The Heavens: A Qing, the Yue Girl at the beginning

"Location?" Zhao Qing immediately pressed for an answer.

“Deep in the southern section of the ‘Natural Barrier’ Rift Abyss in the eastern part of Xuanyi Continent.”

Tuoba Wuchou replied in a deep voice, "The Blood Seekers of the 'Boyan Sect' originally followed the trail of the legendary extinct ancient beast, the Nanli Beast, also known as the 'Lord of Netherfire,' and traveled tens of thousands of miles to explore this wild and dangerous place."

"Unexpectedly, near a deep valley where volcanic fire surges and lava flows underground, beside the rising sulfur mist, we stumbled upon... an ancient battlefield ruin that had been silent for tens of thousands of years."

Zhao Qing's heart stirred slightly: Xuan Yi? The black barbarians, is that the East African Rift Valley? Seventy thousand years ago, was the time when Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa for the second time? Could they have truly brought the seeds of wisdom? I wonder what the origin of the human race in this world is?
Tuoba Wuchou continued, "That... was indeed a true skeletal warship, its size equivalent to the God-King's behemoth of the You Dynasty, like a small, overturned city. The hull was broken in half, the jagged edges deeply embedded in the cooled crimson lava, piercing through several layers of earth veins!"

He paused, as if organizing his thoughts to describe the bizarre scene: "The hull was covered with the outlines of humanoid life forms, their bodies covered with dense, thorn-like bony spikes, their entire bodies as white as frost. The entire outer shell of the spaceship was pieced together and fused together from the skeletons of hundreds of thousands of such creatures..."

"Beyond the mass of corpses, there are two layers of rust-red hardened membranes, presumably to completely seal them and prevent any gaps. Even after thousands of years, they have not completely decayed. Touching them is like touching a branding iron, and one can faintly sense the residual magnetic fluctuations. On them... are covered with terrifying scars that have been torn apart and burned by tremendous force."

"However... that warship has been almost completely dismantled and destroyed, especially the part above ground, which is mostly broken into pieces, with lava and scorched earth scattered over dozens of miles around, leaving a mess."

"It must have trespassed into the territory of the Southern Beast when it crashed. That ancient beast was ferocious to begin with, and it flew into a rage upon seeing this alien object, actually dismantling the warship into pieces..."

"Among the battlefield ruins discovered by the Blood Seeker, there were only a few remains of high-level cultivators... perhaps the remains of warship survivors, mixed together with the broken bones of the Southern Beast... a situation of mutual destruction."

Upon hearing this, Zhan Mohe gasped, the wound on his severed arm seeming to throb again: "Using one's own bones to forge warships? What... barbaric, insane civilization!"

“It may not be what you think,” Zhao Qing said calmly. “Perhaps, those bones are their detachable and regenerable body tissues, like crabs and shrimp shedding their shells, with the old bones being used for other purposes.”

Tuoba Wuchou nodded slightly in agreement. Then, with a casual gesture, several chilling, condensed sword energies appeared out of thin air, and with a few hissing sounds, they had already sliced ​​off a piece of the hard mountain wall next to him.

With a slight movement of his fingertips, sword energy became his brush, swiftly sketching several patterns on the stone slab with cold, hard lines and astonishing details.

"The extraterrestrial beings later told us that they called it 'naked comb beetle,' or more formally, 'coffin beetle.'"

He pointed to the pattern on the stone tablet, “This is a life form that is completely different from us and from all living things we know. Although… they have human-like limbs and torso outlines, most parts of their bodies are densely covered with hard joints, like natural runic heavy armor!”

“Look, their bodies are wrapped in a silvery-white skin with starry patterns... The most bizarre thing is their interior—there is no conventional structure of internal organs, but instead, there are constantly branching, growing, and intertwining spiky cartilage, filled with viscous, semi-solidified medulla.”

Zhao Qing glanced at it twice and couldn't help but think to himself: If you don't examine the internal structure closely, just looking at the shape and bone armor, it looks like a trilobite of the order Split-ribbed worms, which has been forcibly shaped into a human form... What kind of ingenious craftsmanship is this, or is it just the cruel trick of fate?

These highly intelligent life forms that have developed hands and feet likely originated from the environment of terrestrial planets, with solid surfaces and moderate gravity.

"The extraterrestrial beings also told us," Tuoba Wuchou continued, "that the Armored Coffin Clan, who can survive and conquer in the Silent Sea and the Frosty Universe, mostly possess astonishing 'magic resistance' in their bodies, like a domain that isolates the power of primordial energy, which can greatly weaken the true essence attacks that we cultivators rely on to defeat our enemies..."

"But the Southern Beast... is different. It is born with a body temperature that can melt gold and iron. It can burn everything without the need for true essence to activate it. It is precisely the counter to such star power wielders. In battle, it did not show any disadvantage. On the contrary, it occupied an absolute advantage."

