Slowly, one by one, all the cultivators and demons on the battlefield regained their sight and vision. Even so, their sight was filled with spots, their ears were ringing, and a sense of nausea caused them unable to fly or stand straight.
Xia Yushan made a retching sound, but nothing came out of his mouth. It had to be known that when a cultivator reached the Core Formation Realm or Acupoint Opening Realm, they had reached a point of total mastery of their body, and nausea was practically impossible. However, the shockwaves of Tianyi’s attack from earlier had allowed these mighty cultivators to feel as if they had reverted to ordinary mortals once more.
After finally suppressing the uncomfortable feeling resulting from Tianyi’s clash with the Unity Realm level demon, Xia Yushan surveyed the surrounding. He saw that many cultivators and demons were still too affected even to bother continuing combat, and then he looked towards the origin of the clash.
High in the air, Tianyi was panting like a man who had almost drowned to death. His clothes were full of tears and holes even though the materials used to refine them were at the Immortal Realm, and for the first time in years, Tianyi felt fatigued. Not just mental fatigued, but physical fatigue. His previous attack had exceeded all his expectations.
The attack, which he temporarily called Spacetime Collapse, had drained over seventy percent of his qi instantly. Tianyi had never planned to use so much in one attack. Once he had unleashed the attack, the mechanism behind the attack began to evolve and move on its own as if it was following some unknown law outside of Tianyi’s control, causing the extreme power.
During that instant, Tianyi saw the boundaries of the Demon Cage Realm tear, with wormholes leading to the Vast Void, which all the realms of the Three Thousand Immortal Realms System existed in. Luckily, Tianyi’s strength had allowed him to resist the suction of the Vast Void and anchor himself within the Demon Cage Realm long enough for the dimensional tears to heal. Ragingflame Crow, on the other hand, wasn’t as lucky.
That wasn’t to say that Ragingflame Crow had been sucked into the Vast Void, but he almost had. As a result, one of his wings and a portion of his torso was severed and missing. This wasn’t just a matter of his body part being torn, but something more esoteric.
“Hrahhh!!” Ragingflame Crow yelled as flames burst from his wound. He wasn’t proficient in healing or regeneration, but using the concept of immortal flames, he still had some means. However, to his shock and horror, his missing body parts did not regenerate. Ragingflame Crow even felt that his current state of having only one wing was his natural state.
It wasn’t just Ragingflame Crow’s body that had been damaged, but his soul. As a result, his body and soul’s natural state had been changed into his current form, and healing such a wound would be near impossible with the demon’s power. The only reason he had yet to discover it yet was that the damage was brought about by the natural laws of the realm.
Because the dimensional tear had been closed by the natural laws of the Demon Cage Realm when it bifurcated Rangingflame Crow’s body, it was considered an attack from the realm itself, thus the aftereffects.
Feeling the greatest sense of crisis in his life, Ragingflame Crow ignored everything and fled. He forgot about the death of Nightmare Heart and the numerous demons still on the battlefield. Ragingflame Crow’s only desire was to escape from the terrifying Tianyi. He wanted vengeance, but he would only attain vengeance if he were still alive.
Recalling his fellow elders’ words, Ragingflame Crow felt like slapping himself with his missing wing. If only he had taken their words more seriously, he would not have underestimated the cultivators and landed in his current situation.
Ragingflame Crow became a flaming meteor once more, only this time, he was fleeing as fast as possible from Tianyi and the rest of the cultivators.
Tianyi slowly exhaled as he coldly watched Ragingflame Crow flee. He had never felt so empty before, and even his generation of qi had become a fraction of what it once was. In his current state, he had no confidence in slaying the Unity Realm level demon. Even if he didn’t, there was someone else who was.
“Come back here demon and face your judgment!” Xia Yushan yelled as he chased after the fleeing Ragingflame Crow. Not just him, but several of the disciples eyeing Ragingflame Crow from afar before Tianyi had made a move also gave chase.
The body of Unity Realm level demon was a treasure trove to disciples like them. Even if they offended Tianyi, it would be worth it in their opinions. However, this only applied to Xia Yushan and the weaker disciples. The top elite disciples would naturally be given resources at the Unity Realm, while Xia Yushan sought the blood that flowed in the crow demon’s body.
