You said you would practice martial arts. Have you mastered the Tiangang Dharma?

After coming out of the fourth illusion world, Jiang Qiu discovered that the residual soul of Ah Xiong in his control was becoming fuller and fuller. It seemed that as long as he experienced enough illusion worlds, the residual soul inside would be complete.

"Perhaps as long as Ah Xiong's residual soul can be completed, the road to the fifth heaven will appear." Jiang Qiu thought so, and he glanced at the vast entrance to the illusion above his head.

The illusion of the fourth heaven is boundless, but what is better than the third heaven is that the illusion is all free to choose, and you won’t be trapped in a quagmire-like illusion - no matter how you walk, you can’t get out.

As long as the secret realm of the fourth heaven collapses, it will come out.

Knowing this, Jiang Qiu quickly chose the fifth fantasy world. This time he didn't enter it but watched it.

When Bai Yan's sword tip drew the third spell in the air, ripples suddenly appeared in the air. He staggered half a step, and his blue shirt was wet by the sudden cherry blossoms - this was not right, there shouldn't be cherry blossoms on the top of Kunlun Mountain in early spring.

The petals passed through the barrier he had set up and condensed into dewdrops on the inky sword. Bai Yan held his breath and watched the dewdrops reflect the distorted scenery: the vermilion torii was looming in the sea of ​​clouds, and the glazed tiles reflected the colorful rainbow light. This was the source of the evil spirit he had been tracking for three months.

The moment the scabbard hit some invisible barrier, the sound of the whole world disappeared. Bai Yan heard his own rapid heartbeat, followed by the sound of stream water flowing over pebbles. Millions of cherry blossoms bloomed at the same moment, and the pink and white petals turned into palm-sized butterflies as they brushed past his hair.

“Is the guest lost?”

Bai Yan turned around abruptly. Behind the bamboo curtain, a girl in a moon-white skirt was kneeling, with fox ears looming in her hair. The black-glazed tea bowl in front of her was emitting curls of smoke, transforming into the shape of a nine-tailed fox.

"This is Wangyou Valley, where the demons live." The girl lightly touched the tea soup with her fingertips, and the fox-shaped mist suddenly dispersed into fireflies all over the sky. "I am Qingli, the owner of Qingyu Tea House."

Bai Yan's sword fell to the ground with a clang. The bronze mirror beside the tea table reflected his current appearance: a osmanthus flower was pinned in his hair at some point, and the protective golden light condensed from the sword's energy was fading. The most shocking thing was his state of mind - the fierce murderous intent when he was hunting monsters, now melted like spring snow.

Qingli smiled softly, the emerald bells on her earrings jingled, "Master, don't panic. Anyone who enters the Sakura Realm will let go of their obsession within three days." She pushed open the carved wooden window, and the moist wind with the aroma of medicine rushed in, "Look."

In the morning mist, a girl with deer horns walked by carrying a bamboo basket. Wherever her skirt swept past, the withered datura spread its petals again. On the roof, a cat demon stretched lazily, and the dewdrops swept by the tip of its tail condensed into amber on the tiles. The most amazing thing was the thousand-year-old cherry tree in the backyard of the teahouse. Whenever the pink and white petals fell, it would turn into a miniature elf, chasing among the branches while holding pine cones.

"Doctor Yunxiu!" Qingli suddenly waved outside. The deer demon carrying the medicine box looked up upon hearing this, and the red jade on her forehead reflected the morning sun and glowed softly. As she walked quickly, Bai Yan noticed that her left hoof was a little lame - it was clearly an old sword wound.

"A new guest?" Yunxiu's voice was like the sound of a mountain stream hitting bluestone. She took out an oil-paper bag from her sleeve and said, "Try this. The flower honey mixed with morning dew can calm you down."

Bai Yan instinctively stepped back, but bumped into something furry. Looking down, he saw a squirrel spirit holding a pine cone, its glass-like eyes rolling around. The little creature saw that he was paying attention to it, so it raised the pine cone like a treasure, and a glowing pine nut rolled out of it.

"Take it." Qingli brewed a cup of fresh tea, and golden dots like stardust floated in the light green tea soup. "In the demon world, rejecting kindness is more hurtful than a sword."

The moment Bai Yan took the pine nut, he felt a slight tingling pain on his fingertips. The pine nut took root in his palm and sprouted tender green buds. Yunxiu chuckled softly, and the vines wrapped around the antlers bloomed with white flowers as big as rice grains: "The wood spirit has recognized you."

As the sun rose higher, more monsters came to the teahouse. An old man with a turtle back leaned on a plum branch cane, and with every step he took, a few dancing lotus seeds fell from his clothes; a girl with double buns held a gilded stove, and the shadow of a phoenix occasionally emerged in the dancing flames; the most eye-catching was the man in black in the corner, who had a stringless harp horizontally in front of him, and whenever petals floated in from the window, the harp would vibrate and produce clear sounds.

"That's Mr. Jiaowei." Qingli rubbed the teacup and whispered, "Its true form is a lightning-struck tree, and it only speaks one sentence every hundred years." As if to confirm her words, the man in black suddenly looked up, and an arc of electricity flashed in his dark pupils. He raised his hand to catch a cherry petal, and the body of the zither rang loudly. The talisman paper in Bai Yan's sleeve ignited without wind, and the ashes actually spelled out the two words "stop the war".

