’ll be compassionate and answer some questions for you. Let’s hear it! What do you want to know?”
“Changed your mind just like that?” Su Yi smiled faintly, but he couldn’t be bothered to pursue the matter. “First, tell me why you ambushed me.”
The gray sparrow thought for a moment, then said guiltily, “I was just testing you, that’s all.”
Su Yi whispered, “Contemptible.”
The gray sparrow lost its temper and was just about to say something when it stopped itself and snorted coldly. “You’re a junior, so I won’t pursue this matter with you.”
“That so?” said Su Yi. “I have no time to waste with a little sparrow like you either. Starting now, I ask and you answer. Skip the nonsense. If you waste my time, don’t blame me for my poor manners.”
“.....” The gray sparrow paused. After a while, it took a deep breath and suppressed its rage. “Fine. Ask away!”
“Why did you kidnap Miss Dou Kou?”
“I wanted to ask someone a few questions and understand the situation in the outside world,” said the bird.
Su Yi pondered for a moment. “Does that mean you haven’t left this place in a long time?”
The gray sparrow said impatiently, “Can you not ask such irrelevant questions?”
Su Yi didn’t press the issue. “Where is this place?”
The gray sparrow let out a burst of strange, obnoxious laughter. “Interesting! You opened Yuan Motian’s sealed doorway to arrive here, but you don’t even know where this is… Are all juniors this ignorant nowadays?”
Su Yi gazed coldly at the bird. “My patience is limited.”
The bird’s expression froze, and it muttered, “I was just joking, that’s all. Don’t take it so seriously! If not for that promise I made, I would have killed you a long time ago!”
When it saw that Su Yi’s expression was still strange, it hurriedly added, “This is the Ninth Star Ruin, or as the Azure Continent knows it, the Well of Ancient Chaos.”
The Ninth Star Ruin?
Find the original at bit.ly/3iBfjkV.
The Well of Ancient Chaos?
Su Yi’s heart shook.
This was his first time hearing the name “the Ninth Star Ruin”, but he’d heard of the Well of Ancient Chaos.
Rumor had it that the source of the Azure Continent was hidden within the Well of Ancient Chaos. That is to say, it was the home of the Origins of the Azure.
Thirty thousand years ago, an Imperial Realm cultivator ventured into the Well of Ancient Chaos and opened a mysterious seal. The power of the Prohibition of Ancient Darkness then burst out of the Well of Ancient Chaos, and swept over the Azure Continent. It had remained there ever since!
This was why most believed that the Well of Ancient Chaos was also the source of the Prohibition of Ancient Darkness.
According to the gray sparrow, this floating landmass was the Well of Ancient Chaos!
Of course Su Yi was surprised!
After a moment’s thought, he asked, “The Origins of the Azure, the source of the Azure Continent, is hidden here?”
“That’s right,” said the gray sparrow.
Su Yi scanned the area, but his gaze ultimately returned to the ancient tree with branches laden with the corpses of stars. “Is that it?”
“You’re not completely blind,” said the gray sparrow. “If it hadn’t protected this place for the past thirty thousand years, the Starstorm from outer space assailing the continent would have long since destroyed the Azure Continent!”
Su Yi’s gaze focused. He was finally starting to understand. “So that’s it…”
If the gray sparrow was telling the truth, the dead stars filling the tree's branches were remnants from when it fought off the Starstorm from outer space!
The fragmented corpses of stars hovering above Sumeru Mountain and in the underground world likely originated from the Starstorm too.
With the knowledge of his past life, Su Yi was naturally aware that when a world faced its doom, the power of its source would instinctively attempt to ward off the impending calamity.
This was like a clash with a world’s fundamental laws. When a world’s source was destroyed, the world was doomed to perish with it, resulting in utter destruction.
However, Su Yi wouldn’t have guessed that a world like the Azure Continent, a plane home to numerous Imperial-level orthodoxies, would face such an enormous calamity!
“Where did the Starstorm come from?” asked Su Yi.
The sparrow rolled its eyes. “Didn’t I tell you? It came from the starry void of outer space.”
Su Yi didn’t take the bird to task for its poor attitude. His eyes flashed, and he thought of something.
Is the Starstorm the ‘great terror’ the Sumeru Yao Emperor said was hidden deep within the starry skies? Su Yi thought for a moment, then asked, “How did the Sumeru Yao Emperor die here?”
“You’re talking about the little monkey, right? He was originally a spiritual body born of a stubborn piece of rock, a part of the Origins of the Azure. The Origins of the Azure recognized him as its guardian spirit.”
The gray sparrow’s voice lowered, and it seemed to be in poor spirits. “Alas, thirty thousand years ago, the Starstorm came too suddenly. Even the great tree suffered a devastating attack, much less the little monkey! I urged him to leave, but he stubbornly refused to listen. He insisted on fighting to the death, and in the end… agh!”
