An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

Chapter 533: Landslide Shatters the Formation, Slaying Yan Leizi, Withered Toad’s Vengeance, The Underground Door (II)

With those final words, Yan Leizi closed his eyes. The next instant, his entire head erupted in flame, igniting without fire! Thus fell the once-renowned thunder expert Yan Leizi, whose very name had once made battlefields tremble. He perished without even managing to strike a single proper blow against Luo Chen.

Yet before Luo Chen could relax his guard, something stirred amid the dispersing smoke. A flame-shaped mark suddenly drifted out from the curling green smoke and shot straight toward Luo Chen. Luo Chen’s expression shifted slightly. ”A curse?”

He sneered coldly and beat his wings. His figure blurred as he retreated, putting more and more distance between himself and Trapping Hollow Valley with every breath. At such a distance, that so-called curse was bound to lose its effect altogether.

Something’s wrong! Luo Chen slapped his forehead, feeling a scorching heat enveloping the area. It was like something was trying to burn its way into his very soul!

Without hesitation, he cast Water Mirror and stared into the reflection. Reflected in the mirror was his handsome face, aside from a gloomy expression; a small flame was burning right on his forehead.

Damn it! What is this? Why can’t I shake it off even from such a distance? Fire arts? A divine soul secret art? Or something else entirely?

One question after another flooded his mind. Luo Chen’s face turned so cloudy it looked as though it might start raining.

Just then, a sharp crash echoed from the direction of Trapping Hollow Valley, like an avalanche of stones coming down a cliffside. For the time being, he forced aside the matter of the flame mark and flew back toward the source of the sound.

Before he even reached the valley, this source appeared before his eyes—a disheveled figure was frantically fleeing while swinging a jade ruler. Behind him, Wang Yuan’s black hair flew wildly, and his cold black eyes were locked onto the man. He looked as though he wore some kind of ancient suit of armor, and he chased with great strides. From time to time, he unleashed the Divine Blood Tribulation Finger. No matter how the fleeing man tried to block or evade, several of the blood-red streaks he had dodged doubled back in eerie curves, homing in once again.

Within moments, his body was riddled with gaping holes. Blood gushed from his wounds like a burst dam. His energy flow weakened dramatically, plunging into a steep decline.

Thud!

The man could no longer support himself. He fell heavily to the ground. One knee struck the earth as he clutched his chest, his breath ragged and uneven. Only then did Wang Yuan finally lower his hand and stop attacking.

With a few swift motions, Luo Chen descended beside him. ”Are you alright?”

”Not dying yet,” Wang Yuan replied between breaths. He took a deep breath and the ancient-looking armor on his body gradually faded. Then he pulled out a coarse hemp robe and casually draped it over himself.

Luo Chen nodded slightly. Wang Yuan was injured, and quite severely at that. But if he could still talk like that, it meant there was no critical danger. More importantly, now wasn’t the time for catching up. Luo Chen turned his gaze to the man lying on the ground, and his expression darkened.

At that very moment, the man raised his head and glared up at the two of them with unbridled hatred. There was something about that face, something faintly familiar.

”You’re... Withered Toad?” Luo Chen asked hesitantly.

The old man didn’t reply. He simply glared, his eyes filled with venomous rage. Luo Chen frowned. ”There’s no deep grudge between us. We each serve our own sects on the battlefield. You’ve already killed your fair share of the Luo Tian Society cultivators. But why go so far, chasing Wang Yuan down like a madman?”

”No deep grudge?” Withered Toad let out a hollow laugh, as if he’d just heard the most ridiculous thing in the world. He laughed so hard he completely ignored his own injuries. But before long, the pain caught up with him. His laughter turned into coughing, deep and violent.

Ahem, Ahem...

As he coughed, he spat out bloody foam, and within it, faint traces of shredded internal organs could be seen.

Luo Chen still didn’t understand. Beside him, Wang Yuan pressed his lips into a line and said coldly, ”Oh, there’s a deep grudge, one of those that doesn’t end until someone’s dead.”

Hm? Luo Chen glanced at him.

”Huo Quan,” Wang Yuan said, his tone like the edge of a blade. ”That’s right, isn’t it?”

On the ground, Withered Toad’s head snapped up. His eyes filled with venomous hatred as he stared at them. ”The hatred of a slain son... can never be reconciled!”

At the mention of Huo Quan, the corner of Luo Chen’s mouth twitched. He finally understood why the old man’s face seemed familiar. The man had a son Wang Yuan had allegedly slain, according to Yan Leizi. And as it turned out, that son was...Huo Hu! They had met him years back at Taishan Market. Later, in the Battle of Gaoling Plains, they had captured him, and as for what happened after...

Luo Chen’s eyes shifted to Wang Yuan’s back. Though the coarse robe hid his physique now, back then, the Blood Fiend Seizing Formation had been carved into Wang Yuan’s back! He had thought the matter had ended with the destruction of Chican Mountain, but he had not expected that a venomous snake had been lurking in the shadows all along.

Huo Quan did not even glance at Luo Chen. His hateful eyes were fixed solely on Wang Yuan. ”If you had simply killed him, I might’ve let it go. But no, you stripped him of his Dao foundation, devoured his flesh and blood essence. You didn’t even leave him the chance to reincarnate! With such devil acts, even if I don’t kill you today, the great cultivators of the Jade Cauldron Domain will never spare you!”

