This change was no simple matter. Ever since Ling Tianwei had begun cultivating, he had never taken a conservative path. On top of that, his Intent of Death and Intent of Resentment had raised the upper limit of the foul resentment within him.
Thus, the foul resentment around Ling Tianwei had already reached an unimaginable level.
And the Vengeful Curse Yuan Xixiao had cast now had undoubtedly become the fuse that lit it all.
More importantly, all the spiritual energy Ling Tianwei had absorbed since he began cultivating had been incomparably violent. Mixed together, one could well imagine just how complicated the situation inside his body had become.
The fact that Ling Tianwei had managed to maintain it at a point of balance was already an extremely miraculous thing.
Yet Yuan Xixiao had insisted on blowing it apart.
This explosion was no small matter. Yuan Xixiao seemed to sense something as well, and an ominous premonition rose within him.
Ling Tianwei's movements did indeed stop under the Vengeful Curse, but an aura of destruction was spreading from his body.
Beyond that came a terrifying pressure far surpassing the Foundation Establishment Realm.
A twisted, malformed black shadow struggled behind Ling Tianwei.
The aberrant shadow stretched without end. In an instant, the stench of deathly resentment and bloody Killing Intent filled the entire arena.
At that moment, Ling Tianwei's eyes turned scarlet, and even the spiritual energy around him became suffused with malice.
At this instant, Ling Tianwei seemed like absolute evil that had crawled out of hell.
The sudden change plunged the entire dueling platform into silence. The spectators, too, fell quiet as they stared at the twisted, stretched, mutilated shadow behind Ling Tianwei.
Even the elders outside the dueling platform felt that something was amiss.
"Zzt..."
Darkness descended.
In an instant, the winds and clouds changed. A mass of dark clouds shrouded the sky.
A suffocating sense of unease swept over them as dense killing intent erupted and poured forth.
"What is going on? What a terrifying aura."
"What happened to Senior Brother Ling? He feels almost like one of those Nascent Soul elders."
Crack...
Compared to those outside, Yuan Xixiao was facing Ling Tianwei head-on. His face immediately went pale, and his whole body began trembling uncontrollably.
At this moment, he was completely dumbfounded. He could not understand whether the Vengeful Curse had succeeded or not.
According to Xiao E, stirring up the foul resentment would cause Ling Tianwei to suffer a cultivation deviation, give birth to inner demons, and directly stain his Spiritual Platform.
But none of those scenes had happened. Right now, it looked more as though Ling Tianwei himself had become an inner demon.
Dense wickedness, Death Intent, and bloody Killing Intent rushed at him head-on.
"Kill, kill, kill..."
Whispers rang out beside Yuan Xixiao's ears.
Yuan Xixiao likely had never expected that his Vengeful Curse would not only fail to stir up the foul resentment within Ling Tianwei, but instead cause the violent power inside him to erupt. At the same time, it reignited three kinds of Dao Intent. As they combined in pairs, two extreme and violent powers exploded forth.
This pushed Ling Tianwei into an utterly explosive state. His entire body's spiritual power contained three kinds of Dao Intent, along with endlessly fissioning spiritual power. Every part of his body was constantly entering a state of extreme fission.
As a result, the power around Ling Tianwei multiplied more than a hundredfold. Under normal circumstances, this condition might have caused him to explode outright.
But Ling Tianwei happened to possess the Sacrifice Dao Undying Body. At this moment, his abnormal state was attributed to his activating a secret art that erupted his spiritual power and raised his realm.
Thus, Ling Tianwei was still able to maintain an undying state.
Feeling the unprecedented power within his body, Ling Tianwei grinned. Together with the dense Intent of Death and Intent of Resentment behind him, he looked like a great demon descending upon the world.
Though he did not know where this power had come from, killing Yuan Xixiao was the right thing to do.
"Kill."
Ling Tianwei muttered, forming a hand seal as dense Killing Intent erupted from his eyes in an instant.
A Baleful Intent seemingly born from mountains of corpses and seas of blood shot straight into the heavens.
