The Path Toward Heaven

As the smoke and dust settled, the people could see more clearly now. The distant palace walls suffered a similar fate; the surface layer of the walls was peeled off, revealing thousands of dents and holes, looking like 10,000-year-old ruins.

The southern palace wall sustained the most damage, as there was a gap of a few hundred feet wide on it.

Lian Sanyue drew back her fist.

All gazes were focused on her fist at the moment; following the movement of her fist, the people gazed at her face in the end, their eyes full of awe and fear.

She didn’t thrust her fist gracefully; her fighting move was as ordinary as her appearance.

Yet, none of them who had witnessed this fight would dare say her fighting skill was ordinary.

They all knew that Lian Sanyue was the most powerful figure in the Cultivation circle, but few of them had witnessed her prowess, because she hadn’t struck for a great many years, and it was also because those who saw her strike had mostly died because of it. The people realized today that her real self was this powerful and formidable, even more powerful and formidable than what she was rumored to be.

The last powerful swordsman of the Bloody Demon Church, Kou Qingtong, was beaten so badly by her.

Jing Jiu knew what kind of a person she was, and it was expected that she would defeat Kou Qingtong. As such, Jing Jiu appeared quite calm even though there was a hint of worry in the end of his eyes.

“Cloud-Dream Mountain does have a profound resource, so any swordsman you sent out at random is very strong; but he is a bit weaker for me,” Lian Sanyue said to the Immortal Tan.

No matter how imperturbable the Immortal Tan appeared, he couldn’t help but let loose a bitter smile while saying, “But we didn’t send him out randomly.”

There was only one person as vicious as Kou Qingtong, regardless of how profound the Cloud-Dream Mountain’s resource was.

“Because he is not as strong as you,” Lian Sanyue said while staring into the Immortal Tan’s eyes, “so I want to fight you.”

The Green Mountain Sect and the Center Sect had agreed to decide the victory by three out of five fights and the winner could keep on fighting.

Since Lian Sanyue won the first fight, she was of course qualified to fight again.

Yet, nobody had expected that she would challenge the Immortal Tan after having just defeated Kou Qingtong, a very powerful opponent.

It became quiet again in the royal palace.

No one thought she would win this time.

The Immortal Tan was the strongest swordsman in Chaotian, and Lian Sanyue said herself that Kou Qingtong was not as strong as him.

No matter how strong Lian Sanyue was, she must have used up a great deal of her energy and was evidently wounded during the fight against Kou Qingtong; how could she beat the Immortal Tan?

Unexpectedly, the Immortal Tan didn’t refuse her like what he had done to Jing Jiu. “Please,” the Immortal Tan said calmly.

Lian Sanyue’s eyes looked at him as she displayed a hint of appreciation. “Like I said, you’re a decent person; so I let you strike with your hands first,” she offered.

Earlier she had told Kou Qingtong that nobody had any chance of striking if she did it first.

Could this rule also apply to the Immortal Tan?

The Immortal Tan didn’t feel humiliated by this suggestion; he simply started preparing for the attack. He brought his hands behind his back, and then began to adjust the distance and angle of the attack.

The expression on his face was very serious; he behaved like a farmer who was sharpening his equipment for plowing the fields or a general who was sharpening his weapon for the incoming battle. He did it meticulously and in great details.

A few moments later, his hands stopped moving. His two hands were about one and a half feet away from each other, his fingers extending slightly, as if he were holding an illusory space.

After making sure everything was almost perfect, the Immortal Tan lifted up his head and looked at Lian Sanyue, saying, “I’m ready.”

Lian Sanyue suddenly laughed out.

She asked the Immortal Tan to strike with his hands first, and he was actually to use his hands to strike.

It was a nonchalant and arrogant act.

Yet, this was the expected demeanor of the sect master of the Center Sect.

But she still didn’t want to strike first; moreover, it would be difficult to strike against such a pair of hands.

The Immortal Tan’s hands were far from ordinary. The illusory space he held gave her the feeling that it was the space of another world, with a highly remarkable intent and ensuing peril.

Lian Sanyue began to calculate while staring at his two hands.

The Immortal Tan didn’t do anything, as she was staring at his hands.

Time elapsed slowly, and the morning sunlight returned to the sky over Zhaoge City. It was quiet throughout the royal palace. Everyone was gazing at the middle of the square nervously; and they were all aware that it was not so simple though the two of them were staring at each other at the moment, and that they failed to understand what they were doing because whatever the Immortal Tan and Lian Sanyue were doing was way beyond their comprehension due to their extraordinary Cultivation state.

The sound of yawning suddenly came out from the side hall; feeling bored, Ping Yongjia exclaimed, “When will the fight start?”

Many people heard him in the quiet royal palace; they all glared at him angrily.

