28: Chapter 28 The sun and the moon make the same mistake

The night wind howled through the hollows of the unfinished building, sweeping up the dust from the ground, carrying with it the desolate air unique to the city's outskirts.

Ding Qing stood upon a broken wall and scattered debris, feeling the torrential, even more frenzied power surging through his sinews, bones, flesh, and blood due to the 'Eight Steps of the Heavenly Dragon'.

The very air groaned under the strain of his mere intent, as if it could be torn apart by his speed at any moment.

Just as he reined in his Aura, the nine wildly dancing Body-Suppressing Veins beneath his skin slowly faded, and an incredibly faint yet clingingly cold sensation, like maggots in the bone, crept into his awareness without warning.

It's here.

Ding Qing slowly turned around.

His gaze, like two quenched cold blades, stabbed towards the shadows not far behind him.

The shadows rippled like water, and a hunched figure silently materialized.

It was still that faded, earth-yellow Daoist robe, washed white and stained with a few grease spots. His face was withered like old tree bark, and his turbid eyes shone with an unsettling brightness in the dim light.

The Old Daoist in Yellow Robes.

He had arrived faster than Ding Qing anticipated.

"Young friend, it seems... you haven't been idle these past few days either."

The Old Daoist Priest's voice rasped like dry leaves rubbing together.

His murky gaze swept over Ding Qing, pausing for a moment on the ground where Ding Qing had just landed, leaving behind subtle cracks.

A barely perceptible glint of sharpness flashed deep within his turbid eyes.

"Your blood and Qi surge like boiling water, your sinews and bones grind like clashing metal... This commotion hardly seems like cultivating tranquility."

Ding Qing did not respond to his probing, merely staring at him coldly.

Every muscle in his body was taut, coiled yet unreleased, like a fully drawn strong bow, locked onto this unfathomable presence before him.

The explosive force brought by the Eight Steps of the Heavenly Dragon surged within him, giving him, for the first time when facing the old Daoist, a shred of confidence in his heart to fight to the death.

"Where is it?"

Ding Qing's voice was low, cutting straight to the point.

The Old Daoist Priest let out a low, inscrutable chuckle from his throat, his right hand, thin and gnarled like a chicken's claw, slowly emerging from the wide sleeve of his robe.

What he held was not the expected compass or Talisman, but a blade.

No, to be precise, it was a broken blade.

The blade body was a little over two feet long, its break jagged and uneven, as if it had been snapped by some unimaginable brute force.

The blade was covered in layers of dark red rust, overlapping like dried, congealed scabs of blood.

Beneath the rust were densely packed scars of varying depths.

There were hacking notches, piercing holes, and even more were pits and cracks left by the joint erosion of time and some kind of filth.

The wrapping on the hilt had long since decayed into grayish-black flocculent matter, leaving only the bare, equally rust-covered metal grip.

The entire broken blade exuded an indescribable heaviness, decay, and... sorrow.

It lay quietly in the Old Daoist Priest's withered hand, as if bearing endless slaughter and an Aura of destruction.

Its mere presence made the surrounding air feel viscous and heavy.

"This blade is the 'Guide'."

The Old Daoist Priest's voice carried a heaviness akin to a chant.

"It comes from a completely buried era, an epoch... whose very name has been utterly erased in the river of time."

Ding Qing's pupils abruptly contracted.

A buried era?

He stared fixedly at the rust-covered broken blade, sensing the dense, coagulated Death Qi and fierce, baleful Aura it emitted, far surpassing that of ordinary antiquities.

This blade indeed exuded an ancientness and sense of ruin that did not belong to the current era.

"Our target lies within a fragment of 'the past' from that buried era."

The Old Daoist Priest's turbid gaze seemed to penetrate the broken blade, looking towards a distant void.

"A 'town object' sufficient to suppress evil demons and stabilize the foundations of this world."

Ding Qing's brow furrowed tightly, his eyes sharp as blades, carrying undisguised suspicion as they stabbed directly at the Old Daoist Priest.

"Traveling through time and space? Returning to the past? Old Daoist Priest, do you take me for a three-year-old child? How can you utter such fantastical nonsense?"

He took half a step forward, an invisible pressure crushing over like a mountain. The concrete fragments beneath his feet silently turned to powder.

"Do you really intend to send me to my death with this piece of scrap metal and ghost stories?"

Facing Ding Qing's sharp questioning and surging, fierce Aura, the Old Daoist in Yellow Robes showed not the slightest ripple in his turbid eyes.

His withered face instead revealed a trace of anticipated indifference.

He did not directly refute.

He merely raised the broken blade in his hand slightly.

The rust and scar-covered blade body reflected a dim luster in the faint light.

"This old man understands your doubts, young friend."

The Old Daoist Priest's voice remained dry, yet carried a calmness born of insight into worldly affairs.

"It is not traveling through time and space, nor is it reversing the river of time.

Heaven and earth have their order; what is gone is gone. The past cannot be changed, the future cannot be predetermined. This is the supreme principle of the Heavenly Dao.

What this old man calls 'the past' is not true temporal regression, but rather..."

He paused, his withered finger gently brushing over the deepest crack on the broken blade, as if touching an ancient wound.

"...but a small fragment of 'the past' that clings to such 'remains' of an era, forcibly solidified and stripped away by some great terror or great obsession.

A segment of 'the past' whose ending has long been sealed, forcibly intercepted.

This broken blade is the medium to that solidified 'past', a... anchor point.

We are not returning to the past to change anything. We are merely... breaking into the lingering shadow of an era whose verdict has already been pronounced, to retrieve a relic left behind."

The suspicion in Ding Qing's eyes did not completely dissipate.

Yet, this explanation from the Old Daoist Priest faintly struck a chord with a certain intuition deep within his heart.

The eeriness of the Phoenix Mountain shadow, the terror suppressed within the old Daoist's body, the despair so thick it seemed tangible on the broken blade...

All silently corroborated the possibility of something beyond ordinary reason.

"If the ending is already set, destined to be a dead end, then why go?"

Ding Qing asked in a deep voice, his gaze locked onto the Old Daoist Priest's face, trying to find a single flaw in that furrowed, withered visage.

"Because it is worth it."

The Old Daoist Priest's reply was exceptionally concise.

Deep within his turbid eyes, for the first time, a nearly pious, heavy resolve surfaced.

"That town object concerns the survival of countless living beings in this era. This old man has clung to life until now. The Zhang family's Karma is settled. The only value of this body is to gamble for this. As for the danger..."

He raised his turbid eyes.

Meeting Ding Qing's gaze, which burned with Battle Intent and ferocity, the corner of his leaf-like mouth twitched into an extremely slight curve:

"Young friend, you and I setting foot there is itself an act of stealing fire from an era destined for destruction. Why fear dying once more?"

Before his words faded, a sudden anomaly occurred!

The broken blade in the Old Daoist Priest's hand trembled violently.

It was not his doing; the blade itself began to hum.

The dark red rust seemed to come alive, flowing with a viscous, blood-like halo.

An indescribable Aura of desolation, tragic heroism, and destructive force abruptly erupted.

At the same moment, the world before Ding Qing's eyes twisted violently.

The waning moon overhead and the distant city neon lights were like water into which a stone had been thrown—light and shadow swayed and shattered madly!

At the edges of his vision, the eerie outline of a scorching sun, burning fiercely and emitting an ominous bloody light, appeared.

Sun and Moon Astray!

The unfinished building ruins beneath his feet, the distant jungle of steel and concrete...

All the scenes belonging to modern civilization were rapidly erased as if by an invisible eraser.

Replacing them was an overwhelming, suffocating...

scorched earth!