The bird’s voice was full of grief and frustration.
When Su Yi heard this, something suddenly occurred to him. “Are you saying that the onset of the Prohibition of Ancient Darkness accompanied the descent of the Starstorm?”
The sparrow nodded. “You’re not stupid after all. The ‘Prohibition of Ancient Darkness’ you speak of is, in truth, a calamity of the Grand Dao. It was originally a Starstorm containing a type of destructive power specifically intended to corrode and destroy the principles of the Grand Dao and the sources of worlds.
“If not for this tree standing guard here, the Azure Continent would have ceased to exist a long time ago. It couldn’t have endured the Prohibition of Ancient Darkness all this time.”
When he heard this, Su Yi sank into thought.
The gray sparrow’s explanation had cleared up many of his doubts. He finally understood the secrets of the Prohibition of Ancient Darkness, the Origins of the Azure, and the Well of Ancient Chaos.
From this, he deduced many other things.
Thirty thousand years ago, it was the Starstorm assailing the continent from outer space that led to the Prohibition of Ancient Darkness enveloping the world. It was the reason the continent’s spiritual energy was so sparse, and the reason the laws of the Grand Dao were damaged there.
In the years that followed the Starstorm, the world’s cultivation factions either perished and disappeared, or left the Azure continent in search of new paths.
Similarly, it was due to this calamity that the spatial barrier around the Azure Continent was damaged in numerous places. This allowed Otherworld cultivators to cross over and seize the opportunity to invade!
“Junior, you’re only in the Gathering Stars Realm. What good will understanding these secrets do? I urge you not to waste your time thinking about this; this involves an entire world, and it has absolutely nothing to do with you.”
When he saw Su Yi pondering in silence, the gray sparrow grew disdainful. He put on the air of an elder and said, “It’s best not to be overly ambitious!”
Su Yi glanced at the obnoxious bird, then ignored its advice completely. “Do you know the meaning of the phrase ‘the emperor controls the secrets of the nine extremes?’”
The sparrow was stunned. “You know about that too?”
Su Yi looked directly at it. “What I want is an answer.”
The gray sparrow tittered. “The answer is simple. This is the Ninth Star Ruin, the source of the Origins of the Azure. The ‘secrets of the nine extremes’ means that anyone who fully comprehends the Origins of the Azure can reach the Imperial Apex Realm!”
Su Yi was stunned, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
And here he’d thought the “secrets of the nine extremes” was something shocking. Who’d have thought it was nothing but a path to the Imperial Apex Realm?
When he saw Su Yi fall silent, the sparrow couldn’t help but be amused. He said smugly, “What, don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Imperial Apex Realm? But then, that makes sense. You’re just a minor little Gathering Stars Realm cultivator, someone still stuck in the Origin Dao. How could you know that at the very pinnacle of the Profound Dao there exists a supreme level of power, the Imperial Apex Realm?”
The corners of Su Yi’s lips twitched. A tiny little sparrow dares say that I, Su Xuanjun, don’t understand the Imperial Apex Realm…
Were this the Nine Provinces of the Wilds, the populace would have seen this as the biggest joke of all time.
“Don’t be depressed, little junior. Although the Imperial Apex Realm is still far away from you, and although you might never reach it in this lifetime, you can still take pride. After all, at least you know the Imperial Apex Realm exists, while the vast majority of the world’s cultivators… Haha, they don’t even know how many realms the Profound Dao has!”
The gray sparrow’s eyes shone with disdain, as if it looked down upon the masses.
When he saw the bird show off its paltry knowledge, Su Yi couldn’t help but facepalm and interrupt it. “Enough. I’ll just ask you this: whose blood is this?”
He flipped his hand.
Whoosh!
Golden blood floated into the air.
The gray sparrow was briefly stunned. Then, it exploded in fury. “So you’re the one who stabbed A’Cang, you punk!”
“A’Cang? ‘Cang’ as in ‘azure’? Are you talking about the tree?” Su Yi looked up at the tree covered in the corpses of stars. He could sense the golden blood trembling violently, as if desperate to fly back to the tree.
It was then that Su Yi realized something: his earlier guess wasn’t wrong. The golden blood indeed belonged to a Xiantian Divine Lifeform.
However, this Xiantian Divine Lifeform was different from most. It was a tree born of the Azure Continent’s source!
“No, that can’t be right. With your paltry cultivation, how could you possibly harm A’Cang?”
The gray sparrow suddenly realized something. It frowned. “Unless…”
Su Yi’s gaze was a bit strange, and his tone was rife with meaning. “I’m starting to suspect the tree let me hurt it on purpose.”