Golden light flashed like lightning in Dao Xuan's eyes, piercing the void. His aura was perfectly rounded and full, vast as an abyss!
The Top Three Flowers solidified like gold and jade, while the Five Qi Facing the Origin circulated without end. A mighty pressure far surpassing that of a Mid True Immortal erupted, instantly filling the entire Enlightenment Secret Realm and setting the spiritual pool rippling as grass and trees bowed low!
Late True Immortal! It had come as naturally as water flowing into a channel!
"Phew..." Dao Xuan slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air. His aura gradually withdrew, while divine light gleamed in his eyes, deep as a starry sky.
He looked toward the entrance of the secret realm, a relaxed smile curling across his lips.
"Five hundred years... Even if that brute had been squatting in a latrine, his legs should have gone numb by now, right? The grass on his grave is probably three zhang tall already!"
Having made up his mind, he hesitated no longer.
Dao Xuan rose and walked before the Ancient Enlightenment Tree, which stood over a zhang tall, its verdant branches and leaves flowing with radiant Dao charm.
This was a High-Grade Innate Spiritual Root, a stroke of fortune rarely found in the primordial world!
His thoughts reached into the depths of his Sea of Consciousness.
Buzz!
A dim gray phantom of a bead, utterly unremarkable, emerged from between his brows. It spun rapidly, emanating an ancient, boundless Chaos Qi. It was the Chaos Bead Fragment!
"Collect!"
Dao Xuan shouted softly. The phantom of the Chaos Bead blazed with light, and a gentle yet supremely powerful ray of chaotic radiance swept forth, instantly enveloping the entire Enlightenment Tea Tree!
The radiance flowed, and Dao charms resonated.
The ancient tree, along with a patch of spiritual soil by the pool where its roots had taken hold, rapidly shrank within the radiance. It transformed into a stream of emerald light and vanished into the phantom of the Chaos Bead!
Only a shallow pit remained where it had stood, along with a faint lingering fragrance of tea in the air.
Within the Chaos Bead, in that dim gray space, the Enlightenment Tea Tree took root safely. Its branches and leaves stretched freely, its Dao-charm radiance flowing without end, even more splendid than outside!
"Once I settle matters at Kunlun and find a Daoist sanctuary, I'll let you see daylight again!" Dao Xuan said with a satisfied nod.
Having finished all this, he felt no further attachment.
With a flicker, he arrived at the entrance of the secret realm.
That mottled stone wall remained unchanged, though Spatial Ripples faintly flickered across it.
Dao Xuan held two fingers together like a sword. The majestic mana of a Late True Immortal poured into his fingertips as he lightly tapped a certain node on the stone wall!
Pop!
It was like puncturing a bubble.
Clear rings of spatial ripples spread across the stone wall's surface, and an opening just wide enough for one person appeared.
Dao Xuan stepped through.
Outside lay the same vast, ancient valley.
The mountain wind swept past, carrying the fresh scent of grass and trees.
Dao Xuan's divine sense spread out like a tide, instantly covering a radius of a hundred li.
The empty mountains were silent, and ancient trees stood thick and dark.
Aside from a few startled spirit deer, there was not the slightest trace of the Witch Clan.
"Just as expected." Dao Xuan smiled and shook his head. "The primordial world is perilous. Who would have the patience to wait for a rabbit by a tree stump for five hundred years? Time is the best cloak of invisibility."
He delayed no longer and identified the northwest direction.
A pale golden escape light flared around him once more, more condensed, swifter, and more restrained in its pressure than it had been five hundred years ago!
Whoosh!
The escape light shot into the sky, plunging into the clouds as it sped toward Kunlun Mountain!
Dao Xuan rode the escape light, piercing clouds and mist at astonishing speed.
With the cultivation of a Late True Immortal, how could the Heavenly Water Evasion Art be merely twice as fast as before?
Below him, the primordial land stretched in magnificent mountains and rivers, where countless races flourished.
Traces of conflict between the Witch and Demon Clans remained everywhere. Yet with his cultivation greatly improved and his divine sense sharpened, Dao Xuan avoided those regions thick with baleful aura from afar. His journey was quite smooth.
After flying like this for roughly three thousand li.
A massive mountain range appeared ahead, rolling endlessly with towering ancient trees. Its terrain was majestic, and its spiritual energy was rather abundant.
Dao Xuan was about to accelerate and pass through it.
Suddenly!
"Roar—!"
"Awoo—!"
"Kill! Don't let that beast escape!"
