True Joy

*Boom!* At the exact instant the blood-moon arrow flew forth, a massive hole blew open in the Dongjiao Wolf's chest. Flying Light struck, piercing straight through, yet shrieked past without crushing his soul or consciousness. After tearing through his body, the faint shimmer abruptly surged from the ground, intercepting the blood moon hurtling toward Ji Jue. Bitter Day Spring Light flashed and faded. The crucial finishing blow had failed to take effect, ending merely in mutual annihilation with the blood moon! When Tong Shan drew his sword to lend aid, the Mountain Wolf pounced forward once more. Right beneath his feet, thick, viscous black water surged, pale hands reaching out from the depths one after another, dragging at Tong Shan's body. The heavily wounded Dongjiao Wolf gave a silent, sinister grin and hurtled toward An Ning. Discarding the longbow in his grip, he clamped three arrows between his fingers like claws, thrusting them straight toward An Ning's face. An Ning slashed upward with a short blade while thrusting her other hand forward to meet the incoming arrows. The short blade sank into the Dongjiao Wolf's face and punched out through the back of his head, but her other hand was likewise shredded into a bloody pulp. In that split second of stalemate, the Dongjiao Wolf opened his mouth and spat out a sublingual arrow, yet an identical streak of Flying Light burst from An Ning's hand. The two collided and annihilated each other. At that moment, the wolf venom finally took effect. An Ning's movement lagged for an instant. Facing a wolf with both claws intact, she ducked her head without hesitation. Behind her, the Dragon Mountain armor roared and threw a punch! *Boom.* A head-on clash! In raw power, it was not in the slightest inferior to Dragon Mountain, but in speed, it surpassed it! With An Ning's reaction time, in this infinitely stretched, sluggish expanse of time, she could even see the heavily wounded wolf's silent, ferocious sneer as razor claws drew an inch closer to her heart, inch by inch... And in that endlessly slowed time, she also saw a scarlet blade descend from the heavens. With consummate ease and weightlessness, it pierced the wolf's skull, driving downward along the bisected cervical vertebrae and plunging deep into the chest. *Crack!* A crisp snap. Pan Ying!!! By the time the wolf felt the agony and tried to dodge, it was already too late—the claws he had thrust out were locked fast in An Ning's counter-grip. With all her strength. Even if only for an infinitesimal instant. Everything was already sealed. Pan Ying trembled, a bloody siphon draining away all life! Before he could even display his lifelong arts and power, the hunter fallen into a wolf met his demise! Up until the final moment, his swiftly shriveling, stiff face was still filled with bewilderment and incomprehension. Why was he so fast? Why could an artisan be so fast?! Alas, there was no one to answer. "My apologies for troubling everyone to stall for so long." A smile appeared on Ji Jue's metallic face. He slowly turned his head to look at the terrified Mountain Wolf. "Now, are you ready to die?" And so, within the domain, chaos erupted. A glowing-red silhouette of iron tore through the air! Within perception and reaction, in time slowed to the absolute limit, the Mountain Wolf couldn't even clearly see his opponent's movements. It was like dropped frames—in under a second, he lost track of the target hundreds of times... Like teleportation, every flicker brought him a step closer, and each moment he lost the target, a chill pierced deeper into his marrow. In Ji Jue's grip, the scorching red Pan Ying vibrated with excitement, letting out a shrill keening! Along the spine of the blade, the incomplete crest of the third Heritage Offering had already been restored to four-fifths, radiating blazing light! —Former Phantoms of the Six Heavens: Blood Wrist! After falling into Ji Jue's hands for so long, the sacrificial master, nearly starved to death, finally had a feast today! From the moment the battle began, from the instant he handed all control over to Isis, Ji Jue had awakened Pan Ying buried inside his body. While Isis was clashing head-on with Tao Chen through an infinite magnitude of operations, Ji Jue had been relentlessly funneling sacrifices into Pan Ying, activating the Heritage Offering! Consuming his own blood and spiritus, his own vitality and soul, to multiply his power! That glowing-red body was not overheated from the massive consumption of spiritus, but because it was gradually nearing the point where it could no longer withstand the amplification brought by Blood Wrist. As for where the sacrifices came from... Under the gifts of the Kingdom of the Woods, these sacrifices pouring in without end were too vast to count! What did Ji Jue need the things bestowed by the Wolf Sin for?! Wait until the third wolf was born, leaving himself an open door for corruption?! Without the slightest hesitation, in a single breath, he poured every bit of spiritus and vitality he had gained since entering the Kingdom of the Woods right into it. How many people did that amount to? Ji Jue couldn't even count. He only felt his power doubling, doubling, and doubling again throughout the entire process. Twofold, fourfold, eightfold, sixteenfold, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred twenty-eight, two hundred fifty-six, five hundred twelve... Until at last, reinforced by Earth Bears and Sea Embraces and Three-Phase Alchemy, pushed to the brink of collapse at the absolute limit of his tolerance, Ji Jue finally crossed the ultimate threshold. One thousand and twenty-four!!! And so, the Regeneration form that Ye Xian had deemed a blank slate was granted a one thousand and twenty-four-fold amplification—atop a baseline that already exceeded ordinary artisans by countless times! Now, primary and secondary reversed once more. Isis began using her immense magnitude of operations to continually repair and sustain this iron body on the verge of breakdown for Ji Jue! Meanwhile, the gifts of the Kingdom of the Woods still streamed across empty space without end, suffering no depletion at all—if anything, they grew even more abundant! Shrouded in blood-flames, a smile appeared on the cold metallic face. For a moment, Ji Jue suddenly felt that what was about to shatter was no longer himself, but the entire world! "Beautiful, isn't it?" He turned back, looking at the stunned Mountain Wolf, and sighed softly. "So a world of pure stats holds this many possibilities..." *Boom!