From the end of the world

Chapter 462: Fire Creates Earth

I paid extra attention to the changes in Liu Shuying's expression. I was not sure whether Liu Shuying was Shan Liangyi or not; I launched a verbal attack here partly to test him and see if he would reveal any flaws.

This kind of spying would also bring risks to me. If you use your brain a little, you will understand that if I expose the false appearance of an enemy who may use lies and acting to deceive and murder me, will this enemy give in and retreat? It is more likely that he will tear off his disguise and show his fangs in advance.

But this is not some other place, but the Luoshan headquarters where the Great Impermanence gathers. Even the old fist god has appeared here some time ago. Even Shan Liangyi should not want to create disputes here. If the other party really has his eyes on me, then it is better to take advantage of this time and place to directly interrogate me instead of moving to other places to confront me.

Under my questioning, Liu Shuying's face showed a mixture of astonishment and confusion.

He slowly lowered his head, and after a few seconds, he laughed as if he couldn't help himself, and his low laugh turned into a sudden and loud laugh.

I didn't laugh with him, and after a while, he finally stopped laughing, then touched the corners of his eyes and said with a lingering happiness: "Oh... I really didn't expect it. So that's how it is. As the saying goes, 'It's easy to see the faults of others, but it's hard to see your own faults'. It's the hardest to see yourself clearly. I didn't expect that I would be mistaken for Shan Liangyi..."

"Do you want to say that you are not?" I asked back, "If you are not, I hope you can convince me."

"There is nothing more difficult than proving one's innocence in this world. Plus, I've never considered this kind of situation before. If you ask me to suddenly produce ironclad physical evidence, I can't do it." Liu Shuying said, "But it's still very simple to provide a defense. It depends on whether you believe it or not.

"First of all, I obtained the information related to Shan Liangyi before I lost my power of foresight. It was also from that time that I suspected the Taoyuan Township Lord. As for why I didn't act until now, it was because I had something else that had a higher priority than killing Shan Liangyi.

"Recently, since that matter finally achieved a breakthrough, but then encountered insurmountable difficulties, I had no choice but to put it aside for the time being and shift my time and energy to the matter of Shan Liangyi."

Something that has a higher priority than Shan Liangyi... I immediately thought of the information that Liu Shuying had been active in the Arctic in the past.

What he was looking for was most likely the complete divine seal, and he actually said that he had made a breakthrough... Could it be that he had locked on the location of the complete divine seal?

What do “insurmountable difficulties” mean?
"Then, if I were Shan Liangyi, there would be an inexplicable contradiction." Liu Shuying continued, "As the descendant of Qinglong, the Taoyuan Township Lord is already powerful enough to rival Xuanming. If we take into account the power of the 'Paradise' that he has accumulated so far, even Xuanming may not be his opponent.

"I don't know if you understand that 'Xanadu' is not just the ultimate illusion network that is still under construction, you can also regard it as an extremely huge mana warehouse. Although it lacks the crucial density, its overwhelming scale alone can still provide a considerable bonus to the owner of Taoyuan.

"In addition, the power of the Green Dragon of the Wood Element restrains the power of the Yellow Dragon of the Earth Element. Even if Shan Liangyi wants to harvest the current Taoyuan Township Lord, it will not be easy. If he makes a wrong move, he may even be defeated.

"Shan Liangyi can't sit idly by and watch the Heir of Azure Dragon grow to this level, unless he is the Heir of Azure Dragon himself."

I asked, "Even if Shan Liangyi opened the third door, would he be defeated by Taoyuan Township Master?"

"Why not?" Willow Shadow said as a matter of course, "You, Xuanwu, King Zhuanlun, and Taoyuan Township Lord are the four descendants of the two yin and yang of this era. Assuming that Taoyuan Township Lord has not been swallowed and replaced by Shan Liangyi, it means that Shan Liangyi now only has the power of earth.

"For Shan Liangyi, whose power is based on the Four Symbols and Five Elements, this means that his current power is only a fragment of his heyday. If nothing unexpected happens, it is probably only equivalent to an ordinary Great Impermanence.

"You should be very clear about how fierce the restraint relationship between the descendants of the two symbols is, right? Unless there is a gap from the first gate to the second gate, or from the second gate to the third gate, the Azure Dragon can restrain the Yellow Dragon. Although the Mountain and the Two Symbols also have the power to suppress the other four symbols as the central Yellow Dragon, it is not enough to completely cover the disadvantages formed by the restraint relationship.

"Also, don't forget that even without taking into account the restraint relationship, an ordinary Great Impermanence is no match for the Taoyuan Township Lord."

