Buyi Town Rule Twenty-One: [If one leaves the town or kills the town mayor, one no longer needs to abide by the Buyi Town rules.]
When the medicine shopkeeper clearly explained the meaning of Rule Twenty-One to Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou, both of them immediately thought of the exact same thing.
Since one could neither leave the town nor kill the town mayor, then if the two collided, which would prevail?
Not knowing the answer, they might as well give it a try.
Whether the town mayor left the town or they killed the town mayor, either outcome was advantageous to them.
If the town mayor left the town, Buyi Town would become their domain, allowing them to search for another way out—for example, starting with the private school teacher.
Moreover, the two simply refused to believe that the town mayor leaving the town would not destabilize Buyi Town in the slightest.
If they could kill the town mayor, that would be even better; they would clear the trial right away.
However, making the town mayor step into the exit passage was no easy task.
They knew neither the location of the ancestral hall nor the town mayor's identity.
No matter—once they muddied the waters of Buyi Town, the town mayor would inevitably take action.
The one who established the rules would never tolerate anyone breaking them; it was equivalent to a direct slap in the face, declaring that his rules were riddled with loopholes.
Therefore, the two chose to exploit the rules to wreak havoc across Buyi Town.
First, Lu Yang threw out a smokescreen, fabricating functions for the jade pendant, and deliberately communicated using paper, giving the impression that this was a secretive method concocted in the shadows that no one else could know about.
Since he already knew that nothing in the town could escape the town mayor's eyes, how could Lu Yang possibly state or write down the actual method to clear the trial?
The town mayor mocked the duo for their arrogance, yet failed to realize that he was the truly arrogant one; Lu Yang thoroughly deceived him, drawing all his attention toward the jade pendant.
Then, the two played tricks on the yamen runners three times, sending the message to the town mayor that his subordinates were no match for them at all.
With his underlings outmatched, the town mayor would certainly take the field himself to resolve these two scourges.
The town mayor believed that having stolen the jade pendant, everything was settled, and waited in the ancestral hall for them to walk right into his trap. Little did he expect that the two had never planned on using the jade pendant in the first place—all they wanted was for the town mayor to appear in the ancestral hall.
As for how Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou discussed this, such a simple little scheme didn't even require any discussion.
If a demonic cult Branch Master weren't full of cunning tricks, what kind of demonic cult Branch Master would he be?
...
Returning to the present, at the entrance to the ancestral hall, the town mayor was deeply trapped in the Bone-Dissolving Astral Wind. The [Undying Rule] and the [Certain-Death Rule] clashed against each other; his body was continuously destroyed and restored, the pain so excruciating that he wished he could kill himself on the spot.
"What in the world is this thing?" Lu Yang observed the town mayor, having never seen such a monstrosity before.
"That's beast transformation!" the Immortal Fairy said in Lu Yang's mind.
"Beast transformation?" Lu Yang sifted through the cultivation knowledge stored in his mind, but found no corresponding term.
It seemed to be a cultivation method from the Ancient Era that had long since been lost to time.
The Immortal Fairy continued, "During the Ancient Era, this cultivation method was popular for a time—using a human body to devour demons, thereby combining the strengths of humans and demons simultaneously. It was quite powerful, but it had a major flaw: one could not become an immortal."
"Becoming an immortal requires a pure body. A body that is half-human and half-demon simply cannot form a Dao fruit. Eventually, people gradually stopped practicing it."
"Could it be that this guy is also from the Ancient Era?" Lu Yang wondered.
"Unlikely. People from the Ancient Era all knew about the flaw of this cultivation method. It's far more likely that someone from later generations obtained the method, knowing only its strengths without knowing its flaws."
"After all, it's quite normal to assume that the older and more forgotten something is, the better it must be. But ancient things aren't necessarily powerful, and if something was lost to time, there's always a reason. Perhaps no one could cultivate it, or perhaps no one was willing to cultivate it. One must look at these things objectively." The Immortal Fairy shrugged. Such things were commonplace in ancient times.
For instance, some youth might stumble into a ruin, obtain an ancient cultivation method, and think himself invincible under heaven, completely unaware that because the method was so ancient, it was incomplete, and the path broke off entirely at the Nascent Soul stage.
