My Husband’s Ascension C54
Chapter 54 Repentance
Everything that followed finally converged with the prophetic dream Zhao Zhao had envisioned long ago.
The images she had seen in that dream, together with the hidden truths she had not perceived at the time, now wove themselves into the tapestry of the future that was fated to unfold.
Zhao Zhao watched as the once-revered Sovereign of All under Kunwu, a figure who had once stood atop the world with unmatched authority, gradually twisted into a figure shunned by all in the Cultivation Realm.
The spiritual gu implanted within his body kept his mind from ever fully clearing.
He had slaughtered countless innocents upon Mount Ling, and no one heeded his claims against the sacred peak. The surviving wu-shamans of Mount Ling were sheltered, and after long deliberation, the Seven Great Sects ultimately decreed a hunt for the former Dao Lord.
His only refuge lay among those realms that had once suffered under his hand, the Ghost Realm and the Demon Realm.
The immortal who had once remained unsullied now bore a ruined reputation; ascension was beyond reach, and innumerable enemies sought him out, demanding repayment in blood.
Zhao Zhao followed in his wake, watching his snow-white robes become caked with mud, witnessing the grotesque creatures that surged upon him, trampling him to the earth.
His finger bones were shattered, tendons in his hands and feet torn, and for a time, he even forgot his own identity and name.
For what reason did he continue to survive in this world?
To restore Kunwu, to protect the Cultivation Realm, to pursue the Dao and ascend to immortality—
These were not his desires. They were merely the impositions placed upon him as an empty vessel, filled with purpose not of his own choosing.
What, then, did he truly want?
His mind, clouded and chaotic, seldom allowed for clear thought. He wandered alone between the Demon Realm and the Ghost Realm, and beyond a single sword, possessed nothing at all.
His robes had long since lost their original form; when he bent to drink at a stream, he sometimes failed to recognize the reflection staring back at him.
Until one day, in the Demon Realm, he encountered a mortal.
The man was plain of visage, utterly without cultivation, timid and trembling. That he had not yet been devoured by the demons was solely due to the protective blood of a witch upon him.
“My wife has gone missing… can you help me?”
The mortal pressed into his hands gold, silver, and pearls—treasures utterly meaningless to him. He ought to have ignored the man’s pleas, yet, stirred by a certain word, he inexplicably accepted.
By the mortal’s account, his wife was the Holy Maiden of the Palace of Eternal Night in the Demon Realm.
The title of “Holy Maiden” was nothing but a hollow honor, a tool to serve the Demon Successor, ensuring the continuation of his line and strengthening the demonic forces.
After wandering aimlessly for so long, he seemed, at last, to have found a temporary anchor.
In the days that followed, as he made his way toward the Palace of Eternal Night, he began to cultivate once more. His battered body slowly mended, and whispers spread across the Demon Realm of those who had dared to force their way into the palace, carrying with them the growing legend of his name.
The mortal who followed him gazed up with awe, asking, “After traveling together so long, I still do not know your name, my lord.”
He pondered for a long while, so long that the mortal began to suspect he was conjuring a name on the spot.
“Xie Lanshu,” he murmured, as if speaking to himself. “I am…Xie Lanshu.”
Zhao Zhao, observing all of this, felt her eyes ripple like the surface of a tranquil lake, tiny sparks of light glimmering within.
Not long after, they arrived at the Palace of Eternal Night. It was then the Demon Realm realized that the one prepared to breach the palace was none other than the former Dao Lord, now maddened and possessed by demonic corruption, Dao Lord Tianshu.
Walking the world under the name Xie Lanshu, he seemed suddenly to attain a supreme understanding of swordsmanship.
His shattered sword-heart gradually coalesced. The Single Intent Sword and the swordmaster’s resolve fused as one, an unstoppable force. The palace was struck unprepared, and he claimed it as though no one opposed him.
He slew the ruling demon generals, rescued the figurehead Demon Successor from Dol Dhu Lokke, and disbanded the Holy Maidens.
From that point onward, the entire Palace of Eternal Night lay completely under his command.
On the day the mortal man was reunited with his wife, he stood atop the palace in silence, gazing for a long while without uttering a word.
