Returning from the Immortal World

Chapter 1423: God Realm (5): Karmic Cycle, Golden Peng Joins the Ranks

“Earth is the real God Realm and the current God Realm is just a new world established by the twelve Supreme Gods that imitates the comprehensive environment of Earth?” Tang Xiu felt stunned after he digested the information obtained from the golden orb as it was too unbelievable for him.

Tang Xiu had obtained the legacy of the Free and Unfettered God through the golden orb, and at the same time, he had also learned about the origin of the God Realm and the truth of how the twelve Supreme Gods had enslaved all the deities using underhanded means.

The twelve Supreme Gods were neither the strongest entities in the God Realm nor were they the earliest to have become Supreme Gods. However, during an exploration, they had unexpectedly found the Land of Divine Origin—Divine Origin City.

Divine Origin was also known as origin force in the God Realm. It was the fundamental requirement necessary for a God-Sovereign to become a Supreme God and was the most precious and expensive resource in the God Realm without exception.

The discovery of the Divine Origin City invoked the greed within the hearts of the twelve Supreme Gods and caused them to kill the other dozen or so God-Emperors and God-Sovereigns in the exploration team.

If it weren’t for the fact that the twelve Supreme Gods feared they may lose their lives because they were equally matched in strength and the fact that the Divine Origin City had an abundant amount of origin force that could satisfy all of their needs completely, they would have undoubtedly fought each other.

After seizing the Divine Origin City, the twelve Supreme Gods feared that the other Supreme Gods might come over and plunder the Divine Origin, so they didn’t hesitate to launch an unprecedented war against the other Supreme Gods.

The twelve Supreme Gods used the Divine Origin as bait and employed a majority of the God-Emperors and God-Sovereigns to attack the other Supreme Gods. As such, faced with the overwhelming assault, all the other Supreme Gods fell into the hands of the twelve Supreme Gods and even their godheads and legacies were deprived after they perished.

This unprecedented war was known as the Battle of Ruin and it had almost destroyed the entire God Realm.

The twelve Supreme Gods always came up with dignified reasons in each of their campaigns, so they always held the moral high ground in the public and thus didn’t incur the revulsion of that many deities.

After the war ended, to eliminate all chances of anyone discovering the Divine Origin City, the twelve Supreme Gods announced that they were willing to offer all the resources in their hands to build a new God Realm and solicited contributions from all the deities concurrently.

As the twelve Supreme Gods had completely isolated the Divine Origin of the Divine Origin City, all the deities responded to their call after discovering that the Divine Origin on Earth wasn’t enough to satisfy their cultivation needs, and the twelve Supreme Gods even obtained the highest honor and respect thusly.

After establishing the new God Realm, the twelve Supreme Gods discovered that they hadn’t actually used up that many resources and instead gained a lot of rare cultivation resources, so they spent several tens of thousands of years to continuously thicken the barrier between the new God Realm and the God Realm of Earth to prevent the other deities to leave for Earth and find the Divine Origin City, leaving behind a backdoor to Earth which only they were aware of.

By establishing the new God Realm as a result of the Battle of Ruin, the twelve Supreme Gods had not just managed to eliminate all the forces stronger than them, they had also accumulated deep fame at the same time that allowed them to candidly become the supreme rulers of the God Realm without any qualms.

After realizing the benefits brought by the authoritarian regime, the twelve Supreme Gods began to plunder the cultivation resources, cultivation methods, and battle skills of all the deities in an unbridled manner and enslaved all the deities. At the same time, they began to closely monitor all corners of the God Realm for any anomalies and nipped the danger in the bud if any such uncontrollable elements made their appearance.

Under the enslavement of the twelve Supreme Gods, the God Realm was no longer a place where entities lived a free and unfettered life and instead became an existence similar to the eighteen layers of Hell. It became very difficult for the deities to promote their strength and even more difficult to survive as almost all the deities served either the twelve Supreme Gods or their affiliated forces.

And this only changed with the appearance of the Free and Unfettered Supreme God.

It was because the Free and Unfettered Supreme God cultivated the free and unfettered path that allowed him to have countless incarnations and understood his heart well. Furthermore, he always acted in a low-profile manner because of his prudent nature, so the twelve Supreme Gods who had grown lax from an easy life for so long failed to discover his existence from the very beginning.

By the time the twelve Supreme Gods had found the Free and Unfettered Supreme God, they were already unable to defeat him and instead suffered defeats at his hands, which damaged their reputation greatly.

As the divine power of incarnation was too powerful, the twelve Supreme Gods were even on guard against each other because they feared one of them might be an incarnation of the Free and Unfettered Supreme God.

It was also this divine power of incarnation that allowed the Free and Unfettered Supreme God to find out about the truth behind the Battle of Ruin and gave rise to the thoughts of eliminating the twelve Supreme Gods in his mind.

“Senior Free and Unfettered God, please rest at ease. I will definitely fulfill your final wish and return the God Realm to all the deities from the hands of the twelve Supreme Gods.”

Tang Xiu had also figured out the history behind the twelve zodiac jade carvings from the huge amount of information he had obtained from the golden orb.

The Free and Unfettered Supreme God had carved these twelve zodiac jade carvings when he was in the God Realm and they contained the heavenly laws of Earth, the primogenitor star of the God Realm, and also contained the heavenly laws of the entire God Realm. As long as he had sufficient cultivation resources, these heavenly laws would allow Tang Xiu to ignore any bottlenecks in cultivation and reach the Supreme God Stage without any hindrance. However, as Tang Xiu’s body wasn’t strong enough to handle so much power, his cultivation stage stopped increasing when he became a peak-stage Ancient God.