Ling Tianwei completed the hand seal. Amid the erupting fission throughout his body, he raised one hand.
"Condense Heaven."
This was an absolute offensive technique within the immortal art Five Intents Condense Heaven Art, performed through Dao Intent.
But after Ling Tianwei's modifications, the Condensing Heaven Intent combined all three intents—death and resentment surged into the sky, with Killing Intent leading the way...
Boom! The broken, twisted phantom behind Ling Tianwei covered half the sky. The enormous energy inspired instinctive terror, as though it had stirred up the most humble and sensitive feelings hidden in everyone's hearts.
A vortex of black clouds emerged. This power had already far surpassed that of a Foundation Establishment cultivator and infinitely approached the power of a Nascent Soul cultivator.
Boom...
The elders above changed expression at that moment.
"Not good, that is Dao Intent."
"You little brat!"
Xiao E's face was filled with disbelief. At the same time, he stared viciously and warily at Ling Tianwei. He could fully imagine just how terrifying Ling Tianwei would become if he were allowed to grow.
He immediately activated the power of the late Divine Transformation Realm and struck out with his palm.
A gigantic palm imprint stirred up a violent surge of spiritual energy and smashed viciously toward Ling Tianwei. It looked less like he was trying to stop Ling Tianwei and more like he intended to kill him.
The moment Bai Muxu saw Xiao E make his move, he slapped his hand out. The Chitian Sword behind him streaked across the sky, its razor-sharp edge carrying a flash of sword light as it slashed toward the palm imprint in midair.
Clang...
A sword cry rang out. Two surging powers exploded in midair, raising a tidal wave of spiritual energy.
The sword light shot skyward and simply pierced through the giant palm imprint. In an instant, the imprint shattered and turned into scattered points of starlight.
The clash between two great Divine Transformation cultivators nearly pressed all the disciples on the dueling platform to the point where they could not breathe.
Even so, such pressure had no effect whatsoever on Ling Tianwei.
Instead, his sure-kill strike had already headed toward Yuan Xixiao.
With death certain.
The other elders of Lingxu Sacred Land looked at Yuan Xixiao. In the end, someone still chose to intervene and block it.
After all, Lingxu Sacred Land had not yet fallen out with Baiyuan Sacred Land, while the other two great sacred lands were opportunists who steered with the wind. Lingxu Sacred Land was powerful, and it might use this matter to stir up trouble.
Therefore, Yuan Xixiao could be crippled, but he could not die.
In the end, it was Ye Changxu of Yinfa Peak, a Nascent Soul Realm elder, who made his move. Feeling the attack formed from Ling Tianwei's Condensing Heaven Intent, he managed to block it.
Yet the power Ling Tianwei had unleashed still left him utterly shocked.
He found it hard to imagine that a Foundation Establishment cultivator could launch an attack comparable to one from the Nascent Soul Realm. If it had been a Golden Core cultivator instead, Ling Tianwei might have killed him in an instant.
Foundation Establishment in a hundred days, fighting across realms, a Heavenly Spirit Root, reaching the summit of the Heart-Questioning Stairway—when all of these were added together, it seemed to proclaim that Lingxu Sacred Land had welcomed an extraordinary genius.
As Ling Tianwei's attack was blocked, the power gathered throughout his body also deflated, as though that crazed eruption from before had merely been an illusion.
Having regained his senses, Ling Tianwei kept savoring the feeling from just now.
Yuan Xixiao had already collapsed limply to the ground. Faced with Ling Tianwei's surging power and the sensation of standing at death's door, Yuan Xixiao could clearly feel that his pants had grown slightly damp.
Countless despairing scenes also surfaced before his eyes—his family being tortured to death, everything being stripped away from him, cultivators becoming mortals.
"No, no..."
"Hahaha..."
For a moment, Yuan Xixiao screamed as though half-collapsed and half-laughing.
Only then did Bai Muxu and Xiao E, who had been exchanging blows in midair, stop. They looked at each other, each able to sense the killing intent in the other's eyes.