Chapter 220: The Final Trump Card
"Boom—!"
Ming Xin's palm struck out, golden light surging like a raging tide. Chen Chang'an was sent flying like a kite with a severed string, crashing heavily into a distant mountainside. Rock shattered, dust billowed, and his body carved a long, bloody trail across the cliff before sliding limply to the ground.
"Cough… cough…"
Blood poured from his mouth in thick streams. His organs felt pulverized, every breath scraping like knives through his chest. He forced himself upright, but even that small effort made his vision blur—his strength was all but gone.
Across from him—
Ming Xin straightened slowly.
His golden kasaya was in tatters, half a sleeve torn away to reveal a bloodstreaked arm. The Buddha crown on his head sat askew, his hair disheveled, face bruised and stained with blood—yet his lips curled upward in triumph, eyes gleaming with cruel satisfaction.
"Whatever method you used to briefly draw upon the power of Immortal Venerable laws…"
He advanced step by step, and with each pace, his wounds knit further. Streams of merit light rippled across his body, mending flesh and even reweaving the torn kasaya.
"…you're still nothing more than a Saint."
He looked down on Chen Chang'an from above, his smile twisting into something feral.
"It's over."
Chen Chang'an raised his head, meeting his gaze. Then he grinned—blood spilling down the corner of his mouth.
"Not necessarily."
He still had one last card to play.
The Immortal Venerable Experience Card—fifteen minutes of invincible Dao.
He hadn't wanted to use it.
The "Invincible Dao" sounded grand, but in truth, it was an absurdly passive law—as long as one doesn't strike first, one cannot be harmed.
"How do you turtle up when the enemy's already in your face? How the hell are you supposed to 'hide and grow stronger' then?"
But right now, he had no other choice.
"Guess I'll gamble once…"
He took a deep breath and slowly closed his eyes.
Ming Xin stared at the broken figure before him, then burst into wild laughter—raw, unrestrained, tinged with the madness of one who'd narrowly escaped death.
"I laugh at you—"
He wiped the golden blood from his lips, his shredded kasaya snapping in the wind.
"You could only last this long!"
His boots crunched over shattered stone as he crouched down in front of Chen Chang'an. Grinning, he grabbed him by the chin with bloodstained fingers.
"If you'd held out just a little longer—ten more breaths, even…"
His voice dropped, hissing like a serpent in the dark.
"…then the one kneeling here would've been me."
He gripped Chen Chang'an's throat and lifted him into the air—but the instant both of Chen Chang'an's feet left the ground—
Snap!
Ming Xin recoiled as if electrocuted, stumbling back violently!
He stared at his right hand in disbelief—his palm was smoking, the skin blackened and blistering as though he'd seized a piece of red-hot iron.
Chen Chang'an rose slowly to his feet.
Around him, a strange light began to shimmer—defying logic itself.
It wasn't the brilliance of spiritual power surging outward, but rather the return of presence—like a faded painting being redrawn in color. Every inch of his skin, every breath, every movement… reclaimed an overwhelming reality.
Ming Xin's voice cracked, trembling between disbelief and terror.
"Impossible!"
Ming Xin's throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. His Heavenly Eye of the Buddha flared to its limit, yet even its divine sight could not pierce the impossible—this violation of reality itself unfolding before him.
He stepped back. Once. Twice. Eighteen lotus shadows bloomed beneath his feet as his body retreated a hundred zhang in an instant. For the first time since the battle began, the Immortal Venerable was not repositioning—he was fleeing.
The mountain wind fell eerily still.
Chen Chang'an merely took a single step forward. That single motion made the muscles on Ming Xin's face twitch uncontrollably.
The expression of this so-called Immortal Venerable was no longer one of arrogance or calm—it was the look of a mortal who'd just watched a corpse sit up inside its coffin.
Across from him, Chen Chang'an's aura rose again. A faint, translucent radiance coiled around his body—not spiritual energy, but something purer, heavier, truer.
Ming Xin's pupils contracted violently. His voice trembled. "The… Immortal Venerable Realm!?"
For the first time, a shred of instinct screamed at him to run.
But then he realized—Chen Chang'an wasn't attacking. There was no killing intent, no surge of power. Only that calm, sorrowful gaze, filled with something Ming Xin couldn't comprehend—compassion.
"Threads in a mother's hand, clothing upon the wandering son."
Chen Chang'an's voice was low and gentle, as though reciting a lullaby from a forgotten age.
Ming Xin blinked in confusion. His heart gave an inexplicable tremor. Then, caution seized him again—what was this? What kind of technique carried no spiritual fluctuations at all?
"Before he leaves, she stitches more and more, fearing his return will be delayed."
Chen Chang'an continued softly, his tone filled with ache and tenderness. In his eyes flickered the shimmer of unshed tears.
Ming Xin's brows knitted tight. His instincts screamed danger, yet no killing aura existed. The words flowed like rain, seeping silently into his mind despite his defenses.
"How can a blade of grass repay the warmth of spring?"
As the final line fell, Chen Chang'an lifted his head. His eyes burned with divine clarity as he locked his gaze onto Ming Xin—and roared:
"Wang Shouzhi! Wake up!"
The shout cracked through heaven and earth like thunder! Ming Xin's entire body jolted violently.
"Wang… Shouzhi?"
Before he could think, Chen Chang'an spoke again, words tumbling out in a storm.
"Your mother, Aunt Wang, ran a tofu stall alone for twenty years. Every dawn, before the sun rose, she ground soybeans with frostbitten hands—and she never once let you help, saying, 'A true man should chase the horizon!'"
"When you were ten, you caught a high fever. She carried you thirty li through the mountains to find a doctor. She fell three times—her knees were bleeding—but she clutched you tight so you wouldn't get hurt!"
"When she learned you'd been accepted by the Gale Pavilion, she was so happy she cried! She took all the copper coins she'd saved that month and hosted a tofu feast for the whole street, telling everyone, 'My son's made something of himself!'"
"But she waited… and waited. Until her hair turned white, until her back bent. And when you finally came home—"
Chen Chang'an's voice broke into a snarl.
"—you killed her! And even then, she never once stopped believing in you!"
Each word struck like a hammer, smashing straight into Ming Xin's soul.
"You let those bald-headed monks twist your mind! You became a matricidal murderer!"
"She died with a smile—never knowing that the son she was proud of was the one who ended her life!"
Ming Xin's body convulsed. Images surged through his mind—
A shabby tofu stall.
A middle-aged woman, sleeves rolled up, grinding soybeans. Her hands rough and cracked from years of frost and toil. Yet her eyes were gentle, her lips curved in quiet contentment.
As long as she thought of her son, no hardship mattered.
"No… that's not me…"
Ming Xin clutched his head, his expression twisting in agony. But the memory only grew sharper, brighter, unstoppable.
Suddenly, he felt a violent repulsion erupt inside his body—something struggling, raging, trying to tear free!
"Get out! Get out of my body!!!"
The scream that tore from his throat wasn't entirely his own—it echoed with two voices overlapping, fighting for dominance.
Ming Xin's face went ghostly pale.
And in that instant—he understood.
He'd almost forgotten. Inside this body… there was still someone else!
Someone he had only recently suppressed—
…the true owner of this body.
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