PtM 18 - Epilogue

The void was a cold and merciless place, filled with deadly spatial storms and vortexes and predatory creatures. Only saint-level cultivators could travel the void, and even then, it was only the minimum requirement.

Cha Ming was an exception to the rule, as his Primal Chaos True Body was completely immune to most spatial anomalies. There were other hazards that concerned Huxian, however, which was why he’d been busy over the past few months and would be busy for the foreseeable future.

“Who would have thought it’d be so lonely out here?” Huxian muttered to himself. “Even the cat would be welcome company at this point. But no, Luther and everyone else had to hibernate too.”

That included the mysterious Ninesky, the spirit of the Clear Sky Brush. To Huxian’s knowledge, it was probably the spirit of the universe itself, but he couldn’t be certain. Things like that had a tendency to be messy and difficult to see through.

“There,” Huxian said, carving a careful line in spatial glass. “That’s it for the first layer of defenses. This thing could get hit by an exploding star without getting scratched.”

The object in question was a crystal coffin, carved carefully from the most precious materials in Huxian’s possession. It was covered in millions of tiny carved runes made of space and time, the eight directions, and yin and yang. Several immortal treasures had been melted down to reinforce it.

But this alone wasn’t enough. After all, this was the void, and the coffin could get swallowed by a predatory world or a dying star or something. He therefore anchored it in space and built a complicated web around it that would confuse and disorient void-faring creatures and dissuade them from coming any closer.

“The biggest problem, though, is what to do if he doesn’t recover.” It was fine and dandy if he pulled out of this on his own. But Cha Ming was still a mortal, and he only had so much time. A hundred years, by Huxian’s estimation, though the time acceleration in his immortal world was decreasing this. Then again, his life span was also increasing because of the nature of his cultivation.

So he got to work on a third project. He used the nine dungeon cores in his possession, which he no longer needed, and used them to create a grand building. A mausoleum, as it were. It was almost as tough as the coffin but was built shoddily on purpose. The spatial storms in the outside world would continuously wear down this place until it was little better than a ten-thousand-year-old tomb.

Building it took months of careful work, but it was all worth it in the end. “Yep,” said Huxian. “They’ll never tell it apart from the real thing. If in sixty years you don’t break through, the formation will kick in and drag some poor merchant or space pirate into this place. They’ll see the coffin, find out that it’s amazing, and then bring it back to whatever world they came from.”

There were many possible ways for this to develop afterward. If the finder was benevolent, they would see that Cha Ming was alive and try to awaken him. If they were profiteering, they would sell the corpse. If they were power hungry or vicious, they would try to refine the corpse into a treasure or puppet or something. Either way, this would require massive amounts of energy, which Cha Ming would probably need.

“Yep. I am the best, aren’t I?” Huxian said, rubbing his hands together. He sighed and looked at his watch and saw that his time was almost up. “Sorry, Cha Ming. If I don’t go now, I’ll never make it. Best of luck. Catch you on the flip side.”

He then jumped up into the void and flew out a good distance away from the hidden mausoleum. Something snapped inside him as he pushed through his limits and broke through to immortality as a Dao Lord.

Tribulation clouds immediately assembled in response to his breakthrough, full of frightening potential and a thousand times more numerous than those called up by the descendants of the Five-Point Monarchs.

“Yeah, I know, you hate me,” said Huxian to the clouds. “Bring it on. Show me your worst.” The heavens rumbled as they began to summon forth an army of sentient tribulation lightning. It would be completely impossible, even for an immortal king or demon king to transcend this tribulation.

“Heaven and earth, swamp and mountain,” Huxian called out. “Fire and water, wind and lightning. I offer sacrifice to the heavens to open the Door of Life and Death. Tear through the void. Descend!”

Huxian’s eight tails pierced into space and tore it open. An archaic aura descended upon him as the Door of Life and Death slowly came into existence.

The door was locked, but Huxian happened to have its key. He burned the sainthood of his friends, their blood, and their cultivation. He only kept a single drop of their blood essence, as well as the core-most essence of their souls.

“I’ll make it up to you in the immortal dimension,” Huxian said to them. “I promise.” Eight points lit up on the door, and it slowly began to creep open. And the heavens, realizing what he was about to do, threw everything they had at him. Armies and dragons of lightning and countless calamities; whatever it could to stomp him down and show him his place.

Yet by the time the tribulation ran its course, Huxian was already long gone. Only Cha Ming remained in the empty void. He survived only because their bond had been severed. They were no longer a single entity, and the tribulation was unable to find him.

– End Book 18 –

Note: That's it, that's the last chapter of the book. We're on a one month break next month with contributions frozen. If all continues as it has been, we'll start back up again in November with the last book of Arc 2, tentatively titled: Ascension / Graveyard of the Gods.