Chapter 136: Unreconciled Even in Death

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?!”

Jing Fei had barely finished shouting when Gui Rulai struck him and the corpse of Jing Dule, sending them both flying into the air. Blood sprayed in blazing arcs, still radiating scorching heat.

Only after seeing the two insignificant ants crash deep into the rock wall did Gui Rulai contentedly roll his neck. With disdain, he said, “The more insignificant and incapable a person is, the more they love chattering. They will not quiet down until reality itself forces them to.”

With that, Gui Rulai opened his mouth and unleashed a strange force of attraction, drawing toward him the skeleton embedded in the rock wall.

Yet no soul emerged.

A demonic violet light flashed through Gui Rulai’s eyes. The suction from his mouth grew explosively stronger, but still nothing happened.

What surprised everyone even more was that the entire rock wall was rapidly darkening. Its color was becoming identical to that of the Hell Abyss Sacred Stele.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The entire rock wall began to tremble. The vibrations grew increasingly violent, until the whole space seemed on the verge of collapse. Then, from within the humanoid cavern, a person crawled out.

No—more precisely, it was a stone figure shaped like a human.

Aside from his sharply contrasting black-and-white eyes, Jing Fei’s entire body now radiated the deep bluish-black sheen of obsidian, while vast streams of deathly aura from the abyss of hell coiled around him.

His abdomen was far more swollen than usual, yet it retained a human shape. Encased within it was his younger brother, Jing Dule, completely wrapped in Hell Abyss Stone.

“I said no one was allowed to touch my brother unless I was dead!”

Jing Fei’s voice had become utterly hoarse, like that of an old man or a rusted, long-sealed bellows. It was impossible to hear the voice of a young man in his prime. As he spoke, black blood and stone fragments spilled from his mouth.

Clearly, even though Jing Fei had raised his defenses to their absolute limit—and had even burned through his own vitality—Gui Rulai’s attack had still inflicted a fatal wound. At that moment, Jing Fei was nothing more than a spent arrow at the end of its flight.

Though his ability granted him absolute defense, against an existence like an Imperial Arm, all he could do was struggle desperately on the verge of death.

Yet Jing Fei’s struggle was utterly hysterical. He had cast aside all restraint and was staking everything on one final gamble.

He was using his own life as fuel for a brief, ultimate ascension.

“Oh? You’re tougher than expected. So there are ants willing to abandon their lives completely. That truly surprises me. I thought all ants were cowardly, selfish creatures who feared death above all else.”

As Gui Rulai finished speaking, the sea of skeletons filling the sky suddenly boiled.

“But what I hate most is when ants address me face-to-face. You are not worthy of looking upon me. You should bow and scrape, trembling with fear at every shadow and terrified of every blade of grass. Even if you prostrate yourselves before me, I find you an eyesore. And yet you dare act so insolently. You truly have no idea how close you are to death!

“Since you’re so determined to protect your brother, you can die first!”

The more Gui Rulai spoke, the angrier he became. His innate sense of superiority made him want to destroy every living thing before him—apart, of course, from his newly acknowledged master.

“Gui Rulai, what are you doing?!” Xuan Yao shouted, immediately sensing that something was wrong.

But Gui Rulai, provoked by the challenge, no longer paid her any heed. He directly commanded the countless skeletons in the sky, wrapped in the deathly aura of the underworld, to charge at Jing Fei and every other survivor beneath the earth.

“Little girl, you cannot give me what I want, so I’ll have to fight for it myself. Although you are my master, your strength is far too weak to control us. It would be better if you stopped wasting your effort, lest none of us fare well.”

Gui Rulai showed not the slightest respect for his young master. Xuan Yao, for her part, had never placed any hope in him. The moment Gui Rulai attacked, she rushed toward a corner of the subterranean abyss.

There, a corpse with only half its body remaining lay quietly, utterly motionless.

And along with it, Xuan Yao’s heart gradually fell into silence.

Brother Mu You.

“Ha!”

Facing the oncoming sea of skeletons, Jing Fei suddenly turned and slammed himself into the rock wall. The entire wall began to fracture. Cracks spread in every direction, and at last the massive ceiling above collapsed completely, crashing down upon the charging ghostly skeletons.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Boom! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Countless clouds of dust and debris, mixed with overwhelming waves of energy, erupted through the sky. The demonic violet and deep bluish-black lights transformed into glittering grains of sand that drifted down from above. From a distance, they resembled a beautiful rain of sand.

“Hmph.”

Gui Rulai let out a contemptuous snort. With a sweep of his hand, the entire sea of skeletons bore down upon Jing Fei.

“Overestimating yourself. Die!”

Boom!

The entire sea of skeletons surged toward Jing Fei with the force of heaven collapsing and earth splitting apart, intent on swallowing him whole.

Amid the demonic violet light, the deathly aura of the underworld began to spread.

“Eighteen Steles of Heavenly Retribution and Earthly Ruin from the Abyss!”

Layer upon layer of hell descended.

The first layer, the second, the third—eighteen abyssal steles of hell descended at once, standing across Jing Fei’s path. Encircling one another in successive layers, they seethed with resentment and deathly energy. Faint wails of ghosts and howls of wolves echoed from within, as though hell itself had appeared before them.

Countless ghostly skeletons charged one after another toward the gates of hell. As the two forces clashed, they continuously cracked and disintegrated, and for a time the entire sky became shrouded in a curtain of falling fragments.

After Jing Fei unleashed this ultimate spiritual art, every piece of obsidian covering his body exploded at once, transforming the brothers back into their battered, ruined forms.

Once the armor’s protection vanished, Jing Fei’s body—forcefully held together until that moment—collapsed completely. He plunged from an immense height.

Boom!

Even with his dead brother in his arms, even with every meridian in his body severed, Jing Fei could feel no physical pain.

Because the pain in his heart was far greater.

His little brother was gone.

He had killed him with his own hands.

Whom should he blame?

Perhaps only himself.

But why did he feel so wronged, so unwilling to accept it, so desperate to cry?

He was not even afraid of death. What else in this world could possibly make him want to weep?

Sand drifted gracefully from the sky like snow and rain. It reminded Jing Fei of the days when, as a child, he had taken his brother out to play in the snow. After they grew tired, the two of them would lie in the snow and gaze at the flakes filling the heavens.

Just as Jing Dule now lay peacefully in his arms.

Jing Fei remained motionless. Tears streamed endlessly from the corners of his eyes, blurring everything before him.

This damned world—why did it refuse even the dead the mercy of dying without regret?!