The Dao of Reincarnation (408-409) (Patreon)

Chapter 408: The Ancient and Modern Recorder (Part 19)

In the blink of an eye, four hundred years had passed since Si Zhaonan obtained the mask.

In those four centuries, Si Zhaonan had grown into one of the top experts beneath the few deepest foundations of the Sacred Mountains.

Through this, he had come to know many secrets.

He learned the true purpose of the Sacred Mountains' existence.

He also learned that more than four hundred years earlier, a terrifying race known as the demons had once existed in this world.

The five-hundred-year period was approaching, and they would return in force.

Si Zhaonan still regarded himself as a small figure.

If the sky fell, taller people would hold it up.

Though he himself had already become one of those taller figures, the Sacred Mountains still stood above him. If the sky collapsed, they would be the ones to bear it.

"So this is the legendary demon?"

One day a mysterious creature appeared in the Heavenly Origin Dynasty and slaughtered an entire city. Listening to the descriptions, Si Zhaonan thought of the demons from legend.

He ordered the creature captured and brought back to the capital.

The demon before him had a sharp mouth and sunken cheeks, its face ferocious and savage.

"Humans and demons can never coexist in peace."

Si Zhaonan understood this clearly in his heart.

He executed the demon.

If the demons invaded and the human race faced extinction, he would not be able to remain uninvolved.

More and more demons began entering human territory.

Si Zhaonan realized that another war between humans and demons would soon erupt.

He went to the Sacred Mountains seeking an alliance.

The Sacred Mountains agreed.

Yet on the road back to the Heavenly Origin Dynasty, Si Zhaonan was intercepted by a mysterious figure.

A black-robed person whose face could not be seen blocked his path, leaving Si Zhaonan puzzled.

"The Sacred Mountains are no longer the Sacred Mountains of old."

The mysterious figure barred Si Zhaonan's return.

Si Zhaonan asked in confusion, "What does your excellency mean by this?"

The mysterious figure continued, "The demonic race possesses true Saints. The Saints of the Sacred Mountains already perished in the great battle more than four hundred years ago.

"Knowing they cannot withstand the demons, the Sacred Mountains have long abandoned resistance. They now advocate surrendering to the demons and completely casting aside human bloodlines."

The words made Si Zhaonan draw a sharp breath.

Since ancient times, the Sacred Mountains had been the guardians of the human race. Now they intended to abandon humanity?

Had anyone else spoken such words, Si Zhaonan would have struck them dead with a single palm. Yet this person was far too mysterious, and Si Zhaonan was not completely certain of victory.

He did not easily choose to believe the mysterious figure. He could not determine whether the man had been sent by the demons to sow discord.

After all, he found it impossible to connect the many experts of the Sacred Mountains who worried for the common people with traitors who colluded with demons.

Si Zhaonan returned to the Heavenly Origin Dynasty.

He took out a bronze mask.

It was the same mask he had obtained long ago. Precisely because of this mask, he had risen in a short time to become one of the giants of the human race. Without it he would still have been a street idler who never knew where his next meal would come from.

The five-hundred-year mark was rapidly approaching.

Si Zhaonan once again put on the mask, intending to cultivate.

This time, however, a middle-aged man in purple robes who also wore a mask appeared before his eyes.

Si Zhaonan: "?"

The purple-robed middle-aged man spoke. "Do not be afraid, young man. Since you can see me, you must also be a martial artist who cares for the human race. I am already dead… What remains of me now is merely a wisp of divine sense left within the mask at the moment of my near death."

Si Zhaonan still did not lower his guard.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Zhou Chong."

Hearing that name, Si Zhaonan's eyes widened at once.

Zhou Chong… was that not the previous master of the Sacred Mountains?

In the great war between demons and humans, when the human race stood on the brink of extinction, it was the previous Sacred Mountain master Zhou Chong who had caused the demons' plans to fall short at the final step.

He had never expected that this man was the previous owner of the mask!

"My appearance now means that the seal I once laid is about to vanish.

"Young man, has a new Saint appeared among our human race?"

Si Zhaonan shook his head. "The martial path has withered. No new Saint has emerged. The demons are about to return, and the situation is already critical."

A trace of gloom appeared on Zhou Chong's face.

Si Zhaonan looked at the purple-robed middle-aged man. "Senior once turned the tide single-handedly. Surely you still have a way!"

"A way… of course there is one. When I learned that the demonic Saints had been heavily wounded, I used half my strength to seal the demons for five hundred years. The remaining power I sealed within this mask, leaving a thread of hope. After all, if the demonic Saints recovered, even pouring all my strength into the seal would have been useless.

"You are the current master of this mask, so you may inherit that power and attempt to break through to the Saint Realm."

That single thread of hope was the last thing Zhou Chong could do for the human race of this world.

