The Quest for Immortality - Chapter 1129 (Patreon)

Chapter 1129: The Heavens Have Fallen

After “erasing all traces,” Mo Hua still felt uneasy.

“What was that just now… what kind of karmic thread was that? Why were those things entangled around Mister Wu?”

“What exactly is his identity…”

Mo Hua frowned.

In his mind, he replayed the scene he had glimpsed during the divination just moments ago. His thoughts churned.

“Chains of dragon bone, binding a massive fireball that burned as bright as a sun, suspended in the heavens…”

What did that mean? Were those dragon bones meant to seal something?

Mo Hua’s gaze darkened. From those dragon bones, he could feel an immense power of “sealing,” as if someone had bound up the blazing cause and effect of that fiery sun, not allowing others to glimpse it.

“Whose handiwork could that be?”

The more Mo Hua thought about it, the more uneasy he became.

“I pried into a great karmic thread—could someone trace that back to me?”

Though he had reacted instantly when things went wrong—destroying every “medium” used for the divination, cutting off the ritual altogether—he was still far from at ease.

He already had enough troubles of his own. The last thing he needed was another “old monster” taking an interest in him.

Just to be safe, Mo Hua conjured a fireball and burned everything he had used for the divination—the demon bone, the brazier, and all else—until nothing was left but blackened ash. Then, using the Clear Wind Technique, he scattered the ashes into the air. Only then did he feel slightly relieved.

After all that, Mo Hua couldn’t help but sigh to himself.

“Karma truly is perilous…”

He had only just acquired the wild demon-bone divination technique a few days ago. Yet simply using it once—to divine a dead man—had almost cost him his life.

No wonder there were so few cultivators who studied the Heavenly Mechanism. One wrong move, and you could end up divining your own death.

Unbidden, that terrifying image of the dragon bones binding a sun resurfaced in his mind. Mo Hua shook his head quickly.

“Enough. Forget it. I can’t keep thinking about it…”

Even thought itself was a form of karma. Dwell too long, and others could trace your thoughts back to you.

His Shibo had that very ability.

So Mo Hua forced himself to push the matter from his mind. He picked up his brush, drew out an array, and focused on his practice—using the flow of formations to still his thoughts and calm his mind.

But after only a few strokes, his brush halted. His brow furrowed again.

“Can I really just leave it be?”

Mister Wu was from the Great Wilderness. Whatever that karmic vision meant, it was clearly tied to the Great Wilderness as well. And Mo Hua would soon be going there himself.

There was no escaping this. He knew his own fate too well—if he didn’t go looking for trouble, trouble would come for him.

The Evil God, the Heavenly Demons—all were connected to him. He was practically a walking disaster magnet.

“I’ll have to find out more… I can’t probe the karma directly, but at least I should understand what I’ve stumbled into. Better to prepare in advance.”

He pondered for a while. “Should I… try divining again?”

Then he shook his head.

“No. I can’t. That last divination must’ve already alerted someone. Doing it again would be no different from walking into a trap.”

“Heavenly secrets and karmic threads are like a fog of darkness—whoever shows their head first, dies first. Best not to tread the same path twice.”

“The karmic line tied to Mister Wu is already cut. I mustn’t touch it again.”

But if he couldn’t divine through Mister Wu, then who else could he use? From whom could he glimpse the truth without being detected?

Mo Hua pondered for a long while, then sighed softly.

“If I’d known, I should’ve kept one of them alive.”

Whether it was Mister Wu or the former Sect Master of the Gray Wolf Sect, as long as one had lived, he could’ve simply used formation-based interrogation—no karmic arts needed—to pry some answers out of them.

He regretted it now.

“Too rash…”

Sometimes, being too decisive with killing wasn’t a good thing. Kill too fast, and you lose vital information.

“I wasn’t always this ruthless… it’s the baleful aura. It clouds my mind, makes me impulsive.”

He “reflected” bitterly to himself.

But it was too late now. Mister Wu and the sect master were both dead. And the karmic thread tied to Mister Wu could no longer be traced.

So what could he do?

Mo Hua closed his eyes, retraced every detail from beginning to end in his mind, searching for a missed thread of cause and effect.

After a long time, a sudden spark flashed through his thoughts. His eyes flew open, gleaming with realization.

“If I can’t divine him—then I’ll divine myself!”

After all, the cause of everything was his own sense of wrongness—of having overlooked something important. He’d assumed that feeling was connected to Mister Wu, which was why he’d divined him in the first place.

