Make the Immortal Sect Great Again

The moment Wang Ping dropped into Dao Proving Mountain, ninety-nine percent of the expectant, scrutinizing gazes converging from all sides vanished.

Even Daoist Master Hanguang Danyang could hardly mask his disappointment.

’Is that all?’

If a mere arhat could substitute Wang Ping and the heavy treasure on him out of the Eight Trigrams Furnace, the grade of that artifact could hardly amount to much.

There was nothing extraordinary about it.

At least to a True Person of his standing, such a treasure might possess a few profound quirks, but it would never match something forged with his own hands.

Naturally, to an inferior cultivator at the Tribulation Transcending Third Layer, it was still a heaven-defying stroke of fortune; even Qi Refining practitioners might tear one another apart for it.

Yet across the endless years of a True Person’s life, such fortunes were rare, not nonexistent. If direct kin of certain True Persons or even True Monarchs were cherished enough, they might be born endowed with comparable providence. Stripped of the mystique, it was merely that.

It seemed Wang Ping was just one of those lucky few.

With that, Daoist Master Hanguang Danyang lost all interest in Wang Ping. Directing his divine intent, he immediately began a sweeping probe of Wang Ping’s body.At the same time, Wang Ping felt as if he had plunged into an icy abyss.

The instant he touched down upon Dao Proving Mountain, a twenty-four-colored radiance blasted into his frame with overbearing, unyielding force.

All he could do was tightly guard his sea of consciousness.

Yet in this moment, his heart held not the slightest dejection, despair, or gloom—instead, a wave of deep, unburdened relief rose from within him.

The reason was simple.

”...He succeeded?”

Deep within the radiance, Daoist Master Hanguang Danyang perceived the transformation within Wang Ping’s flesh, and the look of triumph on his face instantly hardened.

He didn’t make it in time?

Impossible! His calculations on every detail were infallible. Even if Lian Ruzhao had manifested the Martial Dao to perfection, someone of Wang Ping’s ability could never have condensed the corresponding spirit body in so brief a span, let alone dissolved his Longevity Immortal Physique. Some outside force had to have aided him.

’Who was it?’

Daoist Master Hanguang Danyang locked his gaze onto Wang Ping. Churning a Major Divine Ability, he peered into the karmic shifts woven about him.

Scenes of light and shadow soon surfaced.

It was Wang Ping’s past, tracing his recent encounters within the Eight Trigrams Furnace. Daoist Master Hanguang Danyang did not let a single anomaly escape him.

At last, his gaze pinned itself to one figure.

”It’s you...”

Meanwhile, inside the Eight Trigrams Furnace, with Wang Ping gone, Xuanxiao’s clone naturally had no wish to keep fighting. Pulling back, he revealed the figure of Mingyou.

Having just clashed with the clone of a True Person, his aura should have been shattered and his injuries beyond cure. Yet drenched in blood though he was, Mingyou showed no hint of faltering; instead, his aura surged high. Within the auspicious clouds above his head, beside the Earth Yin Fire and the Heaven Yang Fire, a third radiance blazed into being!

The Human Yin Fire!

With all three qi assembled, the Li Trigram was on the verge of completion. The exact moment Wang Ping successfully forged his True Martial Sacred Body, Mingyou’s own cultivation had finally attained perfection!

”Indeed, True Person, it is I once more!”

Mingyou threw his head back in booming laughter. In Wang Ping’s tightly guarded sea of consciousness, an intensely brilliant candle flame burned fiercely, elevating his comprehension!

More than that, a potent imprint of time lingered over Wang Ping. From the instant he attempted to forge the True Martial Sacred Body, through the successive interventions of the True Persons, it felt prolonged, yet fewer than sixty breaths had elapsed. To Wang Ping, however, it seemed as though six full two-hour periods had passed!

The Heaven-Reversing Sun-Turning Sundial—a Major Divine Ability that manipulated the flow of time!

This supreme ability, which Wang Ping once viewed as unimaginable, had been turned upon him in full—not to turn back time, but to accelerate it!

Witnessing this, Daoist Master Hanguang Danyang offered a quiet murmur of praise.

’Using the Discerning Truth and Illusion Illuminating Qi to heighten his comprehension first, then deploying a divine power to accelerate time... So that was it. That was how he bridged the deficit?’

Merely possessing such methods was one thing.

What truly astonished him was that Mingyou had enacted all of this while locked in direct combat with Xuanxiao’s clone. That alone commanded admiration.

Yet soon enough, his brow furrowed again.

’No, that still isn’t enough. There should still be a sliver missing.’

Brilliant as Mingyou’s execution had been, in the end, it had not exceeded his expectations, nor should it have drifted past his calculations.

In other words, even with Mingyou pushing matters to this point, Wang Ping should still have fallen just short of forming the True Martial Sacred Body and dissolving the Longevity Immortal Physique.

Yet he had succeeded nonetheless.

’How was that final sliver accounted for?’

Daoist Master Hanguang Danyang’s gaze came to rest on Wang Ping once more. Discarding every impossibility, the final answer, absurd as it seemed, remained the sole truth:

’Did he experience a sudden breakthrough at death’s door?’

The Great Dao encompasses fifty, heaven conceals forty-nine, and man escapes with the one. There truly remained that infinitesimal possibility that human comprehension had surged, closing that final sliver of error.

In truth, that was precisely what had occurred.

Within the space of the Taiping Sutra, Wang Ping let out a long breath. Watching a scripture scroll slowly lose its luster before him, a heartfelt smile broke across his face.

