Rewrite the myth and become the Taoist!

Chapter 308 of the script, "The Great Calamity of Humans and Dragons: The Five Spirits Chronicle," is heading towards a world of returning to nothingness.

……

[Congratulations! You have obtained the Golden Achievement Reward - Great Dao Spiritual Treasure: Xuanqiong Suppressing Dao Seal.]

[Congratulations! You have obtained the Golden Achievement Reward - The Great Dao Spiritual Treasure: Qiankun Linglong Pagoda.]

[Congratulations! You have obtained the Golden Achievement Reward - Great Dao Spiritual Treasure: Mountain and River Map - True Name: Jade Void Heaven-Opening Axe - Remains.]

……

Congratulations on achieving the gold achievement "Lord of Mountains and Rivers"!

The Heavenly Dao notification sound kept flooding the screen, popping up various rewards.

Ning Xunqiu was not surprised.

He should have guessed it sooner.

Whether it's the Pure Void Heavenly Dao, the Azure Heaven, or the Giant God of Creation, they are all another version of themselves.

That self that is without desire or ego.

When he left the Mountain and River Realm and faced the [Four Seas Ruler Ancestral Dragon] in the East Sea, he was in mortal danger, and the Heavenly Evolution Book immediately flashed a golden life titled "???".

Afterwards, he regarded the tombstone that sealed him as a supreme innate treasure for self-preservation, the "Sword of Chaos".

Regardless of the difficulties he encountered in reality and in rewriting his life, no matter how tumultuous the process, the ultimate goal was to suppress a hostile "Great Dao Saint" by "Ning Xunqiu, the Nemesis of Destiny".

If it happens too often...

Pure fishing technique.

"Zero one zero one..."

Ning Xunqiu chuckled softly, his eyes reflecting the gap in the "blue sky".

"Has the Heavenly Dao truly shattered...?"

It's just bait.

……

"Qingyun Sword Master, you let someone from another realm leave? That's the son of the Demon Dragon... a very important bargaining chip!"

Although the First Emperor disapproved of the Three Sages of China, he was also pleased with the situation.

【but. 】

The Nine Heavens of the Primordial Realm are either sealed or transformed into the Dao.

Clearly, an invisible hand is manipulating all of this...

Even though He had always disdained the scheming methods of the Three Sages of the Divine Land, He now sensed something amiss. The heavens hung high and silent, the underworld as still as an abyss; in this vast game of chess, it seemed only He was kept in the dark.

He was kept in the dark all along.

The great gods who mended the heavens and created the world, whose great paths far surpassed those of all other deities, left the primordial realm one after another and subsequently perished. When the Ancestral Dragon became the strongest being, he was filled with panic, fearing that he too would mysteriously disappear.

"I made a deal with Him..."

Ning Xunqiu found a reason for joining forces with the "Demon Dragon," and, as the Primordial Immortal Ancestor, barely managed to deal with the Great Dao Saints such as Cangtian, Zulong, and Mingtian.

[Ning Xunqiu, amidst the verdant mountains and clear waters, penned the second phase of the Heavenly Dao script, "The Great Calamity of Humans and Dragons: The Romance of the Five Spirits"—]

[Destiny—General Ning of Qin and his friend, by the mandate of Heaven, will contend with the phoenix, the azure dragon, and the qilin for the sake of all living beings, for this is the truth of humanity.]

[Destiny—Yinglong transcends.]

[Definite number——? ? ? 】

[A Variable – A great god among the dragons crossed the Dragon Gate and established his own lineage – Ancestral Dragon, Sea True Dragon King.]

[A variable—Among the three great dynasties, a highly skilled individual foresaw that their dynasty's destiny was nearing its end. This individual, possessing great supernatural powers, was unwilling to accept this and sought to defy fate, challenging the barbarian state of "Qin" in the East Sea.]

[Variable—In the southern lands, there is a person named…]

[Variable—In the western lands, there dwells a demon named…]

[Variable—Beyond the Nine Heavens, there exists a saint named…]

[The leader of the Azure Cloud Sword attained enlightenment on Purple Cloud Island, usurping the throne of Heaven and establishing the Heavenly Way. Purple energy traveled thirty thousand miles eastward, golden lotuses sprouted from the earth, dragons and phoenixes resonated, and he personally commanded Heaven and Earth, establishing the Azure Heaven Laws with a single word.]

Those of great stature and profound wisdom must not interfere in the affairs of the mortal realm.

The saints were dissatisfied, and someone secretly intervened...

