As Qiao Zizhong followed Xu Ying and Yan Kongcheng into the town, murderous intent surged within him.
"It was him who snuck into my tomb, cleaned out the wealth I had accumulated over twenty thousand years, and left me with nothing but a coffin and black water!"
The fury in his chest was almost impossible to suppress. "I mistakenly thought Xu Fu had done this in secret. Who would have thought the thief was right under my nose!"
Xu Ying, having manifested the twenty-four bright moons in midair, was explaining to Yan Kongcheng: "Just now, I heard Brother Yan mention that your Emei also possesses twenty-four Bright Moon Mountains and Rivers Beads. Wishing to avoid suspicion, I didn't admit earlier that it was I who had invoked the Bright Moon Pearls. But now I have no choice but to admit it."
Yan Kongcheng chuckled. "Identical magic treasures under heaven are beyond count. Why would I harbor groundless suspicions? Besides, Patriarch Qingshuang's tomb is perfectly intact and hasn't been robbed, so naturally his Bright Moon Mountains and Rivers Beads wouldn't be lost. Zhong Ziqiao, wouldn't you say I'm right?"
Qiao Zizhong was just about to strike with deadly force when he saw a towering Heavenly Dao avatar rise behind Xu Ying, radiating divine Heavenly Dao power of utterly terrifying proportions.
Although the Heavenly Dao was inferior to the Immortal Dao, Qiao Zizhong was not an immortal after all. The suppression exerted on him by the Heavenly Dao was still immense, invisibly constraining his cultivation and might.
His heart chilled. *Though I don't fear him, Sect Master Yan is right here. If I make a move and he comes to harm, I will be a sinner against Kunlun.*
"The sect master is quite right," he said calmly.
Xu Ying explained to Yan Kongcheng, "Brother Yan, even so, one must avoid suspicion when appropriate. I must explain clearly to you: this set of magic treasures of mine was obtained from the Sacred Kunlun Mountain, harvested in the sacred mountain of Lu Wu. They contain Heavenly Dao imprints, and it was from those imprints that I learned how to use them. The mountain deity Lu Wu can testify to this."
Yan Kongcheng replied, "I can see that your method of invoking them differs from our Emei's method for invoking the treasures. My disciple Zhong Ziqiao is quite knowledgeable about the twenty-four Bright Moon Pearls and has studied them thoroughly. The two of you could exchange insights."
Although he had some doubts about Xu Ying's account of the pearls' origins, seeing that Qiao Zizhong raised no objection, he assumed Xu Ying's Bright Moon Pearls were indeed above board and had nothing to do with Emei.
*I was constantly worrying he would dig up my Emei's ancestral tombs, so much so that he felt the need to explain himself just for obtaining a similar set of treasures. I truly misjudged him.* Yan Kongcheng could not help feeling a pang of guilt toward Xu Ying.
As they spoke, they had already walked into the town.
To their surprise, the town was completely deserted; not a single member of the Heavenly Dao Crowd occupied the place.
They saw traces left by battle. The town's gateway and the first few houses were undamaged, but further in, rooftops had been torn off and walls sheared in two.
The further back they went, the more severe the destruction became.
At the rear of the town, the buildings were reduced entirely to pulverized dust.
Judging from the traces on the battlefield, someone had entered through the town entrance and clashed with the townsfolk after only a few dozen paces.
By the time he fought his way to the end of town, the might of his techniques had reached its pinnacle, growing ever more powerful!
He had engaged everyone in the town simultaneously, his divine abilities pressing down on all the Heavenly Dao Crowd in the town and forcing them into retreat!
Xu Ying squatted down and spotted some fragmented bones in the roadside ditch. The shattered bones indicated their owner had been blasted apart on the spot by divine abilities!
"This member of the Heavenly Dao Crowd leaped into the air to strike at him."
Xu Ying rose, took a sudden stride forward, pivoted, and chopped through the air with his palm. "With a single strike like this, he smashed that Heavenly Dao follower to pieces in midair. That is why the bone fragments splattered in this pattern!"
