100: Chapter 100: The Boundary Wall

The 190th Year of Hanyuan.

Su Yu was two hundred and three years old.

First-Grade Golden Core Great Perfection.

A Cultivator with a First-Grade Golden Core has a lifespan of fully five thousand years.

For Su Yu, two hundred years was merely the beginning of a long life.

But for the Mortals of this world, two hundred years was enough for earth-shattering changes.

And in the nearly two hundred years since Su Yu ascended the throne, the changes that had occurred in this world were more than could be described by the passage of time.

Around the 80th year of Hanyuan, the last batch of openly active demons globally had completely disappeared.

No one knew where they had gone.

There was no final decisive battle, no doomsday "Great Purge".

They were like the ebbing tide, disappearing silently from the map of this world.

Some were burned to death in the Spiritual Qi storm of the Mortal Self-Severing Method.

Some collapsed on their own after the Devilish Qi dried up.

Some were finished off by Mortals' hoes while fleeing.

Others quietly flew away one night and never returned.

In any case, they were gone.

All gone.

The shadow that had pressed down on the heads of Mortals for tens of thousands of years just dissipated like that.

No Mortal could say exactly which day it had dissipated.

Just as when dawn arrives, no one can say exactly at which moment the night ends.

It just slowly faded, dissipated, and then the sky brightened.

...

The world after dawn was a beautiful world.

Blue skies, white clouds, fresh air.

Spiritual Veins were unblocked, Spiritual Rain was abundant, and the mountains and rivers had recovered the clarity and beauty of the ancient era.

The lifespan of Mortals was nearly double that of the demon era.

When children ran under the sunlight, the color on their faces was rosy, no longer the gray decay caused by the erosion of Devilish Qi.

When the elderly sat in front of their doors basking in the sun, they no longer needed to fear that people from the Zhenfu Division would come knocking in the middle of the night.

The crops in the fields grew a head taller than before.

The land nourished by Spiritual Qi had several times the fertility of the demon era.

The markets were bustling with noise, merchants traveled north and south, and the products of various countries gathered in the new cities of Great Li, then flowed from there to every corner of the world.

Everything was developing in a beautiful direction.

And the one thing that made the Mortals of this world feel happiest was that they no longer had to die.

The Mortal Self-Severing Method was not forgotten.

It still existed in everyone's memory, and the incantations were still passed down from generation to generation.

But it was no longer a weapon.

It had become a Legacy, a memorial, a spiritual totem to remind future generations.

Every year on the Winter Solstice, Mortals all over the world would spontaneously hold memorial ceremonies.

Not to worship Heaven, not to worship gods.

But to honor those who sat before the Black Iron Spire and closed their eyes.

Those who used their own lives to trade back the blue sky.

And in these nearly two hundred years, Su Yu's status had also undergone a qualitative change.

He was no longer just the Emperor of Great Li.

He was the Emperor of the whole world.

This had happened so naturally that there was almost no resistance.

When Mortals of various countries learned that the creator of the Mortal Self-Severing Method was Su Yu, the Emperor of Great Li.

The gratitude in their hearts for this name had already transcended all barriers of national borders and races.

And when they heard that Great Li was developing rapidly under Su Yu's rule, where everyone could eat their fill, have their own fields, and have their own houses.

Submission became a matter of course.

Who wouldn't want to live such a life?

Thus, one after another, the restored nations took the initiative to send envoys to Great Li.

Not to negotiate, not to sign treaties.

They came to request annexation.

Su Yu did not need to send troops, did not need to apply pressure, and did not even need to speak.

Those Mortals came on their own.

Su Yu did not decline either.

Because he knew better than anyone that this world needed a unified order.

Scattered small countries each governing themselves would sooner or later repeat the same mistakes.

Not the mistakes of demons, but the mistakes of humanity itself.

Fighting for power and profit, meeting with weapons, the law of the jungle.

What demons had done, humans themselves could also do.

