Daoist Arts

"Are you a Shina?"

Lan Yi spoke in Chinese, with a clear, authentic Tianjing accent—not the stiff pronunciation of the Dongyang people, who could not distinguish between R and L. Tadokoro Koichi's face suddenly turned much grimmer, like a chameleon changing color, and his attitude instantly shifted from utmost deference to disdainful anger.

So what if he was tall, handsome, and carried himself with extraordinary presence?

A useless man from a ruined motherland would naturally be looked down upon as well.

He had actually treated a Shina with such respect just now. If word of this got out in Puhai, his fellow countrymen would laugh at him—especially since he had recently been desperate to integrate into the Ocean Trade Club.

"That's right. I did say 'sick man of East Asia' just now, but you're very tall, so don't take it as an insult."

His attitude before and after was like night and day.

Tadokoro Koichi's tone immediately became impatient, and his gaze toward Lan Yi also turned somewhat hostile. Of course, it was only somewhat hostile for now. Lan Yi's short hair, finely tailored shirt, and obviously foreign-educated manner of speaking made Tadokoro Koichi decide to investigate him first before settling the matter.

But Lan Yi, who had already been offended, clearly had no intention of waiting before settling the matter.

He slowly raised his hand and spread his five fingers toward the Dongyang man.

This Tadokoro Koichi had quite some nerve. Lan Yi had not seen anyone act so arrogantly before him in a long time, so he prepared to give him a grand burial.

Almost in an instant.

Tadokoro Koichi's pupils contracted sharply, while the Dongyang woman beside him lost all composure and opened her mouth wide. It was not just the two of them—laborers, rickshaw pullers, gang members, constables, merchants, and foreigners coming and going near the wharf all widened their eyes in unison and stopped what they were doing.

Lan Yi's black crew cut transformed in the blink of an eye into a head of eerie, writhing snow-white hair!

Life Cluster: Cang Hua.

Position: Hair. Abilities: Fine as spider silk, peerlessly sharp, Magnetic Control and Evil Conversion, Seal Divine Abilities.

Cang Hua was one of the seventy-two Life Clusters required by the Nine Heavens Responding Primordial Treasury, as well as a Life Cluster Lan Yi himself possessed. With ample psychic energy and a wealth of Daoist knowledge, Cang Hua, as material for casting Daoist Arts, was enough to handle the vast majority of situations in this world.

When driven by Lan Yi, it looked like a demon god in 1909!

Lan Yi moved a finger slightly. A single strand of fine white hair spiraled loose and floated into his palm. In an instant, its two ends joined automatically, forming a rapidly spinning ring. The white ring rotated at high speed with perfect stability, directly transforming into a mass of plasma superfluid that radiated a dazzling light comparable to the noonday sun!

Shenxiao Peak Daoist Art Thunder.

A beginner-level Daoist Art from the leader of a sect in an Artificial Divine Realm, it had been modified and released through Lan Yi's hands. Its power was exaggeratedly amplified a thousandfold!

BOOM!!!

It was like thunder from heaven splitting the sky, rumbling deafeningly! Everyone within a thousand meters lost control of their bodies in terror and collapsed onto the ground! Their minds went blank, like startled quails that had no idea what to do!

A blinding white light flashed. Everyone's vision went from extreme brightness to extreme darkness and then back to normal. By the time they were all weeping and struggling to see what had happened before them, they had gone directly from sitting to kneeling.

Tadokoro Koichi stood there completely unharmed.

Lan Yi lightly shook his hand, then blew toward Tadokoro Koichi.

Whoosh~~

The Tadokoro Koichi who had been unharmed just a moment earlier instantly turned into white ash, like someone petrified in a comic before being weathered by the wind and blown away without a trace. The Palm Thunder had not even affected the Dongyang woman holding his arm. She let out a piercing scream and, in her panic, leaped straight into the river.

Lan Yi was extremely satisfied.

Although he had lost a great many Life Clusters and this body retained only its basic psychic-energy furnace, with even his cultivation progress knocked back to the starting point, that did not prevent him from casting high-powered Daoist Arts. The power of geomagnetism was there for the taking!

"Thunder God has manifested!"

"An immortal has descended to the mortal realm!!"

"Grandpa Thunder God, please strike these foreign devils dead!"

"Immortal, protect us! Strike that pack of beasts dead!"

"Heaven has eyes! Heaven has eyes!!"

Lightning more direct than any charlatan wandering Daoist's tricks, annihilation more direct than any witch doctor's curses—even in the modern era, people would cry out for immortals after witnessing such a thing, let alone in this age of widespread ignorance. At this moment, a vast crowd within a thousand meters dropped straight to their knees. They did not merely kneel—they began kowtowing at high frequency.

Their heads struck the ground with resounding thuds. Some smashed their heads until they bled, their flesh becoming a bloody mess, while many who had originally worn numb, bewildered expressions instantly became fanatical.

They hated it!

Their nation's sovereignty had been surrendered, their people treated like pigs and dogs! On their own land, foreigners threw their weight around. They could seize your property, defile your wife and daughters, and even kill someone without anyone upholding justice! Those who could uphold justice had long since had their spines broken and become good dogs trained to bite people!

"Let me think. What other Daoist Arts would be suitable?"

Lan Yi ignored the voices around him that revered him like a god and looked toward the ironclad warship on the river near the wharf, which had already begun maneuvering and turning its cannons.

There were not many Shenxiao Peak Daoist Arts that could directly destroy a warship at present.

"Right! Then I'll use this!"

Lan Yi's expression brightened.

The eerily swaying white hair shed again. This time, the strands that fell did not land in Lan Yi's hand. Instead, magnetic-field forces lifted them and suspended them behind his head. The white strands connected end to end, effortlessly condensing into a ring and beginning to form an even more complex circular structure.

Within the ring were layer upon layer of extremely thin cavities. Each cavity was controlled by Cang Hua's Magnetic Control and Evil Conversion, maintaining powerful electrical energy like an energy crystal. When necessary, Lan Yi only needed to control Cang Hua to break the electromagnetic balance and release it.

Using the psychic energy of a basic psychic-energy furnace to leverage the energies of light, fire, earthquakes, landslides, electromagnetism, and cosmic rays throughout heaven and earth was a compulsory lesson for every psychic-energy cultivator.

Electricity and magnetism were inseparable.

Ninety-nine percent of the phenomena in this world could be explained through electromagnetic force or the rotation of magnetic fields.

Two bolts of lightning struck out from the crystal ring.

One fell onto the wharf, shattering the bricks and exposing rows of steel reinforcement bars. The other fell into the river, instantly ionizing a great deal of water vapor.

"The instantaneous output is currently more than Cang Hua can withstand. I'll use electrochemical agents instead of electromagnetic propulsion. In any case, with no psychic-energy cultivators interfering, the substitute should have roughly the same effect." Lan Yi muttered to himself, his movements becoming faster as he used both hands to assist in the control.

The steel reinforcement bars were melted by current passing through high-resistance materials, becoming iron balls the size of lychees. The ionized water vapor was further pressurized and heated by the current, transforming into vortices that surged madly toward an ionized state!

Lan Yi even floated into the air!

White light flickered in his eyes. Lan Yi swept both hands outward, and in an instant blue electrical arcs flashed wildly across the ring behind him. Violent electromagnetic force was injected into the ionized water vapor, erupting and driving it forward! The many iron balls fixed in place by Cang Hua's electromagnetism shot toward the ironclad warship a thousand meters away at ten times the speed of sound!

Nansheng Sect Daoist Art Armor Divine Thunder (Pseudonymous).