Archfiend

Chapter 253: The Cultivation World’s Shock

Translator: XTB

The cultivation world was hiding a bomb. Nine people had managed to survive an eternally secret land and brought back information from this forbidden realm. No one spoke of this news. This was because everyone clearly understood that its explosion was only a question of time.

However, none had expected who the first would be to trigger this bomb throughout the cultivation world. It wasn’t Xu Yangyi and it wasn’t Daomaster Ancientpine. On the contrary, it was Chinacultivation.com!

‘The super news of a lifetime!’

Barely a day after the heavenbound door’s collapse, Chinacultivation was the first to tear open this cover.

Click... Click... A slender hand was shaking over a mouse. An index finger nervously tapped the mouse button.

The hand’s owner was a youth with dyed red hair. He was completely dumbfounded, looking at his computer screen. His clan was a small clan, but even if it was smaller, he’d still heard about the awesome and terrible name of Longsu’s Danxia Temple Colonnades. How many cultivators with realms even higher than his own clan elders had fallen inside? Today... someone had actually left?!

One who was even in the Qi Condensation realm like him?

It seemed... as if the image of a descending god had appeared before his eyes. A tall and lofty deity fallen to the mortal realm. Yet the person who had brought this god’s demise was a Qi Condensation cultivator like him!

“Xiao Long.” At this time, the door was gently pushed open. A middle-aged woman wearing a qipao walked in with a cup of pill elixir. “Dye your hair back, okay? We’re cultivators, not mortals. The clan elder didn’t say anything to you, there’s no need for you to get upset and act rashly... He... He’s your father in any case... W-What are you doing?!”

Before her voice even fell, the middle-aged woman was storming with anger! She had come in to check up on her son that she was worried about, but unexpectedly he wasn’t reflecting upon himself at all! Instead, he was on the internet!

“Do you know what repentance is!” Anger rose up in the middle-aged woman’s heart. She stepped forward and grabbed the youth’s mouse, preparing to tear it away from his hand. She said angrily, “All day long, you don’t know how to cultivate, all you know how to do is be on the internet! What’s the point of these mortal things...”

Xiao Long seemed to turn a deaf ear, looking at his computer sluggishly. The middle-aged woman unintentionally brushed an eye over the screen and customarily berated him. “You’re obsessed with this computer! Do you think you’re an ordinary person? You...”

She suddenly choked.

No... that row of large characters just now... appeared to be...

All the strength in her hand disappeared. She simply didn’t have the effort to rebuke her son. Instead, she turned her head, creaking like a robot, and peered at the screen in astonishment.

It seemed... that for the first time in all eternity... Danxia Temple had been broken through?

No, impossible... This was clickbait...

The sound in the room continued to strangely quiet down. Along with Xiao Long, the middle-aged woman began to read the web page together. Not before long, her complexion became redder and redder, and her hand began to faintly tremble.

All of a sudden, she seized the mouse in her son’s hand and started to read!

It was true... It was true... It was actually true! There really were people who had departed from Danxia Temple! Nine people!

Row by row, character by character, she read for no less than half an hour. Xiao Long was also at the side, reading the report with his eyes wide and tongue tied.

“My god...” Half an hour later, the middle-aged woman said shakily, “This... could be the appearance of a second Ancestor Floatingcloud...”

At a villa in the Capital, an old man was lying down on a recliner in satisfaction. A woman in a qipao who was approximately in her early twenties was gently massaging his head.

The villa interior was a tranquil bamboo forest. The old man’s recliner was at the side of an ancient-style table and a Purple Sand teapot was arranged on it. Blue birds chirped in the forest and bamboo leaves fell down occasionally. Things appeared incomparably serene.

The old man’s brows smoothed. He was enjoying everything in peace. But all of a sudden, his brows furrowed because a wildly frantic sound was trampling on bamboo leaves and rushing towards him with great speed!

“Clan Elder! Clan Elder! No good! Something big has happened! Something big has happened in the cultivation world!!!” A middle-aged man, drenched in sweat, dashed over and pulled away the woman’s hands, placing an iPad in front of the old man. “Clan Elder! Hurry up and look!”

