Chapter 157

"What, what are you talking about?"

"How long do you plan to pretend?"

Zong Zi Xiao glared, "Who told you?"

"Does it matter? Don't you want my golden core?" Zong Zi Heng said bitterly, "Imperial destiny, Absolute Human Emperor, the only core you want that can help you cultivate the Great Dao is this one."

"It's Ran Xing Wen, isn't it? Or that old man? Or ..." Zong Zi Xiao thought of Huang Dao Zi, and regretted that he hadn't killed that divine man who was full of nonsense.

"Do you want my core?" Zong Zi Heng looked Zong Zi Xiao straight in the eyes, slowly but caustically questioned him with pressure.

Zong Zi Xiao's face changed again and again, "I want to refine the core from the Heavenly Secret Scripture, not your core."

"The Ran family's father and son are the best core masters in the immortal cultivation world, and they failed countless times to refine it."

"So using the Shen Nong Ding..."

"Using the Shen Nong Ding to refine a core is more difficult than any other furnaces in the world, and the slightest mistake will be a foregone conclusion. What if it fails this time too? What if the core in the Heavenly Secret Scripture can't be refined anyhow, will you dig out my core?" Zong Zi Heng stared deadly into Zong Zi Xiao eyes that were intent on dodging, "Did you take me to Kunlun because of my core? When do you plan to dig up my core?"

When facing this aggressive interrogation, from shock, to weakness, to irritation, the instantaneous changes in Zong Zi Xiao's eyes were all seen by Zong Zi Heng.

"When did I ever say I would take your core? Is this your excuse for daring to run away from me?!"

"You didn't say it, but hadn't you thought about it?" Zong Zi Heng endured the extreme pain in his heart and lungs to say the cruel truth that he simply could not bear.

Zong Zi Xiao's jaw dropped. His fists clenched until they shook. His thin lips mumbled, but he didn't retort.

Yes, he had thought about it, he had hesitated repeatedly. If he could, he wished he had never known anything about the Absolute Human Emperor, but he knew it.

He needs this core. Sooner or later, the entire immortal cultivation world would unite against him. Even though he had two ancient divine treasures, he was still alone after all. Even if he could wipe out the entire immortal cultivation world, the killing he carried would cause him to suffer the insane backlash of karma, and he would fall into the infernal hell and suffer the extreme punishment of sin, never to be reborn. Only by cultivating the Great Dao could he transcend the cycle of reincarnation and truly be free to lie within the three realms without restraint. With the divine power of the Great Perfection, he would be able to let his big brother live as long as he can, and they could live forever and ever together.

If it were any other person, he would have opened the other person's guts without hesitation, but this person was Zong Zi Heng. He could not do it. He couldn’t bear to. He was afraid that his big brother would hate him.

The look on Zong Zi Xiao's face said it all. The deepest despair was like a huge wave that extinguished Zong Zi Heng in a matter of seconds. He looked at the familiar and unfamiliar face in front of him. In a trance, Zong Ming He's face overlapped with it. He could never forget that face distorted by greed. His biological father, whom he had worked half his life to gain his approval, had always coveted his golden core, and eventually they fought each other with their blades.

He thought it would be over when Zong Ming He died, but to his surprise, he never got out of this boundless nightmare. He suddenly felt that what he had in his belly was not the ultimate human core that everyone coveted, but a poisonous parasite that fed on ambition and kept bloating and swelling, which would eventually tear open his abdomen and break out of his flesh, and then provoke an endless bloody fight that would turn earth into a purgatory.

From the depths of his soul, he complained desperately, "You said you didn't bother to eat human cores. You said you hated Lu Zhao Feng the most, but in the end, what's the difference between you and Lu Zhao Feng? You are indeed your biological father's son. You have the same cruel and despicable blood in your bones!"

The three words 'Lu Zhao Feng' deeply stung Zong Zi Xiao. He did not hesitate to kill Lu Zhao Feng personally, just to break his ties with the person he hated and despised the most. The greatest shame and suffering of his life came from this sinful bloodline, but Zong Zi Heng ripped open his wounds and hit him where it hurts the most without mercy!

Zong Zi Xiao's evil, hanging fox eyes turned scarlet, and he was furious: "That's right, I have cruel and despicable blood in my veins. I am of the same bloodline as that demonic cultivator who stole cores. Serves me right for being a bastard who got abandoned after you finished using me! You killed my mother, you ruined my life, you owe me a debt that can never be repaired by death, so isn't it only right that I want your core?"

Zong Zi Heng's jaw dropped. His body trembled and he could not speak.

"You owe me heaps of blood debt, and I still let you sit on the Emperor throne, and I still let you pay respect to that poisonous woman, and I still keep compromising with you. Not only did you not remember that gratitude, you, betrayed, me." Zong Zi Xiao's anger was like a stream of fire on the surface of the water, not wild and rash, yet unceasing. He revealed a bloodthirsty and fierce smile, "I was the one who was cheap. I treated you so good that I made you forget that you were just a prisoner who failed utterly. You only deserve to open your legs and be fucked by me. I control everything about you. If I want to take your core, you can only present it respectfully to me with both hands."

Zong Zi Heng felt his heart burning fiercely with the fire of karma.

"Now, I'll show you what happens if you dare to disobey me." Zong Zi Xiao suddenly flew towards the back mountain of Zhangyang City with his sword.

Zong Zi Heng froze for a moment, then suddenly understood what was going on about and flew after him.

