219|A Century of Deep Water and a Thousand Years of Hot Water 3

The Master of State didn’t answer him, having been completely absorbed in the horror that scene had brought him to this day.

He said, “Those human faces haven’t seen light for a long time. Even if it is just the moonlight at night they can t stand it, I suddenly took the mask away, they seem to be taken aback, they all squinted their eyes and stopped talking. But after a while, seeing that it was me, they began …… to shout my name.

“I was stunned. As I said before, I’ve never seen anything more horrific than tens of thousands of people falling through the air and burning to death in a sea of flames, but the image before me at the time was a million times more horrific than that!

“My hands were shaking, and if I hadn’t been so stiff, the mask would have fallen off and woken up the Prince. And those three faces seemed to be very eager to say something to me, their mouths opened and closed even more, but they lowered their voices, like they were afraid of waking up His Highness the Crown Prince.

“I was disgusted and frightened at the sight of them, but couldn’t help wondering what they were trying to tell me, so I bent down, held my breath, and leaned close to His Royal Highness’s face to listen.

“Getting too close, I smelled the smell of blood and decay that the strong smell of herbs couldn’t hide. I heard them say, telling me to run, that the Crown Prince was mad!

“It turns out that after the other three left, they were still uneasy and secretly returned to look for His Highness the Crown Prince. Who knows, they just bumped into His Royal Highness bringing many people to the Copper Furnace.

“They then realized that His Highness the Crown Prince had not given up the method of sacrificing living people at all, and were so shocked and angry that they came out to stop it, and fought with His Highness the Crown Prince. Who knew that His Highness would actually kill them, and directly cast the three of them, along with the hundreds of people, into the copper furnace!

“The rest of the people, of course, were thrown in and went up in smoke, but the three of them had cultivation in their bodies and were killed by His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, and their grievances and obsessions were so deep that their souls actually parasitized him in this way, and they still angrily harp on him every day, wanting to stop him from doing what he was doing.

“I listened in horror and bewilderment and had no idea what to do. What terror? I can’t actually say whether this Prince is more horrifying or these three things on his face!

“At this time, I felt that a hand was placed on my head.

“My scalp tingled as I slowly looked up and saw His Royal Highness.

“He had woken up at some point. He and the three human faces on his face, four pairs of eyes in all, were all looking at me!

“The expressions on those faces changed even more, twisting and tearing at the wounds on his face, much blood trickling down.

“He stared at me for a long, long time, and then, with a sigh, said, ‘Didn’t I say it was over, and told you not to come in.’

“I suddenly realized what all the anomalies of these days were about.

“His Highness found out that he had three of these things growing out of his face, and couldn’t accept it, nor could he tolerate seeing himself in the mirror who had turned into this inhuman, ghostly appearance, so he smashed all the mirrors. It bled because he tried to cut them off with a knife, and the rotten smell was because the wounds were delayed and bad, but no matter how many times they were cut off, they grew back again!”

The State Master covered half of his face, his pupils contracting violently.

He said, “I …… knelt down beside his bed at once.

“His Royal Highness slowly sat up from the bed and said, ‘Don’t be afraid. They became like this because they betrayed me. As long as you don’t do this, I will still treat you as I did before. You will still be my most loyal retainer, and nothing will change.’

“How could I not be afraid? How could anything not have changed? It all changed a long time ago!

“His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is very smart. He used to never be able to read people’s faces, but since he was demoted, he has learned to read people’s words. He saw what I was thinking and slowly asked, ‘You’re leaving too, aren’t you.’

“Honestly, I don’t know. If he’d just cast the ‘wicked folk’ as he calls them, into the copper furnace, I could have pretended that nothing had happened, and as I said I really would have understood.

“But he killed and threw in our best friend for so many years by his own hand, we depend on each other ah! This has really been …… heartless. I …… can’t accept it.

“It’s okay,” the Prince said to himself, “I expected this, no one will stay when I become like this. I can be alone. I get it, I’ve never been alone!!!!! I don’t need anyone else!!!

…

“His Highness’s power was so strong that if he had really wanted to kill me, I would have had my neck clicked off in a second, and I wouldn’t have been able to make a sound, but I didn’t die right away. And as soon as he had a seizure, all three of our friends screamed in his face as if they had done something to him, causing him to scream with a headache, and I was screaming too. All five of us were screaming and shouting like mad. The Prince was holding his head with one hand and pinching harder with the other. I was blacking out and felt like I was going to die, and just at this …… time I saw something under his pillow.

