The Path Toward Heaven

Jing Jiu floated upwards from the bottom of the green pond. He saw a few disappearing skeletons that produced bubbles in the pond, then a face.

To put it more precisely, it was a skinny face with resentment, anger and despair on its face.

A formidable and highly achieved deviant swordsman ended up as the food of a certain divine animal that felt bored. This was of course an unacceptable humiliation.

The skinny face rose and ebbed a few times in the pond before fading away.

Seeing the scene, Jing Jiu’s expression remained the same. He kept on floating upwards to the surface of the pond, heaving his iron sword in his hand as he arrived by the edge of the pond.

The iron sword had been left in the pond for three years. It was almost a miracle that it didn’t vanish without a trace; instead, the rust on its shaft had reduced a great deal. The burning scars from the fire that lasted six years in the snowland had been smoothened out by the pond water. Yet, this didn’t make the iron sword look like a shining silvery spear, but instead it made it look uglier; in fact, it looked more like the excrement.

Yet, Jing Jiu didn’t feel disappointed in the sword. It had survived the extremely erosive and poisonous pond water, so it was just as good as any sword of the Fairy State.

He employed the Sword Fire to dry the poisonous water on his body, took out a brand new white cloth to put on, and used the Sword Force to conceal his appearance, turning around to look at the high cliff.

The cliff was covered in wet moss, resembling a molded green ribbon.

The old man looked down at him from the cliff. His matted hair tousled and his expression was indifferent, with blood stains found at corners of his mouth.

Jing Jiu had already guessed who he was. There was only one being who could walk about freely in the Fiend Prison, and his matted hair had two noticeable bulges.

He had made meticulous arrangements for entering and leaving the Fiend Prison, and one of the most important arrangements was not to disturb this being.

Somehow, he failed.

Who told the Center Sect? Did an informer tell this being his identity?

As he was thinking of all this, the danger arrived.

The old man wasn’t interested in talking to Jing Jiu.

A strong wind rose up amid the cliffs with a whistling sound, like a sharp instrument sealing off the sky.

The moss was blown up by the wind, flying in midair along with the stinky and rotten soils.

An unimaginably powerful energy arrived in the air above the pond.

Even the elders of the Green Mountain in the Broken Sea State couldn’t hold back this energy, let alone Jing Jiu.

In the Fiend Prison, nobody could beat this old man.

Back when the Old Ones wanted to kill State Duke Lu, he commented that nobody could kill him at Taichang Temple, for the same reason.

Heaven and earth would quiver at the slightest command of his will.

Who could escape to the outside of heaven and earth?

The greenish pond water, along with the skeleton of a huge demon, rushed toward Jing Jiu like an assaulting hailstorm.

The sword light flashed.

In the midst of the greenish raindrops that filled the air, Jing Jiu turned into a flash of sword light that travelled at a high speed as he evaded the formidable attacks while he simultaneously attempted to find a weak spot in the powerful energy.

Standing by the cliff’s edge, the old man looked at the figure shuttling amid the poisonous raindrops, looking on without expression.

Whoever could deceive him and enter the lowest level of the Fiend Prison could not be an ordinary person.

Whoosh!!!

Jing Jiu pointed his sword toward the sky, broke through the poisonous rain, and flew toward the top of the cliff.

Witnessing this, the old man’s expression changed a little.

This method of riding the sword was often seen in ancient times, but it was rare now.

The key point was that Jing Jiu’s Cultivation state was even lower than the old man had anticipated; but how did he learn the vital secret of the Fiend Prison and come here in person?

The old man was unwilling to think about it further.

No one is willing to consider what an ant is thinking.

Since he was so weak, it would be simple to eat him up without further delay.

The old man reached out his right hand to grab at the dark space.

A shapeless force formed in the dark heaven and earth, emerging from all directions, as if a net fell down in front of the cliff and tightened up.

The fast flying Jing Jiu suddenly halted in midair, though he still kept pointing the sword skyward.

The shapeless force assaulted Jing Jiu. His cloth changed shape slightly, and cracking sounds could be heard coming from his body. It seemed that his bones would break at any moment.

Since the force arrived from all directions, the water on Jing Jiu didn’t drip down like the raindrops, but soaked deeper into his cloth, creating all sorts of holes in the cloth.

His wet hair drooped, his cloth became tattered, and his posture was ridiculous. No matter how one looked at the scene, Jing Jiu appeared pitiful and ludicrous.

The old man stood by the cliff’s edge and stared back at Jing Jiu in silence.

The difference between the two of them was as wide as the distance separating the sky and the ground, but at the moment, at least they were the same height.

And their auras were the same as well.

