In the world of cultivation, killing was inevitable.
Everyone would die their hands in blood sooner or later.
Some of them indulge in the act so much that they eventually become numb to it.
However, most of them would still remember the first person they killed.
For Qingxue, the group of people she killed were the two bandits chasing after a female cultivator called Su Fei.
Qingxue had killed those two cultivators and saved her.
But if there was someone who caused her to feel the guilt of murder, it would be that very same female cultivator.
She betrayed Qingxue and tried to kill her after assuming that the latter was out of energy.
Unfortunately for her, both Tianlong and Qingxue had picked up clues of her betrayal beforehand.
In the end, Tianlong had pierced her body with multiple arrows and crushed her skull.
Before death, she had revealed her unfortunate past and reason for turning against Qingxue.
Now that very same girl was standing in front of him like an apparition.
Just as Tianlong noticed the wailing girl, she also noticed him.
"Are you the one who killed me?" She asked in a sobbing voice.
Completely naked, the girl had multiple arrow wounds in her body which were gushing out blood. Her once beautiful face was ruined because of how badly her skull was disfigured.
"…"
Tianlong wasn't intimidated by her horrifying appearance. As a person who could dabble with people's innards right after having breakfast, this wasn't anything.
To him, in this foggy place where he couldn't see or hear anything, her presence was like a guide. So, even though she was screaming at him, Tianlong still made way towards her.
"Don't come near me!" Seeing Tianlong coming near, she shrilly screamed and ran in the opposite direction.
While Tianlong was unable to use his spiritual energy inside his dreamscape, his body still retained the physical strength and speed that he had before becoming a cultivator.
There was no way a person like her could escape him.
With a cold snort, he gave chase.
In just a few minutes, she was caught by him.
"Brute! Rapist! All men are disgusting! Release me!" It was as if the girl had gone insane. When Tianlong caught her, she acted like a wild animal and tried to bite him.
Tianlong was getting a little annoyed by her actions.
Pah!
So he slapped her.
"I get that you were turned into a furnace by Qin Houzi, but classifying an entire group of people by taking one example is just wrong! It's like meeting an aristocrat in another country and assuming that everyone there is rich. Clearly, you haven't studied statistics… Do you know how many observations I have to take for a simple experiment?"
Even as an apparition, she was stunned by how casually he slapped her.
However, Tianlong didn't seem to see her expression. He continued to move forward while lecturing her.
"You can't just call all men evil due to one person. For every evil man, there would be a far greater number of good men, otherwise, the world would've already become chaotic. Also, it's not like women don't commit any evil. Did you forget Lu Yan? Do you know how many kingdoms have come to ruin due to one woman? …Evil has no gender."
Ever since Tianlong had entered the foggy place, he wasn't able to hear any sound. Having met a human after such a long time, even a quiet person like him started to talk non-stop.
However, this company was short-lived as Su Fei's body started to dissipate. She couldn't stay in contact with him for long and her apparition started to crumble and turn to ashes.
Tianlong stopped his talk and watched the entire process carefully. After her frantic screams were over, her entire body disintegrated …leaving behind a speck of light that caused the fog around it to roll away.
It floated above him for a moment then as if being summoned by something, it started to drift away in a different direction.
Tianlong's eyes lit up and he followed it without caring for where it was taking him.
Even with his speed, he had a hard time keeping up with the speck of light. However, he pushed himself to his limits and was barely able to keep following it.
After following it for more than three hours, he started to hear even more wailing sounds in the fog.
"Under the effect of the Candle Dragon's Yin Yang demonic Qi, my cultivation base has reached the peak of both Qi Condensation and Blood Surging realm. There's only a single step that's blocking me from reaching the Yin Yang Cleansing stage. However, there are a lot of people who can never take this step in their entire life! They either lack the resources, have a poor foundation, or just can't connect with the world. Fortunately, it seems that my bloodline is so pure that I can easily take this step whenever I want. But I have two things that rank even above my bloodline – the Seven-Element Divine Lotus and this Undying Tree…
After travelling for hours, the speck of light that was born from Su Fei's life finally reached its destination.
There was a vast crimson sea that looked like an ocean of blood. On that ocean, hundreds of apparitions were moving aimlessly.
There were figures of men, women, animals and even beasts.
However, there was one thing similar about all of them, all of them were dead and Tianlong was present there they had breathed their last!
While most of them were people killed either during his sword practice sessions or his experiments, some of them weren't killed by him but had died near him due to other reasons.
As if this wasn't surprising enough, he saw that there was a vast stretch of crimson sea in front of him that looked like an ocean of blood. A faint black shadow could be seen rising from the sea in the distance.
Even though there was a thick layer of fog in between them, Tianlong could still sense that the existence on the other side was a tree.
Rising from the depth of the crimson sea, its dry branches stretched out like a hand that seemed to grasp the heavens.
It was in the centre of all the wailing souls in the area.
