Fierce spirits went berserk!
Failing an ambush from the brush only to get counter-ganked, getting blasted point-blank by an ultimate before they could even react—fine, whatever. But now you called in a measly minion to take the kill... did you really think they had zero temper?!
The three Xu brothers had merely been pinned down and curb-stomped, not beaten to death. How could they lack even the strength to fight back?
At this moment, atop the three-headed deity-fiend, the three Fangxiang masks of bronze, silver, and gold all twisted in fury, burning with wrath and frenzy. Fierce flames flared above their heads, while churning black clouds roiled beneath their feet.
"Nine-Pneuma Azure Heaven, Bright Star Great Deity.
Shine anew upon the Eastern Quarter, illuminate through the Nine Portals—"
All three gaping maws opened and closed in unison, sending shockwaves through countless souls. A deafening roar burst forth, rolling between sea and sky, swaying the minds of all who heard it. They felt an unconscious urge to chant along, to plunge all their consciousness and soul into that rolling thunderous sound.
Just like the mantras passed down by Wulou Temple.
The Xu family's Spirit-Command lineage primarily cultivated Ascension with Tianyuan as a secondary path, possessing similar arts.
Even if it was confined to internal clan teachings, how could anyone capable of establishing a foothold in the Federation, securing a place in directly governed Dongcheng, and even taking a seat at the main table ever be weak?
Between the opening and closing of those three mouths, complex and tedious secret rituals were completely compressed and bypassed, days of preparation swept away in an instant. The blessed creations held within their six arms executed their respective roles in fluid harmony, unleashed at full throttle!
Command flags marshaled myriad spirits; ritual rulers carved out precepts; an emperor's bell galvanized souls; a master's knife hummed; a bone sword gleamed with eerie luminescence; and a blood seal absorbed the turbulent spiritus within the black clouds, breaking through the confines of the Veil, ignoring the suppression of the Dragon-Severing Platform, soaring into the air with blazing radiance.
The vermilion intaglio script upon the seal wriggled and flowed, blazing brilliantly:
[Seal of the Great Demon Lords of the Five Thearchs]!
Under the combined decree of the three, the billowing black clouds formed from boundless remnant souls rapidly evaporated by more than half. Meanwhile, the trio's domain abruptly collapsed, condensing into a gate that swung open with a resounding crash.
Azure, crimson, white, black, yellow...
Within the darkness, five colossal figures wearing crowns and bound in shackles faintly loomed, resembling prisoners chained and anchored to five great mountains.
Now, the blood talismans plastered over their visages lifted by a sliver. Pairs of eyes shot forth ghostly light as they peered out from behind the gate, filling heaven and earth!
Over hundreds of years, the Xu family had accumulated countless fierce spirits and wrathful fiends—their collection numbered far beyond tens of millions!
Through this relentless, poison-cult breeding process of constant strife and culling, five terrifying entities had been nurtured—things that even the Xu family themselves could not easily command or control, and which would backlash at the slightest misstep.
Generations of inheritors had layered seal upon seal, implanting countless injunctions to suppress them, and forcefully bestowed upon them five names through the Path of Aether to make them check and balance each other. What was ultimately forged was this bottom-of-the-chest trump card:
The Great Demon Lords of the Five Thearchs!
Right now, even separated by the domain and merely leaking a trace of their aura, they caused Lou Yuling's illusions to shatter abruptly and Lou Zhaoye's countless chains to develop fractures.
The moment the Azure Face of the East emerged, all spiritus consumption within a hundred li began multiplying—doubling, then doubling again!
As the Crimson Face of the West appeared, the blood of all living beings boiled. Faces flushed red, blood seeped from mouths and nostrils, threatening to incinerate them into ash with their own searing blood.
The White Face of the South sneered savagely, sending all thoughts careening out of control. Stray thoughts, evil notions, and hallucinations erupted incessantly, while obsessions and delusions surged upward.