Yan Kongcheng nodded. "His power erupted with absolute fullness, so the Heavenly Dao follower who took the blow wasn't knocked backward—he simply detonated in midair."
Suddenly, he felt debris beneath his feet. Looking down, he saw fragments of a Heavenly Dao treasure!
The intruder had used heavy force to shatter the enemy's Heavenly Dao treasure.
The moment the man's palm made contact, the magic treasure had been smashed to smithereens, without an ounce of wasted force.
Xu Ying pulled piece after piece of treasure fragments from the ground. Seeing this, Yan Kongcheng stepped forward to help.
The two youths soon gathered all the Heavenly Dao treasure shards they could find and pieced them together, reconstructing the treasure's original form.
It was a three-legged cauldron. A section of its wall was missing, precisely the size of a fist imprint.
With a solemn look, Yan Kongcheng looked up into the distance. "This person's control over his physical body has reached an unimaginable height. When his fist struck, the section of the Heavenly Dao treasure touching it was vaporized directly. I have never seen anyone like this."
Xu Ying nodded slightly and exhaled a breath of turbid air. "This person's skill surpasses even mine; his physical body is the ultimate magic treasure. This fighting style doesn't look like divine abilities—it looks very much like..."
He paused, leaving the rest unsaid.
This had been a one-sided massacre!
The man had come here relying neither on magic treasures nor on divine abilities. With his physical body alone, he had routed the Heavenly Dao Crowd, slaughtering them into total disarray.
Xu Ying stood up, retracted most of the Bright Moon Pearls, and left only eight suspended in the sky as he followed the ground's tracks out of the town.
Seeing the hairline cracks covering the Bright Moon Pearls Xu Ying put away, Qiao Zizhong felt his heart bleed. *The treasure that made my name is about to be ruined by him! But then again, what sort of ability does he possess to enter my tomb and steal my treasures without even opening the burial vault?*
He suddenly grew vigilant. *Could it be that the ageless immortal is a kindred spirit of mine, hiding his true strength all along? He could have put away all the Bright Moon Pearls, yet he deliberately left eight behind. Is he warning me not to make a move?*
He narrowed his eyes, thinking, *Does he think eight Bright Moon Pearls are enough to make me hesitate for fear of collateral damage? He underestimates me. But if he is like me, also harvesting crops, then he truly could make me think twice. He really is cunning.*
Xu Ying led the way, examining the marks of battle left along the ground.
The man had fought his way through here, slaughtered his way out of the town, and continued into the mountains.
Xu Ying and Yan Kongcheng quickened their pace. The further they went, the fiercer the battle had been. Eventually, after covering dozens of li, an immensely dense Heavenly Dao aura slammed into them.
Though powerful and concentrated, this Heavenly Dao aura was exceptionally dangerous, inducing madness and throwing the Great Daos of heaven and earth into chaos!
"The aura of heavenly gods!" Both Xu Ying and Yan Kongcheng felt their chests tighten.
Because Xu Ying had not put away all the Bright Moon Pearls, the Heavenly Dao domain remained active, shielding their minds from the aberrant Heavenly Dao aura. Yet should they step beyond this domain, they feared even they would lose control and succumb to madness!
Xu Ying's Martial Dao will could certainly resist the influence of the Heavenly Dao, but the presence here was overwhelmingly strong. During the battle back then, the Heavenly Dao's influence must have been even more terrifying.
*The Heavenly Dao aura here is even denser than at the Palace of Heavenly Gods!* he thought to himself.
They reached the final battlefield and beheld the scene of combat. It was a mountain valley flanked by cliffs on three sides, sheer as walls. Yet those stone cliffs were now pitted with craters and hollows—some shaped like fist prints, some palm prints, some finger prints, along with indentations left by blows from various parts of a body.
And within this valley stood heavenly gods of various sizes!