The midday sun shone through the branches of the cherry blossoms, weaving a brocade of light and shadow on the bluestone slabs. Bai Yan looked at his fingertips, which were gradually becoming transparent. The monk's body was being assimilated by the demon world. He should have been terrified, but his chest was filled with an unprecedented peace, like a fetus returning to the mother's womb.

"Would you like to hear a story?" A hoarse voice came from above. A half-dead vine hung from the beam of the teahouse, and in a blink of an eye it turned into an old man with wrinkles all over his face. He sat cross-legged in the air, and the sparks from his pipe turned into swimming goldfish: "Where did we talk about last time? Oh, yes, when the demon world first opened up."

Bai Yan listened and found that there was no war or killing in the old tree spirit's story. He talked about how the morning mist condensed on the tip of the first magical grass leaf, how the moonlight taught the fox to speak, and how the meteor shower three hundred years ago gave every night owl a hat woven with starlight.

As the sun set, Qingli lit the glass lamp on the eaves. In the warm yellow light, Bai Yan saw his hands completely transformed into spirits. He no longer obsessed with finding the sword he came with, because when the first star lit up, the whole valley began to sing.

The rocks hummed in the twilight, the streams echoed the rhythm of the wind, and even the falling cherry blossoms stepped on some ancient rhythm. Bai Yan finally understood that this was the true appearance of the demon race: they were the embodiment of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, and fighting and competing for the demon race was as absurd as a dewdrop trying to drown the sea.

The night wind brought the aroma of wine, and Bai Yan followed the smell to the hot spring. In the hazy mist, he saw the black-clad musician playing music on the water. The stringless harp was suspended in the air, and each ripple plucked a note. In the reeds farther away, a rabbit-eared girl was cleaning her jade flute with dew, and the sound of the flute startled fireflies all over the beach.

At midnight, when Qingli found Bai Yan with the wine jar, the corners of the monk's clothes were already covered with night jasmine. "You smell like Kunlun snow." She poured a glass of amber liquid, "Three hundred years ago, a monk also came here. He realized the truth under the cherry tree and turned into a piece of snow to protect the barrier." Bai Yan drank the demon wine and tasted the sweetness condensed by the moonlight. He saw that his memory was being lost - the obsession of hunting down evil demons, the open and secret struggles in the sects, and the fear of failing to overcome the tribulation, all dissipated under the starry sky with the white mist he exhaled.

When the morning star rises, a cherry blossom mark appears between Bai Yan's eyebrows. The stone lanterns in front of the teahouse light up one after another, and on the path leading to the hot spring, morning dew has begun to condense between the grass leaves. A new day is about to begin. In the demon world where there is no dispute, every tomorrow is a gentle depiction of eternity.

When the moonlight was full for the seventh time, Qingli tied a light green belt embroidered with flowing cloud patterns for Bai Yan. This was the most grand Misty Moon Festival in the demon world. The roots of the thousand-year-old cherry trees would emerge from the ground on this night, injecting the stored starlight into every stream.

"Hold on tight." The fox demon's tail wrapped around Bai Yan's wrist, and her toes touched the glowing tree roots. They danced against the direction of the galaxy, and with every step they took, a crystal lotus blossomed in the air. Bai Yan's cherry blossom mark was getting hot, and he saw his long, loose hair dyed with the moonlight.

At the climax of the festival, eight hundred monsters chanted the ancient blessing at the same time. But before the last syllable faded, the crisp sound of broken glass suddenly came from the sky. Bai Yan looked up first - the bright moon like a jade plate was being eaten away by some black substance, and the edges were constantly peeling off glowing fragments.

"Stand back!" Mr. Jiaowei's stringless harp made an explosive sound. The black-clad harpist's fingers were covered in blood, but he was still plucking the non-existent strings rapidly. The falling moonlight fragments twisted and deformed in the air, turning into burning meteorites that smashed into the cherry forest.

The branches of the thousand-year-old cherry tree grew wildly, forming a dome outside the barrier. The moment the first meteorite hit the treetops, the entire valley was shaking. Bai Yan smelled a familiar scent - it was the smell of Kunlun Mountain's cold iron being tempered by true fire, and it would never appear in the demon world's sword energy.

"Be careful!" Yunxiu's antlers suddenly grew and swept the stunned Bai Yan to a safe place. Where he had just stood was a half-broken sword, and the yin-yang fish pattern on the hilt was clearly visible. More weapon fragments wrapped in spiritual power penetrated the barrier, burning black marks on the ground.

Qingli's nine tails were all revealed, and the fox fire formed a barrier to protect the altar: "It's the Liangyi Sect's Demon-Breaking Blade, a weapon that should have been extinct thirty years ago." Spider-web-like cracks appeared on the teacup between her fingertips, and the emerald green tea evaporated into green mist and rose into the air, barely repairing the gap in the barrier.