“He had a sword under his pillow, and he slept with it under his pillow, a habit he acquired only after he was deposed. I grabbed the hilt of the sword and pulled it|out. The cold light flashed, and His Highness laughed out loud, his eyes bloodshot, and said Do you want to kill me too? Come! Quickly stab me! Stab at my heart! You’re not the only one! I want to see who dies in the end! You or me!

“Of course I didn’t stab him; I put that sword across his face and shouted at the top of my voice, ‘Your Highness! Your Highness! Come back, look at yourself! Look what you’ve become now?!'”

“He broke all the mirrors, having not looked in them for a long time. The blade of the sword was snowy and suddenly reflected what he looked like at the moment, and he saw his own face.

“He saw himself in the mirror and suddenly froze.

“The strength of His Highness’s hand pinching me did not lessen, but, after an unknown period of time, a line of tears suddenly flowed from his eyes as he looked on.

“When I saw his line of tears, I couldn’t hold back my tears. What an ugly reflection on the sword! It makes me sick to look at it, why would I let him see himself like that, reminding him that he is such an ugly monster now?

“I still couldn’t bear it, and the sword came out of my hand and fell to the ground.

“Finally, His Royal Highness threw me out hard and said, get lost.

“I rolled and fled.”

Hearing this in one breath, the breath hanging in Xie Ren’s heart was only slightly loosened.

The State Master also lowered his hand and said, ”I fled far away and escaped the Wuyong Kingdom. It wasn’t long before the Copper Furnace Fire Mountain, once again, erupted.

“This time, the entire Uyong country, all of them were buried, almost no one was spared. A country, just like that, disappeared.

“I escaped and never heard from His Highness the Crown Prince again; he seems to have been buried with the Uyong Kingdom.

“I have ascended to the heavenly realm and practiced on my own, with a little success, keeping my body in shape and wandering aimlessly on earth. I have served His Royal Highness the Crown Prince since I was a young boy, and now that I don’t have to serve him, I rather don’t know what to do.

“His Highness is gone, and three of my friends are dead. I made three empty shell dummies and had the dummies talk and chat with me in their tone of voice and occasionally play cards.”

Upon hearing “empty shell dummy”, Xie Ren’s deep color slightly condensed. The State Master said, “Later on, when my spells improved, I instilled the skills of my three friends into them.”

Xie Ren whispered, “Is it the other three State Masters?”

No wonder he always felt that the other three State Masters were a bit strange, never acting alone or communicating with him alone, originally they were simply dummies, leaving the State Masters to reveal themselves. The State Master said, “It’s them. So, to put it mildly, you are also considered the disciples of those three friends of mine. Unfortunately, I’m not them personally after all, and the skills I can instill in the dummy are only two or three tenths of theirs, so I wasn’t able to teach you much. Those three dummies that accompanied me for a long time were also destroyed by him a long time ago.”

“After another hundred or two hundred years, the heavenly realm changed generations, and the original magi all fell, and were gradually replaced by a new group of magi. However, none of this is my business, and I just eat and die and live.

“Until one day, in a certain country, there was a crown prince, born on the day of the Flux Guardian Heart.

“That would be you, His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of the Immortal Music Kingdom.

It finally came. Xie Ren’s hand on his leg tightened slightly.

The State Master sat cross-legged and hugged his arms, ”I think it’s very coincidental, very fateful. But in fact, it had been many, many years since the overthrow of Wuyong at that time. There will always be one or two encounters in hundreds and hundreds of years, it’s not a coincidence at all. But I held on to something I didn’t understand and made up a name at random to become the Immortal Music Kingdom Master.”

Xie Ren Xin said, “I knew the name was just made up ……”

The State Master said, “I’m not despising you Xianle, but trying to mix up a State Master’s job at that your place is too easy for me. There is only one problem, and that is that people always think that if you don’t have hair on your mouth, you must not have any qualifications or skills, and you will be looked down upon. If I applied for the test with this face, I might not be given a pass, so I changed my face a bit and got a decade or two older, and sure enough, I got mixed up very quickly. And as a national teacher, I would have to talk directly with the Divine Officers of the Heavenly Realm.

