*Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!*
Thunder roared, its world-shaking boom echoing through the heavens.
Bathed in blood, Li Guanqi possessed an overwhelming aura of confidence in his brow and eyes.
As his origin spirit steadily solidified within him, his aura climbed continuously.
Violent power swept across heaven and earth!
The instant three thick bolts of lightning fell from the sky in rapid succession—
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
A deafening roar erupted. The watching cultivators covered their ears in spite of themselves, hurriedly sealing them with primal energy.
Even so, quite a few were still shaken so violently that blood leaked from all seven facial orifices.
Charred black all over, Li Guanqi snapped his head up. His figure shot into the air in a flash, unsheathing his sword as he soared up toward the descending lightning!
Every single one of those thick bolts was as wide as the embrace of a grown man.
Radiating terrifying destructive might, the horrifying lightning tore through the void and crashed down.
Falling in a triangular formation, the three bolts carried a crushing presence hell-bent on obliterating the one undergoing the tribulation.
Li Guanqi raised his head sharply. Boundless lightning power surged around him and rippled outward.
Right after, the power of two heavenly flames spread across an area of a thousand zhang.
The space within a thousand zhang warped slightly, instantly becoming the expanse of Li Guanqi's origin energy domain.
Lightning raged, and heavenly flames flickered.
Primal energy roared and surged through both of his dantian, and his origin spirit was merely a hair's breadth away from completing its total transformation.
Under the circulation of the Dragon Elephant Prison-Suppressing Art, his vitality roared and his muscles bulged high.
Under the impact of the heavenly tribulation's lightning, the bottleneck of the art's fifth layer began to loosen slightly as well.
Standing in the center, Li Guanqi pushed down hard with his feet. The void within a hundred zhang of where he stood collapsed instantly!
"*Haah!*"
Accompanied by a furious roar, the sky around everyone suddenly darkened.
A terrifyingly sharp sword intent erupted in an instant!
"Yanluo Sword Intent!"
*Crack! Crack!*
Two crisp sounds rang out in quick succession. Li Guanqi felt a sudden jolt in the lake of his mind.
His thoughts became clearer and more unobstructed than ever before.
His sword intent, previously stuck at the Sword Gall Realm, stepped completely into the Sword Heart Realm at this very moment!
Far away within the Sword Abyss of the Taixuan Sword Sect, the sword intent Li Guanqi had left behind suddenly erupted.
Terrifying sword qi tore wildly through the bottom of the abyss.
Sword Ruins hummed. The sword in Li Guanqi's hand was instantly wrapped in lightning and engulfed in flames.
His eyes narrowed, and his grip on the sword tightened as he barked in a low voice:
"Soul Release: Yanluo!"
*Boom!*
In that split second, the weight of the pitch-black sword in his hand spiked astronomically.
"Ten Thousand Jun!"
This was the ability granted by Yanluo's Soul Release: breaking all techniques with absolute strength!
However, it required that Li Guanqi possess the physical strength capable of swinging a ten-thousand-jun sword.
This was precisely why the sword spirit had continuously raised the weight of the sword coffin to ten thousand jin after Li Guanqi left the Lingxu Continent.
The muscles in Li Guanqi's left arm bulged high. Holding the long sword, his eyes stared straight at the descending lightning.
With a twist of his waist, his feet shifted into the Traceless Nether Step, his figure instantly splitting into three afterimages.
Three strikes slashed across the void in rapid succession!
The three stances of the Heaven Breaker Sword Art erupted simultaneously!
"Demon Subduer!"
"Heaven Shatterer!"
"Immortal Slayer!"
Three hundred-zhang sword lights, condensed to the absolute limit, exploded outward.
Surging sword intent, lightning primal energy, and raging heavenly flames churned within the sword lights.
Carrying momentum capable of cleaving the heavens, the three beams burst forth.
All light between heaven and earth seemed to vanish at this moment. The only things visible to the onlookers were the bolts of lightning descending with destructive power—
And below, a cultivator of mortal flesh and blood cleaving through the lightning with his sword!
