Chapter 630: The Head in the Jar
From the dome of this dark cavern down to the light below, the distance was incredibly vast. Qin Mu continued to fall, and as time passed, even he began to feel a creeping dread. His falling speed grew faster and faster—if he kept falling like this without being able to use his divine arts to slow his descent, he would surely be smashed into a pulp!
He tried to activate his divine arts, but just as his primal energy formed runic seals, the runes immediately scattered and failed to take shape.
This underground space possessed a strange power that interfered with the operation of his cultivation techniques and divine arts. Qin Mu quickly discovered that this interference was an intrusion upon his thoughts—every time he tried to use a divine art, an inexplicable force would disrupt his thinking, preventing him from executing it.
"Mental divine art?"
Qin Mu was astonished. Although this type of divine art was rare, there were records of such techniques in the Great Nurturing Heavenly Demon Sutra and certain demonic cultivation methods. They were often illusion attacks, using powerful mental fluctuations to generate divine arts that attacked the opponent's brain, trapping them in illusions where they could not distinguish between the false and the real.
In such cases, one could use their own divine arts to break the illusion, perceive the truth, and slay the opponent.
However, the mental divine art in this dark underground space was far more sophisticated—it directly attacked his thought processes, preventing him from using any divine arts at all, and thus he could not break the opponent's mental technique.
"Mental divine arts... that's a direction worth researching. I should definitely mention it to the Imperial Preceptor later and see if we can train some scholars proficient in mental divine arts. If they were to go to the battlefield, unleashing mental divine arts to prevent enemies from using their techniques would be like slaughtering chickens and dogs... Bah, why am I thinking about this? Right now I'm about to be smashed into paste!"
Qin Mu could not focus his mind, but his physical body was still incredibly powerful. He immediately began striding, trying to run through the darkness, attempting to use his astonishing running speed to walk on air.
Then he discovered another peculiarity—the air here was thin, and the further he fell, the thinner it became, so that even with his legs spinning like wheels, he could not gain any purchase.
Just then, he saw a star in the darkness. That star was actually only the size of a bushel basket—it should be a single grain of star sand.
"Senior Brother's star sand! He really did come here!"
Qin Mu's heart leaped with joy. He planted both feet on this bushel-sized star sand, and it was pressed down, falling rapidly. However, within the star sand was a strange force that resisted the bizarre field here. After falling for a while, its momentum gradually weakened, and then it showed signs of bouncing back up.
Qin Mu immediately crouched, then explosively leaped off, landing on another grain of star sand. He bounded through the air like a flying pellet, stepping across dozens of star sands, quickly approaching the location of the glowing light at the planet's core.
The source of the light was a platform floating in the darkness, with flights of steps on all four sides—wide at the bottom and narrow at the top—floating alone in the center of the darkness like a suspended altar hovering in the void.
Qin Mu landed on the altar and looked back. He saw specks of star sand floating in the darkness. The Founding Ancestor had clearly found this place and set up his formation. In other words, the thing on this altar was what the Founding Ancestor wanted to leave behind for the Woodcutter Sage.
"What exactly is it? Senior Brother has already left behind two things—one is the God-Slaying Mystic Blade, a human head sealed in a box, and the other is a military tally of unknown age. So what is this thing on the altar..."
He looked toward the center of the altar. There was a stone coffin there, made of some unknown stone material, stamped with relief patterns that resembled a sealing technique.
The stone coffin was over ten zhang long and two to three zhang wide—very large. It should not be the burial place of a mortal, but rather the resting place of a deity.
Qin Mu tried to activate the Nine Heavens Eye-Opening Technique, but his divine arts still would not activate. After hesitating for a moment, he could only peel back the golden willow leaf on his forehead and use his third eye to peer into the stone coffin.
His third eye did not reveal anything unusual either, though he could vaguely make out that there was no corpse in the coffin—only a large jar.
Qin Mu pressed the golden willow leaf back onto his forehead and walked forward.
"A large jar placed inside a coffin—what is the meaning of this?"
He was cautious, using his primal energy to touch the stone coffin. There was nothing unusual about it. Still, Qin Mu did not let his guard down. He circled the coffin rapidly like a spirit cat, probing with threads of primal energy, but still found nothing abnormal.
Only then did he feel at ease. He walked up and tried to open the stone coffin.
The coffin lid was extremely heavy. Using all his strength, he managed to shift it aside.
