"Do you truly believe you have me cornered, though?!"
Though he had been schemed against, Guan Shanhai showed no panic. He merely disliked fighting; it did not mean he was incapable of it!
Moreover, Meng Junzi still did not know what his Dao fruit was.
Yet to his surprise, Meng Junzi's next words made his heart skip a beat.
"If I am not mistaken, Fellow Daoist Guan, the effect of your Dao fruit is assimilation—to completely transform one person into another. Without that, you would never be able to revive Great Yu."
Long ago, Meng Junzi and Jiang Ping'an had noticed Guan Shanhai's presence and realized his ambition to restore the Great Yu Dynasty.
Guan Shanhai's Dao fruit was unrecorded in any historical text. Restoring Great Yu was not as simple as slaying the Jiang family and taking their place; after evolving across a hundred thousand years, Great Yu and Great Xia were two entirely distinct dynasties.
Both men suspected that Guan Shanhai's Dao fruit could aid in Great Yu's restoration, and they had made numerous conjectures to that end.
Seeing Guan Shanhai transform a corpse into the second Imperial Preceptor just now had finally confirmed Meng Junzi's suspicions.
In truth, Meng Junzi's guess deviated slightly from reality. Guan Shanhai had named his Dao fruit the "Imprint Dao fruit."
For instance, he could take the corpse of a Tribulation Transcendence cultivator as a vessel and imprint the second Imperial Preceptor from his memories onto that body.
This was not merely copying memories; even appearance, physical memory, rudimentary Dao fruit, instinctual reflexes, and special physique were completely restored—virtually indistinguishable from resurrection!
It was only because he did not know what had transpired after the second Imperial Preceptor entered the Dao Seeking Sect that the imprinted replica lacked any recollection of the events leading up to his death.
Using a living person as a vessel yielded even better results. Imprinting onto a corpse produced nothing more than a body possessing memories, but imprinting onto a living person could transform their soul entirely into the soul of someone else!
The power of national destiny connected all the common people of Great Xia, and that was precisely what Guan Shanhai sought to exploit.
His mind held a complete picture of the early Great Yu era—the era Great Xia referred to as the "Golden Age of Wu Yao." Every person, event, and object was etched vividly into his memory. The Golden Age of Wu Yao had lasted three thousand years, and he remembered the entirety of those three millennia.
With the power of national destiny, he could imprint the people from the Golden Age of Wu Yao onto present-day Great Xia, turning its people into the populace of that era!
For example, he could use his Imprint Dao fruit to turn Lu Yang into a genius of the Golden Age of Wu Yao.
Only that could truly be called the restoration of Great Yu!
He could actually transform Great Xia into the Great Yu of his vision without relying on the power of national destiny, but that process would be agonizingly slow, and Jiang Ping'an would undoubtedly intervene. It was far less swift than harnessing national destiny.
However, he had not yet achieved preliminary refinement of that power. Ever since Meng Junzi appeared, Guan Shanhai had remained on high alert, not daring to divide his focus.
Below, a figure was anxiously directing an army into the Imperial City.
"Quick, quick, quick! Everyone get to your assigned positions and unfurl the grand array! If anyone makes even the slightest mistake, prepare to face military law!"
These were the Imperial City Imperial Guards, garrisoned near the capital. With disaster looming over the city, they could not influence the outcome of an immortal battle, but they could erect a barrier to shield the capital from its devastating fallout.
The man commanding them was none other than Meng Jingzhou's third uncle—the border general who had once guarded the Demon Locking Pass, known as the scholar-general Meng Poci.
Meng Poci looked up at the two prominent silhouettes in the sky, clutching the transfer order he had just received, and muttered under his breath.
"Transferred from the Demon Locking Pass to the Imperial City last year... could it have been for this battle today?"
