At this critical juncture, Li Fan also drove the modified Profound Heaven Spirit-Sealing Formation to its absolute limit.
With all three joining forces, the line of defense Mo Shi had erected—a seemingly impenetrable wall of despair—finally showed a crack.
Tianyang and Lin Ling exerted every ounce of strength and finally broke out of the encirclement.
Countless fragments of Mo Shi ultimately merged back into one.
It swept its gaze around, failing to find Lin Ling and Tianyang, who had briefly hidden away to catch their breath.
It paused for a brief moment, then struck once more.
After unleashing its full power in the preceding two attacks, Mo Shi's strength had already been depleted to a considerable degree.
Yet this strike still exceeded the expectations of the three onlookers.
Mo Shi's body slowly dissolved.
Endless black liquid poured from its form, spreading out in all directions.
The liquid flowed faster and faster, yet seemed inexhaustible.
Before long, it flooded a vast expanse of the surrounding space!
Yet it showed no sign of slowing down.
The black fluid surged like towering, cataclysmic waves, roaring as it swept across the area, hell-bent on filling every inch of this subterranean chamber!
"We can't wait—fight it with everything we've got!" Li Fan said in a low voice to Tianyang and Lin Ling, who had recovered a fraction of their strength.
Once again, it was Tianyang who took the lead.
Transforming into a streak of blazing fire, he met the challenge head-on, plunging without hesitation into the black ocean before them.
Li Fan could see that Tianyang was truly putting his life on the line.
At the cost of burning away his puppet body, he was briefly elevating his strength to the level of Dao Integration.
Victory, or death!
Seeing this, Lin Ling gritted her teeth and charged forward as well.
Within the subterranean cavern, the phantom of a towering ancient tree flickered in and out of view.
The silhouette of the tree swayed slightly, releasing countless leaves.
They formed tens of thousands of green laser-like beams, instantly cleaving the ink-black ocean apart.
Even more roots stretched forth, a portion of which burrowed straight into the boundless dark water.
The black sea churned, attempting to swallow the roots, but failed to do so for the moment.
Another portion traversed space and drove directly into Tianyang's body.
The red flowing flames Tianyang had become instantly grew several times more vigorous.
For a time, the blazing scarlet carried an aura capable of overpowering the black liquid.
"The coordination between these two is truly not bad," Li Fan nodded inwardly.
He further refined the formation deduced once more by the Terminal Dissociation Disc.
Mo Shi suffered yet another severe dampening.
Tianyang, meanwhile, fought with mounting ferocity.
Gradually, for the first time within the subterranean expanse, the area claimed by the red blazing fire surpassed that of the black sea.
Li Fan knew that from here on, victory was merely a matter of time.
A full seven days passed.
With nowhere left to flee, Mo Shi was ultimately worn down and ground to death by the three of them.
The flames that filled the entire subterranean space suddenly contracted, condensing into a hazy figure.
Though it was a pyrrhic victory, Tianyang's puppet body had also burned to ashes over the course of the battle.
Originally, the day the flames burned out would have been the moment of Tianyang's demise.
Yet with the nourishment of an anima of Heaven and Earth, things were entirely different.
Tianyang produced a mass of ceaselessly flowing black liquid.
In that instant, greed welled up not only in Li Fan's heart; even Lin Ling, who was already at the Dao Integration stage, felt a flicker of longing in her eyes.
Fortunately, Li Fan had the Immortal Heart Incantation to protect his mind.
As for Lin Ling, she had been born not long ago and remained relatively pure of heart. Furthermore, her true form was a spirit tree, so her desires were not particularly intense.
Neither of them made any untoward move. They simply watched quietly as Tianyang absorbed that mass of flowing, ink-colored liquid into his fiery body.
In an instant, as if poured full of black ink, Tianyang's body transformed from fiery red to an interweaving pattern of ink and crimson.
Moreover, the areas dominated by black were slightly greater than before.
The red was reduced to thin threads, engraved across Tianyang's body like tattoos.
A formidable pressure abruptly erupted from Tianyang, rippling outward in every direction.
Lin Ling could not help taking a few steps back.
A new Dao Integration Immortal Venerable was born!
The surrounding void sinkholes trembled faintly, showing distinct signs of expanding outward in all directions.
Once he had adapted to his new form, Tianyang reined in his pressure.
With a gentle wave of his hand, he suppressed the turmoil rippling through the myriad void sinkholes.
Having done all this, Tianyang looked toward Li Fan.
The ink-like hue gradually faded, though it did not vanish completely; it merely settled into a dark complexion.
While it still appeared somewhat awkward, it was far easier on the eyes than before.
"Senior... Brother."
"I... did it."
His voice remained somewhat strange, yet compared to before, it carried markedly more human warmth.
"Good! Well done!"
After many twists and turns, Tianyang had finally stepped into the Dao Integration realm.
Having gained another Dao Integration enforcer, Li Fan felt deeply gratified.
"Repair the void sinkholes here as best you can. Consider it practice," Li Fan instructed while dismantling the spirit-sealing formation.
Tianyang nodded without hesitation.
Using the divine abilities inherited from Mo Shi, he set about mending the riddled, subterranean sinkholes.
His efficiency was noticeably faster than Mo Shi's had been.
After Li Fan had erased every trace of their presence and observed for a while longer, he finally called a halt.
"If the remaining void sinkholes here were to erupt all at once, roughly what consequences would that cause?" Li Fan asked after sweeping the area with his divine sense.
Tianyang's mastery over spatial power was far beyond what it used to be.
Having achieved Dao Integration, he had also faintly regained his normal faculties. After pondering for a moment, he said, "If I detonate these sinkholes sequentially, it will cause the mountains and rivers of an entire province to tremble continuously."
"However, by staggering the forces and releasing them in tiers, the earth will not instantly overturn."
"It will only cave downward collectively."
"If I exert even finer control over the force, the people on the surface will at most feel a sudden, violent jolt."
"The aftereffects will amount to nothing more than tremors persisting for a period of time."
"If cultivators come to provide aid, the anomalies can be pacified in merely a few days."
Tianyang explained carefully through divine sense transmission.
He was somewhat halting at first, but his speech grew increasingly fluent until it was virtually indistinguishable from a normal person's.
Hearing this, Li Fan nodded in satisfaction.
"Then wait until we depart to stir up a major commotion and draw the attention of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals."
"Make it look natural—don't let them detect anything amiss," Li Fan instructed.
"Rest assured, Senior Brother," Tianyang nodded.
Following that, threads of fine black line shot forth from Tianyang's body, instantly covering the entire subterranean space.
Each served a different purpose.
Some shrank void sinkholes, while others widened them.
Yet under Tianyang's craftsmanship, the subterranean sinkhole cavern—once utterly chaotic and devoid of any pattern—faintly began to display an orderly arrangement.
It took a full month or more before it was finally completed.
"Senior Brother, we can leave now."
*Tianyang's talent is truly remarkable. In such a short time, he has mastered Mo Shi's abilities to such an extraordinary degree,* Li Fan praised inwardly.
This setup resembled a precision demolition.
Once Li Fan and his companions departed, those void sinkholes erupted one after another.
Chapter 837