With a forceful wrench of his claw, Xu Guanwen tried to haul up the foundation, yet across the endless earth, only a few small pebbles bounced up with glee.
At that moment, however, shadows churned within the full moon in the sky, and a gleam of flowing light flashed across the withered branch beside the Jade Mountain.
Xu Guanwen had actually failed to budge Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation. Deeply shocked, he immediately exerted his full strength and hauled upward once more!
With a sharp crack, the giant claw of the dharma idol was overextended, and its four sharp talons snapped clean off. Xu Guanwen let out a cry of pain, his face turning pale in an instant.
A streak of flowing light suddenly swept across the sky, impossibly fast.
Xu Guanwen suddenly let out an earth-shattering shriek. A massive, slanting gash opened across his giant-claw dharma idol—the streak of light sheared straight through, cleaving his dharma idol in two!
A strike from an Immortal Monarch's divine sense was something even a veteran of the Dharma Idol realm like Xu Guanwen could not endure, let alone when caught completely off guard. This wound was catastrophic; Xu Guanwen stood on the brink of death, liable to perish at any moment. Forcing down the agony of a torn primordial spirit, he rose unsteadily into the air, desperate to flee. But right then, the world around them abruptly changed!
With Qingming having recognized its master, Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains had completely fused with it. What could previously manifest only across a hundred zhang now expanded to a thousand. Once manifested, the surrounding world lay entirely within Wei Yuan's heart. With a single stir of divine sense, all the world's might within a thousand zhang pressed down upon Xu Guanwen, making every movement an ordeal.
Originally, the power of heaven and earth across merely a thousand zhang would have been far from enough to bind a dharma idol. Yet Qingming was an immortal artifact, and Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains was a peerless Dao Foundation. When combined, Xu Guanwen felt as though he had plunged into quicksand, every lift of a hand or step of a foot turning agonizingly sluggish.
How could he resign himself to falling here? Naturally, he struggled with all his might. Wei Yuan felt his dao power pouring away at a terrifying pace; in the blink of an eye, more than half was gone! Suppressing the death throes of a dharma idol was truly an arduous feat.
By now, Xu Guanwen's dharma idol had actually been cleaved apart by the Immortal Monarch's divine sense; he had merely used his dharmic power to paste it forcibly back together. Thus, Wei Yuan only needed to stall for time until Xu Guanwen ran out of dharmic power to slay him completely. Yet even Wei Yuan's dao power could not hold out against Xu Guanwen's dying struggle. In moments, his dao power scraped bottom, and the constraints on Xu Guanwen rapidly dwindled. He was on the verge of breaking free.
Right then, the full moon within Wei Yuan's sea of consciousness suddenly spat out a strand of black qi, far thicker than the three before, while an intent reached Wei Yuan's awareness.
Without time to think, Wei Yuan channeled this newly gained karmic fortune to activate Outlaw of Heaven and Earth. The surrounding world suddenly darkened, turning in an instant from midday to dusk. A terrifying aura from the remote ancient past enveloped everything; all living, sentient things were instantly cowed and pinned to the ground.
Wei Yuan leapt into the air, clutching a withered branch in hand, and thrust it ruthlessly into the giant-claw dharma idol aloft!
Xu Guanwen let out a shrill scream as the pieced-together claw split apart of its own accord, unable to stay joined any longer, and immediately began to crumble away.
Wei Yuan had stabbed with a branch of the celestial laurel tree, which was also an immortal artifact of exceptionally high status. With the karmic fortune of Outlaw of Heaven and Earth pressing down from above, he finally shattered Xu Guanwen's dharma idol in one blow.
As his dharma idol collapsed, Xu Guanwen crashed to the ground in despair, landing flat on his back, unable to move.
The meat-mountain of a Wuyu tribesman had been intimidated by the karmic fortune and only just reacted. With a roar, it raised a tentacle several zhang long and whipped it down toward Wei Yuan!
With a thought from Wei Yuan, Qingming activated, beginning to transmute the nature of the local environment. Aided by Qingming, the manifested Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains surged in power, converting a hundred zhang around them into a human clear domain in the blink of an eye!
As if splashed with boiling oil, the mountain of Wuyu flesh broke out in blisters large and small across its hide, which burst open to squirt dark green bodily fluids. The moment these fluids touched the clear qi, they boiled instantly, turning into large plumes of green smoke.
