First Immortal of the Sword

Su Yi glanced at the woman in black. “Don’t be nervous. If I wanted to fight, you’d already be a corpse.”

As he spoke, he approached the bronze box and examined it.

Perhaps because Su Yi seemed a bit too calm and too composed, the woman in black felt alarmed and uncertain. For a moment, she dared not act recklessly.

The woman’s beautiful eyes darted about as she probed, “Young Lord Su, Nirvanic Winds… Is he already dead?”

Su Yi nodded. “Last time, I let him escape. I was already a bit angry after that. I naturally didn’t give him the chance to flee this time too.”

The woman’s heart shook, and her charming, beautiful face turned slightly rigid.

Although he was only in the Origin Palace Realm, the Nirvanic Winds was a monster from the ancient era, someone who’d survived the thirty thousand years of the Prohibition of Ancient Darkness. He had multiple life-saving trump cards on hand.

Even against Spirit Dao cultivators, he had means of escaping.

Yet now, Su Yi had cut him down. Of course the woman in black was surprised. How could she not be?

She took a deep breath, then whispered, “Young Lord Su, we had no grudge prior to this. Furthermore, my only target was Wen Xinzhao; I had absolutely no plans of hurting anyone else…”

Su Yi waved and cut her off. “Rest assured, I won’t kill you.”

The woman was stunned; it seemed she hadn’t expected this. “Why is that?”

Su Yi avoided the question and asked another instead. “Might you tell me about the Demon Womb’s origins?”

The woman in black shook her head. “All I can say is that it’s connected to the Deathbringer’s Netherworld Palace.”

Thirty thousand years ago, the Deathbringer’s Netherworld Palace was the Azure Continent’s top faction of ghost cultivators, and its forces were distributed across the world.

Their first palace master was the man whose name intimidated the world, the Netherworld Asura Emperor.

Although the Deathbringer’s Netherworld Palace had long since disappeared into the long river of history, the Deathbringer’s Gates distributed across the continent still saw it as their holy land!

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Su Yi’s gaze left the bronze box and landed on the woman in black. “You can go, but leave the Demonic Womb behind.”

The look on the woman’s beautiful face shifted, and she seemed to throw all caution to the wind. “Young Lord Su, don’t you think you’re overestimating yourself? Or rather, do you think my willingness to concede means you’re certain to defeat me?”

Su Yi sighed, but wasted no further words. He just attacked directly.

Swoosh!

He pressed his fingers into a blade and casually swept down.

It was just a single casual slash, yet it descended like the river of stars falling from the heavens and onto the world below.

The woman’s pupils constricted, and she suddenly raised her blood-colored lotus lantern.

Boom!

A crimson shadow took to the air. 

However, an instant later, the shadow of a crimson lantern burst apart; the vast, sweeping sword qi cleaved it in two.

The woman in black felt a chill course down her spine. Her red lips parted, and she let out a high-pitched whistle.

She still held the real lantern in her hand, but it instantly transformed into a blood-red saber, which she suddenly swung.

Saber qi swept forth like a bolt of cloth, dazzling and imposing. Hundreds, or perhaps thousands of illusory figures, like ghost gods, appeared in the surrounding air.

The Blood Spirit Profound Crimson Incantation!

This was the woman in black’s killer technique. A single swing of her saber was like a night parade of one hundred ghosts. To her opponents, this was like plummeting into an endless ghost domain. Try as they might, there was no escape.

However, the ghosts of the night parade burst apart like soap bubbles beneath Su Yi’s attack. They couldn’t block that vast, majestic sword qi at all. They just shattered and dispersed, one by one.

“This is bad!” The woman in black visibly lost her composure as she realized just how terrifying Su Yi was.

It was already too late to dodge. She suddenly gnashed her teeth and raised her crimson saber to clash with Su Yi head-on.

However, it was then that her body stiffened, and her movements slowed. She no longer dared act recklessly.

Boom!

When it was just three feet away from her, the vast swath of incoming sword qi receded like the tide and disappeared without so much as harming a hair on her head.

Nonetheless, the woman’s charming, beautiful eyes were filled with utter terror and uncertainty.

This was because, although she didn’t know when he’d gotten there, Su Yi was already next to her, and a fair, slender hand was already pressed against her shoulder. This development left her so startled, her soul practically left her body.

“If you want to live, this is your only chance. You should hurry up and leave.” Su Yi patted the woman in the black dress on the shoulder, then walked toward the bronze box.

The woman watched him walk away, the look on her beautiful face shifting erratically. She still felt uneasy and alarmed. She finally understood that it was just as Su Yi said earlier: if he really wanted to kill her, she’d be a corpse already!

“Young Lord Su, might you tell me why you’re letting me leave?” the woman couldn’t help but ask. 

She’d asked the same question earlier, only for Su Yi to avoid answering.

Su Yi sank into a brief silence, and a hint of melancholy arose in his eyes. He waved, then said, “I owe this to the Ghost Serpent Clan.”

He owes the Ghost Serpents? This only made the woman even more confused. This guy is obviously just a young Grain Avoidance cultivator, and he’s not a survivor of the Prohibition of Ancient Darkness like me. He can’t possibly be one of the Possessed, either.

So why would he say something like that?

Don’t tell me that his sect, or perhaps one of his seniors, has some deep bond with the Ghost Serpent lineage?

She couldn’t see through it. However, she could tell that Su Yi wasn’t willing to explain.

After a moment’s silence, she said, “Young Lord Su, if the cultivators of the world’s Deathbringer’s Gates find out that the Demonic Womb has fallen into your hands, it’ll surely result in numerous attempts on your life.”

