Volume II: The Mortal Realm Chapter Sixty-Six: The Mortal Who Casts Stones at Immortals

Jian Jiu's bloodshot eyes struggled to meet the gaze of the frenzied Li Guifan. He wanted to answer Li Guifan’s furious question, but the enormous hand pressed down on him so hard that he could barely breathe, threatening to crush him at any moment.

With great effort, he managed to choke out just four words.

"Big Dipper, Giant Gate."

With a clang, the massive sword among the seven spiritual blades at his side—the “Giant Gate”—shuddered and rotated. Simultaneously, the seven swords, already arranged in the pattern of the Big Dipper, trembled in unison, angling toward Jian Jiu, struggling to release their light. The killing formation shifted to a defensive stance.

Li Guifan’s crazed roar faltered, and his expression changed. With a snarl, he focused his energy, increasing the pressure of the blue giant hand.

The swords were subdued before their radiance could break free, groaning under the weight as they bent ever closer to the ground. The blue hand continued its slow descent, but its speed clearly diminished.

Jian Jiu's blood-red eyes locked with Li Guifan’s wild ones. Both their faces contorted with exertion, and for a moment, the two were locked in a stalemate of physical and spiritual will.

“How laughable,” Ye Mingke thought, as the memory of Zhao Yuan and Fang Si’s dying screams and the scene of their deaths replayed again and again in his mind.

He had just dragged the unconscious Ying Kui from the sea onto the island, collapsing onto his back in the sand, his body wracked with pain. He had been too close to the sword energy that struck Ying Kui, and the force of the blow had left him severely wounded.

“How laughable. I said I’d bring you all home. I even thought that, even if there were demons, I could protect you all.”

Struggling to his feet, he saw Jian Jiu and Song Mingyu, nearly crushed under the blue hand. At some point, his vision had blurred with tears he’d forced himself not to shed.

A strangled, manic laugh escaped his throat.

He gripped his sword, but felt only his own weakness.

“Are we all going to die? How laughable. After struggling for so long, everything is just the same, isn’t it?” he whispered hoarsely, forcing himself forward.

But someone else moved ahead of him.

It was Zhugan—the youngest, most naïve, and frailest of the men. He had already scrambled up the beach, closer to Li Guifan than Ye Mingke.

Staring at the crazed, terrifying immortal in white who wanted them all dead, he no longer felt the wild joy, fear, or timidity of the first time he’d seen an immortal.

No—perhaps there was still fear, still timidity.

But everyone must do the right thing.

This young man, not yet twenty, trembling, picked up a rock from his side.

Then, with tears streaming, afraid yet furious, he roared as he charged the immortal he had once so deeply feared.

Behind him came Li Han, silent and steadfast, gripping two stones in his hands.

Even Fang Wu, once the most timid, rushed forward in his grief and rage over his brother’s death, flailing his arms at the immortal in white like a shrew, as if he could pull the immortal’s hair or claw at his face.

Everyone must do what is right.

A great roar suddenly echoed in Ye Mingke’s mind.

So, after all, everything had already changed…

They had all been in the same boat, struggling for days under the threat of evil spirits. Even in the darkest days of despair, each one did what they could—what was right.

Though they were mere mortals—ordinary mortals at that—they had always been the ones rowing their own boat.

These right actions, however small, were meaningful. They gave them clarity, gave them courage, gave them the will to survive!

To survive!

If you knew you were unlikely to succeed, would you still begin?

Ye Mingke bent to grip his sword, stepping forward, feeling as if fire—not blood—raged through his veins, about to burst forth.

If you knew you were unlikely to succeed, would you still begin?

Yes, you would.

Zhugan, at the front, hurled the first stone at the immortal. Li Guifan, focused on killing Jian Jiu, noticed him, waved his hand in disgust, and sent the stone flying back with such force that Zhugan was knocked onto his back.

But Li Guifan’s attention wavered; his right hand controlling the blue giant hand trembled, and for the first time, Jian Jiu managed to push upward against its crushing force.

Li Han, right behind Zhugan, leapt over the fallen youth, roaring as he hurled the stones at Li Guifan, then hurled himself at the immortal.

He was their leader; he did not fear death—only that his death would serve no purpose.

Li Guifan’s face twisted. With a flick of his left hand, a sword previously knocked aside by Jian Jiu leapt from the ground, shattering the stones with a flash.

But Li Han, lunging through the debris, forced Li Guifan to use his left hand to push him back, sending him crashing into Fang Wu, who had slowed in fear.

Yet with his attention so divided, Jian Jiu, who had been half-kneeling beneath the weight, seized the chance to nearly stand upright.

Li Guifan, unwilling to let his efforts go to waste, snarled and poured his strength once more into the blue hand, almost forcing Jian Jiu to his knees again.

But at that moment, Ye Mingke, silent and sword in hand, stepped through the swirling dust to within three paces of Li Guifan.

