Chapter 450: Chapter 450

450: Chapter 446: Bet with One’s Life 450: Chapter 446: Bet with One’s Life He had left the Sword Monument and was now kneeling in the vast snowy land.

In front of him lay a Frost Coffin, shrouded in a silver-gray mist of profound frost.

Around the coffin, fresh green vines entwined and sprouted, with sparse flowers trembling delicately, radiating an aura of vibrant life.

Yun Rong lay quietly inside that Frost Coffin, clutching the sheathed Snow Sword, her eyes closed in calm repose.

The terrifying wound on her chest was slowly healing amidst the chill of the profound frost, the pierced wound had already scabbed over with pale new skin.

Her breath was weak, yet it did not lack vitality.

For Arao, however, she hardly cared whether Yun Rong was alive or dead, as a bone-chilling cold spread from her heart throughout her body.

The man kneeling beside the coffin, covered in blood, had a deep, dark red wound from a Demon Spear through his chest.

But the constant flow of bright red blood came not from there, but from his abdomen where his Spirit Root for storing cultivational energy was located.

His black-and-red sword robe fluttered messily in the wind, and the heavy snow could not conceal the gruesomely tooth-like wound in his abdomen!

It was utterly hollow inside!

The Spirit Root that contained all his life’s cultivation was no longer there.

In the snow lay a blood-stained, broken-blade dagger.

He had actually gouged out his own Spirit Root and transformed it into a Spiritual Spring Frost Coffin to preserve her last vestige of vitality.

The bloody, tragic scenes before her hardly brought to mind the man from earlier in the night, gravely wounded yet calm atop the Sword Monument.

Arao gave a bitter smile; tonight, she had ascended to the pinnacle above all beings, becoming the sole sovereign of the Six Realms, the ultimate victorious winner.

Yet suddenly, she realized she had been utterly defeated all along!

Numbly, she stepped forward, her fingers trembling as she parted his robes revealing the ghastly red wound where the Divine Element golden core was utterly shattered.

His master possessed the extremely rare yin-yang dual Spirit Root; the Ice Spiritual Root had turned into the Spiritual Spring Frost Coffin, and the Wood Spiritual Root into the persistent vines sustaining her life force.

So very splendid indeed!

If she had known how important Yun Rong was to him, she should have watched her die herself!

“I thought the master was some kind of Saint,” she said, her smile unclear whether mocking or sorrowful, “always voicing concern for the welfare of all beings, but in reality, wasn’t he just a selfish mortal?”

Arao, well aware of his nature, had never doubted her master’s resolve and determination.

What she least expected was that he would actually dare disregard the lives of the world, sever his own cultivation, to choose her.

Didn’t he know that in heaven and earth, the only person who could contend with her was himself?

She couldn’t bear to personally destroy the things… How dare he!!!

Arao trembled with rage, an inexplicable fury overwhelming her, prompting a wild desire to destroy everything; her expression became manic, her pupils pacing fiercely in their sockets like a cruel beast trapped in an inescapable cage.

“You think that by doing this she will live?

Even if you sacrifice your own Spirit Root to protect her vitality, she will never be able to leave this Frost Coffin!

Your so-called consideration is nothing but a prison for her!”

His complexion was ghostly pale, his expression weary, and despite him pressing his lips together, unstoppable fresh blood still trickled from them.

Gouging out a Spirit Root was indeed excruciatingly painful.

His ears rang at the moment, and he couldn’t quite hear Arao’s furious shouting distinctly.

Looking down, he quietly said, “There will always be a way.”

After speaking those words, finally, his body abruptly lost its support and he collapsed powerlessly on the Frost Coffin.

Arao stood in silence for a long while, looking at her hands drenched in fresh blood, lost in the darkness, unsure of what to do next.

Fang Geyu presumed that given her intense emotional state, the Female Demon Lord certainly wouldn’t spare Yun Rong.

Unexpectedly, however, she made no further move against Yun Rong.

Under the night’s cold chill, she placed her palm on his abdominal wound, and the faint spirit light that emanated from her fingertips was, surprisingly, the Healing Technique of the Tianxi Sword Sect.

Spiritual power gently infused into him, stopping the bleeding.

After a night had passed, he, who had been lying on the Frost Coffin alongside Yun Rong, awoke from a heavy and weary dream.

Upon waking, he pressed his forehead against the cold Ice Coffin, feeling the stable and peaceful aura within, and his tightly tense shoulders gradually relaxed somewhat.

Arao, standing in the bleak morning light, didn’t turn to look at him, her fingers curled tight behind her back, pale as death.

“Master, our game isn’t over yet, and yet you have personally destroyed your entire cultivation,” she said, “Now tell me, who shall I find for amusement?”

The wind plucked at her sash, twisting around her wrist where an old red thread was worn and finally snapped, carried away by the wind towards the distant mountains.

Her gaze wandered off into the distant, endless mountains and rivers, and she suddenly smiled: “Master, do you plan to seek the legendary pool atop Kunlun to heal her wounds?”

Finally, Arao turned from the light, her features somewhat indistinct against the backlight, with a spreading gray sun behind her.

“Master should be grateful that I still hold some fondness for you.

Since you can be so cruel and heartless to yourself, why not gamble with yourself and set a condition with me.

If you truly manage, with this mortal body, to reach the legendary realm of Heavenly Mountain and Sea Tower and settle our grudge, I will spare Yun Rong’s life.

But if you fail to reach Kunlun Mountain…”

“Then you,” she paused deliberately, her words crystal clear: “will voluntarily become my eternal prisoner, your life and pain not your own, and the only person with the right to kill you, to hurt you, will only be me.”

In today’s Mortal World, Demons pave the way, and myriad ghosts roam together.

To say nothing of a mortal with no cultivation, even a Daoist Immortal, adept in Taoist Techniques, might not find it easy to survive in this chaotic world.

Crossing these thousands of miles of mountains and rivers to seek the secluded mountain beyond mountains, the sea beyond seas, was simply a delusion.

Kunlun Pure Ruins existed outside of the Six Realms, and even Immortal Venerable Zhu Zhan had succumbed to this calamity, but only Kunlun remained elusive, untouchable in that indistinct place.

The places that neither Daoist Immortals nor chaotic Demon Lords could find, how could a Sword Master, reduced to a mortal with a damaged Spirit Root, ever find the true Kunlun.

This bet was inherently profoundly unfair.

Yet he replied, “Alright.”

The visions of the future rapidly changed, finally freezing into sporadic scenes.

Fang Geyu saw the man moving through this chaotic era, leaning on a broken sword, towing the Frost Coffin, crossing mountain streams and valleys, traversing the Quicksand Forbidden Land, with hardships untold.

The Mortal World fraught with roaming Demons was far from peaceful, and each time he absorbed spiritual power into his body to repel the Demons, his Spirit Root-less abdomen would rupture anew after each battle.

This was a journey of despair, with no retreat whether exhausting or not.