Chapter 259 - The Inherited Duty and the Deva Realm
This time, it was Su Bai’s turn to explain.
His account took considerably longer than Yue Cangyu’s.
Part of that was unavoidable. More than eight months inside the Fallen-Star Sanctuary could not be summarized easily.
The other reason was that Su Bai had to choose his words carefully.
He had no intention of explaining his Reversal Body.
When Yue Cangyu asked how he had survived the Ashen-Blood Miasma for so long, Su Bai gave him the simplest truthful answer he could.
"My constitution is unusual. Corrosive forces do not affect me the same way they affect other cultivators."
Yue Cangyu looked at him for a moment.
He had personally watched Su Bai lick poison and receive a curse with an expression that was far too comfortable.
After considering that memory, he decided that further questions about Su Bai’s constitution could wait.
Su Bai continued.
He began with what they had discovered while the other disciples were still inside.
The miasma beasts had not simply been ordinary creatures corrupted by the environment. The deeper they travelled, the clearer it became that many abnormalities inside the Sanctuary traced back to something far older.
The False Bodies came next.
Yue Cangyu’s expression shifted slightly when Su Bai described creatures borrowing the appearance, voices, and fragments of memories from cultivators.
When Su Bai reached the Soul-Bloom Returnees, Yue Cangyu’s expression became more focused.
"The returning disciples mentioned those creatures too. They said they could not be killed normally because their deaths released red mist and corruption."
Su Bai nodded.
"That was only part of it."
Yue Cangyu’s gaze sharpened.
Su Bai explained that the creatures were not isolated abnormalities. Their existence was tied to the deeper corruption inside the Sanctuary, and killing them carelessly could release what they carried.
"Containment was safer," Su Bai said.
Yue Cangyu slowly nodded.
Su Bai had been watching his expression throughout the explanation.
That was when he noticed something strange.
Yue Cangyu was surprised by the details, but not by the direction of the story.
Whenever Su Bai revealed something that should have completely overturned an ordinary cultivator’s understanding of the Fallen-Star Sanctuary, Yue Cangyu’s reaction was usually closer to confirmation than disbelief.
Su Bai eventually stopped.
"Senior Yue already knew some of this."
Yue Cangyu gave him a faint smile.
"Fragments of it. Some came from the disciples who returned before you."
He leaned back slightly.
"My ancestors also reached farther into the Sanctuary than most people ever managed. What they left behind was incomplete, and some of it was difficult to believe even after inheriting the responsibility attached to those records."
His gaze settled on Su Bai.
"You are filling the gaps."
That was the calm answer Yue Cangyu gave.
What he did not mention was how difficult maintaining that calm had become.
The records passed down through generations of Azure-Jade City had contained warnings that seemed almost absurd when read separately.
For generations, Yue Cangyu’s family had guarded a place they understood only through fragments written by people who had returned half-dead, mentally broken, or unwilling to record everything they had witnessed.
Now a young Golden Core cultivator was sitting across from him and calmly connecting those fragments into a single history.
Yue Cangyu wanted to drag every ancestral record out of storage and compare them immediately.
He restrained himself.
There were limits to how excited a City Lord should appear in front of a junior.
Su Bai continued his account.
By the time he reached the deeper regions, there was no longer much uncertainty about the true nature of the Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
It was an ancient battlefield that had been separated from the outside world and sealed.
Yue Cangyu accepted that without much surprise.
He had suspected as much for years. The Boundary Pillars, the strange hundred-year cycle, and the responsibility inherited by Azure-Jade City had already pointed him in that direction.
He had always known that something dangerous was being suppressed within the Sanctuary.
What he had never known was exactly what had been sealed there, how far its influence reached, or what had forced even Immortals to become part of its containment.
His attention sharpened.
"Is there anything dangerous left inside?"
That was the question Su Bai had expected from him.
"No. The things maintaining the Ashen-Blood Miasma are dead, and the miasma itself has been cleared."
