Wei Yuan felt there was no need for further nonsense. He immediately manifested a domain of heaven and earth—an azure expanse of ocean surrounding a solitary island—and brought it crashing down atop Xing Linye.
Xing Linye sneered. "This palm-sized speck is your soul realm? Let me show you what a true soul realm looks like!"
A boundless world began to emerge around Xing Linye. The surrounding void was instantly warped and illuminated by an invisible force, transmuting into bizarre, indescribable horrors of worlds devoid of any symmetry or fixed form.
Before the two mindscape worlds could collide, Wei Yuan struck boldly. In a single breath, he unleashed thousands of Dao arts in every conceivable variety. Yet every single one was pitifully weak; combined, they could not match the power of a casual strike from Xing Linye.
Xing Linye laughed uproariously. "Are you trying to scratch an itch with attacks like these?"
Wei Yuan finally breathed a sigh of relief. Tilting his chin upward until he was practically looking down his nose at his foe, he sneered, "And here I thought you were someone extraordinary. Turns out that's all you've got!"
Wei Yuan's flurry of attacks had never been meant to inflict harm. Instead, he had used techniques of diverse natures to strike his opponent, test his reactions, gather feedback, and instantly collect massive amounts of data to deduce what manner of creature he was facing.
This had long since become common knowledge within Splendor of the Many Realms. For instance, when Yu Zhizhuo prospected for ores, he bombarded the earth with specialized Dao arts, mapping underground mineral veins for hundreds of li around in a single blast.
Yet Xing Linye had actually believed Wei Yuan was trying to attack him. It was evident the fellow's grasp of mathematics was utterly abysmal—practically nonexistent—which instantly restored Wei Yuan's confidence.
Being looked down upon by a lesser breed sent Xing Linye into a fury. He opened his mindscape world completely, snapping down toward Wei Yuan's manifested island like a pair of titanic jaws. His mindscape world's method of attack was peculiar as well: within this realm, such clashes were fought by mutual erosion and dissolution, or, if the disparity in power was immense, by fusing into a single entity to crush the other.
Xing Linye, however, relied on outright devouring. Could his divine ability seize an opponent's mindscape world and claim it as his own?
Wei Yuan seemed oblivious to the lethality of this technique. Indifferent, he watched the maw bite down onto the island. Yet just as those jaws were about to swallow the island whole, they suddenly jammed against an invisible barrier, unable to advance by even an inch.
Around the island, boundless heavens and earth began to manifest without end as the entirety of Splendor of the Many Realms unveiled itself. Xing Linye's mindscape world was like a lion pinning down what it thought was a python, only to watch that python grow longer, thicker, and more monstrous by the moment until its true form was revealed—it was merely a single hair on the hide of a gargantuan behemoth.
Bearing down with immeasurable weight, Splendor of the Many Realms shattered Xing Linye's mindscape world in an instant, causing his aura to plummet.
Xing Linye's strength far exceeded that of the mysterious woman from before, allowing him to endure the crushing pressure of Splendor of the Many Realms without being instantly obliterated. By then, Wei Yuan's karmic luck and merit were thoroughly exhausted; unable to sustain Splendor of the Many Realms any longer, his mindscape world faded from sight.
With his mindscape world shattered and his body severely wounded, Xing Linye found himself tightly bound by the worldly power of the Land of Vitality. Enlightenment finally struck him. "You're that remnant! My sister fell into your hands, didn't she?"
Wei Yuan said, "That's right. She's in my hands, alive and well. I have a few questions for you. Answer them honestly and pay a steep enough price, and I might just let you go. If you can offer a sum that satisfies me, I can even release your sister along with you. How about it?"
Without a moment's hesitation, Xing Linye barked, "Damned lesser breed, not a single word from your mouth is true!"
Wei Yuan was taken aback. How had he seen through it? Without even going through any deduction?
At that moment, countless glittering motes of light rose from Xing Linye's body and fell into the chaos, spawning one abomination after another from the primordial void. Visible cracks had already spread across Xing Linye's face, a testament to his grave injuries. Yet far from being afraid, he grew exceedingly excited, a sinister grin spreading across his face. "To think a mere lesser breed could possess a mindscape world of such scale. You must harbor quite a few secrets. Capturing you and taking this newborn world will be of immense benefit to my advancement."
"What do you want this world for? Shouldn't you destroy it?" Wei Yuan pressed.
Xing Linye replied, "You've nurtured this world quite well; it would be a shame to destroy it. I'll raise it a bit further, cast in some seeds of life, and once they've multiplied enough, it will make a fine magical artifact. I just used one up, so this will replenish my supply nicely."
"I see..." Wei Yuan's eyes turned chillingly cold for an instant.
Xing Linye suddenly burst into laughter. "Do you know why I answered your questions? I knew you wanted to pry information about the higher heavens out of me, and I happened to need time to summon abominations! To play along, I even went out of my way to mimic an expression unique to you lesser breeds—for instance, this: Hahahaha!