"That Nanli Beast... what level of ancient beast is it?"

Zhan Mohe couldn't help but press further: how could someone with so many advantages end up being killed? This gave a glimpse into the strength of the extraterrestrial race. The key lay in the relative strength of the two sides.

"The normal state of an adult Nanli Beast is the peak of the seventh realm," Tuoba Wuchou said with certainty. "The best among them can even briefly touch the threshold of the eighth realm! They are one of the few ancient species that could contend with the dragon race and compete for the Abyss of Earthly Fire in ancient times!"

"If that starship hadn't already been wrecked and suffered heavy casualties while crossing the boundary, and hadn't been forced to land, causing the hull to disintegrate and leaving it in extremely poor condition... even a Southern Beast that had reached the eighth realm and could be considered a king would have had absolutely no chance of destroying it completely on its own!"

"Perhaps, the reason we can still stand here today and talk about the existence of heaven and earth is thanks to that fallen Nanli Beast. Otherwise, if the remnants of the Jiajiu Clan had successfully established themselves in this world 70,000 years ago... the consequences would have been unimaginable."

Actually, who knows, it might be that the ancient beast that ruled over thousands of miles back then was killed, which brought humanity an opportunity for development? Zhao Qing pondered this in his heart and a different idea came to mind.

Tuoba Wuchou's voice was heavy, carrying a sense of despair after surviving a calamity. Then, his tone suddenly changed, becoming even colder: "However, these are all old grievances, there's no need to bring them up again."

"Perhaps due to recent bad luck, according to the predictions of the higher-ups of extraterrestrial life, more than 30,000 years from now, another alien sun will probably pass by our realm, and the distance will be even closer than last time... Moreover, what is quite special is that this time it is a 'dark sun' that has already been extinguished and collapsed into a dense star remnant."

"The otherworldly beings it carries are either... remnants of a race that are barely clinging to life in the purgatory of the sun's death, no longer a threat or a concern; or... beings that have experienced the cataclysmic upheaval of star destruction and the collapse of their homeland, beings that have long since lost all compassion and are truly vicious and ruthless!"

"To plunder resources and habitats, their fighting spirit and ferocity far surpass those of the Jiajiu tribe 70,000 years ago! They come with a do-or-die mentality, ready to annihilate us if they fail!"

Zhan Mohe felt a chill run down his spine. Thirty thousand years was an unreachable period for a cultivator, but the cold sense of destiny carried by the prophecy itself was enough to suffocate him.

Zhao Qing's gaze narrowed slightly, his mind racing: When stars reach the end of their evolutionary path, 97% will become white dwarfs; neutron stars and black holes are only a very small minority, and this time should be no exception. After all, the birth of the latter two is accompanied by a supernova explosion, making it difficult for any life to survive.

"Is this the excuse that extraterrestrial forces use to infiltrate and control Tianliang?" Zhan Mohe exclaimed in surprise, "Using a vague and uncertain cataclysmic calamity tens of thousands of years from now as an excuse? Isn't that... far too clumsy!"

“Clumsy? Ridiculous!” Tuoba Wuchou’s lips curled into a bitter smile. “Thirty thousand years is but a fleeting moment for the stars, yet for mortal beings it is a world transformed.”

"You must understand that even the oldest and most complete historical records are vague about events from a thousand years ago, like looking at flowers through a fog. How much more so for such a distant calamity? People's hearts... are often only concerned with the immediate benefits and threats they can see!"

Suppressed anger flared in his eyes: "In subsequent communications, those Guiyi faction people pretended to be worried and anxious all day long, but in reality... they were just using this as an excuse to ask for more 'assistance' from outside the region!"

"Speaking of 'clumsy,' aren't we the ones who are more ridiculous? Today we ask for the 'method of tempering star power,' tomorrow we want the 'treasury of meteorite iron crystals,' and the day after tomorrow we demand the 'basic runes of the laws of the void'..."

"The extraterrestrial beings are quite 'generous,' always agreeing to one or two favors to whet their appetites. The Unity Faction is overjoyed, believing this to be a divinely ordained opportunity, a ray of dawn brought by the blessings of their ancestors!"

Tuoba Wuchou chuckled self-deprecatingly: "Later, the polar day arrived, the celestial phenomena became disordered, and communication was interrupted for a time. But several months later, a comet with a long tail streaked across the sky, illuminating half of the firmament. Midway through its journey, it suddenly split off a fragment several dozen feet long, carrying a writhing 'Tai Sui' (a mythical creature), and crashed into the border wasteland!"

The Guiyi faction regarded it as a "gift from beyond the borders," a so-called "gift to meet you," and immediately sent people to study it in secret. Using local herders as materials, they found several isolated overseas volcanic islands to conduct preliminary "blood fusion" experiments.

