Day of Ascension

Escorted by Dazhong, Xu Ying left the immortal palace and headed straight for jade mountain. When he heard those words, his heart lurched. Someone was impersonating the Heavenly Dao? Why? Could the weapons they left behind be Heavenly Dao Divine Artifacts?

The information the immortal in the painting revealed was far too terrifying to contemplate too deeply.

The heavenly gods of the World of Heavenly Dao claim to be executors of the Heavenly Dao and control Heavenly Dao Divine Artifacts. Are they also impostors?

Xu Ying did not dare think any further.

In the void near the Little Profound Heaven spiritual root, a terrifying aura erupted. A dreadful being from another world was descending through the spiritual root!

Dimensions collapsed and shattered in rapid succession. An incomparably majestic figure emerged from the ruined, crumbling void. Only its towering body could be seen; its head and face were hidden. From the neck up, he was shrouded in radiance shaped like a maple leaf.

The light was so brilliant that no one could look at it directly.

“The Dragon Abyss heavenly god!” The Qi Cultivators of the Yuanding Realm were shocked and delighted. This incomparably majestic figure was the Dragon Abyss heavenly god they had just summoned through a grand sacrifice.

This heavenly god was the guardian of their world. In the Yuanding Realm, from the common people and countless living beings below to the Qi Cultivators above, all revered and worshiped him.

In their eyes, he was omnipotent.

His gaze transformed into two pillars of light that swept across the fleeing crowd. Then they swept back and locked onto Xu Ying, who was escaping toward jade mountain.

The maple-leaf-shaped radiance trembled. Clearly, his heart was far from calm. “People of Yuanding, heed my command. Take him down, dead or alive!”

At his command, the four-armed otherworlders of Yuanding Realm shot after Xu Ying.

The Dragon Abyss heavenly god shifted his gaze to the immortal in the painting. His voice thundered from within the blinding radiance, carrying the sacred majesty. “You wretched maggot who has defied the Heavenly Dao, do you truly believe that possessing a Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact makes you the Dao? Delusional! You have committed the crime of deceiving Heaven. You must be executed!”

The immortal in the painting looked at him and said leisurely, “And what will you use to execute me?”

Next, he slowly raised his hand and said softly, “Heaven Punishment, come!”

The dragon-headed divine man vanished, transforming into a Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact that whistled through the air and landed in his hand.

It was a divine sword, much broader and thicker than an ordinary sword. Its hilt resembled a dragon’s head, while a dragon god coiled around the blade. Bird-worm seal script covered its surface.

“This Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact is called Heaven Punishment Sword. It represents Heaven’s will to carry out punishment!”

The immortal gently stroked the blade, and his murderous aura surged. His eyes gleamed beneath the mask. “With Heaven Punishment in my hand, I am the Heavenly Dao. As for false gods like you, after you fell into the mortal world and could no longer return to the Heavenly Dao World, you gradually lost the Dao’s blessing.”

The immortal in the painting said blandly, “You have been stranded in the mortal world for more than ten thousand years, haven’t you? You can no longer sense the Dao. You can no longer receive its recognition. All you can do is deceive Yuanding Realm’s living beings into revering you as a heavenly god to preserve some shred of pitiful dignity.

“But the truth is simple. You are nothing more than discarded trash. Someone used you up, threw you away, and left you stranded. You will never return to the World of Heavenly Dao.”

Xu Ying was already doing his best to escape toward jade mountain. Yet when those words reached his ears, his scalp prickled. He repeatedly shouted, “Master Zhong! Faster! Faster!”

Dazhong was equally horrified. He shielded Xu Ying and Yuanqi as he raced toward jade mountain, desperately accelerating. They are exposing each other’s secrets and tearing open old wounds. Once they fight, neither will hold anything back. If we don’t get far enough away, we’ll be caught in the crossfire and die!

The auras of the immortal in the painting and the Dragon Abyss heavenly god grew stronger and stronger. In the immortal palace, the last people trying to escape were affected by those auras. Strange noises rang in their ears, and bizarre patterns appeared before their eyes. They fell into madness and began slaughtering one another.