"But what you said was only the one-on-one situation between Shan Liangyi and the Lord of Taoyuan," I said, "and from your tone before, it is not 100% certain that the descendants of Qinglong were killed by Shan Liangyi in advance in history. In other words, there are descendants of Qinglong who escaped Shan Liangyi's killing and grew up step by step from desperate situations - why can't the Lord of Taoyuan be this type?

"As Shan Liangyi, in order to kill the current descendant of Azure Dragon, you may have pretended to be someone who is mortal enemies with Shan Liangyi, and transferred your suspicion to the prey, and then established a cooperative relationship with me, who is also mortal enemies with Shan Liangyi, to jointly defeat the Taoyuan Township Lord..." "Of course, according to this reasoning, the person you need to establish a cooperative relationship with first should be the descendant of White Tiger who can restrain the descendant of Azure Dragon. At present, this person is most likely to be the Wheel King, but you may not be able to find him; and Xuanwu, as the descendant of Xuanwu, is still at the Great Perfection level, so it will be useless even if you find him. After comprehensive consideration, you can only drag me to deal with the Taoyuan Township Lord, right?"

Willow Shadow smiled and said, "If that's the case... why don't I, the 'Shan Liangyi', just hunt you down first?

"In history, when facing a descendant of Azure Dragon who had grown to his full form, Shan Liangyi's killing order would not be to put the descendant of Azure Dragon first, but to put him last. Then, he would harvest the power seeds of the other four descendants first.

“When the number of power seeds in his body, including the Yellow Earth Dragon Seed, reaches four, he can rely on the power of the Five Elements Reincarnation to simulate the last missing attribute and restore himself to the level of opening the third door.

"Instead of trying to gain the power of other descendants of the Two Principles by establishing a cooperative relationship, it would be safer to directly take their power into our pockets. In the new killing order, the first one is the Fire Element Suzaku Seed.

"Under normal circumstances, Shan Liangyi would rank Suzaku last because he has the highest expectations for him. Only under abnormal circumstances would a reversal occur. Do you know why?"

I speculated: "…Is it because in the Five Elements relationship, fire can generate earth?"

It’s not that I have any basis, it’s just that this is the only direction I can find.

Among the five elements, fire giving birth to earth is also a puzzling knowledge point. Earth giving birth to metal and wood giving birth to fire are both easy to understand, and metal giving birth to water can also be thought of in the direction of "cold metal surfaces sometimes easily condense water droplets", but fire giving birth to earth is extremely abstract, and I wonder if there is any secret hidden in it.

Let’s not talk about that for now. At this moment, a flash of inspiration came to my mind: “So that’s how it is. The fire power of the Vermillion Bird is the most beneficial to the earth power of the Yellow Dragon… It can even directly strengthen its power to a large extent?”

"That's right." Willow Shadow nodded.

In the past, I only knew how the mutual restraint relationship between the five elements would be expressed when the power of two descendants of the two yin and yang collided, but I could not imagine how the mutual generation relationship would be expressed. Now I think that this relationship would not appear when two descendants of the two yin and yang collided, but would only react when two power seeds with a mutual generation relationship existed in the body of a descendant of the two yin and yang at the same time.

In the past, I have come into contact with the water-based Xuanwu power of the Water Master Xuanwu and the gold-based White Tiger power inside the Forged Yama Sword. These are also two five-element powers that have a mutual generation relationship. I tried to combine them in my mind and deduce what changes would happen to the two.

This is not a real experiment, but just a mental simulation. However, my intuition as a Great Impermanence and my intuition as a descendant of Liang Yi both tell me that my thoughts hit the mark.

"You have grown into the Great Impermanence. Shan Liangyi thinks it is the perfect time to harvest you. Moreover, Suzaku does not restrain Huanglong. On the contrary, Huanglong can suppress Suzaku by virtue of his central position." Liu Shuying continued, "Perhaps you will think that if I were Shan Liangyi, I might be using the excuse of dealing with the Taoyuan Township Lord to lure you out of Luoshan headquarters before taking action.

"Indeed, Shan Liangyi will not attack you at Luoshan Headquarters, but you are not a stay-at-home in Luoshan Headquarters all year round. You have been out several times in the past month. There are all kinds of opportunities for action. There is no need to find any excuse to lure you out.

"My defense ends here. So, do you still think I am Shan Liangyi?"

I thought about it first.

It is not realistic to expect me to believe that he is not Shan Liangyi just by talking. Just like he said at the beginning, he did not produce any physical evidence to prove that he is not Shan Liangyi. These are just inferences.

However, in my mind, the suspicion that he is Shan Liangyi has indeed been reduced a lot.

I have only just heard of some of the clues he provided in his defense, and I cannot deny the possibility that he made them up on the spot. But the parts that I can be sure to be true are enough to weave a logical chain that proves he is not Shan Liangyi and that is self-consistent.

(End of this chapter)