Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Reappearance of Wei Yan

Boom!

Xu Zhong leapt up, swung the cauldron handle, and charged at the Qi Refiner emerging from the undying spiritual radiance.

A world-shaking crash rang out. Ripples surged through the dantian, layer upon layer, like ten thousand raging waves.

At this moment, Wei Yan’s dantian was filled everywhere with mana rolling like a storm-tossed sea.

The Azure Dragon reverted to its true form, while Shiyue summoned a divine ark. She drove it through the overwhelming flood sweeping in from all sides, sinking and rising, lurching endlessly up and down.

At the same time, a cold, grim, killing aura was being born within the dantian.

On every side, a shroud of piercing chill spread and thickened.

Shiyue’s divine ark was frozen in the waves, and even she herself was coated in a thin shell of ice that steadily grew heavier and thicker.

“Samadhi True Fire!”

Shiyue opened her mouth and exhaled a stream of Samadhi True Fire.

The fire began burning through the ice, loosening the divine ark at last.

Just then, Xu Zhong was struck and sent flying.

He was forced backward, while the Azure Dragon surged forward.

The dragon breathed Solar True Fire, and in the blink of an eye transformed into a vast blazing sun. Solar force flowed ceaselessly, colliding with that frigid, murderous aura.

Another tide of violent upheaval erupted.

Mana washed and churned without end.

That current of mana poured downward, and the entire space seemed to tilt toward the dantian. Along with it, the forces of lunar and solar essence fell into it as well.

Xu Zhong looked upward and saw nothing but blinding brilliance. He had only glanced once before his eyes were pierced into tears, nearly blinded.

“What is going on?”

The one who had emerged from the undying spiritual radiance was naturally Wei Yan himself.

When the consciousness of the Thunder Ancestor had still remained, the power sealing Him had also sealed the undying spiritual radiance hidden within Wei Yan’s body.

But once that seal vanished with the devouring of the Thunder Ancestor’s consciousness, the undying radiance surfaced as well.

And now, behind Wei Yan, Xu Zhong could vaguely make out the figures of Xuan Jiuyuan, Feng Xun, and the others.

Their battle, it seemed, had not yet ended.

A clash between equals always dragged on for a very long time. But a clash between unequals could not even last a single breath.

Clearly, Wei Yan’s strength was nearly on par with the combined force of the cauldron spirit, Xuan Jiuyuan, and the others.

If they truly meant to fight to the death, then years—or even centuries—might pass before a victor emerged.

At this moment, by means of the bond between his soul and his own undying spiritual radiance, Wei Yan was able to appear here in a faint, partial form.

“So my body is here?”

Joy flashed across Wei Yan’s face. Then, with some unknown spell, he blew out a fierce Nine Heavens Primordial Gale from the void.

This gale was of the highest grade, drifting beyond the nine heavens, boundless in power—something no cultivator below the Inner Landscape realm could gather.

With the lightest sweep, it could weather stars into ruin, grind mountain ranges into nothing, dim heaven and earth, and leave sun and moon without light.

There were few beings or treasures in this world capable of withstanding the Nine Heavens Primordial Gale.

Wei Yan seemed intent on using this gale to ride the wind directly from millions of miles away into the dantian of his own body.

And his body, sensing the presence of his soul, answered with a violent response.

But how could the Azure Dragon allow Wei Yan to enter the sealed land?

Its cultivation might not be profound, but Wei Yan himself could not spare much strength either.

At once, the Azure Dragon invoked a divine incantation. Endless sacred light flared around its body, and then it spat out a dragon pearl.

The pearl blazed brilliantly. No one could tell how heavy it was, but the instant it appeared, even the raging waves in the dantian sank under its pressure. It transformed into a vast Yin-Yang millstone.

The Nine Heavens Primordial Gale swept over it, only to be effortlessly ground away by the Yin-Yang millstone.

The Azure Dragon then drove the pearl toward Wei Yan.

In that instant, the Yin-Yang millstone transformed again into a pair of Yin-Yang Golden Flood Dragon Shears. Lunar and solar force became its two blades.

This art had been cultivated from the Dao resonance of the true Golden Flood Dragon Shears, and its might was not inferior to the original treasure.

At that moment, the two blades became two immense dragons of yin and yang, swaying with the wind, swifter even than lightning.

In that flash of fire and stone, the two dragons closed in from left and right, shredding toward Wei Yan’s soul.

Wei Yan’s expression did not change. He merely let out a cold snort.

He produced a pearl.

Within this pearl was hidden the True Magnetism of Yin and Yang Poles.

So-called true magnetism was a power found in the earth’s deepest core, capable of drawing in all things.

The instant the pearl appeared, that true magnetism of polar yin and yang seized the Yin-Yang Golden Flood Dragon Shears and pinned the phantom form of the spell motionless in midair.

And in the next instant, Wei Yan’s soul was smashed by Xu Zhong with the round cauldron.

The blow left him dazed and reeling, stars bursting before his eyes as wisps of black smoke rose from him.

Outside, the yellow dragon also trembled violently, its power flaring. The thirty-three layers of thunderclouds it had summoned descended upon Wei Yan like thirty-three calamity blades.

Wei Yan gave a muffled groan and spat out a stream of expelled breath.

That drifting breath blasted Xu Zhong away to some immeasurable distance.

Blood streamed from his body like a long crimson rainbow, hanging across the sky without cease.

Xu Zhong had only just managed to crawl back from the edge of the dantian, and now he was plunged once more into that borderland. Fortunately, Shiyue was there.

She reached out and hauled him upward.

“Die!”

At this moment, half of Wei Yan’s body had already passed through the space of the dantian. He reached out a hand.

