Deep beneath the Sea of Stars, blood vitality surged violently.
An eighth-stage Sun Moon of the god race possessed an extraordinarily immense reserve of blood vitality!
Fortunately, Xia Longwu's blade qi suppressed these violent surges; otherwise, Su Yu might not have been able to extract the blood essence smoothly.
"Terrifying!"
"Manor Lord Xia is terrifyingly frightening!"
Su Yu could not help but marvel in heartfelt awe.
Just how powerful was Xia Longwu?
An eighth-stage Sun Moon had seemingly been slain by him with a single stroke.
Su Yu examined the fatal wound—a single slash across the neck that had practically severed the head. The wound seemed to have healed somewhat after death, but full recovery had been halted by the lingering blade qi.
Otherwise, even in death, the corpse would have regenerated completely.
Such was a Sun Moon!
No, such was a top-tier Sun Moon—an eighth-stage Sun Moon powerhouse of gods and demons.
A Sun Moon could achieve rebirth from a single drop of blood.
The premise was that their essence, energy, spirit, and sea of will remained intact. Otherwise, rebirth from a single drop of blood was an empty joke. Xia Longwu's blade qi had directly shattered the opponent's sea of will, utterly annihilating his vitality.
With meticulous care, Su Yu used the highest-grade jade vials to store the extracted blood essence, sealing each drop in its own container.
He also used his 'Yin' divine character to erect a barrier, preventing any aura from leaking.
Bit by bit, he extracted it!
Soon, he had gathered nine drops of blood essence. The oppressive aura weighing down from the corpse diminished noticeably. However, a problem remained: the blade qi!
Su Yu had to get rid of this blade qi!
Otherwise, it would invite immense trouble.
One glance was all it took to recognize that this god had died by the Heaven-Cleaving Blade. Could anyone buy the excuse of an ancient Heaven-Cleaving Blade powerhouse?
Utter nonsense!
"The blade qi is far too potent!"
Su Yu sighed helplessly. He had to absorb it; otherwise, there was no way to disguise the corpse.
After a moment's hesitation, he considered that his own cultivation of the Heaven-Cleaving Blade was fairly deep. Could he absorb Xia Longwu's Heaven-Cleaving blade qi?
"Let's give it a try. I absorbed a bit of King Daxia's blade qi before, after all."
Su Yu gave it a shot, circulating the Heaven-Cleaving Blade technique and gingerly drawing in a tiny wisp of blade qi...
*Pfft!*
A bloody gash tore open across his flesh. The blade qi erupted, violently slamming into his internal organs!
The 144 apertures of Su Yu's Heaven-Cleaving Blade frantically absorbed and suppressed the blade qi!
Su Yu gave a low shout as his blood vitality boiled!
*Tempering my body with blade qi!*
Using it to cast his body was actually a fine option, and it would simultaneously strengthen his Heaven-Cleaving Blade.
Su Yu absorbed and digested it!
It was only a minuscule wisp of blade qi, yet it took him over ten minutes just to barely subdue it. Looking at the remaining blade qi suffusing the god's corpse, Su Yu felt both joy and helpless resignation.
His joy stemmed from realizing he could continue tempering his body and absorbing it.
His resignation came from understanding that if Xia Longwu stood before him, a single wisp of blade qi would easily finish him off.
Damn it!
The disparity was frighteningly vast!
That slash had been delivered long ago—well, over a year ago. The blade qi had already wiped out an eighth-stage Sun Moon, yet even its lingering dregs were this formidable!
Was Manor Lord Xia truly only at the ninth stage of the Sun Moon Realm?
Su Yu had his doubts!
Could an ordinary ninth-stage Sun Moon be this overpowered?
It was truly an eye-opener!
Just this wisp of blade qi had nearly shattered his physical body, which wielded the power of thirty thousand apertures. How terrifying had that full-powered strike been?
It defied imagination!
At least, it was beyond anything Su Yu could conceive.
Slowly absorbing and digesting the energy, strengthening himself and his physical frame, Su Yu's expression gradually turned strange.
Inside his 144 apertures, the yuan qi had suddenly congealed into the shape of blades!
"What is this?"
How could yuan qi have a defined shape?
Su Yu wore an utterly bizarre expression!
These blade shapes seemed like seeds. With a slight nudge of Su Yu's will, he executed a slash. Instantly, the immensely pressurized seawater ahead of him split, cleaving open a deep fissure!