Tianyi himself didn’t give chase and instead returned to the immortal boat. In his eyes, the corpse of a Unity Realm demon wasn’t worth that much.
“Tianyi, are you alright?” Daoyi immediately asked after Tianyi landed.
“What happened?” Xi Ri asked soon after.
“Nothing much, one of the demons had some soul techniques, and I was struck. It wasn’t much, and I easily broke out of it,” Tianyi lightly said, but both Daoyi and Xi Ri could tell Tianyi wasn’t in a good mood. “After I killed him, that Unity Realm equivalent demon attacked me. I guess the demon with the soul abilities was quite valuable.”
Tianyi didn’t explain what occurred to him when the soul technique struck him and what happened afterward, but both Daoyi and Xi Ri could tell that something must have happened. When Tianyi finished explaining that the last explosion was a result of his newest technique, he said, “Alright, you two drive the immortal boat. I need to recuperate my qi.”
Both Daoyi and Xi Ri looked at Tianyi in shock. The inexhaustible qi generating monster known as Tianyi needed to actually recover his qi? Was that move really that powerful?
Daoyi and Xi Ri had watched the events from inside the protection of the immortal boat. Except for the loud explosion and blinding, nothing seemed different. It didn’t even look a little bit like the apocalypse at all. In fact, they feared the shockwaves from Leviathan Ancestor more.
Tianyi felt his lips twitching at Daoyi and Xi Ri’s expression and actions, but he didn’t say anything in the end. He returned to his room within the immortal boat and laid down on the bed.
Earlier, when he unleashed his technique, the profundities of his technique explosively increased and ran out of control, but thanks to that, Tianyi was able to gain deeper insight into the concept of spacetime. Not to mention he also directly observed the dimensional boundary repairing itself. With that experience, Tianyi felt that as long as he ruminated for a while, his mastery of spacetime would increase.
Tianyi wanted to comprehend the concept of spacetime he had been exposed to and merged them into his budding dao. When cultivators reached an advanced enough understanding of a concept of the world’s laws, they could integrate and form a dao seed from which their dao would sprout. Mengfei had used the concept of man, earth, and heaven to form her Dao of Heaven, Earth, and Man.
Usually, this step would begin at the Immortal Realm. Hence it was also alternatively called the Dao Seeking Realm. Still, in the long history of the Huang Realm, there have been some cases of the process beginning at the Nascent Soul Realm.
Tianyi hadn’t planned on forming his dao seed now, but the benefits he reaped allowed him to condense a preliminary form of it. But before that, there was something more urgent he had to do. Closing his eyes, Tianyi inspected his inner cosmos.
With over seventy percent of his true qi of chaos gone, the generation of his qi had drastically slowed down. Tianyi had originally thought his nine spiritual core were the source of his true qi of chaos, but he realized that he was only partly right upon closer inspection. He discovered that his true qi of chaos was actually naturally generating more qi by itself!
Cutlvaitors could only produce true qi when they formed their spiritual cores, and all sources of true qi came from their core. To speed up the production of true qi, cultivators absorbed spiritual qi and converted it to true qi, but there has never been a case of true qi producing true qi. To do so went against the laws set down by the Heavenly Dao.
Tianyi knew that such a thing should have been impossible. This wasn’t mentioned at all in Primordial Heavenly Scripture. Could it be a unique feature of my Nine-Five Scripture? I’ll have to confirm when Ba Shifang enters the Core Formation Realm.
The Dao produced one, one produced two, two produced three.
Tianyi recalled the excerpt from the Dao De Jing. Perhaps an immortal monarch who had completed their dao would be able to accomplish such a feat, but Tianyi was still a nascent soul grandmaster. Logically, such a phenomenon should not occur within Tianyi.
Tianyi closed his eyes and began to observe the process of how his inner cosmos operated. He had thought he had understood everything about his inner cosmos but realized he was wrong. Perhaps it was newfound mastery of spacetime that resulted in all this. Nevertheless, Tianyi had a feeling that as long as he understood everything about his inner cosmos, the path to the next realm should be illuminated to him.
While Tianyi was cultivating in his room, the battle outside had begun to reach a conclusion. With Ragingflame Crow demon fleeing, the morale of the demons plummeted.
Once all the demons were slain or fled, the disciples from the various sect gathered and searched for the corpses of their fallen brothers and sister. To their shock and surprise, none of them could find any corpses, not even their clothes.
