Chapter 265: Walking down at the Altar of Zhong Shengming
Translator: Subudai11 Editor: Chrissy
Getting what he deserved?
The words of Sword Demon were simple, but the information revealed within it were not the least bit simple.
What was the thing that he deserved? Sword Demon was obviously the demonic part of Zhong Shengming’s primordial spirit, born out of external pollution, that tried to usurp the legitimate part of Zhong Shengming. By justice, wasn’t horrible death the thing that he deserved?
So, why would he say that?
However, when Sword Demon said these words indifferently, Wang Lu didn’t seem to be very surprised by this.
Because, previously, he was already vaguely aware.
He just felt that, compared to the usurper Sword Demon, Sword God seemed to be not that powerful.
From the beginning to the end, what exactly has Sword God ever done?
It was nothing more than to snatch Big Sister Zhu Shiyao as his successor before failing to do anything else. It was really difficult to imagine him as the Sword God that swept around unhindered in the Nine Regions thousands of years ago.
In contrast, Sword Demon somewhat really has the style of a peerless old demon. Hiding behind the scenes and instigating the four sects team to dance in the palm of his hand with mere words, to open the gateway for him in succession… First, to defeat the guardian that suppressed the Sword Demon and then release a lot of negative emotions in the eight virtues trial for his use, and then afterward, simply using Wang Lu as his hired thug...
Finally, he was able to defeat the superior opponent, the combination of Sword God and Zhu Shiyao. Each step seemed like a miracle, with far higher difficulty than that of Sword God’s path.
Compared to the legitimate successor, the usurper actually seemed loftier. Moreover, after careful thought, the behavior of Sword God was quite difficult to justify. For example, why would he deliberately conceal Wang Lu’s relationship with his Big Sister? Even so much that in the first fight, Big Sister couldn’t even recognize Wang Lu. Aside from Sword Demon pouring Wang Lu’s body with demonic qi to cause mischief, how could there not be a contribution from Sword God?
How were the contact lenses of Big Sister broken...
Later, why did he suddenly choose to forcefully possess her? Moreover, wasn’t forceful possession made him not that different from a demon?
Now it seemed that Sword Demon had given him an extremely good answer.
Sword Demon slanted his head and looked at Wang Lu. "You guessed it right. The so-called Sword God is merely a usurper."
Wang Lu inwardly sighed; this was different from what he said to him earlier.
"What I previously said was not a lie." Sword Demon said, "Indeed, he was the legitimate successor of Zhong Shengming, and I was just the demonic part."
After a pause, Sword Demon scrutinized Wang Lu before saying, "But this does not change the fact that he was the usurper. Can you guess the truth of the matter?"
Wang Lu thought for a moment and then gave his answer, "Did he usurp more than ten thousand years ago?"
"Very good." Sword Demon nodded. "Go on."
Sword Demon’s attitude proved Wang Lu’s conjecture, however, the idea was a bit implausible to Wang Lu. Therefore, he slowed down his speech.
"Like dynastic succession, the original emperor was overthrown, and the rebel leader ascended the throne, offering a sacrifice to the heaven and earth and controlling the dragon vein. For common people, this is tantamount to legitimate dynastic change. However, for the original emperor, treason is always a treason. That being the case, you are the original emperor, and Sword God is the rebel usurper?"
When it came to this, it seemed like things have been straightened out. However, Wang Lu felt that there were still some things that needed to be talked about.
"How could you be overthrown by that thing? This doesn’t make sense. Moreover, you can even challenge the power of four in nine divine tribulations, so you couldn’t have possibly suffered personality split under such circumstances. Moreover, they even said your Heaven Splitting Sword Qi is fastidiously indomitable, so your heart demon couldn’t possibly corrode you and split your personality. This does not make any sense."
Seeing that Wang Lu seemed to have met a dead end in his reasoning, Sword Demon voluntarily gave his explanation, "The birth of Sword God was an accident."
