The Demon Lord Wants a Vacation - Chapter 8: Task One

Luo Xianyun paused in thought before ultimately choosing to follow the Savior System’s second path—at least for the time being.

His trust in the Savior System remained tenuous. From the moment it declared, “Duanmu Wuqiu will destroy the world,” he had harbored doubt.

No one understood the truth behind the world’s impending cataclysm more deeply than Luo Xianyun himself.

Two centuries ago, he had been on the cusp of ascension.

The progression of cultivation followed the path from Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Law Body, Mahayana, and finally to the Heavenly Tribulation. Only by withstanding the Heavenly Tribulation could one ascend to the immortal realm.

Despite the immense power they wielded, cultivators were not truly immortal. Both mortals and divine beings were bound by finite lifespans.

An ordinary person might live to seventy, and those who were diligent in their health could extend that by another few decades. But beyond the age of one hundred, decline was inevitable.

This inevitable deterioration was known as the Five Declines.

Cultivators pursued enlightenment of the Heavenly Dao to transcend such natural constraints, extending their years through mastery of the spiritual arts.

Qi Refining, though foundational, was still bound to mortal limitations. While a practitioner might remain youthful in appearance even into their seventies, their lifespan would not exceed a hundred years.

Those who reached Foundation Establishment could prolong their lives to approximately one hundred and fifty years.

Golden Core cultivation marked a crucial threshold: a cultivator who reached this stage stepped beyond mortality. Their lifespan extended to five centuries.

Yet after two hundred years, even Golden Core cultivators began to wither with time. Without further breakthroughs, they would live to five hundred years—but with a body aged and worn.

Barring the use of demonic methods to steal the life essence of others, the only way to preserve youth was to reach the Nascent Soul stage.

At that stage, the dantian would birth the Violet Palace, and the body would become a cosmos unto itself. The Nascent Soul imbued the body with vitality, halting the aging process entirely.

Yet even this came with limits. A Nascent Soul cultivator still had a lifespan of five hundred years.

The body might remain youthful, but the end still came—inevitable and unforgiving.

To extend life further, one had to reach the Mahayana stage.

The Law Body stage allowed the Nascent Soul to detach from the physical vessel, taking on forms several meters—or even hundreds of meters—in size. These manifestations could resemble the cultivator or take the shape of mythical beasts or ancient gods, depending on the cultivation method.

Law Body increased lifespan modestly, but true transformation came with Mahayana.

Only those in Mahayana could reach a millennium in age, and be revered as “earthly immortals.”

But even that thousand-year limit was not a restriction of the body—it was the soul that failed.

After a thousand years, no amount of spiritual energy, no ritual or stolen vitality could prevent the soul’s decay. It would regress, memories lost, the mind dulled, the consciousness eventually childlike.

Death, in itself, was not terrifying.

What was truly unbearable was the long torment preceding it.

Moments of joy passed in a flash, but suffering made every day feel eternal.

Faced with the Five Declines, many Mahayana cultivators willingly relinquished their powers and their lives, choosing release over gradual disintegration.

Cultivators, for all their grandeur, were still subject to heavenly law. And in fleeing that fate, they tried everything to stretch out their lives.

Until the first among them transcended.

When the first cultivator ascended, it became clear that the final threshold was the Heavenly Tribulation.

The heavens unleashed five bolts of divine lightning, and to become immortal, one had to temper the mortal form within it—fusing soul and body into unity.

Only then, when soul and body were forged as one, could a cultivator escape mortality and ascend to the upper realms.

Yet few survived the Heavenly Tribulation.

Most perished beneath the thunderous judgment of the skies.

Over time, as more reached this stage, cultivators discerned the principles governing the tribulation.

All along, their actions had been watched.

Those who pillaged and killed without restraint faced cataclysmic tribulations—ones that even immortals struggled to endure.

Those who lived with discipline and compassion faced tribulations so gentle they were little more than a rite of passage.