“What’s the matter?” The clan elder knitted his brows in annoyance. He ordinarily told his son many times to calm down; how could his son still be so anxious?

But just as his gaze scanned the iPad, he immediately stood up with a swoosh! Both of his eyes saucered and he looked at the iPad in front of him incredulously. He promptly took it, his hands and feet in a fit of confusion, yet he discovered that he wasn’t familiar with how to use it at all!

“What the heck are you still staring at!!!” He turned his head and angrily reprimanded the man, “Are you just going to keep watching and not help me?!”

The man’s loss of manners couldn’t be blamed because the five large characters on Chinacultivation.com’s front page caused him to completely lose his cool!

Danxia Temple was broken through!

“Danxia Temple was broken through!!!”

“People have left Danxia Temple alive!!!”

By seven or eight o’clock in the morning, this news had spread to all of China! The terrible names of the Eight Great Deadlands were all written in textbooks, in all literature! The cultivation net mentioned them over and over! They were the red dots marked on every major clan’s map!

A hundred years... several centuries... nearly a millennium, never were there records of those who had come out alive! However, on this day, there were now!

“What are you saying?!” In Nantong Province, Tianzhu Mountain was a national tourism district famous for its scenery. In the vast landscape, there existed a quiet valley shrouded in thick clouds that mankind could not enter, located in Tianzhu Mountain’s most famous and scenic “Absolute Beauty Ravine”. At this moment in the valley, a middle-aged man suddenly opened his eyes that had been closed for many years. He looked at the floating paper crane in front of him in shock.

“Clan Elder! Come out of seclusion and take a look! Really! It’s true! Danxia Temple’s been broken through! One of the Eight Great Deadlands has been reported as defeated!!! The cultivation net is blowing up right now!!!”

Before this voice even fell, the man’s figure was no longer seen.

On this day, all of China’s cultivation world—so long as one was cultivator who was on the internet—had been stirred into a frenzy! As for those not online, they were all notified by their friends on the phone of this major news!

As for Chinacultivation.com’s central headquarters, the technology department was presently crowded with people. The entire tech staff was sweating up a storm, clicking and clacking as they typed. Today, Chinacultivation.com welcomed their highest summit in the past several decades! There had been a couple server restarts! All of China’s old cultivators that didn’t know how to access the cultivation net seemed to come alive! Hundreds of thousands of people were swarming and suffocating their web page! Heaven knows that the cultivation net’s ordinary web hits were at most in the tens of thousands!

And this web page was all discussion and question threads. So long as the poster had a little fame, almost each post was followed by at least several hundred to a thousand comments!

‘Congratulations to my great Chinese cultivation world!!! How many years! The first deadland has finally been captured!!!’ - Peaceful Child.

‘Danxia Temple! This is Danxia Temple! Starting right from my fucking sensibilities! I’ve been warned countless times of this name!!! Now someone has actually broken through it! A Qi Condensation cultivator at that! This is frickin’ shocking!!!’ - Windcloud

‘One big step for the Xingtian Legion, an even bigger step for the Cultivation World!—Discuss the effect brought by the capture of the first deadland.’ - CSIB Special Commentator Lofty.

There was a huge pile of such junk threads. The significance of Danxia Temple’s capture didn’t lay in whether someone could come out alive, but rather someone had finally pried open the door of one of the Eight Great Deadlands that caused the entire cultivation world to pale at their mention! This conqueror, this young cultivator, told everyone that a deadland wasn’t truly a place of certain no-return!

This... would spur a horrific tempest! A powerful adrenaline shock administered to the cultivation world! It was a mystery how many people would be moved because of this! As for its source... there was only one!

Almost a million Qi Condensation cultivators constructed the cultivation world’s base. Almost 20,000 Foundation Establishment built the core, and ten-odd Core Formation ancestors were the focus of all gazes! A place yearned for in the dreams of all cultivators, cast away from mortals!