Meng Poci was not the commander of the Imperial Guards. But after Emperor Xia feigned death and Guan Shanhai stepped onto the scene, Meng Poci had suddenly received a voice transmission from Meng Junzi, instructing him to rush to the military camp outside the Imperial City to take command of the Imperial Guards, accompanied by an official deployment order stamped with the imperial seal.
Meng Poci had been dumbfounded when he saw Meng Junzi; he had never expected the ancestor to appear at such a moment.
He had no time to dwell on his shock and rushed straight to the army camp outside the capital.
Great Xia had no shortage of veteran generals whose seniority and cultivation surpassed Meng Poci's, but when it came to defensive formations, none could rival him.
Guan Shanhai paid no attention to the commotion below. He cared nothing for how the Imperial City reacted; from start to finish, his only true adversary was Meng Junzi.
"Fellow Daoists of the Heavenly Court, leave this to me. What say you?" Meng Junzi said politely to Ao Ling's group of three, knowing full well that they were on his side.
In a battle between immortals, the three of them could not intervene. Moreover, the time limit on Ao Ling's immortal body was nearly up. Staying would only hinder Meng Junzi, so the three tactfully withdrew from the battlefield.
"It seems a clash between us is inevitable," Guan Shanhai said with a cold, insincere smile.
At that moment, the second Imperial Preceptor erased his own karma and vanished into thin air. He abruptly reappeared behind Meng Junzi, raising a dagger forged from immortal stone and plunging it fiercely toward the crown of Meng Junzi's head!
Meng Junzi raised a hand, caught the second Imperial Preceptor's wrist, and with a light squeeze, crushed it to powder.
"A rudimentary Karma Dao fruit is indeed tricky to deal with—for a half-immortal, that is. Before a true immortal, it is nowhere near enough!"
With his wrist shattered, the dagger slipped from the second Imperial Preceptor's grasp. Meng Junzi reached out to claim the spoils; an item forged from immortal stone could be called an immortal treasure, a rare find indeed.
*Boom—*
Without warning, the dagger detonated, releasing a cloud of venomous green smoke that enveloped Meng Junzi.
This poisonous mist was condensed from the grievances of hundreds of millions who had died in the late Great Qian era. Anyone afflicted would be plagued by resentment and perish as their body broke down!
Taking advantage of the explosion, the second Imperial Preceptor fled into the distance, departing the battlefield as well.
He excelled at ambushes and curses, but neither worked against an immortal. The true purpose of his surprise attack had been detonating the dagger.
Meng Junzi heard countless wails echoing around him, lamenting heaven's injustice, blaming the conflicts brought upon the mortal realm, and decrying ruthless dynasties that treated common lives as grass.
"Stop howling. You make it sound as though all this is my fault."
Completely unaffected by the resentment, Meng Junzi inhaled the venomous mist in a single breath, clearing it entirely.
No matter what his enemies thought of him, he had always stood upright and acted honorably, with a clear conscience.
Once Meng Junzi absorbed the mist, he found five figures standing behind Guan Shanhai.
General Yu, the Nightmare Supreme, Daoist Lord Wanfa, Master Muyin, and Emperor Yu, Wu Yao, from his time as a half-immortal!
Five half-immortals!
Aside from General Yu, the other four had all been imprinted onto the corpses of Tribulation Transcendence cultivators.
General Yu was fine, fully aware of the current situation, but the other four were utterly clueless.
Emperor Yu, Wu Yao, underwent a drastic change in expression. He recalled that he and his teacher had just dispatched the Nightmare Supreme and were preparing to breach the final province; his teacher should have been a half-immortal as well.
Yet here, the Nightmare Supreme was still alive, his teacher had already become an immortal, and the colossal city below belonged to no place in his memory.
Considering his teacher's rudimentary Imprint Dao fruit, it was not difficult to deduce that he was an imprinted replica.
"Teacher, what era is this? Who are you fighting?!"
Guan Shanhai frowned almost imperceptibly. That was the one drawback of imprinted figures: being identical to the real persons, they were beyond his control.
Chapter 951