For Qin Ming, this was a desperate impasse, an unprecedented trial of life and death. Even exotic metal—a material fit for near-immortal items—could not pierce through the old woman's skull.
Yet his own blood was already splattering everywhere!
During his sixth rebirth, a strange light had awakened within him. No matter his physical state, even if he were weakened to rock bottom, he could unleash it as a strike equivalent to his absolute peak, tied to heavenly light.
Regrettably, after using it once, it would take him a long time to recover that ray of light.
During his seventh rebirth, a mass of golden twilight had emerged within him, resembling a shattered sun mingled with glowing mist—remarkably akin to the conscious spiritual light of pure yang.
The two lights within him had blossomed one after the other, forming a relay attack.
Just moments ago, the golden twilight inside Qin Ming had reconstituted like a radiant sun of pure yang, breaking through the pitch-black clouds. Guiding his weapon with the "Pure Yang Blazing Sun," he had driven the pure-white sword pendant deep into the old woman's brow. Yet even with all his might, he had only forced it in slightly, unable to truly pierce her skull!
Likewise, the blazing sun born from his seventh rebirth could only last for a single instant. Once expended, it would require a long time to recover.
Qin Ming sighed, retrieved the exotic metal small sword, and harnessed the final afterglow of pure yang to slash across the outside of her body.
Yet throughout this process, terrifying fractures crisscrossed his entire body from head to toe. Light could practically shine through from front to back; he had effectively been torn apart.
Qin Ming had practically been crushed in an instant!
Even after deploying the exotic metal small sword, he could not break through the old woman. What was more, this had been an ambush.
Qin Ming had not mobilized his heavenly light force at all—it could be said there had been no sign whatsoever. Striking directly with special abilities made it nearly impossible to defend against.
During the Newborn stage, most of these accompanying abilities were rather useless.
Yet he had awakened two abilities in succession, both extraordinarily abnormal, each equivalent to his strongest blow!
The old woman had been barely inches from him, without releasing her heavenly light in advance. At first, she had indeed taken the hit, but her body's instinctive reaction instantly turned the tide of battle.
Exotic metal weapons were purported to specialize in breaking through heavenly light, divine wisdom, and the like. Yet here, it had proven ineffective, neutralized and blocked in an instant by the old woman's bodily instincts.
Even so, Qin Ming driving the exotic metal small sword with his two abilities had not been entirely in vain; it had, after all, penetrated her forehead at the start.
The old woman shrieked, her vision momentarily turning black. Though her instinctive reaction had crushed her opponent in an instant and shielded her from further injury, the brain was unlike any other part of the body. In that single breath when she lost her senses, many things could happen. For instance, she had already plummeted from the clouds!
Qin Ming gave a miserable smile, feeling that he was about to die. Was this the oppressive weight of the third realm? Even when he exhausted all his strength, it was still like an ant trying to shake a tree.
And this was merely an old woman at the initial stage of the spirit field realm, someone who had made no further progress after stepping into that domain. Yet even when left completely open to attack, she was nearly impossible to shake. Qin Ming's blood dyed the cloudy mist red as he plummeted at extreme speed.
His body was covered in dense fractures—at least a hundred of them—looking like an exquisite piece of porcelain that had been shattered and then pieced back together.
Just now, he truly had been torn apart. At the final moment, he had utilized adhesive force to forcibly bind his flesh and bones, preventing his body from disintegrating and keeping his human form intact.
Otherwise, countless chunks of flesh and blood would have scattered and rained down through the sky.
Qin Ming realized that the silk book method's integration of various heavenly light forces, its fusion of part of his conscious spiritual light, and its consumption of the divine wisdom he had painstakingly cultivated were not useless after all; they possessed a certain miraculous wonder.
For example, the last time, his entire body's heavenly light power had merged seamlessly with his mental consciousness, entering the giant centipede's divine kingdom together as one.
And just like now, his body was practically dismembered and shattered into fragments. Had he been relying on any other heavenly light force, its circulation would have faltered, leaving him helpless and bound to perish in a gruesome bodily explosion.
Because Qin Ming's heavenly light was fused with divine wisdom and conscious spiritual light, it felt like an inherent part of his flesh, blood, and spirit. It could still be mobilized, and thus it held his shattered body together.
Even so, his condition was as terrible as it could possibly be!
At this moment, he was pushed to the very brink, already seeing the abyss of death with more than half his body plunged inside.
"Vile beast!" the old woman shrieked into the night sky. Her face was drenched in blood streaming from her forehead, contorting into something hideous and terrifying.
