First Immortal of the Sword

Chapter 2019: A Graveyard

The enormous landmass was completely devoid of life.

The City of the Lost towered in the distance. The blood-red thunder clouds surrounding the massive city lent the place an additional heart-palpitating, mysterious quality.

Wu Lingchong stood there in a daze. He was still marveling over the fact that Su Yi had slain gods before.

Li Shuang, meanwhile, seemed revitalized. Her bright eyes were full of excitement.

Yu Qian, the leader of the evil spirits, had just given her newfound hope. Her father might have vanished into the City of the Lost a long time ago, but one way or another, he was undoubtedly still alive!

“Let’s go.” Su Yi turned and walked toward the City of the Lost. Wu Lingchong reacted as if awakening from a dream and hurried after him.

Li Shuang frantically gave chase. “Senior, might you bring me with you?”

“Aren’t you afraid to die?” asked Su Yi.

“I’m not,” Li Shuang said without hesitation.

The gates of the City of the Lost were fully ten thousand feet tall. Passing through them was enough to make someone feel utterly paltry and insignificant.

The moment they passed fully through the gates, Su Yi felt a strange, unprecedented sensation. It was as if he’d crossed the threshold of an altogether different world, one completely disconnected from the world outside.

Wu Lingchong whipped around, only to discover that the path had vanished behind them!

A strange, dark void lay beyond the gates, with no other scenery of any kind.

“This…” Wu Lingchong’s hair stood on end. He’d only just passed through the gates, but now, this had happened. Who wouldn’t have been surprised?

Li Shuang was stunned too, but she was relatively calm.

This was the City of the Lost, one of the eight most perilous and mysterious forbidden zones in the River of Epochs! She’d come here prepared to go to her death. No matter how strange or terrifying this place was, it didn’t matter in the slightest.

“Let’s go further in and have a look,” said Su Yi. He was already leading the way ahead.

He carried a gourd of wine in one hand, and his gait was leisurely and composed. His sheer calm left Wu Lingchong feeling reassured.

But his newfound calm proved transient. When he fully passed through the gates and took in the road ahead, panic set in once more.

A graveyard.

Row upon row of endless graves!

Blood-red lightning covered the dome of heaven, flashing with strange crimson light. It illuminated ground covered in endless, scattered graves, an enormous graveyard!

The strangest part was that green lanterns hung over all of the graves, their eerie green flames casting flickering light. They were like countless unearthly green eyes.

Wu Lingchong gasped. This is the City of the Lost?

Li Shuang was stunned too. She never, ever would have guessed that the City of the Lost would be so unsettling.

“The graves are all different,” Su Yi said suddenly. “Perhaps because the people buried there had different statuses and cultivations.”

Some of the graves were just a stretch of smattering of grave soil, while others were like miniature mountains carved out of pitch-black stone.

There were even a few graves built into towers or palaces!

And no small number of them, either.

If not for the eerie green lanterns hovering over the palatial tombstones, few would have believed that they were graves.

Wu Lingchong and Li Shuang noticed this too.

“Don’t tell me that everyone who’s entered the City of the Lost perished long ago? And that these are the gravemarkers of the people who’ve fallen here?” murmured Wu Lingchong.

But then, a hoarse voice resounded out of nowhere, reverberating throughout the blood-red clouds.

“You’re wrong. In the City of the Lost, death means eternal life. The grave markers you see contain no more than our rotting flesh and dried-up bones, while our souls have transcended life and death to become eternal and indestructible!”

Su Yi gazed into the dome of heaven. There, beneath the blood-red thunderclouds, he saw a palanquin smeared with blood.

That raspy voice emanated from within the bloodied palanquin.

“Who are you?” asked Su Yi.

But the speaker avoided the question and said, “You have little time left. Hurry up and find a place to bury yourselves. When the blood-red lightning is obscured by impenetrable fog, a darkness akin to an eternal night descends. You’ll lose all sense of self, never to find your way back.

“When the time comes, you won’t even leave a fleshly body behind, and your souls shall be consigned to the darkness, with no place to come home, unable to determine your own fate. You’ll become… one of the Lost.”

Before this voice had even finished echoing through the air, the palanquin silently faded away.

“We’re supposed to make our own tombs?” Wu Lingchong found the thought absurd.

Li Shuang felt her heart quiver in her chest. She murmured, “When the sky is obscured by dark fog, we’ll lose our fleshly bodies, and our souls will be consigned to darkness to wander among the Lost forever? Doesn’t that mean that the Lost have… well, lost everything they had in life?”

This was quite strange. They’d never heard of anything like it before.

When Li Shuang gazed into the dense rows of tombs, she felt increasingly uneasy. Are all of them experts who entered the City of the Lost? Don’t tell me… that everyone buried here built their own graves?

This was far too unsettling. What expert capable of traversing the River of Epochs would do such a thing?

