Chapter 155: The Sign of Destiny

When his right foot stepped onto the surface of the river, Lu Xin immediately felt that the water beneath his feet was solid enough to bear his weight. He then brought his left foot up, and sure enough, his entire body stood upon the river as if walking on flat ground, without the slightest sensation of sinking.

Once he descended into the river, the surrounding black sandstorms vanished. The sky grew vast and exceptionally clear, like the reflection of the river's surface. Looking back, aside from the boundless riverbanks, the path he had taken had disappeared. The entire world presented an aura of incomparable ethereal tranquility. The Six-Day Azure River seemed as though it truly flowed down from the heavens.

"Primordial heavy water... This place becomes more and more astonishing by the moment!"

Having transmigrated from the modern era to the Tang Dynasty, Lu Xin had never experienced a scene like the one before him. Every aspect of the Fengdu Ghost Domain seemed to defy the natural laws of the macrocosm.

The black sandstorms, the iron-hard red earth, the river water heavy enough to lift a person... Everything here was as magical as a dream.

"If this is what the Primordial World looked like, then the might of the Primordial Demon Clan can well be imagined. Not every creature could rule such a world."

Sighing inwardly, Lu Xin began to walk cautiously toward the opposite bank of the great river. The current of the Six-Day Azure River shifted constantly, and beneath the riverbed, some immense gravitational force seemed to pull at everything on the surface, making each step heavy and sluggish. It took Lu Xin a full hour just to reach the center of the river. At that moment, dense white banks of fog suddenly emerged all around, misty and ghastly, obscuring any sense of direction. Lu Xin tried to walk out, but after a long time, he remained trapped in the hazy blur. The surrounding mist seemed to have taken root, refusing to disperse.

Lu Xin felt a surge of irritation. To plunge so abruptly from an ethereal, pellucid realm into a misty, ghostly world created a jarring contrast. Worse still, he could think of no way to leave this place.

"You are lonely and helpless. You cannot fathom why things have come to this, but this is your end. It is also the end that I least wish to see."

"Who is it? Who is speaking?"

Lu Xin looked around blankly as a voice suddenly echoed in his ear. The voice was intermittent, at times heavy, at times light. He could only catch fragments of it, yet he could sense that the speaker was intimately familiar to him. This sense of familiarity made the hair on his body stand on end.

"The end you least wish to see? Hahahahaha, didn't you want to kill me all along? From the moment I first entered Chang'an, you sought by every means to bring about my death. Now, as you wished, isn't that wonderful?"

"Indeed, I once wanted to kill you, but I had hoped even more that you would have listened to me then. To leave Chang'an, to distance yourself from the rights and wrongs of this Tang Dynasty. You do not belong to this world; your transmigration was merely an accident. Therefore, even with all your power, you still cannot change everything. Just as that mountain pierces the clouds, making all the world look up in awe, yet it remains forever crushed beneath the Dao of Heaven. And I am that very Dao!"

Following the source of the voice, Lu Xin soon beheld a chilling scene deep within the distant mist. It was a colossal mountain rising from the earth to lean against the heavens. At the summit, a man in black, wreathed in bloody light, stood suspended in the air. Below him, another youth in white knelt on one half-knee, clutching a sword. Clearly, they had just emerged from a fierce and tragic battle; not only was he covered in blood, but one of his arms had been severed. The reason Lu Xin felt such palpitations was that the person kneeling on the ground turned out to be none other than himself. And the man in black was the murderous Lu Tingfang.

Within this vision, the two brothers had ultimately reached the point of turning their swords against each other.

"Cough, cough... The Dao of Heaven? Lu Tingfang, I do not believe the heavens look like you. Perhaps you have become the peerless number one beneath the heavens, perhaps all mortals fear you. But from the very moment you killed my master, even if you truly were the Dao of Heaven, I would pay any price to destroy the Dao and slay the heavens!"

With a long roar that shook the mountains and rivers, the youth sprang up from the ground, his body merging with his sword to transform into a dazzling golden sword qi that charged fiercely toward Lu Tingfang. Yet in the next second, the golden sword qi was engulfed by a sky full of bloody baleful aura, vanishing completely in an instant. When heaven and earth returned to normal, the youth in white was gone. A gleaming treasure sword fell from the void, emitting a jarring, metallic clatter. Lu Tingfang overlooked the peak, took a deep breath, and his spiritual power surged wildly. It was as if, in that very instant, he had consumed the youth in white and absorbed his entire cultivation base.

The distant spectacle was terrifyingly real. At every moment, Lu Xin watched with trembling terror. Especially at the moment the youth in white vanished, his heart ached as if pierced by a knife, making it difficult for him even to stand steady. He desperately wanted to say that the youth in white was not him. Yet the scene before his eyes was too real—as real as an event about to happen.

"Hmph, what wretch dares to spy on this seat?"

Suddenly, the Lu Tingfang in the vision whipped his head around, his eyes freezing as he stared directly at him. That gaze was as bright as the sun in the sky, illuminating everything and leaving nothing in the mundane world able to hide. Lu Xin was terrified, his heart hammering so frantically it threatened to burst from his chest. Lu Tingfang's pressure was as formidable as a force shattering space and time, intent on erasing him from this world.

Thud!

