Su Hansheng felt insulted!
That was logical—what’s wrong with it?
Su Xuanlin’s body was pinned to the tower’s stone pillar by the demon‑subduing staff, his blue robes soaked through, blood dripping to the ground and seeping into the intricate array.
Chongjue couldn’t make it clear in a few words. He warned softly, “Don’t make another move.”
Still stung by the earlier slight, Su Hansheng replied with a brittle smile, “If I hadn’t acted just now, eight times out of ten the World‑Honored One would already be strung up and whipped. I didn’t make trouble and even helped, and you’re still unhappy?”
Chongjue tightened his hold on Su Hansheng’s injured hand, speaking mildly. “It doesn’t hurt?”
The wound had only just regrown tender flesh under spiritual urging; Su Hansheng yelped, nearly jumping. “Chongjue!”
He must’ve been out of his mind to listen to Lan Xubai and come to this tower looking for trouble.
Chongjue had his own plan from the start. With a glance aside, he suddenly beckoned. “Come.”
Frowning, Su Hansheng turned—and saw Zhuang Lingxiu trotting over, eyes shining at the World‑Honored One. “Greetings, World‑Honored One!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Zhuang Lingxiu caught sight of the figure nailed to the pillar by the demon‑subduing staff. The face looked oddly familiar, but he couldn’t place it.
Chongjue said to him, “Your brother is there. Take Xiaoxiao and undo his draconic transformation.”
Su Hansheng immediately bristled. “You trying to get rid of me?”
At the World‑Honored One’s order, Zhuang Lingxiu ignored Su Xuanlin, shouldered Su Hansheng like a sack, and said solemnly, “Rest easy, World‑Honored One. I’ll keep Xiaoxiao safe.”
With that, he bolted toward the distant “mountain range.”
Jounced nearly sick, Su Hansheng watched Chongjue recede and thumped Zhuang Lingxiu’s back in annoyance. “Senior Brother! Put me down!”
Judging they were far enough, Zhuang Lingxiu let him down at last.
Ignoring Su Hansheng’s glare, he sighed and advised, “Yuanxiao, with weak cultivation let’s not cause trouble for the World‑Honored One. Come along to somewhere safe—isn’t that nice and easy?”
Su Hansheng stared. “You still revere him that much?”
Zhuang Lingxiu looked puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I?”
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With low cultivation, Su Hansheng burned through spiritual power too fast. He was about to rest when the ground heaved and the mountains shook beneath his feet, as if a great thing surged up from the depths.
Zhuang Lingxiu grabbed him. “Where’s your companion tree?”
A tendril poked out from Su Hansheng’s cloak and waggled—here.
“Everywhere in the tower is dangerous. Don’t let the companion tree stick out at random,” Zhuang Lingxiu warned.
Su Hansheng nodded agreement.
They didn’t know what caused the occasional upheavals underfoot; they just moved more cautiously toward the Fallen Abyss Dragon.
After two quarters of an hour, they finally saw that vast body clearly.
Zhuang Lingge had indeed fully transformed into a dragon, lying docile within a dim array and sleeping soundly.
Seeing him safe, Zhuang Lingxiu finally exhaled, tugging Su Hansheng forward with swift flight.
Zhuang Lingge slept so deeply there was no response at all.
Once close, Su Hansheng deftly channeled spiritual power to break Zhuang Lingge’s dragon form, but the moment his hand touched him, he sensed something wrong.
Zhuang Lingge’s body was ice‑cold. No matter how much spiritual power from the phoenix bone he poured in, it was like a drop in the ocean, stirring no ripples.
—Completely different from before, when a touch could suppress the dragon form.
Su Hansheng drew back his hand and exchanged a look with Zhuang Lingxiu.
“Maybe it’s because we’re in the tower,” Zhuang Lingxiu forced a smile and even tried to comfort him. “It’s alright. The World‑Honored One is capable. We’ll ask him when we get back.”
Su Hansheng could only nod faintly.
Zhuang Lingge still slept.
Zhuang Lingxiu couldn’t stand seeing his brother like this. He stroked that massive body, pressed his forehead to the scales, and whispered, “Don’t be afraid. I’ll take you home.”