She hesitated, then added, “And if… If the existence slumbering within the Demonic Womb awakens, I’m afraid it’ll bring you disaster, not fortune.”

With that, she turned and left.

From beginning to end, Su Yi didn’t so much as turn to look at her. In his heart, he sighed. Ye-zi, Little Leaf, I wouldn’t have thought I’d encounter a member of your Ghost Serpent Clan here on the Azure Continent…

The image of a gentle, graceful beauty floated into his mind.

She looked about eighteen or nineteen, with a radiant smile and a crown on her head. She wore a crane cloak, and she held a lotus lantern shining with clear, flowing light.

That night, she left, her eyes flowing with tears as she ventured into the vast darkness of the world. She left nothing but her solitary, desolate silhouette behind, but soon, even that gradually faded from view…

Even after she left, it was as if he could still hear her soft yet determined voice echoing through his ears: “Su Xuanjun, I’ll wait for you to come back. Even if it means I spend the rest of my life waiting, it won’t matter.”

Her name was Ye Yu.

She was the first empress in the history of the Ghost Serpent Clan.

After a while, Su Yi shook his head and repressed the melancholy rising in his heart.

He couldn’t dwell on the past. He couldn’t bear to.

Su Yi returned his gaze to the bronze box, thought for a moment, then bit through his fingertip and used his fresh blood as ink to outline a strange and miraculous Edict.

The Spirit-Sealing Edict!

This was a Daoist Edict for suppressing spiritual bodies.

Bzzz~!

When the Edict took shape, it instantly flickered on and off, as if it were breathing, then silently disappeared.

The bronze box’s aura disappeared completely. There was no longer anything strange about it; even when he used his divine sense to examine it, he couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary.

Only then did Su Yi extend his divine sense into the box’s interior.

The object lying silently inside was about the size of a cattail leaf. It was round as a ball, and black, like a mysterious piece of jade.

Heavenly Demon Source Essence.

This was an extremely rare, unmatched divine material. It could be used to create the core of a Demonic Womb. Then, after using a secret method to seal the womb, the living thing within would obtain nourishment and undergo metamorphosis.

This Demonic Womb had numerous seals covering it too. Its presence was strange and terrifying.

Just relying on his divine sense, he could only see the indistinct, ethereal outline of the spiritual body beneath the many layers of seals. He couldn’t tell what it looked like at all.

Whatever it was, it seemed to sense his divine sense. The Demonic Womb suddenly trembled, and the power of the seals covering its surface lit up and flashed with strange and mysterious energy fluctuations. 

“I don’t care about your origins. Just be good and stay inside for now.” Su Yi laughed, withdrew his divine sense, closed the bronze box, and tossed it into the Snow Beetle Jade Pendant.

Although he didn’t know the origins of the living thing growing within the Demonic Womb, its presence was incomparably shocking. If the power of the seals weren’t suppressing it, he feared it would have emerged a long time ago.

According to Su Yi’s estimates, the creature within the Demonic Womb most likely already possessed Spirit Dao cultivation!

This was far too shocking.

After all, the Demonic Womb was like a mother’s womb; the creature within was like an infant.

It hadn’t even been born yet, yet its energy fluctuations were those of the Spirit Dao. How shocking was that?

Su Yi couldn’t help but recall his third disciple, Huo Yao. When Huo Yao was still inside a Demonic Womb, he, too, had an enormously powerful presence. He was perhaps even stronger than the creature inside this Demonic Womb.

However, when the creature within the Demonic Womb entered the world, it would need to seal its power and cultivate anew. Only then could it master its own power.

It was a different approach, but it somewhat similar to the way he’d reincarnated to cultivate anew.

The only difference was that the living thing within the Demonic Womb hadn’t reincarnated.

For now, Su Yi had no desire to even think about the living thing inside the womb.

If he just killed it, that would be like desecrating a heavenly treasure, but if he let it out now, it was likely to cause enormous trouble.

Better to just seal it and ignore it for now.

It wouldn’t be too late to ponder the Demonic Womb later, when the time was right.

In any event, to Su Yi, the Demonic Womb was currently a useless treasure. He couldn’t be bothered to spend his mental energy on it.

“You two, I know you’ve already woken up, so don’t bother hiding it.” Su Yi raised his head and looked at a distant private room.

Shortly after, Gu Cangning and the elderly woman appeared. The former looked rather awkward, while the latter seemed alarmed and uncertain.

“Brother Su, thanks for your help this time. I wouldn’t have imagined that Jade Angelica would do something so frenzied and depraved.” Gu Cangning clasped his fist in greeting.

Just thinking about what had just happened left him gnashing his teeth in fury. He was enraged, but also somewhat ashamed.

The way he saw it, this was no different from falling flat on his face. It was just too embarrassing! 

“You don’t need to thank me. I just happened to be here, that’s all.” Su Yi shook his head, then turned and headed toward their private room.

“Fellow Daoist Su, please, wait up.” It was then that the aged woman with the youthful face suddenly spoke up.

“Do you have business with me?” asked Su Yi.

“Might you… Might you perhaps be willing to part with the Demonic Womb?” The said hesitantly. “Of course, in exchange, we’ll pay a satisfactory price in the form of other treasures.”

Gu Cangning looked expectant too.

“If you were me, would you be willing to part with this treasure?” Su Yi smiled faintly. He naturally could tell that the old woman was a Spirit Dao cultivator, but that wasn’t enough to scare him.