Chapter 1770 - 317: (End of This Volume)_3

Maybe the Heavenly Dao feels it hasn't yet reached the time to kill the donkey once the millstone's done;

The Heavenly Dao still wants to keep using this blade of its, reluctant to destroy it just yet.

Maybe, it's that the Heavenly Dao thinks that even with the deadly crisis of Zhao Lu Hai in front and the Great Elder behind, they still might not be able to kill it.

If I happen to escape, the lamp goes out, I leave On the River and reach the shore, no longer affected by Jiang Shui, then I will be completely out of control.

In short, the Heavenly Dao rejected my surrender application…

And snuffed the lamp,

Out.

This tangled, indistinguishable lamp flame of ours naturally couldn't be separated out to extinguish; if you want to put it out, you can only slap it out all at once. And in doing so, it incidentally snuffed out that original flame atop Zhao Wuyang's skull as well.

The Heavenly Dao is formless; this has always been the test‑setter's style.

So this time, you can also understand it as Li Zhiyuan forcibly using the Dragon King Position of the Qin and Liu Families' Dragon King Sect gate to cancel out the Spiritual Thought Zhao Wuyang left behind.

Li Zhiyuan suddenly collapsed to the ground in agony, blood spilling from his seven orifices; that too was backlash from three Dragon King Positions colliding, not the Heavenly Dao rejecting him and then casually giving him a slap.

But what the real reason is, Li Zhiyuan himself knows deep down.

Actually, to avoid taking this slap, the youth had been sitting on the ground earlier, trying every possible method on that lamp, one by one.

The result: all invalid.

Therefore, when Li Zhiyuan stood up and finally decided to use this lamp for a second lighting, there was also a trace of helplessness in the youth's heart.

Alas,

This slap is fated to be inescapable.

Zhao Lu Hai: "You didn't light the lamp yourself… what do you mean?"

Li Zhiyuan: "You can take it as: my fate is tougher. I countered and extinguished Zhao Wuyang's lamp, and I'll counter you, to death."

Zhao Lu Hai: "Fate… tougher?"

At this moment, the flames had already burned up to Zhao Lu Hai's waist.

He couldn't stall any longer; stall further and he'd be burned away, and Li Zhiyuan had finally finished preparing.

The youth lifted his head. When those icy eyes turned to Zhao Lu Hai, Zhao Lu Hai felt a jolt of heart‑palpitating dread.

"You…"

Li Zhiyuan: "You deserve death—but you don't deserve such a cheap death."

The youth pressed his index and middle fingers together and walked toward Zhao Lu Hai.

As he moved, Li Zhiyuan spoke:

"Ah You, lend me a ladder!"

Lin Shuyou instinctively leaned forward, lifting his right knee.

Li Zhiyuan stepped onto Lin Shuyou's knee to level the height, and pressed his fingers to the center of Zhao Lu Hai's brow.

Actual contact wasn't necessary; he could have triggered it from a short distance away.

But this was a newly deduced Secret Skill, never tested even once, and the stakes of this Skill were far too great. Li Zhiyuan worried that if he mishandled it and the Skill spread, it would affect his companions around him as well.

...

Deep within the consciousness.

The Body still stood on the dam, watching toward the fish pond.

He saw:

So many fish, in thick swarms, flying out of the fish pond and into the sky.

...

At Li Zhiyuan's fingertip, a black ring appeared, a circle of black that carried a despair beyond hope.

As though every living, spirited thing in this world, before this black, was like xuan paper soaked in water; this ink‑black, once it touched, seeped straight in.

In an instant, Zhao Lu Hai felt his consciousness being shattered into countless fragments; within each fragment, some extreme emotion was independently playing out, and all of these emotions would ultimately be transmitted to him in sync, making him fully experience every single one.

In that moment, he lost track of time; every second became an infinitely prolonged stretch.

Countless versions of himself within the fragments were wailing, kneeling and kowtowing, begging for an end to this torment whose end he could not see.

Death, in the face of this torture, truly counted as a long‑yearned‑for sweet rain: the phrase "worse than death" could not describe a ten‑thousandth of it.

This is… an Asura Hell on the level of consciousness.

Because Zhao Lu Hai is the first carrier of this Domain, what he is undergoing will also be equivalently spread and shared to all the Zhao family ancestors deep underground.

In an instant, below, all the Zhao family ancestors whose bodies were incomplete experienced a pain a thousand times stronger than when they were burned by the flames earlier!

No wailing, no sobbing; even those who had been tearing heaven and earth with their cries all stopped moving at this moment.

Yet this soundlessness still conveyed a terror that every spirit creature around could feel.

Lin Shuyou reflexively shut his eyes and covered his ears. He didn't know what he was trying to block out, but instinct drove him to a self‑protective posture—useless in practice, meant only to give his mind a sense of safety.

The child was even more crazed, screaming madly in Ah You's mind:

"No wonder he's the heir of Emperor Fengdu; he belongs in Fengdu, he belongs in Fengdu!"

Tan Wenbin's five senses were keen to begin with; now, he simply sealed his perception of his own accord, retreating into full shutdown.

And the four spirit beasts that had already become completely obedient now grew even more subdued, each one prostrating before Tan Wenbin's consciousness, trembling violently.

They were terrified that if they made another mistake, disobeyed again, that one would use this method to punish them.

Only Run Sheng stood there, expression scarcely changing.

The Great Elder standing at the amber‑colored perimeter took the greatest shock.

First he watched Zhao Lu Hai's sudden failure,

Then he discovered that the resting place he had yearned for in his dreams and paid a massive price to obtain was about to overturn,

Then he sensed the formless agony radiating from the entire Zhao family.

"Thud!"

The Great Elder fell to his knees.

They say the greatest sorrow is a heart gone dead; in this instant, he was the convergence of many sorrows at once.