"Huh?"
Su Yu stared in surprise. What was going on? His strike seemed considerably stronger!
He inspected his apertures again. Indeed, within all 144 apertures, the yuan qi had taken the form of blades!
Struck by an idea, Su Yu promptly pulled out a booklet. This was the manual of the Heaven-Cleaving Blade Technique that Marquis Xia had given him back then, handwritten by Xia Longwu himself.
Su Yu had browsed through it several times, but he had never seen any mention of yuan qi turning into blades.
What in the world?
Su Yu quickly opened the manual to take a look. His vision blurred, and in that instant, he unexpectedly reentered the state of comprehending a text of will! It had been so long since he acquired this booklet that its energy should have nearly dissipated.
Furthermore, as his strength grew, ordinary, weak texts of will could no longer induce this state in him.
"Lingyun?"
The moment Su Yu sank into the booklet, Xia Longwu's figure manifested before him.
It was an illusion, a projection of will, not a living person.
"Blade qi taking form, stepping into Lingyun, the Nine Yuan Qi Transformations..."
Su Yu was thoroughly astonished!
This... this was the second tier of the technique!
No, this was the method of the Nine Transformations for the Lingyun Realm!
The Heaven-Cleaving Blade had not taught him a body-casting art. Su Yu had assumed the Xia family simply refused to teach it, but that was not the case now. Perhaps the Xia family considered their body-casting art unimpressive and never intended to pass it on.
Yet, concealed within this technique was the method of the Nine Yuan Qi Transformations!
At this moment, Su Yu was actually judged to have stepped into Lingyun, and his yuan qi had mutated!
In truth, this was normal. Su Yu's physical body had long surpassed ordinary Tengkong cultivators—in fact, even gods and demons were not as physically strong as him. But Su Yu had never considered the Nine Yuan Qi Transformations because he thought he was still far from them!
Yet in reality, approaching 28 casts, his body was far stronger than someone who had completed 36 casts!
Moreover, absorbing a bit of Xia Longwu's blade qi had triggered changes in the yuan qi within his 144 apertures—the embryonic form of the Nine Yuan Qi Transformations!
Su Yu's eyes shone brightly. *So... I can initiate the Nine Yuan Qi Transformations ahead of time!*
...
At that very moment, Xia Longwu, who had just departed from Liu City, paused in surprise.
He turned his gaze back toward the Sea of Stars!
What was going on?
He stepped into Lingyun?
His physical body entered Lingyun?
How could it be so fast!
That kid Su Yu had to aim for at least 36 casts, and how much time had passed since then?
Willpower was one thing—advancing quickly there made sense.
After all, Su Yu had opened numerous divine apertures, which saved immense amounts of time.
However, a physical body truly required meticulous, step-by-step forging.
Given how strong Su Yu's body was, casting it took even longer!
Even with an endless supply of god and demon blood essence, he had only reached Tengkong in February. It was late July now—merely five months. Could he have completed all his casts?
Xia Longwu frowned slightly. Even if he were an unmatched genius with limitless resources, achieving one cast every ten days would yield only fifteen casts in five months and over 150 days.
Nonsense!
"Could it be that slaying the Sun Moon last time provided so many rewards that he completed his body casting ahead of schedule?"
"Is it a 36-cast technique?"
He could not be certain. If it were a 36-cast technique, it was plausible.
Yet it still seemed unlikely!
Could this fellow only be cultivating a 27-cast technique?
Xia Longwu was baffled. After a long moment, he froze as a realization struck him. *Could that kid... have absorbed my blade qi, causing his yuan qi to enter the stage of the Nine Transformations ahead of schedule?*
That was a distinct possibility!
After all, he had just brought out the corpse. But... had that kid brought out the corpse just to absorb his blade qi? Had he lost his mind?
Xia Longwu knew better than anyone how potent his blade qi was.
A single misstep would result in a shattered body.
"Even if we both cultivate the Heaven-Cleaving Blade, mine is not something you can compare with!"
Xia Longwu was thoroughly bewildered by Su Yu. Did the boy have a death wish?
Had he disregarded his own life just to gain power?
He dared to absorb anything!
Forget it, let him be.
Xia Longwu had plenty of his own matters to attend to. The boy would have to look out for himself. If he survived, he survived. One could never walk far if one had to be propped up every step of the way.