Jing Jiu was very calm at the moment, his eyes completely absent of fear.

The old man felt somewhat surprised by his demeanor, asking, “Are you the devil?”

Jing Jiu responded with a question in kind, “Are you the dragon?”

“You know this old man’s identity, but don’t show any fear; you indeed have a special background,” the old man said emotionlessly. “I’ll eat you when you are in the best condition, an offering of respect to your sect.”

Jing Jiu knew that this was the price he had to pay for letting this old man stay in Zhaoge City back then.

The price was…the prisoners in the Fiend Prison would become the old man’s food after they had died.

The Zhenyuan and energy of those deviant swordsmen and the devils of the Underworld would be turned into the purest energy after being digested by the old man in order for him to prolong his life.

Back when Liu Shisui had the conflicted energies in his body, Jing Jiu had thought of this method.

Apart from the old dragon of the Center Sect, Dead Dog was the only one who could transform the filthiest and the most complicated devilish energy into purest Daoist energy directly.

In fact, this old man in the Fiend Prison was the Divine Guardian Old Dragon of the Center Sect, or in other words, he was the spiritual soul of the Old Dragon.

Jing Jiu said, “According to the original accord, you can only eat the dead.”

The old man was surprised that he knew about something that had happened long time ago, saying, “When I eat you, you’ll be dead anyway.”

Thinking of the resentful and angry skinny face he had witnessed in the pond, Jing Jiu claimed, “You have actually been violating the accord the entire time.”

“The living of course taste better than the dead,” remarked the old man.

Jing Jiu asked, “Don’t you fear that the Center Sect might punish you by the sect rules?”

“Nobody could leave here alive. This was the rule set for me by the Great Grandmaster Bai. As a result, who would be able to know the people I ate were dead or alive?”

The old man laughed out while opening his mouth wide.

The opened mouth was extremely big; it was actually even bigger than his body, resembling a snake ready to swallow its food.

The shapeless force grabbed Jing Jiu and brought him to the cliff’s edge.

The saliva was drooping from the corners of his mouth, emitting a horrible odor. His large blood-red mouth was full of sarcomas, which looked like a human brain.

The most horrifying part was that there were four sharp tusks poking out from the bloody gum, which were the dragon teeth.

Seeing all this, Jing Jiu’s expression was the same, unchanged in the least. “Don’t you want to know why I came here?” he asked.

One of the sarcomas in the old man’s mouth suddenly opened up, turning into a mouth itself, making a terrible sound, full of the humiliating and mocking intent.

“I won’t ask you even if you would like to tell me. It’s because I will use the Method of Searching Soul to get the shattered episodes of your memories. The immense pain and the subsequent fear will make your energy more robust. As I said earlier, a beautiful and healthy body like yours should be eaten by me in its best condition; as such, your body will be consumed in the best way. Later when the masters on Green Mountain learned of the incident, you should thank me for it.”

The Method of Searching Soul could hardly obtain the complete memory of the victims when they were alive; but the Cultivation practitioners who went through the Searching Soul would suffer mental pain to an extreme degree.

The old man had no patience to listen to Jing Jiu, and he was to employ the Method of Searching Soul right away. What he intended to do was to torment Jing Jiu, or perhaps it was because he had already guessed Jing Jiu’s identity.

The lower part of Jing Jiu’s body was already inside the old man’s mouth. The sharp tusks pointed at Jing Jiu’s waist. But Jing Jiu still maintained a calm countenance, as he commented, “As a matter of fact, the pain you intend to inflict upon the disciples of Green Mountain will backfire on you.”

Those were the hardest dragon teeth in the world that could penetrate even the magic treasures of the Fairy State.

Even though these dragon teeth were not the original ones of the dragon, they were still too strong for the Cultivation practitioners’ bodies to withstand.

The old man displayed a cruel and mocking expression in his eyes and then bit down on Jing Jiu’s waist.

Boom!!!

Along with the loud exploding sound, a violent wind rose in front of the cliff, coupled with the lightning and thunders.

It turned out that the loud booming sound occurred when the dragon teeth collided with each other.

A dreadful cry burst out following the booming sound.

The old man clutched his mouth, fresh blood oozing out between his fingers.

The old man was stunned, his face pale.

This young man was so hard to bite, the old man thought.

He turned around to look straight ahead.

Jing Jiu had already disappeared.

The old man was both angry and astonished. He used his spiritual awareness to sweep the area, and found that Jing Jiu was already a few miles away from him. “You have no way to flee from me!” the old man shouted sternly.

“This is just the beginning,” said Jing Jiu, as he turned around and shot a glance at the old man.