Su Yu would absolutely not let this happen.

He spent over a hundred years incorporating the entire world into a unified system.

Unified laws, unified tax systems, unified weights and measures, and a unified postal road network.

Differences in various regions still existed.

Culture, language, customs—these things did not need to be unified, nor should they be.

But the bottom line was consistent.

No bullying Mortals, no engaging in that Blood Tribute nonsense, and no allowing anyone to live like livestock in the demon era again.

Whoever dared to violate this, Su Yu would handle it personally.

The cultivation of a First-Grade Golden Core Great Perfection was already the undisputed Peak combat power in this world.

No one could challenge his authority.

But what truly made the whole world submit willingly was not his cultivation.

It was the real, tangible good life he brought to every Mortal.

Two hundred years of governance had pushed Su Yu's humanistic Luck to a terrifying height.

The faith of tens of billions of Mortals worldwide, like an endless river, poured into his body day and night.

This power allowed his Golden Core to continue being polished on the foundation of the First-Grade Great Perfection, and its thickness was a hundred times that of his third life!

But right now, Su Yu had one more important matter to confirm.

He left the capital alone.

Su Yu did not tell anyone where he was going.

He simply left an edict on the desk in the Imperial Study, letting the Chief Grand Secretary handle state affairs.

Su Yu had been on the throne for two hundred years and had long established a perfect system for selecting and employing the virtuous.

Officials in the court, regardless of their background, were appointed based on merit; those capable rose to power.

The Chief Grand Secretary was nominated by the ministers of various departments and approved by the Emperor, changing every five years, with no consecutive terms.

Now, the operation of the Empire no longer relied on any one person's Bloodline.

Su Yu was the Emperor, but he did not need to do everything himself.

Two hundred years of institutional construction had long allowed this Empire to operate on its own.

He could leave with peace of mind for a period of time.

Because he was going to a place.

A place he had sensed for a long time but had never personally visited.

The World Barrier.

...

Su Yu left the capital and headed north all the way.

The further north he went, the thinner the smoke and fire of humanity became.

At first, beneath his feet was still the most prosperous hinterland of Great Li.

Cities were lined up like scales, Spiritual fields stretched as far as the eye could see, and the clamor of the markets could be faintly heard from above the clouds.

Further north, the prosperity gradually faded, and the cities thinned out into small border towns.

Still further north, even the small towns disappeared, leaving only vast mountains and uninhabited wilderness.

In the end, there was only an eternally frozen, extremely cold snowfield left in the world.

This was the northernmost end of Great Li, and also the end of inhabited places in this world.

The wind and snow wailed, and everything was silent.

Su Yu slowed down, slowly descended from the clouds, and stepped onto the vast snowfield.

He did not fly anymore.

Instead, step by step, with deep and shallow footprints, he walked toward the direction he had sensed for a full two hundred years.

Two hundred years.

From the day he ascended the throne, he had been able to faintly sense the existence of this place.

It was a sense of dissonance that was extremely weak but always lingered on the edge of his Divine Sense.

He always felt that the last unsolved mystery of this world was hidden there.

But for these two hundred years, he was busy governing the world, busy letting hundreds of millions of Mortals live like human beings, and could never spare the time.

Or perhaps, it was because he always... did not want to face it.

As if as long as he did not look, that dissonance did not exist, and the peace of this world was perfect and flawless.

Now, his Golden Core was at Great Perfection, and his governance was complete.

There was nothing left that could be an excuse for his delay.

The wind and snow grew more urgent, blowing his Dragon robe until it rustled.

He did not know how long he walked, but Su Yu's footsteps finally stopped.

Directly in front of him, at the end of the snowfield, in the Void Realm.

A huge crack that did not belong to this world was suspended.

The crack was silent, like a scar that had been forcibly frozen halfway through healing.

Deep within the gap, a faint, murky dark red color seeped out.

The World Barrier.

Su Yu raised his head and stood silently before it for a long time.

He had finally come after all.