A Pawn's Passage

True Lord Siming gazed at Qi Xuansu. Though the face behind the bead curtain showed no expression, Qi Xuansu could clearly feel a mocking laugh coming from the Emperor of the Netherworld.

Qi Xuansu, intoxicated by the inflated arrogance brought by the Scripture of Zuriel, could not possibly tolerate being ridiculed.

Thus, Qi Xuansu made a move with Pure Bodhi, which emitted a glow that shrouded the entire blade and extended more than 60 meters long. Green Cloud also emitted a sword light of the same length.

The blade and sword formed an “X” before both came slashing down at the Ancient Immortal.

True Lord Siming merely pushed both hands outward. Yin and yang separated and spiraled around him, effortlessly dissolving Qi Xuansu’s strikes.

Four of Qi Xuansu’s hands held weapons, while the remaining two were empty. One clenched into a fist and smashed downward with a roaring wind. Even before the punch landed, the pressure alone was suffocating.

True Lord Siming did not meet the fist head-on. Instead, he shifted to the side.

Qi Xuansu’s punch shattered an entire side hall into rubble.

Seizing the moment, True Lord Siming reached into the void and drew a long, black and white sword, yin-yang energy swirling around the blade.

Qi Xuansu charged again. This time, with the greatsword made of yin fire and moonlight.

This time, True Lord Siming did not dodge. He raised the yin-yang long sword and blocked the incoming strike.

Since True Lord Siming’s incarnation was at the Pseudo-Immortal level, Qi Xuansu’s yin fire and moonlight greatsword shattered instantly upon impact.

True Lord Siming pressed forward, slashing his yin-yang sword at Qi Xuansu.

Qi Xuansu did not foolishly meet the yin-yang sword with his fists. Instead, he attempted to use the Treasure Mirror to halt the blade.

Under the mirror’s radiance, True Lord Siming’s sword visibly slowed, yet it still continued forward until its tip struck the mirror, chipping out a fragment of its surface.

From the fracture, countless golden light spilled outward.

True Lord Siming swept the sword toward Qi Xuansu once more.

Qi Xuansu dared not be careless. Countless streaks of golden light radiated outward from him in every direction. Wherever the golden brilliance passed, the ground, grass, trees, and insects were coated in a shimmering layer of gold.

The golden radiance forcibly widened the distance between them.

True Lord Siming walked toward Qi Xuansu. Wherever he passed, all things withered into desolation. The sky turned a dim gray. Even the palace halls seemed covered in a layer of lifeless dust.

Qi Xuansu had no way to resist the decay. His golden light was continuously devoured.

This was what set a Godly Immortal apart.

True Lord Siming had reached the pinnacle of the Shaman lineage, igniting divine fire and achieving immortality.

One defining trait of Godly Immortals was that each possessed a unique form of divine power, and no two were alike.

True Lord Siming’s divine power contained the forces of life and death. Though his divine power was limited to a Pseudo-Immortal level, its nature remained unchanged.

By contrast, Qi Xuansu had never reached the Longevity stage, so he did not have a unique divine power of his own. His Spiritual Statue and Spiritual Body could only borrow the patterns of other deities.

Now that the divine powers of True Lord Taiyin and Himiko had been destroyed by True Lord Siming, he could no longer call upon them for a short while.

Relying only on ordinary divine power, Qi Xuansu was no match for True Lord Siming even without considering the gap in their cultivation levels.

Faced with this situation, Qi Xuansu could only withdraw his three-headed, six-armed Spiritual Body, revealing the sole visage of True Lord Ziguang. That way, he could use her divine power to resist True Lord Siming’s corrosive one.

Seizing the opening, True Lord Siming approached Qi Xuansu, raising his yin-yang sword high and cleaving it down on him.

Qi Xuansu only had two arms now, holding Pure Bodhi and Green Cloud, respectively.

Relying on the advantages of the two semi-immortal objects, he barely managed to stop True Lord Siming’s descending sword.

True Lord Siming had wielded the sword single-handedly all along. With his free left hand, he reached straight for Qi Xuansu’s chest, clearly intending to tear out Qi Xuansu’s heart.

Though inflated with arrogance, Qi Xuansu still retained a sliver of clarity thanks to Pure Bodhi. He knew very well that with his Zaohua-stage cultivation, it was impossible to defeat a Pseudo-Immortal head-on. Thus, he needed another approach.