Si Zhaonan nodded, his expression filled with delight.

As expected, the older generation still held the sharper edge.

He decisively began his attempt to break through to the Saint Realm, even though that final step was like a chasm between heaven and earth.

The five-hundred-year period arrived.

Everything unfolded much as Zhou Chong had foreseen. The demonic Saints easily tore through the veil. The demonic race that had vanished for five hundred years finally reappeared in this world.

The terrifying gap in strength plunged all living beings into despair.

Human experts retreated step by step.

What drove the human race into even deeper despair was that the higher echelons of the Sacred Mountains suddenly switched sides in the midst of battle.

The Sacred Mountains had been the guardians of humanity since ancient times. Now they chose to submit to the demons?

The news first brought despair, then sorrow.

Within the demonic lands, flames soared skyward from the Demon Transformation Pool. A terrifying power capable of destroying the world erupted.

The demonic Saints were heavily wounded, and countless powerful demons perished.

"The human race is truly despicable!"

The old ancestor of the Sacred Mountains had somehow deceived the heavens. Carrying a sacred artifact, he detonated himself at the very core of the demonic territory.

The old ancestor of the Sacred Mountains had long known that without a Saint, the human race stood no chance against the demons. He had spent years winning their trust, only to use his own body and the foundations of the Sacred Mountains to buy the human race one final thread of hope.

While in seclusion, attempting to break through to the Saint Realm, Si Zhaonan understood that he had to succeed with everything he had. The barrier of the Sacred Mountains was gone. The good news was that the Sacred Mountains had never betrayed the human race from beginning to end. The bad news was that when he related the mysterious man's suspicions to Zhou Chong, the latter was so enraged that he ordered Si Zhaonan, after achieving victory in the Saint Realm, to thoroughly discipline those unworthy disciples and grand-disciples.

There was no longer any need for him to do so.

Just as Si Zhaonan's consciousness began to blur, a cool sensation pulled him back. When he opened his eyes again, he had broken through to the Saint Realm.

"This Saint Realm… does not seem so difficult to reach after all."

Why did it feel as though he had simply taken a nap and woken up a Saint?

Never mind. This was not the time to dwell on such thoughts. If he remembered correctly, the demonic Saints had been heavily wounded by the Sacred Mountain old ancestor's self-detonation with a sacred artifact.

Strike while the enemy is weak.

Si Zhaonan charged straight into the ancestral grounds of the demons and forced their Saint ancestors to appear.

"This is wrong… why are there two Saints?"

Si Zhaonan discovered a serious problem.

"This is… Zhou Chong's aura. The human race is truly shameless beyond measure!"

One of the demonic Saints, whose aura was weaker, roared in fury.

He was the former demon lord who had once fought Zhou Chong. After five hundred years, he had broken through to the Saint Realm.

The bad news was that he had been caught in a scheme.

The good news was that both demonic Saints had been heavily wounded.

Chapter 409: The Ancient and Modern Recorder (Part 20)

Si Zhaonan cursed the group of old foxes in his heart.

There was no time for further thought.

The two demonic Saints charged at him together.

Si Zhaonan reacted swiftly.

When Saints clashed, heaven and earth were destroyed.

The two demonic Saints, temporarily blinded by rage, suddenly realized something.

The battlefield was their own territory.

In that brief exchange, the demonic race suffered catastrophic losses. The ancestral grounds of several major demonic clans turned to ash.

The scene forced the two demonic Saints to hold back.

Si Zhaonan noticed their hesitation and laughed aloud.

This was not his home ground, so he had nothing to restrain him.

The earth split apart. Countless stars beyond the domain were disturbed by the terrifying force of their battle and drawn downward, forming a magnificent meteor shower.

The night sky blazed with brilliance.

Si Zhaonan's priceless yellow robes had long since been shredded in the fighting, revealing his powerful frame covered in wounds large and small. A bronze-carved mask covered his face, and beneath it his eyes burned with bloodlust and madness.

"I, Si Zhaonan, rose from the lowest ranks. Though I received many opportunities, I have cultivated to this day in a world where man eats man.

"What I have always relied upon is a single word."

"Ruthlessness!"

"Only by being ruthless enough will others fear you and grant you room to breathe. Those who are not ruthless enough are eaten until not even their bones remain."

Si Zhaonan paid no attention to his injuries. A true Saint, he now fought like a mad dog, gripping a divine halberd.

He abandoned all defense. A terrifying strike from the elderly Saint annihilated more than half of Si Zhaonan's body. Without a sound, he swung the great halberd and smashed it toward the Demon Lord.

Hundreds of towering mountain peaks, together with the land around them, turned to dust in an instant, leaving a pit as deep as an abyss.