Indeed, there was a large jar inside the stone coffin. Qin Mu looked along the light and saw a head inside the jar—a head with four faces. At the top of its hair bun, which was shaped like a pagoda roof, there was also a single eye.
This head was soaked in a strange liquid, seemingly still alive. The eye at the top of the pagoda-shaped bun suddenly opened, and its gaze fell upon Qin Mu's face.
Qin Mu's heart jolted. Suddenly, the scenery before his eyes shifted—the planet's core, the darkness, the altar, the stone coffin, the head in the jar—all of it vanished!
He appeared in a grand palace, extremely luxurious, with white jade for the floor and pearls and jade for stars. A faceless man was walking toward him, saying: "Ying Zhao, I need you to do something for the future of our Kaihuang Era."
"Your subject obeys the Kaihuang Emperor's command."
"Emperor Shitian has gathered the finest artisans of the realm to build the Land of No Worries and forge the Ark of the Far Shore. I need you to preserve some foundation for our Kaihuang Era. I fear that those who remain in the future will forget the Land of No Worries, and I also fear that enemies will destroy the Ark of the Far Shore. Here are the blueprints for the Ark of the Far Shore. You possess the most powerful divine brain—commit them all to memory."
Qin Mu saw mountains of blueprints. He watched as "himself" paged through these blueprints one by one. The patterns and text on the blueprints were extremely complex, difficult to memorize, yet "he" imprinted every single page into his mind without missing a single one.
"Your Majesty, do we truly have no chance of victory?" Qin Mu heard a voice that was not his own.
That was the voice of the deity named Ying Zhao.
"No."
The faceless man turned his back to him and shook his head: "Not even a sliver of a chance. The more I learn about our enemy, the more despairing I become. Era after era in history has been destroyed, and we too cannot escape annihilation. But there is still hope in the future. By leaving these blueprints, you leave behind that hope. In the future, my descendant will come to find you and retrieve these blueprints. He will bring you all to the Land of No Worries to see me. Then, we will rise again and remake the heavens and the earth!"
"Your Majesty..."
The faceless man walked outward, leaving him behind. He devoted himself to memorization, and it took him a very long time before he finally committed the incredibly complex blueprints of the Ark of the Far Shore to memory.
He destroyed the blueprints. The paper burned, and the flames took a long time to die out.
When the blueprints had been reduced to ash, the palace was plunged into darkness.
The darkness before Qin Mu's eyes gave way to light—it was a vast and magnificent battlefield of gods and demons. In the sky, on the ground, everywhere there were mighty gods and demons locked in mortal combat. Countless deities fell in battle—a spectacle both magnificent and tragic.
Qin Mu watched as the Kaihuang Heavenly Court fell from an unimaginable height. The Kaihuang Heavenly Court smashed through layer after layer of heavens, dragging long trails of fire and flowing light as it plunged into other worlds.
Qin Mu watched in a daze as "himself" raised a divine sword, then lowered it again. He returned to the Divine City, went deep underground, and there created a dark space and built an altar.
He used his own spirit to construct a strange spiritual force field, prepared a coffin for himself, and placed a large jar inside the coffin. The water in the jar was divine water refined from his own spirit and life force, which could keep his flesh from decaying.
Once again, he raised his sword.
"O one who beholds this scene..."
Qin Mu heard that unfamiliar voice again, murmuring softly to itself: "Are you a descendant of the Qin clan? Have you come, as the Kaihuang Emperor commanded, to retrieve the blueprints? The Kaihuang Emperor's grace in recognizing my talents is something I could never repay. Your subject offers his head and waits in silence for the Qin lord to come and take it."
Ssshh—
A flash of sword light passed. Qin Mu felt intense pain, and then he saw "himself" topple into the jar. He looked outward and saw the headless body of the deity Ying Zhao moving the coffin lid, slowly sliding it shut.
After a moment, he heard the sound of a heavy object striking the ground from the dark depths of the planet's core. It was the sound of the deity's corpse falling from the altar and hitting the ground below.
Qin Mu's eyes stung, then reddened. He wiped away his tears.
The head in the jar seemed to see him. The head rotated within the jar, and waves of powerful spiritual fluctuations resonated with Qin Mu's own spirit. Blueprint after blueprint transformed into images that imprinted themselves firmly into Qin Mu's mind. The blueprints grew more and more numerous, while the divine water formed from the head's spirit and life force dwindled visibly.
