Now that the heavenly tribulation was underway, the four Great Shang Qi Refiners were shaken to the core. A single person crossing a tribulation faced a super heavenly tribulation; four people crossing together brought about a fourfold super heavenly tribulation!
Most terrifying of all, the tribulations did not descend one after the other in turn. The four tribulations merged into one, meaning the might of every single heavenly thunderbolt was easily four times greater than before!
Surviving a tribulation had barely been possible in the past. With its terrifying might magnified fourfold, how could anyone endure it?
"One final strike!"
Though the four exchanged no words, their minds moved as one. They abruptly abandoned their other opponents, paying no heed even to the onslaught from the big bell and Chu Xiangxiang.
At that moment, the four Qi Refiners' divine powers fused seamlessly. Blazing flames surged skyward, blotting out the heavens, and transformed into a swirling host of xuanniao that beat their wings and cried out shrilly as they rushed toward Xu Ying from all directions!
Having pushed their divine powers to the very limit for this single strike, the four immediately fled, streaking away in separate directions.
Beneath each of their feet, a xuanniao materialized to bear them through the air at blinding speed—a pace not even inferior to Xu Ying’s Utmost Intent Freedom Technique!
Fleeing a thousand li away, they all looked back. The heavenly tribulation was still taking shape in the sky, its thunderclouds growing denser and heavier by the moment. Meanwhile, their four combined divine powers converged in one place, their radiant fires soaring skyward to form a colossal xuanniao towering over heaven and earth!
"We did it!"
The four Great Shang Qi Refiners were overjoyed. Their divine powers had achieved flawless harmony, merging into an earth-shattering force whose might had increased far more than fourfold!
Before the smiles could even fade from their faces, Xu Ying raised a hand toward the sky in an empty grasping motion. Countless Heavenly Dao runes surfaced within the tribulation, coalescing into a Heavenly Dao cloak!
The Heavenly Dao cloak descended and swept up the towering xuanniao. Each of the four Qi Refiners felt their divine powers erupt, watching as the cloak expanded drastically. The colossal bird soared and surged beneath the fabric, threatening to burst it open at any moment!
Yet to their growing dread, the Heavenly Dao cloak never tore.
That cloak was woven from seventy percent of the fourfold super heavenly tribulation's total power. Had their combined divine powers managed to tear through it, they might have stood a slim chance of surviving their joint tribulation.
Instead, their divine powers fell far short of testing the cloak’s limits, snuffed out and smothered beneath the cloth.
With a flick of Xu Ying’s wrist, the cloak flew back into the sky, merging into the swirling wind and clouds to reform the tribulation clouds spanning thousands of li.
*Crack!*
Thunder detonated across the heavens. A bolt of heavenly lightning, more brilliant than tens of thousands of suns, plunged straight down onto the head of the Great Shang Qi Refiner fleeing westward.
The man blew apart entirely, reduced to ash and smoke, wiped from existence!
*Crack!*
Another thunderbolt descended, its blinding glare illuminating all of Shenzhou. Even across the other major continents, people could see the radiance of that strike.
A second Great Shang Qi Refiner shattered beneath the thunderbolt. No matter their cultivation, no matter their divine powers, none could preserve themselves in the face of such a tribulation!
A third flash of lightning burst forth, so bright and dazzling that it could be seen even out among the stars.
The Great Shang Qi Refiner targeted by this bolt immediately abandoned his mortal body, his Primordial Spirit fleeing at even greater speed. His Primordial Spirit even shifted into a xuanniao blazing with roaring flames, vibrant as a phoenix as it rode the fiery light away!
Yet the lightning bolt split in two like branches on a tree. One of the branching bolts crossed rivers and mountains, flashing past ten thousand li in an instant, and struck down squarely onto the fleeing Primordial Spirit's head!
His Primordial Spirit was ground to powder within the lightning, leaving behind only a faint wisp of an immortal true spirit that drifted uncertainly toward the Netherworld.
His mortal body had long since been obliterated by the lightning. A lifetime of cultivation, along with all the immortal medicines he had gathered from hunting countless Nuo Immortals and fellow cultivators, vanished into nothing.
As the final Great Shang Qi Refiner fled for his life, he suddenly raised a talisman. The talisman ignited, transforming into a portal. Ghostly qi billowed from within, murky and dim—it led straight into the Netherworld!
The Qi Refiner hurled himself into the portal, escaping into the Netherworld.
The sky above the Netherworld shattered as the dazzling heavenly thunder pursued him, its fiery brilliance piercing the underworld's heavens before plunging straight down toward the Qi Refiner’s head.
Paying no heed to anything else, the Qi Refiner fled madly forward. Ahead of him lay the endless stretch of the Wangxiang Platform!
He leaped into the air, but just as he was about to land upon the Wangxiang Platform, the lightning plunging from the sky caught up with him.