To be precise, heavenly gods had descended into the bodies of the Heavenly Dao followers. The followers' physical bodies had bloated, enlarged, and deified, forming earthly avatars of heavenly gods!
These divine avatars stood up to a hundred fathoms tall and took bizarre, grotesque shapes. There were hundred-eyed giants with no facial features on their heads, covered front and back in eyes; thousand-armed heavenly gods with countless limbs like palm-leaf fans sprouting from their bodies, misshapen and colossal;
heavenly gods with mantis-like torsos but human upper bodies and well-developed mouthparts, their scythe-like arms bristling with barbs;
others with human torsos sprouting countless writhing tentacles from their backs;
and even avatars of Tianshu, followed by countless manifestations of himself.
In this valley, virtually every form of heavenly god was on display.
Xu Ying had encountered most of these heavenly gods before. For instance, when Zhou Qiyun underwent his tribulation, he had abducted three hundred and sixty Heavenly Gods of the Universal Cycle to descend and aid him. On Mount Jiuyi's parasol tree, stone statues of heavenly gods had assembled en masse to abduct Xu Ying, only to be hacked to pieces by Jin Buyi's twin sabers.
However, during Zhou Qiyun's tribulation, Xu Ying had been thousands of li away, too far to see clearly, and the flickering lightning of the tribulation had allowed only fleeting glimpses.
As for the stone statues, they could never truly display the heavenly gods' authentic appearances.
Yet in this valley, the Heavenly Dao Crowd had lured the intruder here, and heavenly gods had descended, seizing their bodies and instantly assimilating them into parts of the gods to spring this ambush!
Each of these heavenly gods was vivid and lifelike, frozen in the posture and expression they held at the moment of death!
Their postures exuded natural Dao charm, forming organic Dao images.
Their expressions bore joy, fury, hatred, despair, sorrow—every human emotion was etched distinctly upon their faces.
In the final moment before death, they were no different from the mortal men they regarded as ants.
Xu Ying drifted upward and arrived before a colossal heavenly god. This god's forehead had been punched straight through, leaving a clear opening from front to back.
They could even fly through the great hole in the forehead into the avatar's cranium to examine the frozen wound.
Suddenly, Yan Kongcheng raised a palm and tapped lightly. With a resonant chime, the avatar's Realm of Xiyi was jostled out of the body, materializing before them.
"Brother Xu, look."
Yan Kongcheng pointed to the highest level of the Realm of Xiyi, to the Jade Capital behind the third Heavenly Pass. "The Primordial Spirit of this Heavenly Dao follower was shattered to death by the heavenly god's divine might the very instant the god descended."
Xu Ying followed the direction of his finger and indeed saw a shattered Primordial Spirit within the Jade Capital, cracked like fractured porcelain yet frozen in the air.
"The cultivation method of the Heavenly Dao Crowd may seem to swiftly elevate one's cultivation and grant longevity, but in truth, it merely refines oneself into an earthly vessel for a heavenly god," Yan Kongcheng said, looking deeply at him with genuine earnestness. "You and I are friends, and I cannot bear to watch you stray onto the wrong path. You have traveled too far along the path of the Heavenly Dao Crowd, far from the righteous Dao."
Xu Ying argued, "I understand Heavenly Dao runes that even the heavenly gods do not..."
Yan Kongcheng shook his head. "I know your mastery over Heavenly Dao runes is exceptional. You can control a Heavenly Dao domain and slaughter many members of the Heavenly Dao Crowd. But the heavenly gods are far too powerful. If one descends into your physical body, you will have no means to resist. It will crush you, assimilate you, and turn your flesh into its avatar on the spot."
Xu Ying gave it some thought and realized the danger Yan Kongcheng described was entirely real.
Though the Heavenly Dao runes on the heavenly gods contained many flaws, quite a few were correct. If he continued digging deeper down the path of the Heavenly Dao Crowd, and a heavenly god sensed him, it could descend along those correct runes!
