Chapter Sixty-Eight: You at the Foot of the Mountain, I Upon the Peak

A poet stood at the foot of the Lost Mountain, hands on hips, a giant sword on his back. Before him rose the towering peak, and he declaimed with easy delight under the summer sun, entirely lacking any shame that might have befallen a mere imitator. When he finished, he did not even forget to ask the woman beside him for her opinion.

After a careful tasting of his verse, she said, “Excellent poetry.”

At once, his smile in the bright sunlight outshone the day itself.

Just as his small vanity was being thoroughly satisfied, at the summit of the snow-clad mountain, a man buried beneath thick layers of snow broke free.

In truth, it was not so much that he broke through the snow as that the accumulated drifts collapsed from his body and slid away to either side.

First the crown of his head, then his face, then his neck; as the snow slipped off, his entire body was gradually revealed.

He had a stern, hard face and a powerful, steel-like torso laid bare. The scars covering his body were shocking to behold, and on the great iron case strapped to his back was engraved a flying steed.

This celestial visitor, once fallen like a meteor into the northern desert steppe of the Road of Rebirth, this man who had effortlessly slain two barbarian powerhouses of the rank just below divine beings during his southward journey, had hesitated after meeting the woman in the moonlit night, wavering between going to the spirit realm or ascending Lost Mountain. In the end, after sensing a presence he found intensely repugnant, he chose to abandon the pursuit of the traveler for the time being and instead came up the mountain to investigate.

Yet even after he reached Lost Mountain, that loathsome presence still remained, and so he came here.

What the mighty one had not expected, however, was that waiting for him would not be some person, some god, or some thing, but a trap.

A trap already laid long ago atop Lost Mountain, seemingly prepared especially for him: the Divine Sealing Array.

It was a sealing formation, and one that, after countless battles, he had never feared any scheme, never retreated before any formidable foe, never truly been defeated by.

So he likewise would not fear this great sealing art capable of imprisoning a godly essence.

Not fearing it did not mean it was ineffective. In truth, as one of the strongest sealing arts, the Divine Sealing Seal could indeed imprison his divine essence.

But so what?

Countless times he had stood on the brink of body and soul being utterly extinguished. Countless times he had been knocked down, yet in the end had it ever not been he who survived and the enemy who perished? Even against Hades, the Asura King who had once been invincible, he had shown no fear, instead battling him head-on for over a hundred rounds.

That time, he had still won. Yet he felt no joy that a victor ought to have, because he knew Hades had lost only because he had been ambushed by those wretches who spent their days on plots and tricks and lacked the courage for direct combat. Deep in his heart, he had always remained unwilling to accept it—unwilling to accept that he had never defeated Hades openly.

Since he had not beaten Hades in fair and honorable combat, this so-called title of strongest war god bestowed upon him was, in his own eyes, nothing short of a joke.

And yet, after an eternity beyond counting, Hades was finally about to return. At last there would be a chance to settle the outcome with Hades in the open. How could he miss it, after so many countless ages without meeting a true rival?

God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

He said, Let it be shattered, and after sealing his divine essence for three months, the Divine Sealing Seal truly shattered.

The broken seal turned into the energy of heaven and earth, vast and boundless. He sensed it carefully and discovered that the power forming the seal had actually come from the stars above.

No wonder it had been able to imprison him for more than three months. At the highest point of this world created by Hades, the Asura King, using the advantage of altitude to gather such immense stellar force and condense it into a Divine Sealing Seal—who was the one emitting that utterly disgusting presence?

The man with the iron case on his back slowly opened his eyes and, with utmost casualness, looked toward the direction in which that odious presence had departed. Two beams of light flashed from his eyes, racing along the trail left three months earlier by that person and vanishing in an instant.

Having done this, the man slowly rose. The thick snow packed around his lower body scattered, broke apart, and turned to powder.

“Hades, where are you?” A voice, a little hoarse and filled with murderous intent, echoed for a long time over the summit of Lost Mountain, yet it was also saturated with unwillingness and longing.

Lifting a hand, he lightly pressed it over the right side of his chest, where a huge scar lay. Recalling the battle that had left him with that terrifying wound, the man with the iron case murmured, “Hades, it still hurts even now. You are truly strong. Please do not disappoint me.”

He closed his eyes again, and in an instant his divine sense spread outward, sweeping across the snowfield, the cracks in the rock, the ridgelines, and down toward the mountain below.

On the snow-blanketed summit of Lost Mountain, where it snowed year-round, the sky was once again filled with white flakes as it always had been, soft as goose down, falling one after another in endless abundance.

The party led by the poet continued upward toward Lost Mountain. Returning to an old place stirred countless emotions in him. Looking at the great trees he had once cut down, now sprouting new branches, he was reminded of his former self, and of the old man of those days.

As they climbed higher, the snow line gradually came into view, and it was then that the woman named Flowing Moon ordered the group to stop and instructed everyone to take out the snow fox demon cores issued by the spirit realm and swallow them.

For the poet, this was already his second one. Looking at the demon core in his palm, he could not help but recall that day, when the old man had been pinching the nipple of the snow fox he himself had strangled, looking indecently pleased with himself. Somehow, it felt strangely unfamiliar.

At some point, he had grown accustomed to the old man being by his side, accustomed to hearing his endless muttering, accustomed to listening to him recount his former glory again and again, accustomed to clinking cups with him over wine.

“Be sure to wait for me to come back,” he thought silently.

Going around the foot of Lost Mountain, the group heading south through the barren lands moved farther and farther across the plain beyond the spirit realm, until they seemed about to vanish into the green horizon. Walking in the middle of the column, the old man looked back once more toward the mountain range of Lost Mountain, already blurred beyond recognition.

You climb the mountain; I will travel far away.

As the man with the iron case opened his eyes, a pressure of overwhelming force burst from him, yet vanished without trace in the very next instant. He looked toward the western foot of Lost Mountain and said, “You are below the mountain. I am on the mountain.”

Then he looked toward the eastern foot, gazing for a long while before saying, “This seems a little interesting.”

On the mountain road along the eastern side of Lost Mountain, a force of several hundred elite beasts was racing upward at breakneck speed under the leadership of Heavenly Wolf, surging like a stampede.