Fury consumed her heart. A dignified master of the spirit field realm had actually been wounded by a mere Newborn, her consciousness momentarily blacking out so that she tumbled from the clouds.
To her, this was an utter humiliation—like a lion being tripped by a grasshopper sticking out a leg, and falling flat on its face only to come up covered in blood.
"Old hag!" Qin Ming ground his teeth. He had never felt so much hatred. The Cui clan was like a lingering ghost, constantly appearing at his side and bringing fatal threats.
At the same time, he felt humiliated and profoundly powerless.
He had been crushed in an instant by the instinctive release of her spirit field and heavenly light, blasted far into the distance.
Perhaps it was for the best that they were so far apart. Otherwise, the moment the old woman regained her senses, even mid-air in the night sky, she would have seized him immediately to enact a bloody retribution.
The only part of Qin Ming still intact was his head, because at the critical moment, he had used that mysterious rag to shield himself.
Furthermore, he had been positioned considerably higher than the old woman, so when her spirit field and heavenly light surged outward, his head had escaped being shattered.
"I might as well have died once!"
Agony wracked Qin Ming's entire body. His flesh and blood had been forcefully cobbled together; without the heavenly light force fused with conscious spiritual light and divine wisdom, he could fall apart at any second.
"Qin Ming, impressive. You truly are someone raised by my Cui clan—to actually injure me while only at the Newborn realm! Fine, once we reach the ground, we shall have a good long talk!" Having recovered, the old woman was not gravely harmed. An exotic metal small sword piercing her forehead was not enough to claim her life. Her eyes flashed like lightning as she locked onto the distant youth.
Hunched over, her expression was sinister and ruthless as she glared intently in his direction.
"Your Cui clan has brought me so much suffering, yet your skin is still thick enough to boast. Fine, I will remember every bit of it!" Qin Ming muttered weakly to himself. He did not bother addressing the old woman; without genuine strength to shake the Cui clan, words were meaningless.
"Living or dead, you bear the brand of my Cui clan! We raised you. In the past, we could treat you as a young master; in the future, we can just as easily treat you as a household-born slave. Did you truly believe you could ever break free?"
The old woman bit down hard on the words "household-born slave," provoking Qin Ming to fury. Targeting him was one thing, but she dared to humiliate his family as well.
"Until one of us dies!" Qin Ming spat out those words, another trail of blood hanging from the corner of his mouth.
The old woman gave a cold laugh. "See you on the ground!"
She reached to pull her parachute pack, casting a ruthless glance his way. The next instant, however, she froze in horror—a disaster had struck!
Immediately after, she screamed in terror, "No!"
She had deployed the parachute pack, but what emerged was nothing more than shredded webbing. Could that even be called a canopy? It was a fishing net, completely useless.
"Ah..." she cried out shrilly, despair washing over her face. What was she supposed to do now?
"You!" Realization struck her, and she glared across the empty expanse. Two streaks of silver lightning shot from her aged eyes, only to find the youth smiling coldly through his agony.
"Seeing you like this puts my heart at ease," Qin Ming's voice drifted down from above, his parachute already deployed.
Ever since his previous experience falling from the giant bird alongside Li Qingyun, he had been left with lingering trauma, which was why he had brought several parachute packs. In truth, that very precaution was what had saved his life.
The other packs on his body had all been shredded, but the one atop his head had survived. Gritting through the pain, he had managed to slip it on.
After this ordeal, Qin Ming's dread of falling from high altitudes had worsened several times over.
The old woman was terrified, utterly despondent. Even as a master of the spirit field realm, she could not withstand such a fall; her body simply could not endure the impact, and her death would be gruesome beyond measure.
She finally understood: in the brief instant her consciousness had wavered, unable to pierce her body with the exotic metal small sword, he had used it to shred her emergency parachute pack instead.
"Who will save me?!" Even a master of the spirit field realm was still mortal flesh; she too felt dread and terror, no different from an ordinary person in her final moments.
In the night mist, along with the old woman's disappearance, a five-colored bottle was also lost from sight. That bottle had contained heavenly light liquid!
Qin Ming withdrew his gaze, uncertain whether he could survive. He had never been so severely injured in his life.
Examining himself with internal vision, Qin Ming saw clearly that every single bone in his limbs and torso was fractured—not a single one remained whole. Most terrifying of all, his five viscera had been torn apart, split into numerous pieces.
Though they had been pieced back together, his bodily functions and his once-booming vitality had plummeted to the absolute bottom.
All told, when the old woman's spirit field and heavenly light had erupted, it was as if a pair of colossal hands had ripped him apart, or as though he had been slashed by countless blades.