“If we don’t want to join the Lost, we must dig our own graves…” Su Yi laughed dismissively. “How could this place have such a stupid rule? Come on, let’s move further in.”

Earlier, he noticed that the outline of an enormous building lay deeper in the massive graveyard.

He, Wu Lingchong, and Li Shuang promptly set off. They passed all manner of tombs along the way, and all was silent and still save for the blood-red lightning overhead. The city’s interior was dark and overcast.

The green lamps cast their mottled light on the ground, but that only made the atmosphere all the more sinister and oppressive.

Su Yi walked and drank, entirely unperturbed despite the terrifying, sinister scenery. He had, after all, once explored the Netherworld. He’d seen no small number of strange apparitions. Moreover, he controlled the power of reincarnation, so he had nothing to fear from ghosts.

Wu Lingchong stuck close to Su Yi. His thoughts raced. Don’t tell me that despite the passage of countless years, not one person has left the City of the Lost alive? Not even one?

Does that mean something will happen to us, too?

Fortunately, Wu Lingchong was no coward. He was scared, but he wasn’t scared out of his wits. He was, however, tense and uneasy.

Li Shuang examined the graves along the way. Each grave had a marker. Some just had names, while others included information about the deceased and their accomplishments.

Gradually, she realized that the graves didn’t all belong to Great Realm experts. Some housed the remains of the indigenous inhabitants of the River of Epochs!

In life, the indigenous people had been captured, then forced to enter the City of the Lost. Their captors were using them to uncover the city’s secrets.

At least, that was the idea. In the end, all of their captives died here!

But Li Shuang still had yet to discover the graves of any gods. There was surely a reason for that.

Hm? Li Shuang suddenly stopped and said, “That… that’s my father’s grave!”

She shot over to a grave and stared intently at the tombstone, two lines of tears streaming down her cheeks.

The grave bore only a single line of carved text: “Here Lies Li Yong’an.”

Li Yong’an. That was her father’s name.

The sight of the name left Wu Lingchong stunned. He suddenly recalled a certain rumor.

Li Yong’an was once a dazzling, unparalleled saber cultivator of the River of Epochs, a demigod-level existence. He’d joined one of the Nine Great Orthodoxies, the Celestial Purity Pavilion.

He soon had many miraculous accomplishments under his belt, and within just one hundred short years, he became the Celestial Purity Pavilion’s chief elder and entered the Kingdom of Lasting Light to continue his cultivation.

There were even people who said that Li Yong’an was sure to become a god one day.

But then, something happened that shocked the entire River of Epochs. Li Yong’an, the chief elder of the Celestial Purity Pavilion, betrayed his sect and fled!

They said that he stole an Epoch Fragment to become a god. This incident shook the entire sect.

Heavenly God Panhu, the leader of the Celestial Purity Pavilion, personally issued a bounty on Li Yong’an’s head.

The entire River of Epochs was in uproar.

But Li Yong’an, the traitor to the Celestial Purity Pavilion, vanished completely from the River of Epochs shortly after. No one knew whether he was alive or dead.

It was only when Wu Lingchong saw the words “Here Lies Li Yong’an” that he understood. That legendary demigod saber cultivator was trapped in the City of the Lost!

Wu Lingchong couldn’t help but ask, “Miss, why did your father come to the City of the Lost?”

“To become a god,” said Li Shuang.

Wu Lingchong was stunned. “The rumors say that he stole an Epoch Fragment from the Celestial Purity Pavilion. If so, why risk himself in the City of the Lost?”

“My father is no thief!” Li Shuang frowned. “My father acquired that Epoch Fragment in a forbidden zone. When the deity behind the scenes at the Celestial Purity Pavilion, Heavenly God Panhu, found out about it, he tried to claim the Epoch Fragment for his own. He even insisted that Father offer it to him of his own accord.

“My father refused, infuriating Heavenly God Panhu, who falsely accused him of theft and treason before ordering his sectmates to chase him.

“Had my father not sensed the danger in time and fled beforehand, he’d likely have fallen to Heavenly God Panhu’s schemes!”

Only then did Wu Lingchong realize what had really happened. “But he did acquire an Epoch Fragment, right? So why enter the City of the Lost?”

Li Shuang had a strange look on her face. “That Epoch Fragment was only sixth level. My father was proud and confident; he couldn’t tolerate being forever restricted to the Lesser God level upon achieving divinity. Thus, he never used the Epoch Fragment. Instead, he gave it to me.

“Then, he resolved to brave the City of the Lost in hope of finding a higher quality Epoch Fragment…”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. How could she fail to understand the implications of that tombstone? Her father had met with disaster in the City of the Lost!

Wu Lingchong couldn’t help but sigh. How dazzling of a saber cultivator was Li Yong’an? He even disdained to use a sixth-level Epoch Fragment to achieve divinity. It was obvious how great his pride was.

Yet even someone like him had met with disaster in the City of the Lost. How could Wu Lingchong be anything but wistful?