The Divine Martial Stars

Chapter 887 The Lake of Death

Wang Yanyi’s eyes burned with a strange fire.

He peered at the neatly arranged remains and sighed.

“So, the Rain Clan had succeeded in delaying me, eh?”

He turned his gaze towards the silver-outlined portal. The door was slightly ajar inwards with milk-white divine lights glowing in gentle undulations like liquid.

“The Central Sky Gate,” he murmured.

“So, it’s open nevertheless.”

Wang Yanyi stepped down from the carriage and strode to the front of the array of bones and dried husks where he gave the remains of the sentinels a deep bow. Then he paced towards the Central Sky Gate with the same bloodstained clothes and the same injury-riddled body of his.

“Shouldn’t you take a rest and heal?”

The Cloud Light Saintess couldn’t help asking.

Wang Yanyi paused for one second and said, “There’s no time for that.”

“That’s it? You’re going after the prize of divine providence too?” the Saintess cried, “The rest of the Clans are inside by now. You’ve decimated the Rain Clan. That makes you an enemy of the Divine Clans. You’ll never survive in there!”

“Divine providence?” Wang Yanyi swiveled around to peer at the Saintess. “Is that why you’re here too? For the prize?”

The Saintess nodded without even the slightest hesitation.

......

Wang Yanyi suddenly cracked into a cryptic grin. “Do you know what this ‘prize of divine providence’ really is?”

The Saintess stared at him dubiously.

“Go if you will,” said Wang Yanyi, “But I shall no longer be there to watch you. You’ll be on your own.”

“Wait. I have one last question that I’ve been meaning to ask,” the Saintess said.

“What is it?”

“Why to save me?” she asked.

“Do you even need to ask?” asked Wang. “The Rain Clan are my enemy and they were trying to kill you too. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, they say.”

“But I’m still a member of the Divine Clans nonetheless,” the Saintess pointed out. “The Rain Clan is one of the Divine Clans so doesn’t that make me an enemy of yours instead?”

Wang Yanyi nodded at how that made sense before he had a question of his own, “Which brings me to a question of my own: why did the Rain Clan try to kill you?”

“I don’t know,” she shook her head.

Wang Yanyi shrugged and lost any interest to pry further. “That’s farewell, I guess.”

He vanished and reappeared right before the portal and he stepped inside.

The Cloud Light Staintess stood there alone for seconds before she finally withdrew her chariot and entered the Central Sky Gate after him.

The image of Wang Yanyi fighting the Rain Clan alone with his dual swords remained clearly etched in her mind.

She had never thought that one man could wield such power through focus, commitment, and sheer will. The Rain Clan could never believe that its lineage would become extinct because of one man – a madman who just refused to back down and give up.

Yet, why did Wang Yanyi save her?

That was the question that never stopped tormenting her.

But whatever his reasons were, the Saintess was certain that it was not as trivial as the sorry excuse of an answer that he just gave her earlier.

“Whatever,” she groaned. “I need to get in right now.”

She too stepped inside the silver-outline portal.

What engulfed her was a deluge of blinding white light. She did not feel the sensation of traveling through Time or Space. Only how she could not see and by the time her vision finally came back to her, she found herself standing in a new and foreign world.

But it looked very similar to the world outside. A collection of palaces clustered together, filled with corridors made of white cream-like and finely-hewn jade line every corridor in the palaces, snaking further deeper into eldritch and translucent veil of mist.

Wang Yanyi was nowhere to be seen at all.

But with only one way ahead, she sped on, knowing that she would catch up sooner or later.

Until the acrid stench of blood slammed face first into her.

The Cloud Light Saintess immediately slowed down and readied herself for anything untoward.

She pressed further on and stumbled upon a corpse kneeling on the ground, kept upright by a sword impaled straight from his back. His garb indicated that it was an acolyte of the Thunder Clan. From the looks of things, someone appeared to have ambushed him from the back.

No more than three hundred meters ahead, another three corpses were lying in a large pool of blood. Upon a quick examination, the Saintess discovered that they were two acolytes of the Ghost Clan and a Deity-Realm Elder of the Mist Clan. The air reeked of brimstone and blood – the telltale signs of a battle – and it must have been left by a fight that broke out between the Mist and Ghost Clans.

“What on Earth happened here?! They were fighting against each other?!”

The Saintess could not quite believe her eyes.

But with her mind still set on the prize of divine providence, she did not want to tarry long and continued speeding down the pearly-white path.

Only, the longer she walked, the more frightened she grew.

Death and carnage met every mile of her journey.

Blood was everywhere – the white jade-hewn balustrade of the path, the frosted cobblestones on the ground. Everywhere.

It was like one of her deepest nightmares come true. Scores of cadavers awaited to receive her arrival and amongst them, she could recognize a few of the faces, including some from the Cloud Clan. Whatever had happened here, one thing was certain: these men had died fighting each other.

“But what for? Is it all because of the prize?!”

Then she recognized another face. A Cloud Clan Elder who had always been nothing but kind to her. Here he was, dead and bisected waist down in the most terrible way possible. At long last, the Saintess could take no more. She paused and let lose an anguished howl at his demise.

Even that did little to impede her progress.

She pushed on, but the sense of foreboding just never stopped haunting her.

“Please! Please! Not my mentor!”

The jade-white pathway snaked further ahead until it was out of sight. Beyond the balustrade flanking the pathway, one could feel the unknown threats that lurked in the brilliant white space that hung on either side of the passage. One wrong step out into the barren white void and one could die. Only the pathway where anyone could remain safe.

