Xu Ying was enveloped within the indestructible spiritual light, hurtling into the darkness of the deep universe as the Ancestral God's power stretched endlessly onward!
Eventually, the Ancestral God's power dissipated, and the rainbow bridge formed of indestructible spiritual light broke away on its own, leaving only him hurtling forward through the darkness by sheer inertia. Pitch blackness still surrounded him, and the spark of light ahead remained tiny.
After who knew how long, the light suddenly expanded, dazzling brightness rushing toward his face as green hills and emerald waters entered his sight.
Xu Ying hurriedly surged his magic power, attempting to steady himself.
Suddenly, he found that while his magic power was still present, his flight arts would not work at all!
Xu Ying tried to activate the Taiyi Divine Bridge, but received no response either! "Is the Heavenly Dao of the Mortal Realm abnormal?"
He instantly realized, "It's not abnormal—it's that the Heavenly Dao of the Mortal Realm and the Heavenly Dao of the Earth Immortal Realm are not the same Heavenly Dao!"
Because the Heavenly Daos were different, immortal divine abilities founded upon the Heavenly Dao could not be used.
Xu Ying's Daos and divine abilities had two origins: one from the Immortal Realm's Immortal Dao, and the other from the Immortal Dao of the ancient era.
Both were rooted in the foundation of the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth. The Ancestral Court's Great Dao differed somewhat from that of the myriad heavens and realms, causing them to clash.
The Dao of the Ancestral Court was known as the Old Dao, while the Dao of the Immortal Realm and the myriad realms was called the New Dao.
Yet there was no fundamental conflict between the Great Daos of the Ancestral Court and the Immortal Realm's myriad realms; many similarities remained. The Heavenly Dao here, however, differed vastly from both the Ancestral Court and the myriad realms of the Immortal Realm!
His Daos could not function under this Heavenly Dao, making it impossible to perform divine abilities.
"I must find Daos and divine abilities that can be used under any Heavenly Dao, or else a lifetime of bitter cultivation will come to naught in the face of a changed Heavenly Dao! Wait—martial arts! The Martial Dao is the foundation of all Daos, usable under any Heavenly Dao!"
As Xu Ying drew closer to that world, he tapped into the Martial Dao, treading upon empty air and leaving behind a string of thunderclaps, finally slowing his descent. Yet he was still moving too fast. Xu Ying pushed the Ultimate Free-Form Technique, turning into a rainbow streaking across the sky in a bid to decelerate, only to see towering mountain peaks rushing straight at him! Protecting his head with both arms, he smashed through a peak with a loud boom, followed by several more booms as he sheared off another mountaintop and tumbled across several others.
Finally, he crashed to the ground with a deafening blast, sending debris and earth flying amid scattered sparks. A massive crater opened in the earth.
"Of all Daos under heaven, martial arts comes first. Confound it, I've failed the expectations of Martial Emperor Shen and Wu Tianzun—I didn't work hard enough on martial arts..." Xu Ying lay at the bottom of the crater, staring lifelessly up at the sky.
His cultivation and magic power had not vanished; he merely couldn't use the Daos he had learned before. Relying on martial arts had barely allowed him to land, but he had still taken a brutal beating.
It was equivalent to being hurled by the Ancestral God and smashed into the earth, utterly shattering his Flawless Golden Body!
Just how immense was the Ancestral God's power? Given enough time to prepare, Xu Ying might have dispersed the force of the Ancestral God's throw. But unable to use divine abilities and restricted solely to the Martial Dao, this crash was truly miserable.
Xu Ying tried to move, only to hear the grinding of his fractured bones, and immediately dared not budge.
"The Ancestral God is terrifyingly strong. He said the Mortal Realm was dangerous, but the greatest danger is probably him! A villain like Wei Xu couldn't achieve it, yet the Ancestral God did it with a gentle toss. I think His Eminence smashed a leak right into my Flawless Golden Body... Ouch!"
Xu Ying tried to shift again, inhaling sharp breaths of cold air from the sheer agony.
After a while, he recovered his wits and attempted to mobilize his ten cave-heavens, hoping to use the vitality of his Mud Pill to repair his body. Yet the ten cave-heavens seemed to have vanished completely; he could not sense them at all.
The foundation of the ten cave-heavens lay in the Great Daos contained within the bodhimandas of Dao Ancestors such as Taiqing, Yuxu, and Emperor Xu. And the foundation of those bodhimandas was still the Great Dao of the Ancestral Court!
In the Mortal Realm, divine abilities and Daos derived under such a Heavenly Dao could not be used.
Xu Ying's heart sank. He tried to mobilize his own vitality, but though various energies were clearly present inside his physical body, none would obey him.
"Nearly all my bones must be broken. The Ancestral God is far too dangerous..."
