A Call from the Distant Starry Sky

A Call from the Distant Starry Sky

Within the vast, imposing hall, a slender girl with ordinary features collapsed painfully to the ground.

Amid muffled, anguished moans, ominous green flames seeped from all seven of her orifices!

A youth bathed in sunlight formed hand seals with both hands. The exposed flesh on his body visibly withered away.

His already salt-and-pepper hair turned dry and gray-white at an uncontrollable pace.

"You old bastard, do you know..."

"The thing that makes you most deserving of death is that you just had to be an elder of the Ten Thousand Demon Cavern. If there had been no chance of offending a plague god like you, I could have fled with a clear conscience. But you had to give me a chance to destroy you!"

"So tell me, how am I supposed to mercifully... let you go?!"

At that moment, the youth who had been forced into a desperate situation could no longer suppress his snickering. His laughter grew louder and louder until it became manic laughter that echoed throughout the hall.

He laughed so hard that saliva dribbled from his mouth, making him look utterly miserable!

The laughter was too horrifying, too crazed, giving people the impression—

That he would laugh until his heart, liver, intestines, and lungs all came spewing out, leaving behind an exceptionally nauseating, sticky sensation!

"Demon brat, what are you laughing at?"

Hundred Tribulations Daoist had already gained the upper hand within Qin Long's body. An uncomfortable expression appeared on his face as he turned to look at Xiao Liang.

Yet the latter's changes made his heart jolt.

"This is... an unforeseen variable. What did you do? Stop it now!!!"

Although Xiao Liang still roughly maintained the posture of forming seals and chanting, his entire aura had completely changed.

His eyes were utterly vacant, as though staring at something that existed within the void.

That suffocating manic laughter finally stopped, but his slightly parted lips began to chant a strange, ancient ballad.

The wording and phrasing of the ballad were bizarre and awkward. It was not any language from the Sky Mist Continent, making one doubt whether it could truly be used for communication.

Even stranger, although no one could understand a single word, the moment they heard the ballad, they could comprehend that it was a grand hymn of praise.

It praised a great existence that was indescribable, inexpressible, and untouchable, yet supreme, sacred, and powerful!

Hundred Tribulations Daoist's Golden Core spiritual sense had already developed a rudimentary awareness of fortune and calamity. He sensed that something's gaze seemed to have fallen upon this place.

That gaze pierced through everything. Even this hall had nowhere to hide!

Suppressing his discomfort, Hundred Tribulations Daoist extended his spiritual sense toward Xiao Liang. In an instant, he recoiled as if he had seen a ghost.

An incredulous expression appeared on his face.

His spiritual sense had merely touched a cultivator at the Third Level of Qi Refining, yet it felt as though it had touched crimson lava, exploding lightning, or an entire pool of poisonous saliva.

As the incomparably strange hymn continued.

In the unseen realm, that great existence—chaotic, idiotic, and lazy to the extreme—bestowed Its blessing.

Xiao Liang's withered flesh became rosy and full as if time had reversed. His dry white hair returned to smooth black, and even his unseen lifespan was replenished without any discernible order.

If it had stopped there, it would undoubtedly have been a miracle comparable to reviving the dead.

Did they think that was the end of it?

No. That utterly perverse, overflowing vitality continued pouring into his tiny body, swelling his flesh until his blood vessels and skin burst open with crackling sounds.

In an instant, blood poured from Xiao Liang's body as though he were a porcelain doll on the verge of shattering.

Fortunately, not even a trace of spiritual power remained in Xiao Liang's body.

The technique supporting and guiding the Sun True Fire was extracting that inexhaustible blood essence and lifespan at a scalp-numbing rate.

A fragile balance kept this shattered body from exploding on the spot!

The Sun True Fire's guiding effect continued.

This method of energy conversion was extremely inefficient. It often required double, or even several times, the lifespan and blood essence to achieve the guiding effect of a mere thread of spiritual power.

But Xiao Liang did not care at all. He only felt that the Sun True Fire was absorbing too slowly.

A hundred years, five hundred years, or perhaps a terrifying thousand or three thousand years of lifespan!

All of it was poured into the spell. At last, the heat gathered within that pillar of sunlight underwent a transformation.

A wisp of Sun True Fire, dazzling to the extreme, was born!

The instant the Sun True Fire appeared, it whipped up a scorching tornado within the hall. Wherever it passed, even the light was roasted into distortion.

"No, this is not your power! Are you sacrificing to some evil demon?!"

"What kind of evil demon is this? What kind of evil demon is this?! Aaaaaah!"

Hundred Tribulations Daoist's voice finally turned panicked. None of this matched his expectations of a cultivator's methods after several centuries of cultivation.

Life-risking methods such as demonic rituals did exist on the Sky Mist Continent, but which of those sacrificial targets was not greedy, cruel, and cunning to the extreme?

Borrowing even a little power from them usually meant stripping the victim of their soul, flesh, and everything else in the unseen realm. They would never accept a losing bargain.

How could they be like Xiao Liang, who did not even want the power anymore, yet was still being force-fed it? Refusing was not an option!

Was it trying to burst him apart with power? What extravagance, what an evil and terrifying method.

While Hundred Tribulations Daoist questioned his very existence, Xiao Liang did not stop. He would likely die the moment he did.

Thus, he continued madly burning his lifespan and vital essence into that wisp of Sun True Fire.

It was like continuously feeding firewood into an incomparably terrifying furnace.

What terrifying consequences would that bring? What would happen once the firewood filled the furnace?

Hundred Tribulations Daoist knew very well. He could even foresee the incomparably miserable state of his death.

No, there would be no corpse, because nothing would remain.

It would certainly be a horrifying explosion. Its destructive might would obliterate the entire mountain peak and turn hundreds of miles around it into an infernal sea of flames.

The Sun True Fire was drawn from the sun itself. With Xiao Liang's mad actions, the light filtering through the large hole in the Earthfire Hall's dome was no longer enough to sustain it.

With the Earthfire Hall as the center, sunlight within dozens of miles gradually dimmed, as though a localized total solar eclipse had descended.

On the mountainside, the Guan Family siblings had somehow joined up with Yu Guang. Having just opened a path through, they were looting scattered buildings along the way.

As they encountered this heavenly phenomenon, they could not help turning toward the Earthfire Hall.

From where they stood, they could not see the Earthfire Hall, but they instinctively sensed the suffocating dread and panic that came before a natural disaster.

Yu Guang's expression was grave. A bead of cold sweat slid from his forehead to his chin, and he actually felt the urge to turn and flee!

"What... happened?"

Guan Lin was confused and terrified, one hand tightly clutching Guan Qiu's sleeve.

Guan Qiu activated his spiritual power, causing his eyes to shine completely with an earthen-yellow glow. The activated eye technique allowed him to briefly see the movement and concentration of spiritual energy.

At last, he saw... an illusory "sun" expanding madly at a terrifying speed.

(End of Chapter)