A series of deafening roars, beastly howls, and bloodthirsty battle cries abruptly rang out from deep within the forest ahead!
Violent energy fluctuations spread like ripples, startling countless birds into flight!
Dao Xuan frowned slightly, and his divine sense swept out at once.
He saw a bloody hunt unfolding in a relatively open mountain hollow below!
Three burly Witch Clan men, each over a zhang tall with muscles knotted like coiled dragons, radiated fierce baleful energy. They stood in a triangular formation, surrounding two enormous tigers covered in golden fur, with molten-gold eyes and dagger-like fangs!
The fierce tigers:
Their fur seemed forged from gold, gleaming brilliantly beneath the sunlight!
Their molten-gold eyes flashed with savage light, while scorching gusts poured from their mouths and nostrils!
With every swipe of their claws, streaks of golden sharpness tore through the air!
They were clearly vicious Golden-eyed Tiger Demons! Each possessed the cultivation of a Mid True Immortal. Though covered in wounds, their savagery had not diminished as they roared and charged in every direction!
The hunting Witch Clan members:
The man on the left:
His face was bronze-green, his fangs protruded, and his red hair hung loose!
Wrapped in crude animal hide, he held a black giant axe the size of a door panel. Cold light flickered along its blade, and its baleful aura was intimidating!
His cultivation was Mid True Immortal!
The man on the right:
His face was black as the bottom of a pot, and his beard stood upright like steel needles!
He too was wrapped in animal hide. Both hands gripped a massive bone club fashioned from the leg bone of some unknown ferocious beast. Bloody baleful energy coiled around the club's head, and evil winds howled whenever he swung it!
His cultivation was likewise Mid True Immortal!
As for the leader in the center:
His face was the color of dark dates, his red hair blazed like fire, every strand standing upright like a steel needle!
A savage beast-bone headband was wrapped around his forehead, with faint witch markings flickering across it!
His bronze upper body was bare, every muscle seeming cast from refined iron. Mysterious and ancient dark-red witch markings covered his skin, writhing like living creatures as his blood and vitality surged!
He wore a skirt of some unknown ferocious beast's hide around his waist. Barefoot, each step he took struck the ground like a drumbeat, cracking the earth beneath him!
In his hand was a Mountain-Splitting Great Axe, larger and thicker than the Witch Clan member's axe on the left! Its blade gleamed with piercing cold light, wrapped in dense bloody baleful energy, with faint wails of wronged souls echoing from it!
His cultivation had reached Peak Late True Immortal, only one step away from becoming a Mystic Immortal!
He was precisely the Witch Clan Leader who had roared madly outside the secret realm five hundred years ago, swearing to tear Dao Xuan to pieces!
"Hahaha! Feathered beasts! Let's see how much longer you can last! Hand over your flesh and demon cores obediently!"
The Witch Clan Leader laughed wildly and swung his great axe in a full arc. Carrying terrifying force capable of splitting mountains and shattering earth, it hacked viciously toward one Golden-eyed Tiger Demon's head!
Bloody axe energy tore through the air!
The tiger demon roared in fury, meeting it with golden sharpness, only for the blow to scatter it. Another wound deep enough to reveal bone opened across its body, blood streaming down!
Dao Xuan's divine sense swept over the scene and instantly locked onto the violent Witch Clan Leader at the center!
When enemies met, their eyes burned red with hatred!
Almost the instant Dao Xuan's divine sense reached him, the Witch Clan Leader sensed something as well!
He suddenly looked up. His enormous bell-like eyes pierced through the obstruction of branches and leaves, locking onto the figure standing upon pale golden escape light within the high clouds, dressed in an Apricot Yellow Eight Trigrams Robe!
Five hundred years of hatred and five hundred years of searching erupted in that moment!
"You thieving Daoist! It's you!!!"
The Witch Clan Leader's roar boomed like divine thunder from the nine heavens, making the entire mountain hollow tremble!
His eyes instantly turned blood-red. Boundless baleful energy surged into the sky as though tangible, staining the surrounding plants and trees with a layer of crimson!
"Five hundred years! I searched for you for five hundred years! I crossed thousands of mountains and rivers! Heaven has eyes to let you fall into my hands today!
I will grind your bones to ash, extract your soul and refine your spirit, and sacrifice you to the souls of my brothers in heaven! Ah—!!"
His violent killing intent swept outward like a tsunami. Even the two heavily wounded Golden-eyed Tiger Demons trembled in fear and temporarily stopped attacking.
