Yefutidaolu

Chapter 419 Severing Karma
Gao Jian burst forth from the lake with the force of thunder, heading straight for the group of aristocratic masters on the shore, whose minds were shaken by the dramatic changes in the lava lake!

The rusty knife was raised, carrying a resolute killing intent, and its first target was the family patriarch, whose emotions were the most unstable and who seemed to be the easiest to break through!

However, would Shui Wuyai let him have his way?
Just as Gao Jian moved and locked onto the killing intent, a cold light flashed in Shui Wuyai's eyes, and his left hand, which had been hidden in his sleeve, suddenly swung out!

What he unleashed was neither a magical weapon nor a fierce spell, but rather a hazy aura that seemed ethereal yet contained the myriad aspects of human life and the lights of countless homes!

Its color was murky, neither quite gray nor quite yellow, and within it seemed to be countless tiny sounds murmuring, laughing, crying, praying, and cursing...

It was precisely the "Ten Thousand Steps of the Mortal World" that he had painstakingly collected and refined!
There is an old saying that those who have achieved spiritual cultivation can send Mount Tai as light as a mustard seed, but ordinary people cannot escape the mortal world.

Moving mountains and filling seas is difficult, but with sufficient supernatural powers, it is not impossible. However, if one were to help an ordinary person transcend, it would be equivalent to involving all their karmic causes and effects, the weight of which is immeasurable. Therefore, practitioners often retreat from the world to cultivate in seclusion, or to cleanse their minds of worldly dust, so as not to become deeply entangled in it. Hence, among the ritual implements, there is such a thing as a 'dust whisk'.

Inside the Qi Refiner's Abode, besides the bright windows and clean tables, there are also books, antiques, and decorative items, all of which must be kept free from dust and require constant sweeping and wiping.

When worldly desires are mixed with other things, everything becomes tainted, even the beams and rafters are obscured. If things are like this, how can one's heart, tainted by worldly desires, not be clouded? If a practitioner falls into the sea of ​​worldly sins, it is feared that they will never be able to escape.

Of course, this statement is certainly an exaggeration. After all, among countless practitioners in the world, who can truly escape the mortal realm? Everyone is actually struggling within it, and although they cannot escape, it is not necessarily that painful.

However, Shui Wuyai gleaned a unique skill from these sayings.

Ordinary practitioners, even if they are in the mortal world, have limited entanglements.

An ordinary person may have only a dozen or so acquaintances and few matters of concern. A cultivator, even with a wider circle of friends, may only have a few hundred or a thousand, and most of these are casual acquaintances. Therefore, worldly karma and karma do not deeply affect them.

The Shui family usually keeps a high and mighty position and rarely interferes directly in the mundane affairs of Cangzhou. They rely on the Zuo family for everything. One of their deeper purposes is to isolate themselves from the direct cause and effect of the lower-class world and simply act as a harvester hidden behind the scenes.

And all this isolation and harvesting was for today!

Shui Wuyai usually indirectly rules Cangzhou through the Shui family. Every land rent contract, every business transaction, every dispute mediation, and even every thought of awe or resentment towards the Shui family that he handles is quietly collected and refined by him using the secret methods of Qi cultivators, and transformed into the vast worldly energy in his sleeve!

An individual's connection to the mortal world is weak, and the mortal world of a village or town can be ignored.

But within a single state, the accumulated burdens of life, the obsessions of desire, and the entanglements of karma of tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, of ordinary people and countless cultivators, come together to form a mortal world so vast that it can crush even gods and Buddhas! It is a terrifying force capable of dragging those extraordinary beings into the abyss of the mundane world!
"Blinded by worldly dust, entangled by countless obstacles! Fall!" Shui Wuyai shouted coldly, and that hazy and turbid worldly aura, like a giant net that had been poured over the sky, or like a flood that had burst its banks, instantly enveloped the rushing Gao Jian!
Gao Jian only felt a blur before his eyes. He was not attacked in any real way, nor was he impacted by any energy. But an indescribable, enormous, and suffocating "weight" suddenly pressed down on him!
This weight is not physical, but rather stems from cause and effect, from attachment, and from the mortal world!

In that instant, Gao Jian seemed to see, hear, and feel countless images, sounds, and thoughts:

"Please, Master Shui, have mercy! This year's harvest is poor. Could you please extend the rent for a few more days?" An old farmer knelt on the edge of the field and kowtowed. His pleading thoughts turned into an invisible straw, pressing down on Gao Jian's shoulder.

"May my son pass the sect selection this time and bring glory to our family..." A woman burned incense and prayed in the direction of the Shui family. Her earnest hope turned into a tangled thread that bound Gao Jian's wrist.

