Volume 1, Chapter 397 – The Ending

On the high platform, Li Jingzhou’s expression did not change much. Steady as a mountain, he sized Shi Lan up from head to toe, seeming deep in thought.

In a pavilion not far away, a middle-aged monk clad in kasaya robes intoned a Buddhist invocation and muttered to himself:

“To manifest a Vajra phantom through the Vajra Divine Fist alone… what astonishing affinity with the Buddha.”

His skin shone with a bronze hue, and a faint Buddhist radiance lingered behind his head. His face was solemn, like that of an Arhat Vajra.

The fighting on the surrounding arenas gradually came to a halt. One young heavenly prodigy after another, Shi Feng among them, gathered before the arena and stared at it without blinking.

This was no longer just a martial contest. It was a battle over the throne of the human race’s number one heavenly prodigy.

…

Bang!

A faint golden glow lit up across Gao Linyuan’s body, blocking Shi Lan’s punch. Blood kept spilling from his mouth, yet his aura did not weaken in the slightest.

His gaze turned incomparably deep, with traces of the Dao faintly circulating in its depths.

Shi Lan instantly sensed that something was wrong. Her fist became a palm as the Heaven Extremity Seal came crashing out.

Gao Linyuan made no move to block it. Forming a fist seal, he let traces of law interweave over his fist and smashed it into Shi Lan’s lower abdomen.

Boom!

Fist and palm crossed. Shi Lan flew backward like a meteor and slammed onto the arena, making the entire platform shudder violently. Without the protection of the formation, the whole arena would have collapsed.

The Heaven Extremity Seal struck Gao Linyuan squarely in the chest. The violent force, heavy as an ancient mountain range, scattered the golden light around his body, and the formation screen behind him rippled like the surface of water.

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Shi Lan rose from the arena floor. The armor over her abdomen had shattered, and her palm felt numb. Looking at Gao Linyuan, who had fallen from the arena, she formed a rough guess.

This was likely some strange combat method, one that fused the Nascent Soul golden body into the fleshly body to obtain an enormous increase in strength.

Gao Linyuan stepped forward, his entire body bristling with sharpness, the power of laws faintly flowing around him.

Bzzz—

Shi Lan’s body suddenly sank. The surrounding space instantly turned incomparably heavy, like layer upon layer of shackles, slowing her movements by more than tenfold.

A cultivator in the Nascent Soul Realm could already carve out an outer space of their own within the Lingyang Realm. In terms of comprehension of the laws of space, they far surpassed those in the Myriad Phenomena Realm.

“I am older than you. There is no denying that your talent far surpasses mine. To defeat you by taking advantage of your youth would be no honorable victory, but today, I cannot lose…”

As his words fell, the golden light around Gao Linyuan grew even more dazzling. He reached out and struck with a palm print.

Wrapped in golden light, the palm print shot toward Shi Lan like an arrow leaving the string, dragging out peals of thunder through the void and leaving behind streaks of black cracks with booming force.

Shi Lan reined in the fluctuations of her blood and qi, as if she had realized something. With her current martial strength, she could defeat an ordinary martial artist at the middle stage of the Nascent Soul Realm.

But against someone like Gao Linyuan, who could fight across realms, she fell short. Without the cutting edge of the Scarlet Crow War Halberd, and without paying some price, she still could not break the defense of a fully matured Nascent Soul golden body.

Within her sea of consciousness, her immortal-path Nascent Soul suddenly opened its eyes. With two fingers together, it formed a hand seal, and a gentle clear light reflected deep within Shi Lan’s pupils.

The Five Elements qi was drawn continuously out of the void and condensed into a five-colored astral seal. Wrapped in dazzling immortal radiance, it crashed down from the nine heavens with terrifying fluctuations powerful enough to suppress a star river.

The Five Elements Heavenly Fiend Seal, born from an immortal-path divine ability battle art within the Tiancang Xuanling Scripture, possessed unbelievably terrifying might.

Shi Lan’s immortal cultivation had long since entered the Deity Transformation Realm. The magic power within her Nascent Soul was incomparably abundant, and when she unleashed an immortal-path divine ability, its divine might shook the heavens.

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Crack!

Gao Linyuan’s palm print struck Shi Lan’s left shoulder. She was sent flying sideways at once, her pale golden battle armor shattering. A wound split open across her flesh, the bones in her left arm broke, and spirit blood scattered through the air.