Xu Ying's heart sank further and further. Lying on his back in the crater, he pondered how to deal with this.
He attempted to invoke the Flawless Golden Body taught by Daoist Wukong, chanting the few Dao sounds of the Flawless Golden Body. Suddenly, joy rose in his heart; he felt a wondrous power slowly awakening within him, responding to his Dao sounds.
Nearby, an adult shook his head and shouted,
"Even if an immortal falls from the sky, it won't help!"
The adult's voice sounded anxious as he urged, "Hurry home! Didn't I tell you not to leave the house after dark?"
The young girl called Xiaoman hurriedly rounded up her younger brother and sister, intending to head home. After a moment's thought, she called down to Xu Ying at the bottom of the crater, "Hey! Are you still alive? It's dangerous outside once it gets dark! After you climb out, you can take shelter over there!"
She pointed into the distance, then dashed away.
"Dangerous after dark?"
Xu Ying could not even move his tongue, thinking to himself, "Could it possibly be more dangerous than the Ancestral God?"
He lay on the ground, chanting the Nine Flawless Sounds while repairing a second finger.
Inside the Yingzhou Cave Abyss, there was no movement either. Shenpo, Gushe, and the others had made no sound, their circumstances unknown.
Xu Ying felt anxious, but knowing that worry served no purpose, he patiently focused on repairing his fingers.
The Yingzhou Cave Abyss formed a world of its own, so when Xu Ying was affected by the Mortal Realm's Great Dao of Heaven and Earth, they suffered comparatively less. Even so, the immortals wobbled unsteadily, barely able to fly.
"Hide inside the Taiyi Cave Abyss!" Shenpo suggested.
The immortals flew into the Taiyi Cave Abyss, and only then did the Mortal Realm's influence over them disappear.
"The Immortal Master seems to have run into trouble," Fairy Gushe said worriedly, strumming karma and sensing Xu Ying's plight.
Shenpo shook her head. "Yingzhou is part of the Earth Immortal Realm. Our Daos work in the Earth Immortal Realm, but outside it they lose their effect. We cannot help him now. As long as we don't cause trouble, we've done our part."
Before anyone realized it, darkness crept across the sky.
As Xu Ying lay in the crater, gust after gust of chilling wind swept past, carrying faint, ghostly weeping. "Haunted?"
Xu Ying was startled. Were there ghosts in the Mortal Realm as well? Did this place have a Netherworld too?
Did that mean the reach of the Netherworld's Big Four could extend here as well?
"If so, the Primordial Monarch's obsession with the Netherworld becomes quite intriguing. She must have received guidance from some master and realized the Netherworld's importance... Wait, that isn't a ghost weeping!"
Xu Ying's expression changed drastically. Controlling the two fingers he had just repaired, he dug frantically into the dirt, attempting to crawl out of the pit.
"It's Dao weeping! Even at night in the Mortal Realm, Dao weeping wanders unchecked!"
Cold sweat broke out on Xu Ying's forehead as his face turned pale. But pulling himself along with only two fingers was agonizingly slow, and he was still far from the crater's rim.
The sound of Dao weeping drew nearer and nearer, already beginning to disturb the Daos within his body. Suppressed by the Mortal Realm's Great Dao and thrown into disorder by the Dao weeping, his internal Daos immediately churned in violent turmoil!
Xu Ying's broken bones were jolted by the deranged Dao, sending waves of excruciating agony through him that forced out a stifled groan.
In the next breath, a brisk, eerie chill swept in, and a towering shadow fell over Xu Ying.
Xu Ying opened his eyes wide to see a towering skeleton standing before him, ghastly white and shimmering with phosphorescence. Suddenly, the skeleton leaned down until it was virtually pressed against his face, opened its fleshless jaws, and unleashed a shrill Dao weep!
Ringing filled Xu Ying's ears, and the Daos within his body raged with unnatural fury. His attainments in the Great Dao were primarily concentrated in the Ten Great Luo Landscapes—the crowning achievements of his cultivation.
By contemplating the achievements of the various Dao Ancestors, Emperor Xu, the Ancestral God, and others, he had comprehended ten Great Daos—vitality, divine consciousness, primordial qi, soul power, yin-yang, heart power, life-death, Dao force, void, and Hunyuan—and cultivated ten Dao landscapes, known as the Ten Great Luo Landscapes.
Now, agitated by the Dao weeping, those Great Daos showed signs of rotting away, threatening to ruin his entire cultivation!
However, this skeleton's Dao weeping was somewhat inferior to that of the two Dao boys from Wuzhuang Temple, Qingfeng and Mingyue. Likely, this individual had been a cultivator of the primeval era whose cultivation in life had been slightly inferior to theirs.