"The Shui family is powerful, so I can only swallow this insult..." A small merchant sighed helplessly after being suppressed, his resentment turning into a wisp of gray mist that obscured Gao Jian's vision.

"If I could gain the favor of the Water Fairy, I would gladly shorten my life by ten years..." A young cultivator's delusional wish, his burning passion transformed into a scorching wind, burning away the divine soul of Gao Jian.

"The taxes have increased again this year, how are we supposed to make a living..." The sorrowful whispers of countless ordinary people converged into heavy shackles, binding Gao Jian's neck.

"Why do I cultivate so diligently, yet receive less than half the resources of a collateral descendant of the Shui family..." The jealousy and resentment of the poor cultivators pierced Gao Jian's acupoints like cold needles.

The bustling traffic and noise of Cangzhou City, the haggling in the market, the boasting and complaining in the restaurants, the intrigue in the mansions, the hard work in the fields... the daily lives, joys and sorrows, firewood and rice, fame and fortune of hundreds of millions of people throughout the Cangzhou region... all the trivial and real "weights of the mortal world" were transformed into substantial obstacles by Shui Wuyai's magic and were all placed on Gao Jian!
Gao Jian's momentum suddenly halted! It was as if he hadn't crashed into thin air, but rather into an invisible wall composed of countless human relationships, karmic causes, and consequences! It was as if he had sunk into a viscous quagmire billions of feet deep, making it difficult to move forward!
He felt that with each breath he took, he was inhaling and exhaling the heavy, foul atmosphere of Cangzhou.

He felt that each heartbeat was synchronized with the pulse of countless mortals, chaotic and powerless.

He felt that with every thought that arose, thousands of irrelevant, trivial wishes and distractions flooded his mind, interfering with his judgment.

He felt that the whole world was against him, not through swords, but through countless tiny, ubiquitous concerns and obstacles!
The rusty knife became incredibly heavy, as if its blade was laden with the sorrow of the entire prefecture.

His steps became unsteady and faltering, as if he were stepping on the livelihoods and destinies of countless people.

Even the surging flow of qi and blood throughout the body was hindered, as if sand and gravel had been mixed into the blood, making it stagnant and difficult to circulate!

This is Shui Wuyan's "Red Dust" killing move!
Instead of winning by force, they used their power to suppress! Using the mortal karma of hundreds of millions of people in Cangzhou as shackles, they forcibly dragged Gao Jian, this martial artist who wanted to transcend and forge ahead, back to the "mortal world," making it difficult for him to move an inch, making him an enemy in every direction, and making him completely crushed by the "weight of the human world"!
Gao Jian's figure froze in mid-air, and for the first time, an extremely solemn and even somewhat painful expression appeared on his face. The powerful aura around him visibly became dark and heavy, as if it were covered with a thick layer of dust.

Shui Wuyai watched expressionlessly, a cold smile playing on his lips. No matter how exceptionally talented you are, no matter how ruthless and decisive you are, how can you possibly contend with this turbulent world, this vast and unpredictable human realm?
However, at this moment—Gao Jian was enveloped by the overwhelming aura of the mortal world, but his feelings were completely different from the struggle, suffocation, and being dragged down by the mortal world that Shui Wuyai had anticipated.

What he felt was a deeper, more suffocating sense of oppression. An unnamed fire raged within him, not at Shui Wuyai, who had used this technique, but at the entire disgusting world!

These aristocratic families are truly... time and time again, doing the exact same thing! Exploiting, plundering, and then turning the suffering of those they exploit into weapons!

His senses became incredibly sharp under the illumination of the inner lamp, and countless fragmented thoughts contained within the worldly atmosphere surged forth: the humble farmers' plea for rent reduction, the mothers' earnest hopes for their sons' success, the merchants' forbearance after being oppressed, the unrealistic fantasies of teenagers, the lamentations of the common people over taxes, the indignation of poor scholars against injustice... The daily necessities, joys and sorrows of the entire Cangzhou flooded his mind like a tide.

Throughout the entire Divine Dynasty, there is far more than just Cangzhou. There are countless towns and countless people. Every moment, countless stories unfold, many of them epic tales, deeply moving moments, and joyful tales—this is what life should be like.

But for the vast majority of people in this mortal world, their horizons are limited. They don't know what countries lie beyond the four seas, nor can they feel the magnificent yet helpless era they are living in. Their simplest wish is nothing more than for their families to live peacefully, to have enough to eat and wear, and to live to old age without illness or disaster—that would be the greatest blessing.

