Netherworld Painted Skin Scroll

Chapter 384 The Six Great Emperors
Zhao Qi froze behind Li Wuxiang, and upon hearing the dragon's ghostly wailing voice, he finally couldn't help but ask, "What the hell is that?!"

Li Wuxiang immediately waved his hand forcefully behind his back, signaling him to be quiet.

Because he felt that this thing, the thing that spoke inside Xu Zhen's skin, didn't seem to be here, or at least hadn't "seen" or "heard" him and Zhao Qi.

This feeling came from his divine sense—he was carefully touching it with his divine thought, trying to figure out whether it was "Tai Zhuo Da Jun" or, if so, whether it was a spirit similar to Donghuang Taiyi or Dutian Siming.

The result of the investigation was very strange—when I sensed the true spirit of Taiyi before, although it was separated from the present world, I could at least feel that it still belonged to the same world, just a different world within this world.

The aura emanating from the thing within the dragon's body felt utterly unfamiliar to him. It didn't evoke feelings of majesty, solemnity, terror, or bloodshed, but rather of "the unknown" and "emptiness." The moment his divine sense made contact with it, it vanished without a trace. It was like a mortal encountering a ghost; you see the ghost there, but when you reach out to touch it, you grasp nothing.

This thing doesn't belong to this world. That was a gut feeling in his heart.

The second intuition was that it hadn't arrived here yet. In Li Wuxiang's perception, it was as if it were at the corner of a wall—from that corner, it could see exactly what it wanted to see, but it couldn't notice itself, Zhao Qi, or anything else in the world, including the living, the dead, even the Dao and the rules, all on the other side of the corner.

As for the third intuition, it was the unknown and emptiness he sensed through his divine sense. That emptiness gave him the feeling that if he were to plunge into it, he could see a vast, all-encompassing world, and a multitude of things he could or could not understand. It was as if this thing was a passage, or some kind of pipe, and the world he was in was a small pool of water. It extended over, peering through this thin pipe, and if he was bold enough, he could slowly climb over and see what was on the other side.

None of these three intuitions could be described; Li Wuxiang could only transform them into something he could somewhat understand through metaphors.

Then he heard it speak again: "...Soon...soon...you will all be back..."

This language, or rather, this information, intuitively felt to him like water flowing from one end of a pipe. A remarkably bold idea popped into Li Wuxiang's mind—

I really want to go there and take a look!
Since arriving in the Central Plains, he has almost always escaped death in every battle. But this was not luck; rather, it was because he always knew more than his opponent and had more allies. He now fully understands that the key to victory in the highest level of struggle in this world is power, and a large part of power comes from information.

If this thing truly is the Great Lord of Turbidity, and can turn something like the Blood God into its puppet, then its power must be terrifyingly strong. If one could glimpse even a little of its secrets, perhaps one could gain unimaginable advantages and advantages!
Without further hesitation, he slowly raised his left hand and gently placed it on the dragon's chin.

The mycelium-like substances on the dragon's body immediately spread over and began to climb up his arm. In that instant, Li Wuxiang felt a powerful attraction trying to pull his consciousness away from his body. The more the mycelium spread on the back of his hand, the stronger this attraction became.

It was as if the thin "pipe" he intuitively perceived was filled with water, and his consciousness was a tiny speck of dust being siphoned into that pipe, possibly never to return. He needed to extricate himself in time!
But Li Wuxiang seized this moment, mustered more courage in his heart, and extended his divine sense to look!
In that instant, consciousness was elevated, as if breaking through the end of this void, breaking through the present world, breaking through Mount Ling, and even breaking through the crimson sky, heading towards a deeper and more distant place.

The heights seemed endless, with even deeper depths. But his divine sense was failing him; he knew that if he continued forward, he might never return. Just then, he saw something before him—or rather, because his mind was in a special state, information about that thing flooded into his head—

It was a huge, faint light, white and spherical. It seemed to be alive, but its vitality was not strong; perhaps it was newly born, or perhaps it was dying.

