The thirty cultivators in formation retreated a hundred zhang back into the boundary realm, putting up a desperate defense at its outer edge. By then, the cultivators who had fled earlier had gathered their equipment and were returning to the fight one after another, only just managing to withstand the Shaman offensive.
Wei Yuan and Xiaoyu had also pulled back into the boundary realm. Relying on the realm's suppression, they barely held off a siege by more than a dozen mid- and late-Dao Foundation enemies. Alongside the warriors, many shaman casters lurked among the ranks, launching sneak attacks with curses. By now, Wei Yuan and Xiaoyu were covered in splotches of blue, red, yellow, and green. The power of Qingming was not enough to neutralize every curse, and even within the boundary realm, their movements grew increasingly sluggish.
Casualties mounted among the cultivators below, yet not one retreated; they merely kept their heads down and fought to the death. Behind them lay the boundary stone—there was nowhere left to run.
Fury flared hotter in Xiaoyu as the battle dragged on. Suddenly, he let out a great roar, and the Immortal Sword Great Sun blazed with sudden light, igniting a mid-Dao Foundation warrior before him from the inside out in a single stroke!
Yet that all-or-nothing strike left Xiaoyu exposed. Two curses struck him instantly. Xiaoyu turned pale and spat out a mouthful of black blood on the spot!
Another warrior at late Dao Foundation hurled a javelin, sending it whistling straight toward Xiaoyu's chest!
Seeing he could not dodge in time, Xiaoyu's ferocity only mounted. He slashed downward in counterattack, bent on taking his foe with him. The Shaman warrior was equally ruthless; refusing to sever his spiritual connection to the javelin, he raised his spear horizontally to parry. In an instant, the short spear was sheared through by Great Sun. The immortal sword kept falling, carving open most of the warrior's chest and shoulder.
Yet the thrown javelin had already reached Xiaoyu! Its head was lined with barbs and dyed dark green, visibly drenched in virulent poison.
Just as Xiaoyu braced to take the spear head-on, his vision blurred. Wei Yuan was already standing before him, holding a massive cauldron in his arms to use as a shield against the thrust.
The javelin struck with unmatched force, piercing straight through the square cauldron and stabbing into Wei Yuan's lower abdomen. Fortunately, the cauldron blunted its momentum, or it likely would have driven all the way through his body.
Without a word, Wei Yuan wrenched the javelin out, the barbs tearing away a chunk of flesh! Then, sealing the wound with Dao power, he stepped back into the fray to resume slaughtering the enemy.
Xiaoyu froze for a heartbeat before recalling his immortal sword. Just as the Immortal Sword Great Sun was about to reach his hand, a speck of white light appeared in the distance. Something shot toward Xiaoyu like lightning!
In that split second, the looming shadow of death made Xiaoyu's hair stand on end. He could barely raise his immortal sword in front of him to block.
Yet the object was too fast, its power too immense. Though merely a tiny speck, it exerted an overwhelming pressure across the entire battlefield, freezing everyone in place.
A Great Shaman had intervened!
A large hand suddenly appeared behind Xiaoyu, seizing him by the nape of his neck and hauling him aside. The projectile immediately locked onto Wei Yuan. A massive cauldron appeared in Wei Yuan's grip; nested inside it was a medium cauldron, and inside that lay a small one. Three layers of cauldrons shielded his chest.
With a soft thud, the projectile punched through all three cauldrons and drove into Wei Yuan's heart. Wei Yuan's back violently erupted, tearing open a hole the size of a bowl! The projectile burst out behind him, and from the wound erupted a great spray of blood, shredded flesh, and shattered viscera!
With no time to treat his injuries, Wei Yuan hurled a small, flaming cauldron straight from his hand, plugging the wound in his back! The blaze seared his flesh, immediately throwing up a plume of gray smoke.
Having narrowly escaped death, Xiaoyu looked upon the scene, entirely stunned.
"Flee!" Wei Yuan uttered only a single word before flying toward Qingming at full speed, looking as though he intended to uproot the boundary stone and run.
"Think you can flee? Too late!" A booming voice swept across the battlefield, freezing everyone's movements for a fleeting moment.