...
Xia Longwu washed his hands of the matter.
Su Yu, on the other hand, was not overthinking it.
By now, he was already studying the Xia family's Heaven-Cleaving Nine Transformations Art!
The so-called Nine Yuan Qi Transformations referred to mutating and enhancing one's yuan qi once the physical body and apertures were sufficiently formidable.
Each mutation made the yuan qi sharper and more potent!
For the same volume of energy, where the original damage output was 1, a single mutation might elevate it to 1.1, 1.2, or even 1.5...
Under normal circumstances, a 10% increase per mutation was considered standard.
Of course, there were also trash results.
For instance, if someone opened only 36 apertures, completed nine casts of the body using the lowest-grade techniques and blood essence, and then entered Lingyun, it would not be strange if each mutation granted merely a 5% boost.
Su Yu did not even want to calculate how strong such a Lingyun cultivator would be... because there was no strength to speak of.
Reluctant though he was, Su Yu ran the numbers anyway. A cultivator with 36 apertures would fuse four apertures into one. By the ninth stage of the Wanshi Realm... good grief, their strength would only amount to fifty or sixty apertures. By the ninth stage of Tengkong, if they underwent nine casts... holy hell, they would barely surpass 120 apertures of force.
Naturally, Tengkong provided some additional passive bonuses.
Let's generously round it to 150 apertures of force!
If the Nine Lingyun Transformations only added around 5% per stage, after nine mutations... the result would be abysmal!
Barely over 200 apertures of force.
Su Yu bared his teeth. He wondered whether such pitiful ninth-stage Lingyun cultivators truly existed across the myriad races.
Come on!
In reality, they would generally be stronger than that. Breakthroughs between major realms always provided bonuses, and physical bodies were strengthened. Su Yu had not felt those bonuses simply because he was already ridiculously overpowered.
Still, if such a ninth-stage Lingyun existed, they would possess around three to five hundred apertures of force at best.
In theory, such a ninth-stage Lingyun was possible.
Of course, Su Yu found it improbable.
To cultivate the absolute worst techniques at every single realm and still reach the ninth stage of Lingyun—that person would have to be an absolute marvel!
If you had the aptitude to reach the ninth stage of Lingyun with the garbage techniques, it proved your talent wasn't terrible. In that case, why wouldn't you switch techniques?
Even his own father had started opening extra apertures!
He was switching his body-casting art as well.
Otherwise, his father would have remained a warrior with only 36 apertures.
If someone truly cultivated trash techniques all the way to the ninth stage of Lingyun with only three to five hundred apertures of force, Su Yu could poke them to death with a single finger!
"Such an oddity probably doesn't exist in the myriad realms, right?"
Su Yu was skeptical. In the human race, for instance, even if someone started with 36 apertures, if they managed to break through later, they would usually open more apertures or choose an 18-cast technique, no matter how difficult it was.
In any case, he had never seen a ninth-stage Lingyun with only a few hundred apertures of force.
Setting that aside—if he ever ran into such a miracle worker, he definitely shouldn't kill them; he had to keep them around as an exhibit—Su Yu focused his thoughts on the Xia family's Heaven-Cleaving Nine Transformations Art.
The Nine Yuan Qi Transformations generally required supplementary materials.
For example, the fruit of the ancient Dragonblood Tree mentioned earlier, or similar treasures that aided the metamorphosis of yuan qi. The Nine Yuan Qi Transformations were essentially a process of incubation and rebirth, just like what Su Yu was experiencing now!
This time, he was using Xia Longwu's blade qi as the catalyst to incubate the power of his 144 apertures!
Rebirth had not yet occurred!
The blade-shaped yuan qi currently inside his 144 apertures was merely a set of seeds.
Once incubation succeeded, they would shatter and revert to the original form of yuan qi, but the quality would experience a massive surge!
With every yuan qi metamorphosis, geniuses would use an exceedingly powerful foundational item for incubation.
And this time, Su Yu had unintentionally used Xia Longwu's blade qi as his foundational medium!
This was truly not something just anyone could handle.
If Xia Huyou reached the first stage of Lingyun and dared to absorb Xia Longwu's blade qi, his body would probably be torn apart before he could even absorb it. Su Yu's body, however, was already comparable to a third-stage Shanhai cultivator's!
It wasn't that the blade qi spared you simply because you shared the same origin technique; sharing the origin had merely mitigated the damage considerably.