Later, he bestowed countless treasures and arranged a grand wedding for them. The mortal was elevated to the rank of a high-ranking demon official within the palace, serving alongside his wife, now a demon general, in loyal devotion to Xie Lanshu.
News of these events soon spread back to the Cultivation Realm, sending shockwaves through all circles.
Who could have imagined that the Dao Lord who had once guarded the borders, slaying countless yao, ghosts, and demons, would one day utterly defect and betray?
No one called him Dao Lord anymore.
All regarded him as a shame upon the Cultivation Realm.
…
A century passed. Under Xie Lanshu’s godlike, terrifying swordsmanship, even the Ghost Realm was laid low. Upon hearing that he had become the master of both realms, the Yao Realm trembled in fear, dreading that he might unify their lands with the same ease.
Yet he did not.
For to attack the Cultivation Realm, the combined might of the Demon and Ghost Realms was already sufficient.
“…You truly intend to march against the Cultivation Realm? Why? Were you not once their Dao Lord? Does it hold no kin or friends of yours?”
On the very night he declared war on the Cultivation Realm, the Demon Successor, who was rarely one to speak with him, came seeking him out.
By the flickering torchlight, the silver-haired man draped in black fox fur gazed into his eyes, the intensity of his scrutiny seeming to cut straight through the soul.
“Does it hold your kin or friends?”
The boy, no more than fifteen or sixteen, pressed his lips together.
Xie Lanshu’s voice was gentle, tempered with quiet understanding. “You mean the cultivator of Mount Ling… that one called Yao Ling?”
The Demon Successor’s head jerked upward in surprise.
This man knew everything.
Yao Ling had once infiltrated the Demon Realm, seeking to assassinate Xie Lanshu. It was he who secretly shielded her, even leaking secrets of both demons and ghosts to ensure she might survive under his hand.
And yet, though he knew all, Xie Lanshu did nothing to stop him.
Why?
“You risked your own life to protect her. She even brought you the candied hawthorns you loved as a child. You wandered the Ghost Market together, celebrated the Demon Realm’s Qiqiao Festival* side by side…Rong Yu, do you like her?”
(TLN: The Qixi Festival, also known as the Qiqiao Festival, is a Chinese festival celebrating the annual meeting of Zhinü and Niulang in Chinese mythology. The festival is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month on the Chinese lunisolar calendar.)
Xie Lanshu even knew the name he had chosen for himself: Rong Yu.
The boy’s breath caught; his knuckles flexed slightly. Though Yao Ling had now returned to the Cultivation Realm, he understood that if Xie Lanshu wished it, she could be struck down in an instant.
“I envy you both so…” A voice as warm and gentle as a spring breeze drifted through the night, weightless and unanchored. “If my wife were still alive, I too would buy a beautiful hairpin and place it in her tresses.”
He spoke of his wife on occasion.
Rong Yu did not know who the man’s deceased wife had been. He only thought that to have married someone so profoundly mental must have made her the most ill-fated soul under heaven.
…
From the moment war erupted between the Ghost Realm, the Demon Realm, and the Cultivation Realm, Xie Lanshu never brought up the subject again.
The battle that followed was fiercer than any before it. In terms of raw strength, the Cultivation Realm far surpassed the other two realms. Yet their former Dao Lord now stood in opposition to them. He knew all too well where their defenses were weakest, and he knew precisely where they would hide the wu-shamans of Mount Ling.
Thus, his objective was clear from the very beginning.
Immortal Realm of Kunwu.
The land that had sheltered him for a thousand years, that had nurtured him to adulthood.
He advanced along a path calculated to minimize casualties, his sword aimed directly at Kunwu. If they would hand over the wu-shamans of Mount Ling, the forces of the Ghost Realm and Demon Realm would withdraw at once and never again set foot in the Cultivation Realm.
Mu Ling and Zong Fei led countless disciples to their knees, a dark sea of bodies prostrating themselves as they begged him to stop.
The elders of Kunwu, meanwhile, denounced him with furious voices, accusing him of disgracing Kunwu’s name and vowing to slay him with their own hands that very day to uphold its honor.