Thunder boomed above the Wangxiang Platform, disturbing the ancient beings lurking deep within. In an instant, bursts of immortal radiance erupted across the platform as divine senses probed outward one after another.
"What happened? Why is the heavenly tribulation this powerful?"
"Has another monstrous fiend emerged, boosting the tribulation's power fourfold?"
"Which fiend could it be? It can't be that that man has returned, can it?"
In the sky above Yuanshou Shenzhou, the terrifying tribulation clouds finally dispersed, leaving the heavens clear and bright once more. A cloak billowed as it drifted down from the sky, fastening itself neatly around Chu Xiangxiang's shoulders.
Xu Ying looked toward the sky and saw stars shifting in the outer reaches, drifting away one after another.
"Five fishermen have died in succession. The rest of you must be frightened by now, aren't you?" he murmured.
Those moving stars were the fishermen and leek masters hiding in the shadows. They had initially intended to wait for an opportunity to ambush and kill Xu Ying, but watching four Great Shang Qi Refiners perish one after another beneath the tribulation filled them with dread.
"The world has changed. It is no longer an era where we can harvest at our whim."
They slipped away in silence, one after another.
"If that is the case, we must assimilate into this new era."
"There is only one path left: go into hiding, sever our own cultivations, and start anew. Even if Xu Ying comes to harvest us, that will be an affair for the future."
"We were the paragons of our respective eras, chosen and refined by history itself. The past could not cast us aside, nor can the present, and neither will the future!"
"Xu Ying cannot stir up much trouble!"
Xu Ying, Chu Xiangxiang, and their companions arrived at the Mount Shu Sword Sect. Shi Yuqing, the sect master, came out to greet them. Seeing the divine maiden Chu beside Xu Ying, she felt a twinge of sourness in her heart. *Every time I see him, there is always a different girl by his side…*
Xu Ying presented a jade slip and smiled. "Yuqing, this is the ancestral method. Take it and cultivate."
Shi Yuqing accepted the jade slip. "The Grand Supreme Elder has not returned to the Sword Sect in quite some time. The world outside is full of wind and rain, but the Sword Sect can at least offer you shelter from the storm."
Warmth rose in Xu Ying's heart. He had once believed Jiang Family Fields was his only home, only to learn later that there were eight or ten thousand places just like it. He had mocked himself as a drifting leaf, blown about by the wind, not knowing where his roots lay.
Yet Shi Yuqing’s words gave him the comforting warmth of home and friends.
"Yuqing, I want to bring an end to this man-eating era and return a fair world to all," Xu Ying said with a smile. "That is why I am spreading the ancestral method, in the hope of resolving the fishermen and leek masters once and for all."
Hope shone in Shi Yuqing’s eyes, and she murmured, "Can it truly be resolved?"
In truth, the Nuo method's fishing and harvesting had harmed her far more than Xu Ying. Xu Ying merely saw the injustice of it and wanted to seek fairness, whereas Shi Yuqing was a direct victim.
Her mentor, the previous sect master Tao Danyang, had been a ruthless fisherman. He had not only harvested the Sword Sect's Nuo cultivators, but had even harvested the sect's Qi Refiners, turning them into external avatars and second Primordial Spirits!
Had it not been for Xu Ying, she would have become Tao Danyang’s next victim. Tao Danyang had even sought to regain control of the Sword Sect and harvest it all over again!
"It can be resolved, and it must be resolved," Xu Ying said with a faint smile. "On the road here, I have already dealt with five. There are surely more, and I will definitely hunt them down."
Shi Yuqing remarked, "Martial Uncle, there is another very strange matter."
She voiced the anomaly she had noticed: "Tao Danyang, like many other fishermen, was not cleansed when the Great Purge arrived; instead, he survived. Where were they during the Great Purge?"
Hearing this, Xu Ying replied without hesitation, "Some achieved Heaven-Human Induction, communicating with mysterious deities beyond the realm to transport their mountains and rivers to another world, thereby avoiding the Great Purge. Others hid within the Wangxiang Platform to escape it."
Shi Yuqing shook her head. "That cannot be it. Tao Danyang controlled hundreds of external avatars, and his consumption of immortal medicines was massive; he certainly would not have stopped harvesting. Yet he only appeared to look for me after the world was unsealed. Where was he during the preceding three thousand years?"
Stumped by her question, Xu Ying chuckled. "He probably went to another world. He might have passed through the Abyss of Cangwu to seek refuge elsewhere. Now that Tao Danyang is dead, no one remains who can answer these questions."
Reflecting on this, Shi Yuqing found it plausible and did not press the matter. She smiled and asked, "What of Master Jin? Is he still in the sun, not yet returned?"