[The Azure Cloud Sword Master was furious. With a thought, he issued a "Azure Heaven Decree" to his eldest disciple, Zhao Qingzhou, and, wielding this "method," suppressed him, banishing him to the Four Desolate Lands to forever suppress the storm of the Eye of Chaos, serving as a barrier for the world.]

The holy beings were greatly astonished and bowed in submission.

The rest of the dynasty were unwilling to accept defeat, but their supernatural powers were no match for fate. They perished as a result of the combined attack of the Five Spirits and the Martial God.

Qin means green.

……

[Eight hundred years later.]

During the great calamity between humans and dragons, Yinglong created the last auspicious white tiger, using the Five Elements to attain the Dao—Primordial Chaos.

The timeline of the Azure Heaven Order has taken shape, and the chaotic time of the "Myriad Realms" finally has a clear beginning and end. The time of the Azure Heaven World is the anchor point of the "Myriad Realms"—

Although the time in other worlds differs from their own, they are all synchronized with the time in the Azure Heaven Realm.

[Without beginning or end—the "existence" in between is infinite; anyone's path to enlightenment can continue to progress, as long as the bottom line of "clear sky" is not crossed to prove the ethereal—nothingness.]

Unfortunately, only a small number of sages and saints understand this principle.

[The Azure Cloud Sword Master's aim was to strike at the Great Dao Saints of all realms who had "crossed the line."]

[We invite the Six Sages of the Investiture of the Gods to join the "Guardian of Heaven's Inspection Team" to provide cross-disciplinary assistance when the Guardians of Heaven encounter insurmountable problems.]

In the "infinite future" across countless worlds, such beings will become increasingly numerous... This is a noble task with no end and no retirement.

[—The Azure Sky Inspectors will come into the world from a river. They are messengers of the Azure Sky, whose duties are—to preach the Way, to spread the Dharma, to slay saints, to maintain balance… or to destroy those hopelessly doomed worlds.]

In some worlds, they are also called—the messengers of destruction.

If you don't want to be purged by the Destroyer, please cooperate with them to uphold the principles of justice. They might help you recreate the elements and restart the world.

The traces of the Azure Sky Patrolmen are found throughout the myriad realms, leaving behind countless legends.

[A myth is born, achieving a golden milestone – The Source River]

……

……

Beyond the Abyss.

Ning Xunqiu, the Shadow of Heaven's Path, slightly raised his eyes and looked towards the void and chaos.

There, a faint crack was slowly healing—it was the boundary wall torn open when the elders of the Transcendent Alliance fled.

"Return to the Void Heaven?"

Ning Xunqiu frowned slightly.

Even [Wings of Freedom - Ether] has failed, so he has no intention of personally entering this world.

His current fortune is an "infinite" symbol, giving him ample opportunity to understand the situation of another Heavenly Dao.

A thought came to my mind.

"Wow—"

A gilded celestial book manifested from nothingness, its pages moving without wind. Countless profound Daoist patterns flowed across the cover, finally settling on a line of slowly decaying text:

[Another version of myself has traveled to an unknown, forbidden world...]

Its name is—Black Iron Realm.

I was born three thousand years after the Great Cataclysm, when civilization's prosperity had faded.

I miss the era my older brother talked about, but he never saw it either.

At six years old, I huddled in a crevice of the ruins, using the pale light filtering through the steel dome to decipher the ancient characters that had long since been abandoned.

[—Leftover milk being poured down the drain? And enough rice to feed 1.4 billion people for decades—you could probably swim in it!]

[And then there's the delicious pork I only tasted once in my life. Apparently, in ancient times everyone could eat it until they were tired of it. How lucky the ancients were!]

My Adam's apple bobbed, and my chapped lips unconsciously repeated the words.

The person in the ancient book died during their migration, and the reason this world he spoke of became... is because someone invented a weapon capable of destroying the world—called the Solar Bomb.

[A single marble? Turning an area of ​​30,000 miles into lava? Larger than the entire Augu Empire.]

[It's truly an ancient myth, but I've heard similar claims before; this is plagiarism—the birthday of the "Sun God" in the doctrines of the Peace Cult!]

In mythology, the sun god unleashed this forbidden divine art, capable of ending everything, from a height of ten thousand feet in the sky!

Unfortunately, after that war of the gods, the fundamental rules of the world changed, and later generations could no longer use "magic" and "divine arts."

[The ancients called this magic "technological crystallization," and everyone knew how to use it.] [I'm not interested in that. I don't care how much convenience that technological crystallization from that civilized world would bring, like flying to the sky and standing shoulder to shoulder with the sun, or about laws, human rights, and equality.]