But the first cause—the true “seed” of karma—was in himself.

In other words, if he divined himself, he could learn what he had overlooked, and perhaps find the truth he sought.

Mo Hua’s eyes lit up. Without hesitation, he performed the ritual again—burning wolf bones with phosphorous fire, invoking the wild demon-bone divination.

“What have I overlooked? What have I overlooked…” he whispered inwardly.

The blue flame flickered. Patterns began to crawl across the wolf bones. Karma began to flow…

Vaguely, an image took form before him.

A dark chamber, lined with tables, the walls glowing faintly with array lines. And there he was—alone—staring into a mass of fog ahead, his face pale with shock, as if he had witnessed something beyond belief.

“Is this… a glimpse of the future?”

“What did I see… that could have shocked me so?”

Mo Hua frowned and tried to peer deeper into the vision. But the instant his awareness brushed against that fog of “unknown,” the image shattered. The karmic line broke, dissolving into smoke.

Mo Hua’s heart jolted. He immediately burned away every medium of the divination once more, leaving not a trace behind. Only then did he relax slightly.

Then he sat still, lost in thought.

That vision had been a divination by “cause leading to effect.” It showed a future moment—something he would witness himself.

He had indeed discovered a secret—something unknown—and been astonished. But the question remained…

“What was that unknown karma?”

“And how did I, in that moment, uncover it?”

“If I discovered it, then it must be something within my reach—within my ability to perceive…”

He furrowed his brows deeply.

“That dark room looked familiar… Wasn’t that… Mister Wu’s secret chamber?”

“And the glowing patterns… were those the demon markings within it?”

“In that case, that unknown fog must have been located… right where the empty altar was?!”

The altar!

Mo Hua’s mind snapped into clarity.

No wonder he’d felt something missing—something he’d unconsciously ignored.

Normally, as a half-step Divine Being, he was highly sensitive to altars. Even an empty one would’ve drawn his full attention and study.

Yet in that chamber, he had looked past it—almost deliberately ignoring it.

“That’s not right…”

Without hesitation, Mo Hua moved. His figure rippled like water as he entered the forbidden ground beneath Gray Wolf Mountain, slipping through the mountain path into the secret chamber.

The surroundings were silent. Not a single disciple was nearby.

That was his order to Zhao, the new sect master—no one was to approach this place. Zhao had followed it perfectly.

Mo Hua stepped inside.

The chamber remained as it was—untouched, though stripped bare by his earlier “inspection.” Only the faded demon patterns on the floor and the vacant altar remained.

Mo Hua’s divine sense swept through the chamber. Nothing seemed unusual.

The altar was indeed empty.

At least…

“Empty—on the current karmic layer…” That thought alone sent a shiver through him.

He looked around again, recalling the image from his divination. Comparing the two, he spotted one key difference.

“The formation.”

In the present, the array was dim—damaged.

But in the vision, it had been glowing.

That meant that sometime in the future, he would activate the array—and then see the unknown secret.

The array…

Mo Hua knelt, studying the markings closely. His expression gradually changed.

The demon patterns were messy, uneven—he hadn’t cared much before. But now, on closer look, they hid astonishing intricacy.

“Eagle markings, tiger, serpent, deer, ox… all different…”

“This is… the Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon technique?”

“And moreover—a variant lineage of it, from the same roots as the Great Wilderness tradition, but the dragon it forms isn’t the Azure Dragon…”

Mo Hua’s heart sank. His face grew solemn.

The Myriad Demons Transforming into Dragon art fused the essences of many demon patterns into one—a dragon pattern. It was, in essence, a way of creating dragons.

Master Tu’s plot in the Qianxue Prefecture had relied on this—raising demon cultivators in the Myriad Demon Valley, experimenting with the four-symbol demon markings, and “assembling” a true dragon pattern.

That was “dragon creation.”

Mo Hua had been deeply intrigued by that concept and had studied it ever since—though it was not something one could master overnight.

He still couldn’t yet create a dragon pattern of his own.

Examining the fragmented array again, he let out a breath of relief.

“At least… this one doesn’t actually create a dragon.”

Indeed, such a technique was extremely rare. Aside from himself and the late Master Tu, few in the world could manage it.

What lay before him was not a “dragon-creation” array, but a Dragon Pattern Seal.

The different demon markings were like puzzle pieces—forming a dragon pattern to unlock a seal.

Such an array required a specific “key”—a pattern code—to restore it. Without that, decoding it was nearly impossible. It demanded profound mastery over the Four Symbols demon markings and their interrelations.

