Volume 5, Chapter 82 – Melee (Three-in-One)

The moment she finished speaking, Bai Xiang’s golden pupils suddenly shifted left. Her right hand closed around the hilt of Feixiang Heaven in midair, her wrist flipped, and she whirled sharply to slash to the left.

She did not hold back at all with this strike.

In fact, if one could see through her body, then at the instant she grasped the sword, one would discover that all three hundred and sixty-one of her acupoints had lit up, flickering like stars and linking into one vast whole.

And at the same time, within Feixiang Heaven, this newly born Dao sword, thirty-six brand-new stars lit up as well, connecting to the starlight points in her arm like the Big Dipper. They flowed into the blooming star-sea, and the radiance burst forth!

Wuuung—

There was no warning at all. Fang Yang only had time to desperately drive his voidbursts to cut open space and use that to force his body lower.

He could tell that although Bai Xiang’s strike had included him within its range, he was not the main target. So when the blade swept toward him, it did not yet carry its full force, its full weight. That gave him just enough time and just enough room to duck his head and barely avoid the blow.

But after that instant, after he had hunched his neck and felt that icy sword-light of death skim over his head, the light became truly unreasonable!

It was still “microcosmic voidburst,” but this was the first time, the very first time in Fang Yang’s experience, that it had been attached to a kind of energetic sword qi, merged into it, fused with it, instead of merely displaying the effect of “void explosion” on its own!

Under that utterly terrifying fusion, the energy form Pang Tiandao had called “Sword Qi Divine Force” blazed with a white radiance ten thousand times brighter than before. Before anyone could react, it spread outward as a blooming “white ring.” Even the “tail” that swept over Fang Yang’s head scythed across nearly two thousand meters in an instant, directly sweeping over the cliffside mountain where Xu Shu and the others were hiding!

“Hold tight!”

At the critical moment, Xu Shu immediately used a sword cultivator’s technique to summon his reforged Dingsi Sword. He stepped onto it like a flying sword and yanked his junior brothers into a line behind him, preventing them from sliding down with the rumbling collapse.

Meanwhile, at the center of the distant battlefield, where Bai Xiang’s sword-point was directed, the void there immediately sensed the intensity of that strike. It rippled like some living thing that had been startled, and jagged burrs even appeared across its surface, like the fur of a demon beast standing on end!

Krrsh!

Slash complete, sword withdrawn, Bai Xiang’s movement was seamless from beginning to end. Only at that moment did the “ring” of her strike truly expand, and everywhere her sword-light spread, every hill, cliff, tree, demon beast… everything in its path was cut apart by that single strike.

It completely ignored the stability of the void in the present world. Although the white radiance of the “ring” vanished in an instant and was already difficult to make out, along every path where it met obstacles and cut through them, within a visible radius of at least three or four thousand meters, it tore open countless black rifts that all slashed upward at the same oblique angle.

Anything cut by it, even if it remained intact for the moment, would not last long. Those “black-rift cut-surfaces” seemed alive. Once touched, they continued to function, constantly spreading “microcosmic voidburst” along the severed plane. At this rate, even the mountains around them that had only been caught in the aftermath would be devoured clean by those “sword scars” within a dozen breaths.

So this was the power of a Sage…

Bai Tingyun’s eyes widened and narrowed at once, unable to hide the shock in his expression.

Including Bai Tingyun, every onlooker had their mind shaken by that strike. One could almost say they had been utterly subdued by the elegance of that sword.

But.

Still holding her sword, Bai Xiang straightened from her sword-withdrawing posture and calmly stared at the void ahead of her.

“With the mech-soldier technology the Federation has revealed so far, there is no way you could block my blade. You embedded at least one Order-Preserving Treasure in your body?”

At her question, the torn void abruptly came alive. The upper and lower halves of the scene that had clearly been severed before actually ignored the black-rift cut-surface and rejoined, shrinking and collapsing toward the center, assembling a blurry human shape like speed lines drawing themselves together.

