Archfiend

Chapter 316: The Godseal Spark (26)

Five meters!

Xu Yangyi was unable to wait any longer! A flash of resolution traveled through his eyes. The region above his head had already completely transformed into a massive tunnel! A willpower that rocked him to his core was arriving at an unimaginable speed!

“Spiritcleaver Pulse!” A roar of fury thundered through a hundred li! Xu Yangyi’s left hand tightened again, and a thrust of formless spiritual sense fiercely stabbed ahead!

Regardless of whether or not the action was of use, it had to be tried to be known! After all, this thing was still a living being! An organism possessing qi! For it to not have spiritual sense was impossible! As if god was showing consideration for him, the green orb of fog actually stopped moving for a twinkling!

A tenth of a second. Merely a tenth of a second!

Yet the orb’s decisecond-long pause was Xu Yangyi’s tenth of a second to spear ahead with all power!

To cultivators… how could five meters be far?

In an instant, shadows enclosed. Xu Yangyi uttered not a single word. As if he was a descending god of murder, he consumed all of his strength, even causing the air to loudly resound with the sound of breaking wind!

Swoosh! Falling Moon aimed towards the green fog and slashed down!

Crack crack crack… A flower bloomed, a flower wilted. In this moment of sheer determination behind the fall of Xu Yangyi’s blade, the Reincarnation Puppet snarled at the Featherwood Guard branch and raised three arms for the first time!

Drip… A bead of cold sweat dripped down Zhao Wuye’s temple. His throat was already fuming with rage and smoke, and yet… this damned Reincarnation Puppet seemed ignorant of exhaustion! Against the formation above, the colossus launched wave after wave of tide-like offense! 

Already, around seven or eight holes that were tens of meters in size had appeared on the Azurewood Demon-Resister Shield! Over the span of the last tens of minutes, all of them had been caused by the Reincarnation Puppet’s repeated attacks with its Spiritcleaver Awl. The people below were not few, despair already revealed on their faces. Through their location, they could see that the heavenly calamity… was only less than fifteen meters away from the azurewood shield! Even now, the shield below was showing signs of spiritizing, beginning to transform into rays of qi and vanishing!

Without the slightest way left… everyone was practically bracing themselves to the step of a dry lantern exhausted of oil. Even Zhao Wuye was carrying a Spirit Accumulation Cannon on his shoulder!

“A little bit faster…” His gaze was set dead on the sky. He knew that deciding whether or not the Featherwood Guard could still survive was based on whether the war machine that was the Reincarnation Puppet was halted in its tracks at the critical moment. The branch couldn’t keep on passively taking a beating forever!

In the sky above, Fang Cheng had already fully demonized! On the puppet’s arm, he raced like a whirlwind! With each of his steps, a deep bloody scar immediately appeared. If he was allowed to continue running, this arm would be severed!

However, the thread of spiritual light atop the puppet’s head continued to ceaselessly restore its wounds, the healing rate even faster than the speed Fang Cheng could create them!

Qin Xueluan had taken on the form of a woman-serpent again, freely spraying out jets of venom. Along with her many fantastic and bizarre “little friends” gnawing at the puppet’s wounds and rushing in like pouring water… the scarlet color of the Reincarnation Puppet’s blood even contained purplish-black poison!

The sonata of Chu Zhaonan’s dual pistols echoed through heaven and earth. Each bullet accurately hit the previous wounds, continuing to punch open holes on the puppet’s stomach.

And yet… it was of no use! No use! Completely useless!

Undying and unexterminable, without rest and without pause… They understood much more clearly than the cultivators on the ground about the horror ushered in by the Reincarnation Puppet!

Such might from an absolute perpetual motion machine was practically the magik treasure for heralding victory in sieges!

Indestructible and extremely robust. They no longer knew how many pill elixirs they had taken, but there was no way they could stop the monstrosity a few more times.

Yet at this moment, above the qi thread in the sky, a terrible thing suddenly flitted past!

“That’s!” Chu Zhaonan abruptly stopped firing his guns, cold sweat suddenly making itself known on his face.

What a horrific feeling! It was not terror born from physiological response or sight. Neither from hearing nor the five senses!

Instead it was psychological… 

Against an undefeatable creature… To people, it was a kind of despairing horror!

