Chapter 817

Fuxi Divine Capital

The maltreatment of Xi Wule and Xi Bubai continues.

Drops of fresh hot blood dripped into the strong liquor, one after another of the underground native tribe chieftains who had seen through reality raised their blood wine and drank it all in one go, then knelt on the ground and pledged their loyalty to Feng Rong.

Tribal warriors were organized by Feng Rong in wave after wave, setting out in mighty numbers toward all directions.

Feng Rong issued an order, demanding that the high-ranking officials of every conquered prefecture, commandery, and city be brought before him, and, following the same pattern, he had them kneel and surrender.

Watching these once high and mighty nobles grovel on the ground like dogs, wagging their tails and begging for mercy.

This feeling is wonderful.

Feng Rong felt that this was the Way of the Human Emperor. Countless branches of the Pangu remnant clan knelt and submitted—this was the myriad tribes bowing down, this was all directions paying homage, this was the Human Emperor's Great Way.

So Feng Rong pointed to Xi Wule and Xi Bubai, who were hanging from the rack, and said casually, "Give them treatment, have them take some good medicine that replenishes blood and promotes flesh; don't let them die so easily."

"Besides, there are still many people waiting to spill their blood and form a blood alliance with them."

As Feng Rong spoke, he couldn't help bursting into loud laughter, laughing so hard he bent forward and backward, his pride and satisfaction reaching their peak.

As Feng Rong spoke, he couldn't help but glance toward the direction where the Feng Shang fleet had disappeared. He resentfully gritted his teeth and muttered, "You occupy two dynasties, I only occupy one… but what does it matter? I have so many underground tribes pledging allegiance to me here."

"Second brother, just remain the second brother forever… the Fuxi Divine State is definitely mine. Don't even think about interfering."

"Right, maternal uncle?" Feng Rong turned around, hoping to get a reassuring affirmation from Bai Su Xin's mouth.

But Bai Su Xin had already taken his royal command token and led the forbidden army to subdue the various regions; only a few eunuchs with obsequious smiles stood by his side.

Feng Rong wearily waved at the few eunuchs, as if shooing dogs away to make them stand farther from him. But the next moment he suddenly came to his senses: "You bunch of old dogs, are you all idiots? What are you doing standing here? Hurry up and find this king some tender, spirited palace maids to serve me."

"With those old chrysanthemum faces of yours, could you possibly have the fresh lotus beauty that is pleasing to the eye?"

The eunuchs stood dazed, then turned and ran off in a fluster. Suddenly they remembered: their lord's peculiarity—wasn't it just a special fondness for young servant girls?

Before they had taken a few steps, Feng Rong furrowed his brow again: "Right, don't forget to get in touch with the people at Ink Bamboo Embankment. Although I'm too lazy to deal with those trivial matters, after all, it's the military affairs entrusted to me by the father emperor, so I ought to… attend to them."

The eunuchs hastily stopped, turned back, and kowtowed to Feng Rong in a flustered reply, then sprang up like fleas and fled.

As for the Ink Bamboo Embankment matter, colleagues there are handling it, so there won't be any mistakes.

Besides, isn't the Ink Bamboo Embankment just handling those trivial affairs of the Rongji Hall? Compared to helping our lord find pretty young maids, those scheming, backstabbing secret intelligence is nothing.

Outside the Fuxi Divine Capital, amidst thick clouds, Wu Tie has been sitting cross-legged here for over half a month.

While the flow of time in the outside world remains constant, the time flow on Wu Tie, the Canghai Daoist, and the Wuxing Daoist has reached a terrifying rate—one day outside equals a thousand years passing for them.

All the cultivation resources Wu Tie had painstakingly accumulated over the years have been completely exhausted.

The soul crystals harvested over these years have also been burned up to more than seventy percent.

On his person, not a trace of the Great Dao's markings remains; only a murky haze lingers, yet within it shines a faint, clear, bright gray.

His hair, skin, and eyes are all gray, and even the space and time around him—indeed, all the laws of the Great Dao—have been tinged gray by his body.

Inside his body, his viscera, bones, nerves, meridians and flesh, skin and blood vessels, even his marrow and brain, are all enveloped by gray chaotic divine light, as if he had returned to the primordial chaos before heaven and earth were split apart.

Within that vast expanse of gray divine light, the only things moving are twisting, jumping light dragons formed of complex multi‑helical structures.

The gray divine light erodes these light dragons, starting from the simplest double‑helical flow, slicing them apart like a butcher dissecting an ox; the gray light acts as a blade, bit by bit cutting open the multi‑helical flows and extracting from them the faint traces of the Great Dao principles that differ vastly from those of the universe where Mu Dalu resides.

Everything is different.

A profoundly different Dao resonance is being projected into Wu Tie's divine fetus, evolving into a brand‑new pattern imbued with exotic flair.