"I hear you lot love to laugh like madmen before executing your enemies, just to give your foes a chance to recover and make the fight unnecessarily harder for yourselves. Foolish lesser breed, your time is up. Enjoy the baptism of chaotic demons—eh?!"
Xing Linye stared at the sparse scattering of abominations, wondering for a moment if his divine sense had gone awry. Why were there so few abominations—not even a third of what he had anticipated!
Seeing Xing Linye summon merely ten thousand abominations, Wei Yuan's first thought was: did he really need to make such a grand display for a measly handful like this? This damned wretch was trying to fool him again! Over the past six months, when had any of Wei Yuan's summons ever yielded fewer than this?
Still, Wei Yuan had long resolved not to let Xing Linye leave alive. With a grand sweep of his sleeve, countless dharma body puppets manifested around him—over two thousand in total!
Among them, the most eye-catching was naturally the Glazed Heavenly Phoenix. Yet Xing Linye's gaze split into several directions, bypassing the Glazed Heavenly Phoenix entirely to fixate first upon an ordinary-looking black Heavenly-tier dharma body.
Wei Yuan couldn't help but admire the fellow's sharp eye; he truly possessed a knack for piercing through to the truth. That dharma body looked utterly unremarkable, but the one piloting it was actually Zhang Sheng. Given how perilous this battle was, Wei Yuan had naturally called upon all his strongest backers.
Xing Linye's second gaze fell upon a grey Earthly-tier dharma body, giving Wei Yuan a start as well. From what he remembered, the one piloting it was a plain-looking young girl whom he had consistently overlooked. Only now that Xing Linye had locked onto her did Wei Yuan realize he had no idea what her background was!
This was no small matter!
Xing Linye's gaze then shifted to two other dharma bodies, piloted respectively by Bao Yun and Han Li. Wei Yuan frowned slightly. Was Han Li really that formidable? Did he pose a threat to Xing Linye comparable to Bao Yun's?
Then Xing Linye cast yet another gaze onto an unremarkable Heavenly-tier dharma body. Inside, Wang Hu had been lounging carefree, but startled by the stare, he let out a squeak of fright and blurted, "What are you looking at me for? There are plenty of terrifying monsters in this bunch, go after them! Honestly..."
Xing Linye suddenly let out an earth-shattering roar: "Damn you, damn you! How... how dare you take me for a lesser breed!"
Wei Yuan was startled as well, but his offensive was already surging forth like a torrential flood!
Xing Linye's attacks were bizarre beyond measure, at times even materializing inside Wei Yuan's Dao arts to unravel them from within. But where Wei Yuan's status rank fell short, his magic power compensated. Even if it took two measures of Dao power to cancel out a single spell from Xing Linye, Wei Yuan still wore him down through sheer, overwhelming reserves until Xing Linye was completely exhausted.
Several days later, Xing Linye had been reduced to a pile of iridescent sand in Wei Yuan's palm, and all the abominations had disintegrated into grey sand. The great battle had ended.
Had Xing Linye not suddenly lost his mind over Wang Hu at the end, the fight likely would have been even more grueling.
The others had not heard the exchange between Wei Yuan and Xing Linye, so none of them understood why he had suddenly gone mad. Wei Yuan, however, had guessed the gist of it. He smiled faintly; perhaps this was what they called an unintentional hit.
Yet at that slight motion, several small fissures abruptly split open at the corners of Wei Yuan's mouth. Just as a chunk of his cheek was about to peel off, a tiny hand suddenly reached out from the wound, caught the loose flesh, and pressed it back into place.
"This injury is quite troublesome... And who knows how many more are behind that fellow. What a pity I couldn't get any answers out of him..." Wei Yuan sighed inwardly. Setting his worries aside for now, he poured the iridescent sand from his palm around the Leaf of the Great Dao.
The Leaf of the Great Dao immediately put forth new branches and foliage, sprouting two more leaves alongside a tender bud at its crest. The radius across which it devoured chaos expanded by over ten thousand li, and its efficiency at converting heaven-and-earth origin qi skyrocketed.
Watching the Land of Vitality flourish, Wei Yuan felt that although more than two hundred dharma bodies had been destroyed in the battle, the harvest far outweighed the losses. In high spirits, he set off to return to Qingming. But after taking only two steps, an ear dropped off; after two more, a foot remained behind where he had stepped.
Fortunately, each time, a tiny hand reached out from the wound and retrieved the fallen piece.
Wei Yuan frowned slightly, knowing he had to hurry back and treat his injuries. Otherwise, his entire dharma vessel was going to become animate.
The moment he returned to Qingming, Wei Yuan received bad news: the aging cultivator who had rented the longevity-extending mindscape world had suddenly perished. Upon examining him, his clan discovered that the cause of the old cultivator's demise was the sudden destruction of that mindscape world. Now, several hundred cultivators from that clan had set out, demanding that Wei Yuan give them an explanation.
Chapter 1409