* The Mountain Wolf violently exploded into pieces. Countless tendrils of blood mist squirmed, coalescing onto Pan Ying. The blade hummed and shrieked with thirst. The mere vibration sent violent tremors through the domain formed by the Lord's Masterwork. The moment Ji Jue looked back, the Water Ape let out a terrified screech and roared, trying to sink back into the black water. Yet compared to Ji Jue's current speed, it moved like a crawling tortoise. The neural reflexes of a wolf, the sensory acceleration of Transcendent Vision, matched with the all-conquering pure stats of this moment—instantly, the joy of the Swarm welled up from the bottom of his heart. Sheer, unadulterated joy. Stats! Stats! Stats! Never in his life had Ji Jue experienced such absurd stats, such absurd power, and such an absurd... efficiency of destruction! A flash split heaven and earth. Galloping in blood-light, Ji Jue was already before the Water Ape. He reached out and casually clasped her hand, reversing his grip on Pan Ying and stabbing downward—the human face wailed, shattering inch by inch! In Tao Chen's grip, a crack abruptly split across the scepter. Right after, the Gu Huo bird was pulverized into ash! Amid surging clouds and vapor, an ancient mirror reemerged from the void. The dragon-like calamity beast opened its eyes, only to see Ji Jue inches away. By the time it tried to close its eyes, it was too late. Ji Jue seized its face. Five fingers clamped tight with a snap; the head ruptured, the ancient mirror fractured, and under the destruction of the Dissociation Art, it dissolved into flying ash. Now, looking up at the ashen-faced Tao Chen in the sky above, Ji Jue suddenly grinned. "Wait—" Tao Chen only had time to raise a hand before hearing the relentless, popping shatter of all his surrounding alchemical creations. Flare after flare of radiance surfaced from his defenses, only to disintegrate before that iron hand. Only now did Ji Jue's words reach his ears: "Too late!" Pan Ying pierced through, tearing apart the body formed of nether light. Then, the Dissociation Art pressed down onto the Lord's Masterwork in his hand. The Masterwork erupted in instinctual rebellion, only to bow and submit before an even deeper darkness. Greedily swallowed and plundered, as the scepter shattered, boundless shadows fell into the Hole and vanished. "You really are so weak." As that iron hand, scorching like a branding iron, clamped over his face, Tao Chen heard the final sigh of his life. So disdainful, so pitying. And then— Dissociation Art: Jingzhen!!! Zhanlu, Chunjun, Pan Ying—the spiritus transmutations of three of the Nine Forms converged between five fingers and surged into the Exaltation-tier soul, rampaging wildly, spreading, and utterly swallowing everything. Black fire born of the soul's reflection dissolved everything with effortless ease, returning soul, consciousness, and even Blessings—every single thing—wholly into chaos. Vanished into thin air! Bringing everything to an end— In that final moment, Tao Chen didn't even have time to speak. Only his expression shifted as unstoppable annihilation encroached step by step—distorted, frenzied, resentful, terrified, blending into a wretched chaos until, in the end, what appeared was... a hint of bewilderment? As if waking from a dream, an end to a nightmare. Finally recalling what time it was, where he stood, and all that he had wrought, he could not comprehend—why had the rage and resentment he harbored for so long suddenly become uncontrollable the moment he heard Ye Xian's student had arrived? And at the very end, what surfaced in his mind was a scar-riddled, expressionless face. Looking at him with indifference, devoid of grief or joy. Like looking at a piece of consumable material tossed into a crucible... Elder Zhen, was this your goal all along?! To throw me to— *Crack!* Across that terrified face, a fracture abruptly split open. Behind the fissure, the soul that had unknowingly been hollowed out and devoured by rage and resentment dissipated without a sound. In its place was a cold pupil. As if an embryonic parasite inside had awakened, casting a cold, contemptuous glance at the ant outside its host. —The Wolf of the Heart!!! A stray thought planted by the Wolf of the Heart back then had, the instant it awoke, drained every remnant of the artisan, developing and swelling at a terrifying speed barely visible to the naked eye to reveal its true form. In this fleeting span of time too swift for thought to follow, it gazed contemptuously at everything within the domain, and finally turned its gaze toward the opponent before it. Ah, an artisan— Such a sweet scent, such pure determination, and a selfhood bordering on fractured! A host and mother body countless times superior to that useless waste Tao Chen. "What fine materia—" *Smack!* The wolf's ethereal face was seized in the tight clamp of a suddenly outstretched metal hand. And then, Pan Ying in Ji Jue's grip plunged straight into its face, sinking to the hilt! Pan Ying erupted! The terrifying power bought with a boundless sea of sacrifices poured forth. A rainbow of scarlet light fell from the heavens and seemed to erupt from the earth, piercing straight through heaven and earth. Amid the shrieks of the wolf.