Rumble!
Li Guanqi moved with the wind, turning into a streak of lightning as he darted through midair.
The power of laws surged within him, rendering his perception of the lightning falling from the heavens sharper and clearer.
He darted left and right, his movements elusive and unpredictable.
Bolts of thunder scraped past his body in rapid succession.
Li Guanqi's mind wavered slightly, and the aura inside him that had only just stabilized suddenly began to fluctuate.
Boom-crack!
Li Guanqi took a hit to the shoulder, a chunk of flesh instantly torn away.
As he plummeted, he shifted directions repeatedly while bolts of lightning smashed into the gravel and bedrock below!
Li Guanqi's heart seized.
The lightning's power now was thirty percent greater than before; any stray strike was enough to grievously injure him!
Meanwhile, Shiwu was doing everything he could to refine the power of the Falling Star Cold Lotus.
Even the twisted, bulging lumps across his body had not yet subsided.
Thoughts raced through Li Guanqi's mind. He could not keep going like this.
His conscious mind was still interfering.
"Phoo..."
Li Guanqi exhaled a breath of turbid air, forcibly suppressing his panicked mind.
Leaving only a wisp of divided consciousness to control his body and dodge, Li Guanqi's consciousness gradually sank into darkness.
Only an instinctual awareness remained to evade the thunderbolts. Though he still suffered injuries, the surging power within his body was abundant enough that recovering was not overly difficult.
With his eyes tightly closed, Li Guanqi remained expressionless, his body transforming into a streak of lightning as he dodged ceaselessly in midair.
When he could not avoid a blow, he minimized the impact and braced to endure it.
Having quieted himself, Li Guanqi began to gradually comprehend the power of the Falling Star Cold Lotus inside him.
The power surged tempestuously within him, and Li Guanqi ran his cultivation technique madly, channeling the energy into every meridian throughout his body.
With the sword spirit having obliterated the lotus spirit of the Falling Star Cold Lotus, the energy had become noticeably easier to control.
Every breath Li Guanqi took was saturated with extraordinarily dense elemental essence.
Two icy-blue dragons seemed to dart continuously between his nose and mouth.
The power, imbued with the pure force of heaven and earth, flowed through his limbs and bones.
Every strand of energy seemed to contain endless profound truths.
In just a single breath, Li Guanqi immersed himself entirely in this baptism.
His physical body, meanwhile, moved like a wandering husk, evading solely on instinct.
In his dantian, Shiwu frantically refined this power, while the restored meridians were repeatedly destroyed and reborn.
As time passed, Li Guanqi made no deliberate effort to refine it; instead, he immersed himself in the power itself.
His mental state transitioned from initial tension and urgency into tranquil stillness.
Under the resonance of the Spirit-Devouring Dao Physique, Li Guanqi felt as though he stood above the void of stars.
His perception of his surroundings grew clearer than ever before—clearer even than the resonance power of his Spirit-Devouring Dao Physique alone.
It was not just the laws; his consciousness seemed directly connected to heaven and earth.
He could feel every minute fluctuation throughout the entire Realm of Celestial Spirits.
Casually diverting a wisp of focus to maneuver his body out of harm's way, he left the thunderstorm overhead completely helpless against him for a time.
As Li Guanqi's consciousness strolled atop the void of stars, his mind suddenly shuddered!
For the first time, he saw the Human Spirit Realm...
It was a gorgeous, deep-blue spherical world.
Yet he also saw a barrier enveloping that world.
Spiritual light shimmered across it—something they had never seen from inside the world itself.
Li Guanqi murmured, "Is that... the manifestation of the Heavenly Dao's consciousness...? The rules of that world were decreed by 'it.'"
Gently closing his eyes, he drew his consciousness closer.
At that moment, Li Guanqi's mind fell into a subtle resonance with the ceaselessly flowing laws of all creation.
He seemed to hear the whispers of the wind, witness the flow of time, and perceive the expansion and contraction of space.
All his perceptions sharpened beyond measure; his five senses were magnified to the utmost.
He felt the ebb and rebirth of life throughout all things in the world.
That surging vitality filled him with awe.
In this state, an epiphany jolted him awake.
Li Guanqi realized that the key to breaking through to the Ascension Realm did not lie in the mere accumulation of raw power, but in a complete metamorphosis of the mind and comprehension.
In the fleeting moment his consciousness merged into the Heavenly Dao, he comprehended far too many truths.
In an instant, an earth-shattering transformation reshaped his state of mind.
Seas turn to mulberry fields in the snap of a finger; the most merciless thing in the world is nothing other than the quiet, unassuming passage of time.
The transcendent, otherworldly demeanor Ling Tianchen possessed existed precisely because of this.
By now, the primal energy within Li Guanqi's body had accumulated to its absolute limit.
His figure paused.
The bottleneck of the fifth layer of the Divine Punishment cultivation technique, which had bound Li Guanqi for so long, shattered with a thunderous roar at this exact instant.
The circulation pathways of the cultivation technique inside him shifted abruptly.
Shiwu blinked in surprise, then hurriedly followed this energy, allowing it to advance.
Gradually, Shiwu was astonished to find that the speed of refining accelerated once again!
Yet immediately afterward, something occurred that threw Shiwu into sheer panic.
Li Guanqi's flesh and blood began to disperse into motes of starlight.
This change was uncontrollable, beyond anything Shiwu could possibly fathom...
Li Guanqi's limbs and torso dissolved into specks of starlight and drifted away.
Yet Li Guanqi showed no intention of stopping it.
Thunder roared as hundreds of lightning bolts violently engulfed Li Guanqi's spirit body!
Shiwu wanted to intervene, but full control of the body rested in Li Guanqi's hands.
"It's over..."
Yet the tragic scene of death and destruction Shiwu dreaded never came to pass.
The hundreds of thunderbolts passed directly through Li Guanqi's body!
In the distant void, cold sweat beaded on the old man's brow, and he breathed a slight sigh of relief at the sight.
"Transcending the mortal coil, reborn through nirvana!"
Li Guanqi's body had turned into an illusory phantom of golden spiritual light.
The phantom of a lotus appeared above his head.
Hum!
A mysterious ripple gently spread, and an immense surge of vitality suddenly burst forth from within Li Guanqi!
Under the surging power of the Falling Star Cold Lotus, Li Guanqi's flesh and blood rapidly regenerated.
His entire skeleton turned translucent and jade-like, pristine and devoid of impurities, as pure and white as fine jade.
Blood welled, and flesh reconstituted.
Li Guanqi's physical strength reached its absolute peak.
Strands of aura invisible to the naked eye merged into Li Guanqi's body.
The corners of Li Guanqi's mouth curved slightly upward...
"Is this the Heavenly Dao energy?"
Indeed, these invisible wisps of energy were the very manifestation of the Heavenly Dao's rules across the entire Human Spirit Realm.
Gradually, Li Guanqi's aura manifested and began to soar wildly!
Not only that, wondrous changes were taking place within his body...
He felt his origin spirit undergoing a kind of baptism.
The origin spirit grew increasingly pure, purged of every impurity.
The primal energy that Shiwu had previously refined now radiated a soft, lustrous sheen, becoming even purer and extraordinarily bright.
Li Guanqi's heart leaped...
"Is this... immortal primal energy?"
Chapter 1467