When the Dao weeping struck, he had not died immediately, surviving for a time. But he had been unable to endure for long and was ultimately worn down and destroyed by it.
The Dao weeping hidden within his corpse had never dissipated; it drove his remains to continue roaming this land, coming out by night to harm the living!
"My cultivation and strength are far greater now than when I encountered Qingfeng and Mingyue. Against Dao weeping of this intensity, I can hold out for three days and three nights!"
Just as the thought crossed Xu Ying's mind, the skeleton reached out, seized him by the throat, and hoisted him up, opening its mouth to weep Dao right in his face!
A wave of air blasted into his face, reeking of putrid rot.
Xu Ying held his breath. Suddenly, the skeleton slammed a heavy fist into his abdomen. Powerless to resist, Xu Ying was launched into the air like a ragdoll.
Smack!
He landed on the ground, out of the crater at long last.
"Good thing the Flawless Golden Body can still be used. That skeleton packed quite a punch—he was definitely stronger in life than I am."
Just as Xu Ying thought this, the skeleton's figure flickered. An eerie gust blew, and it appeared before him once more, hauling him upright.
Only then did he notice that across the vast, dusky plains, towering skeletal giants were wandering through the fields, glowing with eerie phosphorescence.
Some still wore tattered garments; some even had a layer of skin remaining, though it was riddled with gaping sores.
They roamed about, emitting strange variations of Dao weeping from their mouths, scouring the landscape and sparing no living thing!
"These skeletons are masters who perished during the catastrophe of the Dragon Court era!"
Just as Xu Ying realized this, the roaming skeletal giants dashed toward him, alerted by the sound of his landing.
Surrounding Xu Ying, they opened their jaws in unison, unleashing a chorus of Dao weeping that battered him from every side.
Black blood immediately seeped from Xu Ying's eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Despair washed over him: This is it...
He could have endured for three days and three nights against the weeping of a single skeleton, but with so many giants swarming him, he would be lucky to survive past midnight!
Suddenly, the skeleton released Xu Ying and drove a fist into his head. As Xu Ying spun through the air, another skeletal giant leapt up, sweeping its leg across his neck while wailing its Dao weep.
The next moment, another skeletal giant flew into the air, driving its knee hard into his abdomen.
Dozens of skeletal giants rose and fell, mobbing Xu Ying in a relentless beatdown. Their strikes grew faster, denser, and more vicious!
Xu Ying was both shocked and delighted: "Maybe... I can just take a beating until dawn..."
In the chaos, he noticed a village nestled in a nearby ravine. The young girl called Xiaoman from earlier that evening must live there.
Xu Ying was stunned. How did these people survive in such a perilous environment?
"The weakest of humans are like weeds—their vitality is truly astonishing!"
A strange wave of emotion stirred in his heart. The mighty dragon race had failed to survive the catastrophe of the Mortal Realm, yet humble mortals had clung stubbornly to life, surviving and multiplying.
Such strength was deeply moving.
In the village within the ravine, every household kept their doors tightly shut, not making a single sound.
Inside one of the rooms, the young girl with twin topknots lay against the windowsill. Seeing Xu Ying being pummeled in midair by the swarm of skeletons far off, she was both startled and pleased. Turning her head, she whispered, "Father, it's the big brother who fell from the sky!"
Behind her, a pair of large hands reached out and clamped over her mouth. A terrified voice hissed, "Silence!"
It was her father who covered her mouth. He swiftly pulled her into a coffin, lying motionless beside her.
There were no beds in the room—only several coffins, inside which the family members lay awake.
Just then, a skeleton descended silently from the sky, drawn by the girl's voice.
Emitting bouts of Dao weeping, it approached the coffins and leaned over to peer inside.
Xiaoman squeezed her eyes shut, not making the slightest sound.
Having inspected the coffins, the skeleton was suddenly alerted by the sounds of Xu Ying being beaten. With a whoosh, it took flight, bursting through the window to join the mob pummeling Xu Ying.
Xiaoman cautiously sat up. Her father doted on her; he quietly traced characters on the ground, gesturing for her not to speak and to communicate in writing instead.
Xiaoman wrote on the ground: "Is that big brother still alive?"
Her father shook his head. Once spotted by a Wanderer, how could anyone remain alive?
"Haven't you lot eaten?"
An indignant voice rang out from the sky, startling the father. "You don't even have the strength to throw a proper punch! Is that all you've got?"
In the sky, more and more Wanderers gathered to gang up on the paralyzed youth.
All night long, the youth was battered about midair, never once touching the ground.
"He's dead for sure," her father wrote.
"Nice hit!" outside the window, the youth shouted, his taunts and provocations continuing unbroken through the night.
Chapter 562