Boom!

A deafening roar followed immediately after. The entire arena collapsed in an instant. The golden light on Gao Linyuan’s body broke apart, and the Five Elements Heavenly Fiend Seal drove him straight into the depths below the earth.

The center of the arena became utter ruin in an instant, reduced to rubble, with a massive palm print lying across it.

Shi Lan stood up and set her broken, displaced bones back into place. In just a few breaths, her blood had already stopped flowing, and her bones had begun to mend.

Her fleshly body already possessed a trace of undying qualities. Injuries like this would recover very quickly.

To outside observers, the process of the Nascent Soul casting its spell was invisible. All they saw was Shi Lan lift a finger, and then a five-colored astral seal fell from the sky and slammed Gao Linyuan into the depths of the arena.

“What kind of technique was that?!”

“Spellcasting through the Nascent Soul? But she’s only in the Myriad Phenomena Realm!”

“Unbelievable. It’s too terrifying…”

On the high platform, the teacup in Chu Hanzhou’s hand slipped to the ground with a light clink. His divine sense swept out in a roar, scouring the lingering magic-power fluctuations at the center of the arena, and a strange light flashed through his eyes.

Not far away, Li Jingzhou’s gaze deepened as well. He too had sensed that something was off.

This power did not belong to the Lingyang Realm.

…

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Crash—

Gao Linyuan rose from the rubble, his clothes torn to pieces, blood streaming unceasingly from all over his body. Clearly, he had already suffered severe injuries.

He stared at Shi Lan with burning eyes. A gleam flashed at his brow, and the Nascent Soul within him once again blazed with golden light.

“That’s enough.”

A figure abruptly appeared on the arena. He wore a dark azure python-dragon robe and a jade crown. Handsome and elegant, he carried an easy, unhurried bearing of perfect composure.

“Spirit King, I still have the strength to fight again!”

When he saw Li Jingzhou step in, shame appeared on Gao Linyuan’s face, and he could not help protesting.

“There will be plenty of time in the future. Why should a true man fight over the outcome of a single moment?”

Li Jingzhou shook his head slightly and swept his gaze around.

“This martial contest ends here. Does anyone else wish to issue a challenge?”

Several breaths passed. The arena remained utterly silent.

“In that case, Shi Lan is the champion of this martial meet.”

With a single sentence, Li Jingzhou settled the matter and brought the martial meet to a direct close.

…

“Do any of you remember Shi Lan’s age?”

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“I think she’s still not even twenty-four…”

“This is simply unheard of…”

A thought quietly surfaced in everyone’s heart: even among the ancient Great Emperors, had there ever been such a monstrous talent?

It was easy to foresee that as long as Shi Lan continued growing safely, this era would inevitably carve her name into itself, leaving behind an indelible mark across the entire Lingyang Realm.

That made the gathered heavenly prodigies feel envy despite themselves. Since the Primordial Age, the human race had produced outstanding figures as numerous as the stars in the sky. Of them, who knew how many had lived for the sake of one line: “My name should stand in the annals of the human race”!

Shi Lan slowly walked down from the arena. Some sharp-eyed observers noticed that in that brief span of time, her injuries had already healed. Seeing her essence, qi, and spirit restored to their peak, they could only sigh again.

Hidden in the crowd, Shi Feng looked at that face in the distance, a face that now felt so much more unfamiliar, and a faint loneliness entered his eyes.

Along the road he had walked, through all he had seen and felt, he had in truth already come to understand certain realities. What he hoped for and what he actually received would always differ greatly.

Perhaps he had once carried a heart full of fervor, waiting for a beautiful ending that could never truly exist.

But now, he had already let go—of that once unreachable dream, of the longing that had tangled itself in his heart, and of the one person who had once been his everything.

Perhaps, many times, what Shi Lan had represented to him had been more like a dream of his own, endlessly beautified in his mind until it became flawless.

The ravine of desire always deepened without one noticing, making him greedily wish for a false dream to bloom and bear fruit.

The flower blooms, yet its face is unknown; in a single thought, it carves itself into the bone.

After taking one last long look at that receding figure, Shi Feng tightened his grip on the long saber at his back, turned, and walked against the flow of the crowd into the surging mortal world.