Lu Xin dropped heavily to his knees, his breathing painfully rapid. A pall of death occupied every thought in his mind. He was petrified, seized by such dread that in an instant he felt reduced to a helpless child who knew only how to weep.

Above the Six-Day Azure River, the heavy fog still lingered. The world was utterly silent, vacant, and bone-chilling...

"That vision just now... what on earth was it? Did I... witness the scene of my own death?"

He knew not how much time had passed before Lu Xin recovered from that near-death agony. By now, his eyes were bloodshot and his entire body was drenched in sweat, as if he had just survived a life-and-death struggle. Raising his head to scan his surroundings, the distant scene had vanished. No matter how he searched, the mountain piercing the clouds and the figure wreathed in bloody light were nowhere to be seen.

Lu Tingfang was gone, yet a heavy oppression weighed upon his heart. Deep within his mind, the vision he had just witnessed refused to fade. Lu Xin had fancied that having endured so many tribulations, he had long since grown indifferent to life and death. But he had been mistaken; at this moment, he finally understood. No one is without fear of death—at least, no one can remain unmoved upon witnessing the very moment of their own demise.

"Master? Master could not possibly die at the hands of Li Chunfeng. Everything just now must have been a trick, it must have been an illusion..."

"All things in existence possess karma. As long as you remain within these Six Paths of Red Dust, you cannot escape the bitter torment of parting and death. Where there is karma, there is destined fate. Some matters are ordained long ago. What you witnessed just now is precisely your future, and also your ultimate end."

"Master Dao'an?"

Looking forward, a few paces away amidst the mist, the figure of a monk materialized. It was none other than Shi Dao'an, the Holy Monk of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Hand-Sealing Bodhisattva whom Lu Xin had encountered in the dilapidated temple at Xuanzhou. Yet he clearly remembered that Shi Dao'an had died centuries ago. Even back at the ruined temple, only a wisp of residual soul had remained.

Bizarrely, in response to Lu Xin's inquiry, the monk offered no reply. Instead, he brought his palms together, closed his eyes, and chanted a Buddhist title.

"All people must eventually die. Only the Buddha in his great mercy transforms this into the Western Paradise of Ultimate Bliss. You and others should lay down your butcher's knives and instantly become Buddhas."

As the monk's voice faded, he abruptly opened his eyes. His pupils were blood-red, resembling a ghost or a demon. Simultaneously, the monk struck out with a single palm; a golden dragon roared, and a flood of Sanskrit light filled the air. Lu Xin felt as though he were caught in towering waves, in imminent danger of being overturned. The entity before him was by no means an illusion.

"What do you mean by everything being predestined? Fate is not some plaything in the mouths of you people! I believe in karma, but I do not believe in malevolent demons and ghosts like you!"

Lu Xin sneered, leaping abruptly to his feet and striking out with a palm of his own against the monk. The two forces collided, and the blinding Sanskrit light eclipsed the boundless white fog. The youth then brandished his sword and charged into the Sanskrit light, where a black flying shadow was seen dashing swiftly away. After chasing for a short while longer, the surrounding fog dissipated. Heaven and earth regained their pristine, lucid state. In the distance, a black bird was flapping its wings in panic, fleeing toward the opposite bank.

Looking back, the riverbank from which he had started was still visible, yet not a single wispy thread of white fog remained. Everything he had just experienced felt like a fleeting nightmare.

At that moment, Lu Xin suddenly recalled a conversation he had with Zhao Li on the journey from Chang'an to Fengdu City. In the section "Classic of Mountains and Seas: Within the Seas," there had been a description of the Fengdu Ghost Domain.

Zhao Li's exact words back then were: "It is said that within the Northern Sea, there is a mountain called Youdu Mountain. Black water flows from it, and upon it dwell black birds, black snakes, black leopards, black tigers, and black-plumed foxes. Tu Bo's appearance is terrifying; in his hands he holds nine ropes, upon his head grow sharp horns, with a hunched back and bloody hands, he swiftly pursues men. He possesses three eyes, a tiger's head, and the body of a bull, treating humans as delicacies."

"A black bird... It seems everything just now was an illusion created by it."

Thinking of this, Lu Xin's expression improved noticeably. Though the shadow of being killed by Lu Tingfang lingered, he at least regained the courage to keep moving forward. Henceforth, Lu Xin's pace grew much faster than before. In less than half an hour, he crossed the entire Six-Day Azure River. However, the moment Lu Xin stepped onto the opposite bank, the ground suddenly turned remarkably soft. Walking upon it felt like treading on cotton, and for a moment he struggled to steady his footing.

Not only that, but before a palace not far away, Lu Xin saw a massive flock of black birds attacking a crowd of people. Those birds were as large as eagles, pitch-black all over, possessed three legs, and bore intensely vicious gazes. Numerous corpses lay scattered around the palace, all of their eyeballs devoured, with fresh blood staining the earth.

Roar! Roar! Roar!

A low growl suddenly sounded beside his ear. Lu Xin turned his head to look and saw a black wolf, shaped like an elephant, walking toward him step by step from his left. In the black wolf's jaws, it even clamped a horribly disfigured human head. Upon the black wolf's back, a blurred shadow seemed to flicker in and out of existence.

"Mortal, you should not have come to this hell!"