It was covered in countless spots of light, and between these spots flowed ripples like water. The moment he saw it, based on his knowledge from another world, Li Wuxiang thought it was a sphere shrouded in smoke, and the flowing things were the smoke covering the surface of this sphere.

As for those spots of light, it seems that the terrain caused some smoke to gather there, making them particularly bright.

What is this? My consciousness has just broken free from the mortal world, from Mount Ling, and even from the Crimson Heaven... Is this the world I live in? But what are those spots of light?
The attraction was growing stronger. Li Wuxiang risked relaxing his consciousness slightly, letting it draw him to a higher place, and thus saw even more.

There are six largest spots of light, almost all of which are clustered in a certain area of ​​this sphere.

The tiny spots of light were stationary; only the smoke flowing around them moved. The six largest spots, however, seemed to come alive—the spots themselves were their bodies, and the wisps of smoke their tentacles. These tentacles intertwined and moved violently, like six enormous typhoons tearing at each other, trying to destroy one another and grow stronger. But because they were evenly matched, they were in a temporary state of equilibrium.

What are these things? They are—

A certainty suddenly leaped into his mind. This thought wasn't something he conceived himself, but rather a conviction that the existence of those six things was absolute, certain, and unquestionable. Therefore, as doubt arose in his heart, according to some immutable rule of the universe, their names emerged—

The True Form Emperor of the Five Sacred Mountains!

The Great Emperor of the Six Rivers and the Dark Underworld!

Dongjun, the Great Emperor of the Sun!

The Great Emperor of the Moon!

Ji Ci Baosheng Dadi! Haotian Wuguan Dadi!

Then more thoughts flooded his mind, as if now that he was certain of these ideas, everything else related to them naturally became clear to him—

These six emperors are sojourners, residing in the body of the Netherworld Mother... The sphere with swirling smoke on its surface that he saw was the Netherworld Mother!
What was flowing was not smoke, but the blood of the Netherworld Mother!

Li Wuxiang wanted to know more, but the "passage" he was in was drawing his consciousness in stronger and stronger ways, pulling him further and further away.

So he did it again, but this time, with the experience of Li Guichen and Xu Chen, he did it much more skillfully and completed it in an instant—he created another version of himself and threw it toward the “Netherworld Mother” he saw.

His divine consciousness merged into it, or rather, it merged into the rules that he had manifested through the passage he had used to arrive with the Great Lord Tai Zhuo. In an instant, he felt that he understood everything, as if he himself had experienced the long history of this world from nothingness to its present state.

The Netherworld Mother did not exist in the beginning. This world was initially in a state of neither life nor death, like a huge fleshy body that had lost consciousness... no, not lost, it never existed.

The essence of heaven and earth transformed into everything in the world—living things, plants, mountains, rivers. Just as the clouds in the high sky need a small core to gather into water droplets, the essence of heaven and earth gradually condensed due to subtle disturbances over long periods of time, thus giving rise to the essence of heaven and earth—humans.

Humans are insignificant, like dust within this enormous body. And even greater are the spiritual energies that have gathered together precisely because of the terrain, feng shui, and the five elements.

Compared to the thin, misty spiritual energy between heaven and earth, this gathered energy possesses a much more vigorous vitality. However, it's still lacking. Just as large swaths of clouds cannot yet form water droplets, these places where spiritual energy gathers, commonly known as blessed lands, still require a slight disturbance.

This disturbance cannot be caused by humans. Humans are the essence of heaven and earth, a collection of spiritual energy that has already developed a clear mind. Their intelligence is perfect and flawless, and cannot accommodate anything more to fill the void.

Rather, they are demons, things like crocodile demons. They live longer by chance and begin to develop intelligence. However, their minds are still confused and lacking. When they happen to come to a place where spiritual energy is extremely concentrated and almost alive, their intelligence fills in the gaps, and thus they become demons.

However, these clusters of spiritual energy are not the largest; there are six even larger ones. The things they need to gather in one place are also "larger" and "stronger," but there are no conditions in this world that can give birth to what they need.