Otherwise, even a Sun Moon-level body might have struggled to endure it.
"In other words, I've used Manor Lord Xia's blade qi as the foundational item for my First Transformation!"
Su Yu muttered, "Isn't this absurdly strong?"
He certainly thought so!
For a figure as formidable as Xia Longwu to provide the blade qi for his first transformation's foundation—how could it not be powerful?
Once this metamorphosis was complete, would his 144 apertures unleash unfathomable power?
"Just how high will the amplification be?"
Su Yu was uncertain!
The critical issue was... holy crap!
*I have 360 apertures, but this first metamorphosis is only affecting 144. What am I supposed to do with the rest?*
*And once this metamorphosis is done, does my body count as a first-stage Lingyun, or still Tengkong?*
Su Yu's head ached!
He could sense that his power would increase, but it might lead to a loss of control and an imbalance among his apertures. That would be troublesome, unless he guided the remaining apertures through a metamorphosis as well!
"The crux of the problem is that these 144 apertures used Manor Lord Xia's blade qi as their foundation for the First Transformation. To prevent an imbalance, the yuan qi in the other apertures will need power or treasures of an equivalent tier..."
Su Yu felt like spitting blood!
Damn it!
That meant if he wanted the other apertures to undergo metamorphosis, he had to find power or treasures on par with Xia Longwu.
Xia Longwu was practically a Quasi-Invincible, wasn't he?
If he wanted to trigger the metamorphosis in his god-race apertures, did he need to absorb the power of a god-race Quasi-Invincible?
And for his demon-race apertures, the power of a demon-race Quasi-Invincible?
*I have fucking 360 apertures covering the systems of nearly all the major races. Doesn't that mean I have to go around absorbing power from all their Quasi-Invincibles to finish the transformations? Are you kidding me?!*
Of course, if Su Yu wanted balance, he could do one other thing—abandon the yuan qi metamorphosis right now!
It was not mandatory to continue!
Yet could he truly give it up?
He was completely unwilling!
It felt so powerful!
If a genius didn't cultivate the greatest techniques, temper their body with the maximum casts, and metamorphose the strongest yuan qi, could they even be considered a genius?
"Forget it, forget it. Let's see how things develop first!"
Su Yu was in no rush; the metamorphosis had not finished yet.
Even if it did, there would be ways to remedy the situation.
He would wait and see how much the power of these 144 apertures increased after the transformation.
If the amplification wasn't significant, there would be no need to torment himself over whether to hunt down power of that caliber for the rest.
Leaving those worries aside, Su Yu continued absorbing Xia Longwu's blade qi.
Inside the 144 apertures, the blade-shaped yuan qi grew steadily stronger!
He absorbed more and more.
Cycle after cycle, it felt like breaking from a cocoon into rebirth, signaling that the First Yuan Qi Transformation could conclude at any moment.
Su Yu found the whole situation bizarre!
He hadn't even finished his body casting, yet the Nine Yuan Qi Transformations had arrived uninvited. And if they had to arrive, why only transform the yuan qi in 144 apertures? Wasn't this pure torture?
Moreover, did this mean he could cast his body and undergo the Nine Yuan Qi Transformations simultaneously?
If so, once he finished his body casting, would completing the Nine Transformations at the same time instantly make him a ninth-stage Lingyun?
Then all that would be left was aperture fusion for Shanhai?
Su Yu fell into deep contemplation!
In all likelihood, yes!
Which meant he could cultivate Tengkong and Lingyun concurrently, rather than defining his realm solely by the number of body casts.
"The biggest catch... is that all 360 apertures must transform. Otherwise, with 144 being absurdly strong and the rest weak, the power imbalance aside, aperture fusion will become nearly impossible!"
Even now, it was causing trouble.
Upon reaching Tengkong, forty apertures fused their power into a single composite aperture. He currently had nine composite apertures, each containing forty individual apertures.
However, the 144 apertures of the Heaven-Cleaving Blade were not evenly distributed among those nine.
Right now, because certain composite apertures contained more Heaven-Cleaving apertures and were thus disproportionately strong, Su Yu already felt a sense of imbalance.
"All I came here for was to modify a corpse..."
Su Yu sighed helplessly!
He felt like he was complaining about an embarrassment of riches!
Alas, that was the life of a genius—opportunities simply knocked on his door unbidden.
