A burst of firelight streaked past the horizon. Zhou Wu didn’t persist any longer; he really did leave.
The Four Great Auxiliary Stars landed before the mausoleum and glanced in the direction in which Zhou Wu had fled. They couldn’t help but turn to the stone statue and say, “Why did you just let him leave? Sparing him will surely invite disaster.”
When Zhou Wu left, Yin Shang could sense his bitterness and repressed resentment.
How could someone with such resentment in his heart see the light just because of the stone statue’s advice?
Yin Shang didn’t understand what the statue was thinking, but at the same time, he had to be polite to it. As one of the Four Great Auxiliary Stars, he was fully aware that this stone statue was one of the prior era’s Four Great Auxiliary Stars.
“That’s right! If my attack had landed just now, I totally could have crippled him,” said Gou Yuzhuan.
“I spared him because he’ll be useful,” said the stone statue with an aged, worn sigh. “The First Era has been destroyed, while the Second Era never transcended. The gods of the end have rallied their entire forces to march upon the Third Era. The pressure on the Third Era will be great indeed. Zhou Wu, regardless of his character, has too high a cultivation to throw away lightly.”
“I’m just afraid he’ll attack us instead of them,” said Yin Shang.
The stone statue merely sighed in response. Of course he’d considered that possibility, but he still had a hint of hope for Zhou Wu.
If Zhou Wu could learn from his mistakes and give up on his obsession with transcendence, his existence would present an enormous obstacle to the gods of the end.
“Forget it. Zhou Wu’s already run away, so saying all that is useless. Is there anything else we need to do here? If not, I’m going to go home. Little Lorie’s waiting for me!” Gou Yuzhuan said while stroking his ahoge.
“The River Styx needs me to hold down the fort, so if there’s nothing else, I’ll go back too,” said Su Yiyun.
Su Liu’er and Yin Shang had business too. They’d only come here at the orders of the prior Four Great Auxiliary Stars top stop Zhou Wu from forcing his way into the mausoleum’s interior.
They’d already completed their mission, but they were no ordinary people, and there were many other matters that required their attention.
“Go back and contemplate the various applications of starlight we entrusted to you. The future of this era is in your hands.”
The four of them nodded, cupped their fists, then blurred into four streaks of starlight and disappeared into the clouds.
Once they’d gone, the stone statue sighed as if it were human. It turned and glanced at the mausoleum it had been guarding for billions of years, then turned in the direction Zhou Wu had fled in.
“Don’t stubbornly cling to your obsessions!”
….
“Dammit! Dammit!”
Whole body covered in blood, Zhou Wu roared and cursed. The statue’s words were intended to enlighten him, to make him give up on his foolish delusions!
Transcendence!
It had been Zhou Wu’s dream for tens of thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of years!
Was he supposed to give up and accept that he couldn’t take that final step just because of the statue’s few words of advice?
Why? On what basis?
“Why can’t I transcend? What am I lacking! Damned auxiliary stars! Blast them!”
When he recalled his pathetic, defeated state, and how he’d been forced to flee with his tail between his legs, Zhou Wu gnashed his teeth hatefully.
But during their battle, he realized that he’d grossly misunderstood the nature of starlight.
In terms of cultivation, the Four Great Auxiliary Stars were nowhere near his level.
They’d joined forces to beat him into this state, but they’d only succeeded because they’d called upon the limitless power of starlight.
But he still wasn’t sure why the power of their stars could increase their strength so much.
In terms of the level of their starlight, theirs was inferior to the Emperor Star’s. Why was it that when he called upon his own starlight, it couldn’t strengthen him the way his opponents’ starlight had?
“My adorable little fellow, it appears you’ve run into a bit of trouble.”
A youth dressed like a clown stepped out of the verdant, flourishing forest. His red nose and black-rimmed eyes made him look ridiculous; just the sight of him was enough to make one laugh.
But Zhou Wu didn’t laugh. He was furious.
Little Fellow?
What did that clown just say?
After his battle with the Four Great Auxiliary Stars, Zhou Wu was seething with resentment. It instantly boiled over; he was about to vent his rage on the ridiculous clown.
“You’re seeking death! Spatial compression!”
Perhaps the stone statue’s words really had influenced him, but Zhou Wu didn’t call upon the Dao of Fire, for which he’d yet to condense a dao heart. Instead, he chose the Grand Dao of Space.”
As soon as he spoke, the space surrounding the clown compressed in on itself without pause.
The trees sharing the same path of space couldn’t take it; they were crushed directly into powder. As for the clown, his eyes and nose both started leaking a nonstop flow of blood.
“Hmph!” When Zhou Wu saw this, a hint of a smile returned to his lips.
This was the price of insulting him!
The clown’s fate was sealed. In this compressed space, no one could save him. Zhou Wu turned and left without even looking back. The way he saw it, there was absolutely no meaning in savoring this vulgar attention-seeker’s death.