Until the arrival of a man named Li Ye.

He passed down the Dharma, becoming the Dao Ancestor, allowing the spirits of heaven and earth to cultivate. Under the intervention of rules not belonging to this world, the spirits of heaven and earth gained immense power they shouldn't have possessed. This power stirred the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, making them grow ever stronger, until they reached their limit—

The sparse spiritual energy of heaven and earth could no longer meet their needs, so they began to explore the Dao and its rules. The six largest clusters of spiritual energy gathered together were manifestations of the Dao and its rules contained within the Netherworld Mother Earth—Li Ye's six disciples were the first to find them and merge with them.

This method is very similar to the path of demons achieving enlightenment, but there are also fundamental differences. Demons become demons by relying on the blessed lands and grottoes between heaven and earth. Although the spiritual energy there is also considered to be living, it is weak and has not yet developed a complete consciousness. When absorbed into the body, it can only fill in the gaps and make the demon's consciousness clear.

However, the six largest groups, regardless of the power they contained or the will they harbored, were far too powerful even for True Immortal cultivators. Therefore, after they merged into one, the primary and secondary groups immediately reversed—

The existence and name of the true immortals themselves were completely erased from the world, leaving only the six emperors: the True Form of the Five Sacred Mountains, the Profound Darkness of the Six Rivers, the Eastern Lord of the Sun, the Pure Radiance of the Moon, the Compassionate Life-Preserving Emperor, and the Great Emperor of the Five Officials of the Azure Heaven.

They are no longer human, but six living entities of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. It is not that six true immortals merged with the Dao, but rather that the Dao absorbed them.

The Dao's destiny has come alive, and the Dao's destiny needs more. The Dao's destiny wants to seize everything, and even drain the Netherworld Mother who once nurtured them.

Therefore, they need offerings, and the essence of heaven and earth, which needs to cultivate, will absorb as much of the scarce spiritual energy between heaven and earth as possible for them before they are inhabited. They become another world independent of this one, like children parasitizing the Netherworld Mother Earth, and they, these children, are called "Wonderful Realms" by cultivators in the world!
No wonder they joined forces to suppress Donghuang Taiyi... because to the Netherworld Mother and the six Great Emperors who had merged with the Dao, he was not a thing of this world, but an alien being, someone to be rejected and destroyed!

Li Wuxiang sensed all of this, but he wasn't alarmed. He had a premonition about some of it, and what he wanted to know was what was going on with Donghuang Taiyi!

If the six great emperors of the Six Departments of the Mysterious Sect attained enlightenment through this means, then what about the humanistic fortune that Li Ye obtained? He could actually see the so-called "humanistic fortune" on the Netherworld Mother. It was something produced when countless essences of heaven and earth gathered together during production and life. Humanistic fortune looked more like a wisp of dark smoke, as if it were a dirty mark or a tiny scar on the Netherworld Mother's body.

There are only about 100 million people still alive in the world today. Therefore, the human fortune that Li Wuxiang saw was like a wisp of green smoke, lingering outside the six religious districts. It was not only incomparable to the six great emperors of the Xuan Sect, but it was also much thinner than the spiritual energy in some blessed lands that could produce great demons. It seemed as if it would be extinguished and dissipated at any time.

Even if there were a billion people in the world more than three thousand years ago, the resulting human fortune would only be a slightly more obvious wisp of black smoke—Li Ye must have used this black smoke to become a true immortal... So how did he become a golden immortal?
Before witnessing everything before him, Li Wuxiang felt that the rules of this world were a huge black box, full of possibilities he didn't understand. But now, with the power of the Great Lord Tai Zhuo overlooking the world and taking in the concrete rules, he realized that this world had always been very simple—the struggle for the rules of destiny was essentially a struggle for the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. Powerful forces and spiritual energy led to qualitative changes, capable of reshaping everything in the world.

But how did Li Ye become the Eastern Emperor Taiyi? What did he rely on?
(End of this chapter)