At that point, he would indeed face the risk of becoming a vessel!
"Thank you for the guidance, Brother Yan." He bowed in gratitude.
Yan Kongcheng quickly supported him. "Think nothing of it. Brother Xu, you have been tracking the Heavenly Dao Crowd—do you know whom the heavenly gods were besieging here?"
He looked around. Every single heavenly god was dead, slain right in this mountain valley. Each had been struck down in a single blow, without need of a second.
Killing the Heavenly Dao Crowd was one thing; after all, mortal followers could not exert the full power of the Heavenly Dao. But the descended heavenly gods were entirely beyond comparison.
At the same cultivation level, they could unleash several times the combat power, not to mention the crushing pressure of the Heavenly Dao. An opponent ought not to have possessed the courage even to raise a hand.
Xu Ying suddenly bounded into the air. Mid-leap, he smashed downward with the Overturning the Heavens seal method, shouting, "He killed this heavenly god with this move!"
His palm hovered just over the heavenly god's forehead. Immediately flipping backward in midair like a divine dragon lashing its tail, he executed the Dao Hammer seal method, slamming toward the chest of an outwardly unblemished heavenly god, shouting, "To kill this god, he used this move!"
Dancing like a nimble swallow, his footwork was unfathomably elusive, moving in harmony with the Great Dao. The bones and sinews within him resonated in unison with continuous rolling thunder. Using his hand as a blade, he slashed toward another heavenly god's throat. "To slay a god, he used this move!"
His form shifted incessantly, flitting across the valley in mere moments, scarcely touching the ground as he demonstrated profound martial techniques, striking the weak points of one heavenly god after another.
Yan Kongcheng could hardly keep up with the spectacle. Glancing at the cliffs behind the fallen gods, he was stunned to see fist prints, palm prints, and finger imprints that matched Xu Ying's strikes exactly!
Xu Ying dropped from the sky, landing beside him.
Yan Kongcheng stammered, "Xu... Brother Xu, the one who killed these heavenly gods... who is he to you?"
"I have studied his Eight Methods of the Martial Dao."
Xu Ying's vitality surged with immense vigor, still churning relentlessly. Looking out over the valley, he said, "This man is a martial genius from the Taichu World who established the Other Shore of the Martial Dao. When he departed, he had already cultivated a Martial Dao Primordial Spirit. Judging by this scene, he has likely pushed the Martial Dao to the Ascension stage. The Martial Dao..."
He paused in silence for a moment before continuing, "...is about to welcome its first ascended Martial Immortal, its first Great Emperor of the Martial Dao!"
Behind him, Qiao Zizhong gazed out across the valley. Those standing heavenly gods offered their deaths as tribute, highlighting the terrifying power of this martial legend.
"Perhaps he wishes to open a true Other Shore of the Martial Dao and plant immortal herbs," Qiao Zizhong murmured, unable to suppress the shock in his heart.
Hearing this, Xu Ying suddenly turned to look at him, his gaze sharpening.
Startled, Qiao Zizhong quickly harmonized his light with the dust, rendering himself utterly unremarkable so that anyone's gaze glancing off him would slip away as though looking at a dull stone.
Then he snapped out of it. *Why should I fear him? He stole my treasures—why should I be the one who is afraid?*
Xu Ying smiled. "Brother Yan, may I borrow your disciple for a moment to consult him on how to refine and activate the Bright Moon Pearls?"
Yan Kongcheng, captivated by the marks left by the Great Emperor of the Martial Dao, was attempting to comprehend the martial essence and spirit within them, and readily let Xu Ying lead Qiao Zizhong away.
Xu Ying brought Qiao Zizhong to a secluded spot, cast a sidelong glance at him, and asked, "Does Ziqiao know how to refine the Bright Moon Pearls?"
Furious rage surged within Qiao Zizhong. This brat actually dared to ask him how to refine the Bright Moon Pearls!