Yue Cangyu studied him carefully.
"And the seal?"
"Once there was nothing left for it to contain, I removed what remained of the Boundary Pillars. The separated region gradually returned to the outside world afterward."
Yue Cangyu fell silent.
For generations, he had treated the Boundary Pillars as something that must never be disturbed because nobody knew what would happen if the seal failed.
Su Bai had done the opposite only after destroying what the seal had been built to contain.
That was the difference.
"What exactly was sealed down there?" Yue Cangyu asked.
Su Bai’s expression became more serious.
That was where his account changed.
He explained the sealed sources buried in the deepest region.
They were enormous remains that had persisted for countless years despite everything done to them. Even fragments separated from those remains could continue carrying their corruption, while the main sources had constantly produced the Ashen-Blood Miasma that eventually filled the Sanctuary.
The creatures encountered throughout the outer regions had not been unrelated abnormalities.
The False Bodies, the Soul-Bloom Returnees, the corrupted flesh, and the worsening miasma all traced back to the same ancient disaster.
Yue Cangyu listened without interrupting.
This was what he had wanted to know.
For most of his life, he had known that something terrible had been sealed inside the Sanctuary. He had known enough to fear what might happen if that seal ever failed, but he had never known the nature of the enemy behind it.
Now Su Bai was finally giving that danger a shape.
Yue Cangyu’s expression grew heavier.
"If those remains survived for that long, the people who sealed them must have paid an enormous price."
"They did."
Something in Su Bai’s voice made Yue Cangyu look at him more carefully.
Su Bai continued.
"The ones maintaining the deepest seal were Immortals."
Yue Cangyu stopped moving.
He had known that Immortals were connected to the Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
Knowing there was a connection was different from hearing that Immortals themselves had remained there for countless years to keep the enemy contained.
Su Bai described the enormous petrified bodies surrounding the deepest seal.
Their physical bodies had long since turned to stone, yet remnants of their souls had remained tethered to them, sustaining the seal long after the ancient battle ended.
They had endured there until Su Bai destroyed the last of the sealed sources. Only after their purpose was finally fulfilled did they prepare to leave.
Yue Cangyu remained silent throughout the explanation.
Su Bai also told him about the final things they had said before departing.
Among them was something Yue Cangyu already knew from the present state of the cultivation world, but hearing it directly from ancient Immortals gave it an entirely different weight.
The Immortal Path was sealed.
Even those Immortals had lost their connection to it.
With no path back and nothing left binding them to their ancient bodies, they had chosen reincarnation.
Su Bai described the strange force that eventually descended for them. The Immortals had recognized it immediately, and one after another, their souls had been taken away.
When Su Bai finally stopped speaking, Yue Cangyu remained silent for a long time.
He had spent years imagining what might exist in the deepest part of the Sanctuary.
The truth had been worse than anything he imagined.
Strangely, that knowledge no longer frightened him as much as it once would have.
A quiet laugh escaped him.
Su Bai looked at him.
"Senior Yue?"
Yue Cangyu leaned back slightly.
"Before all of you entered the Sanctuary, your master once asked me what I was afraid of."
Su Bai remembered enough about Lu Canghai to imagine how that conversation had probably gone.
Yue Cangyu continued.
"I told him enough that he eventually realized the Sanctuary was connected to Immortals, but I never properly answered his question."
His expression became thoughtful.
"What frightened me was not the possibility of meeting an Immortal."
He looked at Su Bai.
"It was knowing that Immortals had bled there."
Su Bai became quiet.
Yue Cangyu’s voice remained calm.
"We spend our lives climbing because we believe there is always another step above us. No matter how difficult the road becomes, reaching higher means becoming stronger, living longer, and moving closer to something beyond mortality."
For Yue Cangyu, the Sanctuary had always placed an uncomfortable question at the end of that road.
"Yet somewhere beyond what we can reach today, Immortals once encountered something they could not simply destroy."
