Chapter 654: The Circulation of All Things; The Only Unchanging is Change Itself

Chapter 654: Chapter 12: The Circulation of All Things; The Only Unchanging is Change Itself

But Zhou Buyi still had a way to counter him. The Divine Tree he had become was the fruit of his decades-long research into Mysterious Power. He had named this Divine Wood the ‘Wood of Continuation,’ and it naturally possessed its own truly miraculous abilities.

The ‘Continuation’ in its name meant to inherit the past and forge the future. Once he realized the essence of the Immortal Banyan Tree’s power was being ‘Undying and Unbreakable,’ he decided to alter that very essence. He wanted to create a Divine Wood Power that suited his own needs. Back then, he had aspired to suppress the entire world by himself but was frustrated by his own insufficient reserves of power. He thus became determined to find a solution.

And he succeeded. The power of the Wood of Continuation allowed him to convert his accumulated energy into ‘Sub-Plants.’ He could then draw upon their power when needed, or control them in battle. Using this unique Divine Technique, he had placed his ‘Sub-Plants’ in all one hundred and forty-four states of the Tianzheng Alliance. Each and every Sub-Plant was equivalent to a Celestial Spirit Martial God!

In other words, his true, full power was equivalent to one hundred and forty-four Celestial Spirit Martial Gods, plus the power of his own main body!

VMMMM—At that moment, all across Tianzheng, wherever one of Zhou Buyi’s Sub-Plants was located, a mass of cyan, woody light vanished from a wooden statue. Admittedly, transferring power so recklessly from afar resulted in massive losses, and he couldn’t command all of it at once. Nevertheless, in that short span of time, the power of Zhou Buyi’s main body increased fiftyfold!

BOOM. The fifth second. The cyan light of the Wood of Continuation, which had been suppressed until now, suddenly flared. It was as if a concave, bowl-shaped Spiritual Light was gradually bulging outward. Su Zhou’s Dragon Breath—the mere aftershock of which was enough to turn the surrounding earth into a molten wasteland and scorch steel and concrete into slag—was split into dozens of tributaries upon impact, scattering in every direction.

For a moment, the other Martial Artists watching from afar grew slightly more spirited. Although things had happened too quickly for them to understand the situation, it was clear that some Powerhouse of unknown origin had sought out their Director for a fight. And just now, the Director, who had been on the receiving end of a beating, had finally gained the upper hand!

But this outcome, far from elating him, shocked Zhou Buyi. ‘Even with my power increased fiftyfold—so much so that I can’t fully control it for a moment—and even with the disparate power not being fully concentrated, so its destructive force isn’t truly amplified by fifty times… this should still be more than enough to surpass Su Zhou’s Spiritual Power. Why can I only manage a stalemate? Why can’t I push back?!’

In the sixth second, Zhou Buyi finally understood why. Su Zhou, raining down endless Dragon Breath from high above, wasn’t just spewing Thunder Light. In fact, within those mere five seconds, he had already found the flaw in how Zhou Buyi’s Spiritual Power circulated!

One could see the light of the Five Elements was in Reincarnation on the massive White Dragon’s chest. No matter what transformations Zhou Buyi employed, Su Zhou could always counter him with a corresponding change in Attributes. He could even freely gather the powers of thunder, water, fire, and wind, combining them into a Torrent of energy with an Attribute that Zhou Buyi couldn’t comprehend at all. A single Dragon Breath like that was enough to make his Spiritual Shield simply disintegrate!

The seventh second. Thunder cracked across the sky—the delayed sound from the burst of Thunder Light back in the second second. As the thunderclap echoed, the Wingless Great Dragon that was Su Zhou ceased its Breath. He let out a long roar toward the heavens, his entire body flaring with a cyan-purple Spiritual Light even more brilliant than before. This time, however, strange black-and-white Flames coiled around his arms. Mars danced across the sky, making him look like a Demon star plummeting into the Human World.

BOOM! With Zhou Buyi’s defensive shield now completely gone, Su Zhou transformed into a meteor that grew ever larger as it streaked toward him. In the eighth second, Zhou Buyi roared and moved his branches. The giant Tree-man, the main body of the Divine Wood, raised its branch-like hands, which were covered in Spirit Patterns and glowing with Spiritual Light. A pale cyan radiance condensed into clouds of hazy mist, attempting to block Su Zhou’s self-sacrificing charge.

RUMBLE! In that same second, the two collided. The Giant Dragon smashed the giant tree, driving it deep into the earth. The ground rippled violently like water, and the battle zone, which had already become a lake of molten rock, erupted with a colossal wave of golden magma that splashed across every corner of the surrounding several kilometers.

At this very moment, Zhou Buyi, who had been slammed to the verge of unconsciousness, once again faced the Fire of Sin. It was also the first time he had to endure the trial of Su Zhou activating the Fire of Sin Divine Technique with his full power.

—What did it feel like to be burned by Karmic Fire?

Zhou Buyi could not describe the agony. It was a purely spiritual torment, like being forced to relive the things you most dreaded over and over again. The man had thought he would be forced to see his teacher pass away, his wife die, his friends disappear one by one without a trace, their remains lost forever. But he found that none of those moments were what pained him most.

His most painful moment had come on a day one hundred years ago, when he made the decision to let the Undying Sect go, allowing them to escape across the border and eke out a meager existence.

“This way, all groups within the Alliance related to the undying will be gone. In the future, anyone who wishes to pursue the immortality of the Divine Wood will have no choice but to seek out the Undying Sect—and they’ll never understand. Those people are just bait we let go. We can harvest them whenever we need.”