That's bullshit to me.

I only care about milk and bread.

Does the world described in ancient books really exist?

In this era, there is only poverty and hunger.

Every day, I watch my older brother and parents leave for work. I obediently close the door and take care of my naive little sister. Her big eyes are innocent and she only knows how to babble and laugh foolishly.

Our family lives in the slums of Grey Pigeon Town. We are a Black-Eyed Clan who migrated from the East. In Grey Pigeon Town, we are considered third-class free citizens, but our social status is only slightly better than that of slaves.

[After my younger sister was born, the pressure on my older brother and parents increased dramatically. I'm curious why we had her in the first place?]

[The father smiled and said: Hope is as precious as a pigeon's blood gem. If we hadn't fallen in love with your mother and had your eldest brother, we wouldn't have worked so hard, and we would have become cold corpses by the roadside someday.]

I think I understand now.

I occasionally get curious, but I only peek through the crack in the door at the dark, smoky world outside; it's truly choking.

Dead beggars were frequently found in the alleyway near my house, and even boys only five or six years older than me were murdered in the street. Soon after, vultures would come and clean up the mess, searching for the body and then dragging it away in a gruesome manner, throwing it into a mass grave.

Life is so fragile.

Therefore, I am often grateful for all of this.

That evening, my elder brother returned alone, carrying a large sum of money stained with blood—a full twenty Augustinus silver coins. Five Augustinus silver coins would have been enough to support our small family for a year.

[Amidst the younger sister's laughter, and the elder brother's tears.]

My eyes are lifeless. Are pigeon blood gems as precious as those blood-red silver coins?

A human life isn't worth twenty Augustus silver coins.

[In the old factory district, the ironworks equipment was severely outdated and prone to accidents. Workers either died from illness or exhaustion, but there was no compensation. These twenty Augustinus silver coins were a casual gift to the elder brother by Viscount Wilson's youngest daughter, who was present at the time.]

Grey Pigeon Town is one of the territories of Viscount Wilson, belonging to the Augu Empire.

[My elder brother wiped away his tears. Twenty Augu silver coins would be enough for him to raise my younger sister and me until we were ten years old, at which point we would be able to survive on our own.]

I am not optimistic.

Having lost our father in his prime, and now only our fifteen-year-old older brother, so many people in the old factory district know we have a huge sum of money...

That night, I heard rustling sounds outside the door. I peeked through the crack and saw a pack of jackals and tigers watching us, as if they wanted to devour us alive. What could a seven-year-old child like me do?

What can we do? Think of something quickly!

The next day, at dusk at the alleyway entrance, a muffled thud suddenly erupted in the rusty air.

I saw my eldest brother kicked to the ground, where sewage was flowing everywhere, and the third brother of the Viper Gang's spiked boots crushed his right hand.

"All the money is here."

I hurriedly pushed open the rickety wooden door, clutching the bag of silver coins in my hand.

Silver coins slipped through my fingers, clattering onto the gravel path. As the Viper Gang leader bent over, the scar on his neck grinned menacingly at me.

I can only pay this money in person, because if I don't, my brother will be beaten to death by the Viper Gang.

The eldest brother, filled with righteous indignation, wanted to complain to Viscount Wilson, but he was easily dismissed by the factory on the grounds of "injury preventing him from working."

My older brother lost his job and is now forced to beg on the streets, but we are too weak. Besides, he has two children to support, and with their savings dwindling, we're left with nothing but scraps to live on.

Three months later, my older brother and I went out to collect garbage. When we returned, the house had been completely ransacked.

I rushed into the house and stomped on the broken earthenware pot on the floor. Only my sister's little hat remained on the empty straw mat, stained with unfamiliar muddy footprints. My older brother suddenly went berserk, searching every corner, even digging through mouse holes.

I don't know if my sister was sold or if she's dead... I can only pray in my heart that she can survive, because even an infant like her can't survive with us; she'll die sooner or later.

I didn't see her body, so I'm convinced she's still alive somewhere.

Even if there's only a sliver of a possibility.

[—Later, another group of garbage-scavenging rats joined the Viper Gang; they wouldn't allow anyone to take their garbage.]

My older brother was indignant. Seeing the iron weapons in the hands of the Viper Gang, he realized that steel was the right to survival. My brother and I could only barely survive by stealing, and of course, if we got caught, we'd get a severe beating.

【I remember.】

My older brother shoved a stolen raw potato into my mouth. I swallowed it desperately, my throat aching from the scraping. We immediately curled up like shrimp.

