A Guide to Self-Rescue in the Cultivation World - Chapter 37

The darkness didn’t last long.

The distorted delusion shifted, and when light hit Zhou Suyao’s eyelids again, she opened her eyes to a battlefield as gruesome as hell.

Scorched earth, scattered farming tools, and… contorted, wide-eyed corpses.

These bodies were dressed in simple, coarse cloth, clearly just ordinary villagers.

She and the boy stood in this mountain of corpses and sea of bl00d. Their own clothes had somehow changed into rough cotton soaked with mud and bl00d.

The boy’s face was pale, his body trembling slightly, his eyes filled with infinite fear and confusion, yet he still stood in front of her.

What is this place?”

The boy was clearly terrified, his voice laced with tears.

The younger Zhou Suyao was just as scared. She desperately suppressed the scream in her throat, looking around in bewilderment.

The sky was dark. Smoke, bloodstains, and streaks of various lights flashing across the horizon made it impossible to see clearly.

Just as she was lost, an angry roar exploded in the sky.

“Female Yin! Why are you so stubbornly misguided!”

Zhou Suyao flinched at the sound, quickly looking up to find the source.

Before she could locate it, the voice continued.

“Drawing on the Human Dao’s spiritual energy to aid our ascension is the rule of Heaven and Earth. What’s wrong with that?! Do you insist on defying the heavens and opposing the entire Spiritual Dao?!”

Zhou Suyao finally saw the scene in the sky, but she quickly recoiled in horror.

High in the air, several celestial lords, their white robes flowing and surrounded by powerful spiritual energy, were besieging a single figure.

The besieged figure was a woman. Her white robe was mostly stained with bl00d, her disheveled hair flew in the wind, and her face was paper-white. The streaks of bl00d at the corners of her mouth signaled her desperate situation.

Yet, her eyes were shining.

They were beautiful eyes, with upturned corners that were utterly captivating, but they held an almost insane determination and profound compassion.

“Rule? Defying the heavens?” The woman, known as the Female Yin, had a clear voice filled with endless mockery and indignation. Her robes fluttered as she blocked an attack with a sweep of her sleeve.

“Humans are human, and gods are also human! You treat human lives as grass to refine your so-called Great Dao! Is this truly Heaven’s mandate, or a lie you fabricated for your selfish desires?”

Her challenge was resounding, like thunder from the heavens.

One of the sparse-haired elders wanted to admonish her, his face showing a look of self-righteousness: “Female Yin, you are the legitimate daughter of a Spiritual Dao Lord. You should know that the Spiritual Dao has persisted like this for thousands of years! If your father hadn’t discovered that human spiritual energy could aid in ascension, neither you nor I would be here today! Stop, Female Yin! How can something done by ten thousand people be wrong?”

“Those are pretty words! Yes… There are tens of thousands of Spiritual Dao cultivators, but… There are countless actual, true humans in the Human Dao!! You say what ten thousand people do can’t be wrong, but is what ten thousand people do always right? Why are you unwilling to listen to the lament of tens of millions of people!”

“Incorrigible!” another Lord shouted. Terrifying dark magic instantly coalesced in his hand, slamming directly down toward the Female Yin.

“Since you claim martyrdom for humans, then you shall turn to dust and have your soul scattered along with them!”

The attacks from the Lords of the Spiritual Dao were absolute and merciless. Though the Female Yin looked on the verge of collapse, she still erupted with astonishing power.

However, her power was not for killing the enemy, but for protecting the souls yet to dissipate on the land below her.

The sheer destructive magic forced Zhou Suyao and the boy to stumble backward. The boy clung desperately to her wrist, closing his eyes in terror, but still positioning himself in front of her.

Zhou Suyao’s eyes were wide behind the boy. She watched the Female Yin being wounded again and again in the siege, her bl00d raining down across the sky.

Yet, she did not retreat a single step.

She stubbornly resisted the attacks of the gods until she was utterly exhausted. She looked down at the devastated land below, slowly closed her eyes, and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

When she reopened them, only absolute resolve remained.

If I can’t stop you, then let’s all be destroyed together.

She murmured in a low voice.

The next moment, a brilliant light burst forth from her body.

The light was not an attack, but destruction.

She was destroying her own foundation.

“No! She’s going to self-detonate!”

The gods cried out in alarm, frantically trying to retreat.

But it was already too late.

The spiritual power unleashed by the Female Yin’s self-detonation instantly swept through the entire world.

In that blinding light, Zhou Suyao saw the Female Yin’s body shatter inch by inch.

But in the very center of that body, a golden core like her original elixir did not perish with the self-detonation. Instead, it struggled free from the Female Yin, and, as if alive, flew slowly toward Zhou Suyao.

Zhou Suyao stared blankly as the golden light flew toward her. A clash of cold and scorching heat instantly swept through her body.

But before she could react!

One of the Spiritual Dao Lords, slightly injured by the Female Yin’s self-detonation, seemed to spot the golden elixir flying towards Zhou Suyao. A fierce, malevolent look flashed in his eyes.

Ignoring his injuries, he gathered his spiritual energy. Immediately, a powerful black stream of light slammed directly at Zhou Suyao, attempting to seize the elixir.

The attack was too fast and too sudden.

