Chapter 59: Rain of Dissolution

Meng Ruji hurried to the window with urgency thrumming through her veins. Standing at the precipice, she looked outside into the vast expanse.

Mu Sui stood suspended in mid-air on a silver formation beneath his feet—an intricate pattern of light that served as the source of power allowing him to float effortlessly hundreds of feet above the ground.

"You came so easily?" Meng Ruji found it almost impossible to believe. "No one stopped you? No guards, no barriers?"

"If it weren't my city, it wouldn't have been nearly so easy. Come out." Mu Sui extended his hand toward her with calm assurance.

Meng Ruji quickly raised her own hand to stop him. "Don't touch it! There's a restriction spell on the window."

Hearing this, Mu Sui's outstretched hand paused mid-reach, his brow furrowing with concern.

Meng Ruji gently tapped with her finger from inside, and sure enough, a row of golden formations materialized in the air between them, looking considerably more expensive and complex than the silver one beneath Mu Sui's feet.

"He doesn't want to kill me, so it should be safe for me to touch it from inside, but I don't know what consequences there would be if you attempt to touch me from outside." Meng Ruji glanced back toward where Zhan Ye had appeared earlier, finding nothing unusual in the empty space, then returned her attention to Mu Sui. "You should go back first…"

"There's no reason to return empty-handed after coming this far." Mu Sui's tone was firm as he withdrew three round golden beans from inside his robe!

Golden beans!

Meng Ruji was so shocked that her eyes widened dramatically. "You still have three gold! Where did you possibly get that money?"

Even as she asked the question, an equally expensive-looking formation had already begun coalescing in Mu Sui's palm, glowing with deadly intent! Just as the attack formation was about to strike the window's restriction, Meng Ruji snapped back to her senses and shouted to stop him. "You can't attack it! I can't leave yet!"

These words made Mu Sui's face darken considerably, but he still complied with Meng Ruji's urgent plea and didn't launch the assault directly.

The formation continued rotating in his palm like a small sun as he stared at Meng Ruji with unmistakable displeasure. "Do you truly want to reminisce with him?"

"Don't be jealous! Calm down!" After her initial exasperation at his accusation, Meng Ruji spoke with serious intensity. "You can forcibly break the restriction today, and I can indeed leave with you right now, but then what happens? Won't Zhuliu City still be controlled by Zhan Ye? Won't the wealth here still be completely at his command? The innocent people living here would still be unable to escape the coming disaster."

Meng Ruji's reasoning was sound and logical. Before arriving, Mu Sui had also considered that simply rescuing Meng Ruji wouldn't fundamentally solve the underlying problem.

But not come to rescue Meng Ruji at all?

He couldn't do it. He physically couldn't make that choice.

He told himself it was merely the mystical connection between the life-sustaining object and the half-dead person that made him unable to resist. He couldn't fight this compulsion, couldn't control this overwhelming impulse.

"Inside this restriction, the protective spell you cast on the bracelet seems to have failed completely, but it doesn't matter. Mo Li has awakened…"

As Meng Ruji spoke, a clear, cheerful voice suddenly emanated from somewhere near her chest. "Good son-in-law, I'm here!"

The air fell into profound, awkward silence for a moment…

Then both Meng Ruji and Mu Sui rolled their eyes in perfect, speechless synchronization.

Mu Sui was the first to regain his composure and speak with barely controlled irritation. "Don't keep it in your chest!"

"I know, I know." Meng Ruji replied with obvious perfunctoriness, then continued her explanation. "He can let you and me meet in shared dreams, which is much safer than us hanging here chatting where anyone could see. Go back later, find a secure place to hide well so Zhan Ye doesn't capture you too, then get some good sleep."

Mu Sui remained silent for a moment, processing this plan, then nodded with understanding. "Nightmare demon arts are indeed a feasible solution."

Before he finished speaking, Meng Ruji suddenly caught a whiff of an unusual, acrid scent on the air. Looking back sharply, she saw formations beginning to appear where Zhan Ye had emerged earlier, with wisps of dark malevolent qi starting to drift out from the glowing patterns like poisonous smoke.

"He's coming! Leave first!"

Mu Sui looked deeply, searchingly at Meng Ruji, his eyes conveying everything words couldn't.

"Don't worry about me—he won't kill me!"

"The Golden Staff of Chiying Hall—find a way to locate it." Mu Sui left these cryptic words hanging in the air. The golden formation rotating in his hand immediately transformed, the symbols and characters on it shifting and rearranging—this was an exquisitely crafted wind-riding technique that even made Meng Ruji look impressed despite the urgency of the moment.

