He wore a grey cloth robe, and his frame was extremely gaunt. His skin clung to him like a haphazardly assembled afterthought, and his eye sockets were deeply sunken.
The old man did indeed possess blood fiend energy—the unmistakable mark of an evil cultivator. There was no doubt about it, and the quality of this aura even far surpassed that of the black-robed puppet from before.
However, it was impossibly thin and constantly leaking outward, like a dilapidated thatched cottage riddled with holes.
Compared to the evil cultivators in Li Yuan's memory, whose blood energy surged and whose murderous aura pierced the heavens, the aura of the man before him was almost pitifully weak.
His life was like a candle flickering in the wind, liable to be extinguished at any moment.
“Why won't you let me be?” the old man spoke, his voice dry and raspy, filled with bitterness and resignation. “We have no grudge between us.”
Li Yuan looked at him, his gaze indifferent. “I have nothing to say to an evil cultivator.”
He raised his right hand, a pale golden light igniting at his fingertips.
In that instant, a dark shadow descended from above, slamming heavily into the ground between the two of them. It was the black-robed puppet—the hem of its robe was completely shredded, and its arms were covered in spreading, dark red cracks.
Without a moment's pause, it kicked off the ground, gouging out a shallow pit as it launched itself at Li Yuan like a cannonball. The blood fiend energy condensed on its right fist spun rapidly into a cone, carrying a terrifying momentum.
But Li Yuan's eyes remained fixed on the old man. He casually raised his right hand and delivered a single slap toward the charging puppet.
Snap.
A crisp sound rang out. The black-robed puppet's body froze mid-air for a heartbeat before cracks rapidly spread from its fist to its entire body—it exploded into countless fragments.
Before the pieces could even hit the ground, they disintegrated into fine dust in mid-air, leaving not a single trace behind. The entire process didn't even last a second.
A puppet at the late Nascent Soul stage was only slightly more durable than that incarnation of the Blood Moon God. To Li Yuan, there was no difference between the two.
Li Yuan withdrew his hand, his gaze falling back onto the old man.
Then he froze slightly—at some point, the old man had fallen to his knees.
It wasn't a combat stance; his entire body was bent like a bow. His gaunt hands braced against the ground, and his frame trembled slightly against the dirt.
His shoulders were slumped, and his white hair hung down to obscure his face. Li Yuan had seen this posture countless times—it was exactly how desperate mortals looked when they knelt before the gates of a sect to beg for protection.
“I know I am no match for you,” the old man's voice drifted out from behind his hanging hair, every word sounding profoundly sincere. “The puppet attacked only because it was set with a master-protection seal. It was not my intent—”
A few coughs followed, his shoulders shaking violently before he continued.
“I beg you...” He lifted his head, his clouded eyes staring straight at Li Yuan. There was no deception or excuse on his wrinkled face, only the desperate pleading of someone driven to a dead end. “Please, let this festival proceed smoothly. After that, my life is at your mercy.”
Li Yuan's finger paused in mid-air, the speck of pale golden light flickering slightly.
He was, quite frankly, a bit bewildered.
In his hundred-plus years on the Kyushu Continent, he had encountered hundreds, if not thousands, of evil cultivators. He had seen those who knelt and begged for mercy when cornered, those who cursed until their last breath, those who tried to take him down with forbidden arts, and those who tried to detonate their souls when they realized they couldn't win.
But he had never seen a scene like this.
What felt even more jarring was that there was no trace of faith or vow power on this old man.
“...Stand up first.”
Li Yuan withdrew his finger, though the golden light didn't fully dissipate. His tone remained flat, but compared to his previous judgmental coldness, there was a trace of nearly imperceptible softening.
Yet the old man remained kneeling, his forehead still pressed against the dirt. Seeing him like this, Li Yuan remained silent for a moment before speaking again. “You said to let the festival proceed—why? You should know that those things are of no use to you.”
The old man's shoulders trembled slightly as he slowly lifted his head, a flash of surprise in his clouded eyes. He hadn't expected Li Yuan to notice that.
“Because those things were never meant for me.”
“Then who are they for?”
The old man didn't answer immediately. Bracing himself against the ground, he slowly stood up, his movements sluggish and unsteady. He brushed the dirt from his cloth robe and looked up at Li Yuan.
“Are you willing to come inside and see?” The old man stepped aside, pointing toward the thatched cottage behind him. His voice was dry but calm. “The answers you seek are in there.”
Li Yuan stared at him for a few seconds before glancing at the cottage. His Divine Sense had already thoroughly swept the interior—no traps, no hidden fluctuations of spiritual energy, only a coffin carved from spirit crystals.
He gave a slight nod of agreement.
The old man turned and pushed open the wooden door of the cottage. The interior was even darker than the outside, with only a few slivers of light leaking through the gaps in the walls to faintly illuminate the floor.
Li Yuan followed the old man inside.
Upon entering, his gaze was immediately drawn to the coffin in the center of the room.
The coffin was carved from a single, massive piece of spirit crystal, with no visible seams on its surface. The crystal was a pure, translucent white, emitting a faint, ethereal glow in the dim room.
This quality of spirit crystal had a specific name on the Kyushu Continent—Heaven-Essence Crystal. It was a rare material a full grade higher than top-grade spirit stones. Even a piece the size of a coin would be enough to make Soul Transformation stage cultivators fight with everything they had. And here, someone had actually turned it into a coffin?
Even with Li Yuan's vast experience, he couldn't help but click his tongue inwardly. Though he had some stock of Heaven-Essence Crystal himself, all of it combined would only be enough for half a lid. The sheer extravagance of the material used for this coffin was bordering on outrageous.
He stepped closer and looked down into the coffin.
A young girl lay inside.
She appeared to be around seventeen or eighteen, dressed in a plain white dress with her hands folded over her chest. Her features were refined to the point of being surreal—the arch of her brows, the line of her nose, the slight upward curve of her lips—every detail looked as though it had been carved with the finest chisel. Her skin was as white as porcelain, and her lips still held a faint, lingering pink.
But Li Yuan knew with a single glance that there was no vitality left in her body. Her soul's aura was so weak it was almost undetectable, as if it had been sealed deep within her body layer by layer. This crystal coffin was channeling spiritual energy into her at an extremely slow pace, maintaining the final shred of life in this body, but nothing more.
He watched for a moment, his brow furrowing slightly.
This face... he felt like he had seen it somewhere before.
He couldn't quite recall where at first—but he had definitely seen it, and more than once.
“...Who is she?”
The old man walked to the side of the coffin, resting a hand gently on the edge of the lid. He looked down at the girl, a faint light finally appearing in his clouded eyes as he spoke softly.
“Vernas.”
Vernas—Li Yuan recognized that name. In the main temple of the City of Divine Grace, that ten-meter-tall giant stone statue behind the altar bore that very name.
He realized it instantly, then looked down at the girl in the coffin again. Indeed, her features were an exact match for the statue's.
The only difference was that the stone statue's expression was solemn and majestic, carrying the detachment and pity unique to a deity, while the girl in the coffin lay there quietly, showing no divine authority whatsoever.
She was the God of Light?!
“So... the God of Light is dead?”
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