After the deaths of countless demonic cultivators beneath divine punishment, they finally understood the cost of their ways—and learned restraint.

Though it was difficult to change their nature, over time they found ways to pursue their desires without incurring the wrath of heaven.

Heavenly tribulations brought order.

Demonic cultivators learned to temper themselves. Righteous cultivators recommitted to virtue. The human realm flourished.

But this fragile balance shattered two hundred years ago.

The sky split. Fire rained down. The ground tore apart. Mountains rose where plains had been. Oceans vanished into yawning chasms. Fissures, floods, tsunamis—an endless chain of disasters brought the world to the brink of collapse.

At that time, Luo Xianyun, preparing for his tribulation, was acutely attuned to the changes in the heavens.

And he sensed it immediately: the Heavenly Pillar, which upheld the sky, had cracked.

Luo Xianyun, skilled in the arts of fate, divined a way to delay the collapse—by using spiritual roots to mend the Pillar.

Human spiritual roots could belong to metal, wood, water, fire, earth, or heaven.

Most people possessed all five elemental roots and were relatively healthy, but those missing one or more were often frail and short-lived. Those with three or fewer elements were weaker still.

Those with two roots—especially non-conflicting ones—were rare prodigies in cultivation.

But those with a single elemental root were even more exceptional.

And those with a heavenly spiritual root?

They were miracles—once-in-a-century phenomena, fated to alter the world.

Many revered emperors throughout history had possessed such a root.

Luo Xianyun himself had a heavenly spiritual root.

So too had the first sage who opened the path of cultivation. So too had the first immortal.

Heavenly spiritual roots were destined to usher in transformation.

From childhood, cultivation came effortlessly to Luo Xianyun. At eighteen, he established his foundation. At twenty, formed his Golden Core. By fifty, he had reached the Nascent Soul stage.

Compared to other cultivators who struggled at the Golden Core level for centuries, he had been born for ascension.

Had such a person pursued scholarship, they would have become a peerless sage. In strategy, a peerless ruler. In cultivation, a destined immortal.

And it was precisely this heavenly spiritual root that made him the perfect material to repair the Heavenly Pillar.

Luo Xianyun calculated: seven cultivators with heavenly spiritual roots could restore the Pillar entirely.

But only two existed in the current age—himself, and a boy of sixteen who had just reached Foundation Establishment.

Time was short. The heavens would not wait another century. They had no choice but to substitute in cultivators with pure elemental roots, though the result would be inferior.

Few were willing to die for the world.

Luo Xianyun stepped forward.

The sixteen-year-old youth, though still unready to face the vast world, also offered himself—albeit hesitantly.

Five others with pure elemental roots joined them, all in the Law Body stage.

These seven became known as the Seven Stars of Deliverance.

Ideally, seven Mahayana cultivators with heavenly roots could have repaired the Pillar completely—granting the world another hundred thousand years.

But they fell far short.

Luo Xianyun was the only one near ascension. The youth was barely a novice. The others, only Law Body.

They were mud in a broken dam.

But time ran out, and so they gambled.

They arranged themselves in the formation of the Great Dipper, encircling the Heavenly Pillar, ready to sacrifice themselves.

Their hearts connected, Luo Xianyun could hear the youth’s quiet weeping.

Only sixteen…

Luo Xianyun reflected that he had lived a privileged life, gifted from the start. Ascending at a hundred was unheard of.

To repay the heavens, it was only right for him to give back.

But what of this boy?

Without his consent, his spiritual root could not be fully extracted.

The ritual required unity. If one wavered, they all failed.

In the end, Luo Xianyun could only extract half of their roots—barely patching the Pillar.

The seven survived—but they lost their cultivations. Their bodies weakened, their power gone.

A fissure remained. Celestial wind leaked from it, which Luo Xianyun sealed in Skyfall Gorge.

Afterward, the youth apologized incessantly, ashamed of his hesitation.