Dao Xuan stood upon the clouds, his Apricot Yellow Eight Trigrams Robe snapping loudly in the mountain wind.
Looking down at the Witch Clan Leader, who seemed possessed by madness, Dao Xuan showed no fear. Instead, a cold, mocking smile appeared on his face.
"Hmph! Five hundred years ago, you relied on your numbers and strength, acting overbearingly and without reason as you hunted me like a stray dog.
Had Heaven not spared me and had I not stumbled into the secret realm, I would have long since died at your hands."
Dao Xuan's voice was clear, yet carried bone-piercing chill. It reached the ears of every living being below with perfect clarity.
"Today, my cultivation has advanced, and I intend to test my halberd upon you!
I will avenge the pursuit of that year and repay the suffering of my five hundred years of 'seclusion'!
You brutes, do you dare fight?!"
"Arrogant little thief! Die!"
Hatred had long driven the Witch Clan Leader out of his mind. How could he listen to a single word?
With an enraged roar, he ignored the two Golden-eyed Tiger Demons and violently kicked off the ground!
Boom!
The ground exploded into a massive crater!
He shot upward like a cannonball, wrapped in towering baleful energy and bloody axe force!
His target was Dao Xuan high in the sky!
His violent momentum seemed capable of cleaving open the heavens themselves!
"Big Brother! We'll help you!"
Seeing their leader charge out, the two Witch Clan men holding the great axe and bone club also roared. Abandoning the Golden-eyed Tiger Demons, they leaped into the air after him, one to the left and one to the right. Their axe and club brought howling winds as they smashed viciously toward Dao Xuan!
They surrounded him from three sides, their baleful energy reaching the heavens!
A cold gleam flashed in Dao Xuan's eyes!
"Excellent!"
Not only did he not retreat, he instead stepped forward!
The Mysterious Gold Law-Breaking Halberd in his hand blazed with golden light!
All twenty-seven Innate Restrictions opened in an instant!
A terrifyingly sharp Dao charm capable of breaking ten thousand laws and severing all things erupted!
Facing the black giant axe smashing in from the left and the massive bone club whistling in from the right, Dao Xuan's figure swayed slightly like a phantom!
Slash! Slash!
Two dark-golden lines, condensed to the utmost limit and tearing through the void, struck after their attacks had begun yet arrived first!
One landed with absolute precision upon the point where the left Witch Clan member's axe force circulated!
The other stabbed toward the weakest point in the baleful energy surrounding the right Witch Clan member's bone club!
Sizzle! Sizzle!
Like red-hot irons plunging into butter!
The seemingly overwhelming black giant axe and blood-fiend-wreathed bone club had their cores effortlessly pierced by the dark-golden lines!
The law-breaking power erupted!
Bang! Crack!
Spiderweb-like cracks instantly covered the black giant axe's head. All spiritual light vanished from it as it gave a mournful cry and flew from its owner's grasp!
The huge bone club snapped in two, its baleful energy dispersing!
"What?!"
The two Witch Clan men were horrified beyond belief, their eyes filled with utter disbelief!
Yet before they could react!
Dao Xuan flicked his wrist, and the Law-Breaking Halberd traced two arcs as graceful and unpredictable as antelope horns hanging from trees!
Rip! Rip!
Cold light flashed and vanished!
Two enormous heads, still wearing expressions of terror, soared into the sky! Blood spouted from their severed necks like fountains!
Their massive headless bodies fell from midair like two rotted logs, crashing to the ground!
Instant kill!
The two formidable Mid True Immortal Witch Clan warriors could not withstand even a single move before Dao Xuan's Late True Immortal cultivation and the edge of the Mysterious Gold Law-Breaking Halberd!
"Sixth Brother! Seventh Brother!!"
The Witch Clan Leader watched helplessly as his two brothers died in an instant, their heads flying through the air. His eyes nearly split apart as he released a heart-rending roar!
Beyond the overwhelming hatred in his crimson eyes, there was now a trace of terror!
He had never imagined that in merely five hundred years, this Daoist's strength would have surged so drastically! That short halberd was even more terrifying beyond measure!
"Little thief! I'll make you pay with your life!!"
His terror was instantly swallowed by even greater madness! The Witch Clan Leader completely went berserk!
The witch markings across his body shone with bloody light, as though they had ignited!
The Mountain-Splitting Great Axe in his hand erupted with unprecedented bloody baleful energy. Upon its blade, a ferocious beast phantom faintly emerged!
