A True Saint

Standing in the empty void, Xu Yuan took in everything around him. From within the massive crater, a quiet rustling drifted up as dense threads slowly drew Mu Xingyi's mangled limbs back together. Far away at the base of the western wall, Madame Wan was enduring the wild bombardment of a hundred heavy ballistas. Finally, Xu Yuan’s gaze fell upon the white-robed woman whose figure was gradually coming into focus. Several golden chains reached out from the pitch-black void behind her, locking firmly around Tianye’s slender, fair wrists. They halted the lethal strike she had been preparing and prevented the future where Mu Nuo would have died. Perhaps at this very moment, the ten-thousand-year calamity so devoutly believed in by the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion had been saved by the pavilion master’s own hand. A fleeting look of sorrow flashed in his eyes as Xu Yuan silently criticized Tianyuan’s actions with no small amount of malice. As far as the current situation went, the balance of victory seemed to have tilted to their side thanks to the performance of the three useless members of the Mu family, but Xu Yuan knew very well that this was only temporary. If they couldn't slay the Saints outright, those Saints could rapidly heal their injuries in a short time using their saint origin whenever they wished. Although Xu Yuan had repeatedly stressed to Li Junwu not to harbor any reckless desire to kill these Saints, those words had actually been meant for her ears alone. His sole purpose in fighting this battle was to keep her alive. If she were to rely on the military array to slay a Saint, it would completely put the cart before the horse. Yet just because Li Junwu couldn't kill didn't mean Xu Yuan couldn't. In his hands, he held two trump cards capable of slaying a Saint—one in the open, one in the dark. Tianye, and the levitation stone ring. With these two trump cards, he intended to catch the six invading Saints off guard right at the start of the battle, immediately thinning their numbers. All his previous arrangements—whether acting as bait, superficially blasting Mu Xingyi, or laying a trap for Madame Wan—had revolved around this objective. Yet when the battle truly began, Xu Yuan found himself reluctant to part with them. The pathetic performance of the husband and wife, Mu Xingyi and Madame Wan, had not only defied the expectations of the White Emperor and the others, but had also shifted Xu Yuan's thinking ever so slightly. Was it truly worth exposing the levitation stone ring just to instantly kill one of these two trash Saints? It would be better to save the levitation stone for the other three and let Tianye step in to finish off Mu Xingyi or Madame Wan. And that was where the problem lay: the sheer extent of Mu Xingyi and Madame Wan's incompetence had blown past the lowest threshold Xu Yuan had anticipated. This husband and wife had sneaked into a high-tier match only to get reverse-stomped. Having already achieved sainthood, Mu Xingyi had failed to break through Xu Yuan’s defenses as a mere Body Integration realm cultivator in a short span of time. It was true that Void-Treading Slash was a rule-based divine technique; during its flicker, not even Xu Changge's Karma Sword could inflict damage. Yet his ability to evade Mu Xingyi's slashes relied entirely on the special black qi within his body. Black qi would deconstruct upon contact with Source Qi. By coating his body in a layer of black qi, the instant an incoming attack struck and the two collided in reaction, it would trigger the Void-Treading Slash that Xu Yuan had prepared beforehand within his meridians using the overlapping pattern secret technique. Had the frequency of Mu Xingyi's slashes been even slightly higher, the Source Qi within a Body Integration cultivator like Xu Yuan would have run completely dry. Yet Mu Xingyi hadn't managed that. Instead, he had been battered to the brink of death by Xu Yuan’s pay-to-win combo. And what about Madame Wan, who had rushed in to save him? She had been hammered into a battered wreck on the spot by the contingency he had arranged over by the west wall. Their complete failure as Saints to pose a fatal threat to him cemented Xu Yuan's conviction that he could not squander the levitation stone ring on these two embarrassments to sainthood. And as long as he faced no fatal danger, Tianye, who was only in it for the amusement, would not lift a finger. Without her stepping in, there was no way to slay Mu Xingyi and Madame Wan in a short time. In the end, it was Mu Nuo, the ghost infant sharing the same origin as Xu Yuan, who posed a lethal threat to him. The black qi could not react with the boy, leaving the Void-Treading Slash primed within his body unable to trigger. Tianye had finally made her move. In that split second, the advantage in intelligence once again flashed its deadly teeth. Tianye was able to detonate the yin origin of the Thousand-Thorns Ghost Willow, causing Mu Nuo to instantly lose his combat capability. For experts of their caliber, even a fleeting moment of hesitation was fatal. Yet even so, it had failed. Still, it could be considered an expected failure. Mu Xingyi's family was weak, but the other three Saints were supreme among Saints. They would never permit the three of Mu Xingyi's family to simply exit the stage and bow out so easily. No matter how absurd the family of three had performed, they possessed genuine Saint cultivation, and Mu Xingyi even held the massive saint origin accumulated by the Insect Saint over tens of thousands of years. Tianyuan had arrived too quickly. The speed of the 'Instant' true word was truly unreasonable. A sea of clouds drifted past, blotting out the sunlight. The tide of insects was like a waterfall hanging upside down in the heavens, surging into the city along the breach in the sky canopy. Ferocious insect beasts hit the ground, martial apprentices stood with drawn blades, and blood blossomed and swayed amid burning houses. Earth-shaking battle cries and detonations drifted from afar, highlighting the eerie stillness above the marketplace. *Boom—* Almost on the heels of Tianyuan's appearance, a searing blaze suddenly ignited atop the towering west wall. The constant rumbling hammering down upon Madame Wan abruptly ceased, replaced by a dull explosion that resonated across the entire prefecture city. Glancing over in an instant, Xu Yuan saw only a hunched old man with half-squinted eyes, standing atop the city wall with a faint sigh. The spot where Huang Shiwei had stood was already empty. Yet he remembered, Huang Shiwei had the city defenses protecting his body... Before that thought could fully settle and before Xu Yuan could knit his brows, *Rumble—* A thunderous blast erupted from the other side of the prefecture city. An ignited, burly figure flew backward across the entire city, ultimately slamming a massive crater into the eastern wall. A single strike, and Huang Shiwei's fate was unknown. Having done this, the hunched old man dusted off his robes and cast a glance at the yin ghost female Saint at the base of the wall, showing no intention of coming to her aid. Raising his hand slightly, the raging flames encircling him began to rapidly melt the wall with terrifying heat. A laughing voice spread undisguised across the city: "White Emperor, this old man and the pavilion master have already made our move. There is no need for you to hold back any longer, is there?" The next instant, as if in answer to the old man's words, drumbeat-like thunder suddenly rolled across the sky veiled by the insect tide. *Rumble—* Sensing this aura, Tianye, who was readying her lethal strike, unconsciously raised her deep-gold eyes toward the heavens. Her willow brows twitched slightly. "Oh my... The Divine Maiden's little puppy got thoroughly beaten up. This looks like a bit of trouble." As the words fell, right where Tianye was looking, fine cracks suddenly splintered across a corner of the city defense canopy. Then, *Crash—* Accompanied by a bloodied white wolf crashing down into the city, that section of the city defense canopy shattered like colored glass, dispersing into specks of starlight in the air. The Linlang struck the ground with immense speed, sending a tremor through the entire prefecture city like an overturning earth dragon. Without giving anyone room to catch their breath, that figure surrounded by dragons, seemingly warping the very space around him, slowly descended from the breach into the sky above the prefecture city. Dragon eyes, cold and indifferent, looked down upon all living beings. The pressure belonging to a supreme Saint descended upon the sky above the prefecture city without the slightest reservation.