A Pawn's Passage

Two yin spirits returned to Li Changge, who was holding a sword in his right hand and the no-longer blank Holy Xuan Card between the index and middle fingers of his left hand.

Yao Pei, having lost a fragment of her soul, should have been disoriented and sluggish. But with the support of the Taishang Emotionless Sutra, she could maintain her composure and did not show obvious signs of weakness.

Li Changge tucked the Holy Xuan Card into his sleeve. Mortal Vitality began to grow like a living plant, extending from 1 meter to about 10 meters.

Despite holding it single-handedly, he showed not the slightest sign of strain. The wooden sword moved as he willed it, as though the sword did not grow heavier. If it did, Li Changge’s Martial Arts Practitioner’s physique gave him ample strength to wield it. Whether or not he had the indestructible body, his strength was unaffected, and control remained fluid.

When throwing a punch, only a few key points along the strike’s arc were actually dangerous. So one just had to avoid these zones to endure the strike.

But it was a different matter with a sword or blade. Their sharpness made every point along the arc equally lethal. There was no blocking or enduring, only dodging.

Even though Mortal Vitality was a wooden sword, it was a semi-immortal object, more than capable of bisecting a Heavenly Being.

Now that the Mortal Vitality extended to 10 meters, its sweeping arc was wider than normal. Yao Pei found it hard to evade even with her Heavenly Calculation.

While Li Changge’s Heavenly Calculation was not as refined as Yao Pei’s, the moment she lost a fragment of her soul, their calculative abilities balanced out. Since he had the longer weapon, Li Changge could even suppress her.

The sharpness of Yield Sovereignty would have broken any other weapon after several clashes. But the regenerative property of Mortal Vitality rendered Yield Sovereignty’s advantage useless unless the latter could sever the former in a single blow. Otherwise, Mortal Vitality would keep regenerating. While it was true that Yield Sovereignty had sliced through the Fallen Soul Mirror, it might not be able to do the same to a semi-immortal object like Mortal Vitality.

This embodied the Daoist principle of soft overcoming hard.

No matter how one looked at it, Yao Pei appeared to be cornered.

Yet there was no triumph on Li Changge’s face. Instead, he looked deeply solemn.

Yao Pei had called Li Changge arrogant because he could have leveraged the advantage of terrain to summon more experts and besiege her, but he insisted on taking the fight into his own hands. However, Li Changge did not underestimate Yao Pei just because he was one of the three prodigies. On the contrary, he had studied her in detail and knew she still had hidden cards left to play.

Sure enough, the snowy white in Yao Pei’s eyes began to fade, replaced entirely by a deep, blood-red hue.

Had Qi Xuansu been present, he would have instantly recognized those blood-red eyes because he saw them every time he dreamed and fused with the Xuan Jade.

Those were the eyes of a Great Witch.

Li Changge had never seen them before. The Longevity Stone Heart from the Li family was slightly different from Madam Qi’s, so he had never experienced those chaotic dreams nor seen the spiritual peaks during fusion with the Xuan Jade. Still, his family’s deep heritage meant he understood full well what this signified.

The ancestral bloodline of the Great Witch within Yao Pei was awakening.

Among the eleven Great Witches who founded Ancient Wuism, Wu Yang was the most powerful, but Wu Xian was the orthodox lineage.

Li Changge murmured, “There is no true division between the Great Witches.”

It was no wonder that Great Sage Jiang Hedao was so fond of Zhang Yuelu. Both Yao Pei’s bloodline and Li Changge’s external aid were considered unorthodox methods within the Daoist cultivation path.

The Yao family had made Yao Pei practice the Taishang Emotionless Sutra precisely to suppress the Great Witch bloodline within her body to prevent the ancestral will from awakening inside her.

But after Li Changge seized a fragment of her soul, that delicate balance collapsed, and her ancestral bloodline awakened on its own.

Even Li Changge felt a crushing sense of pressure, akin to a sheep encountering a tiger cub, instinctively aware of the latter’s lethal potential.

Yao Pei was not the one exerting this pressure. It was her bloodline.

But Li Changge quickly used the Taishang Emotionless Sutra, mimicked from the Taiping Qingling Sutra, to calm his heart, dispelling that sense of oppression. He voluntarily withdrew the 10-meter Mortal Vitality sword, returning it to its original form.

Moments later, the blood-red hue in Yao Pei’s eyes fully replaced the white. Her body began to expand continuously, growing to over 5 meters tall, identical to the Great Witches Qi Xuansu had seen in his dreams.

Her once well-fitted hechang now looked comically undersized, exposing her forearms and calves. Her boots shattered, so her giant feet were bare, and her hairpin broke, letting her long hair fall loose.

This was the Great Shaman True Form, a technique only Wuliang-stage Martial Arts Practitioners could use, yet Yao Pei had achieved it effortlessly and instinctively.

The Staff of Merit, which previously seemed awkward due to its height exceeding Yao Pei’s stature, now suited her perfectly. After all, it was originally the scepter of the Great Witches.

After revealing her Great Shaman True Form, dense black mist rose behind Yao Pei, within which a dark silhouette could faintly be seen. It was the same Ancestral Witch Spiritual Statue once used by Madam Qi to exile the Owner.

Ordinary Shamans could not summon the Ancestral Witch Spiritual Statue, which combined the essence of all eleven Great Witches. They could only manage to manifest Wu Luo’s Spiritual Statue. Since this Ancestral Witch Spiritual Statue was so mysterious, the Daoist Order never formally classified it by rank.