Across his entire body, there were no fewer than a hundred wounds piercing straight through from front to back, crisscrossing in every direction. How could any normal Newborn possibly survive this?
"I still have so much left to do. If I die like this, my life will be full of regrets," he murmured softly.
Yet the brutal truth lay before his eyes. His heart had shattered into more than a dozen pieces; even patched together, it was barely twitching. How could he possibly go on living?
Bitter and despondent, scenes of the past surfaced before Qin Ming's eyes one by one—those people, those events, flashing through his mind like an electric surge.
They said that when a person was about to die, their entire life would flash before them in an instant. He felt he might have truly reached that stage.
"Grandfather, even now, I don't know where you went or if you're still alive."
"Mother, Father, I have no memory of you at all. I don't know if you are still in this world, but it seems I may depart before you."
"Cui clan, get lost! Don't you dare intrude upon my final, precious moments!"
"Twin Trees Village... sigh, I won't be able to return."
"Uncle Meng, Elder Li, I failed your hopes. I was merely an insignificant Newborn who couldn't stir up a single wave on this path."
"Qingyue, beware of the other immortal seeds in the pure lands, and those shameless seniors. I hope you ascend amid glowing mists and stand atop the immortal path, though it seems I won't live to see that day."
"Ning Siqi, you must become a god. Li Qingxu, what a pity I won't get the chance to bash your dog head in. Cui Chonghe, what kind of immortal could you possibly become? Too bad I won't have time to march up to the Cui clan's gates to battle you..."
Qin Ming continued descending. His mind remained lucid, but his body was on the verge of shutting down entirely, held together only by his special heavenly light force to keep from collapsing into pieces.
His heart, spleen, liver, lungs, and kidneys had been shattered into countless pieces; even pieced together, there was no sign of recovery, and they had completely ceased functioning. How was he supposed to survive? Death was bound to come sooner or later.
He tried every method he could think of. While the Destiny-Altering Scripture could extend life, it could not produce immediate results.
As for the thunderfire inner refinement method, he dared not risk it—a severely weakened body could not endure such potent medicine. Crucially, doing so might simply shock him to death on the spot, causing his physical body to blow apart. And as for the silk book method, it seemed powerless to help him right now.
Through the night mist, he caught a glimpse of an intoxicating, crystalline blue radiance, which instantly made his chest feel stifled. It was the mineral essence he had preserved for so long.
Back then, when he had fallen into the chasm at Black-White Mountain, irradiated by heavenly light until his entire body turned black and he nearly died, he had found this item on a nearby corpse.
During the Newborn stage, so long as one had not yet completed nine rebirths, consuming it for the first time would enhance one's constitution and grant a fifty-percent chance of undergoing a rebirth, entirely dependent on luck.
Thus, to maximize its effect, Qin Ming had saved it until now.
The primary reason was that he had never lacked spiritual substances for rebirth before.
Moreover, Qin Ming's body had its limits. Though he had not been held back by the barrier restricting one to only five rebirths a year, ever since his seventh rebirth, he had yet to fully recover.
Now, the thumb-sized crystal vial was broken, its blue liquid spilling out, held against his skin by his adhesive force.
"I haven't even tasted it yet!" Qin Ming felt deeply unwilling. Should he drink it now?
However, mineral essence had to be consumed when the body was in its prime; otherwise, it could backfire and harm the consumer. Back when he was gravely ill, it was precisely for this reason that he had not dared to drink it.
At this moment, his heart had already stopped beating. Feeling carefully, he realized his lungs had also failed—he was no longer breathing! Qin Ming's expression froze. Had he suffered bodily death?
His facial expression felt numb. Was he about to lose all sensation entirely? This was truly a soul-crushing, despair-inducing reality.
"You might as well give me a swift end!"
Qin Ming realized that the reason he had not died immediately was likely linked to the various purple mists, golden twilights, and silver lights he had absorbed on that mountain. Wisps of luminous vapor still lingered and drifted within him.
"Wait, what is that?"
Suddenly, he spotted a "silver plate" hanging in the distant sky! How could this... look so much like the moon described in the ancient books?
He froze in astonishment. What kind of place was this?
Before long, Qin Ming hit the ground. Although he had the parachute, the impact caused him to hemorrhage violently all over again, nearly blowing his body apart once more. Lying on the ground, without a heartbeat or breath, he looked at his surroundings with a surreal sense of wonder—there truly was a moon in the distance.
In this area, pure and gentle moonlight draped over the landscape, completely unlike the pitch-black nocturnal world he was accustomed to seeing!
"Where on earth am I?" On the verge of death, Qin Ming's face was filled with utter bewilderment.
Chapter 174