Though the old shaman was clearly only at the perfection of the Dharma Idol realm, the danger he posed felt far greater to Wei Yuan than Leiying, nearly rivaling Hongye.
Seeing him stretching his limbs, the ashen decay sloughing from his body piece by piece as the aura of a newborn child began to emerge, Wei Yuan acted without hesitation. He crashed through the front of the house before him, bound the woman with Dao force, and tied her together with the child.
Then a rotary flying sword autocannon appeared in his hands, its barrels spinning into motion.
Wei Yuan had barely used a rotary flying sword cannon before. With a slight misjudgment, he funneled in a bit too much Dao force. Amid a deafening roar, over a hundred flying swords spewed forth in a single breath, tearing through every obstacle ahead in cascading collapses until a villager came into view.
The villager held out for a mere breath before his body was pulverized by countless flying swords. The deluge of blades surged onward, obliterating three more villagers in succession before Wei Yuan's line of sight suddenly widened to reveal the edge of the village. Dozens of flying swords flashed past, dissolving into the origin qi of heaven and earth at the limits of their range.
In just a few breaths, a corridor over a zhang wide opened before Wei Yuan, leading straight out of the village with only a foot of rubble left upon the ground.
Wei Yuan channeled more Dao force, and the rotary gun roared once more. Sweeping the muzzle across, he leveled the village swath by swath, the villagers sharing the same fate, until his gaze fell upon the old shaman.
Pouring all his Dao force into the weapon, Wei Yuan concentrated every flying sword squarely on the old shaman!
Though each sword lacked individual punch, their rate of fire was staggering and their numbers overwhelming. Hundreds erupted in the blink of an eye, pummeling the old shaman until he tottered like a battered flower swaying in a gale.
His newly recovering protective shamanic power collapsed beneath the rain of swords in an instant, and blade after blade plunged into his flesh.
At this stage, the old shaman's body was reviving from the inside out; his dharma body had not yet spread completely to his outer skin, leaving the surface rather frail. Consequently, every flying sword sank two inches deep before meeting the unyielding resistance of his dharma body, unable to pierce any further.
Right then, the Civil and Military Dragon Guards materialized in midair, each wielding a flying sword autocannon and sweeping furious fire across the ground. In moments, chaos overtook the gathered shamans. The Great Shamans could not even lift their heads under the barrage, while the Dao Foundation villagers suffered catastrophic slaughter.
Wei Yuan leaped into the sky, relentlessly unleashing a torrential downpour of firepower upon the mountain-like old shaman, discharging over a thousand flying swords in a single breath!
The old shaman's protective wards were shattered the moment they formed, only to reconstitute and shatter again. Squeezing through the fleeting gaps between each wave, the flying swords pinned him like a hedgehog. His towering presence had its peak shaved clean off, giving him a thorough taste of what fire superiority truly meant.
Wei Yuan fell back while keeping up a steady barrage, while the Civil and Military Dragon Guards lent their fire from time to time, pinning the old shaman flat to the ground so that he could not rise at all!
By now, the entire settlement had been razed flat. Every single Dao Foundation villager was annihilated, and the Great Shamans were left severely wounded.
The bristling old shaman suddenly let loose an earth-shattering roar, like a mountain tiger stalking its domain. The deep tremors made the hearts of all living beings shudder! Myriad beams of golden light then lanced out between the embedded swords, disintegrating everything around him.
Knowing when to quit, Wei Yuan instantly recalled the Civil and Military Guards. He strapped four spray canisters onto the woman and child and sent them rocketing away into the distance in a flash. He himself clutched eight whole canisters, shooting off in a completely different direction as if blasted away by an immortal's kick.
Down in the village, a golden sun rose. Every trace of debris was dissolved away, leaving behind a shallow crater a hundred zhang across. The village was completely gone; only seven Great Shamans, enveloped in faint golden barriers, managed to survive.
At the center of the crater stood a boy a mere four feet tall, his body a translucent gold resembling both jade and precious metal. His small face was twisted with fury. Kicking two of the Great Shamans into the air, he launched them toward the trajectory of the woman and child, while he himself shot after Wei Yuan's path of retreat.
The boy was incandescent with rage. In his heyday, he had been a Nether Shaman of formidable power—even Hongye had to treat him with deference.
