Cohabitation with Sword Spirit

Chapter 510 - 11: Before Yanqi Cliff

Behind a shattered mirror, a new world flows out like a river, the first sight being an enormous gray barrier that reaches the sky and ground.

It covers almost the entire field of vision, blocking everything in the world, both left and right, up and down.

"This is Huiyan Pass, named with the meaning that even migrating birds would have to turn back in despair when encountering such a pass. In fact, this barrier has indeed blocked us for two thousand years, until... the two Deans of Cyan Lotus Sword Academy joined forces to finally break through the first barrier, revealing Yanqi Cliff behind. Unfortunately, they failed to notice the danger behind the pass, and due to the resonance triggered by the Sword Seal on Yanqi Cliff, they ultimately didn’t make it back alive."

While listening to the Sect Leader of the Saint Sect, Wang Jiu involuntarily fell into recollection.

This gray barrier is not Huiyan Pass at all.

Rather, it is a fortress created with all might by the Myriad Immortals Alliance during the Immortal-Demon War, with the mythical walls named "Broken Immortal" reputed to sever time and space and isolate two worlds. At that time, the leaders of the Myriad Immortals Alliance pinned their hopes for survival on this wall.

On one hand, they commanded the immortals of Jiuzhou with the Jiuzhou Seal to fight desperately on the front lines, while on the other, they gathered resources to build the Central State Fortress, hoping to win a slim chance of survival with the Broken Immortal.

Objectively speaking, the design of the Central State Fortress was exquisitely ingenious. The elder figures of the Myriad Immortals Alliance, in the last few years of their lives, burst out with unprecedented creativity and execution. Those ingenious ideas, far surpassing the standards of the era, emerged one after another, eventually becoming the blueprint for a fortress that could be deemed perfect.

From the perspective of the Celestial Divine Sword, the exquisite design of the Central State Fortress is only one grade less satisfactory. If the Celestial Divine Sword represents a miraculous score of 100, the Central State Fortress could at least score 85.

If it could truly be built, perhaps the course of history would be vastly different. The Demon Emperor’s power was overwhelming, yet he might not have been willing to waste too much energy tearing through the Broken Immortal, for there were several human combat bases behind Central State at the time. While the Demon Emperor was rampaging the rear, the Myriad Immortals Alliance could activate the escape devices in the fortress, sever connections between Central State and the other eight states, completely hiding themselves within Chaos.

The elders of the Myriad Immortals Alliance named it the Fire Seed Plan, sacrificing the vast majority of humanity to preserve the fire seed of civilization, hoping to find a new home after thousands of years of chaotic drifting and begin anew.

Objectively, this plan had some feasibility, yet under the collaboration of the Jiu Immortal Venerables and the Nameless Sword God, the Central State Fortress was never completed; it halted after the first phase of construction, most resources diverted to the Blood Sacrifice Sword Pool scheme. Ultimately, the Jiu Immortal Venerables summoned the invincible Celestial Divine Sword, leading the immortals to a tragic victory in the Immortal-Demon War, obliterating the world-destroying demon calamity. Naturally, the Central State Fortress never initiated the drifting procedure — the entire Central State was shattered by the decisive battle.

Now this Huiyan Pass is nothing more than a fragment of the long Broken Immortal city wall, partially built in earlier times.

Listening to Wang Jiu recount the history of the Immortal-Demon War intermittently, the Sect Leader sighed, "I knew this Huiyan Pass must be a fragment of some great miracle, still possessing a divine wonder far transcending the Xiangzhou era despite the millennia of chaotic baptism. We spent two thousand years without breakthrough on this fragment, finding a small door by mere chance to bypass the barrier."

As he spoke, the Sect Leader prepared to lead the way to the small door opened by Dean Cyan Lotus.

But Wang Jiu was a step ahead, flying towards the top of the barrier: "Here it is."

Seeing Wang Jiu’s unwavering figure, the Sect Leader sighed again, "... Even though your identity was never in doubt, it’s at this moment that one feels truly that you are indeed a senior from the Primordial Era."

A small door discovered after two thousand years by the people of Xiangzhou was crystal clear in the eyes of the people from the Jiuzhou of the past. The Broken Immortal city wall only completed one phase of construction; the final sealing procedure wasn’t completed, meaning this is just a construction site.

Being a construction site, naturally, a small door is left for workers, and the small door discovered by the Saint Sect was the workers’ passage back then.

Moments later, the Celestial Divine Sword had already flown several hundred yards high, yet the barrier overhead still had no edge in sight.

"Yes... this is the place."

As he spoke, Wang Jiu extended the Divine Sword Body forward.

The gray barrier, like an illusion, was directly passed through.

With a simple traversal, with no thickness experienced, Wang Jiu arrived in the world beyond the wall.

The exterior wall of the Central State Fortress, the Broken Immortal, inherently has no thickness yet is shockingly miles thick in legend. Without special pathways, breaking through by brute force is as unreachable as digging into the earth’s core. This was the reason no findings were made in two thousand years of exploration by the people of Xiangzhou.

Having bypassed the workers’ passage, Wang Jiu arrived beyond the city wall ahead of time.