[With a dull thud from the leather boots hitting my ribs, I bit down hard on my collar, tasting the metallic flavor—I couldn't tell if it was the grime from the potatoes or the blood in my mouth.]

"For our parents' sake, they'll stop hitting us when they get tired."

This went on for an unknown period of time...

We won't survive this winter.

I huddled beside the stench of the rotting garbage heap, watching my older brother's trembling fingers open one moldy can after another. Black grime was embedded under his fingernails, and the frostbite on his knuckles cracked and bled.

We would sneak over the food after the mice left, but there would be no food left.

The next day, my older brother fell ill, and I leaned against the corner of the alleyway, barely alive.

Three days of hunger blurred my vision, making even breathing a luxury. The distant, crisp sound of horseshoes striking the cobblestones sounded to me like the footsteps of death.

Suddenly, the sound stopped.

A pair of gleaming leather boots appeared in my blurry vision, their toes speckled with fresh mud.

I looked up with difficulty and saw a luxurious carriage stopped in front of me. A hand wearing a lace glove gently lifted the silk curtains hanging in the carriage window.

A bright red apple was offered through the car window, its surface glistening enticingly in the sunlight.

I froze for a moment, my fingers trembling uncontrollably as I gripped it, my nails digging into the flesh, juice trickling down between my fingers.

I didn't care about appearances; I bit into it frantically, the sweet juice mixing with my tears as it slid down my throat.

As I took my third bite, my Adam's apple suddenly choked—a faint groan came from deep within the alley. I looked down at the remaining half of the apple, the flesh still stained with traces of my blood.

"Big brother! Food!"

I dragged my weak knees over and pried open my older brother's chapped lips. As the apple approached his teeth, he swallowed unconsciously, his Adam's apple bobbing like a dying fish.

I grinned.

If you can eat, you can live!

[The sound of a carriage wheel creaking in the distance filled the air. As I turned back, I caught a glimpse of the lady gently lowering the curtain with her lace gloves.]

I then noticed the emblem on the carriage door—a silver eagle with outstretched wings, its lower part entwined with thorns and roses.

[—Viscount Wilson!]

I saw a glimmer of hope for survival.

"Please...wait!"

A hoarse roar ripped from my throat, drawing blood. I stumbled towards the carriage, only to be lashed across the shoulder by the driver's whip. The searing pain, ironically, awakened my numb limbs. I gripped the carriage shaft tightly, my fingernails scratching five white marks into the paint.

A noblewoman, about ten years old, peeked out.

"It's quite sturdy."

Suddenly, she used her fan to lift my chin, pressing it against my Adam's apple. I was forced to look up and saw her still-chubby face, her blue eyes precisely measuring my bones—like a butcher weighing a lamb to the slaughter.

"Grandfather once said..." she nodded in satisfaction, putting away her fan, "The wolf that grows out of the thorn bush bites the hardest."

[The sound of my elder brother coughing came from afar.]

The noblewoman suddenly smiled, a calculating look beyond her years appearing on her youthful face. She flicked her finger, the silver coin tracing a cold arc in the air. "This is for your elder brother's medical treatment."

I instinctively reached out, and the silver coin, chillingly cold, fell into my palm. The driver roughly pulled my unconscious older brother up.

This noblewoman, named Delilah, was only ten years old, but as a noblewoman, she already understood the origin of all that she had.

As the thirteenth child of a viscount, she knew better than anyone that her dowry might not even be as much as that of a merchant's daughter, and that after her father's death, what awaited her was not a gilded invitation, but moldy bread from the slums.

She had witnessed too much of the cruel reality of either marrying into a good family or going bankrupt and becoming a struggling commoner; she was still traumatized by it and certainly didn't want that kind of life.

Therefore... she needs her own "sharp blade" to protect what belongs to her.

At that time, I didn't know that was called—a suicide squad.

Not just anyone can become a suicide squad member. Besides unwavering willpower and vitality, the most important thing is loyalty.

This kind of quality is rare nowadays. Delilah knows perfectly well that besides her milk-white skin, she doesn't have that much pocket money to bribe people, but "value" doesn't actually require much expenditure.

The key is timing.

Even if she were to sacrifice herself for a knight, she couldn't buy absolute loyalty. A single gold coin could buy ten strong adult slaves, but not a single servant willing to take a knife for her.

She knew that in this dog-eat-dog world, her only hope lay with those more desperate than herself. An apple for a life—it couldn't be a better deal.

We are lucky; it was the bond between my elder brother and me that made this noble lady value us.

……

(End of this chapter)