“Awooo!” All of a sudden, Fang Cheng likewise jumped, looking at the thread of spiritual light, in disbelief.

Over yonder, there was already nothing there!

Moments ago, mortal crisis had swept through his heart, causing him no choice but to retreat!

Could it be that he had been mistaken?

Below, Xuan Chengzi spun his head around, his gaze tightly locked onto the thread of spiritual light.

A powerhouse… 

A true powerhouse!

At the lowest… they were about the same with himself!

“You still have the mind to worry about other people?” In front of him, a loud rumble boomed. A black tiger stomped down, akin to a small hill. The ground faintly trembled.

Surprisingly, the exterior of the Screaming Wind captain’s snow-white facial armor was riddled with thick sword scars! To the extent that the lower-half of his armor was unseen, exposing firm and solid flesh inside. Merely, the surface was covered in bloodstains. 

Xuan Chengzi calmly turned his head and looked at the group before him.

Each person bore injuries, and they were softly panting. There were some black tigers that had been blinded in an eye. The lower the number of the Extreme Sword, the more powerful its anti-army killing potential. The greater the number, the stronger its anti-personnel killing potential. As a secret sword that the Dao Sect appointed study to, it almost had no weaknesses. However, that was in a situation against trash cultivators.

The sword-cultivator somewhat admired the Screaming Wind Legion facing him. Just a little while ago, the twenty-six riders had united! They had given shape to a snarling manifestation of a white tiger, forcibly blocking his strongest sword, to his surprise!

Yet that wasn’t the only thing… In a flash, they had thrust out with twenty-six spears! Twenty-six beams of red light that blotted out the sky and concealed the earth! Without almost any gap, the Screaming Wind Legion stabbed at him!

His azure gown had long since been dyed with blood. On his shoulder and thigh, there were actually four bowl-sized bloody holes, blood ceaselessly trickling down in kind!

From beginning to end, he was no Xu Yangyi, unable to bring forth a sword of Foundation Establishment. In a match-up of Qi Condensation versus Qi Condensation, he could still only defend, even with the secret sword the three super sects. 

“You’d better worry about yourself…” the rider’s gravelly voice contained a bloodthirsty icy-coldness. “You’re strong… very strong… I admit your even stronger than the Nalan Clan’s current generation of major geniuses! But…” He shook the longspear in his hand. “This is war!”

“Not an individual martial stage!” The two legs of a black tiger teemed with boundless killing aura. “Darkbind Tiger Formation! Five turns at most! No doubt he’ll be defeated!”

“KILL!!!”

A united cry for murder resounded once more. Twenty-six broken riders assembled again, however, the white light over their bodies faded away this time. Instead, it was replaced not by that white light, which held properties of both offense and defense, but rather soaring rays of black light!

Xuan Chengzi inhaled deeply and tightly gripped his sword while somewhat shaking. This black light… actually had not one bit of defensive power! All of it was attack, assault, and then news of offense!

“Fellow Daoist Xu…” he sighed darkly in his heart. “This poor Daoist could only reach this step…”

“In ten minutes… if you otherwise do not return, I protect you, but not your Xingtian Legion. To do this much is already of the utmost benevolence and duty… Twenty-six late-stage Qi Condensation… I can hold them off for at most ten minutes…”

Xuan Chengzi banished his thoughts and lifted up his longsword. Behind him, a ten-plus-meter-sized Taiji welcomed the wildly charging black light, dazzlingly bright! It illuminated this stretch of the world!

“Yin-Yang To Form!”

“HISS!!!” Yet at this moment, the Reincarnation Puppet roar shook the heavens! Three hands suddenly pierced down! The azurewood shield finally splintered apart with a bang!

Under the thin cover of golden light… was a field of bloodlessly pale faces!

“HIIISSS!” The Reincarnation Puppet reared its head back and screeched. In the next second… all six of its hand rose up!

Zhao Wuye took a deep breath. His face was wan, yet he held his Spirit Accumulation Cannon in a death grip.

BOOM! At the same time, inside the Reincarnation Puppet’s body, Xu Yangyi looked at everything before his eyes in astonishment.

A hand. A snow-white hand.

It was weak, it was fair, and it appeared to lack the slightest iota of strength. Nonetheless, like so, this hand was tightly holding onto Falling Moon, capturing the guandao bare-handed!