In the cosmic void where Mu Dalu resides, the markings of the Great Dao coalesce like dragons, while these mysterious Great Dao markings take on forms—sometimes vicious and twisted like a poisonous snake, sometimes sinister and gloomy like a centipede, sometimes wild and raging like a demonic phoenix, or sometimes cruel and poisonous like a nefarious flood dragon…

In short, the concrete manifestations of these Great Dao markings are utterly different from the majestic, awe‑inspiring dragon‑like Great Dao markings Wu Tie had previously condensed.

Even if they are similar in nature, such as the ice‑pattern Dao markings.

The ice‑pattern Dao markings Wu Tie had previously comprehended were pure, bone‑chilling cold that froze everything.

Yet the most basic ice‑pattern Dao marking extracted from a twelve‑flow, twelve‑helical stream of light, beyond pure primordial cold, also carries a hint of ruthless, yin‑evil corrosiveness and a trace of death‑intent that extinguishes life.

Wu Tie faintly sensed that this ice‑pattern Dao resonance was subtly the same as the ice aura on You Ruo.

This is the unique Heaven‑Earth Dao nurtured in the world from which You Ruo originates.

Strands of deep‑blue‑tinged‑purple Dao markings continually merged into Wu Tie's divine fetus, then into his body; Wu Tie faintly gained a deeper understanding of the Ice Spirit Divine Clan to which You Ruo belongs.

"But this color is really ugly."

Even amidst his busyness, Wu Tie still found the mood to complain about the hue of these markings.

In the Pangu Great Dao, the ice‑pattern markings are pure, unblemished, nearly transparent white—an immaculate icy white that pleases the eye and makes one feel, from soul to body, as if refreshed anew.

However, the Ice Spirit Divine Clan's ice-cold Dao rhythm is powerful and terrifying, but even just judging by its color, Wu Tie doesn't like it.

However, driven by the instinct of living beings, Wu Tie began to comprehend the profound Dao truths hidden within these complex, ever-changing multi-spiral streams of light.

Wu Tie felt he should do it for no particular reason, and so he did.

Time was passing.

Time flew swiftly upon Wu Tie, the Canghai Daoist, and the Wuxing Daoist.

Suddenly, Nuwa Mother's voice echoed in Wu Tie's mind, word by word, extremely slow, as if deliberately drawn out, resonating in his thoughts.

Wu Tie first froze for a moment, then he suddenly understood the cause and effect.

Nuwa Mother was using a divine ability akin to heart-to-heart telepathy to speak to Wu Tie from afar; yet she communicated with him at the normal speed of the outside world—perhaps she uttered a single character in the snap of a finger, and that character entered Wu Tie's mind, resting upon him, and perhaps several days had already elapsed.

Thus, on Wu Tie, a slow, drawn-out tone appears only once every few days.

Wu Tie immediately released a strand of his soul power, breaking out of the time barrier he had created, and directly contacted Nuwa Mother outside.

In an instant, a vast amount of information continuously surged into Wu Tie's mind.

Knowledge, inheritance—the countless knowledge accumulated by the Nuwa Clan over the years—even Lao Tie's knowledge base does not contain it; this knowledge, richer, more mysterious, and more profound, flows into Wu Tie's mind like a tide.

Along with this knowledge, there is also what Nuwa Mother and the Grand Matriarch of the Nuwa Clan call the 'Truth'.

Wu Tie's heart grew inexplicably heavy.

Is this the 'Truth'?

Is this the path of 'war' and 'sacrifice' chosen by my own ancestors?

Facing the scrutiny of the gods beyond the firmament, the human race on Mu Dalu divided the human tribes on Mu Dalu into three categories.

The most important, the most fundamental, is the Human-character Life Field.

The Life Field, the vital essence inherited by the human race, consists of vast continents whose environment is barbaric and ancient; each tribe follows the most ancient way of survival, confronting heaven and earth with their flesh, confronting myriad calamities with their spirit.

They contend with heaven, contend with earth, and struggle to the death against natural calamities, floods, and ferocious beasts.

In the most extreme primordial environment they temper their bodies and spirits, preserving the human race's most primal nature, like the legendary ascetics who propagate in extreme austerity, mining the most primal and ultimate power of the Pangu Remnant Clan.

On the Human-character Life Field, just as Wu Tie had once heard, everyone is born a True Person!

Infants of the human race born in the Life Field have absolutely no bloodline shackles, nor any so-called divine soul or divine embryo; only a single strand of innate spiritual light is wrapped and protected by a powerful innate physique.

That is the Divine Manifestation Realm, and moreover it is the Divine Manifestation Realm approaching the utmost perfection of great accomplishment.

These infants attain an astonishingly high realm at birth; even as infants they can slay fierce beasts and lift ten thousand catties.