No one blamed him.

“There weren’t enough of us,” Luo Xianyun said. “Even if we gave everything, it wouldn’t have been enough.”

“How long will the Pillar last?” someone asked.

He could only shake his head. Even he didn’t know.

But collapse was inevitable.

The sky would fall, the earth rise to meet it, and the world dissolve into formless chaos.

All would perish.

Just as humans faced the Five Declines, so too did the world itself.

The calamity had been nothing more than the world reaching its end.

No more tribulations came. No more ascensions followed.

Aside from the Seven Stars of Deliverance, few knew the truth.

Most only remembered that the sky once split and then the heavens fell silent.

Without tribulations, demonic cultivators lost their fear and restraint. Righteous sects unraveled. Chaos overtook the realm.

Duanmu Wuqiu was born into this hell.

He had been human. Hell made him a demon.

As one of the few who knew the truth, Luo Xianyun refused to believe Duanmu Wuqiu alone could doom the world.

Perhaps the Savior System had foreseen that Duanmu Wuqiu would one day destroy the Pillar.

Perhaps that was why it gave Luo Xianyun two paths—to preserve Duanmu Wuqiu’s dignity, to save him from becoming the world’s scapegoat.

As for the system’s ridiculous talk of bedding and mutual willingness? Luo Xianyun dismissed it as the result of its contamination by the impure world.

And yet… he admitted that the Savior System wasn’t entirely wrong.

Perhaps the Destruction System within Duanmu Wuqiu was a manifestation of an inner demon—or the world’s destiny.

After all, repairing the Pillar had defied heavenly law. A force of destruction was destined to emerge.

Maybe Duanmu Wuqiu was that force.

But Luo Xianyun would not let the burden of destruction rest solely on his shoulders.

Even if Duanmu Wuqiu were to shatter the Pillar and unleash the end, the blame was not his. The world was already dying.

“Honored System,” Luo Xianyun said, “the people are ignorant. If Duanmu Wuqiu becomes the final spark in this dying world, they will call him the destroyer. That is unjust.”

It was Luo Xianyun’s own weakness that had failed the ritual. He hadn’t forced the others. He had held back.

None of this was Duanmu Wuqiu’s fault.

“I’ll do as you suggest. I will guide Duanmu Wuqiu. I will not let him become the sinner who ends the world.

“But spare me your talk of love and marriage. Let’s not speak of that again.”

System: [No problem. That can wait until after Host chooses the second path and falls in love.]

Luo Xianyun: …

There was no persuading it.

Fortunately, the System’s second route required his willing consent.

And without that, it would not act.

Having made up his mind, Luo Xianyun tapped “Accept” on the dialogue box confirming his choice.

System: [Acknowledged. Mapping the host’s step-by-step plan for salvation.]

**Step 1: Prevent Duanmu Wuqiu from killing Song Gui and annihilating the Beichen Sect. Protect his home.]

What?

Luo Xianyun’s pupils constricted.

Duanmu Wuqiu would destroy Beichen Sect?

A surge of alarm swept through him. He realized he had left Duanmu Wuqiu alone on Lingdu Peak for far too long.

He rushed to the door and flung it open.

Outside, he saw Duanmu Wuqiu tilting the last dessert plate into his mouth, crumbs raining down.

Startled by the sudden entrance, Duanmu Wuqiu froze mid-bite, meeting Luo Xianyun’s astonished gaze.

For a moment, neither spoke.

But thankfully, it was Duanmu Wuqiu.

He calmly finished the crumbs, placed the plate back, and snorted.

“This Lord exterminates his enemies the same way he eats sweets—without leaving a single crumb!”

—

Author’s Note:

Duanmu Wuqiu: Hmph! This Lord is flexible and clever. He goes wherever the wind takes him!

Luo Xianyun: …That’s not what that means.

Duanmu Wuqiu: If this Lord says it is, then it is!