Volume 4, Chapter 33 – Saint-Breaking

What kind of Divine Pool is this?

With Jade Spirit Method active the whole time, Bai Xiang had, of course, long noticed that Cui Yuanhao’s Qi presence hadn’t completely dispersed with the shattering of the Tribulation Lotuses. Now, seeing him re-condense out of ice, she was already turning over and guessing at the secrets of his Divine Pool in her mind.

Cui Yuanhao—his title was “Immortal Venerable Hanrong.”

Just now he had been using a flame-type avatar. Later, even after his true body appeared, both his attack and defense kept switching back and forth between ice and fire.

Extinguish his fire and he returned as ice. Extinguish his ice and he revived as flame.

So he was walking one of those “things taken to the extreme reverse” or “extreme cold begets flame” paths?

If you destroyed only one attribute, it wouldn’t bring him defeat or death. Instead, it would trigger the rules of his Divine Pool and let him return in another form?

Wasn’t that essentially a kind of pseudo-immortality?

Could she break it by wiping out both ice and fire at once?

This sort of Divine Pool rule was still fairly straightforward. In Bai Xiang’s eyes, all she had to do was keep that area-wide attack from earlier going long enough, so the very first wisp of Qi as Cui Yuanhao switched between ice and fire was torn apart and blown to bits. Repeat the cycle a few times. There was no way he could come out of it unscathed.

Even if he still managed to revive, there would definitely be a cost, some hidden price being paid in the dark.

Thinking this through, she didn’t slow her hands. Using Taishang resonance, she drove the thunderclouds across the sky into ever fiercer vibration, then copied and replicated them with Jade Spirit Method. This time she simply generated over a hundred thousand Tribulation Lotuses, packing the entire stretch of sky until it was almost solid with them.

“You…” Cui Yuanhao’s face changed slightly at the sight, but before he could say anything more, the familiar silence field spread again. His Dao-Void Method cultivation was instantly suppressed. He couldn’t even keep speaking, much less stay aloft, and he staggered straight down.

Boom! Boom boom boom boom boom—!!!

As the first Tribulation Lotus locked on and exploded, its thunder mallet slammed down viciously. The following hundred thousand bolts of lightning rushed in right behind, one lotus after another, like a line taking turns pounding Cui Yuanhao from the sky all the way to the ground, pressing his mangled body down and gouging a massive pit into the earth.

Pff!

At the exact moment Cui Yuanhao’s fleshly body was blown completely apart, a tiny flame sprouted at the bottom of the pit.

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But the hammering of the thunder mallets did not stop!

The instant the little flame appeared, it was smashed by a single blow, then turned into crystalline ice blossoms, then blown apart again by thunder. The same pattern kept repeating, over and over.

What the hell is this…?!

Blasted to the point of seeing stars and losing even his bones, Cui Yuanhao still couldn’t figure it out before this body perished: how could Bai Xiang, a mere newly advanced Immortal Venerable, show such ridiculous abundance in her “Refining Qi” cultivation… Where did she get that much power to keep spawning Tribulation Lotuses?

And how did she know exactly how to respond to this Divine Pool of his?

She had already broken with the Great Yu Court. Shouldn’t she, like the other natives trapped in the main world, be completely clueless about these mysteries?

As the rules of his Divine Pool ran, his soul power burned away at frightening speed. Knowing he couldn’t let Bai Xiang keep pressing him down like this, Cui Yuanhao gritted his teeth and poured a huge chunk of spiritual power into the Divine Pool Flower that existed in the void. Under the pounding thunder mallets, a strange bloom of intertwined ice and fire finally appeared.

You play with flowers too?

Bai Xiang noticed this ice-fire flower. Once it appeared, it actually blocked the lightning blasts. She immediately shifted the lotus line behind, sending them down in a spiral. The central pillar of thunder kept pinning him in place while the spiral lotuses swung out to wrap him from the flanks.

Like hell I’m letting you keep me pinned… Get lost!

Enraged, Cui Yuanhao let out a long avian cry from the bottom of the pit. A streak of dazzling golden sword Qi suddenly shot up, hacking back up along the thunder pillar. Midway, it took the shape of a giant bird, whose beating wings sliced the pillar in two.

The force of the strike hadn’t even fully run out. What remained cut through the air and slashed to a point right in front of Bai Xiang. She blocked it with her sword in midair, and a shrill blast rang out high above.

Quietly, the clouds over her head were split open by the blow, revealing swaths of blue sky. A few breaths later, fine cracks tore through the space between, with fragments peeling away one after another to show the black void beyond.

Her Void-Imagination Shenming was broken, and Cui Yuanhao finally caught his breath. He re-condensed and drifted back, his gaze toward Bai Xiang now full of wariness.

This demon girl was far too wicked… If he hadn’t brought the Tianxuan Sword to guard his Dao today, he really might have been suppressed by her!

What sword is that?

Bai Xiang’s eyes locked on the long sword in his hand. She could feel it constantly sending out ripples after being drawn, not from any kind of void-vibrating Dao, but purely from power so immense it overflowed on its own.