Once he appeared, the man lifted a hand and swept it across his face. As if changing masks, he revealed an unnaturally pale male face that looked somewhat mixed between East and West. Then he immediately grinned at Bai Xiang.

“Your Majesty the Xia Emperor really is impre—”

Splurt!

He did not even finish his first sentence before the same terrifying spectacle from moments ago reappeared. Another streak of white light descended from above in a vertical chop, entering through his forehead and cutting out through his waist and abdomen. At the same time, the spreading sword-wave swept past the Qingyun Demon Saint hundreds of meters away and lopped off its canopy at a slant.

“What a terrible temper~”

Even after taking another sword strike from Bai Xiang head-on, his body split into two halves, the pale-skinned, black-haired stranger did not die. He only frowned in stern seriousness.

“Don’t misunderstand, all right? I’m not with that Fang fellow. I’m just here to make peace. I’ve always believed harmony makes money…”

At that point his expression changed, because Bai Xiang paid him no attention at all. She did not even try to strike him again. Instead she twisted at the waist and flung that vast, surging sword-light toward the heavily wounded Fang Yang.

“You…!”

That could no longer be treated lightly. A blood-shadow covered the stranger’s whole body. His two separated halves instantly fused back together, compressed into a liquid form, and flashed in front of Fang Yang in an instant, both arms raised and a red light glowing in his eyes.

That red light was not just a sign of demonic power. It looked more like a lamp, like the glow bursting from a mechanical eye. Just as his arms were about to meet the sword-light, they softened and deformed like nanometal, utterly disregarding conservation of energy, and directly condensed into a blood-red armored giant shield that blotted out the sky, looming three or four hundred meters high and gleaming with cold metallic luster.

The next instant, sword and shield collided. At the point of contact, another hemispherical shockwave a hundred meters across exploded outward.

Near the shockwave, no sound could be heard at all. The crash, the wind, the cutting, the howling, all of it was muted. One could only see countless voidfiend monsters flung away, swallowed by the light, and broken down into dregs within it.

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And Bai Tingyun, farther away and suspended in the air, was blown back a hundred meters by the resulting aftershock. Below him, Lu Yun and the other scouts were blasted off balance by the astral wind. People and vehicles alike turned into tumbleweeds, rolling madly in the direction of the Stilling Cloud Army.

Only after several breaths did the aftershock finally subside. Then they saw that the hundred-meter-tall, incomparably thick blood-red giant shield had already been cut open with a smooth cleft. Behind the first shield came a second, a third… all the way to the thirty-third shield. Only there did that terrifying cut finally come to a halt.

But the “black-rift cut-surface” remained. Those giant shields were still being corroded and eaten away by the severed planes. Countless microcosmic voidbursts, driven by qi-force, gnawed madly at the remnants of the shields as if they possessed minds and life of their own.

An unbelievable ability.

Bai Tingyun narrowed his eyes, his heart turning solemn.

The High Emperor’s slash was already terrifying beyond measure, and yet this man could conjure so many giant shields out of thin air…

One had to understand that those shields did not just have surface area. Every last one of them had thickness proportionate to that scale.

How thick were thirty-three heavy tower shields, each three hundred and fifty meters tall, stacked together?

This was absolutely not something Dao-Void Methods could achieve. It was closer to the Federation’s so-called “biomechanical war soldiers”… and beyond even governor-class war machines!

If so, then there should only be one person like this.

This fellow… was he that incomparably mysterious “Blood Lord,” the one who until now had existed only in legend?

“Ah, finally…”

Behind the last shield, through the remaining gap in one of the cuts, the stranger showed his face. He simply severed both hands’ connection to the shields and looked as though he had finally let out a breath.

“Xue En… you?” Fang Yang crouched half-kneeling behind him, pressing his right hand against the gruesome wound on his left shoulder, looking at the newcomer with a complicated expression.

His wound had a serious problem.

If it were only an ordinary severed limb, he could have wriggled his flesh and regenerated it for the time being.

But the “black-rift cut-surface” clung to the wound as well. All his power had to be used to resist that thing. He had no energy left to regrow the limb, and scarcely any ability left to fight.

