EHRPS CH187

Tu Tianba truly wasn’t joking.

He really felt like the sky had collapsed, and very skillfully cursed out,

“The damn heavens are truly detestable, thwarting me at every turn! Did I stab the Heavenly Dao’s nest in my past life, that it’s obstructing me in a hundred ways in this one?!”

The white orb: “…”

It really is exactly like that.

However, whether the host was being targeted by the Heavenly Dao or not was impossible to investigate for the time being. Right now, only three large words popped up in N001’s data brain—

Protagonist. Danger.

It was no exaggeration to say that N001’s sense of crisis was even stronger than the host, who was angry enough to puff out his cheeks and punch the air, and the amnesiac protagonist combined.

If the protagonist died, the mission system would automatically return to the Space-Time Bureau, and wouldn’t it be completely screwed?

Honestly speaking, being remodeled into a sticky rice ball was pitiful enough. It absolutely didn’t want to be sliced up by the Space-Time Bureau again and have its brain comprehensively wiped clean.

The most terrifying part was,

The orb is still here, but the points are gone!

Thinking of this, N001 suddenly really wanted to light a cigarette for itself. Fortunately, the lunatic host’s yearning for dual cultivation was no less than its yearning for points.

The Space-Time Bureau had no idea how much power a little orb could burst forth with to earn points, nor how persistent a three-hundred-and-twenty-seven-year-old virgin could be about dual cultivation!

Sai-ban!!

…Motherfucker.

It seemed its mental state was being influenced by the host.

Inside the system space, the white orb first laid out bait using the words “dual cultivation”. “Host, only by enduring the bitterest of hardships can one become a master of dual cultivation! You absolutely must not lose heart!”

It paused for a moment, then asked:

“The Wondrous Immortal Sect option is a bust, what do you plan to do now? Speaking of which, the cultivation world is full of strange and wonderful things, you should be able to find other solutions, right? But it seems the protagonist doesn’t have many days left?”

“Host, you won’t just let him perish, will you?”

It continued in a very small voice: “It’s all because the Host haphazardly fed the protagonist things earlier, a real man has to take responsibility, right…?”

Finally, it shouted a slogan with righteous indignation,

“—For dual cultivation!!”

These words truly struck Tu Tianba right in the heart.

Although his emotional and mental state could hardly be considered stable, when it came to indomitable resilience, Tu Tianba was very confident.

He raised a hand and patted his own head, quickly sobering up from his anger. “You’re right, if the Life-Extending Shuttle is gone, it’s gone. I have other methods. No one can stop me from dual cultivating!”

It was just that his method…

Tu Tianba didn’t really want to use it, which was why he had targeted the Life-Extending Shuttle.

Who knew the heavens made fools of men; he had actually worked so long for nothing.

Thinking about it, Tu Tianba was still angry. He unconsciously pulled a long face, which made the majority of the Wondrous Immortal Sect disciples on the flying boat suspicious.

A few of them were already starting to agree with Song Ren’s statement.

—The black-clad youth’s motives were unknown, it was unclear if he was friend or foe, they should be on guard.

Only Fu Yuesheng remained completely out of the loop.

He first argued a few words on Tu Tianba’s behalf, then asked Song Ren for detailed information about the desolate realm.

The so-called desolate realm was a secret realm where the spiritual energy of heaven and earth had been exhausted. Not only could it not nourish living creatures, but even the entrances and exits were hard to find. The entire realm was extremely unstable, and it was unknown when it would dissipate.

Presumably, those demonic cultivators definitely held information on the desolate realm’s entrances and exits, but they themselves knew absolutely nothing.

If they couldn’t leave in time, they might all lose their lives along with the desolate realm’s collapse.

Song Ren knew this too.

His face revealed uneasiness as he replied in a low voice: “I really don’t know. That demonic cultivator only told me to cooperate with him in putting on a show, and that he would take me away afterward…”

Halfway through his sentence, Song Ren tilted his head back, his eyes instantly going wide as if he were looking at an unbelievable scene. His expression turned utterly terrified, and his voice came to an abrupt halt.

Red clouds pressed down from above, yellow sand flew wildly.

The scenery outside the boat was incredibly desolate, filled only with an endless aura of grim death. The black-clad youth was seen rolling his neck as if stretching his muscles, then abruptly raising a hand. The flying boat was shrunk down by him and taken into his palm.

The event happened in an instant.

The next second.

Everyone fell weightlessly from an altitude of ten thousand meters!