Black flame was on the cusp of raging out from Falling Moon, yet the hand sensed the danger and withdrew a step in advance.

Xu Yangyi’s gaze was like ice. The green fog in front of him… hadn’t been cleaved. He could sense that this orb was as weak as a mortal. With the descent of a single blade, he would definitely be able to kill it. And yet at this time, a jade hand had appeared out of nowhere.

Rip… The scene before his eyes was too familiar. That year, he had been forcibly whisked away by the Animus Armament. Wide open in view was a spatial crack. 

Without a sound, a woman walked out.

She was pretty, very pretty. Delicate could not be used to describe her facial features. All along, Xu Yangyi felt this delicateness carried a craftsman’s aura. Yet this woman’s facial features resembled nature’s heavenly creation itself, as if her body should’ve been so beautiful. And while she was beautiful, the unshed trace of icy-coldness on her face made her appear like a flower of high mountains. She could only be observed from afar, not one to be disrespected or trifled with.

None would think of sullying her. The threads of qi on her body weren’t constrained in the slightest, hurriedly bubbling forth like a mad tide! Even inside the Reincarnation Puppet’s body, isolated from qi… a vortex of qi materialized with her as its nexus!

Suddenly, the cocoon in Xu Yangyi’s dantian pulsed three times in a row! The great power of these throbbings caused him to feel some dull aches. But, he felt a kind of joyous sensation coming from the cocoon! As if… As if it had seen delicious food?

The woman’s eyes were shut, and she suddenly murmured, “Do you know what a Reincarnation Puppet is?”

Xu Yangyi studied her, not uttering a word. Falling Moon was held flat in front of his chest. Each cell in his body was telling him that this woman was strong… horrifically strong! So strong… that it even caused his hair to shiver!

Not from fear, though, but rather excitement!

The woman continued to speak, only concerned with herself, “This Spirit Parasite is a plant, born in a land of death. After ten years, it sprouts in this dead land. It is neither dead nor alive, undying and unkillable. Furthermore, it exists between the real and illusory. The powerful spiritual force contained inside its body… is almost eternal…”

“I am possessing it.” She turned her head to look at Xu Yangyi . Her eyes were obviously closed, yet Xu Yangyi felt her line of sight. “Possessing a plant.”

“Since then, I am it, and it is me. A few other secret arts of the Nalan Clan are added, so the Spirit Parasite’s body can be controlled by the Nalan Clan.” She sighed faintly, and gently raised both her hands up. “In these past centuries… to presumably maintain the immortality of Liusu’s spiritual sense, the Nalan Clan also invested a considerable price.”

“Yet today… I have been awakened… Do you know, Fellow Daoist, each time I am awakened, the Spirit Parasite’s longevity is cut down by fifty years? And all of this has come about because of you.”

Her jade-like hands hung down at both sides of her body, and her voice was serene without a ripple. Her body, however, was already strangely floating up and fluttering five meters above in the sealed space.

“You talk so much. Aren’t you afraid that you’ll be killed by my blade?” Xu Yangyi suddenly erupted with grim laughter, Falling Moon twirling with blade flourishes.

The woman smiled and nodded. “You’re strong.”

“I can feel that even a centuries ago, you’d still be one who is strong. Perhaps your fortune is no lower than my own. But…” she laughed indifferently, sudden like the advent of wind on a spring night, the blooming of thousands of pear blossoms. “The current you… is still not strong enough.”

In silence, Xu Yangyi was already at full alert and ready for combat.

This was an ancient cultivator!

The Nalan Clan actually still had the corpse of an ancient cultivator! In the qi-rich Ancient Cultivation era, arcane efforts were many and varied, and fortune was linked to the heavens. The cultivators of that time… were not just a little bit stronger than in the modern age!

The woman could converse so leisurely because the dead were unable to speak of anything.

Big bro… t-this woman is pretty dangerous… In Xu Yangyi’s spiritual sense, Zhao Ziqi’s voice was shaking. She’s basically… basically just like an ancient, vicious beast… Seriously, the Zhao Clan has a high elder who’s also Great Circle, b-but he’s not at the level she is… 

Xu Yangyi was reticent. After thirty seconds, he took the initiative to attack!

Falling Moon, wreathed in towering black flame, hacked straight down at the woman’s skull!