“What do you mean, me?” The man turned his head and raised a brow with infuriating casualness.

“Isn’t this all your fault?”

“You were the one who said you could handle it yourself and didn’t need my help. And now what, too much shit hit the fan and your pants couldn’t hold it, so you sent that dumb disciple of yours to beg me for reinforcements.”

He was not merely talking. Even as he turned his head to scold Fang Yang, his body began undergoing further changes.

First came his shoulders and back. Hundreds of holes suddenly opened there. Each one rapidly proliferated and expanded backward, pulling out the rudiments of machinery and cables, and a gigantic device more than a hundred meters high and over three hundred meters long grew out from his back and behind his head, covered in what looked like hundreds of exhaust vents.

Next came his hands. Both liquefied and deformed, each becoming a trumpet-shaped cannon barrel encased in dark-red metal, stretching forward and swelling larger and larger.

Tss tss tss…

He had clearly timed it perfectly. As the remnants of the giant shields were eaten away by the “black-rift cut-surface,” exposing an opening ahead, his two huge cannon barrels extended into view at exactly the right moment and aimed at the Great Xia Empress rising through the air.

[Level-Three Overload Mode. “Emperor Annihilator” ready.]

“I’m the sort of person who really hates trouble.”

Hearing the mechanical prompt at his ear, the man grinned and cocked his head at Bai Xiang with a raised brow.

“If I can settle it all here in one go… there’s no reason to run back, is there?”

Whoosh—

Bai Xiang was diving down, her right hand holding the sword in a reverse grip so the point hung downward, her left hand extended ahead. The man, meanwhile, puffed out his chest like a toad and sucked air greedily into his body.

Swoosh swoosh swoosh—

At the same time, the hundreds of “tubes” that had grown out behind him also began inhaling in sync. And in a manner that defied all reason, as if warping and refracting a painted image, they sucked the night scenery and the nearby void itself into their openings.

The space they drained away was left black, the black of a void-rift, as though those nightscapes had truly been stolen.

Then…

Fwoosh—

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Two beams of energy blasted out from the giant cannons in an instant. Their outer edges were dark red, their middle blinding white, with a blood-red line running through the center. The sheer amount, the sheer immensity of that tilted energy was so great that the beams only maintained a column-like shape for less than an instant before immediately collapsing and spreading outward into a fan-shaped trapezoid, drowning everything ahead of them.

That light was already more dazzling than a nuclear blast. The many onlookers were covered head-on by the white radiance and could only stare blankly as that terrifying surge swallowed even the Qingyun Army’s remaining troops.

Bzzzz—tsss!

He maintained that stream for a full three seconds before the “tubes” behind him began spurting blood and belching black smoke, and only then did a trace of discomfort and pain appear on his face.

But in the very next instant, his expression changed again. He had barely raised his head when a section of metal blade burst out from the incomparably thick expanding light-wave before him, spun once, and sliced off the still-firing cannon barrels. At the same time it ripped a huge hole through the center of the light-screen, revealing Bai Xiang driving forward through it.

How could she possibly have lost head-on?

And her stockings were not even torn?

Disbelief flooded the man’s face. In the next instant, the sword pierced through his mouth, burst out the back of his head, and then ripped straight down again.

Not good…

His eyes bulged wide, bloodshot veins spreading across them.

This monster…

I can only use another treasure to save myself…

“Taishang. Hereby. Gives. Order. Five Elements, be sealed.”

At that moment, Bai Xiang’s icy voice suddenly rang out at his ear.

The man immediately felt a subtle change in the surrounding void. The range was extremely narrow, barely covering a space of one meter around his body, but the suppression was utterly real… he could even sense that he was being rejected by some kind of law!

“Taishang. Hereby. Gives. Order. Yin and Yang—be sealed!”

As Bai Xiang’s second decree fell, the man’s body trembled slightly, and he spat out a mouthful of blood. Something seemed to be mixed in with the blood. A blood-red jade stone?

Bai Xiang immediately reached out and snatched the jade into her hand.