He had genuinely never intended to start his yuan qi mutation, yet here it was... underway.
Could anyone blame him?
He could only chalk it up to his talent being far too overwhelming—there was simply no helping it!
After spending a fair amount of time, he finally absorbed all the blade qi.
His 144 apertures had grown substantially stronger. Even before the full metamorphosis and incubation were complete, Su Yu could sense that their power had increased by at least ten percent.
And that was before the transformation had even finished!
Of course, the boost was restricted to those specific apertures.
Having undergone 27 body casts, this improvement was equivalent to those 144 apertures completing their 28th cast ahead of schedule.
He paid it no further heed; a slight boost was not worth obsessing over.
He began reversing his apertures.
The next instant, heavy death qi permeated the surroundings!
Su Yu swiftly began corroding the corpse.
The corpse still held residual blood essence and possessed immense durability!
To Su Yu's surprise, his death qi could barely corrode it at first. Straining with all his might, he worked on it section by section, focusing especially on the face. It was best to corrode the facial features beyond recognition!
That way, cultivators of the Tianyi God race wouldn't be able to identify him!
Death qi gradually washed over the entire corpse.
...
Just as Su Yu's death qi was enveloping the corpse...
Deep at the bottom of the sea.
A silent, ancient city rested upon the deepest floor of the ocean.
In fact, it was not far from Su Yu, but it lay so deep that Su Yu's senses had failed to detect it.
At this moment, within that lifeless ancient city...
A stone sculpture suddenly opened its eyes!
It abruptly looked upward.
The next instant, sun and moon revolved within its eyes, and space itself shifted.
"A death spirit..."
It murmured. The sculpture took the form of a sea lion. Looking up toward the waters above, it fell into a daze. Had a death spirit escaped?
What a bizarre creature!
Did it possess intellect?
No, it was highly intelligent.
Where had it found the corpse of an eighth-stage Sun Moon to corrode?
What was it doing?
Death spirits... could not leave the ancient cities.
How had it gotten out?
The stone sculpture appeared sluggish, perhaps because it had not awakened or looked upon the world for countlessly long years, leaving it disoriented.
The next moment, its gaze turned cold!
A death spirit!
Divine light flashed in its eyes as it prepared to unleash its might and slay the creature...
At that exact instant, Su Yu's 'Calamity' divine character pulsed violently. He was struck by sudden bafflement and dread. What was happening?
Simultaneously...
The tiny figure inside his heart snapped awake!
*Holy shit!*
*What the hell?*
The tiny figure instantly grasped the situation. Cursing under his breath, he tore through time and space, stepping out of the heart. Walking on air without Su Yu sensing a thing, he plunged straight toward the seabed.
The next moment, he appeared before the gates of the ancient submerged city.
The stone sculpture's gaze snapped onto him.
"He is not a death spirit!" the tiny figure spoke.
The stone sculpture stared at him, then looked back upward. The sun and moon turned in its eyes as time flowed backward. In an instant, the scene of Su Yu reversing his apertures and disguising himself as a death spirit reflected in its pupils.
Turning back to the tiny figure, the stone sculpture spoke in a profound, resonant voice: "I sense the scent of Tianmie and Yunxiao..."
"Yes, I just left their domain!"
"He... is a living being..."
The stone sculpture murmured, then cast an odd look at the tiny figure. "Your descendant?"
"No, picked him up along the way!"
The stone sculpture's eyes widened. "One can pick up someone like this along the road?"
How many years had passed?
Had the outside world become populated entirely by such people?
How miraculous!
"He has opened the Zhoutian apertures, cultivated the Five Elements Divine Art... and his body-casting art resembles that ancient method of the Iron-Eating race... Is everyone out there like this now?"
The stone sculpture had been asleep for far too long!
After all, this ancient city had sunk—it had sunk back in the ancient era.
For countless millennia, the stone sculpture had barely awakened.
Even when Invincibles discovered it, none went out of their way to chat with it; they simply swept past. Entering these ancient cities without purpose was pointless.
The stone sculpture was filled with doubt. In the shifting tides of time, had geniuses of this caliber become commonplace in the outside world?
Even in the ancient era, very few had opened the Zhoutian apertures.
Otherwise, ancient sovereigns would not have descended to offer congratulations.
That was a privilege reserved solely for supreme prodigies.
The tiny figure was equally puzzled. "How long have you been asleep?"
