I Beseech You All, Come Face Death!

Wen Guyan's eyes were bloodshot, strained so fiercely that the corners seemed ready to tear. His gaze remained locked onto Bai Su's ascending silhouette. Summoning every ounce of strength in his body, he roared toward the firmament: "Bai Su!!!!" "One day, even if I must search every corner of the Immortal Realm, I will find you! And kill you!!!!" *Boom!!!* Wen Guyan's body slammed into a shattered mountain peak, but he rose at once, dragging his wounded frame straight back into the fray. Yet in that very moment, Li Guanqi distinctly sensed a shift across the battlefield. The cultivators of the Seven Domains, whose momentum had just burned like a rainbow, all pulled their strength back by several degrees in unison. Li Guanqi's heart sank, and a long sigh escaped him. He knew... The single breath that had kept everyone gritting their teeth and holding on... had scattered. Sure enough, an elder originally hailing from the Third Domain disengaged from the battle, abruptly releasing his aura to summon an ascension pathway. The instant the pillar descended, the blood-drenched elder dropped to his knees with a thud. With tears in his eyes and lips trembling, he whispered in a choked sob, "Forgive me... This old man has no family left in the Human Spirit Realm to protect... I just want to live..." Sun Changlin, clad in shattered silver armor, glared viciously at the elder inside the golden pathway. "Fuck your mother, Ding Fu!! You traitor!!!" "You selfish bastard!!!" As the old warrior raged, the power behind his spear faltered, and two streaks of sword light grazed past his body. His armor shattered, leaving two bone-deep gashes across his chest and back. *Spurt!!!* Li Qingchan swung her sword to rush to his aid, but several cultivators blocked her path dead. The two cultivators flanking Sun Changlin pressed their attack with mounting ferocity. In moments, wounds multiplied across the old man's body. Blood gushed from his mouth, soaking his beard. A look of grief and tragedy fell across his face, and he let out a loud, bitter laugh... *Squelch!!!!* A longsword drove straight through his abdomen. With a savage glint in his eyes, Sun Changlin gripped his foe's wrist tightly and thrust his spear forward! *Squirt!!!* The strike went slightly wide, piercing only the enemy's shoulder. Yet another blade took him from behind, running him clean through between the ribs. His head drooped, mouthfuls of blood spilling from his lips. He wrenched his silver spear back to strike again, but a drawn blade severed his arm in an instant. A single sword slashed his throat! Blood surged forth... Clutching his neck, Sun Changlin looked calmly toward the elder within the pathway. That was his friend—a friend of several thousand years. Sun Changlin's life force ebbed away rapidly, but his eyes never wavered from the elder in the pathway. His lips quivered faintly, faltering words trickling out... "Old Ding... open your eyes and look at me..." "Is this... the ascension... you wanted..." The old warrior's body plummeted from midair. Seeing this from the corner of his eye, Li Guanqi felt fury ignite within him. Facing Tu Yuan's ferocious onslaught, he actually spun around and slashed a sword strike toward the distance! Yet precisely because Li Guanqi had divided his focus, an enemy blade struck his chest, severing four ribs and tearing open a gruesome wound. Li Guanqi had no regrets. *Rumble!!!!!* Fuelled by blistering fury, Li Guanqi's strike tore through heaven and earth, crashing down upon the ascension pathway under the shocked stares of everyone present! Like a wooden post, the pathway was sliced cleanly in two at an angle. "No!!! No, no, no, no!! Don't!!!" Before the elder's despairing gaze, the pathway shattered, and the reception power of ascension vanished completely. Before Li Guanqi could make another move, several flashes of sword light instantly obliterated the soul-crushed elder! His mutilated corpse tumbled from the sky. Even in death, his eyes remained fixed on the spot where the ascension pathway had dissolved. He had summoned the ascension pathway. The reception heavenly tribulation had already appeared, and crossing it would have meant ascending. He had abandoned his dearest friend to win a fleeting chance of survival, only for it to end in vain... all for nothing. Li Guanqi's furious roar resounded across the heavens. "If we win, everyone ascends, and every treasure in the Immortal Burial Pavilion will be divided among you!!" "But... if anyone tries to ascend right now, do not blame me, Li Guanqi, for showing no mercy!" "The Human Spirit Realm has stood guard for ten thousand years, never letting the Immortal Realm's cultivators descend to plunder!" "Are you going to let the entire Human Spirit Realm be ruined in our hands?!" "Everyone... hold on just a little longer..." *Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!