Archfiend

Just as Enihilus’s voice fell, everyone’s gaze grew cold. Up to this moment, the situation was almost completely out of control. They simply didn’t have the time to go look for Bladevessel and the Realm Spirit. But in the wake of Enihilus’s command, two silhouettes emerged from the nothingness like demons, quietly appearing at Enihilus’s side.

The present Enihilus was already five meters tall, the colors black and red intertwining all over his body. With the sound of his skin fracturing apart, sharp black bony horns grew out from his entire form. His eyes were now pure-black, only a thread of white left in the middle. He was unlike a man, and more akin to a devil of western myth.

And as his figure swelled, the Dream Walker behind him also let loose a world-shaking scream. Rays of black and white fog frantically gushed into Enihilus’s seven apertures. Following this influx of fog, the monk grew larger and larger. Thirty seconds later, a furious roar seemed to quake the entire palace hall.

There was no longer any trace in sight of the Dream Walker behind Enihilus. The bony black horns grew all over Enihilus, and all his joints twisted back. Long hair that was a mix of some white, red, and black sprouted out from him. His entire figure was creeping in the void, a full seven to eight meters in size!

Although he wasn’t large, an extremely grave countenance was revealed on each person’s face.

“Demon bodies and demonic qi are usually in direct proportion… but this is the first time I’ve seen a demon with a body less than ten meters in size and have such terrible demonic qi.” Xu Yangyi took a deep breath and vigilantly scanned his surroundings. Slight cracking noises were coming from all around. It was the sound of Enihilus’s demonic qi shaking the area so that it seemed it was faintly humming.

“He’s already transcended Great Circle Foundation Establishment…” Moonless gritted his teeth, a bead of cold sweat at the corner of his forehead. “A monster of this level… Could it really be that we’re going to be buried here?”

Enihilus said nothing. Bladevessel and the Realm Spirit were at his left and right. He wordlessly extended his hands and caught onto their necks. Afterwards, he forcefully squeezed.

BOOM! Two thunderous sounds came from Enihilus’s hands. Subsequently, two strong Buddhist lights rushed into his body and unexpectedly caused golden runes to appear on the strange color of the Dream Walker.

Demonic qi clambered up once more!

Even now… he infinitely approached… half-step Core Formation!

“Ah…” Enihilus studied his hands with deep emotion. He was even shivering somewhat. “So this… is the might of Core Formation…”

“Such a feeling that speaks of the profound knowledge between heaven and man… Even if I cultivated for another several hundred years, I’d still find it difficult to reach… but now, by merely devouring the prisoner I have guarded, I have reached a similar realm… The path of cultivation allows only for advancement, never decline. I, today, fully understand…”

Before his voice even fell, his enormous palm suddenly waved to the far left. A loud crash echoed in its wake, and the three buddha statues at the left looked as if they were cleaved by an invisible blade. They neatly transformed into several chunks of stone.

“Huff!” His eyes brightened, and he then suddenly vanished from everyone’s line of sight. In the next second, a whirlwind of alternating black and red wandered through the palace hall that was over 2,000 meters in size! With its speed, the naked eye couldn’t physically see it clearly!

Rumble… The storm was like a blade, and everyone clenched their teeth and stepped back, because in front of them, hundreds of meters away… several-dozen-meter-deep gorges were loudly extending on the floor! Wherever the whirlwind passed, the surrounding buddha statues were all reduced to rubble!

Crash… As if fragment was missing from space-time, no one whatsoever blinked. Enihilus’s figure abruptly appeared in the palace hall, but in this span of several seconds, the entire area seemed to have been raked into bedlam by an unseen claw!

“Hahahaha!!!” Enihilus reared his head back and roared, screeching at the top of his lungs. “This is cultivation! This is power! I’ve broken through a Foundation Establishment cultivator’s hundred-meter scope for divine abilities! Core Formation… Core Formation!!! I am not far!!!”

Wild laughter reverberated through the palace hall. Rocjourney, Moonless, and Xu Yangyi were standing ready for battle.

“So that Realm Spirit and Bladevessel were your avatars?” Amidst Enihilus’s maniacal cackling, Xu Yangyi stepped forward and asked deeply.

Rocjourney and Moonless shared a glance. They had no idea whatsoever what Xu Yangyi was doing. What was he trying to accomplish?

A chat?

No, the demon slayer wouldn’t do something so senseless.

Rocjourney narrowed his eyes and quickly saw that both Xu Yangyi’s hands were behind him. Xu Yangyi’s fingertips carried an extremely fine touch of qi that wrote out the character ‘delay’ in the air.

Rocjourney was about to walk over and match up with this character, but Moonless suddenly caught his hand in a death grip.

There was an additional line of small characters underneath the character for delay.

‘I can roughly guess who the final seal is.’

His wild laughter coming to an abrupt stop, Enihilus brushed an eye over Xu Yangyi as if he was a god looking at mortals. He said in an indifferent tone, “You aren’t quite so stupid.”

He swept his pitying gaze over Xu Yangyi, Rocjourney, and Moonless. “A pity, what a pity… your talents are pretty good. ‘Tis a pity…”

At the center of his brows, a snow-white eye slowly opened and looked at everyone as if had just awakened from a great dream. Enihilus grinned sinisterly and said, “At the wrong time and wrong place, you all met the wrong person. The Dream Walker shall completely fuse with me, but I still need a few little, insignificant blood sacrifices. I think all of you are quite content to offer your lives… To be able to fuse with a future Core Formation Dao Master is your good fortune, heh heh heh…”

Xu Yangyi’s mind turned at rapid speed. The present situation already stood at the edge of life and death, a thousand pounds hanging by a hair. The Qi Explosion Pill’s effect still hadn’t passed. He was secretly cycling his qi, and at the very least… he still required half an hour to be at fighting capacity. No one had expected that the whole truth would be exposed after Floatingcloud’s demise, but the true orchestrator behind the curtain had appeared himself. 