He had looted his grave, seized his treasures, and now demanded that he teach him how to refine them!
If this could be tolerated, what could not be—
*I will endure!*
Qiao Zizhong glanced up at the Bright Moon Pearls suspended in the air. Unbeknownst to him, Xu Ying had manifested all twenty-four Bright Moon Pearls once more. Turning hostile right now, even if he won, would severely deplete his yuan qi.
There were plenty of opportunistic fishermen lurking in these parts; taking reckless risks was unwise.
The best opportunity would be the moment Xu Ying recalled the Bright Moon Pearls. Only then could he strike with fatal precision.
A blue vein throbbed on his forehead as he spoke: "Treating them as Heavenly Dao treasures is not the proper way to use the Bright Moon Pearls. While invoking them like this forms a Heavenly Dao domain and unleashes the might of the Heavenly Dao, not a single shred of the pearls' true power has been brought forth. Right now, what the Bright Moon Pearls unleash is merely the power of the Heavenly Dao."
Xu Ying asked humbly, "Then how does one unleash the treasure's own power?"
Qiao Zizhong quietly clenched his fist, then slowly relaxed it. "A single Bright Moon Pearl is a miniature world containing its own heavens, earth, mountains, rivers, and myriad things. If you regard these as Dao images and comprehend the Dao images within the pearls, you can master that power. And if you pair them with the technique created by Patriarch Qingshuang of Emei—the Bright Moon Mountains and Rivers Technique—combined with the Twenty-Four Heavens Immortal Formation, you can unleash the combat power of an immortal."
Xu Ying looked pensive and praised, "Ziqiao truly understands. In that case, can the Bright Moon Mountains and Rivers Technique and the Twenty-Four Heavens Immortal Formation be passed on to me?"
Expressionless, Qiao Zizhong gave a dry chuckle. "That is not something I can decide. It requires the sect master's approval."
Xu Ying said indifferently, "Can Patriarch Qingshuang not decide either?"
The blue veins on Qiao Zizhong's forehead pulsed wildly, and he nearly flew into a murderous rage. Fortunately, his composure was astonishing; he forcefully endured it, though the surrounding air grew stiflingly oppressive.
Clenching his fists tightly, Qiao Zizhong chuckled coldly. "Xu Ying, you know?"
Xu Ying stood with his hands behind his back. The Heavenly Dao avatar behind him grew increasingly formidable, faintly resonating with the heavenly god avatars in the valley, as if borrowing the Great Daos of the heavenly gods.
"Of course I recognized you. When you fought Xu Fu, I caught a distant glimpse of you. But you looked so ordinary that I didn't dare assume."
Xu Ying's expression remained placid. "Yet when you said the Great Emperor of the Martial Dao intended to create a true Other Shore of the Martial Dao, I knew you could not be a normal Emei disciple. You, an Emei patriarch, pose as a junior to infiltrate Emei. Could it be that you wish to harvest Yan Kongcheng?"
His murderous intent surged higher and higher, and he said coldly, "Yan Kongcheng is one of my few friends. If you harbor such intentions, only one of us will walk out of this valley today!"
Qiao Zizhong looked at him, and after a moment, asked, "Do you have any idea how strong I am?"
Xu Ying sneered. "Do you have any idea how strong I am? In my Heavenly Dao domain, no matter how powerful you are, your blood will spill within five paces!"
Qiao Zizhong fell silent for a moment before saying, "I remain in Emei with no ill intent. I only wish for Emei to become better."
Xu Ying looked straight into his eyes. Qiao Zizhong met his gaze with absolute candor. After a moment, Xu Ying nodded. "I will take your word for now. Do not let me catch you stepping out of line, or you know the consequences."
With that, he turned and walked away.
Qiao Zizhong watched him depart. Then he noticed the boy's legs were trembling slightly, clearly gripped by sheer terror. Qiao Zizhong froze, then realization hit him: *That punk was putting on an enormous act again! I... I will endure!*
Chapter 236