The mountain of flesh screamed incessantly. It yanked back its tentacle mid-strike and fled in panic out of the main hall. Yet while it had arrived soundlessly, swift as wind and lightning, it fled sluggishly and clumsily, constantly corroded by the clear qi. But Wei Yuan knew full well that since this Wuyu tribesman's body had transformed into such a grotesque state, his strength had to be formidable; relying on clear qi alone could never kill him.
Squeezing out his already parched dao power, Wei Yuan pointed a finger, and a stone sword shot forth. Blazing flames ignited along its blade in midair as it hurtled down, nailing straight through one of the Wuyu's tentacles. It pinned him firmly in place while searing flames fiercely scorched the wound.
This was a dao skill Wei Yuan had newly comprehended over the past few days:
Immortal Sword · False Sun.
Unable to break free, the Wuyu meat-mountain reached back to sever the pinned tentacle, literally cutting off its wrist to survive. Right then, however, a golden cauldron suddenly appeared in the air, swelling with the wind until it spanned two zhang across in the blink of an eye. Wei Yuan pointed a finger, and blazing fire roared within the cauldron as it slammed down overhead, trapping the meat-mountain completely beneath it and searing it fiercely!
This was a dao skill Wei Yuan had only just comprehended, and he hadn't yet had time to think of a name for it.
Pushing himself to squeeze out a few more drops of dao power he thought didn't exist, Wei Yuan pointed once more toward the sky. An exquisitely translucent Jade Mountain manifested high above, falling like a meteor—starting slow, then hurtling down—and smashed both the golden cauldron and the meat-mountain into a sheet of paper. Across the earth, a crater a hundred zhang across and over ten zhang deep was left behind!
With a deafening boom, the ruins of the main hall could withstand no more devastation and collapsed entirely, nearly burying Wei Yuan alive. Struggling out from the dirt, Wei Yuan walked over to the edge of the giant crater and peered down.
By now, the Jade Mountain had been recalled. Immortal Sword False Sun and the golden cauldron whose name he hadn't had time to think of had already turned into two broken stones on his Dao Foundation. At the bottom of the crater, nothing remained but a patty of mashed flesh and fluid, constantly exuding dark green fumes that the clear qi dispersed into billows of green smoke. As the smoke rose into the air, it turned into a fine drizzle that drifted back down to the earth, quickening vitality wherever the drops landed.
Enduring the agony of depleted dao power, Wei Yuan let out a long breath. At last, it was over.
One had to admit that someone at the Dharma Idol realm was truly hard to kill. Xu Guanwen had taken a strike from an Immortal Monarch's divine sense first, and Wei Yuan had exhausted every trick up his sleeve, yet he had still almost failed to keep Xu Guanwen here. Without that divine sense strike, Wei Yuan would have had zero chance of survival. And had the full moon not bestowed another strand of karmic fortune and hinted at using the celestial laurel branch, Wei Yuan could never have brought Xu Guanwen down either. Looking back now, waves of lingering fear washed over him.
In truth, Wei Yuan had initially planned to devise a strategy before taking action, stalling and maneuvering against his opponent. But who told Xu Guanwen to think of handing over hundreds of thousands of mortals to an alien race? Enraged, Wei Yuan hadn't even had time to plan before being forced to strike immediately.
Wei Yuan had really had no other choice. If Qingming hadn't recognized him as master, he truly couldn't have matched Xu Guanwen; even with the sneak attack by the Immortal Monarch's divine sense, he wouldn't have been able to pin him down. Had Xu Guanwen gotten away, Wei Yuan would have had to flee immediately; otherwise, once Xu Guanwen stabilized his injuries and returned two days later, there would be no escaping.
Around the hall lay broken walls and ruined rubble; several structures that had barely survived earlier had also collapsed completely under the strike of the Jade Mountain. That tentacled Wuyu powerhouse had also possessed Spirit Nourishing strength, yet had been crushed to death directly by the Jade Mountain. Wei Yuan now had a direct appreciation of the Jade Mountain's destructive power.
From the ruins, a phantom image of Xu Guanwen suddenly floated up—his primordial spirit.
Seeing the phantom looking around in search of an escape route, Wei Yuan's thoughts stirred. He brought Outlaw of Heaven and Earth down to suppress it from above, then reached out and made a grasping motion, drawing Xu Guanwen's soul and primordial spirit into his own sea of consciousness and setting it before the full moon. Shadows churned within the moon as it inhaled the soul and primordial spirit in a single gulp, and Wei Yuan once again understood its meaning:
Filial!
Then, gazing upon the seven thick strands of karmic fortune floating before him, Wei Yuan felt an urge to drop to his knees and kowtow.
Chapter 115