Before long, dozens of people had died.

The cultivators who had escaped looked back in horror. Those who had failed to escape had already lost all semblance of humanity. Under the influence of the Heavenly Dao, they had transformed into lumps of writhing flesh, evolving into unknown monsters.

Xu Ying and the others had escaped early enough and had not yet been affected.

At last, the immortal in the painting activated Heaven Punishment, sent the sword forth, and attacked the Dragon Abyss heavenly god.

In that instant, an overwhelming heavenly might and murderous aura crashed over them, pressing down on Dazhong until he rang again and again as he escorted Xu Ying and Yuanqi toward jade mountain.

The other noble clan scions and four-armed otherworlders who had left the immortal palace also activated their clans’ artifacts to withstand the might of heaven and the murderous aura.

Unfortunately, many had no artifacts to protect them, or their artifacts were not powerful enough. The heavenly might and Heaven Punishment’s murderous aura overwhelmed them.

One Exorcist Master was running when streaks of sword qi shot out from within his body, cutting him into eight pieces. Heaven Punishment’s aura had triggered that sword qi within him.

Xu Ying’s heart pounded at the sight. He uncorked the gourd, tipped back his head, and took a long, deep draught of the Origin Dao Essence. Maybe this can resist the influence of the Heavenly Dao!

The amount of Origin Dao Essence inside the gourd was beyond imagination. With a single mouthful, Xu Ying felt the soul immortal herbs activate, transforming into abundant energy that nourished his three souls and seven corporeal souls.

The soul was divided into the three souls, the seven corporeal souls, and the Eternal True Spirit. An ordinary person’s Eternal True Spirit was only a single point, a spark of spiritual light. As the saying went, one point of true spirit remained undying, hence the name.

Other people had a single point of Eternal True Spirit. Xu Ying’s soul mostly consisted of Eternal True Spirit. It squeezed his three souls and seven corporeal souls until they had almost no room to exist.

Of course, that was only relative. Xu Ying placed great importance on the soul and cultivated diligently precisely because he wanted to make up for that weakness. Unfortunately, his Eternal True Spirit was too strong. Although his soul had improved enormously, it still seemed insignificant compared to his Eternal True Spirit.

Now that he had opened the Gushing-Spring Secret Trove, he was constantly drawing in soul immortal herbs and comprehending the orthodox arts. With the essence added to that, his soul cultivation was bound to advance by leaps and bounds.

Xu Ying kept pouring Origin Dao Essence into his stomach until he soon realized he could not drink another drop.

Origin Dao Essence was a wondrous substance formed when the spiritual root of Little Profound Heaven gathered spirit qi from places close to the Immortal Realm and refined it within its own body.

It could improve cultivation, strengthen the constitution, and enhance comprehension. Its greatest use, however, was actually to replenish an immortal’s cultivation and transform their mortal constitution.

When lower realm Qi Cultivators underwent tribulation and became immortals, immortal light guided them to ascend, and their first destination was this place. The ascent consumed enormous energy, so newly ascended immortals had to replenish themselves with essence.

At that stage, an immortal still contained mortal power. The impurities within their flesh and Primordial Spirit had to be purged and replaced with Origin Dao Essence. Its baptism would cleanse them, allowing them to undergo purification and sublimation.

Xu Ying was not an immortal. The fact that he had swallowed so much Origin Dao Essence without bursting apart was already a testament to the strength of his physique. Any more would push his fleshly body beyond its limits.

“Master Qi, take it!” Xu Ying casually tossed the gourd to Yuanqi. The snake hurriedly coiled around the gourd, opened his mouth, and poured the essence down his throat.

As Dazhong protected them and flew toward jade mountain, he hurriedly said, “Master Qi, don’t drink it all! Save some for me!”

Yuanqi soon let out a full belch, and a round globule of watery light sprayed from his mouth. He was already saturated with Origin Dao Essence, and he couldn’t hold any more.