Yet, even such a small wish is often a luxury! Their sorrows, their prayers, their complaints that they dare not even utter aloud... at this moment, have all been refined by the Shui family and turned into weapons to counter his superior opinion! How ridiculous, and how tragic!
These karmic consequences are incredibly heavy. If Gao Jian could forcibly break through them, he might escape unscathed, but the backlash from that breakthrough would inevitably act upon the original "masters" through some unseen connection! At best, they would suffer nightmares and mental damage; at worst, they might die of terror, their souls scattered! Shui Wuyai's actions were tantamount to binding millions of Cangzhou citizens into human shields!

This tactic reminded Gao Jian of Li Jun, and of what they had once wanted to fight for but felt powerless to change. Having just escaped, the very next time they met, the other party was pressuring him with such ruthless force, causing the pent-up anger in Gao Jian's heart to surge and erupt like a suppressed volcano!

This is actually quite unusual, and to outsiders, it might even seem like a bit of a "Versailles" scenario, a bit ungrateful. What are you so sulking about?! You're clearly the one with the upper hand, creating miracles time and again! To everyone, you're a legend—a seventh-realm cultivator fighting against tenth-realm cultivators and even a group of high-level cultivators without defeat! You should be full of vigor! You should be carefree and unrestrained! You should be ambitious and have lofty aspirations! You should be singing and drinking wildly!
You are a genius; you overcame almost every visible difficulty, and you demonstrated abilities that astounded everyone. How could someone like that feel stifled?

But at this moment, the sharpness of Gao Jian's rusty knife did not reveal the carefree joy of revenge, but rather a bottomless sense of suffocation, an indescribable anger, an almost suffocating repression, and the ultimate annoyance with this absurd world.

This world is too surreal, too fragmented.

Amidst the onslaught of worldly affairs, he saw things more clearly than ever:

The top-tier powerhouses possess the power to unleash nuclear explosions with their fists, while cultivators can fly through the air and burrow underground, engaging in wondrous battles beyond visual range.

The mid-level Demon Suppression Division cultivators might still be engaged in hand-to-hand combat with demons in the trenches and mud.

Meanwhile, ordinary people at the bottom of society may still be using the most primitive fists, wooden sticks, axes, and machetes to fight for survival.

Every social class and every corner seems to be endlessly clashing with each other.

why?
Ordinary people, in their ignorance, built homes, cultivated the land, and formed villages. They felt happy when their bellies were full—such a simple and unpretentious desire.

But there are always "monsters" who refuse to let them go, constantly occupying the land and enslaving living beings.

Death is not the most terrifying thing; what is terrifying is that these "monsters" keep forcing simple people to become alienated, to take up arms, to fight each other, and ultimately to become new "monsters" themselves.

Everything has a beginning and an end; this is the nature of things. But to force this world into decay, to turn kindness into a weapon, and then to use this distorted "mortal world" to deal with people like him who try to do something...

The "monsters" who did these things, those wicked beasts from noble families, make Gao Jian feel genuinely disgusted just looking at them!
Unfortunately, he doesn't yet have the strength to completely eradicate them.

Moreover... what frustrated him most, even made him feel a little sad, was that the beings in this "mortal world," those enslaved and exploited mortals, whose minds were being refined, were also unconsciously working against him! They didn't even know who Gao Jian was, or what had happened, yet they were passively becoming the shackles binding him!
This mortal world has no regard for his lofty wishes; he simply wants to drag all beings who might transcend it down with him into this quagmire!
This really infuriated Takami. A lonely anger that came from the depths of his soul.

"I was clearly..." A thought churned in his mind, "I was clearly born in an era after civilization had reached a very high stage of development, possessing knowledge and ideas that surpassed this era, but I am imprisoned in this ignorant and backward ancient world where all living beings are in a daze!"

"No one around you can truly understand you. All your knowledge, all your spirit, all your perseverance are out of step with the times, plunging you into eternal, unspoken loneliness—what could be more painful than this?"

This pain far surpasses physical injury, far surpasses the suppression of power. It is the loneliness and suffocation of a conscious person in the long, dark night.

However, at the very moment when this extreme suffocation and loneliness reached their peak—

In the vast ocean of profound knowledge, that inner lamp was not extinguished by the turbidity of the mortal world; instead, it suddenly burst forth with an unprecedentedly blazing white light!
The rusty knife, which was originally as hard as an iron rod, now had an extra inch of sharpness!
To be honest, even Gao Jian didn't know where this bit of sharpness came from, because he didn't feel good about it; instead, he felt uncomfortable.

He just felt stifled and confused.

So, he's going to kill someone!

In that instant, Gao Jian's momentum, which had been stuck at that peak, broke through again!
But he didn't get it!
(End of this chapter)