Chapter 55: A Thousand-Year Wish

Nighttime, atop a high mountain peak. A majestic youth, draped in a cloak made of black bear hide, came to stand behind Yang Zicang. Together, they looked toward the comet that had appeared in the sky.
“Attendant, the lord appointed by the Chief has offered a new wife as tribute. The giver is the leader of the White Wild Tribe in the north. That woman’s village no longer exists.”
The night wind rippled, cold air lingering in the forest. Yang Zicang, clad in thin clothes, seemed oblivious to the biting chill.
“The next book is at this location. Go find its owner, and wait there for the arrival of the Undying King.”
Yang Zicang handed him a piece of hide and a gold coin, which served as both a token and a reward.
“Understood.” Wu Zheng took the gold coin and the hide marked with a route map, standing silently behind this man.
His reports never received direct responses from this man, yet he was never stopped from speaking.
“Has your sister recovered from her illness?”
Hearing this lord take the initiative to speak, the cold young man revealed a hint of genuine smile, humming an affirmation while nodding.
“That’s good.”
“I want to give her a gold coin.”
“Of course you can.” Yang Zicang’s figure vanished on the spot.
The young man no longer found this unusual. He looked up at the sky and stars, clenching his right fist.
The Chief’s follower had lost the essence of his pursuit. He and his fellow disciples were determined not to fall behind such a man.
He took a deep breath, stepping forward, gazing at the thousand-meter cliff below.
“For this challenge, reach the ground within three minutes, or slaughter a thousand ivory dragons.”
He leaped off the cliff, landing firmly on a protruding rock a few meters down, then shot himself toward the other side.
……
The chief of the Sanctum Order led a mighty army in launching their campaign.
Their ancient scriptures had recorded countless experiences of coping with such situations, which he himself had successfully applied sixty-one years ago.
Yet every time, they faced greater challenges, as the past few decades had given rise to many new things.
Houses, tools, clothing, or even discarded trash thrown who knows where—all of these could breed demons, unless a city completely ceased to develop and remained permanently within those old, hard, dark-red houses.
In this town where the leader personally led the expedition, shadows began to emerge as the surrounding warriors raised their heads with sharp eyes.
“Be prepared, children.”
Zaguda, whose hair was just starting to gray, declared in a loud voice, standing beside him were his offspring, who looked to be in their forties or fifties.
“Will the Undead King come this time?”
That was what everyone wanted to know.
Within the Sanctum, the new warriors could now only glimpse the figure of that person through saint statues and ancient texts.
Were it not for the living Saint-Granted one right there on the bay horse beside them, they might have doubted whether this person really existed.
Some years ago, it was rumored that the Undead King was a code name for a group of people.
Others said there was an ancient family with mysterious bloodlines who intermarried, which made them look alike, so each generation that came seemed the same but was, in fact, different.
There were also rumors that the Undying King had abandoned the temple, but soon the makers of these rumors would be skinned, their tendons pulled out, and hung on wooden racks to roast.
Yet the more this happened, the more such rumors proliferated, especially during droughts or floods, when they surged with particular intensity. These warriors of the temple looked forward to the arrival of that year; they wanted to know whether the King was truly here or had already departed.
Boom!
A new building shattered, not exploding outward but collapsing inward, forming a dark red shadow.
The horses startled, rearing high with their front legs.
Boom! Boom! Roaring winds howled as more and more fiends emerged.
“Charge!”
Countless people raised their sacred weapons, roaring, and rushed fearlessly toward these demonic creatures.
The great battle raged day and night in the evacuated town.
Zaguda dreamed of once again receiving the Undying King’s reward in this battle, so he fought with exceptional zeal. Despite his advanced age, with twice-renewed life, he was strong of bone and sinew, capable of facing dozens of enemies single-handedly.
Over the past few months, he had galloped across countless regions like the legendary Undying King; he wanted to emulate the King’s crossing of the continent, save every place, accumulate more merits, and gain a third youth.
Yet as the army advanced, more and more news reached his ears—there was another group doing the very same things as the temple!
And those people were masters of martial arts, unbeatable.
The more he heard, the more shocked he became.
Finally, before winter arrived, the Temple army reached another great city in the eastern part of the continent.
Outside the city lay a sea of placed items, stretching as far as the eye could see.
There were various jars and dye vats, weaving shuttles, wooden frames, tables, chairs, benches, and thousands of arrow shafts. Black, menacing demons scurried amidst the gaseous waves.
