603: Chapter 603 Qingyan

The man's gaze stared fixedly at the xuantian ring; in his glazed pupils, a flash of complex emotion appeared—shock, vigilance, and even a hint of madness found in the desperation of clutching at a lifeline.

"My name is... Qing Yan." The man spoke intermittently. His soul body seemed extremely unstable within the light screen; every time he opened his mouth, several pale cyan light spots peeled off him and dissipated. "I was once... an Elder of the Soul Cultivator of the Spirit Race's Qiming Sect."

Su Ming did not relax his vigilance, nor did he rush to speak. Instead, he gripped the natal formation plate tightly and communicated rapidly with Lin Yu in his Sea of Consciousness.

"Master, he says he is an Elder of the Spirit Race's Qiming Sect. What do you think?" Su Ming asked in his heart.

"Qiming Sect?" Lin Yu snorted coldly, his soul body wandering uneasily inside the ring. "Kid, you can't even trust the punctuation in what a dead person says! Keep your distance and fish for information first. We are in the dark while he is in the light; he doesn't know of my existence. This is our greatest information advantage!"

Su Ming agreed deeply. He raised his head, looking calmly at the remnant soul of Qing Yan in mid-air. His voice was neither servile nor overbearing, but it carried a cold indifference that kept others at a distance.

"Junior Su Ming, Disciple of the Cloud Hidden Sect's Formation Peak. Since you are an Elder of the Spirit Race, why are you trapped in the Guixu Hall of our Human Race's Great Yan Dynasty in the form of this remnant soul?"

When Qing Yan heard the three words "Cloud Hidden Sect," a flash of confusion crossed his eyes; he seemed to have no impression of this Sect. But when he heard "Great Yan Dynasty," his illusory face suddenly twisted in pain.

"Great Yan... Emperor Yan Wuji..."

Qing Yan's voice suddenly rose, carrying an indelible hatred and sorrow. "That madman... that respectable yet pathetic madman!"

Qing Yan's soul body began to tremble violently, and the surrounding light screen rippled intensely. He seemed to have fallen into some tragic memory, his voice becoming intermittent but exploding in the stone room.

"You ask me... why I am trapped here?"

"Because I... came to save your Human Race! And I also came to save my Spirit Race!"

Qing Yan suddenly raised his head, his glazed pupils staring fixedly at Su Ming, as if wanting to carve these words into his Soul.

"The Spirit Race civil war... the Dark Current Faction won. Those lunatics, in order to obtain more powerful strength, wanted to open the passage between the two worlds, using the vigorous Earth Vein Qi of your Human Race to... to release the calamity sealed in the Abandoned Land!"

"They slaughtered all the tribesmen of the Qiming Sect who advocated peaceful coexistence with the Human Race. I am one of the last... survivors."

Qing Yan's voice was filled with endless sorrow.

"The Dark Current Faction disguised themselves as envoys of our Qiming Sect and contacted Emperor Yan Wuji. They used a fake Formation Legacy as bait, promising to help the Great Yan Dynasty build a cross-world teleportation Formation and bring in the Spirit Race army to help him unify the world... That madman, he believed it!"

Su Ming's heart skipped a beat upon hearing this.

Building a world gate! Could the "World" character that Emperor Yan Wuji imprinted with the national fortune be for building this world gate that invited a wolf into the house?!

"The moment the world gate was built..." Qing Yan's soul body grew dimmer, and the pale cyan light spots dissipated faster and faster. "I risked my life to infiltrate the Great Yan, paying the price of having my Physical Body destroyed, broke through the blockade of the Dark Current Faction, and came before Emperor Yan Wuji to tell him the truth."

"I told him... once the world gate opens, what he will welcome is not reinforcements, but the calamity of the Abandoned Land that will turn the entire Great Yan, and even the entire Human Race Cultivation World, into Hell!"

There was a deathly silence in the stone room, with only Qing Yan's hoarse voice echoing.

Both Su Ming and Lin Yu felt the suffocating weight of that history buried by time at this moment.

Emperor Yan Wuji, that crazy emperor who did not hesitate to use the Great Yan's national fortune to imprint the Heavenly Dao remnant symbol. When he learned that the world gate he had exhausted his life's efforts to build was actually a passage to Hell, what kind of despair did he face?

"And then?" Su Ming's voice was a bit dry, and he couldn't help but ask.

Because he knew the ending of history—the Great Yan Dynasty was wiped out by the joint efforts of several Nascent Soul experts of the Cultivation World. If the world gate had really opened and the calamity had descended, then the Great Yan would definitely not have been destroyed so simply.

Qing Yan looked at Su Ming, and a complex look appeared in his glazed pupils.

"And then..."

Qing Yan laughed miserably. "Then, those Nascent Soul experts of your Human Race joined forces and killed their way over, wiping the Great Yan completely off the map."

"At that time, the world gate had already finished charging, and it only needed one last step to be completely opened."

"The envoys of the Dark Current Faction were crazily urging Emperor Yan Wuji on the other side of the world gate; as long as he pressed that Formation eye, the Spirit Race army would descend and help him kill all those Nascent Soul Cultivators, protecting his Dynasty!"

Qing Yan's voice trembled violently.

"But he didn't."

"Emperor Yan Wuji, that madman... he stood in front of the world gate, watching the overwhelming Nascent Soul Spells smashing toward his Imperial Capital, watching his people wailing in the flames of war."

"He personally... destroyed the core Formation eye of the world gate."

Qing Yan closed his eyes, and two lines of illusory tears slid down his cheeks. "He destroyed the life's work he had spent his whole life on, and also cut off the conspiracy of the Dark Current Faction. He would rather let the Great Yan Dynasty be completely destroyed in this catastrophe, slaughtered by the Nascent Soul Cultivators, than open that door to Hell."

"He said... he was the Emperor of Great Yan. Great Yan could fall, but the Foundation of the Human Race could not be broken in his hands."

In the xuantian ring, there was a long silence.

Lin Yu's soul body, which had been flickering constantly due to vigilance, suddenly became strangely quiet at this moment.

"This old emperor..." Lin Yu's voice sounded in Su Ming's Sea of Consciousness, without his usual banter and complaints, but instead carrying a rare solemnity. "He looked like an irresponsible madman on ordinary days, but before he died, he acted as a true Emperor for once. Using the life of one clan to exchange for peace in the world, this deal... even I have to say I admire it."

Su Ming's fingertips trembled slightly.

He remembered the handwriting he saw on that gold foil earlier—"Some things are not for humans to change!"

So, that was not the despair of a failed Formation deduction, but the blood-weeping cry of Emperor Yan Wuji's heart when facing the ultimate choice between "preserving the Dynasty" and "destroying the world"!

He chose to destroy himself. But he preserved this land.

"After I told him the truth, I was hunted down by experts of the Dark Current Faction on my way back to the Spirit Race." Qing Yan's voice grew weaker and weaker, and his legs had begun to become illusory, turning into specks of cyan light and dissipating into the air. "My Physical Body was completely destroyed, leaving only a remnant soul, which escaped into the remnant Formation of this Guixu Hall. I have been trapped here for thousands of years, surviving on the weak Spiritual Qi remaining in the Formation..."

"Now, I have reached my limit and am about to dissipate completely."