Beyond the Timescape

Underneath Crimson Mother’s mortal husk, Xu Qing looked up. His gaze locked onto the tribulation clouds forming overhead. They weren’t very large, and even with the thunder, they weren’t very intimidating. Xu Qing could sense that there were more tribulation clouds forming outside. Those underneath Crimson Mother’s mortal husk were merely illusory projections of the ones outside.

Off to the side, the Captain looked on quizzically. “I’ve lived a lot of lives, little Junior Brother, and this is the first time I’ve ever encountered anything like this. You’re inside Crimson Mother’s mortal husk. So, is the heavenfate tribulation here for you or for the husk? If it’s here for Crimson Mother, then the tribulation is going to be terrifying.

“That said, Crimson Mother’s mortal husk is also terrifying. If it’s here for you, then Crimson Mother’s mortal husk will block it, and you won’t even be hurt. You’ll basically be able to skip the tribulation. This mortal husk showed up just to passively stand in for you during the tribulation! Interesting. I’ve really never seen anything like this. Of course, mortal husks from gods are rare considering that they’re mindless and act on instinct.”

Xu Qing’s eyes glittered thoughtfully.

Outside, the clouds writhed in the canopy of heaven. The sky was red, but that couldn’t block the magical laws of a heavenly dao, and thus dark clouds spread over the blood sea. Deafening thunder boomed in the clouds, and yet no lightning fell. It was as if the tribulation was making a decision.

It didn’t take long, though. A huge bolt of lightning emerged from the tribulation clouds, turning into a lightning dragon that shot toward Crimson Mother’s mortal husk. The lightning smashed into the skin, exploding into a cloud of sparks. Crimson Mother’s mortal husk didn’t appear to be damaged.

However, the lightning bolts continued to fall. Nothing happened.

This was Xu Qing’s fifth heavenfate tribulation! It wasn’t here for Crimson Mother’s mortal husk!

For a variety of reasons, Xu Qing’s heavenfate tribulations were different from those of most people. His first was driven away by the destiny aura of Sea-Sealing County. The second happened when the tribulation mixed with magical laws. For the third, the Heir Apparent helped Xu Qing fuse with the desert, which made the tribulation even more intense. The fourth was even more terrifying, as it happened at the God Decapitation Altar.

Every one was more shocking than the previous. And that pattern held for the fifth one. The Heir Apparent wasn’t around to help him fuse with anything. Nor was Xu Qing seeking enlightenment of the God Decapitation Altar. The tribulation was focused on him alone. After all, he was essentially concealed within Crimson Mother’s mortal husk, as opposed to being fused with it.

There was simply no way a tribulation like this could do anything to Crimson Mother’s mortal husk. Ninety-nine bolts of tribulation lighting all fell, and the result was the same with all of them. The light of electricity glowed brightly. Meanwhile, the mortal husk wasn’t damaged at all.

The tribulation ended quickly, whereupon the clouds dispersed, revealing a brilliant glow. It was the light of heavenfate, which indicated that Xu Qing had succeeded. Things went incredibly smoothly.

However, beneath Crimson Mother’s mortal husk, Xu Qing frowned.

Next to him, the Captain’s eyes gleamed as he looked at the husk overhead. “Something’s not right!”

That was absolutely correct. Although the tribulation was over, and though heavenfate shone brightly, the illusory tribulation clouds inside the husk had not disappeared.

At the same time, Xu Qing did not experience the same sensation as previous occasions in which he passed a tribulation. In fact, it seemed more like he hadn’t passed the tribulation. Except, it really was a tribulation that had just played out....

“Crimson Mother ate it!” the Captain said, sounding somewhat bewildered. “Something’s off here, little Junior Brother. This is too gruish! Let’s get back inside the door!”

“Too late...” Xu Qing said in a hoarse voice, his expression very serious. He had just sensed something lock onto him. It was as if it didn’t matter where he went, the tribulation would find him. It felt like a god was staring at him. He began trembling, his taboo poison seethed, his violet moon godsource erupted, and the god’s finger in D-132 shivered. “Everything inside of me related to a god is being locked onto!”