Lian Sanyue had also heard it, smiling faintly. She extended her forefinger to draw a drop of water from the wind and flicked it toward her opponent.

The drop of water passed the distance of one mile and landed squarely between the Immortal Tan’s two hands.

The ripples suddenly formed in the illusory space, looking like the surface of a lake.

Lian Sanyue didn’t strike.

Neither did the Immortal Tan.

The fight between the two of the most powerful swordsmen in Chaotian had actually begun.

…

…

As the surface of the lake became more unperturbed and the ripples grew wider, a few curved lights emerged.

When the sprays form on the surface of the water, a lake is a lake and a river is a river; and only when the surface of the water is unperturbed will the lake and the river become a mirror.

The illusory space between the Immortal Tan’s hands had become a mirror, on which a few curved lights were glittering.

The smallest mirror could reflect the broadest sky as long as the distance was far enough or the magic powerful enough.

At the moment, the whole royal palace was reflected in the mirror, and then was sliced into different scenes by those curved lights, interacting now and stacking then, and occasionally separating from each other. No matter what, it was not a whole entity any longer.

The objects and things in the real world had also changed accordingly. The palace halls seemed to be sliced into several sections, looking rather eerie, making the onlookers feel dizzy.

Some brave and curious eunuchs took a look at the illusory space and passed out because they couldn’t stand it.

Some chancellors in the grand hall sat on the floor paralyzed while clutching their foreheads with their hands.

The Cultivation practitioners of various sects in the sky felt their Dao Hearts growing chaotic when they saw the side of the scene; they turned their heads away hastily.

After he bade Liu Shisui, Xi Yiyun and other disciples to shut their eyes, Bu Qiuxiao turned to look at the square and felt impressed, thinking that the Immortal Tan was indeed unparalleled in the world as far as the magic tricks were concerned.

…

…

The Immortal Tan brought his two hands closer slowly, and the illusory space became deformed and twisted accordingly.

The two palace halls in the illusory space were drawing closer to each other; and an unimaginably powerful force due to the squeeze of space appeared in the square.

Countless crunchy breaking noises rang out in the quiet royal palace, the sound of air being sliced or the sound of breaking up the space.

Innumerable Chaotic Winds emerged from the cracks and ruptures of the illusory space, blowing across the square. If the royal walls were not protected by the Great Formation of the royal palace, they would be razed to the ground instantly.

The jet black hair on Lian Sanyue’s head tousled in the wind, and her face was a bit pale, with a trickle of fresh blood on the corner of her mouth.

She was severely wounded during the battle with Kou Qingtong, and her wound was getting worse when the space was squeezed.

If she wished to win the fight, she had to use the most brutal attack to halt the Immortal Tan’s magic trick; however, the Immortal Tan was both a holder of the mirror and a person inside the mirror. So if she couldn’t figure out where his real body was in the illusory space, how could she attack him then?

Lian Sanyue made a step forward, and found a passage amid the mirror as big as the sky.

The passage was not something that would lead to the Immortal Tan’s real body, but a path to the morning sun.

She was not about to escape; all she wanted to do was take a look at the sun.

A ray of light came over from the east, passing through the sliced space of the royal palace, and landed squarely on her.

Her figure appeared extremely big in the midst of the gorgeous morning sunlight.

She reached out her right hand and grabbed the ray of morning sunlight, then squeezing it with all her strength.

A noise that was hard to describe blasted out in her palm.

It sounded like breaking of a zither string or a flying sword, or splitting of a magic treasure.

It was the Breaking of Morning Sunlight!

Lian Sanyue didn’t stop; the morning sunlight kept on deflecting and flashing in her palm. In the end, a light leaked out between her fingers, turning into the tiniest particles and dispersing in all directions.

The surface of the mirrors in the illusory space in the royal palace was occupied by the particles of the morning sunlight, and they had all become white in an instant, looking like countless sheets of paper. It was an amazing scene.

“Open!”

Lian Sanyue yelled this while throwing the remaining morning sunlight in her hand to the ground.

The milky and white light particles rolled on the ground like the ocean sprays and a mist.

In the meantime, the light particles in the mirrors of the illusory space started hitting the edges of the space, making many cracking noises that sounded like the rainstorm.

The mirrors in the illusory space began to draw closer to each other and the palace halls also started returning to their original states; it was unclear if it was because the edges of the space were about to collapse due to the bombardments or the particles of the morning sunlight had an extraordinarily strong gravitational force.

There had been a pagoda in the royal garden located on the west of the royal palace; but it was in the sky over the site at the moment.

As Lian Sanyue employed the method of the Morning Sunlight, the pagoda was drifting slowly toward its original site in the western royal garden.

It was then that the Immortal Tan walked out from the pagoda.