All Heavenly destiny reduced to ashes
Chapter 667 - 43 Qu Tong (1/5)

Chapter 667: Chapter 43 Qu Tong (1/5)

In the depths of the Fortress Area.

The most advanced Heavenly Mechanism Armor was covered in ash and dried blood, making the silver articulated shell look mottled and as if it were corroded. Qu Tong wiped its joints with a moist cloth, as gently as one might treat a prematurely deceased daughter, to prevent it from getting stuck during the upcoming battle.

"Boss."

A series of hurried footsteps, the door opened, and Iron Skull, who was missing an eye and half of his brain, replaced by a metal plate, spoke up: "Orders from above have come down; we are to capture someone alive, a kid; we need to set out right now."

"I know."

Qu Tong didn’t even lift his eyelids; he was absorbed in cleaning the Heavenly Mechanism Armor that had already been stained with too much blood. His disheveled hair made him resemble a wild man, a vagrant, a beggar, and a madman—everything but a Cultivator, or someone capable of wielding Heavenly Mechanism Armor, a Tribulation Cultivator at the Peak of Qi Refining.

Iron Skull had not yet left; though he was missing half of his head, he was still the smartest one in Qu Tong’s crew. He said impatiently: "Boss, don’t brush it off; even that Automatic Puppetry was taken down by the enemy forces. We have to give it our all."

"We have bombs in our heads; if we don’t obey, we die! Hurry up, or we’re all dead!"

Iron Skull had always been somewhat disrespectful to him since he was an Array Master. Although Qu Tong was the most advanced in cultivation among this gang of Robber Cultivators, he had joined halfway through. He was a Feather Transformation Cultivator, consuming the most resources of the group. Without an Array Master maintaining things, he wouldn’t last half a year.

Of course, within that half-year, he had enough time to kill everyone. The group was afraid he’d go mad with demonic possession, so they let him become the leader, and thus they all continued their days in superficial harmony but actually estranged.

But the life of people in the Wilderness was never long-lasting, and it goes without saying for Robber Cultivators.

A few months ago, a group of people of unknown origin captured them all, just like an eagle snatching chicks—along with several other Robber Cultivator gangs from the surrounding area. At the moment when a group of old acquaintances looked around speechlessly, a Feather Transformation Cultivator who was three meters tall appeared and forcibly equipped everyone with Divine Soul Chips and Divine Soul Curse Gu. With a single thought, they could corrupt the Soul and Spirit, explode the brain, and forever prevent them from transcending.

Subsequently, these mysterious people arranged a series of missions for them, providing them with exceptionally extraordinary equipment never seen before. Whether it was the Heavenly Mechanism Armor, military weaponry, heavy Sword Boxes, various types of missiles, rocket launchers, and self-operating weapons, overnight, these lowlifes wallowing in the Wilderness’s filthy ditches became the strongest martial force in the surrounding Wilderness.

But in the end, they were nothing more than stray dogs.

Qu Tong still remembered the joy when he received the Heavenly Mechanism Armor, something he had long sought but could not obtain. But soon, he realized that none of these things belonged to him; to those mysterious forces, the lives of people like them were nothing but their property, merely armed for the purpose of achieving their goals.

During these months, they had been intercepting all teams passing through the surrounding areas of the North Lake. As the teams they attacked grew more sophisticated and significant, Qu Tong’s heart grew colder and colder.

—Those who could provoke so many forces and still live simply did not exist, and the same was true for forces.

They were to be abandoned, or rather, they were always meant to die; it was only a matter of sooner or later.

But he did not want to die.

Especially not under their control.

Even in death, Qu Tong wanted it to be by his own will.

That mysterious great force, those... City People...

Once again, they had stolen his heart and spirit.

Wiping down his Heavenly Mechanism Armor, Qu Tong remembered sixteen years ago, at the tribal ritual, when he defeated his own uncle at the age of fourteen. Already at the Qi Refinement third level and adept in the Art of Magic, no elder was his match.

Geniuses could emerge from the Wilderness, and Qu Tong was one among them. With an agile mind since childhood, he learned from books and easily grasped the essence of the arts. While others grew weary and forced themselves through runes and numbers, he read them with delight, finding every unraveling of a conundrum a hundred times more pleasurable than love.

"Go to the city."

Relations within the small tribe were close-knit; Qu Tong’s brothers revered him, and his uncles and aunts had high hopes for him. The Wilderness was in dire need of a genius to ensure the tribe’s survival, yet they were greedy, selfless, hoping Qu Tong would ascend to high-level Qi Refining, reach the peak, and even become a Great Cultivator of Foundation Establishment.

Then... they would no longer be a tribe but could build towns, achieve some deeds, renounce some freedom, and join the safety zones as residents.

Qu Tong had no grand ambitions; he just wanted to stay in the tribe, become the tribal leader, live a good life, plant more crops, raise more chickens and fish. Life would simply go on.

But his uncle and father both advised against it.

"With your talent, you should go to the city."

With earnest persuasion they said: "I know your aptitude may not mean much in the city, but even if you learn just the basics and return, it would be immensely beneficial to our tribe—if in the future you could establish some connections there, it would be infinitely useful. Just look at neighboring Bitter Vine Village; they manage to sell their cultivated bitter vines to the city every year, securing a stable income to support more cultivators and purchase more martial equipment."

Qu Tong was persuaded.

So, with the hopes of his entire tribe, he arrived in the safety zone and went to Xuanye City, dedicating himself to learning in the glittering, neon-bathed metropolis.

As he didn’t have city residency, he couldn’t officially become a student at any academy, yet even the lectures he audited, supplementary courses, and free public knowledge were enough for Qu Tong to distinguish himself. He joined a Wilderness exploration company and, with their support, broke through the high-level Qi Refining barrier.

But he was too young, too... foolish.

With the company’s support, Qu Tong became a Feather Transformation Cultivator—although it was merely a superficial Feather Transformation with a rate below fifteen percent, he had indeed embarked on this path.

Not until then did he realize that becoming a Feather Transformation Cultivator meant being entirely under company control.

The meridians of the Evergreen Wood integrated with flesh and blood as one; this Spirit Plant, the oldest progenitor, hailing from before the Tianyuan Realm was even formed, was part of the most ancient legends where it stemmed from the original Sky-supporting Building Wood of the Dao Courtyard. Its potential was limitless, growing with the person, and even if one lost their body, a new body could be forged from Evergreen Wood and Spirit Iron to be reborn anew.

There is a legend within the Dao Courtyard of a Dharma Protecting Heavenly God who, under various reasons, sacrificed his bones to his father and his flesh to his mother, abandoning his original body. A new body was crafted by a Heavenly Venerate using Spiritual Lotus as the material. This is the inspiration for today’s Feather Transformation Dao.