Chapter 409: The Ancient and Modern Recorder (20)

Si Zhaonan cursed the group of old foxes in his heart.

There was no time for further thought.

The two demonic Saints charged at him together.

Si Zhaonan reacted swiftly.

When Saints clashed, heaven and earth were destroyed.

The two demonic Saints, temporarily blinded by rage, suddenly realized something.

The battlefield was their own territory.

In that brief exchange, the demonic race suffered catastrophic losses. The ancestral grounds of several major demonic clans turned to ash.

The scene forced the two demonic Saints to hold back.

Si Zhaonan noticed their hesitation and laughed aloud.

This was not his home ground, so he had nothing to restrain him.

The earth split apart. Countless stars beyond the domain were disturbed by the terrifying force of their battle and drawn downward, forming a magnificent meteor shower.

The night sky blazed with brilliance.

Si Zhaonan's priceless yellow robes had long since been shredded in the fighting, revealing his powerful frame covered in wounds large and small. A bronze-carved mask covered his face, and beneath it his eyes burned with bloodlust and madness.

"I, Si Zhaonan, rose from the lowest ranks. Though I received many opportunities, I have cultivated to this day in a world where man eats man.

"What I have always relied upon is a single word."

"Ruthlessness!"

"Only by being ruthless enough will others fear you and grant you room to breathe. Those who are not ruthless enough are eaten until not even their bones remain."

Si Zhaonan paid no attention to his injuries. A true Saint, he now fought like a mad dog, gripping a divine halberd.

He abandoned all defense. A terrifying strike from the elderly Saint annihilated more than half of Si Zhaonan's body. Without a sound, he swung the great halberd and smashed it toward the Demon Lord.

Hundreds of towering mountain peaks, together with the land around them, turned to dust in an instant, leaving a pit as deep as an abyss.

What made a Saint a Saint was not merely their immense power. Their very essence differed from all beings beneath that realm. Even a single drop of blood was enough for rapid regeneration. Killing one of the same realm was extremely difficult.

Si Zhaonan raised a hand to block another blow and was sent flying, yet in the blink of an eye, his body was whole again.

He rapidly changed techniques.

From the endless abyss, a furious figure charged out, only to collide head-on with the great halberd that streaked forward like a meteor and was pierced straight through.

Successive heavy injuries took a tremendous toll, even on Saints who could regenerate from a drop of blood.

"Old thing… I once cut down the future of your race. Even if you win this battle, what of it?

"How much longer can that body of yours last? When you old fossils die, the demonic race will meet the same end as the human race. The day of extinction will come!"

Si Zhaonan knew he could not fight two against one.

All he could do was stake everything he had for a single thread of survival.

"The human race has truly produced another extraordinary figure."

The elderly Demon Saint's voice was ice-cold. "If you leave now, my demonic race is willing to cease all further invasions of human lands."

Si Zhaonan burst into loud laughter.

"What are you laughing at?"

"I am laughing at how ridiculous you are, to invent such a clumsy excuse."

Leave? Give the demonic Saints enough time to recover so they could then fight two against one?

Si Zhaonan was no fool.

"Let us settle this beyond the domain. If you win, the human race will be yours to dispose of as you please. If I win, your demonic race will slowly vanish into the long river of history!"

The moment the words left his mouth, the elderly Demon Saint replied, "I accept."

The Demon Lord hurriedly interjected, "Ancestor, this may be a human scheme."

He had every reason for caution.

The elderly Demon Saint answered, "Do you intend to continue fighting on our own territory?"

Those words left the Demon Lord speechless.

After the clash of three Saints, a full quarter of the demonic territories had already been destroyed. If the battle continued, the entire world might be ruined. The demons sought a land better suited for their survival, not a barren wasteland devoid of all life.

As the three Saints departed the continent, none of them ever successfully returned.

In the deserted starry sky, countless stars shattered.

An enormous corpse, stripped of all vitality, floated among the stars.

It was the Demon Lord.

The elderly Demon Saint was imprisoned within a cage, letting out unwilling roars of fury.

Only a white-haired old man remained, sitting cross-legged with a bronze mask still covering his face.

He gazed toward the distant continent.

Si Zhaonan casually removed the mask.

"In this life, I have spent my years on the battlefield, founded an empire that will last through the ages, and in the end became the savior of the human race. It has not been a life lived in vain."

His gaze rested calmly on the elderly Demon Saint.

"You and I will be buried together on this planet. At least neither of us will be alone. Perhaps after tens of thousands of years our blood will give birth to new races, and those new races will once again fight without end.

"The thought is rather interesting."

Si Zhaonan gave a soft laugh. "I can perish with you on this planet… but this mask cannot. Perhaps someone else will need it more than I do."

He casually tossed the mask into the depths of the starry sky. It transformed into a streak of light and vanished.

Si Zhaonan's eyes slowly closed.

...

In the starry sky the years went uncounted.

An unknown number of years later, on a certain planet, a young man stared blankly as a mountain peak in front of him suddenly collapsed.

He had only wanted to travel the mountains and rivers and record the beauty of the landscape.

Yet he had suddenly encountered a supernatural event?

Curious, the young man carefully advanced.

Where the mountain peak had stood, a vast, deep pit had appeared. At the bottom of that pit lay the cause of the destruction: a bronze mask.

"A treasure! This must be a treasure!"

The young man's name was Meng Pingsheng. His greatest passion was to travel the myriad sights of the world, migrating south and north like the wild geese in the sky.

Meng Pingsheng leapt down to the bottom of the pit and picked up the bronze mask.

From that moment, the gears of fate in his life began to turn.

The instant Meng Pingsheng put on the mask, he encountered a man who called himself the Heavenly Origin Human Emperor, the previous host of the mask. The man taught him many techniques and divine abilities.

The only shortcoming was that every day the man urged him to go out and conquer the world.

Conquer the world? Was that something a carefree person like him should do?

Meng Pingsheng politely refused Si Zhaonan's request.

To his surprise, before fading away, Si Zhaonan showed no anger. Instead, he smiled with satisfaction and told him to live in whatever way he preferred.

Thus, Meng Pingsheng walked the path he himself desired. He traveled to many places, beginning with small mountain ranges, then the rivers and mountains of dynasties, the sun, moon, and vast landscapes… and eventually the stars beyond the domain, home to myriad races.

Beneath a cloud-pine tree where great waves crashed against a rocky shore, Meng Pingsheng removed the mask. Leaning against the tree, he watched the first light of dawn at dusk.

He slowly closed his eyes, a smile at the corners of his mouth. The bronze mask slipped from his palm and fell.