Silent Crown

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

"Snort…" Someone was amused by this strange name. But his smile soon disappeared.

Within the blowing hurricane, it was nearly suffocating.

The center of the battlefield was no longer visible, and only the destructive storm could be faintly glimpsed. Thunder and electricity intertwined. This was a storm created by a single person.

A terrible tornado rushed into the sky.

Someone was using their own individual power to resist the full-scale siege of the Nine Families of the Dragon Bloodline!

"There's nothing funny about this," Bai Heng said coldly. "In legends, once it started it could pin the seas under only its own weight, trapping the mighty power of the tides. Before Tai Changqing took it away it had pinned the North Sea for 400 years, settling 4,800 months worth of tides. The natives called it 'The Needle that Pins the Sea,' the artifact that the Celestial Emperor sent down to the mortal world. Before I had seen it with my own eyes I thought it was a legend and a joke. I never would have thought that something so terrifying would exist in the human world." He paused, lifted his cup and filled it with the dust on the wind. He then overturned it, pouring the bloody dust back into the wind.

Twisted pieces of iron shrieked through the violent wind, shattering the porcelain cup in his hand and leaving a torn wound.

Bai Heng lowered his head and looked at the wound in his finger. He licked it and his expression became calm.

"Look, in the face of it, no natural disaster is worth fearing. Everyone, this is the strongest musician under the Emperor's command. As long as he makes up his mind and sacrifices himself he can easily destroy our coalition forces. After Master Yuan dies in battle, I am afraid we will have to directly face that hero's power…"

Amid the silence, Bai Heng grinned and turned to say farewell, "So, I will go ahead and prepare. I would ask that you all stay calm and don't get too excited."

Soon his figure melted into the distance and was not seen again.

…

In the violent storm, a power that exceeded the limits of the imagination swept across, cracking the earth and distorting it. A great quantity of soil was swept up into the air and surrounded the void weapon, creating a fierce tornado.

The distorted gravity enveloped the hero's hands. The power that was originally unrealistic became real under human observation, creating a field so dark that even light was distorted.

He held the weapon that had once fettered the ocean and tethered the tides and tidal waves like wild horses. After overlooking the terrible cost and countercharge, it had become an all-conquering weapon.

The sand that was drawn in by the gravity surrounded it, creating an ultra-dense substance even greater than steel, just as satellites were bound by the gravitational force of their star.

In reality, it was unlikely that there was any material in the physical world that could withstand a frontal attack from it.

The cost of harnessing this power, even for this man who had transformed into a hero, was probably not as easy to pay as he had imagined.

The power that had been exchanged for the burning of a catastrophe was the qualification needed to use this terrifying force.

In such a chaotic environment, the aether still retained its substance, resisting the gravitational attraction. But a line of silver light still peeled off the hero's body, tangling up into a circle and wrapping around the dark area like the thorns around a rose.

That was the mark of burning life.

With this power you were unbreakable!

Facing the power accumulated by the Nine Families of the Dragon Bloodline for centuries, Mr. Hu roared, and instead of showing weakness, pressed harder and harder against the siege, dealing a heavy wound to the Torch Dragon.

Even so, a huge hole opened up in his chest. The sword that had nearly pierced the heavens stabbed out from Yuan Changqing, piercing through earth, water, fire, and wind, tearing through rain and iron. Under the cohesion of the sword movement aether transformed into iron light, too fine for humans to discern, that slashed forward along with the Chun Jun sword.

The sword should have stabbed into empty air, but just like light penetrating into water, after heavy refraction under the deflection of gravity to an angle too fine to measure, it entered the enemy's chest.

There was only a slender slice in the chest, but a riotous blast of aether burst a hole in Mr. Hu's back. If he had not already transformed into a non-human, he would already have been smashed to pieces by the chaos of the sword.

Faced with such enormous pressure, Yuan Changqing's offensive had not only not slowed down but had grown more and more fierce.

It seemed like he was… indescribably happy.

The things which he had desired for so long was right before him.

A strong enemy and death.

Both of them were now at his fingertips.

And so, he reveled like a wild beast.

After abandoning his cumbersome body, Yuan Changqing had incarnated a Holy Spirit with the Chun Jun Scepter. Now, bearing the brunt of the storm as well as Mr. Hu's offensive was like the rust was being ground away in an unreasonably fierce manner.

He wore his learning lightly.

Yuan Changqing's music theory itself was something he had sought from death itself. After 20 years of loneliness and waiting for what he had exchanged for was an unprecedented increase in power.

It was not an increase in quantity, but a change in quality.

It was not even a promotion of his Scepter and music theory. In the Chun Jun Sword, the elements formed of gathered killing power expanded wildly, emitting a huge amount of pressure.

In his ecstasy, the elements continued to expand and shrink, shatter and reform. They were born and destroyed dozens of times, divided into four parts which intertwined with each other layer upon layer until it formed a strange matrix. When the four intertwined into a ring Yuan Changqing's figure grew thinner and more frightening.

He had already integrated everything into the Chun Jun Sword.

