123: Chapter 123 Greed Leads to a Lifetime of Depravity and Eternal Destruction!

Su Changge's sigh, devoid of sorrow or joy, was like an ancient chasm that severed all the noise and clamor in the plaza.

Hundreds of thousands of Cultivators, regardless of their cultivation level or location, felt their Divine Soul tremble in that instant, with monstrous waves rising in their heart's sea.

Peering into the abyss?

These four words were not like speech, but rather like a brand of the Law, deeply engraved into the depths of everyone's Divine Soul.

Indeed, this bloody and terrifying scene before them, these shattered fragments of Dao Heart covering the ground—were they not the most tragic and direct interpretation of those four words?

Those Master Appraisers, who were once high and mighty, worshipped by billions of living beings, were now either reduced to withered bones or had their Divine Soul shattered. The rest were merely bags of flesh and blood, sprawled on the ground, twitching incessantly, emitting unintelligible roars, having lost all semblance of humanity, let alone the demeanor of a Grandmaster.

Gu Yan, the leader, that titan who wielded the Mirror of Truth and had never made a mistake in ten thousand years of appraisal, was now using his own head to strike the cold, hard bluestone plaza over and over again.

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

The dull thudding sounds were exceptionally jarring in the deathly silent plaza. This was not a simple kowtow, but a confession that used all his strength to shatter his dignity, pride, and skull.

Blood mixed with dust, forming a patch of dark red mud on his forehead, yet he was completely unaware, merely muttering those words over and over.

"Senior, spare me... This Junior knows his mistake... This Junior will never dare again..."

He no longer possessed a shred of arrogance; the Dao Heart he had cultivated for ten thousand years had completely collapsed after catching a glimpse of that forbidden corner.

What he sought now was not the Dao, nor longevity, but merely the right to survive as a humble being.

He finally understood: a Mortal is, after all, a Mortal. To use the wisdom of the secular world to speculate on the taboo that carried the Origin point of the great dao was how laughable, how pathetic, and how... deserving of death.

In the plaza, amidst the deathly silence, countless gazes involuntarily converged once more upon the high platform.

That tiny copper coin lying quietly on the white jade pillar.

The gazes had completely changed.

All the previous doubts, mockery, and disdain had been crushed into powder amidst the blood and wails of those dozen or so Grandmasters.

Now, only two emotions remained in those gazes.

One was the awe originating from the depths of the Soul, toward the unknown, toward great power, toward divinity.

And the other, growing even more frantically in the shadow of that awe, was... greed.

That was the "great dao mother coin"!

It was a supreme treasure that, by revealing only a corner of its truth, was enough to cause a Master Appraiser's Dao Heart to collapse and their Divine Soul to be extinguished!

If one could obtain it, even just to comprehend a sliver of its Dao Rhyme, would it not mean... ascending to the heavens in a single step, becoming one with the Dao?

This thought, like a demonic seed, broke through the soil in the hearts of countless Cultivators, growing crazily.

Right in this bizarre atmosphere where extreme silence and fanaticism intertwined, a cold, tyrannical aura filled with the will of plunder and destruction exploded from behind the crowd!

The moment that aura appeared, the temperature of the entire plaza dropped several degrees, and a nauseating scent of blood and decay permeated the air.

A pure black shadow tore through the crowd, and even tore through space!

Wherever he passed, Cultivators were pushed to the sides by an irresistible force, forming a straight, vacuum-like path.

His speed surpassed the naked eye, surpassed Divine Sense, leaving behind only a series of afterimages that distorted the light.

A shrill, eerie laughter, like two pieces of rotten bone rubbing together, tore through everyone's eardrums.

"Hehehe... How could such a rare treasure of the great dao be touched by the likes of you Mortals? It rightfully belongs to me, the 'Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord'!"

Before the words faded, the black shadow had already broken through the Restriction of the high platform and appeared before the white jade pillar!

Everyone felt their vision blur, and a claw, withered as firewood with pale knuckles, reached out.

The fingertips were surrounded by a layer of ghostly green Death Qi; wherever it passed, space emitted an unbearable "hissing" sound, as if it would be corroded and pierced by the Law of death it contained at any moment.

His target was directly that copper coin!

"Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord! It's that old demon from the Nether Ghost Realm!"

"Is he mad?! The fate of Master Gu Yan and the others is right before our eyes, yet he dares to make a move to snatch the Senior's Opportunity!"

Exclamations erupted from the crowd, and countless people wore expressions of horror.

The Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord, a Demonic Path titan famous for thousands of years, a great Cultivator at the Late Nascent Soul Stage, known for his bizarre movement techniques and cruel methods, had countless Righteous Path Cultivators die at his hands.

Mo Wentian's expression changed drastically, his internal Qi surging, and just as he was about to intervene, he discovered in despair that the moment his Divine Sense locked onto the opponent, the opponent's figure had already appeared on the high platform.

Before the Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord's movement technique, which was nearly a Divine Ability, his own actions were ridiculously slow.

On the Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord's face hung a hideous and twisted maniacal laugh. In his eyes, there was no fear, only a boundless fanaticism for being about to rule the world and control the great dao.

In his view, the reason Gu Yan and the others collapsed was because they were "Master Appraisers". Master Appraisers cultivated "Truth" and "Order", while he cultivated "Shadow" and "Chaos"!

He believed his own Dao was closer to Chaos and could better withstand the backlash of this taboo object!