At the same time, she could feel a strange desire that has stirred since her entry into this mysterious domain like an invisible voice that never stopped prodding her forward or an inexplicable force leading her ahead. She could almost hear it calling out to her, saying, “Come quick! Make haste, or the prize would be lost to everyone else!”

That was when she saw the very much dead corpse of Lei Cang, heir to the leadership of the Thunder Clan. Not very far ahead was another face she knew: the body of the chieftain of the Ghost Clan.

These were important individuals to all the member clans of the Divine Clans collective. Yet here they were, slaughtered and butchered like dogs, lying in the most grotesque and undignified manner in the fetid plashes of their own blood and entrails.

Under normal circumstances, the Saintess would have stopped to check on them.

Yet, right here, right now, she obeyed nothing but the strange and clairvoyant desire to press on.

“Press on... I need to keep up...” A strange voice echoed in her mind.

Finally, she reached the end of the pathway.

She had lost count of the number of corpses and dead bodies she encountered all the way here. Her last count was somewhere around seventy to eighty.

A wide shimmering lake filled her vision at the end of the pathway. Right in its center, she could vaguely make out a strange and misshapen bluff more than ten meters tall.

“That must be where the prize is!”

The sight of the lake impregnated the idea in the Saintess’s mind before the same mysterious voice spurred her forward.

“Go! Take it!

Claim your prize!”

The Saintess took into the air and headed straight for the lake, wanting to reach the strange promontory right in its center.

All of a sudden, an unknown figure appeared just beside her and seized her.

“DIE!”

Filled with an outlandish frenzy and rage, the Saintess thrust her finger at her assailant’s forehead using the Cloud Light Heaven-startling Finger Strike at full strength.

“Yun’er! It’s me!”

The warm and familiar voice jerked her back to sense.

“Teacher?!”

The Saintess turned around and saw that it really was her mentor.

“There’s something wrong with the water, do not go near it!”

The woman – a female quinquagenarian with an air of divine elegance – looked at her young student closely and whimpered with dismay, “What happened to your face, Yun’er?! Who did this to you?!”

“It’s the people from the Rain Clan. But they’re all dead now.”

“Filthy scoundrels...” the woman hissed with venom. She glanced at the wound and was relieved to find that it was not lethal. But the darkened wound immediately told her what she needed to know about it. Pained, she said, “It’s the Beguiling Perfidy, the signature move of the chieftain of the Rain Clan. Don’t worry, my girl. I’ll do my best to heal it.”

A strange sense of frustration swelled in the Saintess, nearly making her fling her mentor’s hand away. “Why did you stop me, Teacher?! Do you not covet the prize of divine providence?!” she growled.

“The waters of the lake are treacherous if not dangerous. The chieftain of the Thunder Clan had died trying to cross it. No one will make it over safely. Look!”

Her finger pointed towards the right corner after the frosted-cobblestoned pathway ended.

The Saintess looked and only now did she notice that there was a short and shallow white sandy beach after where the pathway ended. She did not see it earlier because of the thick fog that hung over the area and there were more than a dozen men there, including Li Mu and the newly-arrived Wang Yanyi.

But that was hardly the point.

Li Mu and the rest of the people there were watching someone – a white-robed man in his prime, his foot waddling slowly in the shallow waters as his long hair tottered in what seemed like a difficult and strenuous journey towards the center of the lake like a toddler just learning how to walk...

“What are they doing?!”

The Saintess was flabbergasted.

By now, she discovered something else which was just as bizarre. Every time she looked at the strange promontory in the middle of the lake, the same frustrated yearning would intensify and the voice that had been urging her forward was growing louder and much clearer.

“What is hiding there, really?!”

Fueled by desire and curiosity, the Saintess involuntarily began moving towards the shore.

“No, don’t! It’s dangerous there!” the Saintess’s mentor seized her wrist. Close off your senses, especially towards that lake island! Don’t look that way, or you’ll…”

She could not finish.

“ARRGGHH! NO! I’m not waiting here! Divine Providence! I need the prize of divine providence!” a voice roared from the far end of the white sandy shore. A man leaped into the air and soared towards the island.

That was Ghost, the heir to the Ghost Clan.

And something terrible happened.

He glided over the water and all of a sudden, a freak wave appeared out of nowhere and swatted him out of the air. Ghost crashed into the lake and he, a prodigy cultivator who has a foot inside the threshold of the Deity Realm, immediately dissolved into nothing by the waters of the lake just as easily as cotton candy in water.

“What the hell…?!”

Fear and shock pierced through the Saintess like a spear.

“Just how horrifying is this lake?!”

“You shouldn’t have stepped from the pathway since you are incapable of resisting the allures of that promontory. The death of Ghost has brought the death toll of those who had died trying to cross the lake to more than twenty. Among them included eleven Deity-Realm Cultivators, including the chieftain of the Thunder Clan himself. And that white-robed man just now, if only you know how close he is to reaching the Emperor Realm...”

The Saintess’s mentor told her.

“What?!

Close to reaching the Emperor Realm?!”

The Saintess could barely process what she just heard.

Emperor Realm. The two words that could just as easily leave anyone petrified with amazement.

“Look and observe the lake island. What do you see?” said her mentor.

The Saintess looked closely, struggling to fight off the seduction at first. Then she saw it. Her pupils contracted with such disbelief that in the end, they grew as tiny as needles, showing how shocked she was.

“That’s...”

“That’s right,” said her mentor. “That’s the prize, real divine providence.”