The Black Face of the North glared somberly, causing all souls to sway. Panic and despair erupted, leaving minds blank and void, trapped unable to advance or retreat.
And behind those four faces, when the blurred Yellow Face faintly outlined itself, every soul felt their hair stand on end, sensing an invisible maw slowly opening, preparing to devour their souls and their very existence whole!
Snap!
The Veil shredded, the mandala cracked apart, and the dense fog held for less than an instant—yet that single instant was enough to buy a critical window for the others.
Countless chains materialized continuously from the void, multiplying and splitting, dense as a torrential squall, piercing between sea and sky, freezing even the surging clouds and boiling sea in their tracks.
Countless hushed chants rose from the vibration of the chains. Lou Zhaoye's chanting and murmurs echoed endlessly, indistinct except for a single line that rang clear through every soul:
"Though my might has not subjugated heaven, my virtuous rule can command the earthly deities and bind demon spirits, banishing death while forbidding rebirth—"
Along with his words, crystalline phantasmal light flowed over the chains. They appeared almost transparent, yet no impact or upheaval could shake or twist them.
The Heavenly Cleaver surged!
The Dragon-Trapping Locks tightened inward, coiling layer upon layer around the five faces emerging from the domain, binding them with sheer force and freezing their movements, preventing them from crawling any further out of the domain.
Lou Yuling remained silent and invisible, yet a strip of fine gossamer drifting on the wind materialized out of nowhere, rapidly unfurling to drape over the faces of the Five Thearch Demon Lords, blinding their eyes and senses, throwing them into disorientation, dispersing every effect they wrought.
"Delusional fools!"
Xu Lingwei sneered. All three faces opened their mouths at once, spitting blood upon the bone sword to slash apart and sever every entangling constraint.
Immediately following, a sinister voice sounded right beside their ears.
It made the three brothers' hair stand on end.
That was... Wulou Temple's forbidden mantra art!
Right before their eyes, mist reconvened, the fractured mandala abruptly reassembled, and the chanting took a sudden shift, turning into a heaven-and-earth-shaking thunderclap, proclaiming all things of the mortal world to be mere dust.
Ji Jue said:
"—The cause that leaks, though it exists, is not real!"
The mandala revolved; myriad phenomena convulsed!
Just a few days ago, the secret Wulou Temple transmission Badanta had employed in Xiangzhou—the mantra blessed by the guru via the Womb Realm Mandala—reappeared right here!
Its effect: revise reality, overturn all existence!
To erase everything outside the True Dharma, realizing from this void the wondrous existence of true emptiness and the lotus of self-nature! In short, to turn everything the opponent possessed into an illusion, reducing it entirely to nothingness, as if it had never existed at all...
Xu Lingwei's hairs stood on end as if plunged into an icy cavern!
With uncanny precision, the opponent had seized upon the Great Demon Lords' weakest moment. Even if it could not take effect on the five fiends themselves, it could act upon their own domain! As long as the domain serving as altar and gateway was completely wiped out, the incompletely manifested Great Demon Lords would have no choice but to go back wherever they came from, bidding the three brothers goodbye once and for all!
"Don't you dare!"
Xu Lingwei's eyes nearly tore from their sockets. He swung the bone sword around, slashing down toward the Veil before him.
It was unbelievable, intolerable—did Wulou Temple's fucking "Leakless" mean nothing more than lip service?! Were their secret arts just lying around everywhere? What the hell are they even doing?!
The mandala was one thing, but how the fuck do you know this too?!
Unfortunately.
The answer was: he didn't...
Even the makeshift mandala was cleaved cleanly in two by that sword strike, completely useless—or rather, it had fulfilled its duty to perfection, tying down the enemy for a single second...
Mantra?
There wasn't a damn speck of mantra!
Even the mandala had been reverse-engineered by Ji Jue from Badanta's Golden Body and stitched together with a hodgepodge of his own messy interpretations...
