An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

Chapter 1128: The Chanting Monk; The Supreme Elder of the Ice Pole Sect; The Archaic Beast’s Roar (I)

As soon as the Sages aboard the ship sensed the battle raging across the Blue Ice Sea, the demonic beast army that had been shadowing them swept in from the flank and blocked their path.

”WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING HERE?!”

The waters around were filled with thousands of beasts, all of them glaring viciously at the cultivators on the ship. At the very front, five demon cultivators in human form watched the ship with hostile expressions.

In response to the furious shout, a gaunt man stepped forward. His head was shaved like a monk’s, and his deeply wrinkled face bore an expression of compassion, yet the prayer beads hanging from one hand had been carved from human skulls. He pressed his palms together. ”You may watch from there, but no closer. The battle ahead concerns my race, so I ask that you stay out of it. Otherwise... Amitabha[1], I’d rather not kill you guys unless I have to.”

As he spoke, an imposing aura rose from his thin frame and pressed down upon the ship.

A late-stage Demon Emperor!

The faces of the cultivators aboard all went pale. Fu Chaosheng’s expression darkened as recognition dawned. ”A Chanting Monk... You must be Fellow Daoist Void Contemplation.”

Void Contemplation looked at Fu Chaosheng in surprise. ”I didn’t expect someone here to recognize me. Well... that just makes things easier. You should understand that acting rashly would be unwise.”

Fu Chaosheng’s voice turned cold. ”And if we refuse to take a detour? Do you truly dare to attack this ship?”

Void Contemplation stiffened. He was clearly caught off guard by the challenge.

After allowing the silence to linger for a moment, Fu Chaosheng swept his sleeve. ”Forget it. We won’t interfere in the battle. But once it is over, you will withdraw and stop following us. Can you agree to that?”

The tension in Void Contemplation’s expression eased. He glanced back at the army behind him, then toward the distant horizon before nodding. ”Sun-Moon Island is already close, so our mission may be considered complete ahead of schedule.”

With both sides having made their positions clear, each gave ground. The ship stopped outside the Blue Ice Sea, while Void Contemplation’s army remained in its path. Neither side lowered its guard, but their attention soon shifted toward the battle raging around the Ice Pole Sect while communicating privately among themselves.

”He is from an extremely rare race known as the Chanting Monks. They are bald and with long beards, but they have six legs, and before taking human form, their voices sound like monks chanting Buddhist scriptures. That is how they earned their name. Void Contemplation is one of their strongest. He first made a name for himself during the ancient war between humans and beasts 3000 years ago. He has not only survived to this day, but also reached the late stage. Unless we have no other choice, we should not provoke him.”

The explanation only deepened the unease aboard the ship. No one had expected the Demon Alliance to assign such a formidable figure merely to watch Divine Origin City. With Void Contemplation personally blocking the way, there was no way for them to interfere with the Ice Pole Sect’s battle.

On the demonic beasts’ side, Void Contemplation calmly rolled the prayer beads carved from human skulls between his fingers. The four transformed demon cultivators behind him also possessed formidable auras, but none understood why he had compromised so readily.

One of them finally voiced his confusion. ”With your strength, you can crush every cultivator on that ship by yourself. Why show them such courtesy?”

”The cultivators themselves are nothing to fear,” Void Contemplation replied quietly. ”But they are from the Heaven Origin Dao Sect. Tell me, which is stronger, the Dao Sect or me?”

The question left the four demon cultivators momentarily speechless. Then one of them protested, ”So what if it’s the Dao Sect? We destroyed the Primordial Devil Sect 200 years ago. Once we reclaim our lands in the Northern Sea and restore the glory we had in ancient times, why should we continue to fear a human sect on the distant Central Continent?”

The others immediately voiced their agreement, but Void Contemplation only smiled and shook his head. ”You said it yourselves. That will be after we reclaim the Northern Sea, and that day has not yet come. None of you experienced the ancient war, so you do not understand the terror of these Holy Lands. They are not powers we can afford to move against lightly, least of all the Dao Sect.”

The four demon cultivators exchanged doubtful looks, finding his caution somewhat absurd. The Demon Alliance had paid a devastating price to destroy the devil sect, and even after spending close to two centuries recuperating within the sealed Heaven of Northern Yama, they had yet to recover even half of their former strength. That lingering weakness was precisely why they had only reclaimed the Northern Sea one step at a time.

Even so, they had brought down a Holy Land. How much stronger could another one truly be?

