Chapter 379: Tenth Stage of Foundation Establishment Realm

The catastrophic pressure that had pinned the scarlet coast to the bedrock collapsed like severed twine.

High above the crimson runic barrier, the celestial thunderheads thrashed in blind confusion before dispersing into ragged ribbons of bruised vapor.

The oppressive heat cooled with unnatural haste, leaving only the sharp tang of superheated stone .

Down inside the sunken crater, Shen Yu stood motionless.

His bare feet rested on smooth, black glass that still glowed dull orange along its deepest cracks.

The dull bronze sheen over his reconstructed torso settled into his pores, masking the obsidian density of his skeleton beneath fair, deceptively fragile mortal flesh.

Within his dantian, the change was total.

Resting atop the nine-tiered foundation sat a jagged, pitch-black tenth platform, carved from pure heavenly lightning and sealed with unblemished Yang-essence dew.

It spun with heavy, gravitational force, generating a reservoir of pure Qi three times denser than any conventional Foundation Establishment cultivator could fathom.

He was at the taboo Tenth Stage.

On his right wrist, the miniature Taiji Samsara Serpent let out a faint, contented hiss.

The crystalline golden gem on its triangular brow dimmed to a quiet ember, and its slender ivory body turned completely limp, its tiny black eyes closing as it succumbed to deep digestive slumber, fatigued from channeling the immense primordial currents into his collarbone.

Shen Yu raised his wrist, his gaze passing over the sleeping beast with an emotionless, calculating gleam.

“Sleep, little thing,” he murmured, his voice deep and raspy.

“You have helped a lot.”

With a flick of his spirit sense, he tapped his spatial ring and pulled out a set of simple, coarse charcoal-black robes, throwing them loosely over his broad shoulders.

He fastened the hemp sash around his waist, letting the wide cuffs fall forward to completely conceal the sleeping white serpent around his right forearm.

His face remained locked in the sharp, predatory contours of Ni Tian, rugged, cold, and thoroughly divorced from the divine, peerless visage of his true form.

Right as he tightened the sash, his head snapped toward the distant ridgeline.

RUMBLE… SWOOSH!

The silence was broken.

The moment the heavenly lightning dispersed and the runic dome began to fade back into the earth, the invisible terror holding back the spectators evaporated.

Down the jagged slopes of the cliffs, three li away, the hungry wolves began to descend.

“The tribulation has scattered!”

“The seal is broken! The ancient relic has withstood the heavens!”

“Charge! Kill anyone who steps between us and the supreme inheritance!”

A deafening roar of frantic shouts, whistling movement talismans, and the sharp drone of unsheathed flying swords erupted along the perimeter.

Over two hundred surviving cultivators, scions of great sects, imperial guards, and blood-soaked rogue practitioners, flooded down the dunes like a surging red tide, their eyes crimson with unhinged greed.

Leading the charge along the eastern ridge were the frost-swathed elites of the Glacial Moon Empire, their icy armours carving frosty tracks across the red dunes, with Princess Yue Lingxi hovering directly behind them on twin crescent daggers.

From the southern crags, venom-masters from the Great Venomous Empire and the cultivators from the Crimson Lotus Empire unleashed their martial techniques and explosive talismans, obliterating anyone too slow to yield the path.

To their eyes, the desolate glass crater held an awakened ancient immortal weapon, or perhaps some supreme inheritance of the Asura Tomb.

None of them expected to see a lone, coarse-robed cultivator casually stepping out of the steaming slag pit, dusting ash from his sleeves.

Shen Yu slowly raised his eyes.

The murky crimson gleam beneath his irises flickered with a lethal hunger, but he promptly suppressed it.

Though he had survived the clash with the heavens, or rather, the ancient concealment array of the Asura Desolate Realm had severed the celestial connection just in time, the incoming wave was an entirely different beast.

Yet, as the lingering electrical ozone cleared from his throat, a cold, nagging suspicion settled in the back of his mind.

The Heavenly Tribulation had seemed terrifying on the surface, but Shen Yu could distinctly sense that it had been severely throttled, choked by unseen shackles.

He had caught a faint glimpse of this anomaly back when he shattered the mortal ceiling to reach the Tenth Stage of Qi Condensation, but had not paid much attention at that time.

But now he had the clarity, the unnatural truth was unmistakable.

The cosmic will behind this tribulation was bound by layers of artificial constraints.

