Heavenly Wheel Ascension

Zhi Xuan turned his head and uttered but a single word. "Begone." That one word carried a weight like the heavens falling to the earth. It created a spiritual wave that swept across the surroundings, forming a massive dust vortex.

DUMM!

The air pressure around Yan Lu and his entourage suddenly became thousands of times heavier. Hundreds of practitioners from the Lotus Mountain Alliance and the Sacred Flame Pavilion staggered backward; those with low cultivation bases immediately spat fresh blood and knelt, their bones creaking under the invisible burden.

"I have promised the Ancient Shen Clan not to spill the blood of Chi Di practitioners on their own soil," Zhi Xuan said as he looked forward again, his eyes fixed on the ground. "And I am a man who always keeps my promises."

"Besides, you are not to my taste for harvesting," Zhi Xuan added, his finger scratching the earth once more. "You who are here are merely spoiled children. Leave, I do not know you."

The Elder froze, his hands trembling violently while the veins in his neck bulged like writhing earthworms. He was only five steps away from Zhi Xuan.

"W-who... who are you exactly?!" Yan Lu screamed, his voice cracking into a high pitch. He tried to maintain his dignity, but his legs continued to shake uncontrollably. "I am the heir of the Sacred Flame Pavilion! You dare threaten us on Chi Di soil?!"

"Gu Fengyan," Zhi Xuan said without turning, rising for a moment. He waved his hand, and the scythe returned to his grasp. "Do you wish to test these Banners of Calamity?"

A haunting silence instantly devoured all the noise in the ruins of Red Flame City. That name, Gu Fengyan, was not just a sequence of characters; it was a death mantra that had torn through the sanity of many practitioners in the Yao Gu Plains.

"G-Gu... Fengyan? The butcher from the South?" the Elder before Zhi Xuan murmured with whitening lips. "The Banners of Calamity... Slaughter Gods Crescent... it truly is you!"

Instantly, the hundreds of practitioners were enveloped in pure dread. Seeing the massive scythe that had become a terrifying phantom in the reports of Gu Fengyan using it against the Ancient Han Clan in Cang Hai, it was now real and present before them.

"This... this is the face of Gu Fengyan?!" the voice of one practitioner sounded choked. "It really is him! Look at that scythe; it is the one he used to threaten the Ancient Han Clan while making the twenty year promise!"

"Devil Gu, the Calamity of Devil Gu!" shouted one practitioner, turning and bolting away without looking back. "I would never have dared to look at his face if I knew it was him!"

"Disperse!" Yan Lu shouted loudly, his voice breaking from a panic he could no longer hide. "Turn back! Return to the Pavilion immediately! Don't let anyone look back! Hurry!"

"Young Master, wait for me!" roared the Elder who had previously acted so arrogantly, now running stumbling and discarding his dignity deep into the dust of Red Flame City. "Forgive our insolence, Senior Gu! We were only blinded by greed! Please do not take our lives!"

Zhi Xuan stood still like a statue, watching the fleeing backs with a hollow gaze. "Greed is indeed always blinding, but fear is the most effective medicine."

"Senior..." the male Shen Clan disciple approached with a trembling body, his eyes looking at the Slaughter Gods Crescent with both admiration and horror. "So it is true? You are that legendary figure? The one who dared to point at the nose of the Han Clan ancestor?"

"What do you care who I am?" Zhi Xuan interrupted coldly, glancing at the disciple. "Will my name give you the strength to restore this city? Or will my name resurrect your comrades who have already become ash?"

The disciple lowered his head dejectedly. "It is not that, Senior. It is just that we did not expect the 'Devil' spoken of by the outside world would be our savior today."

"Savior?" Zhi Xuan chuckled cynically, his voice like the scraping of ancient metal. "I saved you only because I happened to be here; I could just as easily have walked away. Do not misunderstand, boy."

"But Senior, what about them?" asked the female disciple, pointing toward the line of practitioners who had now disappeared on the horizon. "They will surely spread the news that you are here. Your position will be increasingly threatened."

"Let them," Zhi Xuan replied while sheathing his massive scythe back into the void of his body. "I did not come to Chi Di to spill blood."

Zhi Xuan stomped his foot, and the formation he had drawn in the dirt instantly glowed bright. Reforming the threads of energy that rebuilt a portion of Red Flame City, he moved his fingers calmly; immediately, the corpses of the fallen disciples floated slowly toward the Ancient Shen Clan disciples.

