Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Chapter 954: The Unbreakable Heart

The cultivators stepped forward as a single massive wave and the heavy doors of the Temple of Purity swallowed them one by one. There was no light inside the massive structure and there was no sound to guide them. As Li Yu crossed the threshold, he felt a strange and powerful pulling sensation grip his entire body. The freezing mountain air vanished while the comforting presence of the Freeblade Alliance members beside him faded into nothingness.

The spatial arrays of the temple activated and isolated everyone. They were all able to enter the structure at one time but they were immediately teleported to their own isolated space. The test of the Dao heart had begun.

Li Mei found herself standing on a long bridge made of pristine white stone. The void around her was grey and completely empty. She understood immediately that this was the physical manifestation of her path toward the Dao, her path towards her future.

For her, the Dao was entirely intertwined with her ambition to lead the Li Clan to a new era of glory. She walked forward with a confident stride and the grey shadows began to form into physical shapes. The temple projected the opponents she would inevitably face on her journey to ultimate power.

Her uncle materialized first. He controlled the vital trade routes of their family and he sneered at her authority while telling her she was not worthy to lead. She drew her sword and bypassed his political traps with cold efficiency.

An older cousin appeared next. He was an elder favorite and his sword intent was as heavy as a mountain and he told her she lacked the power required to rule. She gritted her teeth and pushed past his imposing aura while shattering his sword in her mind.

Several other figures blocked her way as she marched forward across the bridge. She faced them all with her aristocratic mask firmly in place and her refined sword arts ready. She defeated or bypassed every single political and martial rival the temple threw at her with relative ease. Then, the final obstacle formed at the very end of the white bridge.

The shadows coalesced into a figure that made her blood run entirely cold. It was Li Yu. However, this projection was not a normal size at all. He stood nearly five times as big as the other opponents she had faced and he looked down at her with indifference.

Two of the ten great swords of the Li Clan circled around his massive form. Gilded Calamity radiated a tyrannical golden light, while Firmament's End projected a sharp and crushing suppression.

He did not need to speak or attack her. The pressure of his existence and the ancestral authority he wielded threatened to crush her entire ambition into dust. She gripped her sword tightly and stared up at the impossible mountain blocking her path.

At another place in the temple, Li Yu had appeared.

He arrived in a dark void without a bridge or a path to guide him. He simply sat down on the invisible floor and closed his eyes as he waited for the temple to make its move. The darkness around him began to twist and warp as the temple searched his soul for hidden weaknesses and began to project his deepest fears.

He saw a familiar and vibrant landscape from the lower realms. His friends stood together in a green field under a warm sun. He saw Jian Xuan practicing his sword forms while Kui laughed loudly at a joke in his cheerful manner. Malos stood nearby and observed them with his usual calm demeanor. One by one his friends from his journey appeared before him. Li Yu smiled and called out to them.

They stopped what they were doing and turned their heads away from him. They simply turned around and began to walk away. Li Yu stood up quickly and tried to run after them. He pushed his legs as fast as he could but the distance between them only grew larger. The harder he ran, the further they slipped away.

They moved further and further away from him until they became tiny specks on the horizon and faded into the mist. He felt a terrible sense of isolation gripping his chest. He was moving forward on his path to power but he was leaving them behind in the process. He reached out his hand one last time but he could not reach them and the image disappeared before him.

Li Yu sat back down in the dark void with a heavy sigh. The temple did not give him a single moment to rest. The space shifted again and he saw Lian. She stood in the center of the void while a chaotic storm of shadowy figures surrounded her on all sides.

Each figure was a faceless man reaching out to grab her arms and her clothes. They whispered promises and each one tried to pull her towards them. Li Yu felt a sudden spike of anger and he wanted to summon his swords to cut the shadows down.

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Then, the scene changed in a way he did not expect. Lian did not fight back against the shadows. She smiled softly and approached one of them willingly. She reached her hands up to the dark figure and leaned in very close. Just when their lips were about to touch in a kiss, the image disappeared.

Li Yu was completely stunned. He sat frozen in the void as he processed what he had just witnessed. He always thought he was a pragmatic person who could detach himself when needed. Yet, seeing her choose someone else sent a violent and physical ache through his heart. It stunned him to realize just how much something like that would affect him. He cared for her far more deeply than he had ever known or admitted to himself.