They are the human race, the true seeds, the true sparks, the genuine core elite strength of the Nuwa Clan; within the Life Field they guide these sparks and seeds to propagate and store their strength.

The human inhabitants of the Life Field are each like the ancient great witches recorded in the Witch Clan's classics, born extraordinary and overwhelmingly powerful.

The Human-character Life Field possesses Mu Dalu's innate myriad terrifying natural barriers, with some primordial remnants of strange beings surrounding it; if the gods beyond the firmament dare to descend upon the Human-character Life Field, first, they find it hard to locate an entryway; second, the Life Field is rife with peril, making it no easy task to locate those tiny tribes.

Therefore, over the long term, the gods have abandoned harassing and attacking the Human-character Life Field.

After painstakingly searching for decades, they might not even find a small tribe in a barbaric jungle, expending enormous effort perhaps to reap only three or five heads; the gods are not foolish, they will not do such an unprofitable thing.

Surrounding the Human-character Life Field is the Earth-character Battlefield belonging to the Sui Dynasty.

As the name suggests, the Earth-character Battlefield is an absolute hotspot; here the human race has established one divine dynasty after another, each as powerful as the Sui Dynasty and dominant over its region.

The gods descend repeatedly, only to be met with heavy blows from these divine dynasties of the Earth-character Battlefield; even if it means the dynasty shatters and its lineage perishes, they will inflict heavy blows on the gods, tearing away bloody flesh from them.

In such frenzied warfare, these divine dynasties have forged exceedingly elite armies, while also demonstrating to the gods the human race's will to fight to the death.

Each Earth-character Battlefield is a hard bone; on the gods' sand table, these battlefields are absolute dangerous zones.

Thus, similar to the Sui Dynasty, the gods have fostered four great alien dynasties in the four directions around the Sui Dynasty to confront and hinder its growth, yet the gods now rarely intervene directly in the Sui Dynasty's wars.

The greatest sacrifice, the most tragic existence, is the Heaven-character Hunting Ground.

The hunting ground—whose hunting ground is it?

The gods' hunting ground.

Who is the prey?

The Pangu Remnant Clan, they are the prey.

Here, it lies at the outermost edge of the human race's territory; here the land is tiny and resources barren; here civilization is fragmented and inheritance incomplete; here techniques are lacking and experts scarce; here it is a lush leek field where the gods can recklessly harvest at will.

Where Wu Tie is located is the Heaven-character Class One Hunting Ground.

The gods pay the most attention, are most focused, expend the greatest effort to scheme, and simultaneously reap the most abundant harvest from this hunting ground.

The gods' harvest is most bountiful, while the human race's sacrifice here is most grievous.

Over the past two hundred thousand years, the Fuxi Divine Nation of the Heaven-character Class One Hunting Ground has suffered six near-total annihilations; the Xi and Nuwa tribes directly drew large numbers of weak tribes from other Earth-character Battlefields and Heaven-character Hunting Grounds, erased their memories, and filled the ranks, thereby sustaining the operation and propagation of the Fuxi Divine Nation.

Such secret history has, until now, been known only to the divine sovereign of the Fuxi Divine Nation and the matriarch of the Nuwa Lu tribe.

Hunting ground, hunting ground.

The gods need expend only a modest amount of effort here to obtain the richest harvest.

Given the gods' internal scheming and their luxurious indolence, since there is a place where they can continuously obtain the rare resources they desperately need, and these resources can satisfy the demands of all their clans… why would they still go to open new hunting grounds and fight desperately against the powerful human forces on those battlefields?

After all, every living being has a lazy heart!

Especially You Ruo, Wu Tou, and their two previous leaders; after these youngsters of the god clans took up residence, the vast majority of them became even more fond of ease and averse to toil, lounging all day in the divine palaces, so who would really toil away developing Mu Dalu?

Gradually, under the guidance of the Nuwa clan's great matriarchs, the gods' attention long ago ceased to focus on those hard-to-digest dangerous regions of Mu Dalu; instead, their focus shifted to the Heaven-character Class One Hunting Ground.

The Fuxi Divine Nation of the Heaven-character Class One Hunting Ground paid an incomparably heavy price, and the three great divine nations of the mortal world likewise paid correspondingly huge costs.

But these costs, in the view of the human race's high echelons, are worthwhile.

With this land's sacrifice… they obtained roughly peace in other regions.

From the overall situation of the human race, this is absolutely worthwhile.

Wu Tie received the information transmitted by Nuwa Mother, as well as the various Nuwa clan secret arts that Nuwa Mother obtained from the five-colored divine stone.

"Sacrifice?"

"Survival?"

"But this is not what I want." Wu Tie muttered softly: "Whether it be the human race or demons, if they come knocking, I will strike back head-on!"

"I don't care how strategically important the Sui Dynasty is… if you dare abduct my woman, I will chop off your heads."