Xu Ying missed Jin Buyi as well, smiling as he replied, "He is still in secluded cultivation, but by my reckoning, he should be emerging soon."
Xu Ying stayed at the Sword Sect for a few days to instruct Shi Yuqing in sword techniques, then set off once more for the next sect, continuing to have Yuan Qi issue challenges.
Without realizing it, half a year slipped by. Xu Ying had visited all three thousand sects in Yuanshou. Some lineages had been entirely wiped out, their sect masters likely having died in Kunlun.
Passing by these extinct sects, Xu Ying occasionally saw beams of rosy light descending from the heavens onto nearby villages. It seemed their ancestral masters in the Immortal Realm were unwilling to see their legacies end and were selecting mortal disciples to continue their traditions.
*The immortals of the Immortal Realm still possess such methods? Here I thought the treasures within these sects had all become masterless,* Xu Ying thought with a touch of regret. Then he smiled. "Xiangxiang, Lord Seven, I recently discovered an odd occurrence."
Chu Xiangxiang asked curiously, "What is it?"
Xu Ying said leisurely, "Someone has been sneaking into the other shores—Mud Pill, Bubbling Spring, Jade Capital, Crimson Palace, and the like—to steal immortal fire."
Chu Xiangxiang, Yuan Qi, and the others froze. "Why steal immortal fire?"
The big bell was the first to realize, blurting out, "Whoever stole the immortal fire is trying to use it to burn away their cultivation realm! Someone wants to recultivate the ancestral method!"
Yuan Qi remarked, "Only those with exceedingly high cultivations would need immortal fire to melt down their cultivation, right? For an ordinary Qi Refiner, severing their realm isn't much trouble at all."
Xu Ying smiled faintly. "It isn't just one person going to the other shores to steal immortal fire and melt down their cultivation realm; there are many. They think their thievery is well hidden, but my Nuo ancestor cave-heaven has already reached the Taiyi realm. When they slip into the other shores through other cave-heavens, they cannot hide from my senses."
He strode forward and said, "We can track them down one by one and execute them."
Exhaling a long breath, he murmured, "The era of fishing and harvesting leeks has finally come to an end."
***
In the countryside of Youzhou.
A woodcutter raised an axe, cleaved through a cliff wall, and slipped inside. Within the cliff lay a Hidden Scenery latent transformation ground, a hidden world of its own. Astonishingly, another person was already there—an honest-looking man who stared blankly at the woodcutter.
The woodcutter tore open the nape of the man’s neck, and a gleam of light spilled from inside his body.
That honest man was merely a human skin! Inside the skin lay yet another Hidden Scenery latent transformation ground, and the woodcutter stepped straight into it.
Only upon reaching this inner latent transformation ground did he finally relax. He brought out an alchemy furnace filled with immortal fire drawn from the six other shores.
"Regardless of whether there is a trap in the ancestral method, I must burn away my cultivation! As for that Xu fellow, the Heavenly Dao world and the Immortal Realm will surely deal with him. He may not even live long enough to harvest us!"
Sitting cross-legged within the immortal fire, he focused on melting down his cultivation realms.
A Qi Refiner traveling to the other shore would seal all their acupoints to resist the refinement of the immortal fire, allowing them to endure for a long time. But he was actively drawing in the six immortal fires to incinerate his own cultivation realms. In relatively little time, he burned his cultivation down from the Ascension stage to the second Pass-Breaching stage.
"At last, I can cultivate the ancestral method."
He exhaled in relief and opened his eyes. Just then, he noticed an extra shadow cast upon the ground.
A massive shadow engulfed him.
The woodcutter whipped his head around, his face etched with disbelief as he cried out, "It's you! How did you find this place?"
The shadow spoke, its voice low. "It was not difficult, fellow Daoist. While you were stealing immortal fire from the other shores, I was watching you. What is more, we have crossed paths so many times across history; your aura is all too familiar. Tracking you down was truly not difficult at all."
***
Three days later, Xu Ying arrived at the spot, carefully making his way into the latent transformation ground within the outer one.
Before long, he stood before the woodcutter.
A look of bitter resentment washed over the woodcutter's face. Looking at Xu Ying, he rasped, "I would rather have died at your hands."
Xu Ying asked, "Who ate you?"
The woodcutter's expression went blank, which quickly warped into agony. He clutched his hair fiercely, roaring in a low voice, "I don't know! I can't remember anymore! I don't know!"
Xu Ying stared quietly at the nape of his neck, where a faint gleam of light flickered.
"Which one is this?" he asked softly.
Chu Xiangxiang had kept a clear count and answered, "The seventh. The previous six fishermen suffered the exact same fate. By the time we found them, nothing remained but a human skin."
Xu Ying looked up and murmured, "There is a harvester reaping all the fishermen, and he is one of the fishermen himself."
Chapter 308