* Amid deafening booms, Tu Yuan sensed the auras of ascension continuously rising in the outside world and sneered, "Their perseverance is meaningless." "Even if you can intimidate them for a moment, it will never outweigh the terror of death." "It's futile..." "The Human Spirit Realm has fewer and fewer powerhouses. In the end, the Youhuang Realm will become nothing more than a captive breeding ground." Li Guanqi snapped his head up at those words. Glaring at Tu Yuan, he slashed violently with his sword! "Sword Draw: Thunder Wrath!!" *Boom!!!!* A hundred-zhang Thunder God manifested in the firmament, sweeping an upward slash toward Tu Yuan. The strike made even Tu Yuan's heart tighten. Retreating abruptly through the air, he drew a deep breath and countered with a slash of his own. "Blood Sea Waning Moon." *Boom!!!* Within the azure sword radiance, the scarlet hue roared like a blood serpent. Yet just as Li Guanqi was locked in bloody combat, someone below suddenly shouted: "Let's go together!!" "I refuse to believe he can kill all of us!!" "If he wipes us all out, the Human Spirit Realm will cease to exist anyway!!" The speaker wore a sinister expression, but in the next instant, a sword pierced straight through his heart! Frost on his face, Meng Jiangchu stepped out slowly from behind him. His robes stained with blood, Meng Jiangchu trod upon the Five Yang Ghost Flame, thick laws of fire surging about him as he wrenched the bloodied sword free! This sight stunned many. Meng Jiangchu, who had always seemed an affable peacemaker, bellowed with cold fury: "Whoever leaves seeks to condemn the rest of us to death!!" "If any of you want to ascend, then you will die first!!" Covered in blood, Meng Jiangchu revealed a lethal resolve rarely seen from him. How could the lord of a domain ever be as simple as people imagined? Meng Jiangchu might not have killed countless people, but his hands were far from clean! Under current circumstances, if the cultivators of the Seven Domains harbored divided loyalties, none of them would survive. Wen Guyan stepped forward, as did Qin Xiao, Long Hou, and the others. At this juncture, anyone who dared summon the power of ascension would become the target of all. For a moment, the cultivators of the Seventh Domain saw the harsh reality and steadied their ranks instead. Yet being vastly outnumbered was no long-term answer. If this dragged on, the cultivators of the Seven Domains would surely be wiped out to the last... Li Guanqi's eyes flickered, and with a sudden stroke, he cleaved through the domain space of the Seventh Domain. A fissure a thousand zhang long tore open above the Daochan Domain! Through the rift, the figures of Li Guanqi and his companions locked in battle could be seen with stark clarity, along with the bloody struggle between the defenders and the immortals within the domain. This was the very first time the Immortal Burial Seventh Domain had ever been laid bare to the outside world... Li Guanqi's voice, laced with the power of laws, resounded across the Six Domains. "Tu Yuan, didn't you say human nature is inherently selfish?" Still swinging his sword and dodging Li Guanqi's attacks, Tu Yuan sneered, "Are they not? And what do you hope to achieve with this?" "Let them watch how you die? Hahahahaha!" Li Guanqi drew a deep breath, snapped his head toward the direction of the Six Domains, and cried out in a clear, resonant voice: "Immortal cultivators bring chaos to our realm; boundaries shatter and lives are torn apart! "If we cannot hold them back, the Six Domains of this world will plunge into utter devastation! "The Human-Immortal Realm Barrier is no more; anyone may ascend! "I know our seniors yearn with all their hearts to ascend! "Yet... "This junior beseeches you all... for the living souls of the Human Spirit Realm... come... face... death!!!"