At almost the exact same instant that the words left his mouth, Crimson Mother’s mortal husk suddenly twitched as the sky it contained started filling with tribulation clouds. Godly might descended, filling the tribulation clouds.

As that happened, the clouds exploded, and then a huge stone stele the color of gold emerged from the shattered clouds. It was 300 meters tall, and it was heading right toward Xu Qing. As it descended, the aura of a god spread, causing all living beings to tremble with astonishment.

Xu Qing’s expression flickered. The Captain’s eyes went wide with surprise. Knowing exactly what he was looking at, he gave a basic explanation.

“It’s a god stele! If you inscribe your name on it with god blood, experience the Five Elements Deaths, and place the god stele inside the body of an ancient god, then you plunder godhood and develop the personhood of a god! It’s one of the main types of god tribulation ceremonies! It’s called Hidden God Reborn!

“Hold on, it doesn’t seem that formidable. It’s way weaker than you’d expect. It must be the instincts of Crimson Mother’s mortal husk!

“Back before Crimson Mother was a god, hēr determination was to reach godly ascension. And to make sure that happened, shē must have used an imitation magic to practice ahead of time. That determination obviously seeped into hēr mortal husk. Later, shē was decapitated, and ultimately lit hēr godfire in Brilliant Heaven to become a god. However, the determination remained in the mortal husk.

“If anyone else went through a tribulation in these circumstances, nothing would happen. But you’re different! Your violet moon power has the same origin as Crimson Mother, and you’re inside her mortal husk.... Therefore, when you summoned heavenfate tribulation, the mortal husk instinctively activated the god tribulation ceremony!

“This is a big opportunity! It might not be an actual god tribulation, and it might not involve lighting godfire, but to you, it’s definitely a god tribulation of some sort! Little Junior Brother, this is your fifth tribulation!”

As the Captain explained these things, the golden stele dropped down in front of Xu Qing, radiating a sea of golden light.

It doesn’t matter if it’s good fortune or not. I have to pass this tribulation.

Xu Qing looked at the stele with determination in his eyes. Crimson Mother’s mortal husk had devoured his heavenfate tribulation. As a result, his cultivation base wasn’t whole and complete. Therefore, it didn’t matter what good fortune was involved, he had to succeed at this tribulation!

“It’s a unique tribulation, little Junior Brother. Just follow my directions. Take your god blood and use it to write your name on the stele!”

Xu Qing nodded. As everyone watched, he raced up to the stele, extended his right hand, and sent blood spurting out.

Using his hand as the brush and the blood as the ink, he wrote down the first stroke that made up his name. [1]

The moment the brush stroke was laid down, the stele rumbled, and a tremor passed through Xu Qing. His blood immediately went out of control in his veins, and he started panting for breath. However, he continued to circulate his cultivation base and keep writing. After the third stroke, he shivered from head to toe. He felt like he was withering up, as if incredible weakness were spreading through him. At the same time, water droplets appeared all around him, covering him and then running down him in rivulets.

The water droplets were noxious, like necrotic fluid. Xu Qing... was melting.

“This is the five elements tribulation, little Junior Brother! Remember, you can’t lose yourself! Step out!”

Before Xu Qing could respond, he suddenly collapsed onto the ground. He was now a soaked and swollen corpse, so rotten that he didn’t even look like Xu Qing. Meanwhile, the necrotic fluid floated into the air, where it converged. And within it was a reflection of the living Xu Qing.

The corpse itself was a five elements drowned corpse.

“Little Junior Brother,” the Captain said, “use death to reach life. Step out!”

Everyone was watching with various facial expressions. Ling’er was extremely anxious. However, nobody could do anything to help. Xu Qing had to rely on himself.

Shortly after, Xu Qing in the reflection opened his eyes. At first, he looked confused, but his gaze quickly became clear. He felt like he had just passed through endless amounts of time. He had experienced drowning to death over and over again. Each one had been incomparably realistic, and he had struggled each time. Eventually, he lost consciousness and woke up here.