The bow was drawn, the string taut, ready to loose.
Along his path, even if his purpose was the eradication of Mount Ling, he had already committed countless sins. No explanation could alter that truth.
The sword light of the Single Intent Sword burst forth, chaotic and radiant as a prismatic flood, parting the dense ranks of kneeling disciples and driving straight toward the wu-shamans concealed at the rear.
Behind him, the demon and ghost clans intercepted the combined assault of Kunwu’s elders.
Before him, the sword light split the murky heavens, severing the heads of the Ten Wu-Shamans of Mount Ling in a single, blinding instant.
Yet in the very next breath, a clear, brilliant sword light, bright as daylight, swept toward him. Xie Lanshu recognized those eyes at once.
“Today, I will kill you and avenge the annihilation of my family!” Tears brimmed in the young woman’s eyes, every word bitten out with fierce resolve.
The instant they clashed, he knew.
The girl before him was like himself: a genius seen but once in a millennium.
She truly was someone who might be able to kill him.
Moreover—
That Demon Successor was already rushing toward them. He knew full well that the other was not coming to aid him.
…It was time.
His sword light grew ever more urgent, his killing intent mounting. The sword momentum crashed forth like mountains cleft and seas sundered. No matter how gifted Yao Ling was, she was still not yet a century old. If he struck with his life on the line, neither of them could be certain to survive.
Fortunately, Rong Yu arrived in time, intercepting the most lethal blow for her. Yao Ling seized the fleeting opening he revealed, gathered all the spiritual power within her body, and thrust straight toward his face—
In pupils cold and clear as glazed crystal, the reflection of the female cultivator’s face appeared, radiant yet unyielding.
The last time he had seen her, she had seemed like a frail girl who might topple at the lightest breeze. In the blink of an eye, she had grown so formidable.
…If, back then, she had not been left behind at Yunmeng Pier, but had instead gone with him to Kunwu, how might everything have turned out?
Squelch.
Before the disbelieving eyes of all present, the former Dao Lord Tianshu, now the demon tyrant who ruled two realms, was slain by the sword of a little female immortal scarcely over a hundred years old.
That all-too-pure spiritual power poured along the blade into his body, shattering his soul between heaven and earth. Even his flesh was reduced to drifting ash, leaving not a trace behind.
The secrets of Mount Ling were buried along with the deaths of the Ten Wu-Shamans. The four great beings whose souls remained trapped within the formation were still denied release.
Only then did Zhao Zhao dimly realize that this had been the true purpose behind those dreams of the future shown to her.
Not merely to eradicate the wu-shamans of Mount Ling, but to bring the truth before the world, to spare the innocent from senseless death, and to grant release to the souls that had long been unable to pass on.
Those on the ground fell silent for a long moment, before a roar like mountains collapsing and seas surging burst forth.
The demon and ghost clans, who had once arrogantly sought to slaughter the mountain, lost their commanders and instantly scattered in defeat.
Amidst the clamorous chaos of the heavens and earth, the female cultivator, now a hero who had saved the world, stood frozen, still trying to process what had happened, until the Demon Successor at her side held her tightly, worry etched across his face.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m… alright,” she murmured. “It’s just… that demon, before he died, seemed to say something.”
Rong Yu pressed his lips together, his heart a tangle of emotion.
Though this man had manipulated him like a puppet for so many years, without him, he likely would still be suffering unimaginable torment in Dol Dhu Lokke.
“Was it that he could finally see his wife?”
“No.” Yao Ling shook her head. “He said: ‘If she could cultivate, perhaps she would be as gifted as you.’ Who was this ‘she’ he spoke of?”
Yao Ling’s mind briefly lingered on the question, yet she did not dwell on it for long. The Cultivation Realm still lay in ruins, and remnants of the demon and ghost clans had yet to be purged. She had much work to do.
Zhao Zhao, understanding the words, looked toward the place where he had disappeared and, without warning, let a single tear fall.
After so many years.
It seemed she still longed to hear even a single word of his repentance.
Author’s Note: Don’t worry, they’ll reconcile eventually, but not yet.