"Blood Fiend Sky-Splitting Slash! Die—!!"
The muscles in his arms bulged as he swung the great axe with the force of Heaven and Earth Creation. Carrying berserk power capable of destroying heaven and earth, it tore through the sky and hacked down at Dao Xuan's head!
The bloody axe energy expanded to a hundred zhang. Wherever it passed, space itself faintly twisted!
This was a killing blow that gathered his lifelong cultivation and boundless hatred!
Dao Xuan felt a terrifying pressure lock onto him, as though he had been thrown into a mountain of corpses and a Sea of Blood. Even his mind was nearly seized by it!
But his gaze was clear, utterly fearless!
"Break the law! Break it for me!"
Dao Xuan roared inwardly, pouring all the immense power of a Late True Immortal into the Mysterious Gold Law-Breaking Halberd without reservation!
The light of twenty-seven Innate Restrictions flowed to its utmost limit. The Dao intent of destruction and sharpness condensed at the halberd's tip, restrained to the extreme, yet it instead radiated a terrifying aura capable of piercing through eternity and destroying the everlasting!
He did not choose to meet the frontal edge of that hundred-zhang blood-red axe force head-on.
Just as the world-destroying giant axe was about to fall upon him!
Dao Xuan seemed to merge into the wind, narrowly twisting aside by a hair's breadth to evade the central axis where the axe force was at its strongest!
At the same time!
The Mysterious Gold Law-Breaking Halberd in his hand turned into a line that was nearly impossible to catch with the naked eye—formless and intangible, yet sharp to the extreme!
Though launched later!
It arrived first!
A direct thrust!
Its target was neither the giant axe nor the chest!
It was the dark-red witch-pattern node between the Witch Clan Leader's brows, flashing violently with the eruption of his blood and qi like the core of a living creature!
This thrust!
Contained Dao Xuan's primordial spirit insights, nurtured by five hundred years of Enlightenment Tea!
Contained all the mana of a Late True Immortal!
Contained the peerless sharpness of the Mysterious Gold Law-Breaking Halberd, capable of destroying all techniques!
And it contained the humiliation of being hunted five hundred years ago, along with his resolve for vengeance today!
Fast!
Incomparably fast!
Beyond thought!
Sssst!
A faint sound, almost too soft to notice, rang out like a fine needle piercing thin paper.
Time seemed to freeze at that instant.
The hundred-zhang blood-red axe force that could destroy heaven and earth suddenly stopped less than three feet above Dao Xuan's head!
Its violent baleful aura burst apart like a punctured balloon!
The Witch Clan Leader's charging momentum came to an abrupt halt.
The crazed, savage expression on his face instantly froze.
His enormous scarlet eyes, like bronze bells, filled with endless shock, confusion, and a trace of... incredulous fear.
A tiny red mark quietly appeared upon the dark-red core witch-pattern between his brows.
The next moment.
Boom!
The hundred-zhang blood-red axe force completely collapsed, becoming countless blood-red motes that vanished into nothingness.
The Witch Clan Leader's massive body seemed to have been stripped of all life. The light in his eyes rapidly dimmed and went out.
The enormous Mountain Splitting Axe in his hand slipped from his grasp and fell limply.
Bang!
His heavy body crashed from the air to the ground like a toppled mountain, throwing up dust that filled the sky. There was no longer the slightest sound from him.
The mountain hollow fell into dead silence.
Only the mournful whistling of the mountain wind through the treetops remained, along with the suppressed panting of the two severely injured Golden-eyed Tiger Demons.
Dao Xuan slowly withdrew the Mysterious Gold Law-Breaking Halberd and hovered in midair, his apricot-yellow Daoist robe spotless.
He looked at the three Witch Clan corpses below, neither sorrow nor joy in his eyes.
Five hundred years of enmity had been settled today.
He raised a hand in summons.
Three ancient bone storage artifacts, wreathed in faint baleful aura, flew up from the Witch Clan corpses and into his sleeve.
Then he flicked a finger.
Three sparks of true fire fell, instantly reducing the three corpses and all traces of blood to ashes, leaving only a few drifting particles carried away by the wind.
After finishing all this, Dao Xuan did not even spare the two trembling Golden-eyed Tiger Demons a glance.
His gaze turned northwest, toward Kunlun Mountain.
"This delay has been long enough. Kunlun Mountain, this Daoist is coming!"
As his words fell, pale golden escape light rose once more, even swifter than before. He shot into the clouds and vanished beyond the horizon in an instant.
Before you continue