Chapter 893: The Traumatized Marquis of Jinghuan
Translator: Sparrow Translations Editor: Sparrow Translations
Xiao Yan both remnant pieces of the Divine Armor in his hands shook them in front of the Marquis of Jinghuan mischievously. The Marquis of Jinghuan flew into a rage and even started vomiting blood – that magic item was precious treasure that aided him in his rise to power and the anchor of his previous life.
At the same time, this magic item was the closest to his heart. The connection and feeling he had with the Divine Body Armor was vastly different from the rest of his magic items. He felt a deep spiritual link with it, and this link seemed to only become stronger as he rose through the levels of mastery. The martial ways of the Emperor of Violence that he had derived and learned through the Divine Body Armor only became more and more complete as well.
It was as if the two of them were integrated as one being.
This also gave the Marquis of Jinghuan a great boost in his ambitions. He felt as if he was the true owner of this magic item, and felt as if he was very likely to be the incarnation of the Emperor of Violence. He wanted to resolve the regrets of his previous life and return to the Divine Lands to dominate the world.
The Marquis of Jinghuan did not use this magic item easily because the damage suffered by the Divine Body Armor previously was far too severe. Instead, he stocked up on large amounts of materials and resources and injected them into the magic treasure in the hopes of returning it to its former glory as soon as possible.
Never did he expect the Divine Body Armor to be laid to ruin by Xiao Yan’s Quad Fire Lotus and the Yin Yang Burning Heavens Formation. To him, this pierced his heart, and he even felt in that instant that Xiao Yan’s destruction of the Divine Body Armor was even harder to accept and more heartbreaking than his own death.
And now, Xiao Yan was waving the pathetic remains of the Divine Body Armor before his very eyes and this infuriated him to the point where he nearly let himself go and was almost swallowed whole by the golden samsara.
The Marquis of Jinghuan recovered and regained his concentration as he ground his teeth and glared at Xiao Yan. "Xiao! Yan!"
"Good, you are very good! You think you’ve won? When I’m in the immortal soul stage, I will incorporate your nascent soul, your physical body and your own soul into the Divine Body Armor. Surely it will be restored to its original glory in no time!"
"I will keep a single stream of your consciousness so that you can see how I integrate your soul into the Divine body Armor, so that you can see how I use it to roam and eventually sweep the world!"
"There will come a day when you will see clearly how all your mantras and abhijnas will become mine. I will personally execute everyone in the Celestial Sect of Wonders, I will murder all your juniors and I will make you watch as I steal all your women!"
Xiao Yan laughed coldly at his continuous outburst with a spark of ferocity in his eyes. He chuckled again and said, "Oh? I’m sorry to tell you, but you will never realize your dream. My physical body has already been assimilated into my immortal soul."
"You can’t escape! You…" the Marquis of Jinghuan stopped talking abruptly and he looked like he had just seen a ghost. "You… What did you just say? Your immortal soul?!"
Xiao Yan smiled and replied, "What’s the problem?" He flashed his Taijitu on his forehead and blinded the Marquis of Jinghuan momentarily as a Taijitu completely formed by roaring flames shimmered in the void. A terrifying power seemed to surge through the void, and even thought the Marquis of Jinghuan was merely watching, he could already feel the agonizing burn in his remnant soul.
The Marquis of Jinghuan drew a cold breath and held it there for a long while, before he spit it out and exclaimed, "Impossible!"
"Inside the Ying Sea, you were only in the intermediate nascent soul stage, and you haven’t even formed your cosmic form!"
"Only two years have passed since we last met in the Ying Sea. Don’t tell me you shut yourself in a cave that can speed up time because that is ineffective. Even if it’s effective, how long can you shut yourself in for? How much faster can the caves of the Celestial Sect of Wonders speed up time? A thousand times?"
Xiao Yan chuckled and answered, "Yo, is your skin that thick? You have a host of magic treasures, yet I still beat you to the point of no return even though I was only in the intermediate nascent soul stage. It’s amazing you are still dreaming of seeking me out for revenge – you really should wake up."
"Actually, I should be thanking you. After our battle, I ascended to the advanced nascent soul stage and cultivated my cosmic form."
