Archfiend

“FELLOW DAOIST!!!” Enihilus and the Dream Walker began to shout in concert. “The Clearcloud Realm isn’t our wrongdoing! It is the struggle against the heavens for destiny! This is the predestination of a cultivator! We…”

“Don’t waste your words,” Xu Yangyi spat out, “I’m in a bad mood just looking at you two.”

Silence.

Three seconds later, the Dream Walker and Enihilus suddenly roared, “I’m going to kill you, mongrel!!!!!!”

At this moment, the Dream Walker and Enihilus were like two pigs in a pen waiting to be slaughtered. Without one scrap of reservation, they madly vented their hatred at Xu Yangyi and their reluctance to leave the world.

“You will not have a good death!!!” Enihilus slammed his palm against the cage. Black light filled space. He seemed to have gone crazy. “After your death, you certainly won’t reincarnate! Forever you will suffer hardship!!!”

“I curse you not to reach Core Formation!!! May ten thousand serpents devour your heart!!!” The Dream Walker’s six arms smashed out with divine abilities, as if he was beating a drum. “You are unworthy to be called a cultivator! You are doomed to die!”

RUMBLE!!! Limitless black light flashed in the invisible cage, but it was unable to break through.

“If I can get out I shall rip you apart limb from limb! I’ll turn you into a human swine!” Enihilus’s hair rose upwards, his eyes thoroughly red. He sent a palm strike out.

Nonetheless, as this palm struck out, it didn’t even reach the front of the invisible cage. Permeating space, the duo’s qi suddenly vanished.

“Here it comes!!!” Xu Yangyi’s gaze flashed. His barely retained qi was mobilized to the utmost!

“It has come…” Moonless took a deep breath. All he felt was soreness from his throat. Like a machine, he lifted his head up and looked to the sky. His neck seemed to crack like shifting gears.

Faces pale and covered in cold sweat, Enihilus and the Dream Walker looked at the sky in shock. Soon… two thumps rang out, and both their legs actually went soft. They were left kneeling.

Their lips wordlessly opened. It was faintly visible that their mouths were forming the words ‘It has come’.

It had indeed come… A spiritual pressure they had once felt, a majestically boundless spiritual pressure, spread through the entire nightmare space in an instant!

Hum… At the same time, the sky brightened.

“Hehe…” At this time, the Dream Walker’s wildly sputtering black light stopped, and he dumbly looked at the surrounding black expanse. He had believed this domain to be incredibly firm, the Clearcloud Realm’s nightmare space forged by a god. But like a tissue, it had been easily cut open by a sharp knife.

Ruuussstle… Infinite white light sprinkled out from the open crack. It was not terrible, but pure and holy. Like a lighthouse in the black night, it illuminated everything.

“Hehe… hehehe! Hahaha!” he began to laugh like a madman. “The dreamland was torn apart… It’s here! It’s here!!! My dreamland was actually forced open by someone…”

The crack became larger and larger. Everyone’s bodies sunk!

Xu Yangyi and Moonless let out a heavy groan in sync. They couldn’t help but drop down!

Only a full thousand meters later did they stop falling!

If said, that terrible spiritual pressure moments ago was lingering through the entire space, sliver by sliver. Yet now… the water pump had been opened! A heart-palpitating spiritual pressure, a spiritual pressure that killed off any inkling of resistance, frantically poured in!

Enihilus and the Dream Walker resembled two withered corpses. Ramrod-straight, they stared into the sky.

Their hearts were dead like ash.

“Butterflymother Southflower’s… avatar…” Xu Yangyi hardened his heart and gulped, forcibly restraining his frantic pulse. He glared daggers at the ever-dazzling crack.

“Is this… a celestial…?” Moonless’s sweat came out like broth, and his legs went weak. Just as he was about to kneel, however, Xu Yangyi pulled him back up.

“Relax, based on my experience she can’t affect other people.”

“Spare me… Spare me!!! Great Immortal, spare me!!!” All of a sudden, a loud and wretched scream was heard in the company of a kowtow. Enihilus’s mind had already crumbled apart, and he was doing his best to kowtow to the crack in the sky.

Against this oppressive might… Enihilus and the Dream Walker simply felt that they had no way to resist!

Furthermore, the power of a dreamland, several thousands and several tens of thousands more profound than his own, was coming from the other!

He… didn’t even have the qualifications to become a part of Southflower’s dreamland!

But what answered their kowtows was a hand.

A great hand formed out of white light.

It stretched out from the spatial crack, its largeness unknown and its width a mystery… All that could be felt was that this hand was the world.

White spiritual light twinkled above this hand. While hazy and indistinct, this light contained great terror that couldn’t be opposed. It illuminated everything. Softly and gracefully, the hand stroked the invisible cage.

“How many years has it been… finally… without anyone else’s interference… This Palace has found an avatar which I can adhere myself to…”

From head to toe, Enihilus and the Dream Walker shivered. They were originally kowtowing, but now they surprisingly didn’t have the courage to kowtow and beg forgiveness.

It was too frightening… 

“Chatter…” Enihilus couldn’t speak anymore. His heart had already stopped. And the Dream Walker only seemed capable of spasming, huffing sounds coming from his mouth.

The hand merely swept past, yet it seemed to carry away their lives like the Grim Reaper’s scythe.

“Hmm?” The hand carefully felt around and stopped for a second. Without warning, it suddenly applied strength. Countless Nightmares and vast mounds of flesh, with a miserable scream, exploded out from the hand again and again!

The Dream Walker and Enihilus had perished!

Xu Yangyi took a deep breath. This was a high-level cultivator! A true high-level cultivator!