If could drag another second out right now then he had a fraction more of a chance to survive. He almost didn’t make any considerations, and gave voice to his doubts.

“In that case… several hundred years ago, you created two avatars to look for people in the Clearcloud Realm that were suited to ‘open the door’ for the Dream Walker? I thought that Zhang Guangyao and Dream Walker had struck a deal before. That was how the Dream Walker opened the door here, allowing Zhang Guangyao to imprison Fellow Daoist Floatingcloud. However, a contradiction appeared in this.”

He restrained his frantically beating heart and took another step forward. Without the slightest fear, he looked at the devil-like Enihilus and said, “You said that the seal for Earth can only be opened by Earth cultivators. If Zhang Guangyao and the Dream Walker made a deal… both of them would’ve been powerless to open it, even by a hair. Therefore, there’s a bridge in the middle of this.”

“It was Floatingcloud who opened the seal.” He originally didn’t want to give Enihilus a chance to respond. He would leave the other complacent in his achievements, and get out two more sentences to drag the situation out a little longer. Regardless, his anxiousness gave birth to wisdom, and spirited light manifested in his mind. He finally realized a few details of the hidden past.

“You were afraid that Zhang Guangyao would make him skeptical, so you arranged the Realm Spirit and Bladevessel. The two of them were back-ups. Indeed… you spent several hundred years fabricating a nearly perfect story. When I entered, I didn’t even suspect a connection between you and Bladevessel. And on top of that, that’s not to mention Floatingcloud from back then, who was all by himself. Still, maybe you never even imagined that Floatingcloud would be capable of counterattacking. On the contrary, he forcibly possessed the Dream Walker.”

It was a typical conversation, but with a simple deduction, Moonless and Rocjourney both glanced at each other. They’d already guessed that Xu Yangyi couldn’t attack right now!

“Only with the combined power of three can we go all out…” Moonless gritted his teeth and quietly stepped forward. “It looked like Fellow Daoist Wolfbane’s suddenly broke through to late Foundation Establishment before, but he’s dropped back down again. He’s still doing everything that he can, though…”

“Oh?” Enihilus eyed Xu Yangyi with interest. “An interesting house fly… you’ve guessed just about right. I… can make your death a little bit easier.”

Xu Yangyi didn’t pay attention to Enihilus and continued talking, “There’s still one point I don’t understand.”

“Oh?” Enihilus raised a brow. “I couldn’t have possibly made a careless mistake.”

“It’s not your careless mistake.” Xu Yangyi spoke even faster, leaving no room for the monk-turned-demon to realize that he was stalling for time. In his qi sea, qi rose up again, but each time the pain felt like a scraping blade.

The Qi Explosion Pill’s residual effects are too great! No wonder there’s no record of this medicinal pill! I still need about twenty-five minutes… twenty-seven minutes? We’ll only have a chance to fight at full strength by dragging things out!

“It’s the Gold-Banded Staff.” In his mind, he hurriedly reflected over all subjects that interested Enihilus, He knew that only they knew about the events here. Enihilus absolutely wouldn’t tell anyone else. They had to die here, and Enihilus was even more afraid that someone else would forcibly possess the Dream Walker. Nonetheless… 

Enihilus was a man who had sat in peaceful meditation below the twin sal-trees until his mind had gone crooked, for hundreds of years already!

A cultivator was still human, otherwise heart devils wouldn’t exist! Because one had emotion and worry, there was therefore heart devils, and thus Dream Walkers!

A man who sat alone for centuries, confronted with a secret only he knew, in a time that no one in the future could possibly know, AND he had the winning ticket grasped in his hands, in addition to being a Great Circle Foundation Establishment cultivator who was infinitely approaching half-step Core Formation… Xu Yangyi was gambling… that any who succeeded would have that sliver of desire to blurt out everything they had hidden in the deepest abyss of their mind.

He didn’t want too much, but another minute was a minute!

“Its realm even transcends Core Formation,” Xu Yangyi said. There was currently no need consider any consequences that came with his words. There certainly wouldn’t be anything else worse than death. “I simply do not believe that those who escorted the Dream Walker back then were just Core Formation. And I’ve never even heard of a Core Formation cultivator who can enlighten an organism.”

But just as his voice fell, his heart stirred.

After the Qi Explosion Pill… the lake-still qi in his meridians… had floated around a bit!

The Qi Explosion Pill’s effects were subsiding!

His left hand behind his back swiped his storage ring without missing a beat. Another Qi Explosion Pill was already held in his sweaty palm.

Delaying for half an hour was too hard. It was possible that Enihilus would explode and kill them all in the next second, and when the time came… regardless of whatever lousy effect there was in continuously taking Pill Explosion pills… that was a matter that took into account that he survived in the first place!

Still, Xu Yangyi didn’t expect the cautious look that surprisingly appeared on Enihilus’s face.

“That object… was indeed used by Wukong.”

“WHAT?!” Originally, Moonless and Rocjourney had already understood Xu Yangyi’s intentions. They were getting ready to follow-up just as Enihilus’s voice fell, but these words shook them so much that they couldn’t say a thing!

Xu Yangyi was also stunned.

So despite everything thus far… that staff actually was THE Gold-Banded Staff?

It wasn’t a fake?