Both sides of the conflict were advancing their lines with lives as the price.
Above, thousands of demons resembling garments yet moving freely and emitting eerie, illusory sounds—each burst of gray mist causing someone to scream and twist into scattered, bloody tendrils of flesh.
Amid the countless troops, an old man on a white horse cleaved through a wooden-born demon charging at him. Suddenly, as if sensing something, he turned his gaze toward the distance.
At the opposite end of the battlefield, a group of people was rapidly partitioning the demons’ territory.
Countless warriors of the Holy Temple corps also took notice.
They watched in awe at how those dozen or so individuals could slay vast numbers of the swarming, rain-like demon shadows that tore through the sky.
Facing that golden wave of energy, these locust-like demons fell in droves, becoming sealed sacred relics.
Among this group, there were individuals who had defied the Holy Temple in recent years!
For instance, the somewhat grizzled, robust man who, five years ago, had slain a noble appointed by the Temple.
There was another figure carrying a wooden staff who once singlehandedly slaughtered a patrol team of over thirty people, seizing the annual grain and serfs!
At this moment, the vigorous man with graying hair on the opposite side, a defiant rebel, wielded his longsword like a god of swords amidst a horde of demons.
As the golden waves faded, the chief follower on the white horse caught sight of the young figure appearing in the distance.
With a buzzing in his ears, Zaguda felt as if the sky had collapsed.
In the distance, the young man calmly looked up, his gaze crossing a thousand meters to meet his eyes.
It was like a sudden crack of thunder.
Zaguda stared in shock at that person, that supreme being.
One who had walked the earth time and again since ancient times… he was now leading a new host…!
Vigorous and daring warriors surrounded the king on all sides.
Zaguda seemed to see, across thousands of years, the legendary “Cleansing Band” that had repeatedly crossed continents since the barbaric age.
Clang!
A demonic arrow-shaped shadow flew at him from behind; the old man’s splendid sword slipped from his grip and fell under the horse. He felt his vision blur, and something seemed to burst inside his head.
“Chief!”
Panicked people rushed over, forming a circle around him.
But their chief could no longer hear them.
Zaguda tumbled from his horse, his Adam’s apple moving slightly as blood from the back of his head dampened the wet grass. A white circular halo emerged, floating over his chest, bearing blurry, unreadable digits.
[22N]
On the other side of the grassland, the cold girl, whose youth seemed frozen, looked at Yang Zicang beside her, then broke into a smile:
“Brother, it seems something’s gone wrong over there.”
“Let’s focus on ourselves.”
Yang Zicang swung Fist of the Gale, its golden radiance surging, and punched a path nearly ten meters long through the dense, overwhelming horde of demons.
Beside him, chilling ice and blazing flames—the sword energy—erupted simultaneously, alongside the trembling earth and ethereal chants.
Once again, the comet’s figure vanished, solitary, across the other end of the sky.
On the lands it passed, trumpets of resistance had already sounded, and war spread across the continent…
……
This time, Yang Zicang had gathered a massive mountain of spirit objects and war implements.
They filled two dark-red, colossal ships.
“Hey, what’d you call me here for? My time’s really tight, you know—I can’t afford to be as carefree as you.”
Morley grumbled reluctantly, as he was at a critical moment in his breakthrough, and he had only a few centuries of temporal order left.
“You have to come with me this time, and that’s final.”
“Why?”
“Remember the second experiment I mentioned?”
“What?” Morley was a bit baffled. What experiment?
He quickly racked his brain, trying to recall.
One advantage here was that although a long time had passed, it felt like everything had just happened. So after thinking for a while, Morley actually managed to recall those first days he met Yang Zicang over thirty years ago.
“Ah, you mean bugs watching snow back then? What exactly are you trying to do—run an experiment for decades?”
“I originally thought it would take a thousand years.”
Morri felt a jolt inside. So this was the Complete Stamp Emblem—this guy…
“What exactly are you trying to do?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
Two ships sailed on the sea, anchoring at a spot where the water looked slightly different in color. Occasionally, bubbles rose from below.
“Let’s begin, boys!”
At Yang Zicang’s command, the sailors on board shouted as they dumped crate after crate of spiritual artifacts and weapons into the sea.
“Follow me down.” Yang Zicang took off his coat and plunged into the water with a splash.
Morri watched with a pained grimace, gritted his teeth, and jumped in after him.