Life and death between a thought, this was absolutely no joking matter!

In this instant, he reaffirmed his conviction that he had to become even stronger.

Swish swish… In silence, the ghostly Nightmares and chunks of Enihilus’s flesh slowly fell down, the blossoming of the Grim Reaper’s floral shower. In the wake of Butterflymother Southflower’s squeeze, the Clearcloud Realm’s everything came to a total end.

“It’s over…” Xu Yangyi closed his eyes and let out a long sigh.

The tranquility lasted for two seconds. A woman’s voice was slowly heard from above their heads.

“Who… actually dares to deceive me?”

Moonless quivered as if he was having a stroke. Even his breathing had stopped. He only held his breath in on instinct.

There were no words that dared to be said, no perspiration that dared to be sweat.

The woman’s voice was indifferent. “I can feel… that the qi of two people are still here… You best pray you don’t encounter me… Even through the infinite Lesser and Greater Thousand Realms, I will travel to and fro to your dream and surely find you… I will crush your bones and scatter your ashes…”

“I will remember your auras… Using a Dream Walker to tempt me… since there is no physical body, I cannot descend, hehe… Junior… you have quite the courage…”

Swish swish swish… As her voice ebbed away, the hand of white light weakened little by little, and crack in the sky gradually vanished without a trace.

After an unknown amount of time, everything went back to normal.

It was the nightmare space, as before, but Enihilus and the Dream Walker weren’t present. Only Xu Yangyi and Moonless remained.

“Huff…” Moonless seemed to be sapped of his power, so he crossed his legs in the air and meditated. His heart was filled with complex feelings. They were incomparably complex.

“It’s over…” He closed his eyes. Presently, he only wanted to meditate well. He didn’t even want to move for a few decades.

But as for Xu Yangyi, in that instant the hand of light disappeared, he had already passed out.

Still, a smile hung at the crook of his mouth.

He definitely didn’t want to meet with Butterflymother Southflower again, but how was he supposed to break the brand imprint she had left in his qi sea?

When he discovered that she was circling the Azurecloud Seed, and in his experiences with Floatingcloud and how she followed the cocoon’s appearance, he had this idea.

This was indeed his final move. Three Qi Explosion Pills had already smashed his meridians into broken glass. If this move hadn’t succeeded then no one would’ve had the strength to fight.

Regardless, this move still required the right time, place, and setting. In the moment he discovered that he couldn’t save Rocjourney from dying, he had decisively chosen to take aim at the Dream Walker’s body in itself.

The pill fiend was one ring in this crucial structure. The arrival of the butterflymother’s will required time. This wasn’t the Azure Winged-Demon Mask’s kind of representative mark, but for Southflower’s will to truly arrive, the pill fiend was enough to make sure that the Azurecloud Seed was still in the Dream Walker’s body as she came.

It was unfortunate that this move could only be used this one time.

And so, Xu Yangyi passed out because the Voidspirit Immortal Physique’s power had mysteriously exploded in his body. There was no doubt that he seemed to have bumped into an activation mechanism.

Presently, if anyone used Innersight they would be able to see that he no longer had internal organs! Bones! Flesh! Instead, he was filled with lustrous spinning azure light!

In the very center of this cosmos-like spinning azure light, though, there was a round space. As if… it was waiting on something.

One hour… two hours… three hours… 

Three and a half hours later, while Rocjourney couldn’t speak as a bodhi seed, he quickly seemed to receive some summons. With a gentle shiver, he transformed into azure light and rushed into Xu Yangyi’s dantian.

This scene went unnoticed by the meditating Moonless and the passed-out Xu Yangyi.

But as Rocjourney entered, a strange scene immediately took place. His body was within the spinning azure vortex, and radiated motes of light. It appeared… like twinkling stars in an azure universe!

Time slowly passed. A month… two months… a year… and on the second year, a pair of eyes finally opened in the darkness.

“What happened to me?” Xu Yangyi looked at his body in astonishment. He sensed he’d dreamt a long dream, but he couldn’t remember anything at all. Still, he now did a check of his body, but couldn’t help but be surprised!

His qi hadn’t swelled and his meridians hadn’t been injured… no, he didn’t have meridians!

As long as Innersight was used on his entire body, all that would be seen was an azure vortex! In the middle, That Which Could Not Be Said was slowly spinning!

“Fellow Daoist Rocjourney…” Xu Yangyi stared for a few seconds and sighed. “I will bring you to see an even vaster world. I won’t misplace your trust.” He arranged his thoughts and continued to observe the azure vortex. He was already stricken dumb. He’d never heard of only a qi vortex being cultivated in the body, or having no meridians, bones, or flesh.

“In the past, my qi sea shifted, now… hehe… I don’t even have one. No, what is this in me? Am I even human?” He cycled his qi, but discovered an even stranger matter. He clearly had no meridians, but the Eternal Alchemy Canon was still freely flowing without obstruction.

“Could this be the Voidspirit Immortal Physique?” He recalled the previous situation. There was only this possibility.

From the azure vortex, he didn’t sense a blocked feeling of sluggishness. It was completely smooth. And on top of that… 

His qi reserves had actually expanded by a fold!

“That’s good, but not good… The amount of divine abilities I’ll be able to release during arcane combat in the future will be one times greater than the opponent. But… it’s no good that the trouble definitely won’t be normal when I assail Core Formation in the future.”

But after a brief moment of silence, he laughed loudly with a cheery look on his face and shook his head. “No one would dislike themselves getting stronger.”

“My advancement to Core Formation will be harder, that’s all. But once I advance, I’ll be the strongest in the Core Formation realm. Isn’t that a good thing?”