“So I took on Jungo.

“Jun Wu’s appearance is completely different from the one I’m familiar with, His Highness the Crown Prince. But, after all, I am too familiar with him, and after conversing a few times, I became a bit skeptical. But it was only a suspicion.

“And even if I were more skeptical, I don’t want to break anything.

“He had become a different person altogether, and the human face had disappeared from his face. I thought it was because my three friends’ grievances had dissipated, and since that was the case, there was no need to break the peace by not rehashing old memories. Wouldn’t it be nice for all of them to pretend they didn’t recognize each other.”

Xie Ren said, “If it were me, I would probably do the same.”

The State Master said, “But we still didn’t get to pretend until the end. Because, we all saw you.

“Your Highness, you should have guessed why I have high hopes for you. You are very much like him. That’s why I hope that you can be the man, or god, that he wanted to be, that you can do what he failed to do, and that you can make up for my regrets and his with your perfection.”

Instead, Flower City said faintly, “You thought wrong from the very beginning. Not at all.”

The State Master looked at him and said, “Now of course you can say it doesn’t look like it. But once upon a time it was a lot like it. And the bad thing is, it’s too much alike.”

He re-turned to Xie Ren and said, ”That time when Prince Yue Shen, you saved that child who fell from the city tower, I was not too happy about it. Not only because that incident aborted the festival, but also because, that incident, you did something too eye-catching. You caught Jungo’s attention.

“Jungo started talking to me about you. He favors you a lot, and every time we talk about you, I vaguely feel that something doesn’t fit. But I could see that he really liked you, it was the elation of finding a very agreeable and good seedling, and was rather tempted to order you up, only to be dissuaded by me every time for various reasons.”

Xie Ren was also not too willing to believe that Jun Wu’s attitude towards him was all fake, but hearing the State Master say this, he was again in a complicated mood that was hard to describe.

The State Master said, “The twist lies in the Bridge of One Thought.”

Hearing those three words, Xie Ren returned to her senses. The State Master said, “That ghost from the One Thought Bridge, do you still remember?”

Xie Ren said in a deep voice, “That was my opportunity to ascend, so naturally I remember.”

The State Master said, “I felt something was wrong when you met that ghost. This ghost, haunting the broken bridge in the wilderness, wearing broken armor, stepping on karmic fire, covered in blood and swords, leaving a trail of blood and fire behind him with every step, as well as the three questions he asked you – all of them made me very concerned and uneasy, but I couldn’t tell what was wrong. And after defeating the Bridge Ghost, you quickly ascended, so I didn’t even have time to figure it out.

“It’s a good thing that after you ascended up there, Jungo treated you as well as he always did, very favorably, very highly regarded, as if nothing had changed, and I told myself not to think too much about it.

“Then there was the great drought of Xianle and the Yongan Rebellion. And then there was the appearance of that thing, Bai Wu Xiang.”

Xie Ren held her breath as the State Master said, “As I said, at first I had no idea what that was. Even when the sphinx epidemic came out later, I was only skeptical. However, since grievance spirit parasitism isn’t that uncommon, it just never spread on such a large scale. Coupled with the fact that I have some resentment towards the so-called Heavenly Dao, I initially thought that Bai Wuxiang might have been born of nature, and that it was Heaven’s way of punishing you.

“But as you came into more and more contact with that thing, and the sphinx epidemic became more and more rampant, many, many things had to make me think in the worst possible direction.”

Xie Ren said, “Many, many things, specifically? For example?”

The State Master said, “The family of three who fell to their deaths and died at the entrance to the Imperial City of Xianle.”

Xie Ren choked and said, “Then …… is …… it?”

The State Master said, “Later, I examined the corpses of those three people and realized that they were not three people at all, but three empty shells.”

Xie Ren said, “But hollow shell people are hollow and have no internal organs, they won’t bleed?!”

The State Master said, “There is no need for internal organs at all. Falling from such a high place, the internal organs would have been rotten, as long as the empty shell is stuffed with a ball of rotten meat and filled with blood plasma, it will be fine. Among my three friends, there is one who is the best at making this kind of strange and weird things, and he is the one who first made this kind of empty shell dummy. He only taught it to us, and at that time the way of making hollow shell dummies was not as widely circulated as it is now, they died, and the one who can make hollow shell dummies and still make them so realistic, besides me, who else do you think is left?”