“Master Zhong, catch!” Yuanqi tossed the gourd up.

Dazhong rang with excitement. He wrapped the gourd in his divine sense and drew the Origin Dao Essence into himself, refining and strengthening his own material.

“You two have no fortune at all. You enter a mountain of treasure and only carry away half a peak. I could hollow out the whole mountain and even pull up its roots!” he said with a loud laugh.

His laughter had barely faded when Dazhong fell silent, thoroughly dejected. He had absorbed only a small amount of essence before his own walls reached their limit. It could hold no more.

Xu Ying stuffed the gourd into his ethereal void and desperately pushed the Grand-Unity Guiding Method to its limits, drawing in the six secret immortal herbs. This allowed him to raise his cultivation quickly and create room to consume more essence.

Dazhong escorted him into the air above jade mountain. Then the sky heaved violently as the Heavenly Dao’s might reached it, making all manner of grasses and trees on jade mountain grow wildly.

In the blink of an eye, a terrifying expanse of green shrouded the mountain. Even those who had escaped the immortal palace were not spared. The cultivators whom the Heavenly Dao had infected began swelling and mutating. Their flesh twisted grotesquely until they became malformed mountains of flesh.

The other survivors each activated their artifacts to resist the Heavenly Dao and flew down the mountain. They were too close to the battlefield. If the fighting intensified, they could easily be caught in its aftermath.

Yet the air above Little Profound Heaven still held fragments of divine abilities left behind from the battle between the great evil and the strongest beings of the myriad worlds.

Xu Ying, with his Third Eye, could see through those hidden divine abilities, so he landed without injury.

However, the others could not avoid them in time. When they touched those terrifying traces of divine ability, they exploded in midair, transforming into showers of blood. By the time the survivors finally reached the ground, fewer than three in ten remained.

Then the sky rippled like water. Xu Ying looked up and could barely make out the masked Sword Immortal beyond the heavens, wielding Heaven Punishment as he fought fiercely against the Dragon Abyss heavenly god in the starry sky. Bands of light stretched across the stars, looking as though they were moving very slowly.

“Little Profound Heaven is under the influence of the heavenly god and the Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact. Something terrible may happen! Stone City was built for the strongest warriors of the myriad worlds when they besieged the great evil. It is incomparably sturdy. That is the best place to hide from the impact of the Heavenly Dao!”

Xu Ying rushed toward Stone City at full speed.

Brilliant divine radiance flared in the sky and descended into the desert. Beautiful yet deadly, the light carried a strange power. It was the same light he had seen just now with his Third Eye. Now, that light had already reached Taiyi Little Profound Heaven.

The light carried the aura of the Heavenly Dao, profound and obscure.

Another beam of light descended toward Xu Ying. Wherever it passed, the desert sank sharply, as if an invisible sword qi were attacking from above, pressing down so hard that even the desert could not withstand it.

He hurriedly picked up speed and charged to one side.

Whoosh!

A razor-sharp hiss tore through the air.

The divine radiance fell, sending dust billowing. A wave of force swept over him. Xu Ying moved with dragon-like agility and narrowly avoided it.

He looked back and saw a Cui clan member standing in the dazzling light, looking dazed.

He had been nearby. When Xu Ying fled, the man had followed him, only to fall behind and be caught by the divine radiance.

All at once, the Cui clan disciple split into countless thin slices and slowly collapsed to the ground.

“Run!”

Several voices cried out in the distance.

Xu Ying looked toward the sound. Another descending beam of Heavenly Dao divine radiance had caught a group of cultivators. The light swallowed them whole.

The clash between two peerless experts was truly terrifying. The shockwaves left almost nowhere in Taiyi Little Profound Heaven safe to stand. Everyone had to keep moving to find the slightest chance of survival between the constantly falling beams of divine radiance.

Xu Ying took Yuanqi and sprinted all the way, dodging one beam of divine radiance after another. Then the sky blazed bright. He looked up, despair welling in his heart.