Yet the standoff before them had, in truth, offered an answer. Fu Chaosheng was only an early-stage Sage, but he had confronted Void Contemplation without showing the slightest fear. Void Contemplation, despite being a late-stage Demon Emperor who could overpower all Sages aboard the ship, had responded with verbal warnings rather than force. The difference in their attitudes was clear proof of how heavily the Dao Sect weighed upon him.

Void Contemplation lowered his eyes, and his deeply wrinkled face once again settled into an expression of compassion. ”Let’s hope the Dao Sect continues to honor the agreement between the human factions and stays out of other regions’ affairs. More than anything, our kin needs time.”

Only then did the other four understand the true reason for his restraint.

This was why the Demon Alliance had strictly forbidden any attack on Divine Origin City and why the two Ancient Demons had repeatedly warned them not to provoke disciples of the Dao Sect. So long as they avoided giving the sect cause to intervene, its forces would remain outside the Northern Sea, buying the Demon Alliance the time it needed to reclaim the region. Once the Northern Sea was firmly under their control, they could establish a Holy Land of their own.

Most of the five transformed demon cultivators accepted Void Contemplation’s reasoning. One, however, remained unmoved.

A handsome man was glaring resentfully at a figure standing atop one of the ship’s towers. ”Consider yourself lucky!”

***

Luo Chen rested one hand on the railing; Black King lay across his shoulders, looking into the distance.

”Master, that merman is up ahead too. I think he sensed me.”

”He did more than that,” Luo Chen replied calmly. ”He recognized me as well.”

Black King was stunned. With Master’s abilities, how could that dumb fish recognize him so easily?

Luo Chen offered no explanation, though the reason was simple enough. A strand of Liu Jun’s blue flame still lingered within the Withering-Flourishing True Fire. Luo Chen could have erased it long ago, but he had deliberately preserved it so he could study why the flame was so effective against the bodies of archaic beasts. If he uncovered its secret, he might be able to understand and eliminate a weakness of his own body. But with that flame still inside him and Black King openly at his side, it was hardly surprising that Liu Jun had recognized them. If Liu Jun still failed to identify them at such close range, he would hardly deserve to be a Demon Emperor.

”There’s no need to worry about him. They wouldn’t dare attack the ship. And even if a fight does break out, as long as I don’t have to face that demonic monk, there’s no telling whether Liu Jun or I would win.”

Though he framed the outcome as uncertain, there was no fear in his expression. He had never feared Liu Jun, even when he was still in the Golden Core Realm. Now that he had become a Sage and his strength had risen far beyond what it had once been, he was actually quite confident that he could defeat the merman even atop the boundless sea.

He turned his attention back to the Blue Ice Sea. With his Spirit Eyes and divine consciousness working together, the distant battlefield unfolded clearly before him.

This was the first time he had witnessed a direct clash between one of the Northern Sea’s upper sects and the main forces of the Demon Alliance. Judging by the devastation, the fighting had been raging for a while now, at least ten days or perhaps half a month. The frozen sea was strewn with the corpses of humans and demonic beasts, and blood had stained the ice around Ice Soul Spirit Mountain. Its mountain-guarding formation flickered unsteadily, clearly close to collapse.

Luo Chen sensed at least ten combatants at the Sage level. The two sides had likely been evenly matched at first, but that balance disappeared with the arrival of the Ghost Immortal Tower.

”It’s that thing again....” Luo Chen murmured as waves of emotion surged through his heart.

The Blue Ice Sea stretched for ten thousand li around the Ice Pole Sect. Pale ice covered its surface while dark blue water flowed ceaselessly beneath, the two colors reflecting one another to create the strange beauty that had given the region its name. Even the earlier war between humans and demonic beasts had failed to shatter this frozen expanse.

Yet everything changed with the appearance of the monster that looked like a crimson tower.

Wherever it passed, the ice cracked, and the sea erupted. The tentacles of the Great King Squids hung down its back like hair and lashed across the battlefield as it charged. They swept up corpse after corpse and fed them into its mouth, while streams of dark energy converged upon its body. The energy condensed into dense ghostly phantoms that clung to the beast and swirled in its wake.

Luo Chen narrowed his eyes. Has it grown stronger since the Sunken Sea?

1. 阿弥陀佛 (Ē mí tuó fó or Ā mí tuó fó) is the Buddha of Infinite Light, a major buddha in the Mahayana tradition common in East Asia. ☜