"Those frames are dead," Zhi Xuan said coldly. "But for you, they are the bodies of friends lost because of your inability to face misfortune."

"Life and death are like the autumn wind," Zhi Xuan said. "Crying will not return the souls that have drifted to the horizon. Recover yourselves, and you can decide what to do with the bodies of your friends."

Zhi Xuan stepped forward, his hands moving in mudras that reshaped the collapsed buildings around him. Although not everything was fully rebuilt, it was enough to serve as a shelter.

"Rise," Zhi Xuan said, a Five Elements disk appearing in his palm and immediately shooting into the sky. "Form the Formation!"

Five colored lights exploded from the disk Zhi Xuan released, spreading to the four cardinal directions like essence dragons crawling across the sky dome of Red Flame City. The air that was originally stale with blood and the remnants of the demon sect was instantly swept away by the pure aura emerging from the five elements vortex.

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An energy dome enveloped the region of Red Flame City. Zhi Xuan closed his palm and finalized the formation. He glanced briefly at the disciples who had begun their meditation in recovery, then looked forward again, staring at Sky Furnace Mountain towering over Red Flame City.

"This place is within the sovereign territory of the Ancient Shen Clan," Zhi Xuan murmured. "But how did that Demon Sect attack this place? Moreover, there were even vultures intending to scavenge the remains after the sect vanished. Are they trying to rebel against the Ancient Clan?"

"Senior Gu," a low voice broke his reverie. The female disciple from before, whose face was now a bit more colorful thanks to the spiritual pills, stood with the remnants of her clan dignity she tried to gather. "If Senior questions the courage of those vultures... it has been that way for a long time. Ever since the Patriarch and the Sacred Passage experts ascended to the Upper Realm."

Zhi Xuan did not answer directly, thinking to himself. Oh? Just like the Ancient Zhu Clan back then. As soon as other factions in Xing Luo heard that the Sacred Passage experts were no longer in this Lower Realm, they began to show their fangs. It seems it is the same in Chi Di.

"So they have such courage because the Ancient Clan is considered no longer in power?" Zhi Xuan said, not turning. "Quite fascinating, yet they indeed have a reason to act arrogant."

"Senior is right," replied another disciple who had risen. "We have received threats several times, but those sects did not move before. Only when we experienced misfortune did they act. If Senior was not here today, perhaps we would have perished without a trace."

"There is no need to worry about that," Zhi Xuan said coldly, walking toward one of the pavilions. "Now that you have finished recovering, bury your friends immediately and you can rebuild the rest of Red Flame City."

He stepped across the threshold of the pavilion he had just rebuilt. His black and white robes rustled, sweeping across the marble floor that still held small cracks. Inside the quiet room, he sat in the lotus position, resting both hands on his knees and closing his eyes.

However, tranquility did not come. Behind his eyelids, the four colors he saw at the Emperor’s Monument danced again, spinning like a dragon vortex trying to tear through his consciousness.

"Why me?" he murmured very low, almost like a sigh lost in the night. "Those four colors... what exactly are they?"

Two small beings floated out from his robe collar, manifesting in front of Zhi Xuan. Ao Sheng crossed his arms over his chest, while Xiao Die placed her hands over her stomach in admirable grace.

"Senior, you look truly disturbed," Ao Sheng began, his brow furrowed. "I saw everything, though I do not see what is in your mind, Senior. But from your conversation with that Holy Maiden, I also do not know what it means."

"Brother Golden Dragon is right," Xiao Die added, the shawl on her arm rustling softly. "Senior, you look truly troubled by it. Please calm yourself for these few days. We know you are here to distance yourself from Holy Maiden Shen, so let us guard this place while Senior meditates here."

Zhi Xuan sank into the void, entering his sea of consciousness and appearing near the Devil Tree of Life. There, he looked up and gazed at Ruo Xianxue who now sat gracefully upon a branch of the tree, her eyes looking at her slender fingernails.

"Great Saint," Zhi Xuan called. "Have you finished absorbing your memories from that monument shard?"

Ruo Xianxue shifted her gaze, her Sun and Moon double pupils flashing for a moment before she returned to looking at her slender nails.

"No need to ask," Ruo Xianxue replied. "The Ancient Devil Monument has always been a part of me; of course my memory expanded when its shard returned. I remember more about my Supreme Law of the Nine Heavens Darkness from back then."