Moreover, the heavenly laws contained within the twelve zodiac jade carvings also allowed Tang Xiu to return to Earth.

After communicating with Drunken Immortal, Star Soul, and the others with his divine intent, Tang Xiu appeared in another space momentarily with a single thought.

This space contained a dense amount of Divine Origin Force along with a blue sky full of white clouds, black land, and a series of mountain ranges. However, these mountains didn’t have any plants and instead had countless gravestones and ancient graves packed together.

After seeing a totally different scenery compared to Earth, Tang Xiu almost believed he was still in the God Realm and hadn’t returned to Earth.

“Youngling, thirty years hath passed yet thou still haven’t ascended to the Immortal World? How long am I to wait for mine returneth to the God Realm?” A weak voice echoed in Tang Xiu’s mind suddenly and caused his gaze to shift over to another direction.

A 300-meter-tall huge Golden Peng that had its two bare feet chained with two thick manacles and had a conflagration of flames burning on its body came into Tang Xiu’s view.

However, after experiencing decades of torment, the Golden Peng obviously lacked its former spiritedness and rested its head on the ground morosely instead of raising it up arrogantly. The gaze with which it observed Tang Xiu had also turned dimmer.

“Karmic Cycle.” Tang Xiu understood the reason he had appeared in this space immediately after seeing the Golden Peng.

The Golden Peng had helped him consolidate the Buddhist Golden Body when he arrived at the sub-space under the Resting Cemetery Island back in the past and that had allowed his cultivation of the Heavenly Art of Cosmic Genesis to experience enormous progress, causing his strength to leap from the Meridian Transformation Stage to the Viscera Transformation Stage. In exchange, Tang Xiu promised to free the Golden Peng after becoming a Supreme and returning to the summit of the Immortal World.

Unfortunately, although he wished to return to Earth to rescue the Golden Peng after cultivating back to a Supreme in the Immortal World, he was unable to find a way to shatter the barrier between Earth and the Immortal World and had to shelve the matter as a result.

Tang Xiu felt a twinge of guilt after recalling this and looked at the Golden Peng with a guilty gaze.

Tang Xiu actually didn’t care much about the 30 years mentioned by the Golden Peng. This was because of the special nature of the spatial barrier which caused a time dilation when he ascended to Immortal World. A similar time dilation might have existed when he returned to Earth from the God Realm. Hence, Tang Xiu wouldn’t have found it strange even if only a single day had passed since his ascension to the Immortal World after returning to the God Realm.

In any case, for Tang Xiu, it was better to return to Earth earlier than later.

“Senior Golden Peng, pardon me for coming so late. I will free you from the dharmic flames and the chains right away.” Tang Xiu didn’t give an explanation to the Golden Peng and instead took out the sword he had obtained from the Free and Unfettered Supreme God’s legacy within the Walled Hill Village and hacked at the chains binding the Golden Peng’s feet with force.

As for the dharmic flames on the Golden Peng’s body, they were even easier to solve. With just a single thought from Tang Xiu, the Ying Yang Divinity Lake inside his body jetted out a stream of lake water and extinguished the dharmic flames on the Golden Peng’s body that had been burning for several million years.

“Thou… Thou hath used the Ying Yang Divinity Lake’s lake water to extinguish the flames?! This is too wasteful!” The Golden Peng felt like it was dreaming when the dharmic flames on its body were extinguished and then, it berated Tang Xiu with an incredulous tone after glaring at him.

In the next moment, the Golden Peng no longer bothered to criticize Tang Xiu for his wasteful extravagance and opened its mouth as it unfurled its wings, following which it sucked all the Ying Yang Divinity Lake’s lake water that had splashed onto the ground after hitting its wings dry, not even leaving a drop behind.

After swallowing the Ying Yang Divinity Lake’s lake water, the Golden Peng’s spirit, energy, and soul experienced a monumental change as it was freed from the torment of the chains and the dharmic flames, and its aura climbed up little by little.

“Huh… thou cultivation… shouldn’t thou be a Supreme Immortal? How art thou an Ancient God?” The Golden Peng was dumbstruck when it sensed Tang Xiu’s strength as it prepared to thank him.

“Senior Golden Peng, perhaps only 30 years have passed on Earth, but I have already experienced several tens of thousands of years in the Immortal World and the God Realm.” Tang Xiu only knew that the Golden Peng’s master was a Supreme God who possessed the Heavenly Art of Cosmic Genesis once and was the nemesis of the Buddhist Sect. Other than this, he was completely clueless about the Golden Peng’s circumstances and also had no intention of demanding any answers from it, so he explained things with a smile on his face.

“Allow this junior to seek forgiveness, Senior Golden Peng. This junior failed to find a method to shatter the barrier between the Immortal World and Earth after becoming a Supreme Immortal, so this junior couldn’t return to rescue Senior immediately. This junior barely managed to return to Earth from the God Realm because of the help of an almighty deity.”

The reason Tang Xiu was explaining things to the Golden Peng patiently wasn’t that he was afraid the Golden Peng would harm him, but rather because its former master possessed the Heavenly Art of Cosmic Genesis. Tang Xiu believed his cultivation speed would increase by several degrees with the help of the Golden Peng, so he felt tempted to recruit it into his ranks.

“Good! Good! Good!” The Golden Peng laughed out loud after observing Tang Xiu for a while. “Thou art loyal and resolute! Thou eke hast a deep affinity with Buddhism and hast an exemplary cultivation aptitude! Youngling, let us hast another deal. Help me avenge mine master and I shalt fight for thou in the God Realm!”