Everyone present was a medical cultivator, and the only sword cultivator capable of riding a sword was no different from a mortal right now, having been shrunk by Tu Tianba and hidden in a small colorful spiral shell.

Listening to the panicked screams scattering through the air, Tu Tianba continued to laugh uninhibitedly, completely out of place, even letting out a series of bizarre screeches to his heart’s content.

“Wow—”

“The wind is so strong—!”

He turned his face and glanced at Fu Yuesheng—whose sleeve he had grabbed and whose spiritual power had been suppressed—finding that the other was also full of astonishment, his features scrunched together by the wind.

Tu Tianba couldn’t help but laugh even louder.

He was still the more elegant and composed one.

Since he no longer needed to borrow the Life-Extending Shuttle, these existences he had roughly categorized as hostages, extra bonuses, and hush money were no longer of any use.

But on second thought, Tu Tianba felt he didn’t really hate this peacock, so he unlocked the other’s spiritual power restraints and kindly reminded him:

“Hey, that little bell on your waist, is it a protective shield? Open it.”

Fu Yuesheng managed to hear this sentence with great difficulty.

However, before he could react, the youth forcefully tossed him upward, while plummeting down himself at an even faster speed, like a falling meteor.

Fu Yuesheng: “!”

Tu Tianba felt incredibly carefree. He no longer needed to hold onto anyone and could finally let loose completely. He couldn’t help but spin and tumble in the air several times.

During this, he saw the peacock expand his protective shield, shielding everyone around him, not even making an exception for that sect traitor.

Tu Tianba involuntarily curled his lip but didn’t take it to heart.

He wasn’t a meddlesome person, so naturally, he had no free time to clean house for a righteous sect.

Unexpectedly, after steadying himself, Fu Yuesheng abruptly flipped over to face downwards. He steered the protective shield to approach Tu Tianba, reaching out a hand toward him while shouting loudly,

“Fellow Daoist Tu, grab hold of me!”

The sky of the desolate realm was so red it looked like it was dripping blood, casting a bizarre and terrifying glow over the yellow sand. The black-clad youth fell downwards with his arms wide open, his robes and the Peace Knots at his waist fluttering upward. His bangs covered his eyes; Fu Yuesheng could only see the manic smile on the lower half of his face.

Falling.

Falling endlessly.

The air was gradually dyed a heavy color by the yellow sand. Fu Yuesheng could only vaguely see the sand dunes churning beneath the youth, like the back of a giant beast, about to swallow everyone whole.

The howling wind carried gravel, resembling a man-eating monster.

The last image Fu Yuesheng saw—was the youth waving a hand at him, then with a flick of his finger, a violent shockwave hit the protective shield…

He fainted.

Everyone fainted.

Therefore, only the three demonic cultivators located a thousand miles away, still brawling relentlessly, saw what happened next.

“BOOM——!”

The entire desolate realm trembled. In the distance, a vast cloud of black mist erupted and soared into the sky. The black mist was like an ancient demonic python coming alive, devouring the sky full of yellow sand in an instant.

No, it wasn’t devouring.

It was assimilation.

The black mist rapidly spread in every direction. Everything in the desolate realm vanished and disintegrated at a speed visible to the naked eye, turning into a cluster of even more turbulent, icy mist.

In the blink of an eye, the boundless Guixu Desert vanished without a trace.

The three of them froze simultaneously, stopping their actions.

Jin Liuyi was somewhat mentally prepared and her expression remained steady, but the other two demonic cultivators’ eyes nearly split open. They instantly screamed,

“Tu Tianba isn’t dead?!”

The Corpse Dissecting Lord glared ferociously at the rapidly approaching black mist… No, it was an extremely dense scarlet, resembling the blood seeping from a long-dead corpse, turned dark and pitch-black with the passage of time.

He took two steps back and roared: “He’s refining this desolate realm, hurry and leave, otherwise we’re dead!”

The next moment.

The youth’s voice rang out,

“Leave? Where are you planning to go?”

The sky-filling blood mist flooded half the desert.

At this moment, a massive figure capable of blotting out the sun sat up from the center of the mist, even lazily stretching out into a huge yawn. The slender fingertips seemed capable of poking a hole through the celestial dome.

In front of him, the three demonic cultivators were rendered as insignificant as three grains of sand.

It was a pitch-black skeleton. Every inch of its bones was covered in cauldron patterns. Vicious ghost faces dotted it like reliefs, densely packed and countless in number, seemingly struggling to break free but failing, their expressions horrifying.