Xie Ren lowered his head, his pupils contracting.

That family of three fell to their deaths at the entrance of the Immortal Bliss Imperial City, directly igniting the war. However, those few lives were simply fake and a trap!

Xie Ren said, “Then why didn t you …… tell me at that time?”

The State Master said, “I wouldn’t dare at all. If it was really him and I had told you, with your nature at that time, would you have just rushed up to him to settle the score? That wouldn’t save you and the Immortal Bliss Kingdom at all, it would only hasten your demise. Moreover, even without those three empty shells, sooner or later ……”

Sooner or later, something else ignites the war. Like the missing dog in the royal city of Xianle.

“Then, you lost, and so did Senra.

“I just couldn’t help myself, so I first dismissed everyone from the Imperial Extremity View and invited him to descend at the Divine Martial Hall, and then, I directly tore him apart.”

It was also what Jun Wu had said, the side they had seen eight hundred years ago. The State Master said, ”I questioned him about many things, and he didn’t admit or deny it. Finally, I asked him, ”Your Highness, what do you really want?”

“He finally answered. He wants you, he said, to be his perfect heir.

“If there’s one person in the world who can understand him completely, it’s you. If you succeed, you will never betray him!

“I understood what he meant. In the excitement of the quarrel, we moved our hands again. I couldn’t fight at all, I was sure to die if I did, and he didn’t have to move a finger to crush me, but at this time, he suddenly turned pale and covered his face.

“I was startled, and then I realized that, on his face, the three faces had come back!

“It turns out they didn’t disappear at all, he just kept suppressing them with his mana! And now, I don’t know if it’s because of emotional excitement or because of me, but they’ve come out again!

“And so it was that three of my friends came out to make a mess, causing him to have a splitting headache and a horrible look on his face, and I took advantage of the situation to escape again.

“Once again I began to wander the earth, and this time I had to hide in the east. I thought to myself, “What has become of the country of Uyong, which was then? So I went back to see it again.

“What I didn’t realize was that going back that one time led me to another big discovery.

“For some reason, the land of Uyon used to be completely closed off from the outside world. I walked there for a long time and met my three friends again.

Xie Ren said, “Is that the three mountain monsters, old, sick and dead?”

The State Master said, “Exactly.

“The copper furnace devoured their bodies, and the ashes, burned almost to the point of disappearance, mingled with the volcanic ash and erupted, accumulating more and more with the settling of time, and as the millennia went by, they were finally transformed into three great mountains hosting a portion of their souls.”

“It took me a long time to find a way to communicate with the mountain monsters they had transformed into, but after I succeeded, I learned a lot more.

“Originally, the previous generation of magi, not a natural change of generation fell, but by him one by one, slowly kill all. He …… slaughtered the entire Heavenly Court, leaving none behind!

“And after bloodshed in the Heavenly Realm, he returned to earth, waited patiently for some time, made up a new name, fabricated a new identity, and, as a ‘human being,’ ‘ascended’ again. The entire heavenly realm’s previous magi died out, and no one knew who he really was or what he was like once upon a time. The origin, allusions, anecdotes, looks, and disposition …… of the ‘Divine Martial Emperor’ that are now widely circulated on earth are all false, and they are all sophisticated lies that he has woven!

“This immortal capital is the new heavenly realm that he has built under his own control. The corpses and ashes of the previous gods are all mixed in the soil of the foundation of this immortal capital, and they are trampled under his feet every day. Right now, you may be stepping on someone’s ashes under your feet as well.”

“……”

The State Master continued, “Right now, he is the number one Martial God of the Heavenly Realm, with a glorious surface. But in his heart, he suppresses boundless darkness. Resentment, pain, anger, hatred …… these things need to be released. Only then would his entire being be able to maintain balance and continue to sit in the Three Realms as the First Martial God, instead of going on a killing spree.

“What was once the country of Uyong has been turned into hell, and the copper furnace has recognized him as the Lord after he has fed it with countless living people and three quasi-divine magi. He then periodically released these dark emotions into the copper furnace, and with the millions of dead souls of the Uyong people as his support, he ignited the fire of karma and refined many evil things.

Xie Ren said, “The method of refining these things is different from ‘Jedi’, right?”