Even the Chun Jun Sword, which had been forged from the bones of lords of past eras could not withstand such insane power, and faint cracks appeared on it. In the end, in his ecstasy, Yuan Changqing turned the sword around, aimed it at his body, and cut horizontally.

After two passes with the sword, he fell apart along with the Chun Jun Sword.

In the blazing light, the furnace of creation played out once again. An endless amount of aether came together, flying with the four lines of elements and forming four completely different images.

He sought death within death.

In his display of abandoning his life, he had grasped the essence and meaning of life… and then had completely abandoned that cumbersome thing!

He had gazed at death, he had pursued death, and finally… he had become death!

At that moment, the bell in Yuan He's sheath rang out a lament.

A broken sword fell from the sky and into his hands. It was the body of the Chun Jun Sword. After stripping away Yuan Changqing's decades of cultivation, it had reverted to its original form.

The Yun Chun Sword had always been the sword that Yuan Changqing carried. It was never more than a step away from him. For it to appear in the hands of another could only mean one thing—Yuan Changqing had died.

But Yuan He did not wail and beat the ground, nor did he even shed tears like an ordinary person. There was no sadness in his eyes, only an indescribably envy, and a fascination with those four rays of light!

Life was nothing more than the process of seeking death.

Death was worth it.

At the moment of death, Yuan Changqing, the strongest head of a household in history, had touched the realm that the ancestors of the past had been fascinated by, lightly treading on the edges of the Originator.

At that moment, the Originator roared, and four rivers surged out. After piercing through the realm of aether they fell from it and absorbed the power of the sea of aether. Most of the aether in the Empire of Aurora was involved in this, forming a terrible vacuum.

Then it fell into the elements that had flown out of Yuan Changqing's body.

Under the reflection of the four elements, all things and every phenomenon were frozen in an instant. Only the endless blazing light and terrible darkness gathered in the sky.

Four figures emerged from the elements, each of them with Yuan Changqing's face. One was a child; one was an old man; one was in the prime of life, cold and fierce, like he would destroy everything; and one was quiet as a virgin, it fluttered illusorily, so that it was difficult to tell if it existed or not.

The four of them had four different ancient swords. The elements on the swords echoed each other, creating an outline of purest death and destruction. Music theory spread out from within, intertwining to form a huge alchemy array that covered the entire battlefield.

Everything cried out a lament.

It was now that the four elements revealed their own essential power within the void.

Punish, slay, trap, sever!

After exhausting that which the Yuan family had accumulated, the bridge spanning life and death, the explanation of the truth of destruction and the terrible artifact that simulated the end of the world were formed from Yuan Changqing's bones.

At the moment that he died, he finally completed the long-held wish of his ancestors to forge his own soul and bones into a container for these four destructions.

Under the reflection from the four blades, the earth was laid to waste and cracks appeared in it. The scorched earth was covered with frost. The sky was ashen and the wind shrieked.

The light of the stars could not be seen through the cracked sky because the stars had already been destroyed by this eternal catastrophe.

Between heaven and earth, a terrible crack leading to the heart of the earth appeared. But there was no geothermal heat in this crack. The core of the planet had cooled.

A broken skeleton sat upright between the shattered heavens and the earth.

There was no life left in the world.

Only the tragic wreckage of the planet indicated that anything had ever existed.

This was the end of the earth, the sky, the stars, the world and everything in it. It was a scene where everything was destroyed, and everything had lost its meaning.

At this moment, under the cover of the Sword of the End, Heaven's Gate screamed and swayed and was caught in that scene of the end times. It was weathered rapidly, and the soldiers on the walls cried out as they wilted bit by bit.

Even the coalition force had to retreat in the face of this power, leaving the land covered in dead bodies.

At this point, only non-humans could interfere with the battle.

It was a war between monsters and the world, between a hero and death.

Between the shattered heavens and the earth, the heavy weapon collided with the Sword of the End and the horrible battle reached its climax. As the battle changed, the four continued to merge and split, leaving a scar on Mr. Hu's body.

Even though he had died, Yuan Changqing's laughter still seemed to reverberate through this eternal destruction. As the battle grew fiercer, the old man's once insane figure grew clearer and clearer.

Even though he was dead, he could still experience the joy of battle in this way.

He could experience… the thrill of the slaughter!

For the first time, Mr. Hu was forced to retreat under that fierce assault.

It was like a replay of the match between Ye Qingxuan and Yuan Changqing.

He sought victory would attain victory, he who sought death would attain death.

If he didn't want to get pulled into suffering the same fate as Yuan Changqing, he could only be overwhelmed by him. It was difficult to counterattack.

Outside the battlefield, there were still a few places where heads of families drew near the battle. They continued to provide Yuan Changqing with power through the City in the Sky, allowing him to freely squander and spread destruction.

Faced with these four attacking streams of light, the burning hero once again lifted his heavy might and thrust it forward.

This time he did not retreat.

The fierce sun once again operated in the dead silent world. Terrible heat and eternal cold clashed together.

At the last second, Mr. Hu looked behind him, revealing a smile.

Goodbye.

…

"Mr. Hu…" In the wilderness, Ye Qingxuan closed his eyes and looked no more.