When the Great Shaman True Form and Ancestral Witch Spiritual Statue fused, they became the Ancestral Witch Spiritual Body.

As the scion of a Daoist noble family, Yao Pei had no shortage of divine power. Whether it cost 1,000 marks or 5,000 marks to sustain this Spiritual Body, she could afford to wield it freely.

With the support of her Spiritual Body, the Staff of Merit in Yao Pei’s hand activated even further. The twin serpents coiled around the staff seemed to come alive.

At this moment, Yao Pei and the Staff of Merit were almost one entity.

In Li Changge’s vision, Yao Pei began to grow rapidly. In the blink of an eye, she had reached 60 meters in height, like a giant towering between heaven and earth. Strangely, this enormous form was unaffected by the surrounding terrain. Her body passed through the mountain dome without deforming anything, stretching endlessly. At this moment, Li Changge could no longer see Wuxing Mountain. All he could see was this titan figure of Yao Pei.

Yao Pei looked down at Li Changge with massive blood-red eyes that were as vast as the moon.

Li Changge showed no courtesy, unleashing a backhand strike of Tribulation Defiance sword qi.

The Tribulation Defiance sword energy was famed for its unmatched lethality. Yet when it struck Yao Pei’s pupil, it was like a pebble falling into a lake, only ripples emerged, and nothing more.

Li Changge immediately realized that this was not Yao Pei’s true body. Everything before him was merely an illusion.

But before he could act, Yao Pei’s pupils darkened into bottomless voids, like black holes drawing in his spirit. Time seemed to slow, and Li Changge felt as though he had fallen into a mire, his thoughts turning sluggish.

Countless replicas of Yield Sovereignty emerged, with endless blades flashing into existence, all aiming to shred Li Changge to pieces.

At that moment, a black-and-white interwoven crown appeared atop Li Changge’s head. It was made of two dragon whiskers—one black, one white—twined into a wreath, set with a small Dragon Pearl inlaid by the Holy Xuan’s wife. It was called the Bright Crown.

This, too, was a semi-immortal object. Its time-warping function was similar to that of the Staff of Merit. But while the staff could be used for both offense and defense, the Bright Crown was purely defensive.

The Bright Crown instantly dispelled the time-freezing effect weighing on Li Changge, restoring his vitality. Instead, the blade light that entered within one meter of him became frozen in place.

In addition, Li Changge possessed a complete Shaman lineage. Thus, the Spiritual Statue he could summon was a level above Qi Xuansu’s.

Li Changge exhaled deeply and intoned solemnly, “I summon the Heavenly Emperor.”

His face blurred in an instant, bypassing the fusion process between the Heavenly Emperor Spiritual Statue and the Golden Body and directly revealing the Heavenly Emperor Spiritual Body. This Spiritual Body donned a crown and a Twelve Ornaments Robe, though his face remained indistinct.

As the heir of the Li family, Li Changge faced no shortage of divine power as well.

With divine power in ample supply, the might of his Shaman lineage was unleashed to the fullest.

Both prodigies erupted with strength that vastly surpassed their current realms.

Each Spiritual Statue or Spiritual Body bore different mystical abilities. For instance, the Taiyin Spiritual Statue could transform into a luminous moon and possessed the Taiyin 13 Swords.

Yao Pei had just used the Ancestral Witch Spiritual Statue’s cosmic arts.

The Heavenly Emperor Spiritual Statue could obscure destiny, upend heaven and earth, and reverse yin and yang.

Given Li Changge’s current cultivation level, he could not achieve such miracles in full, but simply counteracting and reversing Yao Pei’s cosmic arts posed no difficulty.

If a Manly Immortal could not predict the strike in advance, they could only rage helplessly while watching themselves be banished. But with the right lineage, that process could be undone.

In a flash, all things blurred into chaotic formlessness.

When clarity returned, the two were still deep within Wuxing Mountain, but both their Spiritual Bodies had reached their limits and shattered.

Yao Pei still maintained her Great Shaman True Form and charged toward Li Changge. Her Manly Immortal lineage’s Great Shaman True Form was derived from Wu Gu, one of the Eleven Great Witches.

Li Changge likewise retained his Heavenly Emperor Golden Body and faced her head-on.

Yao Pei slashed with one strike, unleashing the Nine Heavenly Query.

This blade bore not a trace of mortal sentiment, utterly devoid of emotion. Yet it was not mere indifference. Its conception was vast, encompassing heaven, earth, life, death, and all phenomena. It sought nothing but the mandate of heaven, locking firmly onto Li Changge and leaving him with nowhere to hide.

In the face of this strike, Li Changge once again used the Heavenly Emperor Golden Body’s abilities to obscure fate itself, rendering yin and yang indistinct and the five elements indiscernible, temporarily dissolving the blade intention that was locked onto him.

Yao Pei immediately sensed her blade intention cutting into emptiness, losing all control over it, as if a kite string had snapped.

Yao Pei’s blade shifted at once.

She split herself into eight clones in addition to her true body, spread to each cardinal and intercardinal direction that surrounded her true self. Each clone struck with a blade, and their fierce blade qi wove into a net, once again leaving Li Changge with nowhere to dodge.

But this time, Li Changge made no attempt to evade. He let out a long whistle and channeled all his strength into Mortal Vitality. In an instant, Mortal Vitality transformed into a colossal sword over 30 meters in length and 2 meters in width, resembling a massive pillar supporting the heavens.

Li Changge hugged the hilt with both arms and swept the massive wooden sword in a wide arc.