Zong Zi Xiao hovered above the Shen family's cemetery. As he looked out, stone monuments stood here one by one, and he sensed a trace of Zong Zi Heng's spiritual breath left on Shen Shi Yao's grave.

"Zong Zi Xiao!"

Zong Zi Xiao smiled coldly. He spread his palm and a scroll appeared on it. A golden silk embedded with a handle made of divine mulberry wood was shining with a brilliant light.

Zong Zi Heng recognized this object. It was the treasure of their Daming Clan, one of the Four Great Treasures of the Ancient World, the Shanhe Sheji Map. Legend has it that only their ancestor, who founded the clan, used this treasure to a limited extent, but failed to exert 1/11 of its power. After that, it was passed down from generation to generation, and no one was able to use it again. After it was stolen by Zong Zi Xiao, no one thought that an immature and inexperienced boy could do anything with it until Zong Zi Xiao, armed with the Xuanyuan Heavenly Secret Talisman, single-handedly slaughtered the Wuyun Sect, which several sects couldn’t attack.

No one knows how much power the Shanhe Sheji Map has and whether Zong Zi Xiao is capable of controlling it.

Zong Zi Heng was stunned by the spiritual pressure of the divine treasure: "What, what do you want to do?"

"Zhangyang is the homeland of that poisonous woman, and this area below my feet is the Shen Clan's cemetery." The gloominess of Zong Zi Xiao's expression was unsettling, "You moved her grave back. What a great filial son ah."

"Zong Zi Xiao, don't ..." Zong Zi Heng's voice shook beyond belief.

"Yeah, if she hadn't eradicated the obstacles for you, me and Second Brother, the throne to the Human Emperor that you dreamed of would not have been yours even in the next life. Mother's kindness and son's filial piety, so wonderful." The scroll in Zong Zi Xiao's hand slowly unfolded, but it was a blank canvas.

The scroll seemed to stretch endlessly, changing from a palm-sized object to a huge object, and the canvas gradually revealed the landscape and the city. Zong Zi Heng realized that the picture was clearly Zhangyang City!

"As Emperor Zong, you have never even seen the treasures left behind by your ancestors, so today I’ll let you see." Zong Zi Xiao's spiritual pressure soared and his black death aura burned like a flame as he growled, "First ancestor of heaven and earth, a painting opens the sky------"

Zong Zi Xiao merely moved his long and slender fingertips, and on the canvas, the back mountain of Zhangyang City abruptly bulged out as if it was about to be sucked out of the picture.

The earth rumbled with a loud sound, and the location of the Shen family’s cemetery crumbled down. Stones were pulled out from the ground, and the earth quaked. Hundreds of stone monuments flew off the ground like broken stones, and coffins spurted out one by one, either chiseled by stones or fell from a great height. All of them ended up in pieces. Most of the gold, silver and precious stones which were buried in the ground all turned into worthless straw among the dust. Those aged corpses were exposed to the sun without dignity, worse than the wild dogs on the roadside.

Zong Zi Heng saw all of these stiffly, and his mind went blank.

Not yet relieved from hatred, Zong Zi Xiao pointed at the landscape with the divine treasure. The earth and rocks rising out of the ground incessantly. The gently sloping hills became rugged with steep gorges. Countless white bones were battered and crushed, unable to even piece together a complete set of corpses, let alone distinguish whom the broken limbs belonged to.

A massacre was staged here, the slaughter of the dead.

"Stop ..." Zong Zi Heng thought he was shouting to stop, but his voice was hoarse and faint, as if he had been drained of his strength.

Stop it, stop it, stop it.

Zong Zi Xiao, stop.

Don't make me hate you, stop ...

The scroll changed again, and everything in the mountains also followed the unusual change. The rocks, the grass and trees, even those tombstones, coffins and white bones, all became playthings in Zong Zi Xiao's hands. They rose and floated in mid-air, as if they were demonstrating for Zong Zi Heng.

This ghastly power could make everyone who witnessed this scene go weak in the knees. How could the image before them be considered the human realm?

Zong Zi Xiao smiled faintly. His appearance was no match in the world, but his smile was shaped like an evil ghost: "From now on, there will be no Zhangyang Shen Clan again."

"Stop -----" Zong Zi Heng let out a shrilling roar.

The scene on the canvas dissipated like a drop of ink in water. Millions of things in front of him turned to dust, not even experiencing a gust of wind before they vanished in a puff of smoke.

It was as if Zong Zi Heng's heart had also shattered into powder.

"The Shanhe Sheji Map can manipulate everything on the canvas except living things. The generations after generations of trash in the Zong Clan, yet no one could control it. No wonder its state power couldn’t be protected.” Zong Zi Xiao's black death aura rendered almost the entire sky. The majestic spiritual pressure like an ocean made it seem as if one was raising one's head to look at the mountains. At the center of this sole power, in the depths of his pitch-black pupils, there were no three realms, no earth, only a small, painful human figure was reflected.

The scroll was put away. All the bizarre landscapes were obediently restored to their original form, but destroyed, forever destroyed.

Zong Zi Heng drew his sword and his spiritual pressure poured into it with a burst of energy. All the hatred, all the pain, all the humiliation and despair turned into a thunderous fury struck towards Zong Zi Xiao with lightning.

With his sword sheathed, Zong Zi Xiao laughed wildly, "I want you to pay for every betrayal, my big brother."

----

Edited on 6 May 21 (Emzie)

 

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