First Rebirth

“Wei Wuxian is dead. Good riddance!”

The Siege of the Burial Mounds had barely ended, and before the next day, the news flew like winged birds across the entire cultivation world, spreading even faster than the war itself had once done.

For a time, whether noble families or mountain-field wanderers, everyone discussed this siege campaign, jointly led by the four great mystic clans and fought by the Hundred Clans of the Mystic Gate.

“Wonderful, wonderful, truly a great relief! Which hero personally cut down this Yiling Patriarch?”

“Who else could it be? His shidi, the young clan leader Jiang Cheng. The Four Great Clans — the Yunmeng Jiang Clan, the Lanling Jin Clan, the Gusu Lan Clan, and the Qinghe Nie Sect — led the charge, righteous and unsparing, and wiped out Wei Wuxian’s lair, the Burial Mounds, in one fell swoop.”

“I must say a word of fairness: a good killing.”

Immediately someone clapped and loudly echoed: “Well said, a good killing! If the Yunmeng Jiang Clan hadn’t taken him in and nurtured him, Wei Ying would have been nothing but a worthless drifter in the streets and villages his whole life… let alone anything else. The former Clan Leader Jiang treated him as his own son. Yet he openly defected, made himself an enemy of all the clans, disgraced the Yunmeng Jiang Clan, and nearly caused the Jiang family to be wiped out. What do you call repaying kindness with enmity, a white-eyed wolf? This is it!”

“Jiang Cheng actually let that scoundrel run rampant for so long. If it were me, back when Wei defected, I wouldn’t have just stabbed him once — I would have directly cleaned house. Then he wouldn’t have had the chance to do all those insane things later. With someone like that, what talk of brotherhood and childhood bonds can there be?”

“But that’s not what I heard. Wei Ying didn’t die from his own evil art backfiring, devoured and gnawed by his own ghost generals? I heard he was bitten to pieces alive, ground right down to powder.”

“Hahaha… That’s what you call instant karma. I’ve been wanting to say, the batch of ghost generals he raised were like a pack of mad dogs off the leash, biting everywhere. In the end, they bit him to death. Serves him right!”

“That may be so, but in this Siege of the Burial Mounds, if young Clan Leader Jiang hadn’t planned around the Yiling Patriarch’s weaknesses, success would have been far from certain. Don’t forget what Wei Wuxian had in his hands — one night, over three thousand renowned cultivators were wiped out completely.”

“Wasn’t it five thousand?”

“Three thousand or five thousand, it’s about the same. I think five thousand is more likely.”

“Truly insane…”

“Before he died, he destroyed the Yin Tiger Seal. That can be counted as some accumulated merit. Otherwise, leaving that wretched thing behind to keep plaguing the mortal world would have been an even deeper sin.”

As soon as the words “Yin Tiger Seal” were spoken, a sudden silence fell, as if everyone were wary of something.

After a moment, someone sighed:

“Ah… To speak of Wei Wuxian, back in the day, he was a highly renowned young master among the cultivation clans, and not without his good deeds. He rose to fame in his youth — how splendid and carefree… Just how did he end up like this…”

The topic shifted, and the chatter rose again.

“From this we can see, cultivation must eventually stick to the orthodox path. The Crooked Demonic Path may be glorious for a time, seemingly arrogant and impressive? Hah, what was the final outcome?”

Emphatic: “Died without an intact corpse!”

“It’s not entirely the fault of his cultivation path. Ultimately, Wei Wuxian’s character was simply too rotten, provoking both heaven’s wrath and men’s resentment. As they say, good and evil have their rewards, and heaven’s way has its cycles…”

…

After death, final judgments were made. The opinions were all much the same; the occasional faint dissenting voice would immediately be suppressed.

But a lingering shadow remained in everyone’s heart.

Although the Yiling Patriarch Wei Wuxian had died in the Burial Mounds, after the deed was done, they could not summon his remaining soul.

His soul might have been devoured along with his body when the myriad ghosts consumed him, or perhaps it had fled.

If the former, naturally everyone would rejoice and the whole world celebrate. However, the Yiling Patriarch wielded the power to overturn heaven and earth, to move mountains and drain seas — at least, so the rumors said. If he wished to resist soul summoning, it would be no difficult matter. Once, in some future day, his original spirit reconstituted and he performed Body Seizing to be reborn, then the Hundred Clans of the Mystic Gate, and even the entire human realm, would face an even more insane vengeance and curse, plunging into endless darkness and bloody storms.

Therefore, after pressing one hundred and twenty mountain-suppressing stone beasts atop the Burial Mounds, the great clans began frequent soul-summoning rituals, while strictly investigating instances of Body Seizing, gathering reports of strange phenomena everywhere, and maintaining full vigilance.

The first year, calm and peaceful.

The second year, calm and peaceful.

The third year, calm and peaceful.

…

The thirteenth year, still calm and peaceful.

By then, more and more people came to believe that perhaps Wei Wuxian wasn’t that great after all, that perhaps his spirit and soul had truly been extinguished.

Even one who once could turn his hand to clouds and his palm to rain would one day become the one overturned.

No one is forever enshrined upon the altar of gods; legends are only ever just legends.