A promise worth a thousand gold!

This was the crucial variable Daoist Master Hanguang Danyang had miscalculated. On its own, the scripture scroll could never have allowed Wang Ping to forge the True Martial Sacred Body so swiftly.

Yet with Mingyou’s intervention—the candle flame elevating his comprehension coupled with the accelerated time—the progress of the True Martial Sacred Body had surged past ninety percent in an instant. The remaining single-digit deficit fell squarely within the scope of a promise worth a thousand gold, allowing him to advance the rest on credit!

This was his unmatched gift for taking out loans.

This was the sacred bond between master and disciple!

Far in the distance, within the Eight Trigrams Furnace, as Wang Ping dissolved his Longevity Immortal Physique, the Tianzhu Cave Abode lost the last tether of guiding light holding it to the mortal realm.

With a thunderous roar, it vanished into concealment!

With that, Daoist Master Hanguang Danyang’s contingency—to draw out the Earth Yang Wood, secure Xuanxiao’s support, and slay Xianfu—collapsed entirely.

In this placement on the board, he had lost once again.

At this realization, even someone of his composure could not suppress a faint shade of disappointment. ”Pity, a true pity. I can only settle for the alternative.”

With those words, he turned his gaze away.

He looked no more at Wang Ping, spared no further thought for the Tianzhu Cave Abode, and did not even glance at Xianfu, treating them all as smoke blown past the eyes.

A loss was a loss; it changed little.

After all, he had already reclaimed his victory through another piece.

Following his gaze, Daoist Master Xuanxiao Yingyuan shifted his attention as well, looking toward another realm alongside the many presences lurking in the dark.

The Eight Trigrams Furnace.

There, Arhat Shengle stood petrified.

He was an honored arhat, a slayer of passions, unborn, worthy of offerings. Yet all of that unraveled into drifting plumes of smoke at this moment, quietly coalescing in the air.

He had trespassed into the Eight Trigrams Furnace.

”A mis... a misunderstanding...”

Arhat Shengle’s lips trembled. He tried to explain, but found no words to offer. He could only hoist his dharma body with all his might, seeking to flee toward the dominion of the Brahma Nation at top speed.

The issue was not whether he had been framed; the issue was that he stood boldly upon the grounds of the Eight Trigrams Furnace without an Immortal Decree.

In this instant, heaven and earth fell into total stillness. Even True Persons held their breath, fixing their eyes upon the supreme immortal blade suspended high in the vault of heaven above the Eight Trigrams Furnace. And the blade did not disappoint them: a radiant, shimmering scripture scroll had already unfurled.

An Immortal Decree!

In that breath, the Twenty-Four Qi of heaven and earth manifested one after another... and beyond the Twenty-Four Qi, even the Ancient Qi of the Six Heavens, which should have been extinguished long ago, blazed with light!

Alongside them stood boundless trigrams.

Qian, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Li, Gen, Dui. The eight trigrams spanned above and below, left and right, front and back, past and future, standing seamless between heaven and earth.

This was no immortal principle; simply because the Immortal Decree had appeared here, it naturally commanded this wondrous resonance from all things under heaven.

Then, everyone saw it.

The decree slowly dimmed, replaced by a silhouette so indistinct it defied observation, appearing at first glance like nothing more than an ink mark upon the world.

Then, He extended a hand.

The Heaven’s Will Profound Blade settled into His grip, causing the five mysteries etched upon the blade to blaze like fire, rolling outward with unmatched might.

Severing the Dao, Severing Lifespan, Severing Law, Severing Man, Severing Qi.

The five mysteries converged. Yet within the hand of that indistinct silhouette, like a butterfly tearing free of its cocoon or a phoenix reborn from flame, they gave rise to a sixth, supreme law.

Severing Truth.

Arhat Shengle stood frozen in place.

He had fled with all his strength, yet before that indistinct figure, where the blade’s edge pointed, he felt as though he had been cast back into a pathetic mortal form of mundane flesh and bone.

The sliver of ”truth” he had cultivated with so much hardship failed to leave behind the faintest trace.

Crack...

A faint fracture, a brittle snap, abruptly burst from the center of the Brahma Nation arhat’s brow, sweeping outward across his entire dharma body.

No one saw what had happened.

Unlike the interventions of True Persons or True Monarchs, aside from the phenomena that had spontaneously answered the Immortal Decree, there was not the slightest disturbance from beginning to end.

It was simple to the utmost extreme.

Had it not been for the thirty qi of heaven and earth and the eight trigrams encircling that indistinct silhouette, anyone looking upon Him would have taken Him for a common mortal.

He merely stood there, holding the Heaven’s Will Profound Blade.

Then, a gust of wind drifted through.

Arhat Shengle’s eyes went wide, as though beholding some terror beyond reckoning. His dharma body fractured, shattered, and disintegrated into nothingness.

He was dead.

Without suspense, without a lingering thread of vitality, he collapsed under the gaze of every True Person and True Monarch, reduced to a hollow, mortal imitation.

They could not even comprehend it.

In a breath, the upheavals in the Eight Trigrams Furnace brought on by the moves and clashes of the various masters were entirely smoothed away.

The gazes that had converged on the Eight Trigrams Furnace scattered like birds and beasts.

Soon after, it was Clear Heaven and Bright Earth.

Even the indistinct silhouette had faded away unnoticed, leaving behind only the Heaven’s Will Profound Blade, rippling with a soft, translucent glow.