But for Mo Hua—who had already been studying how to create dragon patterns—this was child’s play.

He sealed the chamber door, wove a formation over it to prevent any aura from escaping, and began the restoration.

Dark ink flowed at his fingertips like living streams, winding down to the ground. One by one, demon markings emerged—tiger, wolf, serpent, ox—forming a growing web of symbols.

Before long, they came together. The pieces aligned, the limbs formed, the scales shone.

A demon dragon, coalesced from ink and aura, opened its eyes and roared.

The chamber shook. A heat wave surged outward.

On the once-empty altar, power gathered.

The dragon pattern’s seal broke. Karma reversed. Dense fog of fate rose.

As it faded, something took shape atop the altar.

Mo Hua’s pupils shrank sharply. He saw a banner—black cloth, gold-edged, embroidered with a coiling azure dragon.

Beside the dragon, on each side, were lines of ancient Great Wilderness script.

Mo Hua recognized them. He had studied those characters back in the Great Void Sect, while learning the Glutton Spirit Array.

On the left side of the flag were the words: “The Heavens Have Fallen.”

On the right: “The Desolate Heavens Shall Rise.”

Mo Hua sucked in a cold breath. His heart churned like a stormy sea.

“The Heavens have fallen, the Desolate Heavens shall rise…”

“Is this… the rebel flag of the Great Wilderness?”

And in that same instant—when he broke the seal and revealed the banner—the demon patterns blazed. Lines of demonic fire converged beneath the flag, forming two more lines of words:

“Carry this Dragon Banner—Annihilate the Dao Court!”

The azure light from the dragon surged skyward like a beacon, sending a flare of dragon aura throughout heaven and earth.

Karmic threads intertwined. The Heavenly Mechanism roared.

Across the vast land, dragons cried beneath the heavens.

Mo Hua stood frozen in place.

In that instant, realization struck him like lightning.

He had just… personally ignited the Great Wilderness’ flag of rebellion.

…

Countless miles away, deep within the Great Wilderness, in the towering Dragon Palace—

A gigantic figure sat upon a throne. His body was immense, his features majestic, golden beard gleaming beneath his dragon-scale armor. His eyes opened—vertical pupils flashing with divine might.

A black-robed shaman approached, trembling, and knelt before him.

“Dragon Lord…”

“The Great Wilderness Dragon Bone Lock has been disturbed. The heavenly secrets are leaking…”

“The Desolate Heaven Dragon Banner—someone has… lit it prematurely… the beacon has already spread…”

The Dragon Lord’s expression remained cold, his gaze as sharp as a blade.

“So be it. It was fated. Whether now or later makes no difference.”

He rose. The dragon armor clanged. His towering frame radiated crushing might.

His voice echoed like thunder through the hall:

“Send my decree— From this day forth, the three thousand tribes of my Great Wilderness shall neither serve the Dao Court nor bow to the Heavenly Son.”

“The Heavens have fallen…”

“The Desolate Heavens shall rise!”

“Annihilate the Dao Court!”

The black-robed shaman prostrated himself, trembling with reverence. “Yes… my Lord…”

…

At the Central Dao Court— in the Heavenly Pivot Pavilion.

The aged Pavilion Elder had long since withdrawn under the pretense of illness. The current acting master was the Elder of the Heavenly Authority Pavilion, though much of the power now rested in the hands of the Astrologer.

It was his trial. If he succeeded, within fifty or a hundred years, he would be the next Pavilion Elder.

At that moment, the Astrologer was calmly sipping tea—until a red light streaked across the heavens, like a blazing comet, falling toward the southern wilderness.

His heart jolted violently. A chill ran down his spine.

“Flaming Mars…”

Throughout the Nine Provinces, countless old ancestors of the Hollow-Void Realm lifted their eyes. They, too, saw the blazing fire carving across the southern sky.

A crimson blaze that burned through the heavens.

South of Lizhou, the skies were aflame—fire blotting out the sun.

The cultivators of the world looked up in dread.

…

In the twenty thousand and thirty-seventh year of the Dao Calendar, in autumn—Mars fell to the south. Fire split the heavens, invading the Central Palace. The omen of war appeared. Thus began the chaos of heaven and earth…

Mo Hua really can’t catch a break—one divination and he’s accidentally started a rebellion! If you enjoyed this twist, please support the translation on Patreon—your support keeps this series alive and burning brighter than that dragon banner!

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