Yuanqi also raised his head and stared blankly at the sky.

A sheet of divine radiance that covered the entire sky pierced through Taiyi Little Profound Heaven and pressed downward.

Under the cover of such a divine ability, survival was impossible.

Suddenly, Dazhong shot into the air and rushed toward the sky. “So what if it’s a Heavenly Dao Divine Artifact? So what if it’s a heavenly god? Back then, I suppressed a heavenly god for three thousand years! Don’t think you can throw your weight around in front of me!”

Clang!

Dazhong expanded with a thunderous hum and met the Heavenly Dao divine radiance, tolling repeatedly. The Heavenly Dao divine radiance battered Dazhong, sending him reeling up and down, yet each time he surged back up and ground that divine radiance away.

Xu Ying relaxed and at once sped toward Stone City.

Just then, a four-armed otherworlder attacked from the side. He was still a hundred bu away, but the wind from his fists had already made waves of sand surge, twisting into enormous sand dragons that coiled through the air and bore down on Xu Ying.

“Otherworlder, the Dragon Abyss heavenly god wants you to stay!”

With that punch, dragon roars shook the air. Behind the four-armed otherworlder appeared the strange manifestation of a coiling azure dragon. He had unleashed a martial divine ability.

The azure dragon was astonishingly lifelike. Clearly, he had once seen a real azure dragon and obtained its Dao avatar, which was why he could cultivate his martial divine ability to this level.

Xu Ying was about to turn aside and evade this martial divine ability when he suddenly felt as though a great mountain were pressing down on him, making him unbearably heavy.

He looked up and saw a Golden Core flying over, radiating ten thousand rays of light as it descended to suppress him.

Another four-armed female otherworlder flew in. “Dragon Abyss heavenly god has ordered us to keep you here, dead or alive!”

The two coordinated seamlessly. One attacked to draw Xu Ying’s attention while the other unleashed her Golden Core to suppress him.

Xu Ying’s speed dropped sharply. The four-armed otherworlder’s martial divine ability had already pounced on him and slammed hard into him.

With a heavy impact, the sand dragon exploded. The otherworlder’s fist force struck Xu Ying’s body and shattered on impact.

The otherworlder’s heart jolted. In the next moment, he was right in front of Xu Ying, all four arms spread as he engaged Xu Ying in close combat. Yet Xu Ying simply endured the woman’s suppression and fought him at close range, meeting force with force.

The otherworlder was shocked and furious. His four hands shifted between fists, palms, hooks, fingers, and hand blades, attacking like a downpour. A deafening dragon roar accompanied every blow, and its power was terrifying. He could send the force of a single punch a hundred li away, killing an enemy at that distance.

The Qi Cultivators of the Yuanding Realm took pride in battle and therefore often cultivated the martial path. This otherworlder had even been fortunate enough to comprehend the Azure Dragon Dao avatar, allowing him to cultivate martial arts to such an astonishing height.

Yet within this tiny combat distance—where his martial divine abilities should have been at their strongest—he finally met his match.

Although the female otherworlder’s Golden Core was suppressing Xu Ying, Dao sounds reverberated inside him, his primordial qi surged like a vast ocean, and his vital energy was even more abundant.

While under suppression, he used the ‘Yuan’ Dao sound from the Eight Sounds of Primordial Nurturing to mobilize the Dao intent of water and fire refining one another. In just a few palm strikes, he beat the otherworlder to death.

Xu Ying raised his hand and pointed. The female otherworlder’s Golden Core exploded with a bang, and her soul was torn apart as well.

Her corpse fell from the sky and smashed into the desert.

Xu Ying picked up speed and rushed toward Stone City. It should be almost dawn in Yunmeng Marsh, right? The old immortal of the Zhu clan said that after daybreak, Stone City would return to Yunmeng Marsh. If I can’t get back to Stone City, some great terror will occur.

“You dare kill my disciples!” The Yuanding Realm expert named Yun Fan appeared ahead of him, his Primordial Spirit standing behind him, and his aura as powerful as an abyss.