No one knew how many generations of cultivation methods had been replaced or how many people had died before a complete path from Qi Induction all the way to becoming an immortal was finally established.
The Immortal Fairy was vastly knowledgeable, effortlessly explaining plenty of knowledge that no one in the modern world knew about.
The town mayor glared fixedly at the two. Having cultivated all the way to the Body Integration stage, he was naturally no fool; after falling into the trap, he immediately understood how the two had plotted against him.
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
In the end, the [Undying Rule] lost to the [Certain-Death Rule], and the town mayor's body completely vanished.
This outcome matched their predictions. Daoist Buyu had said right from the start that rules could not be overly heaven-defying; there were no such things as rules of [Absolute Invincibility] or [Absolute Immortality].
The town mayor's rule of [Will Not Die] was not absolute.
"Death? This seat is Perfected Faxian, imperishable through ten thousand tribulations, my true soul indestructible! How could I capsize in this gutter?!" A dark soul leaped out of the town mayor's body, looking somewhat different from the town mayor.
The town mayor had merely been the vessel Perfected Faxian had seized; it was not his true body.
Logically speaking, with the town mayor's physical body dead, Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou had already cleared the trial. However, Perfected Faxian could not stomach such humiliation—a dignified Body Integration grand expert who had lived for thousands of years and outschemed countless adversaries, only to end up duped by two Foundation Establishment juniors!
He couldn't endure it!
Today, even if he violated the rules and risked damaging his soul, he would slaughter these two brats.
"Hmm? You actually have a Sword Spiritual Root?" Without the constraints of a physical body, Perfected Faxian was even sharper. He sensed that one of the two had a Bachelor Spiritual Root and the other had a Sword Spiritual Root—both possessed top-tier talent, hundreds of times superior to the town mayor's.
A Sword Spiritual Root possessed the fiercest offensive power. If he obtained a body with a Sword Spiritual Root and paired it with his Faxian Secret Method, he would undoubtedly surpass his former self, break through his limits, and reaching the Tribulation Transcendence stage would not be out of the question!
Moreover, his Faxian Secret Method allowed one to defy the heavens and slay immortals at peak Tribulation Transcendence; it was an invincible existence. Even when the Golden Age arrived, who could stand in his way?
"It seems Heaven is granting me an opportunity!" Perfected Faxian laughed heartily. He had never expected such an enormous windfall—truly, when every path seemed blocked, another opened before him.
He regarded Lu Yang's body as something already in his grasp. What kind of waves could a mere Foundation Establishment cultivator stir before a Body Integration expert?
He transformed into a cloud of gray mist and surged into Lu Yang's spiritual space, preparing to seize Lu Yang's body.
Lu Yang stared at Perfected Faxian in disbelief, his face filled with terror. "Y-You're a Body Integration expert, yet you won't even abide by your own rules and want to seize my body?!"
Perfected Faxian sneered, looking down on Lu Yang with disdain. In the end, he was just a child who hadn't seen through the true nature of the world. "Before you die, I'll teach you a truth so that you can die in peace."
"Whoever has greater strength is in the right—this is an eternal, unchanging truth. When you aren't qualified to provoke a Body Integration expert, tuck your tail between your legs and behave yourself!"
Lu Yang sighed. "How nice it would have been if everyone followed the rules and competed with their own abilities. Since you refuse to play by the rules, don't blame me for flipping the table."
He stepped aside, revealing the figure behind him, and made an inviting gesture. "Fairy, I'll leave it to you."
And then, Perfected Faxian saw the Immortal Fairy sitting with one leg crossed over the other.
Looking down at Perfected Faxian, the Immortal Fairy curved her lips into a faint, ambiguous smile, seeming half-mocking and half-disdainful. "Young man, to dare talk about body seizure in front of this immortal, you've got quite some nerve."
"Huh?"
Question marks filled Perfected Faxian's mind. Why were there two people in this spiritual space? And why did the other one refer to herself as 'this immortal'?
Without any warning, a premonition of impending doom washed over him.
Chapter 140