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“Fellow Daoist Bai.” Cui Yuanhao exhaled and looked seriously at her face. “I’ll ask you one last time. Will you come back to Tianfu Mountain with me or not?”

That sword was likely the vessel for this so-called Saint-Weapon Dao.

So now that he’d taken out a human-path Saint Weapon, he finally felt he had the backing to talk?

Bai Xiang gave no answer at all. She simply circulated her Qi again, vibrating the world’s energies and forcibly plunging this patch of sky back into silence.

So she was really set on resisting the Tianxuan Sword?

Cui Yuanhao laughed angrily. He didn’t waste another word this time. His body shot straight toward Bai Xiang as he swung the sword down at her again.

The flight ban didn’t work.

Bai Xiang watched his flight path, her gaze still fixed on the Tianxuan Sword.

Earlier, the flight ban had hit him hard. This time, it did nothing.

So he was flying purely on the cultivation provided by that sword?

Suddenly—Bai Xiang tossed Feixiang Heaven up into the sky. Her hands came together in a seal, one finger pointing to heaven, the other pointing to earth, one leg folding up as she sat cross-legged in midair like a Buddha or Bodhisattva seated between sky and earth.

Cui Yuanhao’s alarms went off all at once. Instinctively, he searched for the long sword she’d thrown, but he couldn’t see so much as a trace of it anywhere.

The threat of death closed over him in a heartbeat. Just then, the Tianxuan Sword rang on its own, dragging his arm to block up and to the left. Its tip met Feixiang Heaven’s tip head-on, and two opposing shockwaves blasted out sideways from the point of contact.

The change was utterly silent. Not a sound could be heard in the air. All that could be seen was Cui Yuanhao’s mouth stretching into a wild grin as he smashed Feixiang Heaven down out of the clouds with one stroke, then flipped in midair and lunged up to Bai Xiang.

The outcome was decided.

In that final instant, Cui Yuanhao couldn’t help but look at Bai Xiang’s face.

He wanted to know whether, at this moment, at this brink of defeat and death, she could still keep that arrogant expression.

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What he met, instead, were those strange golden eyes.

They hadn’t had much impact from a distance before, but at this range, face-to-face, he instantly felt a wave of dizziness pour straight from his eyes into his brain, slowing his hand just a fraction.

Bang!

That tiny fraction was enough. Bai Xiang yanked her sword back from the void in time and met the Tianxuan Sword head-on. Another blast of force rippled out as the two of them were knocked away from each other.

Bang!

Clang!

What followed, in the law-forbidden airspace, was the most primitive kind of close-quarters blade fight. The two figures wove and crashed through the clouds. At one moment, one of them was smashed into the clouds and dragged a trench through them; in the next, the other was kicked down the mountainside, punching through a dozen layers of rock caverns.

There’s no way I lose fighting like this!

Cui Yuanhao was already fighting in a blaze of fury. His competitive streak was fully ignited; he’d completely forgotten the purpose of this trip. He only wanted to kill the woman in front of him and reclaim his pride that way.

In the midst of it, he took care not to look at Bai Xiang’s face, avoiding any chance of eye contact and slowly pulling himself out of that dizzying interference.

With the Tianxuan Sword’s guidance added in, his strikes grew heavier each time. At last, he gained the upper hand in his clashes with Feixiang Heaven.

Knowing he now held the advantage, Cui Yuanhao deliberately kept his strength at its previous level and instead opened a flaw in his own defense, letting Feixiang Heaven punch through his chest.

Boom—

Grinning savagely, this version of Cui Yuanhao shattered into ice crystals.

The Tianxuan Sword spun downward from the air, and, in the next instant, was seized by a figure of living flame. From a bizarre angle, it scraped along Feixiang Heaven’s edge in a spray of sparks and stabbed straight for Bai Xiang’s heart.

In that moment, Bai Xiang was perfectly calm inside.

She raised her left arm as a shield and let the Tianxuan Sword punch through her forearm.

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Cui Yuanhao’s pupils shrank. He immediately tried to drive the sword into a ripping slash, only to find that no matter how he pushed, it wouldn’t move.

It felt like the “Saint Weapon” in his hand had suddenly turned into common iron, unable to cut even human bone, stuck fast in the flesh.

This… How is this possible!?

Squelch—

But Bai Xiang gave him no time to be shocked.

Feixiang Heaven’s blade pierced up through his jaw, driving through his skull and crown, then cleaved down, splitting him clean in two.

Feeling the temperature around her start to fall, Bai Xiang’s eyes narrowed. She drove the Golden-Pupil Illusory God and stared into the void.

Instantly, Cui Yuanhao’s attempt at revival was cut off.

She seized that sliver of an opening, wielding her sword to draw all the remaining blood and slurry into the blade, then used her soul-abilities to refine it away completely.

Aaah—!!!

A shrill scream seemed to echo through her consciousness.

The Tianxuan Sword shuddered. On instinct, it tried to tear itself free and flee into the void, but its blade simply could not pull out of the flesh it had pierced.

A gust of gale wind blew past.

Once again, Bai Xiang was alone in the sky.

She lifted her pierced left arm to glance at it, then curved her lips, gripped the Tianxuan Sword, pulled it free, and turned to fly back toward the mountain peak.