Meng Ruji looked steadily into Mu Sui's eyes, memorizing every detail of his face. "See you in dreams."

In the next instant, golden light enveloped Mu Sui completely, and his figure vanished like wind dispersing.

The moment Mu Sui disappeared, a black stream of malevolent qi suddenly shot out from behind Meng Ruji like an arrow released from a taut bowstring, chasing with deadly speed in the direction where Mu Sui had just vanished.

Meng Ruji's heart seized with fear. She immediately raised her hand to intercept it. The malevolent qi passed directly through her palm, instantly sending excruciating pain drilling through her hand straight to her heart like molten metal. She didn't immediately pay attention to her injured hand, but instead looked frantically in the direction Mu Sui had departed.

She saw with relief that her intervention had indeed hindered the malevolent qi's pursuit—that black "arrow" didn't chase far before dissipating harmlessly in the cloud layers.

Just as Meng Ruji released a breath of relief, her wrist was suddenly seized in a vice-like grip. Looking back, she saw Zhan Ye standing there with a thunderously dark expression.

"Meng Ruji." While withdrawing the malevolent qi still attached to Meng Ruji's palm, Zhan Ye looked up at her with those intense eyes. "I said I am your blade, your weapon. So you shouldn't be tainted by divine malevolent qi."

Meng Ruji looked at Zhan Ye coldly, watching him speak with obsessive fervor and a disturbing lowness in his tone:

"You should become a perfect person, untainted and pure, and then ascend to become the best god."

Meng Ruji coldly withdrew her hand from his grasp, initially not intending to waste another word with him. But on second thought, she remembered what Mu Sui had just said—the Golden Staff of Chiying Hall.

It sounded like something extremely valuable, probably worth quite a substantial amount of gold.

How could she find it…

Meng Ruji studied Zhan Ye with calculating eyes, but he had already walked past her to stand at the window, looking down into the churning clouds below. "To find this place so quickly, he's more troublesome than I initially thought."

Without needing any explanation, Zhan Ye could already guess who had come.

"This was originally his place, his domain." Meng Ruji responded, then walked with deliberate casualness toward the bed as if relaxed, chatting as though making idle conversation. "For you to control his entire territory in such a short time—he should be the one saying you're troublesome."

"You seem to have some admiration for him?" Zhan Ye leaned against the window frame, regarding Meng Ruji as she settled by the bed. "How unexpected. I thought you married him only because he was the Lord of Zhuliu City, for purely practical reasons."

"It was indeed because of his status initially." Meng Ruji also looked directly at Zhan Ye. "But I also genuinely appreciate him as a person—there's no conflict between the two."

Zhan Ye's eyebrows raised slightly with obvious disapproval. "He's nothing but a lowly person. Meng Ruji, you shouldn't have any attachment to him whatsoever."

"Lowly?" Meng Ruji looked sideways at Zhan Ye with barely concealed scorn. "You chose to stay in Zhuliu City, using malevolent qi to forcibly control this entire place—isn't it precisely because this 'lowly person' you speak of created wealth that could literally pile into a thousand mountains? Being able to earn money through genuine ability in this place isn't lowly at all. What's lowly is oc-cu-py-ing oth-ers' nests like a parasitic cuckoo."

A flicker of something—anger? shame?—passed through Zhan Ye's eyes.

Meng Ruji pressed her advantage. "Your grand talk of taking me back to the mortal realm is also just achieved by forcibly seizing others' wealth, at the cost of destroying others' century-old foundations—draining the pond to catch fish. Zhan Ye, are you the perfect person you speak of so constantly?"

Zhan Ye was silent for a long moment before responding. "I'm not yet perfect. If the old world isn't completely destroyed, the new world naturally cannot be reborn from its ashes."

Meng Ruji pretended to consider this philosophy deeply, remaining silent for a moment, then said with feigned interest, "I've never asked—how exactly do you plan to destroy the old world?"

Hearing this, Zhan Ye's eyes brightened with zealous enthusiasm. "You're willing to listen? Truly?"

"Go ahead." Meng Ruji looked at him with studied leisure. "First, tell me how you plan to destroy the Land of No Return."

"I once lay on that icy lake, wholeheartedly seeking death and release. In my deepest despair, I received a wisp of divine malevolent qi. Half-dreaming, half-awake in that liminal state, I saw all the gods surrounding me, commanding me to overturn the mortal world, exterminate humanity, and overthrow the immortal way."