“That damn demon, not even leaving behind a full body to be buried!” One of the disciples cursed.
None of the disciples thought it was strange that there weren’t any bodies left behind. Of course, some may suspect something was strange, but without proof, they could only attribute it to Ragingflame Crow’s destructive power.
When Xia Yushan and the others who chased after the fleeing demon elder returned, none of their faces were good. Despite their best efforts, Ragingflame Crow still managed to escape their encirclement. Logically speaking, such an occurrence was only natural because their target was a Unity Realm level expert, but after seeing Tianyi’s fight against Ragingflame Crow, they all felt a sense of inferiority and unwillingness.
Why was the difference so big?
As participants of the Demon Slaying Expedition, they were all elite disciples of their sect and had great confidence in themselves. In their minds, even if it were the disciples of the Buzhou Immortal Sect, the difference should not be too significant. However, reality showed them how vast the gulf was. Repelling and defeating a Unity Realm level expert as a nascent soul grandmaster were two completely different concepts.
For Xia Yushan, he felt an unspeakable emotion burning within him. He still recalled when Tianyi was still a foundation establishment disciple. Although Tianyi had been outstanding then, the difference wasn’t so pronounced then. Now, however…
A sense of urgency flickered within Xia Yushan’s eyes. In his view, although some of the top disciples of the vassal sects were comparable to him, that was only currently. In the future, he would surpass eventually, but Tianyi was different. Just the incomprehensible power Tianyi displayed before showed that the difference between would only grow larger. In Xia Yushan’s mind, there was no doubt that Tianyi would have the power of an earth immortal when he entered the Unity Realm.
The heavens aren’t fair. If I weren’t born as that bastard’s son, if I were born as Grand Elder Xi’s son, that strength would have been mine!
Why is it he that was born as Grand Elder Xi’s son?
If it were me, I would have surpassed him. My willpower is far above him, my accomplishment would supersede his! Isn’t it just a difference in birth? I’ll show you, no matter how good your birth is, the most important matter is yourself!
Sensing that his emotions were running out of control, even beginning to develop a sense of murderous intent towards Tianyi, Xia Yushan quickly chanted the visualization technique that Sect Master Xia bestowed upon him. Soon after, he felt his mind clear and the burning sensation within him cool.
It was a pity. If he had managed to slay the Unity Realm level demon, his goal would have been accomplished. Even though Ragingflame Crow focused on fire rather than yang, just his status as a Unity Realm level existence would have allowed Xia Yushan to extract enough yang essence from his blood.
Shaking his head, Xia Yushan turned his head towards the rest of the disciples. Because of Ragingflame Crow’s action, he had many matters to clean up, such as counting the casualties and maintaining morale.
No matter how powerful he was, he didn’t dare to assault the Golden Crow Clan by himself. And it was likely this was the safest possible distance they could reach without incurring the Golden Crow Clan’s ancestor’s retaliation.
Not to mention, he had to placate the vassal sects’ disciples. Although they had all agreed to the plan and understood the risks, it was unavoidable that they would develop animosity towards him after today’s losses. As someone who was skilled and had experience in such matters, Xia Yushan knew that the longer he delayed, the worse the situation would become.
“My fellow daoists…” Xia Yushan said after he gathered the top disciples of each sect, including his own. Even Daoyi and Xi Ri appeared, but Tianyi remained in his immortal boat, something that almost caused Xia Yushan’s negative emotions to flare up once more. However, he quickly suppressed it, he could not afford to act willfully.
“Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!!” Ragingflame Crow screamed as fire erupted around him, burning the vibrant leaves of the tree he was on.
Two weeks had passed since the disastrous operation, and he had been continually trying to heal his wound, but nothing he tried worked. Perhaps only his ancestor could heal his injuries, but Ragingflame Crow was too ashamed to face the clan’s reverent ancestor.
“Ragingflame Crow, are you done throwing your tantrum?” A serene voice said, causing Ragingflame Crow’s bird face to grimace.
He looked up to see Flametailed Peacock and Ashflame Crow descending onto his parasol tree. If Golden Crow Ancestor was the demon he didn’t want to see the most, then his two fellow elders were the demons he didn’t want to face second.
“What do you two want,” Ragingflame Crow sulkily said, not daring to meet the two’s eyes.