"Our fates were intertwined even before I was born." Starting as a black vine that was sucking away his life force, the black vine had now grown up into a small tree that resided in his soul.
Even though he fused with it, the lifeform was still shrouded in mystery, just like the fog that separated them now.
Letting out a sigh, Tianlong sat on the shore of the crimson sea and tried to form a connection with the Undying Tree. This was the name he had given to it after experimenting on it for a long time.
A wind carrying a bloody stench came from the sea and lifted his white hair. However, the wind couldn't stir up a single ripple in the sea.
Tianlong's mind became empty as he sunk even deeper in the feeling of being one with the black tree in his soul.
It caused the wailing of the apparitions to increase even more which caused the little snake to hiss at them with hostility.
"Murderer!"
"You are a lunatic! Release me!"
"Ah! Please spare me!"
"Why did you kill me?"
While Tianlong was trying to focus his mind, all of the ghosts were screaming similarly to when Su Fei first saw Tianlong.
Due to their continuous screams, he wasn't able to calm himself.
All of the past scenes of his killings came into his mind and played over and over again. Gradually, a feeling of guilt came over him that disturbed him.
"Since I have already killed you once, I can kill you once again!"
He decided to kill everyone here once more and turn them into a speck of light just like Su Fei. Just when the murderous intent boiled up in Tianlong's mind, the voice of the Candle Dragon spoke to him once more.
"If there is a beginning, there'll also be an end. Without destruction, how can there be any creation?"
Although the words were normal and had no spirituality, they still managed to stop him.
"If these people and beasts didn't die, then my medical knowledge would be nowhere near my current self. For curing my mother, their death was necessary!"
Tianlong softly said. His killing intent had already dissipated due to those simple words.
When looked at the apparitions again, there was no guilt in his eyes. Their screams also didn't annoy him anymore.
His gaze landed on a figure that looked like Old Zhan.
"If I didn't kill and refine you, my experimentation wouldn't have been so successful. Without coming in contact with the Earthen Qi in your body, I wouldn't have broken through to the fourth level of Qi Condensation so easily."
His gaze then landed on apparitions that looked like Qin Houzi and Hei Diao.
"You were sitting on a huge treasure trove. If I didn't kill the two of you, I couldn't have increased my cultivation base nor increased my bloodline grade so fast. Your death made me stronger."
"Just like how your death made me stronger, my death can also make someone else stronger. Destruction of one would lead to the strengthening of another. Eat or be eaten, in the end, that is all it comes down to."
The words might be cold, but it was the harsh truth.
The little snake which had spoken the words hissed silently. It was unknown whether this was the meaning it had wanted to convey.
Having come to a realisation, Tianlong was now unbothered by the ghosts.
No matter how much they wailed and screamed at him, he didn't pay attention to any of them.
After an hour of meditation, Tianlong's body started to wither like a corpse. An aura of death filled him as black veins that looked like tree roots became visible under his skin.
In an instant, all the apparitions stopped their screaming and went in a daze. They continued to weep and wander in the crimson sea.
Seeing the black roots in Tianlong's body, the Candle Dragon was startled and immediately jumped away from him in a state of panic.
In the outside world, Tianlong had fused his Yin Meridians with the roots of the Undying Tree. When they manifested again in his dreamscape, they were in a similar state to the real world.
The roots seem to have liked their new position.
However, compared to his Yang Meridian pathways, the Undying Tree's roots were much thicker.
Because they were too powerful, the extreme Yang veins could barely restrain them.
Now that Tianlong was trying to fuse with it on a deeper level, they diverged and split off into equal parts and started to cover his Yang Meridians too.
This was just like how his extreme Yang Meridians had weakened his normal Yin Meridians.
It was a natural action due to the imbalance of Yin and Yang within his body and would've happened in real life too if Tianlong intentionally didn't suppress the tree.
Under normal conditions, Tianlong would have immediately stopped it. But now that he was in a state of immersion, nature finally took its course of action.
Hiss!
Seeing the aura of death getting thicker and thicker around Tianlong, the little snake became agitated. It tried to wake him up with his hisses but was also afraid of the aura coming from him which seemed to be able to extinguish the flames in his eyes.
After hesitating for a long time, it finally came to a decision.
Since it couldn't wake up Tianlong, it would just destroy that existence in the crimson sea. If the latter doesn't exist, Tianlong would naturally wake up!
So with a ferocious expression on its bizarre face, it moved towards the crimson sea. However, as soon as its body contacted the water surface, it came to an abrupt halt.
The slight contact created a ripple in the otherwise still water.
Being free of any kind of disturbance, the ripple easily spread out across the whole sea which incited a sound from the crimson sea.
"Liberated; Free thyself from the restrictions of the imperfect heavens; Face the desolations of life and break free of the Life Extinction dao; Sentience without death breeds imperfection. Search the path of truth…"
As the ripple travelled across the sea, it caused all the apparitions to stop their wailing. They silently looked at the tree and mumbled the words with a daze in their eyes.