Yue Cangyu shook his head with a faint, self-mocking smile.
"I used to wonder what that said about the path we were following."
Su Bai understood what had troubled him.
If the beings standing beyond the present cultivation world could still be reduced to stone while desperately containing an enemy, then becoming an Immortal did not mean reaching safety.
It only meant discovering that there were still greater dangers ahead.
Yue Cangyu looked at Su Bai again.
"You saw all of it."
Su Bai nodded.
"And you still walked out."
There was no praise or exaggeration in Yue Cangyu’s voice.
He was simply stating a fact.
Su Bai had entered the place as a young cultivator, reached depths that generations of explorers had failed to return from, witnessed the truth Yue Cangyu had spent much of his life fearing, and came back after ending the danger that generations of Azure-Jade City Lords had been tasked with guarding.
Yue Cangyu laughed softly.
"I suppose I spent far too many years fearing an answer I had never seen."
Su Bai shook his head.
"Knowing something is dangerous and walking into it are different things. Senior’s caution kept Azure-Jade City standing long enough for someone to finally reach the end."
Yue Cangyu looked at him for a moment.
That answer seemed to amuse him.
"Your master would probably say that with far less tact."
Su Bai thought about Lu Canghai.
"He probably would."
The faint amusement remained between them for several breaths.
Gradually, Yue Cangyu’s gaze shifted toward the window.
The battlefield had returned to the world.
The sealed sources were dead.
The Immortals who had maintained the final seal had entered reincarnation.
The responsibility that had passed through Yue Cangyu’s bloodline for generations had finally reached its end.
Something inside him loosened.
The change was so subtle that Yue Cangyu himself did not notice it immediately.
Su Bai did.
The spiritual energy within the office shifted.
Yue Cangyu’s expression changed, and he closed his eyes almost at once.
His cultivation had been standing before the same barrier for years. There had been no lack of accumulated Qi and no flaw in his foundation.
What had held him back had been something much harder to recognize.
A burden he had carried for so long that he had stopped distinguishing it from himself.
Now that burden was gone.
His aura gradually deepened.
The formations surrounding the office trembled under the growing pressure before quickly stabilizing.
Su Bai remained where he was and waited.
There was nothing he needed to do.
Several breaths later, the pressure settled.
Yue Cangyu had entered the Sixth Stage of the Void-Shattering Realm.
Su Bai watched him silently for a moment.
He had expected his story to answer questions.
He had not expected it to cause a breakthrough.
Nearby, the ancient saber moved slightly.
"This great one has decided that storytelling is a respectable cultivation method."
Su Bai decided that acknowledging it would only make things worse.
Some time later, Yue Cangyu opened his eyes.
His cultivation had stabilized quickly, but the greater change was in his expression. A heaviness that Su Bai had noticed ever since meeting him was no longer there.
Yue Cangyu looked at him.
"Thank you."
Su Bai shook his head.
"Senior already had everything needed for the breakthrough. I only answered a few questions."
Yue Cangyu smiled.
"Sometimes the answer is what was missing."
Su Bai could not argue with that.
More importantly, speaking about the Immortals had reminded him of something he had been unable to understand since leaving the Sanctuary.
"Senior Yue, there is something I wanted to ask you about something."
Yue Cangyu nodded for him to continue.
Su Bai thought back to the Immortals’ final moments.
"Before the seniors entered reincarnation, they spoke about where they might be reborn. One of the places they mentioned was called the Deva Realm."
The change in Yue Cangyu was immediate. His newly relaxed expression disappeared.
Su Bai noticed.
He had expected confusion or perhaps recognition. He had not expected Yue Cangyu to become wary.
"Do you know what the Deva Realm is?"
Yue Cangyu remained silent for a long time.
When he finally looked at Su Bai again, the hesitation in his eyes had nothing to do with whether he knew the answer.
He was deciding whether he should tell him.