Nightfall

This was the power of humanity.

It was not the first time Ning Que had sensed its existence. The Headmaster had used this power when he reached out and called the ancient sword from the Sword Garret in the south from tens and thousands of miles away to kill the Golden Dragon and the Divine Guard. Ning Que had also sensed this power in the houses across Yanming Lake.

He did not understand how he could harness this power.

He had once asked the Headmaster about this. The Headmaster said that he was the world and his power was the power of humanity. This answer was simple, but was meaningless to him.

He looked at the bright moon in the night sky and thought of his teacher. He looked at the pine tree at the edge of the cliff and thought of Youngest Uncle. He looked at the blood that flooded the front of Lanke Temple and thought of Lotus.

He thought of his last conversation with his teacher by the Sishui River. So Lotus had been right.

Youngest Uncle was proud and free. He wanted to represent the human realm and pierce the skies as a powerhouse. The Headmaster, on the other hand, believed that he was the human realm. He wanted to lead the world and challenge Haotian.

However, humans resided in the human realm and the power of this realm came from everyone living in it. This power could not be replicated or led. It could only truly be unleashed when everyone came together.

The Headmaster built the Tang Empire and the Academy, and had been on the right path. However, he had only thought of leading the masses through education and uniting the people through this.

Because of his obsession, Lotus did not reach the state attained by the Headmaster and Youngest Uncle. And also because of his obsession, his thoughts became radicalized.

He looked at his wife’s lone grave in the rain and wanted to dig it open. However, he gave up in the end and drifted far away. Lotus went mad from then on.

Afterward, whether it was his destruction of the Devil’s Doctrine or the massacre at Lanke Temple, it was all because he was crazy.

He wanted to destroy the world because he thought that life and death were all pointless.

He planned to use the Devil to go against Heaven, and Tao to follow Heaven and finally made use of Buddhism to reach the other side, a side beyond the three realms, a side beyond average commoners’ knowledge. It was only then he could create a brand new world and wipe off the old world that belonged to the heartless Heaven. It was only then he could go back in time and search for the things in the past.

In other words, he wanted to break the most fundamental rule of the world. He wanted to destroy Haotian, and the method he chose was to have the entire world go mad with him and be destroyed.

This method was bloody and cruel, but also correct.

If Haotian knew that there was someone like him who had come up with such a crazy idea because he wanted his dead wife to come back to life, he would probably start shaking.

When Ning Que was younger, he had brought Sangsang with him and traveled the world. He was not very patient, and when there were things that Sangsang showed the slightest skill in, he drilled a sentence into her incessantly.

“What you can do, do it yourself.”

Then, what should be done by man in the human realm, should be done by everyone.

Ning Que opened his eyes to find that he was still standing on the long snowy street.

He did not know if he had already awakened or if he was still dreaming.

He saw the injured on the street who refused to call out in pain. He looked at the corpses of the ordinary people and at the two injured but determined teens. He understood many things.

Chang’an was not a city. It was a person. It was made up of everyone living in the city.

The power of humanity came from everyone living here.

Tens, hundreds, thousands, tens and thousands, millions of people.

Everyone’s will and desire. This was a power.

The desire of tens and thousands came together to become the power of humanity.

It was extremely powerful and could change the world, able to go against the tide of time.

In Lotus’ hands, this was a bloody tide.

In Youngest Uncle’s hands, it was the sword marks left behind by his sword.

In the Headmaster’s hand, it was the desire to triumph against the Heavens.

But that was not all.

Lotus did not obtain the acceptance of this power. Or perhaps, one could say that he did not have have the opportunity to move it.

Youngest Uncle was unparalleled amongst many, and was thus lonely.

The Headmaster was the teacher of many, but had forgotten that his students were the ones writing their own scripts.

Master Yan Se spent his whole life looking for that character.

The character that represented the power of humanity.

But just as what the Abbey Dean had once said, the word was too heavy.

The desire of tens and thousands of people would definitely be heavy.

Furthermore, how could the desire of tens and thousands be the same?

That was why nobody could write that character.

Not even the Headmaster.

Ning Que had finally seen the word.

He saw the many people on the Vermilion Bird Avenue.

Tens and thousands of ordinary people coming together for a common goal.

Building a new wall with their flesh and blood.

And at this time, these people became a city.

And right now, these tens and thousands of people had the same strong will and desire.

They were part of humanity.

For Chang’an, this was the most desperate and angriest moment.

And the best time to write that character.

Ning Que now needed to consider how he would write the character. Even though he had seen it, it did not mean he could write it. Just like how he had ascended into the old library back then and saw the shelves full of precious classics. He had looked at the characters he had read many times, but could not write or memorize them.

He thought of the three months they had spent on sea and thought of the conversations held with his teacher.

