The Emperor Reigns Them All

Chapter 367 They Went Too Fast and Far

The mountain reaching up into the sky was towering and precipitous. Neither Li Ye nor Feihong Bodhisattva could see its peak.

After a moment of silence, Li Ye said, “In troubled times, numerous people are usually engaged in fighting. The Luck of heaven happened to show up at this time. It is said that if someone obtains the Luck of heaven, he gets the Will of heaven and can be protected by the Tao of Heaven from then on. But what on earth is the Luck of heaven? No one knows the answer. Bodhisattva, you have an extremely high level of cultivation and have seen a great deal. I suppose that you know the answer, right?”

With her deep eyes, Feihong Bodhisattva looked at the bushy place of the mountain. A long time after Li Ye finished talking, she slowly opened her mouth. “The Luck of heaven is right there. We will know the answer when we see it.”

Li Ye nodded and said, “It is exactly as you said.”

The avenue under their feet extended from the forest to the mountain. Then the flat road became stone steps. Walking side by side, Li Ye and Feihong Bodhisattva led the others to the stone steps and walked toward the mountainside surrounded by the dense fog.

However, just as his feet landed on the stone steps, Li Ye noticed something unusual. In an instant, his feet seemed to be filled with lead and became extremely heavy. He could hardly lift his feet again. At the same time, an invisible pressure fell on his shoulders. Li Ye felt as if he was carrying something weighing a ton.

In the face of the sudden change, Li Ye felt his heart missed a beat. But he did not panic. His first reaction was to check Feihong Bodhisattva, who was beside him. Only after a glance, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

Feihong Bodhisattva’s face looked calm as usual. Ordinary people could not tell any difference, but Li Ye could. He could clearly see a touch of unusual expression flashed across Feihong Bodhisattva’s eyes, and her breath remained in disorder for a while.

Evidently, Feihong Bodhisattva was experiencing the same thing as Li Ye. When Li Ye knew they suffered the same thing, he became less anxious. He was afraid that Feihong Bodhisattva was fine. After all, Feihong Bodhisattva knew many mysterious methods.

But for now, it seemed that everyone was equally treated in this secret region of Tao of Heaven.

Then Li Ye cast his eyes on the mountainside once again and frowned slightly.

The secret region of Tao of Heaven had shown its mystery and strength since long ago. Li Ye could accept his current situation. But compared with this, he worried more about what would happen next.

After Li Ye cut the vortex gate of the dense fog and entered the thick fog forest, the approaching purple-blue grid disappeared. However, Li Ye still could not feel secure at this time.

In the past, the purple-blue grid forced everyone to run toward the secret region’s center. Then, was anything else that would force them to climb these stone steps at a certain speed?

Li Ye was right. This situation that he imagined soon appeared. The stone steps under their feet started to sag like a mud puddle when they stepped on. In the blink of an eye, a smaller part of Li Ye’s feet had fallen into the steps.

They were stone steps. However, when Li Ye’s foot sank into the step, he felt it was very soft, like sand.

Li Ye quickly lifted his foot and took a step up.

He could not move fast because his feet were extremely heavy. Beyond that, he felt as if he had shouldered a ton of burden.

However, before the stair engulfed his insteps, he managed to take a step up. Of course, it was not an easy process because Li Ye’s forehead moistened.

But taking a step up didn’t end this situation. The surface of the stone step under Li Ye’s feet “melted” again. It began to sink and then ripple from the spot under his feet.

Since Li Ye had no chance to stay, he had to step up again.

He managed to take a look at Feihong Bodhisattva.

She was no better off than him. Besides, she could no longer maintain her calm appearance. Not only because of sweat started to gather on her forehead, but also because her cheek slowly turned red. However, Feihong Bodhisattva didn’t mean to keep her appearance perfect. She frowned slightly at this moment, which made her look very vivid and beautiful.

Li Ye certainly was not in the mood to enjoy her beauty.

He soon noticed that her unstable breathings gradually became steady. Moreover, her sluggish pace gradually became smooth. The climbing process gradually seemed to have become less strenuous to her.

All of this showed that she must have learned the changing pattern of the stone steps in a very short period and figured out the most effective way to cope with these soft steps.

Li Ye was not in a hurry. He looked away and calmed down to carefully experience the change of the stone steps. He felt the heaviness of his feet and the process that the steps engulfed his insteps. During the process, he tried to find out the most labor-saving way to lift his feet, the proper chance to move, and the best rhythm of his movements.

When Feihong Bodhisattva was four steps ahead of Li Ye, he kept up with her.

Feihong Bodhisattva glanced back at Li Ye. She slightly curved her blood-red lips and made a perfect, charming radian on her face.

She smiled.

When she was smiling, she always bent the corners of her lips first. Her gentle smile looked charming and lovely.

Li Ye didn’t know why she smiled. Anyway, he didn’t see any evil intentions from her smile. But he knew that he could never fall behind her. By now, they were very close to the Luck of heaven. Whoever was faster could have a better chance to get the Luck of heaven.

The secret region of the Tao of Heaven had used the purple-blue grid before. Thus, Li Ye assumed that if he fell behind, he might be kicked out by the secret region even before he saw the Luck of heaven.

The stone steps were dangerously steep. They went straight up and led to a place hidden in the white fog. Both the cultivators and the monks had climbed for a long time, but they still did not see the end of these stone steps.