The Marquis of Jinghuan’s face was puffed. "Xiao Yan, you… you…"
"You what you?" Xiao Yan interrupted him with a mocking laugh and said, "Let me just give you a heads up – three of my juniors have reached the immortal soul stage as well, so you should just forget about them."
The Marquis of Jinghuan’s eyes were popping of their sockets. "How is… that possible?"
If it was just Xiao Yan himself, it was still acceptable that he probably just got inexplicably lucky. However, when he heard that Zhu Yi, Wang Lin and even Shi Tianhao were all in the immortal soul stage, the Marquis of Jinghuan was dumbfounded.
Xiao Yan grinned and watched him with an amused look. "You don’t seem like you’re doing very well. You should worry more about yourself – if not, your soul may shatter into a million pieces before you even reach the immortal soul stage."
"I will be blunt. Even if you reach the immortal soul stage, you won’t even be a match for one of my hands – save it." Xiao Yan looked him up and down as the corner of his lips curled upwards. "Even if I am only in the advanced nascent soul stage and you are in the immortal soul stage, you are still no match for me. If we are both in the immortal soul stage, I would be picking on someone much weaker than me and that doesn’t interest me at all."
"Perhaps, if you can explode into the third-level immortal soul stage before I finish cultivating the virtual entity, then I will be interested in fighting you again. Still, it doesn’t seem like you have that capability."
The Marquis of Jinghuan was already shaking with rage inside the vacuum created by the golden samsara. His lips quivered as he glared at Xiao Yan but his tongue was tied into a knot.
At this point, he had completely lost it and his remnant soul could no longer resist the pressure of the golden samsara. Vast volumes of light rushed out from his body and the golden samsara absorbed every inch of it.
Lin Feng did not pay attention to the conversation between Xiao Yan and the Marquis of Jinghuan. His eyes were glued to the golden bowl this whole time, and he made even more discoveries as while his consciousness was connected to the golden samsara.
The Golden Cicada Master wanted the memories of the Marquis of Jinghuan in his previous lives. Due to the fact that these memories were from past lives, it had become murky and obscure, using the Soul-Searching technique would have been insufficient to draw such clear levels of information even for an individual as powerful and adept with Buddhist mantras as the Golden Cicada Master.
He could only nurture the Marquis of Jinghuan and let him cultivate Buddhist mantras while he did something to him discreetly. He waited for the right opportunity to complete his plan and extract everything he needed.
The fearsome middle-aged man that seemed like a combination of a dragon and a wolf in the memories of the Marquis of Jinghuan was the last human emperor of the Divine Lands during the Antiquity Age – the Emperor of Violence. Even though his portraits and light illusions were rare, Lin Feng had seen some before.
This golden bowl did not belong to the Emperor of Violence. Originally, it came from the Buddha and was not just another normal Buddhist treasure. The black region inside the rays of golden light flickered with the aura of a human figure, who possessed such mastery of Buddhist mantras that it could be nobody else but the Buddha himself in the history of powerful Buddhist cultivators.
It was apparent that this golden bowl was connected to the Buddha, and nobody knew how the bowl ended up in the hands of the Emperor of Violence. The Emperor of Violence used esoteric methods to cultivate it and attempted to break the mystery of the Buddha’s venture into the Death Sea.
The black region in the center of the rays of light embodied an aspect so terrifying and petrifying that it resembled the last breath of the world, where all beings returned into nothingness and integrated back with the Buddha. Both Lin Feng and the Emperor of Violence had the same guess – this was the mysterious Death Sea.
The Golden Cicada Master’s plan was similar to that of the Emperor of Violence. He wanted to break the mystery of the Buddha’s trip into the Death Sea from which he never returned. He wanted to understand the most inexplicable and enigmatic one of the Grand Celestial Seven Seas – the Death Sea.
The golden bowl was something that belonged to the Buddha himself back in the day. It was likely to have been passed down to his disciples as a clue that gradually established a connection with the Death Sea.
However, the Golden Cicada Master was unable to use the usual methods to unravel the mystery within the golden bowl ever since the effects of the Emperor of Violence. He did not want to break it open forcefully as he was afraid this could adversely affect the authentic powers of the golden bowl, and eventually devised another plan centered around the Marquis of Jinghuan.
At this point, Lin Feng completely understood the foundations of the Marquis of Jinghuan.
