A Pawn's Passage

“Since you’re determined to seek death, I won’t stop you.” Qi Xuansu said as he expanded into his Manly Immortal True Form.

He shouted, “The opponent’s tough. Let’s attack together!”

Before he finished his sentence, Qi Xuansu and Qi Jiaoyao struck simultaneously.

Qi Xuansu once again shook the void.

For Martial Arts Practitioners, the Shattered Void Realm bypassed one’s protective qi shield and resilient physiques, directly affecting the internal organs.

However, at Qi Xuansu’s current cultivation level, he could not yet achieve such precise control. He could only affect a broad area, which inevitably disturbed the spatial fissures and triggered a degree of collapse.

Qi Xuansu had aimed at the Taiyin Corpse’s Longevity Stone prototype, but his punching force was too broad, engulfing the entire Taiyin Corpse and even spreading across most of the temple.

Although the Longevity Stone was incomparably durable, so much so that even Immortals could not shatter it, a prototype could not compare to the completed immortal object. Qi Xuansu was determined to test its hardness.

The Taiyin Corpse’s freshly restored body immediately twisted and deformed, once again showing signs of collapse, as if flesh were being crushed beneath a massive boulder.

Yet without destroying the Longevity Stone core itself, merely destroying the body held little significance.

Under the all-encompassing crushing force of the fist intention, the Taiyin Corpse had almost no ability to resist.

The earlier battle had been so difficult largely because Qi Xuansu had refrained from using the Martial Arts Practitioner’s Shattered Void Realm, which was his highest-level lineage.

When the Taiyin Corpse tried to suppress him through physical superiority, it instead met Qi Xuansu’s fists and was overwhelmed by his indestructible body and everchanging transformations, demonstrating the overwhelming strength of a Zaohua-stage Martial Arts Practitioner.

Qi Xuansu had avoided using the Shattered Void Realm because he feared triggering another collapse. But the circumstances had changed. The Taiyin Corpse was supposedly being controlled by a guard of Lingshan. Who knew whether reinforcements might arrive? They could not linger and had to end the battle as soon as possible. Thus, Qi Xuansu could no longer afford restraint.

With a single punch, he heavily wounded the Taiyin Corpse. Though he failed to shatter the Longevity Stone prototype, faint cracks appeared upon its surface.

Fortunately, this section of the temple proved relatively sturdy and did not trigger widespread spatial collapse. On reflection, this made sense. Even if Elder Yao liked leaving tools, finished works, half-finished creations, and flawed prototypes scattered everywhere, she would not place them in absurdly dangerous locations. If something fell into a spatial fissure, it would simply be a loss.

At that moment, Qi Jiaoyao raised the sword in her hand, sliding her index and middle fingers of her left hand lightly across the blade.

In an instant, countless sword shadows appeared behind her, each closely aligned with the next, radiance flowing like a peacock spreading its tail. At a glance, there were nearly a thousand.

The sword in Qi Jiaoyao’s right hand was not used for direct strikes but for commands. Her left hand formed a sword seal from the Cihang Sword Sequence.

After all, she was a natural-born Banished Immortal, with more than enough capacity to learn new methods, much better than Qi Xuansu.

At this moment, Qi Jiaoyao merged two sword techniques into one. Her sleeves fluttered fiercely, snapping loudly in the air.

With a single point of her sword, more than a thousand sword shadows surged forward together, densely converging like a storm of feathers launched in unison.

The only movement within the temple was that of the swords.

The Taiyin Corpse had just been heavily wounded by Qi Xuansu’s punch and was still reconstructing its body, utterly unable to resist. In an instant, it was drowned beneath countless sword shadows.

When the barrage ended, the Taiyin Corpse had once again been sliced to pieces, its flesh stripped away until only a skeletal frame remained, streaked with lingering strands of blood—a ghastly sight.

Without flesh obstructing the view, a blood-red stone suspended within its chest was clearly visible, surrounded by thick black qi. This was the prototype of the Longevity Stone.

Looking closer, one would notice numerous droplets of black blood floating around the Taiyin Corpse, each distinct and full, glistening like crystal.

Boom! The blood droplets burst apart, transforming into mist.

The blood mist spread, eventually condensing into more than a dozen black-and-red giant serpents. Their tails converged behind the Taiyin Corpse’s skeleton, like swaying appendages, sweeping away the remaining sword shadows and preventing Qi Jiaoyao from attacking the Longevity Stone prototype that had already been cracked by Qi Xuansu’s punch.

At the same time, flesh began regrowing over the Taiyin Corpse at a rate visible to the naked eye.

This time, however, Qi Xuansu would not give the Taiyin Corpse another chance. Ignoring the frenzied whipping of the many blood serpents, he pressed forward and seized the Longevity Stone prototype that was beating like a heart in his right hand.