Then, he saw Yanqi Cliff as the Sect Leader mentioned; it seemed like a resting spot for migrating geese that had crossed a hard pass. A broad open space appeared ahead, smooth and flat like a mirror, but the mirror was carved with myriad intersecting markings, making the entire surface mottled and variegated.

Moreover, this mirror surface was vertical.

Just as its name suggests, Yanqi Cliff is a vertical and steep cliff. Although it doesn’t reach the sky and ground like Huiyan Pass, its summit is high and unreachable.

The reason migrating geese can rest is...

After crossing the wall, the direction of gravity changes, with the mirror surface ahead producing a strong attraction, pulling everything towards it inexorably.

"Senior, please be careful!"

Behind him, the Sect Leader of the Saint Sect stabilized his body to avoid being caught by gravity, while reminding Wang Jiu to be cautious.

"The previous two deans, they were..."

"I know, caught off guard and drawn in by the Sword Seal, which triggered a chain reaction... It’s a common mistake when clearing a battlefield. However, the Sword Seal around here has already been activated once, and it won’t happen a second time in a short period. After all, these are all dead objects now."

As Wang Jiu spoke, the Divine Sword Body had already touched Yanqi Cliff. The next moment, the Illusion Sword Technique was activated, summoning the Sword Spirit True Form. He waved to the Sect Leader: "Come over."

The Sect Leader was silent for a moment, then flew towards Wang Jiu.

"Are you familiar with this area, Senior?"

Wang Jiu said, "I barely have any memory of it. When the battlefield shifted here, the battle had already reached a fever pitch, and my memory started to fragment. But just by looking at this scene, it’s easy to understand everything that happened here."

As he spoke, Wang Jiu gently traced a white mark beneath him with the White Sword Body.

In the next moment, countless invisible fragments surged from the void, transforming into vivid memories.

It was a violent and speechless battle. The two combatants were the top figures in the Myriad Realms, with tens of thousands of spells intertwining at every instant, each capable of disturbing time and space, turning a moment into a long century.

Powers sufficient to overturn all laws and shake higher planes of existence continued to clash, again and again, in this narrow battlefield...

"I see, Yanqi Cliff... is just the remnant of this battlefield." Wang Jiu said as he kept tapping lightly on the smooth surface beneath him, each tap producing a crisp sound, yet it made the Sect Leader increasingly uneasy.

"In the records sent back by Dean Cyan Lotus, this area is particularly sensitive..."

"No worries, this place was originally a dead land, just remnants. The sensitivity comes from a layer of silt deposited over thousands of years. Now that the silt has been cleared, it’s temporarily safe."

"Silt?"

Recalling the stunning Sword Seal resonance in the images sent back by the two Cyan Lotus deans, the Sect Leader found it hard to associate it with the word silt.

"Could you please explain in more detail, Senior?"

Wang Jiu pondered for a moment: "With your level of insight, it’s difficult to explain in words, so I’ll show you a flowchart instead."

With that, Wang Jiu used the Illusion Sword Technique to present scenes to the Sect Leader.

The first was the construction site of the Central State Fortress during the Jiuzhou Era.

Behind the Broken Immortal Wall was a vast ocean, like a moat in the Mortal World during the Ancient Era, except this moat was inside the city walls.

"This is the mother liquid of the Broken Immortal, a complete ecological cycle system on its own, used to maintain the everlasting nature of the Broken Immortal. As long as the mother liquid doesn’t dry up, the Broken Immortal can hardly be broken by brute force, and the ecological cycle speed of this mother liquid is extremely fast, able to draw power from the void and nearly impossible to dry up. Combined, these form the indestructible Central State Fortress."

The Sect Leader nodded, trying to accept the Celestial Sword Spirit’s fantastical explanation with an open mind.

The next image was of the land behind the vast ocean. This picture resembled a construction site, with metal puppets as massive as mountains, weaving creatures stretching hundreds of feet, and countless Immortal Technique Arrays engraved on the land and sky. Thousands of elite cultivators were separated by the vast ocean, commanding tens of times more workers, using Immortal Technique Arrays to construct the walls in the distance. Behind the worksite was a complete city, supplying the daily needs of these workers.

"Similar worksites were twelve in total during the building of the Central State Fortress. This was the largest site, backed by the core Golden Cloud Peak of the Myriad Immortals Alliance, with a city housing over a million people and more than fifty thousand frontline workers. Besides the Broken Immortal City Wall, it was also responsible for constructing multiple key structures of the Central State Fortress and the permanent fortifications of Golden Cloud Peak. However, after the Immortal Demon War, the remnants of such a massive worksite became this Yanqi Cliff."

Looking at the gray sky and earth around, and the smooth surface beneath his feet, the Sect Leader found it hard to imagine what kind of processing would create such a starkly different contrasting world.

He had seen many battlefield relics before, in Xiangzhou, in the Primordial battlefields, but the situation of the Golden Cloud Peak’s relic was something he had never encountered.

"It’s simple, just like this."

In the image, everything started to move, seemingly drawn by an invisible force towards a single point. The ground tore, the sky shattered, and all the grand scenes in the image were ground into infinitely tiny powder, eventually drawn into the central point.

The endless powder finally accumulated into a gigantic sphere, and then a sword light descended from the sky, splitting the sphere into two halves; one side dissipated with a rumbling, while the other left a smooth cross-section, forever suspended in the void.