Luo Chen’s expression darkened slightly. The Blood Fiend Seizing Formation is a well-kept secret. How is it possible for him to know what Wang Yuan did?

Wang Yuan seemed to understand Luo Chen’s confusion and said calmly, ”The Flame Alliance has a technique that triggers bloodline resonance. Huo Quan was once an Inner Hall disciple of the Flame Alliance and learned it. At close range, he can sense everything that Huo Hu experienced through me.”

Luo Chen suddenly understood. He had heard of such techniques before. They could only be performed between direct blood relatives.

”If I hadn’t been wounded by that third-tier demonic beast, the Three-Legged River-Swallowing Toad, I would’ve killed you all long ago,” Huo Quan said with hatred. ”After I recovered and solidified my cultivation in the late stage, I learned you’d sided with a Golden Core-level major sect. That so-called Dan Chenzi is the inspiration of countless youths across the Jade Cauldron Domain. With my abilities, I couldn’t have entered Tianlan Immortal City to kill you.

”But heaven had mercy! The internal war between the two Nascent Soul sects of the Jade Cauldron Domain gave me this chance. I had planned to kill all the Luo Tian Society cultivators on the battlefield, then crush Wang Yuan, and finally draw you out.... But I failed at the very first step. Damn it! If only Yang Wei’s formation skills hadn’t been so poor....”

Before he could finish, Luo Chen’s brows knit together in irritation. A cold flash of sword light flickered from his palm as several sword orbs streaked through the air toward Huo Quan. Too much talking. This isn’t the place for drawn-out speeches or sentimental nonsense. No one has time for that here.

Yet just as the sword orbs launched, a jade ruler smacked them aside. Across the field, Withered Toad, or rather, Huo Quan, took in a breath. His chest swelled, his limbs bulged, and in the next instant, his entire body expanded grotesquely, resembling a monstrous toad coiling to strike. He lunged straight at Luo Chen and Wang Yuan.

Behind him, the jade ruler roared to life, growing rapidly in size until it loomed over the battlefield like a collapsing pillar of heaven. A hundred zhang tall and glowing with light, it plummeted downward in a killing arc, aimed to crush everything in its path.

He had given up on survival. This was a suicide attack, a desperate gamble to drag them down with him.

And yet, Wang Yuan only sneered coldly. He lifted his right hand, then clenched his fist tightly, as if to crush the air itself.

Boom!

Huo Quan’s swollen body exploded in midair. He never even reached them; in an instant, he was reduced to a storm of blood and organs. The jade ruler spun through the air and landed neatly into Luo Chen’s hand.

”Brother Wang, don’t you think that was a little... ruthless?” Luo Chen said with a helpless shake of his head, catching the ruler. ”I still need to clean up the battlefield, you know. Now there’s blood raining from the sky, just how much more work are you adding for me?”

Wang Yuan’s lips twitched slightly. He had watched Luo Chen fight earlier and vividly remembered the way Yan Leizi had died—his head incinerated in turn by blade and fire. Wasn’t that just as brutal and violent?

”This was merely one variation of Transforming Force,” Wang Yuan said evenly. ”After he took my Divine Blood Tribulation Finger, there was no outcome left for him but this.”

He spoke casually, his gaze shifting to Luo Chen’s forehead. ”What’s that?”

Luo Chen forced a smile. ”It’s nothing. Just a trick Yan Leizi left behind. Doesn’t seem dangerous for now. I’ll deal with it once we’re back.”

Seeing him speak like that, Wang Yuan didn’t press further. Luo Chen casually asked about the formation master who had been trapped inside the formation along with Wang Yuan.

The answer came back quickly and grimly. As expected, he was dead, and not even his bones were left behind. Between the backlash from the formation’s collapse and the devastating impact of the Landslide, the poor man had been utterly obliterated. Only a single formation disc remained intact, preserved by sheer luck. Everything else had been consumed by the molten lava that flooded through the mountain’s core.

Luo Chen nodded in satisfaction as he took a look at the formation disc, then slipped it into his storage pouch. A fully intact formation disc like this was a rare find. Once he returned, he could hand it over to Min Longyu. With his talent in formations, he would undoubtedly put it to good use and elevate Danxia Peak’s grand formation to a whole new level.

However, now wasn’t the time to worry about distributing spoils. Luo Chen moved swiftly across the battlefield, casting Cleanse again and again. Each time, wisps of energy flow vanished, his effort focused on wiping out every lingering trace of their presence. However, the destruction wrought by Landslide was far beyond repair.

In the midst of his work, he suddenly noticed Wang Yuan standing motionless in the distance. The man had returned to what had once been Trapping Hollow Valley, now nothing more than a desolate ruin. His tall figure stood still; his gaze was fixed upon the shattered earth below, and there was a faint crease between his brows.

”Brother Wang, what is it?” Luo Chen asked.

Wang Yuan did not respond immediately. He continued staring into the depths of the collapsed valley with an unreadable expression on his face. Finally, in a voice laced with uncertainty, he said, ”Luo Chen, I think... there’s a door down there?”