Xu Qing stood and walked out of the reflection. He looked down at his corpse at his feet. He looked up at Crimson Mother’s mortal husk up in the sky, then back down at the corpse. Suddenly, he realized something.

Is that my mortal husk? Is that what this ceremony does? Create a mortal husk?

After another brief moment of thought, he looked away from the corpse and went back to writing his name on the stone stele.

Four strokes. Five strokes. Six Strokes.

When he wrote the sixth stroke, blood sprayed out of his mouth, and a gaping wound opened on his stomach, as if a pair of hands had ripped open his belly. [2]

His abdominal cavity was revealed. His five yin organs and six yang organs were all disappearing from sight, as if they were being extracted. A moment later, they were gone, and immense pain swept through Xu Qing, causing him to tremble. He dropped into a sitting position, and bent forward as if he were bowing.

This corpse was a five elements dissected corpse.

Before long, a figure emerged from within the dissected corpse. It turned into Xu Qing. Yet again, he had experienced countless deaths. He felt muddle-headed, and was shaking, but he still managed to keep writing his name.

Seven strokes. Eight strokes. Nine strokes.

A red vine appeared, which wrapped around his neck. It was also covered with numerous sharp thorns that stabbed into his flesh. It wrapped around him tighter and tighter, until he fell over, unmoving.

This corpse was a five elements strangled corpse.

After the strangled corpse’s head tilted forward, a projected image superimposed over it, and Xu Qing stepped out of it like an embodied soul. Stepping away from his dead body, he returned to the stele.

His expression was blank for a long time. Then he looked at the drowned corpse, dissected corpse, and strangled corpse off to the side.

It suddenly made him think of that building he saw in the ghast hollow beneath the Supreme Beginning Netherflight Pillar. There was a woman singing in that building, which was pentagonal in shape, and had five cross-legged zombies sitting around it. [3]

So, shē was both suppressing that god and attempting godly ascension....

1. Minor spoiler here to reveal that, sort of unsurprisingly, Xu Qing is writing in Simplified Chinese. Simplified is the script most commonly used in mainland China, meaning it’s the script the novel is written in and primarily read in. In Simplified, his name contains a total of 14 strokes. If he had been writing in Traditional Chinese the name would have 19 strokes, as the Xu character is slightly more complicated in Traditional. Here is his name is Simplified 许青 and Traditional 許青. Just in case you’re not familiar with the difference, Simplified Chinese is only about 75 years old, and is the result of an initiative by the PRC to improve literacy by making the written language easier to learn. I’d rather we not get into arguments in the comments, so forgetting about the political aspects and ramifications, it’s interesting to think of what it implies that the author’s xianxia universe uses Simplified characters…. Honestly, I don’t think it’s much different from an author writing in a Western fantasy setting based on, say, Medieval Britain, in which they have something related to writing or language and it’s all based in modern English as opposed to Middle English. ☜

2. The Simplified character for Xu 许 has six strokes. So the continuation of the tribulation with that specific stroke corresponds to him completely writing the first character that makes up his name. ☜

3. The pentagonal building and the five elements zombies were in chapter 369. Incidentally, the “zombies” in that chapter have the same naming structure as the “corpses” in this chapter. In other words, they are the same in Chinese. In Chinese, the common word for zombie is “jiangshi” which literally means “stiff corpse.” A “jiangshi” can be a specific type of Chinese supernatural creature, or it can be applied to your typical Western-style zombie. However, although a lot of people know about “jiangshi,” what many people don’t know is that there are plenty of other kinds of “zombies” that do not have the character jiang (stiff) in front of the character shi (corpse). In many occult, supernatural, and fantasy writings, there are other kinds of zombies that combine other characters with “shi.” So when I encounter anything with “shi” in fantasy fiction, my standard for whether to translate it as corpse or zombie depends on how those things are portrayed. If they are unmoving, unalive, etc. then I’ll usually call them corpses. If they are moving around, attacking, talking etc., then I’ll usually call them zombies. In chapter 369, the zombies were all “alive” as opposed to Xu Qing’s bodies in this chapter, which just lay there as unliving things. ☜

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