"Wait a minute. The amount of information in this sentence is a bit too much!"
Sword Demon said, "It’s not surprising that you can’t deduce the truth. It’s because your perception of Zhong Shengming is wrong. And since you’re misinformed, naturally, the right result is impossible to be deduced… Sword God of Bai Li, is actually a non-existent existence. If you recall carefully, I never once volunteered to mention these words."
Nonexistent!? Where did this even come from?
"Your knowledge of Bai Li’s Sword God Zhong Shengming comes from the history book—that is a matter of course. You didn’t live more than ten thousand years ago, so naturally, you can only understand it from the book. However, if you were lucky enough to be born more ten thousand years ago, you would’ve heard another name, Bai Li’s Sword Demon."
"Bai Li’s Sword Demon?"
"Zhong Shengming is unbeatable in his entire life; he happily settled the debt of gratitude and grudge. However, he never walked on the right path. Whenever he wanted something, he simply snatched it away. When he saw something not pleasing to his eyes, he would simply kill it. In the immortal path, even the firmament of the ninth heaven could not restrict him, let alone ethics and morality of the mortal world. Someone who looks down on ethics and morality is naturally a demon. The fierceness of Bai Li’s Sword Demon was illustrious. When Zhong Shengming was still alive, countless of people trembled at his name."
Wang Lu could only stare dumbfoundedly. This account was completely different than what was written in Bai Li Ascension Biography, so much that it was the complete opposite! Although after more than ten thousand years, there were bound to be omissions in history books, an error this big was very rare! A peerless devil that terrorized the whole Nine Region was actually not recorded in the history book, this...
"In his entire life, Zhong Shengming always did whatever he pleased. However, his desires are almost wholly concentrated on the path of the sword, and not that much in the worldly affairs. Therefore, regardless whether he was evil or not, at least he was good enough to remain in the history books."
Wang Lu nodded, expressing his understanding. Bai Li Ascension Biography recorded the cultivators who managed to ascend or were very close to in the span of more than tens of thousands of years. The thick book was equally divided between each cultivator, and the length of each part was actually very limited. Moreover, most of it was spent on describing the cultivation method of the cultivator. As for the life deed, naturally, only one or two were chosen as the representative.
As for Zhong Shengming… in fact, in the original text, there was almost no story about his life. In addition to spending a lot of time to describe all kinds of inconceivable power of the Primal Chaos Heaven Splitting Sword, the rest was spent on Zhong Shengming’s heroic feat of ‘splitting the heaven and earth apart’ and ‘penetrating the heavenly calamity of Bai Li Region’ just before he died. As for his deeds during his thousand years of cultivation, no matter how evil they were, compared with his earth-shattering feat just before he died, they were not worth mentioning...
Wait a minute, then that means...
Thinking to this, Wang Lu thought of something. "Could it be that the so-called Bai Li’s Sword God was just a misinformation?"
Sword Demon lightly smiled. "Compared with the great merit of opening up the road to immortality, everything else in Zhong Shengming’s life is insignificant. Based on merit theory, being called ‘God’ is more appropriate than ‘Demon’."
Wang Lu said, "So that’s how it is. But that is only the misunderstanding of the world and Zhong Shengming should not be affected by external things. Regardless of whether people praise or blame him, it has nothing to do with him. He couldn’t possibly turn into a sage just because people said he has tremendous merit."
"How couldn’t it be? If you hear everyone accuse you of something you’re not, aren’t you going to get sick to death? There’s power in the popular opinion. Perhaps the popular opinion of the common people is weak, but it’s different with cultivators who walked on the path of immortality. A tyrannical king could still have his throne even while being cursed by millions of people, but no cultivator can withstand the unanimous rebuke from thousands of cultivators. Likewise, when all cultivators thought that Zhong Shengming of Bai Li who had benefited the people was the Sword God, it was no longer important if he himself was ‘God’ or ‘Demon’."