They might have climbed for two hours or half a day. They were able to tell the time because no sun and moon alternated with each other in the secret region. At this moment, Li Ye was also too exhausted to tell the time. All he could say was that he nearly could not feel his legs.

In the beginning, he felt a burning sensation in his feet. Then, he endured the pain as if lots of ants were climbing on his feet, biting. Finally, his feet went numb, and Li Ye gradually fell into a trance. Under the double pressures, Li Ye’s body became drained. Eventually, he could no longer keep his head clear.

He habitually climbed the steps like a robot.

But the whole time, Li Ye stared at Feihong Bodhisattva’s back before him.

Feihong Bodhisattva was in white. Her hair was brilliantly black and thick, like the waterfall pouring down. The last part of her long hair swung before her slender waist, and her hair end fell over her tight and round butt. From time to time, her hair end brushed her butt like a breeze gently blew through the willows.

However, the numbness caused by extreme tiredness cleared Li Ye’s all desires. There was only one most straightforward thought left: he could never let her go out of his sight.

Quietly, time went by. They still kept climbing the stone steps.

Everything seemed to be back a long time ago. That year, Li Ye decided to go up the mountain to cultivate. At that time, he was just a child, but he had to keep climbing the stone steps that even adults had to stop and rest many times when they climbed.

On the stone steps behind Li Ye and Feihong Bodhisattva, more and more people had fallen behind.

The demon clan cultivators and Land Buddhism monks who lay here and there on the steps looked like the haws fell from the arms of the mountain and scattered on the steps.

There was a long distance between the one at the forefront and the one in the last place. As these people’s willpower and cultivation level differed, they reached different places.

But the distance between the two persons was far much shorter than the distance between them and Feihong Bodhisattva, who just a little ahead of Li Ye.

Finally, except for Feihong Bodhisattva and Li Ye, no one could continue to climb upward.

The person who led the others was the Holy Child. The Son of God was a little behind him, and the Cloth Bag Arhat was beside him. After taking a look at them, Holy Child lay on his back on the stone steps, breathing heavily. Since the stone steps had swallowed his whole shins, his movements looked quite distorted when he lay down.

But now the Holy Child was too tired to care about this little discomfort. Fortunately, the stone steps stopped going upward after it swallowed his shins. It seemed that the stone steps did not mean to devour the whole person. But since these people’s shins had utterly fallen into the stone steps, they could no longer move forward.

Anyway, the Holy Child managed to take a few breaths with ease. He adjusted his posture and looked at Li Ye and Feihong Bodhisattva from a distance. However, the two of them were so far away that he could only see their backs through the gaps between the white fog.

At this moment, they were just two black spots in the eyes of the Holy Child.

You Daxiao was not willing to be left behind. Lying on the ground, he shouted with puzzles. “How can they go so fast? How can they go so far?”

The Holy Child’s spirits were drooping. Discouraged, he said, “Feihong Bodhisattva is not the same existence as weak as us. I can understand that she can go far ahead. But as merely a Yang Spiritual Master, Li Ye can walk so far ahead of us at almost the same speed with Feihong Bodhisattva. It is simply irrational!”

It was true that the Holy Child had been convinced by Li Ye’s capability long ago. But being convinced didn’t mean that he was willing always to admit Li Ye’s superiority. But now, the stone steps clearly showed the distance between them. The Holy Child, who had been proud for hundreds of years, could not accept the fact that there was such a large gap between them.

But he calmed down quickly.

The Holy Child saw that there were dozens of demon clan cultivators and a dozen Land Buddhism monks lying on their stomachs behind him. The famous 18 arhats were even among these people. He went ahead of them!

These Land Buddhism monks lay on the ground unsightly like dead pigs and dead dogs. They looked completely different from their usual solemn and polite appearances. Seeing them, the Holy Child could not help but smile a little.

In the Holy Child’s present position, he could see all the cultivators, no matter they were close or far away from him. When he spotted everyone’s ugly performances, the Holy Child suddenly felt that he was not as bad as he had imagined, and his gesture could still be considered as elegant. Gradually, he even started to exclaim how much better he was than others.

After all, he was the person at the top of others.

But he wasn’t really happy. His whole world would darken whenever he thought of Li Ye. After all, as long as Li Ye was still climbing, the gap between them would go on widening.

Li Ye had long lost the concept of time long ago, and even he lost all feelings. In the end, he could not feel fatigued, weak, or even numb. All of a sudden, the world seemed to be empty. He felt like he no longer existed.

It seemed that he had become a void, floating in the vast empty universe and the nothingness.

Perhaps, he was a gust of wind, flowing among mountains and rivers; perhaps, he was a leaf, falling in the sunset; perhaps, he was a small grass, growing quietly by the river.

But he still had an idea in his mind.

It was that he must keep on walking without a break in case he would be left behind by the figure in white in a while.

Of course, he could never be left behind.

The first realm of the Way of Emperor: never yield and never give in to others.

How could he be left behind?

In a daze, Li Ye noticed that Feihong Bodhisattva, who was in white and had long black hair, would look back at him from time to time.

Thus, in the void world, Li Ye remembered the pair of bright and deep eyes of Feihong Bodhisattva. Her eyes looked as deep as the abyss and as vast as the Milky Way.

There were twinkling stars in the eyes that looked at him. Her eyes could touch Li Ye’s soul.

Eventually, Li Ye stopped.