"You look very pathetic, Zhi Xuan," Ruo Xianxue said, the corner of her lips lifting in a thin smile full of mockery, her nine tails of darkness glowing. "Just because you saw a vision of Xi Wangmu lamenting, your Dao Heart wavers like a candle in a storm."

"That is because the vision should not have been mine," Zhi Xuan countered, dropping into a cross-legged position on the ground of the Devil Tree of Life. "I do not understand why when Shen Ruolan touched me then, I suddenly got a vision of a man above the sky and a woman on a path."

"I do not understand that either," Ruo Xianxue said, her brow furrowing. "Xi Wangmu, she was more like a junior sister to Zhan Xianwang. I saw her back then, someone born of a beautiful life, becoming the Empress of the West. Yet, she loved a figure that even the universe could not bear to look upon."

"Loved a figure that even the universe could not bear to look upon?" Zhi Xuan repeated the sentence, his voice echoing hollowly in his consciousness. "Is that the man I saw floating above the sky? Who is he exactly that an Immortal like Xi Wangmu had to cast away her divinity just for a single look?"

"That is the Star Emperor, someone you once knew from the Yin Primordial Chaos Lotus," Ruo Xianxue whispered, her voice no longer containing mockery. "Even Zhan Xianwang was but a grain of dust before His authority. Yet, for Xi Wangmu, He was an obsession that became poison. That feeling was too great for even a divine frame, so she chose to become mortal so she could feel that sorrow fully. For only mortals are permitted to be destroyed by love."

Zhi Xuan fell silent for a moment. Star Emperor... he remembered his meeting with Qingyin Xuelian, speaking of a figure living in the void as Seven Stars and One Sun, but what did all this mean?

"Star Emperor..." Zhi Xuan murmured. "What kind of figure is he, that even the Empress of the West was obsessed until she had to be destroyed under the Will of Heaven."

"Do not try to measure the depth of the ocean with a twig, Zhi Xuan," Ruo Xianxue said, her voice now as heavy as a mountain. "The Star Emperor is the Will that preceded the creation of the Nine Heavens, even myself. Forget your thoughts about that Emperor’s Monument vision for a moment; this is not like you searching for ancient memory shards."

Ruo Xianxue raised her slender fingers, manifesting a rune character glowing in a square. "And now, after I have regained my memory, I can give this to you as your debt to me."

"Suddenly?" Zhi Xuan said, looking with caution. "What is it?"

Ruo Xianxue chuckled, her laugh like a silver bell echoing in a silent valley. "Do not look at me as if I am giving you poison, Zhi Xuan. You are the key to my growth; it is only right that I give an exchange if you give me something worthy as well."

"This is the **Six Heavenly Demon Transformations**," Ruo Xianxue said. "Because your soul and main body are that of an Ancient Devil, you as the second soul have the authority to summon the manifestation of the Ancient Devil Guardian. Especially after reaching the second pillar, that body of yours is already considered an Ancient Devil infant."

"This heavenly body of yours is weak, not as hard as that main body," Ruo Xianxue continued. "Therefore, this technique will summon what is inside your main body, which can be said to be knowledge, not a technique. This knowledge belongs to your Main Body. But you need it after that twenty year promise with that Han Shanshan rat."

Zhi Xuan gazed at the rune character floating before Ruo Xianxue with a deep stare. The black light glowing from the rune seemed to have its own heartbeat, pulsing in sync with the second pillar of the Ancient Devil Body residing far away in the Great Constellation.

"Six Heavenly Demon Transformations..." Zhi Xuan murmured, feeling a strong pull from his soul. "Knowledge locked within my own main body?"

"Yes, this actually does not belong to you as a heavenly practitioner body," Ruo Xianxue replied. "But I will not let your ignorance of the ancient races make you foolish and forget that your main body is a monster. Therefore, you must utilize the duality of these bodies."

Ruo Xianxue waved her hand, the rune character glowing above the sky of the sea of consciousness. From the depths of the sea of consciousness, six Demon giants appeared, each taking a form similar to his own, in dark robes with long black hair flowing down.

"This is connected to your Soul," Ruo Xianxue said. "Since you no longer have Ancient Heavenly blood in your hands, your Divine Soul is no longer like it once was. But this will be the manifestation of your Dharma instead. The Six Heavenly Demon Transformations is how you fight with six shadows of yourself alongside you."