Wealth is sought in danger! If one does not become a saint, one becomes a martyr!

However, from beginning to end, Su Changge on the high platform remained standing with his hands behind his back.

He did not even turn around, nor did he lift his eyelids even once.

（Another one who cannot see through life and death, who cannot break through greed and hatred. System, make him understand what true Hell is.）

This thought flashed through his mind, while on the surface, he remained indifferent, looking down upon the ages, viewing all living beings as ants.

Just as the Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord's fingertips, with their glowing green light of the Law of death, were about to touch the copper coin.

【System Special Effect: 'Money Hell' has been triggered.】

【Effect: Drags the target's spirit into an endless cycle of Reincarnation illusion constructed by their own greed.】

The Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord's movements stopped without warning.

His fingers froze in mid-air less than an inch from the copper coin; the Law of death, which was enough to corrode space, was as docile as a dead snake before that tiny copper coin.

The fanatic smile on his face instantly froze.

The luster in his eyes seemed to be instantly pulled away by an invisible hand, becoming hollow and vacant.

The next breath, an even more extreme and morbid ecstasy occupied his entire face.

"This is... Origin Ghost Qi! An endless sea of Taiyin Origin Ghost Qi!"

"That is... the legendary 'Yellow Springs Holy Fruit'! Consuming it can transform an Acquired ghost body into an Innate ghost god!"

"Hahahaha! Mine! It's all mine!!"

Under the gaze of hundreds of thousands of horrified eyes, this infamous Demonic Path titan, who once stopped children from crying at night, suddenly acted like a demented madman, hugging, kissing, and gnawing at the empty space before him.

He opened his mouth, crazily biting and swallowing at the air, his throat making "gulping" sounds, as if he were tasting some of the world's finest delicacies.

"Longevity divine medicine! This is the longevity divine medicine left behind by the Nether Emperor! Consuming it grants eternal life!!"

He suddenly lowered his head, opened his bloody maw, and bit down on his own left arm!

"Crack!"

The sound of bone cracking was clearly audible, and black-purple demonic blood gushed out, yet he felt no pain, his face instead showing an incomparably happy and satisfied flush.

He tore at the top-grade magic robe on his body, which had been refined from countless vengeful spirits, stuffing the torn pieces into his chest, laughing crazily: "Ultimate Dao Emperor Weapon! The Nether Ghost Emperor's 'Reincarnation Banner'! Haha, this is also mine! I shall control Reincarnation!"

The entire plaza was in an uproar, followed by a coldness that seeped into the marrow.

Everyone was terrified by this bizarre and extremely horrific scene, their scalps tingling and the hairs on their bodies standing on end.

Who could have imagined that a Nascent Soul great Cultivator, who dominated the winds and clouds and was capable of rivaling the master of a sect, would turn into a complete lunatic in the snap of a finger!

He had not been attacked by anyone.

He had not even truly touched the copper coin.

Yet his current fate was a hundred times more miserable than suffering from thousands of the cruelest punishments in the world!

"Thump."

The Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord fell heavily to the ground.

He foamed at the mouth, his limbs twisting and twitching at an unnatural angle.

The spiritual power within his body, no, it should be called Demonic Yuan, was dissipating crazily at a speed visible to the naked eye. Within his Dantian Qi Sea, the Nascent Soul miniature figure that had been refined for thousands of years let out a shrill wail, shattering inch by inch, turning into the purest energy that dissipated into the heavens and earth.

His earth-shattering cultivation base was reduced to nothing in just a few breaths.

From a Nascent Soul great Cultivator, he was reduced to a cripple.

The entire Tianbao Plaza was deathly silent. One could hear a pin drop.

Fear, like a cold, sticky hand, silently gripped everyone's heart, tightening with every moment.

If the fate of the Master Appraisers was a stern warning.

Then the end of the Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord was the most direct, bloody, and unquestionable deterrence!

This copper coin.

Cannot be looked at; it is a tribulation of the Dao Heart.

Even more so, it cannot be touched; it is a wound to the Divine Soul!

Harboring even the slightest bit of greed is an abyss of eternal damnation!

On the high platform, Su Changge finally moved.

He stepped forward slowly, and under the gaze of countless eyes, he stepped directly over the Shadow Devouring Ghost Lord, whose body was still twitching on the ground.

That step was light and breezy, as if he were not stepping over the body of a former Demonic Path titan, but a trivial rock by the roadside.

He reached out, gently picked up the copper coin that had caused countless people to die, go mad, or be crippled, held it between two fingers, looked at it against the light, then casually flicked off the non-existent dust and tucked it into his sleeve.

The movements were fluid and extremely casual, just like picking up a fallen autumn leaf from under a tree in one's own backyard.

After doing all this, he finally turned around, his gaze sweeping calmly over the faces below, which were pale and twisted with extreme fear.

He did not speak.

He merely let out another light sigh.

The sigh was very light, yet carried an endless vicissitude of having seen the changing of eras and the birth and destruction of star seas.

This scene was eternally engraved by all the Image-Recording Stones present, from every angle.

This sigh also made every Cultivator present remember it for a lifetime, branded into the deepest parts of their Divine Soul.

Countless years later, when someone asked them about the scene that happened in Tianbao City that day, they would all unanimously recall that figure standing aloof from the world, and that unbreakable truth forged with blood and madness—

Before that Senior.

Greed is the most unsolvable poison in the world.