The State Master said, “It is indeed different. ‘Jedi’ is relatively later now, because he …… changed the way of refining out.”

Xie Ren said, “What do you mean by refining the way?”

The State Master said, “‘Quality’ and ‘Quantity’.”

He glanced at Flower City again and said, “As you all surely know, Jedi are born only once in a hundred years or even a few hundred years, and there can only be one at a time, so they are extremely rare and extremely difficult. Moreover, the predecessor of the Jedi is an independent existence. The copper furnace merely provides an environment that accelerates the process of their explosion. Those who could become Jedi could become Jedi anywhere, sooner or later.

“As a matter of fact, the expression ‘absolute’ takes the meaning of ‘absolute’ and ‘absolute’. It has little to do with whether or not one has practiced in a copper furnace. However, to be able to survive the tempering of the copper furnace, one can indeed be so crowned. Because there simply aren’t many who can survive it. Isn’t it only three so far?”

Xie Ren glanced at Hua Cheng beside him, and it so happened that Hua Cheng was also looking at him. Although he didn’t know why he was looking, he still smiled slightly.

The State Master continued, “However, the early output of the copper furnace was not like this. In the early years, it came out once every few years, ranging from a few hundred to a few dozen at a time, batch by batch, probably related to the fact that he was emotionally unstable at the time. The output were all monsters condensed from his hatred and resentment, and I’m afraid there was no shortage of things you’re all familiar with. For example – the Vernacular True Immortal.”

Xie Ren said, “The vernacular True Immortal is also something born from a copper furnace?!”

The State Master said, “Precisely. Some of these things have their own consciousness and are detached from him; some do not, and can be considered his detachments. The True Immortal of the White Word has his own consciousness, and after he went out, he also separated into many smaller detachments. Those three friends of mine stayed behind in the territory of the Wuyong Kingdom to stop these monsters from leaving the country, while I spent years in the outside world searching for these things and trying to remedy them.”

Xie Ren suddenly remembered the strange attitude of the State Master when he saw Shi Qingxuan before he came up and said, “Master! Is the tall man who gave Qingxuan the fortune telling and told their family not to make a big deal out of the wedding back when Master Feng …… was here, is that you?”

The State Master said, “Nonsense. Other than your master, which senior person can be so accurate? Which master has so much time on his hands? A bowl of congee to get rid of and then give the calculation?”

“……”

The state master said: “that vernacular true fairy would have liked to try to swallow the age of the division WuDu, but the division WuDu this kid is too ruthless, small age is not easy to deal with, the knife and gun is not afraid of, the life of the horizontal froze can not be under the mouth, hard to gnaw for fear of chipping the teeth of the mouth full of blood, it had to turn to his mediocre and rich life of the younger brother. Although still did not nibble, but the two brothers disturbed, but also bit a originally have ascension destiny of the water, how is not a loss, did not get this thing dead I am really not willing.”

Flower City said, “It’s already been done to death.”

The State Master said, ”It was swallowed back by He Xuan, wasn’t it? I’ve also heard about it. I was supposed to keep an eye on the Shifu brothers until I was sure they were fine, but at that time, the Copper Furnace was about to open up again, so I couldn’t follow it closely. When I went back, things got messy. Shifu Wudu had a crooked idea and made a big mess, which was completely impossible to end! I have a terrible headache, and I can’t manage it even if I wanted to.”

That’s really can’t be managed even if you want to. The State Master added: “But seriously, the Vernacular True Immortal isn’t even considered to be powerful inside, and just loves to go out and cause trouble, so this thing can only be considered to be technically a second-rate product, and it can’t be ranked. And, then there’s …… for example.”

Xie Ren whispered, “And then for example …… a thought of the bridge, the war dead souls?”

The State Master took a breath and said, “…… It’s him.

“Why else do you think I said that everything was because of your words? Because that bridge ghost, is a black split|body that he refined in the copper furnace, every many years, it will come out to haunt and kill to vent its hatred. But you, on the other hand, defeated that monster!

“He sensed that the bridge ghost had been killed and immediately went down to check it out and saw you. And you, on the other hand, said those words-‘Body in the Infernal, heart in the Peach Garden’-in front of him. This is simply a crazy taunt to him, touching his reverse scale ……

“This, this is where it all turns around.”