But in the next instant her expression shifted. At once she let go of the jade, released it, and leaned backward while floating in the air, flashing a hundred meters away.

Crack—

The jade split apart, and a collapse began within it.

And that was only the beginning. With a Heavenly Stem Precious Jade destroyed in this way, vast banks of dark clouds abruptly gathered over this world, clearly about to call down “origin-chaos heavenly punishment divine lightning” once more to punish the instigator.

“Still bearing a grudge against me…?”

Looking up at the sky, feeling the will in those clouds lock onto her from afar, Bai Xiang grinned and simply floated there in midair with her body completely open, showing not the slightest intention of evading.

“Ally of the former dynasty, enemy of the present one.”

“You resent me for altering your original form. You resent me for being the variable born within the laws of this world.”

“Then let me see exactly what right you have to discipline me.”

Boom!!!

As if it had heard her provocation, as if her attitude had angered it, a white-gold bolt of lightning suddenly crashed down from the thick clouds above, aimed directly at Bai Xiang’s forehead.

Perfect!

Bai Xiang grinned. A vertical blood-red flame mark appeared at her brow, then with astonishing speed turned gold like her eyes. Her whole body was shrouded in the Returning-to-Origin Purple Qi drawn from the store of her Qi Sea, condensed from the Shenming Sword and the Sword Dao divine pool. That purple qi formed into a pearl-curtain imperial crown above her head. Then she violently raised her hand and thrust her sword directly into the tip of the lightning.

What a horrifying sight it was!!!

Smoke and fire surged, yellow sand swept in waves, more than eight thousand li of dark cloud and smoke rolled through the air, and blackness all but swallowed heaven and earth into one color. Only that single white bolt of lightning remained, forming a pillar of light. Set against that white-gold pillar connecting heaven and earth, a woman clad in a black-and-gold dragon robe and wearing a pearl-curtain crown floated proudly in the air, sword raised in her right hand and pointing straight at the sky, as though she intended to contest Heaven’s Dao itself in battle!

I am afraid I will never forget this image for the rest of my life…

Bai Tingyun held both hands up before his face and peered through the gaps between his fingers, staring at the scene before him in absolute shock.

He had always had a bit of a difficult temperament. Although he obeyed the returned High Ancestor, in military matters and strategy he still possessed his own pride.

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But now all of that was gone.

Before this power that shook heaven and earth, military skill and schemes were a joke. He was now truly convinced by Bai Xiang from the bottom of his heart and willing to obey any order she gave.

“This is too absurd… too absurd…!!”

Meanwhile, amid the black smoke around them that everyone else had ignored, the man suspected to be the Blood Lord dragged the giant-bodied Fang Yang behind him and fled westward in a rather ridiculous posture, shouting at the top of his lungs as he ran.

“What the hell is that?!”

“What the hell is she?!”

“She cost me a Blood Jade!”

“How did she do that?!”

“Damn you, Fang Yang! You’re paying me back!”

“Stop shouting—” Fang Yang was still in that small giant form, being dragged behind him and throwing up huge sheets of dust. Hearing the complaints in the wind, he frowned tightly and forced out an explanation. “…I didn’t know she had broken through again.”

That truly could not have been predicted.

How long had it even been since he last fought her?

At that time, Di Xiang had only just broken through in the midst of battle and comprehended the concrete use of “microcosmic voidburst.” For anyone else, these past few days would not even have been enough to settle and digest that insight. No matter how he thought about it, Fang Yang simply could not understand how Di Xiang had already achieved another breakthrough.

“The Xia Emperor’s sword is too brutal! I couldn’t take it head-on!”

The man was still shouting up ahead.

“And what was that sword qi of hers? It can fuse with voidbursts and explode? Even the ‘Emperor Annihilator’ driven by a Blood Jade can be cut apart, and your intelligence never mentioned any of that!”

“I didn’t know either!!!” Fang Yang finally snapped. “She couldn’t do that when she fought me!”

“I’m guessing the problem lies with that sword.” The man’s voice sank. “That sword… it gives me the aura of a living being.”