A god’s magic was impossible for a mortal to resist.

Just as the harm was about to strike her, the boy beside her suddenly shoved her aside, shielding her with his mortal body.

“No!!”

Zhou Suyao didn’t even have time to feel fear; she only instinctively reached out, trying to pull him back.

But it was all too late.

The boy turned his head, looking back at her with a smile.

Zhou Suyao froze.

She suddenly realized she had never noticed before how much the boy resembled Eldest Senior Brother.

The same gentle eyebrows and eyes, the same aloofness of an exiled immortal.

But this was no time for frivolous thoughts. She quickly stood up, wrapped her arms around the boy, and turned, shielding him in her embrace.

The expected pain did not arrive.

Instead.

“Puff!”

A sound of suppressed coughing up bl00d was heard.

Zhou Suyao snapped her eyes open, seeing that the spiritual energy aimed at her had been violently repelled the moment it touched an invisible barrier in front of her body.

The attacking Lord could only watch in disbelief as his fatal blow was reflected at him with greater ferocity. Before he could react, the spiritual energy that originated from himself fiercely pierced through his chest.

The savage expression on his face instantly froze, replaced by infinite panic and confusion.

He seemed unable to comprehend what had happened. Bl00d gushed from his chest like a spring, and his body swayed, falling straight backward.

With a heavy thud, his corpse slammed onto the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Then, there was silence.

The sudden turn of events happened too quickly for anyone to react. Even the other Spiritual Dao cultivators looked bewildered.

Zhou Suyao stood where she was, unharmed. She looked down blankly at her hands, then at the lifeless body on the ground.

She had no idea what had just happened.

However, as she stood there in confusion, she suddenly noticed a flash of golden light swirling around her chest.

The light was fleeting. Before she could clearly see it, it sank into her chest.

Instantly, a surge of overwhelming power rushed through her entire body. Countless fragmented memories flashed through her mind.

These were her three mortal lives.

She wasn’t the Spiritual Dao’s salvation. She was merely a girl barely clinging to life that the Female Yin’s reluctant spiritual elixir found amidst the mountains of corpses and seas of bl00d after her self-detonation.

That village girl was her.

Not Zhou Suyao, but another nameless girl born of suffering.

The girl standing here right now.

The Female Yin’s last ounce of power chose not a powerful cultivator but the most humble mortal.

But this power didn’t save her directly. In the first life, she couldn’t even protect the little boy beside her.

The girl ultimately couldn’t escape the cruel killing by the Spiritual Dao cultivators. After her death, the elixir protected her, but her mortal body perished, leaving only a wisp of her soul to be swept into the torrent of reincarnation.

Her first life was brief and painful.

She opened her eyes again, and the scene before her abruptly changed.

She saw the familiar Chengxian Dao, saw Master, Second Senior Brother, and Third Senior Brother.

And Wangcai (her dog) is circling happily beside her.

And, Eldest Senior Brother.

In this life, she was Zhou Suyao.

Perhaps due to the lingering compassion of her past life, when she learned that Eldest Senior Brother was fighting for the Spiritual Dao cultivators, she directly engaged him in battle.

That fierce battle lasted three days and three nights.

Heaven and Earth seemed to be torn apart. Zhou Suyao was no match for Eldest Senior Brother, even after destroying her own foundation.

In her daze, a voice appeared behind Eldest Senior Brother. The speaker was adorned with countless gold and silver accessories, dazzling brilliantly.

He seemed completely out of place next to the two battered fighters.

But this person gently placed his hand on Eldest Senior Brother’s bl00d-stained head.

“Xun Dan, now, use the spiritual power I gave you. Kill her.”

She looked up and saw Eldest Senior Brother’s eyes, once like an exiled immortal’s, were now filled with nothing but killing intent.

A sharp sword pierced her heart.

She heard Wangcai charge forward, sinking its teeth fiercely into Eldest Senior Brother’s wrist.

The Eldest Senior Brother cried out, savagely kicking Wangcai away.

Wangcai whimpered. Before long, its life, too, faded.

Carrying endless regret and fury, she closed her eyes once more.

In this life, she had seemingly touched the edge of her mission but had failed to complete it.

Darkness descended again.

This time, she was an ordinary modern girl.

No magic, no cultivation, just the repetitive existence of a mundane life.

But she found that she could always see things that others couldn’t.

She didn’t know why.

In this life, the power of the Spiritual Dao was subtly hidden, attempting to regulate the Human Dao with its rules.

The false peace made Wangcai realize that she needed her back.

So, Wangcai tried countless times, attempting to cross the river of time and find her.

To find Zhou Suyao.

Fortunately, it succeeded in bringing her back.

Although the Zhou Suyao of that time had lost all memory of the Spiritual Dao, it didn’t matter.

Wangcai believed its little mistress could do it.

This was her third reincarnation.

The third time is the charm. The annihilation of the Human Dao was imminent, and this was her last chance.

If she failed to save the Spiritual Dao from the second life, she and all of humanity would live under the oppression of the so-called gods in the modern world a thousand years later.

But humans, more than those sanctimonious gods, deserved to live in this world.

Didn’t they?

It was time for her to be the savior.

The torrent of memories came to an abrupt halt.