Then, face returning to its usual gentleness, he led Su Hansheng away.
“Senior Brother…” Su Hansheng hesitated.
Zhuang Lingxiu smiled to say he was fine, yet his expression quickly dimmed. He looked back at the dragon’s colossal form for a long moment before speaking softly. “Xiaoxiao, have you ever thought—if you weren’t a sacred object but just an ordinary person—what would your life be like now?”
Su Hansheng shook his head.
He had never thought about it—didn’t dare to.
“I have,” Zhuang Lingxiu said, a trace of warmth in his tone. “I think that if my brother weren’t some so‑called sacred object, he’d have grown up alongside me, tall and stalwart. We’d have entered Wendao Academy together…”
Studied and cultivated together, gone on trials together…
Instead of one swimming free through the human world, while the other was trapped in a mountain‑sized body, unable to take even half a step.
Su Hansheng tilted his head to speak, when another tremor jolted him and the words fell out of his mind.
This tremor was stronger, and a surging tide of spiritual power shot skyward from the ground.
Su Hansheng staggered and nearly fell, but Zhuang Lingxiu caught him.
Once steady, they looked toward the sound and froze.
The dim array where the Fallen Abyss Dragon had lain moments ago seemed to be lit in an instant.
Spiritual power surged from nowhere, vast as the sea. It roused the dust‑covered ancient formation bit by bit, like kindling catching into a spreading blaze, sweeping toward them like the night sky filling with stars.
The Fallen Abyss Dragon was already within the formation.
Or rather, the Silver‑Carved Lamp spread at the four quarters, the Lanke Record, and the Kunlun Jade clashing with Su Xuanlin—all were simultaneously in the formation that stabilizes the Heaven‑Reaching Tower.
Two thousand years on, the four sacred objects had finally gathered in the tower.
Su Hansheng drew a sharp breath and suddenly understood why, when he’d voiced that earlier guess, Chongjue had looked at him like he was a clear‑eyed but foolish child.
Sixteen years ago and now, it wasn’t that false, heaven‑climbing will laying a trap to forge a body—it was Chongjue, Qifu Yin, and Zou Chi who set the snare of their own accord.
Only, sixteen years ago, the false Heaven’s Will used Su Xuanlin—the Three Realms’ sole Immortal Lord—to throw the game into chaos.
And now, they were all here in the Heaven‑Reaching Tower…
Chongjue stood tall within the formation, watching the now‑freed Su Xuanlin with a faint, ambiguous smile.
Smiling like that, he looked unusually like the evil half—or to Su Xuanlin, exactly like the true, whole Chongjue from before the split.
“The four sacred objects are in position,” Chongjue said lightly. “Do you dare come seize a forged body?”
Su Xuanlin’s eyes were dark as a revenant’s. “Aren’t you afraid the tower will truly collapse…”
Chongjue smiled. “Once, maybe.”
Because if the tower fell, half the living beings of the Three Realms would perish. Even before entering, Chongjue had worried—until Su Hansheng said the tower showed no movement at all. Then he was fully at ease.
There had never been any record of the tower collapsing in the Qiankun annals—until the first time two millennia ago, when a heaven‑climbing demon tried to seize the four sacred objects as a body.
Chongjue finally understood: the tower’s three “collapses” were mere illusions.
Only one who had undergone nirvana—Su Hansheng—could pierce the falsehood and see the true tower.
Now that the four sacred objects were gathered, they would use themselves as bait in the tower, to drag that heaven‑climbing demon back down into the eight‑thousand‑zhang depths.
If that demon feared a trap and didn’t come, they might have to wait another two thousand years for new sacred objects to appear.
Gambling on whether that “heaven‑climber” had the guts to enter the array laid for him by their own hands, to take what the four sacred objects would condense into—
In the distance, Su Hansheng suddenly saw it all.
“…So all that talk about the Heaven‑Reaching Tower ‘collapsing’ was really about using this killing formation to bring the tower down and kill the false Heaven’s Will?”
Su Hansheng understood yet again.