“No. Strictly speaking, that aura is identical to hers.”

“It feels like another version of her.”

“Somewhat autonomous, but also separate.”

“It was that sword. The Xia Emperor’s sword made the two powers combine.”

“We need to find more Order-Preserving Treasures and gather more awakened great powers to oppose her,” Fang Yang said.

“Of all the outstanding figures I have seen so far, only she, only Di Xiang, cannot be allowed to keep growing.”

“Her existence itself runs counter to Heaven’s Dao… she has to die! We must suppress and kill her as soon as possible!”

“Easy, easy… I know, I know…”

The man began coaxing him along in a soothing voice.

“Oh right, brother.” Then his tone abruptly shifted. “That gathering signal was yours, right?”

“Signal?”

Fang Yang froze.

“That plume of essence-blood smoke?”

“Wasn’t that yours?”

“Oh…” he heard the man murmur into the wind. “I knew it felt strange. So that’s what it was. That’s how it is…”

“Xue En, what did you find?”

“I found…”

The man lowered his voice slightly. Then in the very next instant he abruptly spun around and flung Fang Yang toward the center of the thunder tribulation.

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“Xue En!!!?”

Fang Yang roared, eyes wide.

“Sorry.” The man’s expression turned cold at once. “On the one hand, I have no interest in making wedding clothes for someone else. Whoever caused the trouble can deal with it himself. On the other hand…”

He slowly raised his head and looked at the huge mass of dark clouds overhead. Even though he had already run quite a long distance, it seemed as if he had not left the center of the storm at all, as though it still hung directly above the same place.

That was because the clouds were moving.

They were chasing the person who had been locked onto.

Boom!!!

As another white-gold bolt of lightning came crashing down, the distant darkness was suddenly illuminated, revealing a figure holding a sword and meeting the lightning head-on. It was Bai Xiang, who had pursued them all the way.

“Mighty indeed, Xia Emperor. I have learned my lesson.”

The man cupped his hands toward Bai Xiang.

“I’m not an idiot.”

“So I’ll be taking my leave.”

“One final reminder before I go: do not let some petty thief steal the fruit.”

Hm?

Bai Xiang split the thunder tribulation with a single sword strike. She ignored the golden lightning still dancing over her shoulder, curling even several loose strands of her hanging hair, and lowered her gaze slightly to see that the man had turned and run without another word.

Narrowing her eyes, she looked at his retreating back for several moments. In the end, she chose to increase her speed and rush after Fang Yang, who had been left behind.

And just then, at the Jiuli temple only a few dozen kilometers away, the so-called Demon God Temple of legend, the sweat-soaked chieftain of the Li clans, Rong Wen, was leading a handsome, slender man in a green robe downward by flashlight.

They quickly arrived at the ninth level of the ruins, where they saw the nine stone coffins and the enormous mural carved ahead of them.

“This is the place.” Rong Wen kept wiping the sweat from his face, speaking in a low, trembling voice as if bearing some terrible pressure.

“The awakening ritual has already been taught to you.”

“The future fate of our Li people now depends entirely on you.”

“Rest assured.” The man nodded.

“Once I obtain its Demon God fleshly body, I will become the new ‘Jiuli.’ Naturally, I will protect you and your people.”

As he spoke, he raised his right hand and looked at the flame held within it.

The flame looked extremely weak, somewhat like a fireball and somewhat like the “Flame Eye,” the divine ability Jiuli had displayed. The moment he brought it out, Li Nanyun’s scream immediately rang from within it.

“Ahhh—you damned mongrel!!”

“You dare plot against me?”

“You dare plot against me!!”

“I order you to let me out!!”

“Let me out! Did you hear me!???”

The young man merely narrowed his eyes and looked down at the fireball.

“Your devouring reached its limit at the number ‘nine.’ That means your talent in matters of the soul is limited, insufficient to bear any greater power.”

“But I am different. My devouring has no upper limit.”

“I am likely the only one who can stand against her.”

“So don’t hesitate.”

“Give everything you have to me.”