Chu Xiangxiang pondered for a long while before shaking her head. "I'm not quite sure. Your Twelve-Storyed Mansions have already been refined into a dharma treasure. Even if you took them back, I'm afraid they would still be a treasure, not a realm..."
Her eyes lit up, and she smiled. "So you still need to see my father. He is the God of Cangwu, an ancient being of profound insight. He will surely know the answer to this question!"
Her bright, sparkling eyes fixed on Xu Ying as she coaxed, "The Cangwu Abyss isn't far from here..."
Xu Ying shook his head. "Miss Xiangxiang, return to Cangwu first. I still have important business to attend to."
Chu Xiangxiang's eyes darted about, and she laughed. "I'll come with you. Once you finish your business, you can come with me to Cangwu."
Li Xiaoke and his wife snuggled close together. The woman laughed softly. "Look at those two. How like a pair of young lovers they are."
Li Xiaoke said, "They bicker and argue, thinking there are things in this world more important than loving each other. But sooner or later, they will realize that nothing matters more than being together, leaning on one another."
They looked at each other and smiled.
Xu Ying took his leave of Li Xiaoke and his wife and stepped out of the Hidden Scenery latent transformation ground. "Rest assured, Miss Xiangxiang," he said. "Once I finish this urgent matter, I will go to the Cangwu Abyss to find you. Until this is resolved, my heart cannot be at peace."
He leaped into the air, turning into a streak of rainbow light that sped into the distance.
"Hey—!"
Chu Xiangxiang hurried after him, but how could she hope to catch up? Along both banks of the Nai River, silent mountains stood beneath the azure sky, with not a trace of Xu Ying to be seen.
Disconsolate, Chu Xiangxiang had no choice but to return to the Cangwu Abyss. Within the abyss, a divine figure slowly rose and inquired, "Xiangxiang, did Xu Ying agree to return with you?"
Chu Xiangxiang shook her head and recounted her encounter with Xu Ying and Hua Cuoying. "He had an urgent matter to tend to, but he promised he would come to the Cangwu Abyss once it is done."
The God of Cangwu sighed faintly. "Merely an excuse. Even if he does come to the Cangwu Abyss, he will not willingly part with the Jade Pool immortal water to revive me. You insisted on searching for him yourself, and I let you go, only for you to return empty-handed. Now, we must do things my way."
Chu Xiangxiang asked, "What is Father God's method?"
The God of Cangwu said, "I shall tell him: I have a daughter, dignified in appearance, gentle and virtuous..."
Chu Xiangxiang flared with feigned anger. "I won't marry him!" With that, she turned and left.
The God of Cangwu chuckled heartily and transformed into an old man wearing a crown of thorns. Leaning on a wooden staff, he set off along the Cangwu Abyss.
Beneath his feet, the Cangwu Abyss continuously cracked open ahead, stretching longer and longer.
Within this chasm, a colossal body rolled and surged, rocks colliding and sending sparks flying.
The god's journey caused the collision between the Netherworld and the mortal realm to grow increasingly violent.
On the Nai River Bridge, Granny Meng felt the tremors and could not help but frown. "That old coot Cangwu is setting out in person? When he moves, the commotion is far too great—has he no fear of appalling the world?!"
The earth cracked and split with loud rumbles, cleaving ever forward. Even the sects nestled in the famous mountains and great rivers were disturbed. Numerous sect leaders flew into the sky one after another, looking down in shock and uncertainty.
"Why has such an abnormal change occurred in the Cangwu Abyss? Could the world be about to be sealed away once more?" they speculated amongst themselves.
Mount Weiyu, the Kongming cave-heaven.
High God Tianji descended from above, landing precisely upon the altar prepared by Beichenzi and Fairy Yutang.
The two looked up at this heavenly god, feeling waves of dreadful Heavenly Dao might. They carefully reined in their mental willpower to avoid clashing with the will of the Heavenly Dao and enraging the god.
High God Tianji slowly stepped down from the altar, walking between the two reverent figures.
His frame was slender and towered far above an ordinary mortal's, with long limbs and a long face. On his back hung a large bamboo cylinder containing forty divination tallies.
Carved upon the divination tallies were forty Heavenly Dao calculations, capable of divining all affairs under heaven.
Anyone who remained within the Heavenly Dao and had not broken free could have their whereabouts deduced.
"This mortal realm truly produces generation after generation of talent and is remarkably rich."
High God Tianji surveyed the Kongming cave-heaven. Seeing streaks of ascension light cascading down as dense as a forest, making the heaven-and-earth primordial qi exceptionally rich, he smiled. "Once I rule this world and reap the incense of its countless living beings, and then capture Xu Ying, my meteoric rise to become a god king of the Heavenly Dao world will be well within reach."
