Spirit Ruin, Sword Coffin, Blind Swordsman

Boom, boom, boom!

Even Gu Li was taken aback by the ferocity of the lightning.

At its deepest point, the pool seethed with the most terrifying purple-black lightning of all. These were remnants of the pill tribulations triggered whenever tier-eight pills were refined. Though weaker than a true Heavenly Tribulation, they were not weaker by much. Worse still, an astonishing amount of lightning had accumulated in the pool.

The Gu clan’s alchemists were no ordinary people. Those who came here to refine pills were all figures of considerable ability, such as Han Yuan and Guo Feng. After so many years, the amount of tribulation lightning gathered within the Gu family’s lightning pool had reached monstrous proportions.

Meng Wanshu sensed Gu Li plunge into the pool, talismans blazing across every inch of his body.

Whenever lightning struck him, one of the talismans flared and burned away its power. The talismans also completely concealed Gu Li’s presence. His entry went far more smoothly than Meng Wanshu’s and did not provoke another rampage from the pool.

Even so, Gu Li advanced with extreme caution. A single misstep would doom all three of them.

Nine Heavens and the remaining jiao dragon had entered the final stage of their mating, their cries now low and muffled.

Sensing the disturbance in the lightning pool, Nine Heavens grew anxious. It did not want the others to be hurt on its account.

Gu Li reached Li Guanqi and Meng Wanshu. Without a word, he covered them both in talismans.Suddenly, a beam of light pierced through the realm’s barrier and shot straight toward the center of the lightning pool.

Gu Li’s eyes widened. His pupils trembled as he glared toward the void. Two dark-red cloud boats, each more than two hundred zhang long, slowly emerged.

There was no time to think. The beam struck the center of the lightning pool and triggered a lightning storm. The purple-black lightning-element power twisted into a towering tornado and surged into the sky, engulfing all three of them in a heartbeat.

Talisman after talisman shattered. Gu Li broke out into a cold sweat. His storage rings flared brilliantly, and a vast flood of talismans enveloped the trio in an instant.

He crushed several jade slips in quick succession, but their spatial fluctuations vanished without a trace. The rampaging lightning storm had made spatial communication impossible.

Meng Wanshu’s voice cut through. “Forget it. They came prepared. Get ready to fight for our lives!”

Ye Feng and the others were scattered throughout the Gu clan’s Paradise Realm, focused on preparing for their own breakthroughs. None of them knew that anything had gone wrong on Li Guanqi’s end.

The relentless explosions jolted Li Guanqi out of his cultivation. The instant his eyes opened, he scanned his surroundings and understood the situation.

His expression darkened, and he unsheathed the Red Lotus Sword from behind his back.

His aura surged. He took Meng Wanshu’s hand, his eyes tightening with pain at the sight of her drenched in blood and covered in wounds.

He yanked a talisman off himself and slapped it onto Gu Li. The two men exchanged a look, understanding each other without a word.

Still holding Meng Wanshu’s hand, Li Guanqi seized Gu Li by the collar. Relying solely on the monstrous strength of his physical body, he charged straight into the heart of the lightning storm.

At the same moment, a chorus of jiao dragon roars thundered through the pool. Four pitch-black ink jiao dragons, each more than a hundred zhang long, burst from the pool’s depths.

Overwhelming demonic beast pressure erupted from them. The jiao dragons lowered their heads for the trio to climb aboard, then swept their massive bodies through the lightning and carried them out of the pool.

The moment they reached the edge of the realm, Nine Heavens unleashed a furious dragon roar that resounded across a hundred li.

Roar!

Yang qi surged powerfully through the four ink jiao dragons. The strongest among them was already showing faint signs of an impending breakthrough, while the other three were nearing the peak of the seventh tier.

At Nine Heavens’ roar, a vicious light flashed through the dragons’ golden slit pupils. They no longer restrained the savage, predatory ferocity unique to demonic beasts.

The trio’s hearts tightened under the weight of their auras. These jiao dragons were not to be trifled with. In their present condition, none of them could match even one.

One of the jiao dragons smashed through the realm’s spatial barrier with a direct charge. Its enormous body reared upright as it opened its fanged maw and roared at the distant cloud boats.

The two cloud boats were only a few thousand zhang away. The powerful auras concealed aboard them put Li Guanqi on full alert.

Li Guanqi swept a sharp gaze over the cloud boats. Meanwhile, Gu Li seized the opportunity to crush several more jade slips and transmit a message to his family. Once again, their spatial fluctuations disappeared as though swallowed by still water.

Meng Wanshu drew the Sword Phantom Sword and said coldly, “It’s no use. Since they’ve showed themselves this openly, they must have come fully prepared. All that matters now is who they are and whether we can handle them.”

Li Guanqi narrowed his eyes. The flame spirit mark between his brows looked ready to shatter at any moment.

Gu Li had somehow found the time to cover all of his fingers with storage rings, each glowing softly. He had also rolled up his sleeves to reveal tightly packed armlets covering both his arms from the wrists to the elbows.

And that wasn’t all. Li Guanqi noticed a mysterious light shimmering across the thirty-six white jade beads on Gu Li’s belt. They were clearly more than mere ornaments. Each bead contained a separate storage space.

Li Guanqi’s mouth twitched. Each of Gu Li’s storage rings held at least a hundred thousand talismans. With that many storage spaces at his disposal, Gu Li’s stockpile of talismans had to be staggering.

Gu Li gritted his teeth, his voice low. “Damn it, let’s fight! I refuse to believe anyone can take us down.”

Strangely, the moment those aboard the cloud boats saw the four ink jiao dragons, light began pulsing from within both vessels. Then, amid Gu Li’s curses, the boats slipped back into the void and vanished without a trace.

Gu Li frowned and drew a sharp breath. “That was a clean exit. Even the spatial talismans I planted in the void failed to mark them. The fluctuations felt like those of an ancient teleportation scroll, though I’m not very familiar with them.”

Li Guanqi lowered the Red Lotus Sword and breathed a sigh of relief. There was no doubt about it. They had been after Nine Heavens.

He turned to Gu Li. “Your family has a mole. They were obviously targeting Nine Heavens. We’ve only been at the Gu clan estate for a few days, yet they still found us. That can’t be a coincidence. Also… there’s something strangely familiar about those dark-red cloud boats.”

Li Guanqi suddenly remembered where he had seen such cloud boats before. The Zhu clan’s cloud boats had been present during their wager duels against the Lu clan, and the vessels that had attacked them looked remarkably similar.

A cold smile touched Li Guanqi’s lips. “Interesting. It seems the Lu and Zhu clans truly have no regard for the Eight Generals of the Seven Territories.”

Neither Meng Wanshu nor Gu Li understood what Li Guanqi meant. They watched as he pulled out a green jade slip and spoke almost offhandedly. “Uncle Nangong, I think people from the Zhu clan just ambushed me.”

Li Guanqi put the jade slip away and looked down at the four ink jiao dragons, now calm and docile beneath them. “It seems I owe the Nine Dragon Immortal Sect a great debt this time.”

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