"How long?"
The stone sculpture drifted into a daze. The sun and moon revolved in its eyes as eras flew past. After a long silence, it murmured, "How long... far too long! The last time I saw Tianmie and the others... it has been... eight thousand tides?"
Its memory was hazy; it was merely estimating.
Having spent the ages in slumber, it did not know the exact passage of time, retaining only a vague recollection of over eight thousand tides. Perhaps... over nine thousand?
Who could remember so clearly!
"The next tide is coming!"
It looked up toward the surface of the sea. The tiny figure quickly understood. "A tide is coming... you mean the Star Astral Mansion is about to open... That truly has been long. Eighty to ninety thousand years."
One tide corresponded to one opening of the Star Astral Mansion—once every ten years. Eighty to ninety thousand years had indeed passed!
It was shockingly ancient!
This was the first time the tiny figure learned that the ancient cities had existed for so long. Or rather, the ancient cities might be even older; what the sculpture referred to was merely their last meeting, meaning the cities had likely predated it.
Just as the tiny figure was about to inquire further, the stone sculpture murmured softly, "I am going back to sleep. That human above... tell him to convert to death qi less often. His death qi is thick, but he is still weak. Once it grows too strong, it may open a death spirit passageway. Without a sacred city to suppress it, he will be targeted by the death spirit race!"
With those words, the stone sculpture closed its eyes once more and returned to slumber.
Having woken up groggy, it was best to keep sleeping!
Seeing it resume its slumber, the tiny figure had no choice but to step through the void and return.
Arriving back where he had started... the tiny figure felt helpless. Su Yu had long since hauled the corpse and fled who knew how far. The exchange with the stone sculpture had taken only an instant.
He truly ran fast!
Whenever danger loomed, that fellow's instincts were absurdly sharp—he had sprinted hundreds of li in the blink of an eye!
Fortunately, since the tiny figure was rooted in his heart, he could track his aura.
A moment later, the tiny figure stepped through space.
Catching up to Su Yu, who had transformed into a stream of water, he silently slipped back into his heart and concealed himself once more.
...
Meanwhile, Su Yu was entirely oblivious to all this, sprinting for dear life!
Just a moment ago, the 'Calamity' divine character had throbbed violently—a sign of imminent catastrophe!
Run!
Fleeing at top speed, covering hundreds of li in a single breath, Su Yu finally resumed human form, panting heavily. *Holy crap, what was that just now?*
The sense of peril had been utterly terrifying!
His heart had practically stopped beating!
It was harrowing to the extreme!
So terrifying that his 'Calamity' divine character had nearly shattered from the violent pulsing!
"An Invincible?"
Su Yu felt a lingering chill. That had definitely been an Invincible. Had an Invincible just locked onto him?
And intended to strike!
Merely being watched wouldn't cause such an extreme reaction—he had encountered three Invincibles before, and without severe malice, the 'Calamity' divine character barely twitched. Just now, the intent to kill had been unmistakable.
Holy hell!
Who wanted to kill him?
An Invincible from a hostile race?
Then why hadn't they struck?
Don't say it was because he ran fast—what a joke, could anyone outrun an Invincible?
He could hide from Sun Moons, but before an Invincible, stealth, altered identities, and suppressed auras were completely useless!
An Invincible could see right through him!
Of course, that assumed they actively probed him. If they didn't, seeing through him wasn't easy either. Clearly, the Invincible just now had likely looked at him, and looked quite deeply...
"Just which one did I run into?"
Su Yu wanted to cry!
Though he hadn't died, he had apparently caught the attention of an Invincible!
Come to think of it, while others struggled to see a single Invincible in their entire lives, Su Yu had already met quite a few. Leaving the rest aside, he had seen the three human Invincibles.
When he first arrived at the All-Heavens Battlefield, King Daqin had likely seen him.
In truth, he had also encountered King Daxia, King Daming, the big fur ball had looked at him, several stone sculptures had looked at him...
All told, Su Yu had crossed paths with more than ten Invincibles.
Su Yu waited for a while. The 'Calamity' divine character finally quieted down!
Su Yu sighed. Forget it; running wouldn't help anyway.
If he was marked, there was nothing he could do.
Perhaps the Sun Moon corpse had drawn them in. After all, an eighth-stage Sun Moon corpse carried a formidable presence.
