Relying on the halo of golden light, Emperor Wenguang barely managed to evade another of Chen Chuan's slashes, yet a look of fury and dread surfaced in his eyes.
Pushed to this point, he seemed forced to bring forth a power he had not wished to invoke before.
The rich, iridescent radiance across his body abruptly blazed with an even more dazzling brilliance. Immediately after, the void seemed penetrated by illumination, and a vast expanse of silvery luminous mist manifested overhead, cascading down toward Chen Chuan.
Chen Chuan's gaze narrowed slightly. He immediately sensed that this was a power originating from the upper layers.
Be it the force field surrounding his body, his spirit, or his spiritual fire, anything that brushed against this mist vanished on contact—as if it possessed the property to obliterate whatever it touched.
Fortunately, after fighting Prince Yong, he had grown wary of such things. Though Prince Yong had ultimately failed to unleash this measure, Emperor Wenguang was another matter.
In that very moment, the Mystic Void Fire upon the radiant disc behind his Visage of Man dispersed abruptly, colliding with the falling mist. The instant they met, the mist burst into roaring flames.
Evidently, while this substance fell short of the Mystic Void Fire, it could still be considered something on a comparable plane.
At the same time, Chen Chuan understood why Emperor Wenguang had been reluctant to employ this means: an upper-layer power drawn down by one's own initiative would interfere with or even disrupt the Ascension Rite. Under the permeation of this force, the ascending pillar of guiding light before him was already trembling faintly.
Yet Chen Chuan showed no mercy. The moment the protective golden light dissolved, his blade luminescence penetrated inward once more!
Emperor Wenguang had never anticipated that even this would fail to stop him. Fortunately, only a small portion of the summoned luminous mist had fallen toward Chen Chuan; the majority had been directed around himself.
When the blade luminescence swept across, Chen Chuan had to deploy the Mystic Void Fire to breach the obstruction. With that layer of power serving as an intermediary buffer, it indirectly impeded the advance of his strike.
This time, Emperor Wenguang finally mustered all his strength and intercepted the blade luminescence in advance with a sword. Yet the force carried by the blade remained undeniably real; even though he had prepared thoroughly, he was still overpowered.
The spiritual fire on his body whipped violently backward as though caught in a gale. The shock sent him leaning back and drifting to one side. Though battered and disheveled, at least his upper body did not shatter as it had before.
Chen Chuan noticed, however, that while the Mystic Void Fire had been tied down, its flames grew steadily fiercer as it consumed the luminous mist, its potency rising in turn. The mist served as yet another fine grade of kindling.
Naturally, now was not the time to covet such gains. If using this mist could delay his pace, he was certain Emperor Wenguang would gladly offer it all to him.
Taking advantage of his foe's backward recoil, Chen Chuan lunged forward, blade light sweeping swiftly as he slashed toward the emperor's neck.
As this strike flew forth, he unleashed both the Grand Radiant Light Forms and the Grand Firmament Forms. A halo of radiance blossomed outward around his body, instantly enveloping both Emperor Wenguang and himself within it.
Sensing that the opportunity to shatter and slay Emperor Wenguang had arrived, Chen Chuan moved to bind him within first, preventing his Divine Visage from abandoning ascension to slip away and flee, or launching a desperate counterattack once his vessel was destroyed.
Yet the moment he released those two forces, another esoteric art struck toward him.
Chen Chuan did not know what esoteric art Emperor Wenguang had unleashed, nor did he need to understand it; he simply unfurled the One Primal Divine Seal.
As long as one's foundation was deep enough, this secret heritage required little overthinking—one merely seized the opportunity and struck with it. It perfectly embodied the Purist Faction's characteristically crude yet devastatingly effective approach.
With that, the strike drove home without obstruction, sending Emperor Wenguang's head flying in an instant. Simultaneously, due to the torrential force imparted by the stroke, both head and torso detonated into countless specks of flesh and blood the moment they parted.
With the vessel gone, the Divine Visage concealed within was completely exposed. It was a figure coalesced from azure mist, its facial contours identical to the Emperor Wenguang he had seen before.
The exposure of the Divine Visage seemed to stir something, and indistinct, shadowy silhouettes of ghosts and monsters soon emerged within the void outside the two of them.
This anomalous rite was linked to the realm beyond the heavens, and the Ascension Rite itself was like a blazing torch lit in the dark of night. Without a solid vessel and the protection of those gods and celestials, these demons would be drawn in to gnaw away at him.
Although they dared not advance just yet due to the luminous mist around Emperor Wenguang and the barrier of Chen Chuan's Grand Radiant Light Forms, every single one bared expressions of rapacious greed.
Emperor Wenguang could not spare attention for such creatures now. Having lost his outer shell, he had been stripped of the bulwark that allowed him to confront Chen Chuan head-on, unless he abandoned the spot and fled at once—which was precisely what the Visage of the Divine excelled at.
Yet if he fled, the entire Ascension Rite would be broken. Setting aside his reluctance to forfeit it, even if he survived, he might not escape the pursuit of Chen Chuan and Great Shun.
Unwilling to accept such a fate, he borrowed the aid of a legacy relic upon his person to commune with an entity beyond the heavens.
His Visage of the Divine surged upward abruptly, transforming in an instant into a three-headed, eight-armed divine demon nearly two hundred meters tall.