Bai Yan picked up the meteorite that had rolled down to his feet. The runes of the Taixu Sword Art floated on the surface of the broken stone. The moment he touched it, his memory pierced into his mind like a sharp sword - he remembered why he was hunting monsters, remembered what his master said on the observatory, "guarding the destiny of heaven and earth", and remembered the strange infatuation three months ago.

"Your eyes." Yunxiu suddenly pressed his shoulders. In the bronze mirror fragments, Bai Yan's pupils were alternating between amber and dark black, and the shadows of the osmanthus flowers and the monk's jade crown in his hair overlapped and flickered. The weirdest thing was the position of his heart, where the cherry blossom mark and the Tai Chi diagram were violently torn under his skin.

Mr. Jiaowei appeared behind them at some point, with seven blood-red notes floating on the body of his zither: "Time and space are wailing." This was the first sentence he spoke in a hundred years, and every word was like thunder. "Three days in the outside world, three years here, the misaligned gears began to mesh."

The medicine room was lit all night for the first time. Yunxiu's antler was broken in half, and used to grind evening primrose to stop bleeding. The bamboo demon boy lay on the jade bed, and the wound on his abdomen continued to steam black gas, which was a symptom of being polluted by external spiritual power.

"Help me hold him down." Yunxiu opened his clothes, revealing the Bagua formation sealed on his chest. Bai Yan's pupils shrank - that was clearly the Kunlun secret soul-suppressing seal. The deer demon's demon core was locked by eight golden chains, and it was beating violently under the skin, shaking the chains.

When Yunxiu pressed the demon pill into the bamboo monster's wound, Bai Yan saw countless fragments of memories: the mountain temple on a stormy night, the bronze sword that pierced the deer's belly, the coiled dragon pattern on the monk's robe, and finally the moment Qingli rushed into the Sakura Realm holding the bloody fawn.

"You have known me for a long time." Bai Yan held Yunxiu's trembling wrist and found that her body temperature was rapidly decreasing. "The cultivator from three hundred years ago is the traitor Xuandu Zhenren mentioned in the ancient books of my sect?"

What answered him was the sudden commotion outside the medicine house. Outside the human wall formed by the twelve night owls, the old man with a turtle back was knocking on the ground with his plum stick: "The water in Mirror Lake is boiling! All the reflections have turned blood red!"

When Bai Yan jumped onto the roof, he was nearly knocked over by the heat wave. The originally clear lake surface was rolling with red foam, and the scene of the Kunlun Mountain top emerged in the water curtain: the demon-killing formation formed by 300 monks was in operation, and the sword he wore before he disappeared, Qingshuang, was suspended at the center of the formation.

What was even more terrifying was the fusion of the lake's reflection and reality. Whenever a rune lit up in the demon-killing formation, a crack would appear in the ground at the corresponding location in the demon world. The osmanthus flowers on Bai Yan's waist suddenly grew wildly, their roots piercing into his meridians, and the pine seedlings in his arms began to emit a clear light.

"The pine spirit is giving a warning." Three of Qingli's tails have been scorched. "The external spiritual energy is polluting the spiritual veins. The demon world is beginning to reject all foreign objects - including the remaining humanity in you."

Bai Yan stumbled towards Mirror Lake, leaving burning footprints on the grass with every step. When he pressed his palms on the boiling lake, a miracle happened: the sweet osmanthus roots in his left hand and the pine seedlings in his right hand plunged into the water at the same time, and the clear and turbid spiritual powers rushed along the meridians, colliding at his spiritual platform to create a sky full of stars.

The lake suddenly became as calm as before, reflecting Bai Yan's double face. On the left was the cold eyebrows of the monk, on the right was the soft outline of the demon spirit, and in the transition zone in the middle was floating with tiny starlight. He saw his past and future flowing in the lake - the snowflakes that Xuan Du turned into three hundred years ago were now flashing in the demon-killing formation on the top of Kunlun Mountain.

"Space-time anchor point." Bai Yan muttered to himself, and ice crystals began to condense on the ends of his hair. "What Master wants to destroy is not the demon race, but the spiritual vein node that maintains the balance of space and time."

When the first thunderbolt split the sky of the demon world, Bai Yan finally awakened completely. He pulled out the sword that was formed from obsession in his heart, and carved the cherry blossom mark and the Tai Chi diagram into the sword body at the same time. Qingli's fox fire plated it with gold edges, Yunxiu's herbal juice soaked the edge, Mr. Jiaowei quenched it with the sound of the piano, and finally the thousand-year-old cherry tree wrapped its roots around the hilt of the sword.

"This sword has no name." When Bai Yan stepped into the rift of time and space, the starlight of the entire demon world was behind him. "After today, it may have a myriad of names - Demon Crossing Sword, Immortal Killing Blade, Monument of the Two Realms."

The last scene is the re-gathering of the broken moonlight. The power of the monks and the demons interweaves into a web in the cracks of time and space, reweaving the unbalanced spiritual veins. When Bai Yan's sword penetrates the demon-killing formation and the cracks in the demon world at the same time, three thousand cherry blossoms wrapped in starlight rush up to the sky, and a gentle rain falls on the top of Kunlun Mountain. (End of this chapter)