Yet after sleeping for so long, he had merely wanted to stretch upon waking, only for this junior to seize the opening, beat him senseless into the dirt, and then turn tail and flee!
What was more, this junior loved to act young. He looked youthful, but in truth he was already over two hundred years old; with the fleeting lifespans of the human race, the brat had lived quite a long time.
The boy detested nothing more than someone pretending to be young in front of him. With grievance piled upon grievance, he was resolved to blast Wei Yuan to pieces.
Meanwhile, though the two Great Shamans had received a brutal kick, they were also bolstered by powerful shamanic arts. Flying with the speed of wind and lightning, they gradually closed the gap between themselves and the mother and child.
Just then, the spray canisters on the pair depleted their Dao force, and their speed began to slacken.
With immense merit within reach, the two Great Shamans were overjoyed and surged forward at full speed. At the thought of the rewards awaiting them for recovering the woman and child, every caution flew out the window.
Yet at that very moment, the Civil and Military Dragon Guards reappeared. One of the canisters held in the woman's arms expanded and shifted, taking on Wei Yuan's form, and grinned at them with a flash of white teeth.
In a flash, shaman blood sprayed across the sky. Wei Yuan devoured the two Great Shamans' dharma idols in a single gulp, swept every item on their persons into his purse, and tossed their useless dharma bodies aside.
A tremor seemed to stir within Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, but Wei Yuan had no time to inspect it, vanishing into the distance with the woman and child.
Far away, the boy was frantically pursuing Wei Yuan and closing in rapidly when he abruptly sensed the sudden demise of the two Great Shamans. A streak of lightning flashed across his sea of consciousness; he understood at once that he had been duped. Who else besides Wei Yuan could slay two powerful Great Shamans in an instant?
Beside himself with fury yet possessing no outlet for it, the boy could only wheel around and bolt toward the spot where the two Great Shamans had fallen.
How swift was the full-speed flight of a Nether Shaman! In the blink of an eye, he reached the corpses of the two Great Shamans. They bore almost no visible wounds, their expressions serene as though they were asleep. In reality, their insides were completely hollowed out, their seas of consciousness pitch-black, their dharma idols and souls gone without a trace.
Without a dharma idol to anchor it, the physical body could not contain its shamanic power; wisps of energy leaked steadily into heaven and earth. His face dark as thunder, the boy dropped beside the two Great Shamans and seized a body in each hand, lifting them up. Left exposed here, the corpses would soon be devoured by beasts drawn to the scent. They were his descendants; he could not bear to leave them to rot in the bellies of beasts.
Yet the moment he hoisted the corpses, brilliant light burst beneath them, and a fiercely blazing fireball engulfed the boy!
A moment later, the smoke and flames cleared to reveal a shallow crater more than ten zhang wide. The boy stood at the bottom, holding nothing but a severed foot from each Great Shaman in his hands; the rest of their remains had been vaporized in the blast.
"Wei! Yuan!" The boy's infuriated roar resonated across a hundred li.
Wei Yuan naturally could not hear it. He was flying toward Qingming at top speed. Only now did another Nether Shaman react, striking across the distance through sacrificial power. Yet when the chains descended, Wei Yuan was already within five thousand li of Qingming.
As the chains of karma plunged down, Wei Yuan had long prepared a countermeasure. He hoisted the child forward as a shield while using yin-yang qi to invert karma, causing the chains to bind around the child instead.
Maiden Yin-Yang drew another crimson sword qi and slashed fiercely back along the chains. In an instant, Wei Yuan seemed to hear a chorus of agonized screams from afar.
Entangled by the chains, the child suddenly grew more than ten times heavier. But the child was light to begin with and carried little karmic weight; even if multiplied by hundreds of times, it would hardly impede Wei Yuan's speed.
Wei Yuan pressed on. At this point, the only force remaining in his path of return was the battered Flying Hawk Cavalry. But having been scattered earlier, they posed little threat.
Wei Yuan sensed several flying hawks in the distance. The hawks possessed superb vision, their aerial sightlines far surpassing Wei Yuan's.
The moment they spotted Wei Yuan from afar, they scattered and fled in every direction, not giving Wei Yuan the slightest chance.
Chapter 587