A faint green shadow materialized, darting past Wei Yuan and lunging straight for Qingming. It moved with inconceivable speed; Wei Yuan had barely sensed it before it had already flown into the main hall!
Yet bands of tasseled ribbons suddenly draped around Qingming, shielding the entire hall within. That impossibly fast green shadow collided several times, but failed to penetrate the ribbons and enter the hall.
It grew abruptly frantic. The tassels seemed like its mortal enemies, and it slammed into them like mad over a dozen times. The ribbons snapped one by one, yet they refused to part. It appeared that unless every last ribbon was shattered, entering the hall would be impossible.
The Nine-Layer Demon-Suppressing Pagoda materialized without a sound, descending through the sky to suppress it!
The green shadow let out a cry of alarm, revealing its true form: a green lizard just over a foot long!
Sensing trouble, the little lizard turned to flee. But under the pagoda's suppression, its speed was reduced to barely a tenth of what it was—a pace Wei Yuan could easily match. Wei Yuan manifested Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains and channeled the realm's full power to bear down upon it, instantly making the little lizard billow smoke and halving its speed once more.
Hampered repeatedly, the little lizard flew into a rage. An astounding surge of power erupted from its body, jolting the Nine-Layer Demon-Suppressing Pagoda upward. Its aura swept across the boundary realm, nearly tearing the Qingming realm apart!
Right then, four immortal swords emerged at the four corners of the realm, plunging down one after another.
As the first sword struck the ground, the little lizard shrieked in agony. A through-and-through wound opened across its body, gushing green blood! It spat out a cloud of green mist to seal the injury, but the wound refused to mend.
In the blink of an eye, the second immortal sword descended, carving another wound across the lizard and nearly slicing its body in two.
The third immortal sword dropped. This time, the wound tore across the lizard's neck, severing nearly half of it!
With a screech of pain, the lizard thrashed frantically, snapping itself cleanly into three pieces! Each segment bolted in a different direction. Yet a jade mountain materialized overhead, crashing down to crush all three pieces beneath it!
The fourth immortal sword arrived at a crawl, finally settling into place.
A tremendous surge of energy erupted from beneath the jade mountain, blowing it into the sky. The lizard's head flew out, ignoring the dual suppression of the boundary realm and the pagoda as it darted westward. The head was almost cleft in two down the middle, held together only by the mouth.
Zhang Sheng had unleashed all four swords, nearly finishing off a Great Shaman who had been entirely uninjured! Yet the fourth immortal sword was still unfinished, falling just short of perfection and allowing the Great Shaman's head to break away.
The lizard's entire head was enveloped in a bizarre swirl of gray-green mist. At the surface of the gray vapor hovered a miniature tree wrapped in a strand of black energy, but both were repelled by the green mist, unable to touch the lizard's head again.
These were the hidden measures Bao Yun had planted and the karmic angling line Ji Liuli had forged with Wei Yuan's destiny, now entirely expelled by the gray-green vapor. That vapor was clearly of extraordinary standing, far beyond what an ordinary Great Shaman possessed; it was likely the lizard Great Shaman's life-saving trump card.
His mind now clear, the lizard Great Shaman instantly realized he had fallen into a trap and fled outward with reckless abandon. Shielded by the green vapor, the suppression from both the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda and the boundary realm was vastly diminished. His speed grew faster and faster, and in mere moments he would burst free of the realm.
Just then, Wei Yuan appeared directly in the path of the lizard's head, reaching out with his left hand to seize it!
The green mist coiled around Wei Yuan's palm at once, instantly corroding away an entire layer of skin and flesh, baring faint gold bones in several spots! The rest of the green mist crept up his wrist, reaching his elbow in the blink of an eye.
With one hand corroded to the bone, a flicker of agony crossed Wei Yuan's face, but his grip remained ironfast. With the head firmly clutched, much of the green mist's protective ward was rendered useless, and the power of the boundary realm and destiny fell upon the lizard's head once more.
A withered branch suddenly appeared in Wei Yuan's right hand. He drove it straight into the lizard's mouth and out through the back of its skull, skewering the head entirely upon the branch.