His eyes lowered, breath calm, the sword in his hand burning hot as fire. Countless fragments of knowledge surged in his mind.

There is a crack in everything.

Paper can cut steel and not retreat.

No passage!

Ye Mingke drew his sword and struck.

There was none of the brilliance of his earlier sword that felled a python; this strike was silent and restrained.

Li Guifan, noticing the blow, kept his focus on suppressing Jian Jiu, merely raising his own sword to block.

A sharp crack.

Something broke.

A sword. A heartstring. Perhaps even a life.

Li Guifan turned in disbelief. The sword he had raised was severed before his face, and a terrible crimson line slashed from the upper left of his face to the lower right.

The blue giant hand he controlled quaked and dissolved. Jian Jiu, seizing the fleeting opportunity, leapt to form a sword seal.

“Big Dipper! Rise!”

With a series of ringing notes, the seven spiritual swords, nearly flattened to the earth, shot up, seven beams of deadly light piercing Li Guifan and pinning him to the ground.

Li Guifan fell flat on his back, staring blankly at the sky.

From the moment Ye Mingke’s sword struck him to the instant Jian Jiu’s seven swords pierced him, the maddened howling Li Guifan never uttered another sound.

With a thud, Ye Mingke collapsed, his sword clattering beside him, but he hurriedly struggled to return his blade to its scabbard.

If he delayed any longer, even his unusual constitution would not save him from aging into a withered old man like Jian Jiu.

Thinking this, he glanced at Jian Jiu, who was leaning weakly against a tree, and burst into hearty laughter—the kind he had not felt since the calamity in his home village.

It had been hard, but they had truly succeeded.

An immortal? Just cut him down—that’s all!

Leaning against a tree with Song Mingyu, Jian Jiu watched Ye Mingke’s foolishly radiant laughter and, for the first time in ages, a hint of a smile cracked his winter-bound face.

“A fine sword!” he said to Ye Mingke, genuinely impressed.

Even after mastering countless sword forms in the world, Jian Jiu had been awed by that strike.

“It is a fine sword,” Ye Mingke replied, shaking the cold, somber blade called “Nine” with a sly, squinting grin.

“You owe me a huge favor for this. Why don’t you just give me your sword? I really feel a kinship with it.”

That he could cut through Li Guifan’s spiritual sword was not merely due to the strange technique he had only half-mastered, but more so to this unassuming yet domineering and uncanny blade.

With it, he had been able, as a mere mortal, to break through Li Guifan’s defenses.

“It is my life,” Jian Jiu replied mildly, neither agreeing nor refusing.

After resting a while, Jian Jiu struggled to his feet and walked toward Li Guifan, pinned to the ground. Ye Mingke, still unsteady, got up and joined Song Mingyu in checking on Ying Kui, Li Han, and the others.

Fortunately, after a brief examination, he and Song Mingyu confirmed they were all still alive—unconscious, with injuries ranging from mild to severe, but not in immediate danger.

Having settled them as best they could, Ye Mingke and Song Mingyu returned to the silent Jian Jiu, who was gazing at Li Guifan’s body.

Li Guifan’s wide eyes were already glazing over, his blood nearly spent, but his lips still moved faintly.

“I didn’t want to lose.”

Over and over, he muttered almost inaudibly.

Jian Jiu watched him in silence for a long, long time.

“You’ve won,” Jian Jiu suddenly said quietly. “This time, I lost. Ying Kui lost. Mingyu lost. You alone defeated me—defeated the three of us.”

He paused, meeting Li Guifan’s fading gaze, and spoke with emphasis.

“You’ve won. You’re very strong.”

Song Mingyu understood what Jian Jiu was doing. Her pale, haggard face broke into a sorrowful smile.

Yet her voice, though choked with tears, was cheerful—just as it had always been when, as the little junior sister, she spoke to her senior brother.

She said softly to him,

“Yes, you truly are the senior brother. You really are incredible.”

Hearing her words and Jian Jiu’s, Li Guifan’s eyes suddenly brightened for a moment, only to dim forever as his lips ceased their movement.

Then his eyes closed, and he moved no more.

Song Mingyu, who had been forcing a smile, suddenly began to weep. Just now, she had spoken in her usual playful tone to Li Guifan, but she had never before said anything like that to him.

She had always clung to her honest, useless senior brother, laughing and talking:

“Senior brother, come play with me! Oh, why are you still practicing that technique? My Jian Jiu mastered it long ago.”

“Senior brother, you’re so silly. How is that annoying sword-stand still at the top of the merit rankings?”

“Senior brother, what are mortal lives really like? I heard they get so hungry they eat their own children! How disgusting.”

“Senior brother, your name may be Guifan—‘return to the ordinary’—but you don’t have to be so dull and boring, do you?”

And each time, her senior brother would only smile self-deprecatingly, as if none of it mattered, sometimes even making a joke at his own expense.

She never realized how much pain her careless words had brought to the man she thought was just a good-natured fool.