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
Violent explosions thundered as a terrifying shockwave swept over all of Yuntian City.
At this moment, the entire city trembled faintly under that horrifying force.
Meng Wanshu held her hands clasped against her chest, gazing worriedly into the sky filled with lightning and dust.
By contrast, Ye Feng looked completely nonchalant. He dangled Pengluo in his hand, giving it a shake. Seeing it foaming at the mouth with its eyes rolling back, he couldn't help but mutter:
"If this thing were stewed into a soup, it ought to be super nourishing, right?"
Heaven and earth's primal energy went wild. The stray lightning nearly leveled every building within three thousand zhang.
Ruins and rubble lay everywhere. Fortunately, Li Guanqi's breakthrough had shown clear signs beforehand, allowing all the cultivators below to evacuate in time.
Just as the crowd was left bewildered, not knowing whether Li Guanqi had succeeded in breaking through—
Yuntian Square was already long gone, replaced by a massive crater where a figure charred black lay still.
Suddenly!
The person's finger twitched slightly. Immediately afterward, a pair of pure white eyes snapped open.
A terrifyingly immense pressure burst forth!
*Hum!*
Even from several thousand zhang away, the watching cultivators felt a suffocating aura steadily expanding.
Li Guanqi opened his eyes; he had never felt the world's spiritual energy so clearly before.
In an instant, the primal energy inside him began to circulate steadily, and the golden miniature figure inside his dantian began to reveal its features.
The appearance of that origin spirit was none other than himself!
At this moment, his mind and origin spirit were completely linked. He felt as though he were the origin spirit, and the origin spirit was him.
And the power of the origin spirit was also the fundamental power that would ultimately allow him to shape an avatar in the Void Refining Realm.
Li Guanqi slowly rose from the deep crater, his body floating gently into the air.
At this moment, within his divine sense—
Cang Lu, who had remained motionless a thousand zhang away, gave him a strange, inexplicable feeling.
He sensed an unprecedented, distinct aura coming from Cang Lu.
Li Guanqi murmured softly, "An avatar... The person I've fought for so long is actually just an avatar..."
This truth left Li Guanqi somewhat at a loss.
He had considered whether Cang Lu might be an avatar before, but subsequent probing and interactions had dispelled the thought.
Only now, upon officially stepping into the Void Refining Realm, did he find it even harder to imagine—
Just what kind of person could cultivate their avatar all the way to the Void Refining Realm as well?
Yet he knew there was no origin spirit inside Cang Lu!
All that was there was an empty shell, a fake soul fragment.
*Whoosh!*
The Yanluo Sword flew back into his hand in an instant.
His robes had been charred to cinders by the lightning, leaving only the blackened hem around his waist and exposing lean, sculpted muscles along with a back covered in scars.
*Boom!*
At that moment, everyone was stunned by the aura Li Guanqi unleashed.
Because the Void Refining Realm aura he displayed right now showed not the slightest trace of instability!
Li Changqing's eyes went wide as he stared at Li Guanqi holding the Yanluo Sword, stammering as he pointed at him:
"H-H-He... He swallowed the final three bolts of lightning too?!"
"Dual cultivation of spirit and martial paths! Isn't this too... monstrous?! A physical body rivaling a rank-six great demon?!"
Seeing this, Meng Wanshu finally breathed a sigh of relief. Clasping her hands behind her back, her beautiful eyes remained fixed on Li Guanqi's figure, a blush rising on her cheeks.
"It really is you. Driven to excel, just as always."
*Clang, clang!*
As the zither melody concluded, Cang Lu slowly rose to his feet.
In that instant, their gazes collided in midair. Without a single word, both unleashed their greatest strength simultaneously, each unfurling their origin energy domain!
Except Li Guanqi's Sword Prison power swept through the void across a thousand zhang in an instant.
Spreading outward, the two terrifying heavenly flames formed a cage.
This battle could only end when one of them was dead!
Chapter 505