Right now, the corpse was stowed in his storage ring, its face partially rotted from the death qi corrosion.
Dark blemishes dotted its body as well.
It still didn't look old enough!
Su Yu hadn't finished aging it completely, but that was fine; he could touch it up later.
Once done, he would bury it in a cesspool for a few days.
An ancient corpse ought to smell foul to be convincing.
He just wasn't sure if there were any cesspools around here. Probably not, so a muddy sludge pit would do.
He harbored not a shred of reverence for a Sun Moon of the god race!
The corpse was mostly prepared. Ancient weapons, divine characters, garments... all of them were nearly set.
Next, he needed to find an ancient pocket dimension on the verge of collapse!
Then, he would lure some people to explore it with him—ideally while disguised as someone prominent.
"I need to head to Nine Stars Island and capture a genius!"
"I heard Tianduo is here, and the Little Golden Dragon is around too. I'll bag one of them!"
"The Dragon Realm is too close to this place... capturing Tianduo is the best option!"
Actually, capturing Foutuling would work too, but there had been no news of that fellow coming here. Being from the earth spirit branch, he likely hadn't come, since this entire region was an ocean.
Su Yu gave it no further thought and set off to capture a genius!
Without a captive, making his getaway would be difficult.
Once captured, he couldn't kill them either; if their name vanished from the rankings, it would cause trouble.
Killing the direct descendant of an Invincible would immediately draw an Invincible's scrutiny.
...
While Su Yu was pondering these matters...
On Nine Stars Island.
A small mound suddenly contracted. Within the hill, several exploring powerhouses cried out in shock, but before they could say anything, golden light flashed with razor sharpness, beams of gold piercing through their bodies!
The next moment, the mound shrank, morphing into an earthen figure.
Foutuling had slain several individuals, causing clouds of reward to descend from the heavens.
Suddenly, he grew vigilant, glancing around with a vague sense of unease. Was someone gunning for him?
Facial features surfaced on Foutuling's clay-like face, looking puzzled. *My arrival was kept very quiet.*
*Has someone locked onto me?*
*I feel a faint premonition of danger!*
*Forget it, time to relocate immediately!*
Everyone knew he was an earth spirit. If anyone wanted to capture or deal with him, they would do so on land. He would go play in the water instead of staying on land. No one would ever expect an earth spirit like him to go messing around in the water!
As for Modona's wild guesses earlier, let him guess all he wanted; Foutuling would never admit to anything!
"I'm an earthen man. If I go into the water, I won't run into anyone targeting me, right?"
Taking comfort in that thought, Foutuling swiftly flew toward the sea, refusing to linger on the shore any longer. Good things had surfaced in the waters recently anyway—it would be great if he could pick up a Five Elements Fruit Tree of his own!
He wanted some yuan qi metamorphosis too!
That ancient Dragonblood Tree had been discovered far too early. The fool who found it actually intended to sell it. If it were him... he definitely wouldn't sell—what a priceless treasure!
Then again, if they offered enough money, he would sell it too.
The fellow had sold it far too cheaply!
Powerhouses from minor races were truly pitiable. If it were him, no one would dare coerce him like that. His Five Elements race was also a mighty race with Invincibles in their ranks—and not just one or two. Once the five elements unified, they would boast over a dozen!
Granted, the five elements had not yet unified.
Even so, Foutuling possessed plenty of confidence.
Look at how an Invincible ancestor had personally come to his rescue when he was trapped in the ancient city last time. That wasn't a privilege just any descendant of an Invincible enjoyed. Tianduo, for all his status as an expert of the Primordial Demon race, hadn't received Invincible reinforcements; he had merely ridden on Modona's coattails.
With that precedent established, powerhouses from the major races wouldn't dare push him too far.
Of course, if he were slain by a genius of the same cultivation stage... there would be no recourse. A genius killed by a peer was no longer a genius, and the Five Elements race wouldn't waste resources or effort on his behalf.
If you couldn't even defeat peers of your own stage, who could you beat?
Expecting him to revitalize the Five Elements race would have to wait for the next life!
Foutuling cast the thought aside and raced toward the shore. The next instant, he transformed into a mixture of mud and water, plunged into the sea, and vanished without a trace!
*I'm out of here!*
*The land is too dangerous!*
*For all I know, my old rival the stone man might have arrived. That fellow is strong on land, but in the water, I'll beat him half to death!*
Chapter 410