66: Chapter 66 Determined to Seize the Godhood

The carriage jolted along the rugged dirt road, kicking up fine plumes of dust.

Luo Hanchán pressed her small face against the swaying window, looking up at the horizon.

One streak of light after another hurried across the dusky sky, fleeing in the direction away from Langya Province.

“It's so lively outside! Brother, look at the sky, there are so many shooting stars!”

Luo Hanchán withdrew her gaze and tugged at the sleeve of Luo Changting, who was leaning against the carriage wall with a furrowed brow; her tone carried the innocence of a child watching a spectacle.

“Where are they going? To a fair? They're in more of a hurry than our Opera Troupe rushing to a show.”

Startled by his sister's tug, Luo Changting woke from his chaotic thoughts.

He looked up at the thousands of escaping lights outside the window, his heart feeling as if it were weighed down by a massive boulder.

Through his partially formed Aggregate of Sensation, he could vaguely perceive the tension and panic mixed in the wind from afar.

This wasn't a fair; this was a flight for survival.

The flames of war in Mythical Tree Province were like a sharp sword hanging overhead, and the shadow of its blade had already begun to shroud Langya Province.

“It’s nothing. The affairs of the Cultivator lords have nothing to do with us Mortals.” Driving the carriage ahead, Luo Hui didn't turn his head; his voice was dull, carrying a deliberately suppressed calm.

“Little Cicada, sit tight. Don't look around, just mind our own business.” He had naturally heard the rumors as well, even more specific details than what Luo Changting had gathered through secret perception.

About the smuggling of demon cores, about the collapse of the front lines, and about the cruelty of the Yao Race.

But he was just a small troupe leader at the second level of Qi Gathering, leading a large family of the elderly, weak, women, and children in the Opera Troupe. In these times of impending chaos, just keeping this single carriage of people safe was already difficult enough; how could he have the spare energy to care about things on the horizon?

Luo Changting pursed his lips and did not argue with his father.

This was exactly what he was worried about.

The Opera Troupe moved with faltering steps; where could they possibly flee?

Once the flames of war truly reached them, how would people like them be any different from lambs to the slaughter in the eyes of the Yao Race?

Thinking of the Yao Race in his dreams, who used humans as blood food—if they entered the borders, it would surely result in the slaughter of all living beings.

Luo Changting looked again at his sister beside him, who was completely unaware of all this. A strong sense of powerlessness and anxiety almost threatened to consume him.

He had to obtain power as quickly as possible—power enough to protect his family!

“Brother?”

Luo Hanchán keenly sensed the low pressure radiating from her brother. She leaned in closer, tilting her head to observe Luo Changting's tightly knit brows and lips pressed into a straight line. Suddenly, she reached out with a small, cold hand and gently pressed it against the center of his brow.

“When you frown like that, you look like a painted face from a play! So ugly!”

She tried to make Luo Changting laugh with exaggerated tones and mimicry, her small hand rubbing his brow with feigned maturity. “Don't copy the painted faces, give me a smile? Look at me, bleh—”

As she spoke, she stuck out her tongue and made an extremely silly face.

Normally, Luo Changting might have been amused by his sister's clumsy attempt at comfort.

But at this moment, his heart was heavy. In his eyes, that silly face only reflected his sister's clear eyes, full of complete trust and devoid of worry.

This innocent gaze was like a needle, causing a slight pang of pain in his heart.

He forced the corners of his mouth up into a smile that looked worse than crying. He reached up and gently patted Luo Hanchán's hand away, whispering:

“...I'm fine. Sit properly so you don't fall.”

Luo Hanchán looked at her brother's profile, which was still heavy with worry. She blinked, and the playfulness on her face slowly faded away.

She sat back quietly in her place and stopped talking. She only stole glances at Luo Changting from time to time. In the small carriage, only the monotonous sound of wheels rolling over the road remained.

Luo Changting closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking into the mass of the newly condensed and unstable Five Aggregates Demon Seed within his body.

Time. He needed time, and he also needed resources.

His Cultivation of the Primordial Demon Heavenly Book had to be accelerated.

No matter what, he could never allow the Yao Race from his dreams to appear in the territory of the Human Race.

If his cultivation was insufficient when the time came, then he would have no choice but to... He thought of the Heavenly Demon Ritual in the Primordial Demon Heavenly Book, and that absolute Forbidden Summoning Technique.

The price wasn't exactly high—just a Soul with a life as thin as paper.

A flash of resolve crossed Luo Changting's eyes.

Whether it was his family or the common people of Langya Province...

He would be the one to protect them... Shen Moyan fell into silence for a moment as he read Luo Changting's thoughts.

If this Luo Changting went to resist the Yao Race and gave up on competing for the nascent soul dao fruit, it would deviate from his plan.

However, everything has two sides.

Shen Moyan gave a contemptuous smile and immediately circulated the Primordial Demon Heavenly Book.