This was the Soul-Refining Cauldron.

This was also Tu Tianba’s true form.

He stood up, casually tore a rift into the scarlet sky canopy, and then made a tossing motion, as if throwing something out, and then…

Tu Tianba tilted his head, looking at the three of them.

Jin Liuyi couldn’t help but swallow hard. She quickly professed her loyalty to Tu Tianba, flew swiftly toward the gap in the sky canopy, and upon finding she wasn’t obstructed, let out a long sigh of relief.

The Corpse Dissecting Lord and Plague Bodhisattva were not so lucky.

Clack.

In the eyes of the two, when the skeleton turned its head to look over, those two hollow eye sockets were like the star of death hanging in the sky, freezing them in place.

Plague Bodhisattva’s breathing was rapid and heavy. He shouted loudly at the Corpse Dissecting Lord: “Death is at hand, join me in a final desperate fight!”

At this time, the youth’s voice descended from the zenith,

“Ah, it’s you.”

“You wanted to kill me earlier, didn’t you?”

Hearing this, the Corpse Dissecting Lord remembered that rumor. He couldn’t help but swallow hard, raising his voice to beg for mercy: “This lowly scholar did not shout about killing the Demon Lord! We merely happened to meet here by chance! Please, Demon Lord, be magnanimous and spare this lowly scholar’s life!”

Silence. A deadly silence.

At the moment of losing his life, the Corpse Dissecting Lord only heard a casually understated…

“You stink, the smell gives me a headache.”

All things were dissolved.

The blood mist filled the desolate realm, melting the desolate realm…

In an instant, the desolate realm completely vanished, leaving only an expanse of nothingness. The spatial rift he had just torn open was slowly healing.

And at this moment, Tu Tianba retracted the blood mist, dismissed his true form that resembled the Dharma Idol of Heaven and Earth, and transformed back into that bizarrely dressed black-clad youth.

He had protected the red strings on his body, preventing them from being corroded.

After dismissing his true form, he once again descended from the sky.

There was no expression on Tu Tianba’s face, nor did he let out any laughs or bizarre screeches. His ears were noisy enough already, he didn’t want to add any more noise.

Can’t live well, can’t die either.

…He really felt a little tired.

Right at this moment.

The howling wind puffed up his clothes. The small colorful spiral shell Tu Tianba had hidden inside tumbled out, dangling and swaying non-stop in front of his eyes.

Tu Tianba blinked his round eyes. Suddenly, his limbs started flailing violently, like punching the air, his body spiraling downward.

“Dammit, dual cultivation!”

“I really want to dual cultivate!!”

“I feel like ants are crawling all over me!!!”

After shouting, he finally remembered he had cast a sound-blocking spell on the small colorful spiral shell. He immediately released the little person inside and restored the other to his original size.

Tu Tianba was waiting to see the man make a fool of himself, but unexpectedly, the other was only surprised for a fraction of a second. Reacting quickly, he grabbed Tu Tianba’s wrist and said somewhat angrily:

“This is what you meant by ‘everything is fine’?!”

The man hovered above Tu Tianba. His long hair blew backward in the wind, a disobedient strand of bangs clinging to the corner of his eye and falling to his cheek…

He wore the pearl earrings Tu Tianba had personally forged. The excessively long chain bones flashed with a faint light, a bit dazzling. His white wide-sleeved robe fluttered wildly in the wind.

Feeling the warmth at his wrist and the tight grip, a thought suddenly flashed through Tu Tianba’s mind.

…He’s mine.

This man in front of me is my possession.

Tu Tianba couldn’t help but let out two muffled chuckles, but this sound pried open his mouth, jumping out from his throat and evolving into an unbridled burst of laughter.

His entire body began to tremble.

This tremor transmitted down his wrist into the man’s palm.

Then, A-Hui heard the youth close his eyes, laughing loudly, venting his heartfelt words to him, and to this entire world,

“I want—”

“To—”

“Dual cultivate with you, oh woo—”

This sentence echoed in all directions, as if thousands of people were endlessly screaming these words into the man’s ears, one after another.

Inexplicably, A-Hui couldn’t help but laugh as well.

“…I know.”

“My ears are growing calluses from hearing it.”

The next instant.

A-Hui was pulled down by the youth.

A pair of cool lips covered his, forcefully gnawing and sucking.

And he, merely closed his eyes subconsciously.