The last person to leave a deadland was Ancestor Floatingcloud. However, he couldn’t be said to have captured it and really didn’t kill his way in throughout his journey. Instead, under the coincidence of destiny, he’d entered the heart of the Dragon Hole. Moreover, he held the great fortune and blessing to leave without the slightest hair of an injury. How could such a living legend, a great living destiny, not cause the hearts of all cultivators to gallop and dream!

Scarlet characters edged with gold. Because of this news, the front page of Chinacultivation.com, which hadn’t changed for almost five years, had finally switched layout! On top were the red, gold-bordered characters of Chinacultivation.com. Below to the left was a bright headline: ‘The Xingtian Legion’s Commander Xu Yangyi Captures Danxia Temple With His Legion! The Cultivation World’s Indiana Jones!’

The bottom right section was white and black without anything else. There was only a line of characters: ‘Memorial Service for the 1098 Cultivators who Devoted Their Lives to Breaking Through Danxia Temple’. Below, there was an additional line of small characters: ‘Although They Didn’t See the Conclusion, This is the Journey They Wrote with Their Lives’.

The entire cultivation net had exploded! Completely and thoroughly exploded!!!

In a flash, the official stickied thread for “One of the Eight Great Deadlands, Danxia Temple, has been Broken Through” stacked up like a skyscraper with almost ten thousand stories!

‘This is too thrilling... This is a breakthrough! A real breakthrough! One of the Eight Great Deadlands! Entered from head to tail! Awesome, this is awesome!’

‘...The livyatan is one of the ancient whale primogenitors. It hasn’t existed in the world for millions and millions of years. Its strength at late-stage Qi Condensation is super domineering... Fuck me... Looking at this, I only regret why I didn’t enter the heavenbound door back then!’

‘...The Yellow Springs Path, those who turn back die. Two of the Xingtian Legion’s legionnaires lost their lives here... A triple-layered illusion, drawing human desire layer after layer... Is this true? Is there really such a terrible place?’

‘Upstairs, I dare not speak about this, but Longsu Province’s blockade has already been extended for twenty days. I’m a Longsu Province cultivator. There’s been a massive image of a giant Peng in the sky for the past twenty days. Don’t tell me you guys can’t see it from elsewhere?’

Danxia Temple was defeated, but it wasn’t Danxia Temple that had been captured. Instead, it was the entire cultivation world’s questing heart towards destiny and opportunity! This heart was totally set aflame!

These words and threads seemed ordinary but were in fact startling and shocking characters. The circumstances of seeking life amidst everyone’s deaths in Danxia temple’s depths was vivid and lifelike, a painted scroll surging with majestic grandeur. Following this post submission that revealed the true nature of events, everyone seemed to see each squadron’s struggle in the deadland.

Regardless of the Buddhist Monastery, the Dao Sect, the apex lineages, or even the low-level first-rate clans, they had all used their lives to write this journey.

Until ultimately, a photo’s release brought extreme shock to all the post readers!

“Huff...” In a dazzling conference room of gold and jade in Shanghai, there were three old men with heads full of white hair. They were wearing bathrobes and reclining on comfy lounge chairs, looking at the computer in front of them. They simultaneously lost their voices.

“This... Is this real...?”

“I’ve heard that mortals have a technique that can put photos together. It shouldn’t be fake, right...”

It was a gigantic fish!

It was unknown who had used the Shadow Preservation divine ability to record this in a jade slip. At this moment, all the post readers were shocked speechless.

In front of everyone was an infinite azure scale! Contrasted with a person, it seemed like the comparison of a great tree and a large ant!

Its head was unseen and so was its limit. This beast only gave off a singular kind of feeling!

Large! Extremely large!

1. Purple Sand teapot is a specific kind of teapot made with what is called Purple Sand/Clay. They are also known as “Yixing clay teapots”.

2. Note here for “fucking”. In the text, the author uses the abbreviation of “TMD” aka “Ta Ma De” (他妈的) literally “his mother”. Curses in China are censored, so people find interesting ways to get around them.

3. I may have mentioned this in the past “Chinacultivation.com comment sections”, but “Upstairs” is a slang abbreviation for LS (楼上).