In his final, paralyzed thoughts, the black robed man realized the true horror of what was happening.
This was not an illusion, not a technique born from Qi or illusory arts. This was sheer will, a wrath so deep that even his own soul was being suppressed beneath it.
Han Yu let out a guttural roar and twisted.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
There was a sickening sound... a wet, violent crack.
Blood sprayed across the ground as Han Yu ripped the man's head off!
It did not come off cleanly; flesh tore unevenly, tendons snapped, and bone splintered. The body convulsed once before falling limp, collapsing into the dirt with a dull thud.
Han Yu stood there, panting, his hands trembling as they dripped with the man's blood.
His eyes lost their glow, the purple fading back into dull brown. The fury that had driven him moments ago began to drain away, leaving only exhaustion behind. His chest rose and fell in heavy bursts, each breath rasping painfully through his throat.
Finally, his legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground. The halberd he had thrown earlier lay a few feet away, glinting faintly in the dim starlight.
Pain erupted from every part of his body. The gash on his waist had deepened during the struggle, blood still seeping freely and soaking into the soil beneath him. He could feel his strength slipping away, his vision blurring at the edges.
"Lost too much... Blood." Han Yu muttered with difficulty.
His hand moved towards the spatial storage pouches on his waist, but he simply did not have enough control over his qi to even take out the healing pills within them.
'No... It would not have been enough either way.' Han Yu had studied healing and human physiology along with alchemy enough to know how much blood loss could kill a person.
Even if cultivators were more resilient, there was still a limit to them. And Han Yu was no exception to it either.
A soft sigh full of fatigue left his lips as Han Yu looked up toward the sky. And seeing it, his eyes squinted in confusion, finding it a bit strange. At first, he wondered if his vision was hampered due to his injuries or the blood in his eye, but he soon realized this was not so.
The illusionary canopy that had always hung above the inner realm was gone.
Instead, a vast night sky stretched before him, studded with stars brighter than he had ever seen before. They were arranged differently, their constellations alien and yet strangely real.
His lips curved into a faint smile. "The sky…" he muttered weakly, his voice cracking. "It's… different."
The realization dawned slowly in his fading mind. The barrier between the inner realm and the outside world had vanished. The cracks that once shimmered with unnatural light were gone, and in their place was a real, endless sky.
He wanted to laugh, to cry, but his body was too weak for either. His thoughts began to blur together.
"Senior Sister Li Mei…" he whispered, his eyes glassy. "I'm sorry… perhaps I can't… see you again."
A single tear slid down the side of his face, cutting through the layer of grime and blood that covered his skin. The tear glimmered faintly in the starlight before disappearing into the earth.
His vision began to dim completely now. In the distance, through the haze of pain, he saw something pale appear beyond the clouds. A round white shape... soft, glowing.
For a brief moment, Han Yu chuckled, a sound of quiet disbelief. "Heh… so it's real… all of it…"
The faint smile on his lips lingered as his eyelids slowly drooped. His breath grew shallower and shallower until it stopped completely.
The world around him went silent.
But death was not the end.
From his chest, a faint light began to glow... a pale, ethereal wisp that drifted upward, shimmering like a tiny spirit flame. For origınal chapters go to NovєlFіre.net
The wisp hovered for a few seconds before slowly drifting away, carried by an unseen wind. It floated toward a nearby tree trunk that was half buried in the soil.
That trunk was where Han Yu had hidden the materials and the talisman for the Undying Life Charm. Fate, or perhaps coincidence, had brought him back to the same spot in his final moments.
The wisp slipped effortlessly into the trunk, vanishing within.
It began as a faint pulse, then flared outward, growing brighter and brighter until it engulfed the entire tree.
The roots glowed, the soil trembled, and nearby stones began to rise into the air as if drawn toward it. The spatial storage pouches hidden within were pulled in, their contents unraveling into streams of light that fused into the core of the radiance.
The process did not stop there. The light spread across the ground, washing over everything it touched.
The grass, the soil, even the corpses nearby... all were drawn into the expanding brilliance.
When it reached Han Yu's body, the glow flickered violently. His corpse and the black robed man's remains both disintegrated into countless motes of white, absorbed into the pulsing core within the trunk.
The forest around the area was now eerily silent, devoid of any trace of the fight that had taken place. The once mighty tree trunk had dissolved completely, leaving behind only a faint shimmering mist hovering above the ground.
Then, from within the mist, a shape began to form. Flesh knit itself from light, veins and bone emerging from the glow like ink spreading through water. The process continued until, finally, a human body lay upon the earth.
The form was that of a young man, his skin pale and unmarked, his body naked and motionless. His chest rose once, shallowly, as if drawing the first breath of a new life.
The forest was still. The stars above shone brighter, and the moon's silver light fell upon him, illuminating the quiet scene.
The Undying Life Charm had activated.
Han Yu's story was not yet over.