That hand was thick with the aura of calamity and doom, clearly wounded by the yellow dragon’s thunderclouds.

His injuries had not yet healed. The arm was gaunt and bony, like a length of rotting deadwood.

Furious beyond measure, he clawed toward Xu Zhong.

It came down like a mountain, mist churning around it as it crushed downward.

That mist first compressed the entire space, forcing it into narrow limits and trapping Xu Zhong and Shiyue within.

Then the palm descended.

At once, it felt as though a crushing thousand-pound force had fallen across Xu Zhong’s shoulders, forcing his waist to bend. The pressure continued to rise without end until sharp whistling sounds burst forth and jets of blood shot from every aperture in his body.

Xu Zhong’s face turned as pale as a ghost. Under that immense force, he was being driven ever closer to the limits of his body. If he passed that threshold, he would likely be flattened into pulp.

“This fiend means to flee—strike now!” Sensing it, the yellow dragon roared in fury.

“Flee?” Xuan Jiuyuan’s voice boomed. “I’ve hacked at him with so many blows, and now you tell me he’s trying to run?”

She was livid.

The treasured blade in her hand moved even faster. In the air it bared fangs and claws like a true dragon stretching its body, and the sword-light it released stretched thirty thousand zhang, crashing down and blotting out heaven and sun.

One blade-light followed another, dense and terrifying as a torrential rainstorm.

Within the dantian, the Azure Dragon had also arrived. Its enormous tail swept through the air and smashed savagely into Wei Yan.

Boom!

What struck him seemed not a tail, but an immense azure whip. With one lash, the entire dantian seemed almost split in two.

Wei Yan had been on the verge of crushing Xu Zhong to death, but the sudden change in circumstances within and without forced him to withdraw the spell.

Dividing his attention, he seized the Azure Dragon’s tail with one hand—only to see the dragon twist back upon itself and bite toward him, tail in jaws.

Within its mouth was a sea-eye capable of containing all things in heaven and earth, and of tearing all things apart.

Inside that sea-eye countless water demons and fish demons leapt wildly; among them were even one or two flood dragons already taking on true dragon form.

All the living creatures inside the sea-eye stared at Wei Yan in utter shock.

Wei Yan knew that if this vicious dragon bit down on him, he would have no choice but to sever an arm to survive.

He closed his eyes and turned into a streak of light, shooting outward.

At that very moment, Xu Zhong hurled out the round cauldron.

The yellow dragon sensed it and manipulated the cauldron from afar.

In an instant, beams of divine light descended from it, pinning Wei Yan fast within the dantian.

Though he had escaped from beneath the Azure Dragon’s grasp by means of a movement art, he was ultimately fixed in place by the round cauldron—and took a slash from Xuan Jiuyuan.

Drops of blood fell, pure and clear, trailing threads of gray smoke.

“So even a soul can bleed?”

Seeing this, Xu Zhong could not help but marvel inwardly.

“You are all courting death!”

Wei Yan’s soul had nearly been cleaved in two by Xuan Jiuyuan’s blade.

The two halves now roared in mad fury:

“Weixuan Golden Core, come!”

The entire traveling palace began to tremble.

For now that his soul had entered the sealed land within the dantian, the undying spiritual radiance had grafted soul and body back together.

The coursing cloudfall was gathering toward Wei Yan without end.

And with part of the Golden Core’s power in his grasp, his cultivation now clearly showed signs of surpassing the Inner Landscape realm.

His body shook, and he transformed into a Heaven-and-Earth Dharma Form thirty-six thousand zhang tall. Behind his head, ring after ring of incomplete grotto-heavens condensed—these were the broken fragments of the Great Dao within him.

They were incomplete because he had no heart.

His heart was still in the Yu Kingdom.

Only by reclaiming that heart could he recover his full cultivation.

But even so, the power he wielded at this moment had already surpassed Xuan Jiuyuan and the others.

He extended a single finger.

That finger became unimaginably vast, stabbing downward from the heavens. Clouds boiled, wild winds howled, one mountain was shattered outright by the spilling force alone, and the earth began to crack apart.

“That finger has reached the level of an innate deity,” Xuan Jiuyuan said, unafraid even now. “But you are still not an innate deity.”

She too unleashed the art of magnifying heaven and earth. In a single shift, she transformed into a Dharma Form only nine thousand six hundred zhang tall, far smaller than Wei Yan’s.

Yet the ringed grotto-heavens gathered behind her were whole, surging with immense mana and reflecting the path of her blade.

Xuan Jiuyuan shot into the sky and swung her six-thousand-zhang treasured blade at that descending finger.

The instant finger and blade collided, a tremendous explosion resounded through the entire secret realm. In the sky, wave after wave of shock air rolled the clouds into heaving masses, one layer overtaking the next like billows on the sea.

And Xuan Jiuyuan was hurled backward through the air, coughing blood.

Yet Wei Yan’s finger had been severed by her strike.

It was a real finger.

Wei Yan had already grafted his limbs onto his soul.

So what fell was not only the finger itself, but also the corresponding fragment of his soul.

Thus, the soul too was missing a finger.

With his soul incomplete, no matter how profound his mastery of creation, he would never be able to restore that finger.

But now Wei Yan had no leisure even for rage.

“Once I reclaim my body, all of you will die!”

Pouring out his full strength, he stepped into the void.

A moment later, his entire body had appeared above the sealed land of the dantian.

The Golden Core called the Weixuan Golden Core was falling toward him together with the entire hidden treasury.

Seeing this, the yellow dragon opened its mouth and said, “If Wei Yan does not die, none of us will live. I’ll take you into that space now and intercept him there!”

It swallowed everyone in one gulp, then turned into scattered starlike points, transcending the limits of space. A moment later, it appeared within that round cauldron.