By the time the divine water in the jar was exhausted, Qin Mu's mind was already crammed full of the blueprints for the Ark of the Far Shore.
The deity's head was still emitting spiritual fluctuations, transmitting the remaining blueprints into Qin Mu's mind. The head was rotting at a visible rate, and when its spirit was completely spent, only a skull remained, lying quietly at the bottom of the jar.
Qin Mu stood silently before the stone coffin for a long time. Then suddenly he said: "You owe nothing to the Qin clan—it is the Qin clan that owes you! I cannot let you die without a complete body!"
He leaped off the altar, a thread of primal energy suspending him as he descended into the fathomless depths below. After a long while, Qin Mu came back up, carrying a headless skeleton on his back, gripping the spider-silk-like thread of primal energy as he rose steadily.
He returned to the altar, lifted the large jar out, and respectfully placed the headless skeleton inside the coffin. He then took out the skull from the jar and set it upon the neck of the headless skeleton.
Qin Mu closed the stone coffin, kowtowed three times before it, then turned and leaped upward, bounding from star sand to star sand toward the opening above.
On his final leap, he was still a thousand zhang from the cave mouth. Qin Mu pointed a finger, and a thread of primal energy shot out a thousand zhang, wrapping around the bone rope hanging at the cave entrance.
The many skeletons at the cave mouth hurriedly climbed up, and after considerable effort, they managed to pull him out of that bottomless underground space.
Qin Mu had just crawled out of the cave mouth when suddenly a tremor came from deep underground. His expression shifted. He immediately exploded with primal energy, sweeping up all the skeleton monsters around him to form a Great Luo Heaven star force field, and with these skeletons in tow, he sprinted at full speed.
Behind him, the earth collapsed. The Divine City, long since reduced to ruins, suddenly plunged toward the planet's core, the cave mouth growing wider and wider.
Qin Mu pushed his speed to the absolute limit, tearing out of the ancient ruins like the wind. The tremors gradually ceased. He looked back and saw that the ruins of the Divine City had become a deep abyss, burying history beneath it.
Qin Mu set the skeleton monsters down and sat on a rock, gazing into that fathomless abyss with deep, sorrowful eyes.
One skeleton monster reached out and touched his head, as if comforting him. Another skeleton came before him, trying to wipe away the tears at the corners of his eyes.
Qin Mu's face brightened into a smile. He stood up and bowed to the skeleton monsters in a full circle: "I'm fine now. Thank you, fellow daoists, for accompanying me all these days. Perhaps in the future, if I survive, I will return and gather your souls for you, let you live again. We shall meet again then!"
He strode away. This time, the skeleton monsters did not follow. Qin Mu looked back and saw the white bones raising their arms, waving at him.
Qin Mu waved back and strode off into the distance.
"Though death comes to the chivalrous, their bones still carry fragrance—unashamed before the heroes of this world. Kaihuang Emperor, my ancestor, far away in the Land of No Worries, do you still remember a deity named Ying Zhao, who cut off his own head for the sake of a promise? I fear you have already forgotten. But I will remember for you. A son of the Qin clan will never betray those who follow him, and will never forget the promises made by himself or his forebears!"
He ran across this desolate and barren land, heading straight for the place where the Kaihuang Heavenly Court had fallen—which, according to Ying Zhao's memories, should be the entrance to the Supreme Emperor Heaven or the Great Ruins.
"I will fulfill your promise for you, so that the fallen heroes may rest in peace!"
He arrived at a fractured stretch of space. Dazzling rosy clouds surged there, and another world could be faintly glimpsed beyond. The rosy clouds were fragments of space itself—crossing through them would be extremely perilous.
Qin Mu took a small box from his Glutton's Pouch, leaped into the fractured space, and just as he was about to meet the rosy clouds, the youth suddenly snapped the box open. A bloodthirsty, heaven-shaking murderous light transformed into two blades of light that snapped together with a crack, cutting through the rosy clouds!
Before the rosy clouds could close back together, Qin Mu passed through the space fragments. His body plummeted rapidly. Below him, forests were lush and green, mountains stretched vast and boundless, and the Southern Heaven Gate stood tall.
Qin Mu was momentarily stunned. Below him was not the Supreme Emperor Heaven—it was the Great Ruins.
—At the Crippled Elderly Village in the Great Ruins, the Chicken Mother Dragon looked utterly serious: Cluck! Cluck cluck! Cluck cluck cluck!