Consciousness Accumulation · Cognitive Distortion... In the distance, a flicker of inspiration suddenly entered the mind of the resting Luo Changting.

A thought, like a poisoned nail, was driven deep into his consciousness and quickly took root and sprouted.

You cannot protect everyone.

Only... the nascent soul dao fruit!

Only by controlling the power of that step into Soul Transformation can you reverse all of this!

Only with absolute strength can you protect everything you want to protect!

As for the birth of the Dao Fruit, a certain amount of sacrifice is necessary.

This thought carried an unquestionable absolute quality, instantly catalyzing Luo Changting's originally vague desire for the nascent soul dao fruit into a near-obsessive conviction.

His original intention to protect his family and the common people was cleverly hijacked within his distorted cognition, becoming the reason to pursue extreme power.

Luo Changting snapped his eyes open, an imperceptible flash of crimson flickering deep within his pupils.

When he looked again at his sister Luo Hanchán, who was somewhat uneasy due to his emotional changes, his brow, which had been tightly knit with worry, slowly smoothed out, replaced by a near-cold calm.

Luo Hanchán blinked, feeling as though something was different about her brother, though she couldn't say exactly what... Half a year later, underground.

“Fellow Daoist Cen, I have arrived.”

“Not replying to me? Could it be that the signal is bad?”

The sound of the underground river's flow was exceptionally clear in the vast cavern. Shen Moyan steered the small boat along the crude navigational chart provided by Cen Boliang and finally reached the so-called ferry crossing.

This was an even more open underground lake; the water was dark and bottomless, as if connected to the Nine Underworlds.

By the lakeshore, there was only a stone platform that had long since mostly collapsed, covered in a thick layer of sickly green moss. The air was thick with heavy moisture and the scent of ancient decay.

A broken stone pillar was stuck diagonally in the water, upon which several ancient runes were vaguely visible—exactly the characters for the Ancient Realm marked on Cen Boliang's token.

Through the great power of the Nine Songs Immortal Lord to carry the Dao through writing, Shen Moyan understood those characters.

Jiehe Ferry.

Shen Moyan shifted his gaze and stepped slowly onto the crumbling platform.

In the center of the lake, a ship was quietly moored.

The ship's style was ancient, crafted entirely from some kind of dark wood. The hull was covered in mottled erosion marks, looking as if it had been forgotten and soaked in the deep sea for tens of millions of years.

A lantern hung from the bow, emitting a gray light that was neither bright nor dark, barely illuminating a small patch of water around the ship.

A Ferryman with a hunched figure, draped in a tattered cloak, stood at the bow with his back to the shore.

He seemed to have stood there since time immemorial, merging into one with this deathly silent environment.

Shen Moyan took a closer look and discovered that beneath the cloak was no flesh-and-blood body, but a hollow skeleton, with two points of ghostly blue Soul-fire leaping within its eye sockets.

This was the Ferryman Cen Boliang had contacted, an ancient existence wandering the forgotten routes between the past and present.

Shen Moyan restrained his aura and held the bone plate token, which felt cold to the touch, in his hand.

He did not speak, but simply held the bone plate out in front of him.

The Ferryman's skeletal head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees without a sound, the ghostly blue Soul-fire looking at the bone plate in Shen Moyan's hand.

After a moment of dead silence, it raised a hand that was nothing but white bone and pointed toward the ship's gunwale.

No words, no questions; the transaction was reached in silence.

Shen Moyan tapped his toes lightly, his figure floating up like a falling leaf and landing steadily on the deck of the ancient ship.

The ship didn't even sway in the slightest.

The moment he boarded, the light from the gray lantern seemed to flicker slightly.

The skeletal Ferryman then turned around completely and walked to the stern, its bone hands grasping a similarly ancient punting pole.

The tip of the pole probed into the dark lake water, noiseless.

In the next moment, the ancient ship began to move slowly.

As if sliding into an invisible membrane, the ship's hull began to blur, and the surrounding scenery began to distort and stretch.

The cave walls, the glowing moss, the pitch-black lake water... everything faded rapidly from view.

In its place, countless bizarre lines and blocks of color flowed frantically outside the ship, as if they had sailed into a tunnel composed of pure space-time turbulence.

Subconsciously, Shen Moyan opened his Heavenly Demon Eye.

The chaotic blocks of color and lines that originally filled his vision and caused dizziness were stripped of their layers of disguise under his gaze.

Shen Moyan's eyes widened.

This was a scene he would never forget in his life.

Among those blocks of color, some were as fierce as stars, filled with pure light and fire in a purgatory; others were as dark as an abyss, with indescribable giant shadows lurking in the dead silence.

Some were full of vitality, with the outlines of mountains, rivers, and living beings vaguely visible, light and shadow intertwining, birth and death without end.

Others were fragmented, like crushed glass, pulled behind as the ship moved, as if falling into eternal nothingness... Each streak of light flying past was actually a world of a different form!

No, to put it another way.

planes—these were all planes!