Zhong Shengming’s smile turned somewhat ironic. "When Zhong Shengming managed to challenge the four in nine divine tribulations, he received no small measure of contraflow of heavenly calamity. His primordial spirit was routed, his sword lost its acute spirit, and the upper part of his body was polluted by the power of the wish of all living beings, so he couldn’t help but become ‘God’. Zhong Shengming chose to use his power to resist the divine tribulations without ever considering his life and death, but he didn’t want to die in such an unclear situation."
Wang Lu nodded, expressing his understanding. "At least in times of death, the body must be pure."
"But at the time, he was already wounded and dying, unable to root out the power of the will. Instead, the power of the will continued to erode him, and his primordial spirit gradually became not his own…"
Things seemed to have come to light; Wang Lu continued with his own reasoning, "So he dispersed his primordial spirit, established the yin and yang factions division, then used the ten thousand years of life or death transformation to filter and purify the primordial spirit to then reconstruct the ‘God’ and ‘Demon’, two bodies, using them to investigate the origin?"
This reasoning seemed smoother. Although Wang Lu vaguely still felt that there were some missing parts, most of the mystery about the original existence of the Sword God has already been solved.
The only problem was...
"After you raised yourself back from death, why did you involve the outsiders? At least, Sword God did not have the need to introduce foreign aid. After ten thousand years, he has already occupied the legitimate position and firmly suppressed you, so why the need to introduce uncertain factors just to trouble yourself?"
Sword Demon said, "As early as more than ten thousand years ago, Zhong Shengming has already anticipated that change might happen. Before he died, his primordial spirit has already been corroded more than half by the power of the will, and the ‘owner’ and the ‘guest’ position has already long been exchanged. Extrapolating from this, more than ten thousand years later, naturally, Sword God would be the stronger one. Therefore, he made the rule that the two parts of him, Sword God and Sword Demon, must not directly contact with each other, so even if one of them wants to kill the other, he must use the hand of outsiders; Because this is my only chance."
"I believe you have also seen that there’s nothing special about Sword God except the might of his primordial spirit. If he confronted me directly, I will have no chance. However, once outside variables are introduced, his odds will plummet."
Wang Lu said, "Yes, I have a feeling that he seems clumsier."
"Because he’s just a child." Sword Demon coldly said, "He was only born when Zhong Shengming was contaminated by the power of the will and about to die. His conscious time has not exceeded more than a month, so naturally, he’s clumsy."
"In other words, we just had a desperate fight against a baby?"
"Although he was just a baby, after all, he inherited the memory of Zhong Shengming and more than half of his primordial spirit. Although his conduct with people seemed clumsy, he was not an idiot. In time, he would be more difficult to deal with."
"So that’s why… Then, could you answer my question, since he was not a fool, why did he forcefully possess Zhu Shiyao? Why did he even deliberately destroy her contact lenses to deceive her vision?
"Mm, you finally get to the point."
Sword Demon nodded and then stood up.
"Because the matter of possession is something that is bound to happen. If he failed to remove her glasses, she would soon be able to see, thus she no longer could be controlled as a pawn.
"Then I believe you have also guessed it. Not only Sword God needed to take possession of someone, I also need it. Now that the struggle between the ‘God’ and ‘Demon’ is over, my primordial spirit has become whole, and the next thing to do is to find a matching body to carry this primordial spirit, and you are the one that I choose."
Wang Lu was silent for a moment. "Didn’t you say that after the Unity Stage, primordial spirit and body could transform into each other? Wouldn’t that mean you don’t need a body to possess?"
"It is indeed not necessary, but if I don’t use the unprecedented Void Spirit Root and just the barely passable primordial spirit transformation, wouldn’t that be a waste?"
As soon as he said that, demonic qi overflowed out of his body and his killing intent was no longer restrained anymore!
Sword Demon Zhong Shengming was a person that did whatever he pleased—when he like something, he took it; when he dislike something, he eliminated it!