Hearing this, Beichenzi and Fairy Yutang exchanged bewildered glances.
Beichenzi summoned his courage and said, "High God, Xu Ying is weak; capturing him should suffice. But ruling this world—where would one even begin?"
High God Tianji's face darkened. "Did I descend to this realm just for scraps? I hear that in your Yuanshou world, even the Netherworld went so far as to build a Nether Court, defying the governance of the Heavenly Dao! I have come precisely to set things right and bring the subjects of this world back under the Heavenly Dao!"
Beichenzi hurriedly explained, "The High God may not know, but the Yuanshou world is rife with unruly folk, not a few of whom possess immense power..."
High God Tianji let leak just a hint of Heavenly Dao aura, and Beichenzi's mind instantly fell into disarray, struggling to maintain his divine consciousness.
Tianji withdrew his aura and said coolly, "Beneath the Heavenly Dao, all who fail to become immortals are mere ants. Mortals, no matter how powerful, can never surpass a heavenly god."
Beichenzi dared not speak further.
Tianji stepped out of the Kongming cave-heaven and onto Mount Weiyu.
Beichenzi and Fairy Yutang hastened after him. Fairy Yutang whispered, "Beichen, this Heavenly Dao deity seems rather out of touch with the situation. Our Yuanshou world is not like the others. There are old monsters who have lived for tens of thousands of years, treacherous and sinister, not to mention ancient deities who have lived even longer..."
Beichenzi muttered grimly, "Was what I said of any use? I uttered just a single line and was nearly overwhelmed by the will of the Heavenly Dao. Our only recourse now is to find the Shenzhou Earth God. She is a heavenly god too—let her speak to him."
High God Tianji suddenly said, "There are experts clashing nearby! I shall subdue them first before conquering the Yuanshou world!"
He leaped into the air and flew toward the sea.
Beichenzi and Fairy Yutang followed. From afar, they saw a wave of Xuanhuang Qi surging across the sea, followed by roaring immortal fire blazing to life, with a Yellow Court Mansion seated amidst the flames.
Buzz—
A colossal halo slowly rose, encompassing both the Xuanhuang Qi and the fire-wrapped Yellow Court Mansion. A voice laughed heartily, "You juniors dare flaunt your might before me? You hunted me for so long, but in the end you only gave me time to heal my injuries! Today, I shall send you on your way!"
The raging magic power was boundless and immense. High God Tianji turned ashen—even a god king of the Heavenly Dao world might not possess such vast cultivation!
He dared not draw near, gazing from a distance to see a short, white-haired old man with a ruddy, youthful complexion standing beneath the radiant cave-heaven. Beneath his feet coiled a great azure serpent composed of immortal qi, his cultivation and power boundless.
Confronting the old man were three Qi Refiners. Behind them, one had merely six cave-heavens, while another possessed as many as ten or twenty thousand cave-heavens!
They stood within unique worlds, radiating strands of immortal light, enveloped in swirling immortal qi like earthly immortals!
They had not broken free of the Heavenly Dao, yet the aura of any one of them surpassed that of a heavenly god!
High God Tianji turned pale and hastily flew backward.
At that moment, the white-haired old man and the three great experts clashed upon the sea—and in an instant, ocean and sky flipped upside down!
The arts and divine powers they displayed were not merely mortal Dao arts. Those Dao arts had not broken free of the Heavenly Dao; if that were all, High God Tianji might still have coped. But they also mastered terrifying immortal divine powers—powers far beyond anything High God Tianji could withstand!
"Hurry, run—!"
In frantic flight, with the aftershocks of the clash pursuing closely behind, High God Tianji seized Beichenzi and Fairy Yutang, leaping into the air to flee far away.
Behind him, the forty divination tallies floated up, growing taller and wider until they stood erect in the sky. Various runic imprints surfaced upon them—brands of various Heavenly Dao runes!
The tallies shifted back and forth, their runic sequences transforming to assemble different Heavenly Dao divine powers, blocking the shockwaves rolling in from behind.
High God Tianji cast a hurried glance back, only to see that one of the peerless experts had already been slaughtered by the white-haired elder. Piercing the realm of the five immortals, the old man tore out the expert's immortal-like Primordial Spirit and swallowed it whole!
"So ferocious..."
A shiver ran down his spine, and he sped up his escape.
In the very next moment, another peerless expert was slain, his immortal body skinned and devoured alive!