In his past life, across a distant world where he had slaughtered his way to the Nascent Soul realm, the heavenly retribution had been pure, untamed, and absolute.

This sky, however, felt shallow.

Fragmented.

It was as though the firmament presiding over this realm were a manufactured cage, a hollow, imitation heaven mimicking the true cosmic order.

He had no answers yet, only the sharp, unyielding instinct of a veteran demonic sovereign.

Shaking the stray thought away, Shen Yu looked toward the ridgelines.

Whatever secrets this sky harbored would have to wait, the encroaching danger was flesh and blood.

These were no scattered weaklings, but hundreds of bloodthirsty cultivators descending into the basin in droves, packed with early-stage Golden Core experts, armored imperial retainers, and ruthless sect elites.

He had only just hammered the Tenth Layer into his dantian, his newly forged meridians were still settling, and getting bogged down in a senseless war of attrition against a sea of fresh, greedy wolves was an amateur’s mistake.

A wide, demonic smirk curled across his rugged, coarse-featured face as he watched the rabid swarm plunge down the slopes.

His gaze dropped to the thick, shimmering sea of rose-gold vapor lingering in the deep vitrified crater.

Activating the dual-polarity resonance of his mutated bloodline and driving the volatile Qi of his Tenth Layer into his palms, Shen Yu whipped both wide sleeves forward in a violent, concussive arc.

WHOOSH!

Like an unsealed dam, the concentrated, reality warping pheromones surged outward in a rolling, tidal wall of pink fog, charging directly into the path of the descending cultivators.

Flipping his wrist, Shen Yu retrieved a silver spatial escape talisman, one of the precious batch of five he had originally bought from the Primal Store.

He had entrusted one each to Li Xue, Li Na, and young An’er, keeping two for himself.

He pinched the silver talisman between his fingers, allowing the suffocating slaughter intent he had just tempered under the heavenly lightning to erupt from his frame.

The sheer, primordial weight of his murderous will slammed into the approaching vanguard like an invisible hammer.

“I am Ni Tian,” Shen Yu rasped, his voice carrying clearly across the basin, dripping with dark amusement

“This sovereign takes the artifact. Consider this your only grace period, cross my path again, and I will harvest every single one of your heads.”

BZZT!

Spiritual light ignited the talisman.

Spatial tears swirled around his frame, swallowing him whole before snapping shut, leaving only an empty glass crater behind.

Miles away at the front of the vanguard, Princess Yue Lingxi’s eyes widened in sudden horror as the wall of pink vapor rolled toward the ridge.

The moment a stray tendril brushed the edge of her icy spirit sense, her Pure Yin Glacial Constitution shrieked in primal alarm.

A searing, untamable heat flared deep within her lower abdomen, an ancient, predatory instinct screaming that if she breathed even a single wisp of that mist, her cultivated purity and Dao heart would be obliterated on the spot.

She didn’t waste half a breath shouting a warning to her imperial retinue.

Without a single word of explanation, Yue Lingxi crushed a high-tier escape talisman hidden beneath her sleeve.

A sphere of frost-light enveloped her, vanishing her from the ridgeline in a fraction of an instant.

Her royal guards and the surging sea of cultivators in front of her were not so fortunate.

“What is this mist—”

“A defensive smoke screen! Push through it, the treasure is—”

The pink fog slammed into the charging horde like a warm, suffocating tide.

The instant the rose-gold vapor penetrated their pores, the intoxicating, reality-warping aphrodisiac of the mutated Heaven-Seducing Celestial Bloodline seized their nervous systems.

Rationality, cultivation discipline, ancient grievances, and blinding greed dissolved into pure, primal delirium.

Their eyes lost all focus, pupils blowing wide and flooding with lurid, feverish pink.

Weapons clattered to the blood-red sand.

A wave of ragged, frantic groans and heavy panting ripped through the ranks.

Cultivators who had been hacking each other to pieces moments before threw themselves at the nearest warm bodies with animalistic frenzy.

All restraint, shame, and concept of gender vanished beneath the hypnotic haze.

Respected head disciples, imperial guards, ruthless demonic cultivators, and rogue killers tore at each other’s robes with trembling, desperate fingers, collapsing into the sand in a chaotic, writhing mass of raw hedonism.

The desolate shore was instantly transformed into a grotesque sea of unbridled carnality, drowned in the sweet, inescapable perfume left behind by the demon who had already vanished into the wind.