The Headmaster said that Haotian was not the world, but was the collection of the basic rules of the world.

The Headmaster said that when rules control the world, the world would be stable but boring. Only when new forces emerge and break the old rules can the world regain its vitality and be interesting.

The Headmaster said that man was the greatest product of this world because man is wise and can leave behind inheritances. Man had the instinctive will to confront and even break the fundamental rules of the world.

That kind of will was so stubborn and powerful, it could be called a desire.

Therefore, the world and Haotian would inevitably confront each other until a party won.

In the past history of the world, Haotian had won countless victories, and the world had ushered in countless long nights. The wisdom that had been passed down had fallen into the cold Everlasting Night.

But the world would always recover to challenge once again.

It was daytime, so the sky was naturally bright.

The snow falling from the sky was white as well.

The Vermilion Bird Avenue in the storm and snow was completely white.

The blood on the street gradually darkened.

The Tangs laying in puddles of blood all wore dark clothing.

The bricks scattered on the street, the woks and the chamber pots, they were all filthy and black.

Since Haotian had chosen the color white, people would then choose the color black.

The world clearly separated into black and white in Ning Que’s eyes.

Light and darkness, holiness and filth.

The world of black and white produced a simple image in his eyes.

It turned into two absolutely straight lines running parallel and watching each other from a distance, aloof; refusing to come close.

The two lines shortened and lengthened.

This was an image Ning Que was familiar with. It was the first Divine Talisman he learned. It was the Two-Horizontal Talisman.

Following that, a line suddenly turned, piercing into the other line.

This was the second talisman he had learned last night by the lake, the Talisman of “Yi”.

When the two lines met, the two worlds connected, but they could not blend together and thus began a fierce conflict.

A smashing cut occurred, seemingly as if it was about to tear the entire space.

Unlike Master Yan Se’s Jing Fu, which had its own rules and its own areas of calmness, the Talisman of “Yi” spread across the borders, growing like weeds.

The Talisman of “Yi” was very powerful. When they intersected, the two worlds could communicate with each other. There was a sense of endless life, which represented the balance between the world and Haotian.

But this was not what Ning Que wanted, nor was it what Chang’an needed today.

He looked at the Talisman of “Yi” on the snowy streets, and felt as if he had seen several weeds, or two withered branches. It seemed to resemble a chopper that was planted on fertile land.

Two pieces of firewood could not be firmly secured, and one of them slowly collapsed.

Holding the hilt with one hand, he wanted to pull the chopper out of the ground.

A stone with moss appeared suddenly in the weeds.

It was the stone at the bottom of Daming Lake which faced the Devil’s Doctrine’s Front Gate.

Youngest Uncle had carved two sword marks on every rock when he had broken through the stone array tactics.

The two sword marks made up one character.

Ning Que was truly awakened by then.

He was no stranger to such a situation. He had similar experiences in the Front Gate of the Devil’s Doctrine when he saw the sword marks Youngest Uncle had left behind and also when he faced the stone Buddha statue at Lanke Temple.

He had not been buried in his thoughts for long today, while on the snowy street. However, he had gained plenty. Even if some of his ideas could not be used right now, if he survived, they would be the most valuable treasures he had gained on his cultivation journey.

He knew that some things had already happened.

Then, he heard second uncle Chao’s cursing.

Following that, he heard the Abbey Dean ask Eldest Brother, “When has Heaven ever spared anyone?”

He had heard this before.

Lotus had once said the same to him at the Front Gate of the Devil’s Doctrine.

Back then, his answer had been that mankind would triumph over the Heavens. They did not have to be spared.

But he did not wish to answer as he did today.

Between the Abbey Dean and himself, were a few hundred citizens who were old and weak, including the women and the children.

To him, these people were tens and thousands of people.

He looked into the Abbey Dean’s eyes across the tens and thousands and said, “If Heaven does not abide, we will have to destroy it.”

Compared to his answer to Lotus, his answer today was calmer and more certain.

It was not because he was confident that he could defeat the Abbey Dean, and nor was he trying to show his arrogance. It was because he had finally understood, which was why he was calm.

It was because the freedom that human hearts desired would not be allowed by the Heavens, so they could only destroy the Heavens.

It was something they had to do no matter whether they won or lost.

And they were doing it because it had to be done. This was the Academy’s logic.

With that, he held the hilt of his blade and prepared to pull his podao from the ground.

This movement caused the liquid that was churning in his abdomen to wildly burst out. It sprayed in all directions, and the Great Spirit grew quickly and spread like weeds.

Chang’an City sensed the change on the snowy street.

A vast amount of Heaven and Earth’s Qi fell with the storm and snow through the array eye pestle and into his body.

His aura suddenly changed and began to climb up to the peak of the Knowing Destiny State.