With that thought, Qi Xuansu shrank his Spiritual Body to a normal human size.

True Lord Siming grasped at the air, but he flowed into another technique. His five fingers merged like five miniature peaks as he turned his palm over and pressed downward, blotting out the sky.

This scene resembled the Buddha suppressing the restless Monkey.

True Lord Siming seized Qi Xuansu in the center of his palm.

Having recovered the divine power of True Lord Taiyin, Qi Xuansu turned into a stream of moonlight and slipped through True Lord Siming’s fingers, reforming into human shape a short distance away.

Qi Xuansu then began to fully activate the Fruition Realm of his Shaman lineage.

The world was like a vast tree, and each pocket realm was like a fruit growing upon it.

Earthly Immortals were like insects upon the tree—powerful, able to bore through the trunk, gnaw at leaves and fruit, and roam freely along the branches. However, they could not leave the tree. Even winged insects could only fly briefly before falling, unless they break through their cocoon and become butterflies.

Heavenly Immortals were the butterflies. They might not surpass certain insects in raw strength, but they could fly. Thus, Heavenly Immortals could leave the tree and pollinate, helping the tree bear fruit, which meant opening new pocket realms.

Godly Immortals were somewhere between Heavenly and Earthly Immortals. They could pollinate like Heavenly Immortals, but they could not leave the tree, like Earthly Immortals. Thus, Godly Immortals could produce fruit but could not abandon it. Instead, they nurtured the fruit diligently and resided within it, also known as their divine kingdom. Within this realm, they held absolute advantage, enough to contend even with Heavenly or Earthly Immortals.

Simply put, a Heavenly Immortal’s fruit would not decay and would sustain itself in an endless cycle, while a Godly Immortal’s fruit needed continual nourishment with incense power, as it withered quickly.

The Fruition Realm had three stages. Only upon reaching the Longevity stage could a full divine kingdom be formed. Before that, it was merely a prototype called a divine domain.

The Fruition Realm’s divine domain typically corresponded to one’s Spiritual Statue.

At this time, a Pingtian Crown similar to True Lord Siming’s appeared above Qi Xuansu’s head as well.

This Pingtian Crown had belonged to the master of the Ghost Kingdom, which bore a unique divine power of a Godly Immortal. Back then, the Three Yin Beings had entrusted the crown to Qi Xuansu. This was the divine power that activated his Xuan Jade of Death.

Qi Xuansu chose to use the crown’s unique divine power as the foundation upon which to construct his own divine domain, which was a perfectly square city, complete with gates, towers, and a moat.

Its walls rose over 30 meters high and stretched more than 600 meters long. It was entirely black and imposing, like the legendary Fengdu Ghost City. The moat was 15 meters wide, but what surged within was not water. They were countless pale spirits with twisted faces. It was a chilling sight to behold.

At this time, True Lord Siming was pulled into Qi Xuansu’s domain. The two vanished together.

Pale mist drifted everywhere, blending seamlessly with the gloomy sky above, as if heaven and earth were about to meld into a single desolate realm.

Inside, the city resembled any normal city, with houses, streets, arching bridges, decorative gates, trees lining the roads, and lanterns hanging from storefronts. However, all of it was black and white, like an ink painting. It felt as if the living world had instantly turned into the netherworld.

People from all walks of life bustled through the streets, as if they had returned to the mortal world.

However, the peddlers and passersby’s faces were pale like corpses. Though they continued their motions, their eyes were empty and numb, like puppets on invisible strings.

This divine domain was unmistakably a replica of the Ghost Kingdom.

Qi Xuansu knew that in a direct clash, he could never defeat True Lord Siming. He could not even guarantee his own survival due to their disparity in cultivation.

Thus, Qi Xuansu had to adopt a different strategy to seek an unexpected path to victory.

Constructing his domain using True Lord Taiyin’s divine power had obvious advantages. After all, the Palace of Cold Light currently had no master. If Qi Xuansu built his domain with that divine power and reached immortality before Zhang Wuhen, he might even claim the Palace of Cold Light as his own, gaining a free divine kingdom far superior to the Ghost Kingdom. However, the Palace of Cold Light was of no help in the present crisis.

That was why Qi Xuansu abandoned the immense temptation of claiming the Palace of Cold Light and chose to construct his own domain, with the Ghost Kingdom as its core.