Nothing could be done about it; Wulou Temple's security measures were simply too successful.
From the moment one set foot upon the cultivation path of Wulou Temple, a monk's self-nature became completely merged into the lineage. Everything they learned, attained, and practiced relied upon the True Dharma.
The price of striding down this path was that there was no other road to walk!
Appearing to be masters, yet functioning as slaves.
So much so that once one lacked access permission from a guru and had their privileges banned by the True Dharma, even if an outsider learned it, understood it, and mastered it, they couldn't use it at all!
Even with a Golden Body in hand, blessings complete, and matrices flawless, without the account credentials, you couldn't log into their intranet!
Using it rashly would result in what Ji Jue just did: completely useless aside from looking the part. It expended a huge amount of spiritus, took a painfully long cast bar, and after casting finished, didn't even make a pop—utterly useless.
Otherwise, why would Ji Jue bother going through the trouble of independent R&D and knock-off bootlegs? He could have just spiced up his competitors' tech with a bit of "micro-innovation"!
Without his vile fiends deployed, his damage output was heavily gimped; without Isis, his plays were constrained.
Right now, if he really had to go head-to-head, unless he abandoned his newly built server room and completely detonated the Chopra House God, he had no immediate way to take them down.
But it didn't matter.
He lacked the damage output, but others had it. He lacked a solution, but others still had one!
What to do with this monstrosity?
Simple...
Kill!
Beyond the shattered Veil, behind the dissipating mist, daylight blazed!
Above the wings unfurled by the Bifang, the shadowy silhouette of towering palaces high in the heavens manifested...
—[Five Towers and Twelve Cities]!
How do you like my clan-exterminating Entropy trick: Immortal's Caress, Annihilation of Spirit and Form?
As Lou Yanyue's azure wings spread and snapped closed, five-colored light converged into a flickering pinpoint of glimmer. Ten thousand li of thunder collapsed and condensed into a single point, descending in utter silence.
Now, die!
BOOM!!!
Under the illumination of boundless thunderlight, the domain cracked apart. The Great Demon Lords of the Five Thearchs dissolved into nothingness. A ripple spread outward like a wave, reducing everything in its wake to void.
It effortlessly annihilated and erased multiple blessed creations, evaporating half the body of the three-headed deity-fiend entirely. Under the glare of the thunder, those three terror-stricken faces gradually distorted.
Yet right on the brink of death, the three burst into ecstatic joy, wild laughter, and crazed shouts.
"Grandfather!!!"
Xu Lingwei bellowed at the top of his lungs, "Grandfather, save me!"
The movements of the Great Demon Lords of the Five Thearchs had already alerted the main clan on the other end. The disturbance within the underworld and their plea for aid had reached the clan head's senses!
In an instant, a helpless sigh sounded beside everyone's ears.
Domain and thunder vanished.
Heaven and earth turned pitch-black—so dark one could not see one's own hand before one's face—numb, senseless, imperceptible!
At that moment, the world underwent an abrupt transformation.
Legend tells that beyond the mortal world's Endless Sea lies another mountain named Mount Iron Enclosure. It stands sixty-eight million li high and spans sixty-eight million li wide, wrought of adamantine, indestructible throughout all eternity.
Beyond Iron Enclosure lies another Great Mount Iron Enclosure, identical in height and breadth, of the exact same measure.
The two mountains encircle the world like rims of a wheel, and between them lies an immense darkness bereft of light—even the sun and moon, possessed of such great divine might, great power, and boundless virtue, cannot illuminate it!
Now, within this immense darkness, the eight hells rose one after another, encircling the colossal figure at the center.
A Celestial-Human had descended!
Without even any deliberate action, everything in this place had fallen into the boundless Iron Enclosure, left entirely at their mercy!
Unfortunately, though the Iron Enclosure was boundless, it possessed a flaw...
[Lieque]!
Chapter 730