A look of shock crossed Mingchengzi's face upon seeing this. Recovering immediately, he sent a mental message to Chen Chuan:
"Xuanji, this is a secret art of our sect—the method of 'Marshaling Gods and Summoning Celestials,' executed upon the foundation of the 'Mystic Refining Celestial Body.' It can commandeer the vital essence of celestial gods and fiends from above to forge a body, turning them into one's own dharma protectors!"
He then added with venomous rancor: "Even if he cultivated our Xuan Sect's orthodox 'Mystic Refining Celestial Body,' without the sect master's register of investiture, he could never have deployed this art! The false emperor must be relying on the power of our sect's supreme treasure, the 'Moyun Lotus Root,' and utilizing the Ascension Rite's gateway to the upper layers to cast down and seize our sect's bound divine demons for his own use!"
Chen Chuan had encountered a similar divine visage back in the Tianji Sect, and its awe-inspiring might had indeed been peerless; had it not been for the traitor Ran Ming, the Federation might not have breached the defenses of the zhenren back then.
Afterward, he had lacked the chance to contest those figures in that regard and did not know where their upper limit lay. Now that Emperor Wenguang's measure appeared comparable, it seemed well worth putting to the test.
Looking at the colossal body, Chen Chuan drew a deep breath. Billowing white vapor instantly rose from his body, while a shimmering purple light surfaced across his skin.
At the same time, his second self merged with him in an instant, and his hands swung the blade upward.
In that breath, an extreme sense of danger radiated into the hearts of everyone present. Even the ancient deities felt a chill run through them.
The gigantic divine demon seemed to perceive the threat Chen Chuan posed as well. A purplish-red flame burst from its frame as though capable of incinerating the void, and its hand reached down toward Chen Chuan, while the iridescent vapors originally wrapped around the Visage of the Divine gathered toward its palm.
Seeing what looked like a swirling vortex coalescing upon the claw, Mingchengzi's heart jolted. He immediately recognized it as an ability akin to an extraordinary force granted by the divine demon's possession: so long as one's own power exceeded the opponent's, one could drag them directly into one's grasp.
Facing the descending hand, Chen Chuan acted as though blind to it, standing motionless in the void. A moment later, his eyes snapped open, and he slashed forward with immense force!
In an instant, a beam of platinum light that seemed to tear open the void flew toward the colossal form, carrying wisps of flickering flames. Like a flash of lightning, it crossed the creature's body in the blink of an eye.
The towering divine demon jerked to a sudden halt. In the next instant, a clean, level incision appeared across its chest, and its upper torso sheared away in a neat separation!
A lingering look of astonishment remained on the divine demon's face. The wisps of Mystic Void Fire clinging to the severed plane spread rapidly in both directions, swallowing its entire body in moments.
Chen Chuan maintained his follow-through stance in the void. Even as the massive hand reaching for him was engulfed by the Mystic Void Fire, it still pressed stubbornly forward.
Yet his gaze did not waver. Just as the gigantic hand was about to descend upon his head, the two severed halves of the colossal body, along with the palm itself, shattered with a thunderous roar into countless specks of light dancing in the void.
From amidst those particles of light, a wisp of clear vapor emerged and swiftly coalesced into shape. Yet this time, panic and terror marked his face, and he seemed to be crying out toward the heavens above.
From the carriage ahead, Consort Teng drifted downward, heading straight toward his location.
Emperor Wenguang was her ally, and she had taken part in this Ascension Rite. With Emperor Wenguang's promises yet to be fulfilled, she had no wish to see him slain here.
Chen Chuan cast a glance with the Heavenly Eye between his brows and discerned that this serpent-bodied woman appeared to be the incarnation of some entity from beyond the heavens.
Upon seeing her, he had no intention of intercepting her personally. Instead, he manifested a projected duplicate from his body, imbuing it via a relic with the same strength he currently possessed.
He had refrained from using it earlier precisely in anticipation of such a moment—so that should any extra ancient deity or foreign power intervene, he could deploy it to hold them off.
The duplicate flashed with light and arrived before Consort Teng in an instant, after which Chen Chuan paid her no further heed.
The power the duplicate could sustain would last only three breaths. If it could dispatch the opponent, all the better; if not, it did not matter—that brief window was more than enough for him.
With a tap of his toes, Chen Chuan shot forward like a streak of flowing light, reaching Emperor Wenguang's position in an instant. Sweeping his hands forward with a brilliant blade luminescence, he brought the strike down upon the cluster of clear vapor!
Emperor Wenguang had nowhere to evade. Even if he wished to flee now, he could never outrun Chen Chuan's speed, and his legacy relics had all been exhausted; he had no protective wards left.
In this final moment, he pressed his palms together and invoked the "Glazed Divine Body." His body, which had resembled clear vapor, instantly solidified into something akin to five-colored glaze.
This was an esoteric heritage of the Chan Sect that drew upon upper-layer power to anchor and guard the body. If one's resolve was exceedingly pure and one's will to survive strong enough, it could be rendered extraordinarily hard.
A flash of blade light passed through him as the Xuejun Saber cleaved across his body without the slightest impediment.
Emperor Wenguang was struck with disbelief, intense rancor and unwillingness surfacing in his eyes. Traces of light webbed across his glazed body, and moments later, a fierce brilliance erupted from within, bursting into countless specks of clear vapor and fluorescent light.
Chen Chuan raised his blade and swept it outward. A vast plume of Mystic Void Fire showered forth, igniting all the vapors and light with a roar, and surrounding him in a sprawling sphere of flames dancing and whirling through the void.
Chapter 1439