He glanced at the Marquis of Jinghuan and shook his head. "He’s not the incarnation of the Emperor of Violence. He is born from a stream of the Divine Body Armor’s original soul; this stream incorporated itself into a human soul. He exists with the sole purpose of fixing the magic treasure."
The image from the memory of the Marquis of Jinghuan that depicted the Emperor of Violence cultivating the golden bowl actually belonged to the Divine Body Armor of the Emperor of Violence.
His words rang loud in the mind of the Marquis of Jinghuan. His entire body trembled and he did not even bother to recognize the origins of this statement as he roared, "That’s not possible!"
"Impossible! If the original soul of the Divine Body Armor is reborn, then the magic treasure itself will be nothing but an empty shell. It’s impossible! It’s not possible… I am not, I am not…"
The Marquis of Jinghuan was despondent. Even though he vehemently denied that possibility and continued to deny Lin Feng’s words, the pressure of the golden samsara combined with the destruction of the Divine Body Armor put things in perspective. As fate would have it, his connection with the Divine Body Armor became more intimate and he could see his true self with unprecedented clarity.
The Mahayana-level magic treasure managed to escape certain calamity by incorporating itself intot he soul of a human, and the magic treasure itself became an empty shell.
The Divine Body Armor had been a single step away from becoming a destiny-level magic treasure and its original soul already rarely showed itself. Gradually, it became more of a willpower of an area in the world with formidable vastness. Following the defeat of the Emperor of Violence, the Divine Body Armor also suffered irrevocable damage from the Great Heavenly Wheels. Thus, it tried to find a way to branch out a bit of its original soul to be reborn into a human in the hopes of restoring the magic treasure back to its former glory.
The fusion of this strand of its original soul and a human soul was not a pure rebirth. Therefore, it could not be said that the Divine Body Armor had truly escaped a certain demise. Still, it was a combination of two entities into one with shared memories of previous lives and could not be considered to be entirely distinct either.
Even though the soul belonged to a human, it established a mystical but intimate connection with the Divine Body Armor and created a sense of duty to repair the Divine Body Armor.
It was apparent that this kind of rebirth was not limited to one generation. It continued for generation after generation till now, embodied by the Marquis of Jinghuan Liang An. He continued to repair the Divine Body Armor, and this was the real reason why the Marquis of Jinghuan felt so close to the Divine Body Armor as if he was born to be its rightful owner.
He used to think that he was destined to be a kingly figure to resolve the regrets of his past life and dominate the world once again. He never expected himself to simply be a magic treasure’s tool to repair itself. Put more bluntly, he was only half an avatar created by the magic treasure.
This discovery sent the Marquis of Jinghuan into a daze as he felt his world collapse around him and everything did not make sense anymore.
"That’s impossible… I’m not…" the Marquis of Jinghuan shook his head stiffly. His eyes appeared empty as images surfaced in his head.
Even though he was Liang Pan’s bastard son, he was the most powerful individual amongst the younger generation of cultivators from the Great Zhou Empire. His luck was unrivaled, and he had escaped by a hair’s breadth from great calamities and subsequently encountered unprecedented opportunities; he only became more powerful with every experience.
The Great Void Sect, the number one holy ground in the Divine Lands, favored him as well and supported him in secret.
He embodied the martial ways of the Emperor of Violence, Emperor Tai, the Great Void Sect and even the Great Thunderclap Temple.
He was young but he conquered everything that he was tasked, and became the number one figure in the younger generation of the Great Zhou Empire’s military.
He possessed multiple magic treasures and had a host of nascent soul cultivators that knelt before his feet as if he represented the word of the divine emperor.
He took in many beautiful girls into his private residence and enjoyed the wondrous earthly desires. The place that had the highest concentration of beautiful ladies was not the Royal Palace of the Great Zhou Empire or that of the Great Qin Empire – it was the Marquis of Jinghuan’s backyard.
Everything that he ever wanted in the world was within his grasp. Even though some were temporarily out of reach, he was overflowing with self-confidence that he would eventually get everything he desired.
What was originally incredibly clear and was his entire world suddenly illusory and surreal.
Everything about himself, including the meaning of his own life, was transformed into a single duty – to repair the magic treasure that he had viewed to be his own tool all his life.
It turned out that he was the tool instead.
In an instant, the Marquis of Jinghuan felt as if his world was virtual and he was inside a dream.