In an instant, veins bulged along his entire right arm, while numerous body spirits manifested, each mirroring his grasping motion.

Qi Xuansu seemed to enter a state of pure contest of strength.

Though the Longevity Stone prototype appeared within easy reach, the moment he grasped it, he felt countless bindings pulling against him, like an invisible web with the stone at its center. To take it away, he would have to tear apart the entire net.

It was clear that implanting a Longevity Stone prototype was far more than simply placing it inside the chest cavity. The stone had fused completely with the host, forming a system in which touching one part would affect the whole.

For Qi Xuansu to take the prototype was by no means as simple as ripping out a heart. He had to uproot the entire implanted structure while he faced tremendous resistance.

Even so, his right hand advanced with unwavering determination, moving forward bit by bit at an extremely slow pace, gradually shifting the position of the Longevity Stone Heart.

Faint cracking sounds echoed, as though invisible bonds were being forcibly torn apart by his brute strength.

It was clear that once Qi Xuansu tore out the stone, the Taiyin Corpse would collapse immediately.

Amid the continuous tearing sounds, the Taiyin Corpse’s regeneration slowed, and its aura weakened rapidly.

The voice controlling the Taiyin Corpse spoke again. “A Zaohua-stage Martial Arts Practitioner is hardly a nobody. Who exactly are you?”

Still wrenching at the stone, Qi Xuansu replied, “What, seeing that you can’t defeat me, you want to learn my identity so you can report to the Earthly Preceptor and have the Daoist Order hunt me down?”

The guard spoke. “Even if you won’t tell me, I’ll remember what you look like anyway.”

Qi Xuansu replied indifferently, “Since you know I’m a Zaohua-stage Martial Arts Practitioner, then you should know that I can change my appearance at will. Even if you remember me, what can you do? The Earthly Preceptor might punish you for false reporting.”

The voice fell silent.

For Martial Arts Practitioners above the Everchanging Realm, changing one’s face was trivial. Certain artifacts, like the Bone-Illuminating Mirror could reveal a Martial Arts Practitioner’s true form. But the Taiyin Corpse could not see through the man’s identity.

After a moment, the voice spoke again, clearly tinged with anger. “If that’s the case, then neither of you will leave here alive. Let’s die together.”

Countless beams of blood-red light burst from the cracks in the Longevity Stone prototype that Qi Xuansu had fractured. The entire stone exploded, transforming into a blood-red storm that swept across and engulfed everything around it.

Under normal circumstances, a Longevity Stone could not explode. However, since this was only a prototype, it implied that there were other developmental paths.

Qi Xuansu reacted swiftly. Besides his indestructible body, his Banished Immortal lineage was at the Wuliang stage, so he was able to manifest the Joyous Cloud Shield. He also had his Shaman lineage’s Spiritual Body.

The blood-red storm first had to break through the Joyour Cloud Shield and then the Spiritual Body, before it could ultimately reach Qi Xuansu’s Martial Arts Practitioner physique.

Qi Jiaoyao once again deployed the Ruyi Light Barrier, sealing herself tightly within while retreating backward.

The blood-red storm soon became a crimson tidal wave, swallowing the entire temple.

After an unknown amount of time, the crimson storm gradually subsided, receding like the ebbing tide.

The Taiyin Corpse was reduced to nothing but a skeleton, jade-like and crystalline, without the slightest trace of excess flesh. Not even a single blood droplet remained.

Not far from the Taiyin Corpse, Qi Xuansu withdrew his Manly Immortal True Form, returning to his normal state. Though he bore no visible injuries and even the Youyi Cloud Robe remained intact, his aura was clearly weakened. The self-destruction of a Great Asura had evidently caused him considerable trouble.

Suddenly, a rustling sound echoed. The Taiyin Corpse’s skeleton quickly weathered away, turning into drifting ash and dispersing.

However, the voice that had remotely controlled the Taiyin Corpse did not depart immediately. It continued to echo from all directions, its source impossible to pinpoint. “We will meet again. I will be waiting for you at Lingshan.”

This statement partially resolved some of Qi Xuansu’s doubts, such as why the Lingshan guard did not recognize him. Judging from his words, he had remained at Lingshan all along, truly isolated from the world. In the mountains, years passed by unnoticed, so it was perfectly reasonable that the guard did not recognize Qi Xuansu.

Of course, this also meant that the Taiyin Corpse was on Lingshan and had deduced that Qi Xuansu and Qi Jiaoyao were heading there.

Setting aside whether the guard’s true body was stronger than the Taiyin Corpse, the key point was that Lingshan was his territory, giving him a genuine advantage in terrain. With additional constructs, mechanisms, or formations, Qi Xuansu and Qi Jiaoyao could easily find themselves overwhelmed.

But Lingshan was already close at hand. Qi Xuansu could not be frightened away by a few words and simply retreat; only by personally venturing forward would he be satisfied.