But when he was one hundred meters away…
“Little fellow, you sure are unfriendly!”
A voice tinged with resentment made Zhou Wu freeze midstep. A moment later, a man in a bizarre outfit appeared before him.
That red nose was particularly strange…
“You…” Zhou Wu’s eyes widened, and he glanced behind him. The clown he’d attacked with compressed space was exactly where he’d left him. From the look of things, his bones had already completely shattered, and his entire body was distorting and collapsing in itself erratically within that restricted space.
But this clown looked completely identical to him.
“Are you surprised?” The clown’s eyes narrowed into slits. He pressed gently against the ground, then leaped onto the thirty-foot boulder behind him.
“Who are you?” Zhou Wu could sense that this clown was no ordinary man despite the fact that, based on his appearance, he was nothing but an early-stage diviner, a mere ant.
“Are you asking me?” The clown twirled twice atop the boulder. “Can’t you tell? I’m an artist who brings people joy and laughter.”
“An artist? This is my first time hearing a clown call himself such a thing,” sneered Zhou Wu.
“Little Fellow, please watch your words,” said the clown indignantly. “I already introduced myself: I’m an artist who brings people joy and laughter, not a purveyor of vulgar, crowd-pleasing claptrap like a mere ‘clown.’”
“Then why are you here? Why did you come looking for me?” asked Zhou Wu.
“I could tell that you were in a terrible mood. It seems you’ve encountered a grave problem. As I said, I am an artist who brings people joy and laughter. Your displeasure makes me feel rather uncomfortable, so I made an appearance to grant you heartfelt joy!”
“Ludicrous!” The clown’s words were only getting stranger and stranger. If the clown wasn’t so obviously out of the ordinary, Zhou Wu would never have wasted his time on him. He still had to go back and research an alternative path to transcendence. He was only one step away; he didn’t want to waste his time on anything unimportant.
“Hey, you pitiful little fellow. The Great Artist, Tam, is before you. This is your good fortune, a once in a lifetime chance, yet you’re choosing to ignore me!?” The clown leaped into the air and landed directly in Zhou Wu’s path. He pressed his entire head toward Zhou Wu until his bulbous red nose practically touched Zhou Wu’s face. “I advise you to think it over one more time. Wouldn’t you like me to fix your inner discontent?”
“Fix it? What, are you going to put on a sideshow for me?” Zhou Wu laughed coldly.
“Hey, little fellow, don’t compare me to a mere clown ever again. The Great Artist Tam would never engage in such ridiculous behavior. We’re too high-class for that.” Tam grinned and tilted his head to the side. “How about I try and guess just what it is that has you so upset?”
Zhou Wu said nothing, but he didn’t actually refuse. He wanted to see just what this cloud had to say.
“You want to transcend, yet you’ve run into difficulties, right?” The clown stuck out his jaw and looked at Zhou Wu’s face. “The Transcendent Mausoleum has rejected you and refused you entry. Furthermore, you just got beat up, so you’re in a violent mood!”
“You saw all that?” Zhou Wu suddenly reached out and seized Tam by the throat. “You’re just here to make fun of me, aren’t you?”
“Hey! You’re hurting me!” Tam laughed and beat at Zhou Wu’s hands, but when Zhou Wu didn’t relax his grip, he merely shrugged.
Then, yet another clown in a red nose appeared in Zhou Wu’s line of sight.
“The Great Tam would never mock another’s misfortune. You say I saw what happened…? No, I saw it written in your face.”
Another one!
Zhou Wu stared intently at the newest Tam. The one he was currently throttling was still struggling, while the first was still crumpling within that compressed space.
For some reason, he relaxed his grip. The newly freed Tam tilted his head up at him. “It seems you know what’s good for you.”
But the other Tam seemed rather bitter that Zhou Wu had relented. “Why didn’t you just suffocate him to death?”
“Hey, you mere replacement. Don’t tell me you want to take the Great Tam’s place?”
The newly-released Tam jumped at the one who’d just appeared. Soon, the two of them were tussling like hoodlums.
The only difference was that their methods were far crueler.
In but a hundred breaths of time, the strangled Tam had been ripped into chunks. The survivor even kicked his victim in a show of wanton arrogance. “Pitiful creature.”
Zhou Wu was struggling to understand what was happening. Weren’t all these clowns the same person?
“I finally dealt with that guy. Hey, pitiful little fellow, what are you looking at?” Tam glanced at the shredded corpse, then waved dismissively at Zhou Wu. “There’s no need to concern yourself with that pathetic thing. His existence was like that of spoiled food; if we let him linger, his stench would only contaminate the clean air.”
Zhou Wu thought himself long-lived and experienced. He’d seen all sorts of things, but this…
He was really shocked.
And yet, this cruel scene somehow gave him an idea.
“Great Artist, Tam.” Zhou Wu no longer called him a clown, and his gaze contained unprecedented reverence. “Might you help me recover my heart’s joy?”