High God Tianji fled desperately toward Mount Weiyu, thinking, This world truly is perilous beyond measure! No wonder none of the other heavenly gods chose the descent talisman for this place! And here I thought they had merely forgotten about the Yuanshou world! Without further ado, I'll use the descent talisman to return to the Heavenly Dao world, trade it for another, and roam some other world instead. To hell with this credit!
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a sudden premonition struck him.
Tianji felt a stirring in his heart and immediately activated the divination tallies behind him. As the tallies whirled through the air, he swiftly divined the cause of the premonition.
"That Xu Ying is rushing this way!"
Surprised and overjoyed, High God Tianji landed on Mount Weiyu with a laugh. "You search far and wide, wearing out iron shoes to no avail, only to find it without any effort at all! That Xu Ying has delivered himself right to my doorstep. Capturing him will still be a great achievement."
He set down Fairy Yutang and Beichenzi and said, "Hold the line for me and watch how easily I take him."
Beichenzi and Fairy Yutang exchanged glances, mixed feelings of sorrow and joy washing over them. Our days of suffering are finally over, they thought.
Just then, they saw a beam of rainbow light speeding toward them in the distance, within which flew Xu Ying.
"The High God's divine calculations are truly uncanny!" Beichenzi complimented him before cautiously warning, "High God, this rebel's divine powers are formidable. In recent years especially, a portion of his seal was broken. Though his cultivation is not high, his divine powers and Dao arts are extraordinarily profound and exceedingly difficult to counter."
He could not help but recall how he had been forced back then to unseal part of Xu Ying's power, whereupon Xu Ying—with only the cultivation of the knocking on the pass realm—had slain a heavenly fiend possessing an immortal corpse.
Xu Ying's divine powers had banished the heavenly fiend and severed the immortal corpse with absolute ease!
High God Tianji laughed. "My name is Tianji, and I govern the Way of Heavenly Secrets. No divine power under heaven holds any secret before my eyes. A single glance is all I need to know what art he employs. Before his power is even unleashed, I will already have devised the means to overcome him."
Xu Ying arrived like a brilliant rainbow, his momentum swelling ever more imposing. With three resonant hums, three incomparably dazzling halos emerged behind him—none other than the three great Nuo Ancestor cave-heavens of the Mud Pill, Crimson Palace, and Bubbling Spring!
Around these three primary cave-heavens floated a series of smaller ones.
The corner of High God Tianji's eye twitched as the Heavenly Dao runes on his tallies shifted at blinding speed. He muttered, "Before he even executes a technique, I already anticipate his every move..."
Immortal light surged around Xu Ying—the radiance of the Immortal Dao.
The immortal realm of the Hidden Scenery latent transformation ground opened, and the three great immortal domains of physical body, divine consciousness, and soul force spread wide: the realm of the three immortals!
A bronze divine mountain, a colossal tree veiling the stars, a chaotic river of stars, a grand furnace devouring celestial bodies, the Dao-Burying Heavenly Abyss—all manner of terrifying and magnificent Dao phenomena formed this Hidden Scenery latent transformation ground!
"Beichen—!"
Xu Ying took a single stride forward. The several dozen li of space separating him from Mount Weiyu was nearly flattened raw, compressed into an invisible mountain of space that came bearing down to crush them!
High God Tianji still could not decipher his divine power. Gritting his teeth violently, he drove the forty divination tallies and roared, "Even if I cannot fathom your technique, I can still capture you!"
The tallies transformed into towering bamboo slips that reached from heaven to earth, trapping Xu Ying in their center.
Tianji immediately urged the tallies forward to manifest the Heavenly Secret formation, calling out to Beichenzi, "I have trapped him with the Heavenly Secret grand array..."
Terror filled the eyes of Beichenzi and Fairy Yutang. Wheeling around, they bolted, turning into two streaks of light that fled into the distance.
High God Tianji realized things had gone horribly wrong and took to his heels as well.
Glancing back in haste, he saw the tallies exploding one after another. Xu Ying charged out from the Heavenly Secret formation, his primordial qi forming sword light that sheared horizontally toward him.
"This strike should be countered like this!"
High God Tianji immediately unleashed a Heavenly Dao divine power to meet the incoming sword light. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh! The sword light cleaved off all of his fingers and plunged straight into his body.
High God Tianji stared in shock as the Heavenly Dao runes inside him shattered one after another, breaking his Heavenly Dao body.
Deprived of the Heavenly Dao's empowerment, he was nothing more than mortal flesh and blood. His body suddenly tore into pieces, ending his life on the spot!
Xu Ying transformed into a rainbow streak and landed before Beichenzi with a heavy thud.
"Beichenzi, long time no see."
Xu Ying turned around to face the Qi Refiner who had monitored and manipulated his destiny for three thousand years.
Chapter 281