"You've said this before. I remember clearly."

Zhan Ye's gaze softened for an instant at her words. "When I came to the Land of No Return, before being sealed beneath the Yinyuan Tree by the Lord of No Return, I learned during our violent battle that this Land of No Return is merely a realm of desire created by the Lord of No Return's will."

Meng Ruji's eyebrows moved slightly, and she suppressed the urge to touch the stone hidden in her chest.

At this critical time, Mo Li remained completely silent, as if he had never existed at all.

"This place was created by the Lord of No Return's thoughts combined with tremendously powerful divine force. This thought was extraordinarily strong—attached to divine power, it drew over the dying desires from the mortal realm like a magnet."

"So…" Meng Ruji understood with dawning horror, "only those harboring deep unwillingness and obsession can enter the Land of No Return."

"Precisely. And here, the so-called wealth is merely the physical manifestation of everyone's desires given form."

Meng Ruji didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"Why can a thousand gold buy life?" Zhan Ye's tone dropped to something almost reverent. "The wealth here can serve as a medium for casting spells and can make people 'return from the dead'—this power defies heaven's natural way, overturning the fundamental power of life and death itself. How could mere gold and silver, simple metal, possess such heaven-defying power?"

"It's… everyone's desires?" Meng Ruji's voice emerged small with realization.

"The gold and silver of the Land of No Return are born from the collective thoughts of all living beings who have ever passed through here. The thoughts of all living beings can reverse life and death, can defy heaven itself and change fate."

After hearing this revelation, Meng Ruji couldn't recover her equilibrium for a long time.

What she had thought was merely the Land of No Return's boring money game was actually a profound struggle of desires, a manifestation of human will.

Gold and silver were born from all living beings and circulated among them, exchanged between hands, nourishing so many people in the Land of No Return…

When gold and silver were overused in powerful spells and turned to powder, it was because that portion of collective desire couldn't support such intense magical demands, the spiritual energy exhausted.

Meng Ruji suppressed her inner shock and asked Zhan Ye carefully, "When you fought the Lord of No Return, would he simply tell you these things?"

"Naturally not." Zhan Ye said. "But ever since I first came to the Land of No Return, I've often heard divine voices speaking in my head…"

The stone in Meng Ruji's chest moved slightly, trembling. She immediately shifted her body to conceal the subtle motion of her clothing.

Fortunately, Zhan Ye seemed completely immersed in his memories and didn't notice the anomaly.

He continued, his voice taking on an almost dreamlike quality. "She told me her name—Mo Yi. She also told me why the Land of No Return exists, and finally, she told me exactly how to destroy the Land of No Return."

The stone in her chest seemed to tremble more violently. Meng Ruji simply folded her arms across her chest, completely blocking where the stone was located.

"The god wants to destroy the entire world, annihilate everything—immortals, humans, and human desires themselves."

"So, how did the god say to destroy the Land of No Return?"

"Draw the water of the Nai River into the clouds and rain it down upon the world."

Meng Ruji fell into stunned silence.

"Nai River water is highly toxic, corrosive beyond measure, because this river water can dissolve desires themselves. The people and gold and silver here all exist purely because of desires—naturally, they would disappear when those desires dissipate. When gods create worlds, all things are mutually generating and restraining, perfectly balanced in their opposition."

Zhan Ye's tone remained disturbingly calm throughout, as if describing what he had eaten for breakfast yesterday. But in Meng Ruji's heart, waves were already surging like a storm-tossed sea. "You… have been in Zhuliu City, besides seizing gold and silver…"

Zhan Ye smiled, just like before when he would beat Meng Ruji at chess and savor his victory.

"Two thousand gold is somewhat difficult to accumulate, but not insurmountably so. Zhuliu City is the highest place in the entire Land of No Return, literally touching the sky. Here, arranging this matter couldn't be more perfectly suitable." Zhan Ye said. "Previously, I've already successfully made it rain once in the Land of No Return, but unfortunately, Nai River water hasn't yet been drawn into the clouds."

A few days ago, that heavy rain in the forest that had forced their entire group to take shelter in the ruined temple…

That rain… wasn't just a simple rain at all…

Meng Ruji turned her head to look out the window with mounting dread. Seeing the sea of clouds that had never dissipated outside, swirling with unnatural patterns, her throat tightened with fear:

"Zhan Ye, you're truly insane."

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