What made a Saint a Saint was not merely their immense power. Their very essence differed from all beings beneath that realm. Even a single drop of blood was enough for rapid regeneration. Killing one of the same realm was extremely difficult.

Si Zhaonan raised a hand to block another blow and was sent flying, yet in the blink of an eye, his body was whole again.

He rapidly changed techniques.

From the endless abyss, a furious figure charged out, only to collide head-on with the great halberd that streaked forward like a meteor and was pierced straight through.

Successive heavy injuries took a tremendous toll, even on Saints who could regenerate from a drop of blood.

"Old thing… I once cut down the future of your race. Even if you win this battle, what of it?

"How much longer can that body of yours last? When you old fossils die, the demonic race will meet the same end as the human race. The day of extinction will come!"

Si Zhaonan knew he could not fight two against one.

All he could do was stake everything he had for a single thread of survival.

"The human race has truly produced another extraordinary figure."

The elderly Demon Saint's voice was ice-cold. "If you leave now, my demonic race is willing to cease all further invasions of human lands."

Si Zhaonan burst into loud laughter.

"What are you laughing at?"

"I am laughing at how ridiculous you are, to invent such a clumsy excuse."

Leave? Give the demonic Saints enough time to recover so they could then fight two against one?

Si Zhaonan was no fool.

"Let us settle this beyond the domain. If you win, the human race will be yours to dispose of as you please. If I win, your demonic race will slowly vanish into the long river of history!"

The moment the words left his mouth, the elderly Demon Saint replied, "I accept."

The Demon Lord hurriedly interjected, "Ancestor, this may be a human scheme."

He had every reason for caution.

The elderly Demon Saint answered, "Do you intend to continue fighting on our own territory?"

Those words left the Demon Lord speechless.

After the clash of three Saints, a full quarter of the demonic territories had already been destroyed. If the battle continued, the entire world might be ruined. The demons sought a land better suited for their survival, not a barren wasteland devoid of all life.

As the three Saints departed the continent, none of them ever successfully returned.

In the deserted starry sky, countless stars shattered.

An enormous corpse, stripped of all vitality, floated among the stars.

It was the Demon Lord.

The elderly Demon Saint was imprisoned within a cage, letting out unwilling roars of fury.

Only a white-haired old man remained, sitting cross-legged with a bronze mask still covering his face.

He gazed toward the distant continent.

Si Zhaonan casually removed the mask.

"In this life, I have spent my years on the battlefield, founded an empire that will last through the ages, and in the end became the savior of the human race. It has not been a life lived in vain."

His gaze rested calmly on the elderly Demon Saint.

"You and I will be buried together on this planet. At least neither of us will be alone. Perhaps after tens of thousands of years our blood will give birth to new races, and those new races will once again fight without end.

"The thought is rather interesting."

Si Zhaonan gave a soft laugh. "I can perish with you on this planet… but this mask cannot. Perhaps someone else will need it more than I do."

He casually tossed the mask into the depths of the starry sky. It transformed into a streak of light and vanished.

Si Zhaonan's eyes slowly closed.

...

In the starry sky the years went uncounted.

An unknown number of years later, on a certain planet, a young man stared blankly as a mountain peak in front of him suddenly collapsed.

He had only wanted to travel the mountains and rivers and record the beauty of the landscape.

Yet he had suddenly encountered a supernatural event?

Curious, the young man carefully advanced.

Where the mountain peak had stood, a vast, deep pit had appeared. At the bottom of that pit lay the cause of the destruction: a bronze mask.

"A treasure! This must be a treasure!"

The young man's name was Meng Pingsheng. His greatest passion was to travel the myriad sights of the world, migrating south and north like the wild geese in the sky.

Meng Pingsheng leapt down to the bottom of the pit and picked up the bronze mask.

From that moment, the gears of fate in his life began to turn.

The instant Meng Pingsheng put on the mask, he encountered a man who called himself the Heavenly Origin Human Emperor, the previous host of the mask. The man taught him many techniques and divine abilities.

The only shortcoming was that every day the man urged him to go out and conquer the world.

Conquer the world? Was that something a carefree person like him should do?

Meng Pingsheng politely refused Si Zhaonan's request.

To his surprise, before fading away, Si Zhaonan showed no anger. Instead, he smiled with satisfaction and told him to live in whatever way he preferred.

Thus, Meng Pingsheng walked the path he himself desired. He traveled to many places, beginning with small mountain ranges, then the rivers and mountains of dynasties, the sun, moon, and vast landscapes… and eventually the stars beyond the domain, home to myriad races.

Beneath a cloud-pine tree where great waves crashed against a rocky shore, Meng Pingsheng removed the mask. Leaning against the tree, he watched the first light of dawn at dusk.

He slowly closed his eyes, a smile at the corners of his mouth. The bronze mask slipped from his palm and fell.