The lizard clamped its jaws desperately around the withered branch, yet could not bite through it at all, failing to pierce even the bark. A gleam of light flashed along the branch, and the vitality in the lizard's eyes began to fade. In the sky above, the dharma idol of an ancient giant crocodilian over ten zhang long appeared, writhing and thrashing before gradually dispersing.
The withered branch vanished from Wei Yuan's hand. The lizard's head tumbled to the ground, rolled a few times, and went still.
Great Shamans truly were hard to kill, Wei Yuan thought to himself. Only now did piercing pain begin to shoot from every wound on his body, leaving him faintly dizzy.
Outside the boundary realm, the Shaman army saw the dharma idol shatter and knew the Great Shaman had fallen. Without the slightest hesitation, the rear guard bolted, fully upholding the Shamans' usual tradition. With the rear guard fleeing, the rest of the army began to pull back, while a dozen Dao Foundation warriors and casters directed the retreat, fighting as they withdrew rather than routing all at once.
Suddenly, an enormous pagoda tens of zhang tall manifested, crashing down from above!
Where the giant pagoda landed, it pinned over a thousand Shaman soldiers along with seven or eight Dao Foundation warriors and three casters beneath it, rendering their movements agonizingly slow, as though slogging through a swamp.
Countless bells on the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda swayed in the wind, producing crisp, rolling chimes. Yet to the Shamans trapped beneath the pagoda, the chimes brought immense agony; those of weaker cultivation rolled frantically on the ground. As the chimes grew more urgent, near-translucent souls were steadily wrenched from their bodies, drawn one by one into the pagoda.
In the blink of an eye, the Shamans beneath the pagoda fell in swathes, dying without a sound.
This was the first time Wei Yuan had seen the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda unleash its lethal suppression mode; it was truly a supreme weapon against vast hordes of rabble. With most of the Shaman vanguard cavalry pinned beneath the pagoda, an Exquisite Treasure Tree appeared above the surviving units and the center army.
A branch upon the tree swayed without any wind, and instantly a violent gale swept across the battlefield. The wind carried countless grains of coarse sand that punched tiny holes into the Shaman warriors upon impact. Inside the holes, flesh and blood rapidly turned to sand, and the wounds spread outward. Some of the weaker Shaman warriors merely stood rooted to the spot as dozens of small holes sprayed sand from their bodies, collapsing into heaps of fine sand in the span of a breath.
In the Western Regions, Wood and Water flourished while Earth was restricted. Yet if an Earth-attribute Dao art could avoid suppression, its lethality against the Shamans was the greatest of all.
Even several Dao Foundation experts could not escape unharmed; struck by the sandstorm, they could only grit their teeth and flee with all their might.
The instantaneous lethality of the sandstorm was modest, but its area of effect surpassed even that of the Nine-Layer Demon-Suppressing Pagoda. Those tiny wounds severely impeded movement; while Dao Foundation experts could endure the injuries and run, ordinary warriors collapsed before covering even a hundred zhang, despairing as they crumbled into mounds of sand.
Bao Yun's sandstorm claimed over two thousand Shamans, though its lack of instant lethality allowed the Dao Foundation warriors and casters to escape. Under the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda, nearly a thousand Shaman cavalry were completely wiped out, and while the Dao Foundation combatants still struggled bitterly, their demise was only a matter of time.
By this point, more than half of the human cultivators had fallen, leaving them unable to give chase. Outside the boundary realm, the power of Zhang Sheng's immortal swords would plummet, and having exhausted his Dao power slaying the Great Shaman, he took no part in the pursuit.
Ji Liuli and Bao Yun pursued the retreating forces for a while longer, cutting down another thousand or so Shaman warriors before returning.
At the summit of the boundary realm's primary peak, Wei Yuan sat upon a boulder, a layer of black salve smeared over his left hand, which had been reduced almost entirely to bare bone. Xiaoyu stood behind him, loosening Wei Yuan's robes before taking hold of the small cauldron plugging the wound, his hands trembling slightly.
Chapter 135