"Night Demon Ape?" Zhao Qing's heart stirred, and he asked, making the connection.

"It is this very thing!" Tuoba Wuchou's voice was hoarse, as if weighed down by a thousand pounds. "Those originally simple and honest herdsmen, after consuming the Tai Sui, were transformed overnight into man-eating demons with blue faces, fangs, and fleshy wings. They lurk in caves during the day and howl across the streets at night, tearing children apart and swallowing them whole..."

"How could such a tragic situation be concealed? I already had loyal spies in the northern frontier, and since those islands are not too far from the mainland, the trail of the demonic ape flying at night was eventually discovered. So I traveled day and night back to the ancestral mountain, entered the palace to plead my case, and explained the serious consequences!"

"However... in the imperial court, factional infighting is rampant, the Unity Faction has already gained power, and the royal family has tacitly approved of it... They only think that I am exaggerating and hindering the great cause of the empire, and they try their best to suppress this matter, saying to the outside world that 'strange beasts are causing trouble', and hastily send a team of cultivators to suppress it - fortunately, the test site was already deserted and had not yet spread into a disaster."

Zhao Qing sighed inwardly: Even today, the Zheng family of Jiaodong County is still breeding Night Demon Apes in large numbers, eating countless human flesh, and regarding them as weapons of war. It is clear that once such evil seeds are sown, they will grow wildly in the shadows.

Zhan Mohe frowned, his anger barely contained: "After such a horrifying disaster, why continue? Are all the officials in the court truly bewitched by the evil forces from beyond the borders, their minds clouded? Has no one seen that the other side harbors malicious intentions and is plotting something wicked?"

"Because they found a 'reason to deceive themselves'."

Tuoba Wuchou's tone was icy: "The elders of the Guiyi faction claim that a 'mediator' can be used for filtering—the Night Demon Apes, which are transformed from herdsmen into demons, can be regarded as a 'new beast race' and no longer as 'humans'. Since they are demon beasts, their bloodline can be refined and usable power extracted, so it will not be considered 'harming one's own kind'."

“This method can completely avoid the ‘side effect’ of Tai Sui eroding the mind—ultimately, it’s because the life level of ordinary herdsmen is too low and they cannot withstand the transformation of higher bloodlines.”

"Even worse, some courtiers made the following sophistry: 'If they still belong to the human race, why can they be refined? Since our ancestors first created the Blood Fusion Technique, there has never been a precedent of successfully refining the blood of one's own race! This irrefutable evidence proves that they are no longer of our kind!'"

"They also advised me: 'Marshal Wuchou, you have fought for half your life and made unparalleled contributions to the empire, and we all respect you. But in this matter, you are being far too... pedantic. You have clearly seen life and death many times, so why are you being so sentimental? Heaven is merciless, and only the fittest survive. What's the use of closing your eyes and pretending not to see it?'"

"Whether we contact them or not, that vast power from beyond our borders is there, and it's hundreds or thousands of times stronger than us! Instead of resisting, we should go with the flow. This experiment was a case of good intentions gone wrong; we were too hasty. Next time, we'll be more careful and try to improve!"

"If the Heavenly Cold Dynasty wishes to endure for ten thousand years and become an eternal dynasty, it cannot do without their support. This opportunity to monopolize the resources of the starry sky must not be missed! We must not allow outsiders to have a foothold!"

Zhan Mohe was dumbfounded. He felt a chill run from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. How could such a sophistry make such a heinous act seem so respectable!

He couldn't help but rebuke, "Absurd! To kill someone, then call them 'inhuman,' and then take their blood and bones with a clear conscience? To treat human life like dirt, how are you any different from a demon?"

"So, later they switched to using livestock, condemned prisoners, and some political enemies who were secretly 'dealt with'," Tuoba Wuchou flicked his finger and shattered the Jiajiu tribe pattern on the stone shard, "but this is nothing but self-deception! How can the essence of evil magic change because of the source of the materials?"

"That 'Tai Sui' itself is a living, greedy poison from beyond the borders! It can tempt and amplify people's desires!"

"After the previous 'help,' 'gifts,' and guidance on filtering out the 'toxicity,' once we lowered our guard and thought we had mastered the 'method of perfect fusion,' the real erosion silently descended! Its target was the entire upper echelons of the Guiyi Sect!"

"But what ultimately made them decide to fall into the abyss and embark on a path of no return was undoubtedly the stimulation of another event."

"That was in the third year of communication with the outer realms. Many members of the Boyan faction gradually learned of the royal family's actions and began to have their own ideas. In order to avoid being completely overwhelmed by the increasingly powerful Guiyi faction, with no chance of turning the tide and forever being controlled by others, they panicked and even started to have wicked thoughts..."

"But these guys didn't have any records of the star-worshiping ritual, so they looked for another way and set their sights on the hidden forces in the Central Plains."

...(End of chapter)