The void turned a deep crimson red before he could recover his breath.

He saw his parents standing back to back in the center of a ruined city. His mother and his father were covered in blood and exhaustion. They were fighting desperately against a massive tide of shadowy monsters that poured from the sky.

The enemies were endless and their Qi was clearly failing. Li Yu tried to rush forward to help them but an invisible wall of force held him in place. A shadow blade slipped past his father's flowing defense. Just as the dark blade was about to impale his parents, the image disappeared.

Li Yu was breathing heavily now and his hands were curled into tight fists. The feeling of powerlessness was a poison in his veins.

The battlefield reappeared but it was much larger and far more brutal this time. His grandfather Zhan Tian stood alone on a mountain of shattered corpses. The old man was holding back thousands upon thousands of terrifying shadowy figures all by himself. He swung his glaive and roared with defiance but the scale of the enemy was simply impossible to overcome.

His grandfather turned his head and looked directly at Li Yu. He yelled for Li Yu to run and save himself as a massive spear of darkness descended from the sky and impaled the old man through the chest. The image disappeared instantly.

The Temple of Purity waited in the silence. It had shown him the bitter loss of his friends and the heartbreak of his love. It had shown him the brutal death of his family. It expected his Dao heart to crack under the overwhelming weight of despair and powerlessness.

Instead of despairing though, Li Yu's resolve skyrocketed to an entirely new level.

He remained seated on the floor of the void with his eyes tightly closed. The fear and the sadness burned away and they were replaced by a cold and absolute fury. He never ever wanted to see those scenes ever again. He vowed to himself that he would never allow that to happen.

He would not be weak. He would become the strongest cultivator the Myriad Realms had ever seen and he would protect everything he holds dear. He would not rely on fate or luck to keep his family safe.

He would defend his people with overwhelming force. He would fight for his own future and he would destroy everything in his path in order to achieve his peace and happiness. His conviction became an unbreakable fortress of iron that the temple could not pierce. It was at this moment that his killing intent exploded out again.

It erupted from his body like a physical shockwave of pure malice and unyielding survival. He remained seated and he did not even realize what was happening since he was still trapped in the lingering echoes of the illusions.

The dark void around him began to tremble violently. His soul space opened and his five souls appeared behind him as if they were there to show their support.

His own Human soul anchored the center, while the ethereal Koi Soul swam silently through the dark air alongside the massive and imposing figure of the Whale Soul. Muddy, the sturdy water buffalo, stood its ground with an unyielding presence.

Then, the Fisherman stepped forward.

The old man in the straw hat slowly raised his head. The Fisherman's killing intent exploded outward and it was nearly one hundred times greater than Li Yu's own terrifying aura. It was a suffocating pressure of ancient slaughter that defied the natural order.

The Fisherman opened his eyes and his gaze seemed to destroy everything it looked at. The very reality within the temple was breaking down and shattering everywhere he looked. The invisible walls of the isolated space began to crack and splinter under the weight of his fury and resolve.

Outside the isolated void, the entire Temple of Purity reacted to the anomaly.

The massive black stone structure shook and groaned loudly. Deep cracks appeared in the frost covered ground around the foundation. The elders waiting outside on the snowy plateau were stunned about what was happening within. They stared at the trembling temple in terror as the spiritual pressure spiked to impossible heights.

The temple had stood for countless millennia and it had never groaned under the weight of a single trial before. They wondered what kind of monster was being tested inside the black walls. Inside the splintering void, the temple spirit finally appeared.

It manifested as a glowing orb of white light that descended from the dark ceiling. The spirit did not attack Li Yu or try to enforce the rules of the trial. Instead, its glowing form shifted and looked at the Fisherman soul standing behind the seated young man.

The temple spirit projected a message of reverence into the void. It stated that it had never seen a person wield such an unbreakable Dao heart on any path in its entire existence. The spirit sent a message saying that it could not believe someone could weather all those years and endure such hardships.

The white light pulsed brightly and a small object materialized in the air. The object flew over to the Fisherman as a reward for showing the trial with such profound purity. The Fisherman did not keep it for himself though. He simply waved his hand and sent the object directly down to Li Yu instead.