Without a word, Xu Ying abruptly unleashed the broken saber. Saber light descended like a ribbon of white silk.

He had obtained the broken saber in the desert of Taiyi Little Profound Heaven. While it hadn’t belonged to him, it was as though he had refined and nurtured it for countless years. The power within the saber erupted.

Yun Fan and his Primordial Spirit raised their hands together to receive it head-on, but beneath that silk-like saber light, they were forced to slide backward without stopping.

Xu Ying’s cultivation hadn’t surpassed Yun Fan’s, and he was far weaker than Yun Fan. The difference was that the broken saber was simply too powerful. It was a mighty treasure refined by one of the most powerful Qi Cultivators.

Yun Fan finally steadied himself and caught the broken saber. Seeing Xu Ying charge toward him, he laughed in anger. “Without this saber, what else can you do?”

Xu Ying’s sleeves swept through the air. In the desert, one damaged weapon after another, left behind by Ascension Stage Qi Cultivators, rose from the yellow sand.

Each broken weapon bore a palm print. The same person had clearly broken them all.

Xu Ying raised his hand, awakening the lingering power of Ascension Stage Qi Cultivators within. They howled as they surged toward Yun Fan, engulfing him.

Yun Fan was, after all, a Pagoda Stage expert who had cultivated a Primordial Spirit. Faced with danger, he did not panic. His four arms swung as he desperately blocked the attacks from the artifacts, but the impacts repeatedly drove him backward.

“I want to see just how long you can last!”

He gritted his teeth and resisted with everything he had. Using these broken weapons requires an enormous amount of mystical power. Xu Ying is only a Transmutation Stage Qi Cultivator who has just refined a Golden Core. There’s no way he can keep this up for more than a few attacks!

Xu Ying’s robes fluttered as he advanced with a calm expression. Before him and behind him, one broken artifact after another erupted from beneath the earth, tearing through the air as they bombarded Yun Fan.

Yun Fan couldn’t stop coughing up blood, struggling to hold on. Despair rose in his heart. Why hasn’t he exhausted his mystical power yet?

Xu Ying’s mystical power had not yet run dry, but Yun Fan’s was almost gone.

Ultimately, Yun Fan was overwhelmed by wave after wave of broken artifacts. His mystical power was exhausted, and hundreds of weapons left behind by mighty Qi Cultivators battered him to death in the desert.

Even at the moment of his death, he never managed to understand why Xu Ying could use the artifacts of the strongest Qi Cultivators of the myriad realms, or why Xu Ying’s mystical power was nearly endless, allowing him to unleash the power of those artifacts continuously.

Only after Xu Ying confirmed that Yun Fan had truly been blasted to death did he finally let out a sigh of relief. He took out his gourd, drank a mouthful of Origin Dao Essence, and murmured, “As expected of a powerhouse who cultivated a Primordial Spirit. He really could take a beating.”

“If I hadn’t had the Origin Dao Essence to replenish my mystical power, I wouldn’t have stood a chance against him, let alone killed him!”

Yun Fan had delayed him for far too long, so he hurriedly picked up speed and headed straight for Stone City. From a distance, Stone City came into view, and Xu Ying felt slightly relieved. “Stone City is still there...”

Suddenly, a tremor ran through Stone City, and it slowly floated upward. Xu Ying rushed toward it with all his strength, moving faster and faster, yet the city rose higher and higher. Then, with a violent shudder, it tore through the air and vanished without a trace!

Xu Ying stopped and comforted himself. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Stone City will return on the next full moon. I only need to wait one month, and then I can return to Yunmeng Marsh.”

He laughed aloud. “The Zhu clan’s old immortal was struck dead by my Mud Pill divine ability. That shows how limited his experience was. There definitely won’t be any great terror inside Taiyi Little Profound Heaven!”

Just then, the sky darkened, and a sinister wind rose. A figure walked toward Xu Ying. He focused his eyes and saw another version of himself.