Yun Qing murmured to himself.
The next instant, his aura erupted!
An immense pressure soared into the sky, bearing the nascent shape of laws, making even the space sealed by the formation tremble faintly and groan!
The immortal king realm!
And he was at the early immortal king stage, with an incomparably solid foundation and Spiritual Power refined to its utmost purity!
He ignored the restraints of the Space Chains outright, appearing before Yun Chi at the formation's edge as though he had teleported!
The Silent Abyss Spear bore pure, tyrannical chaos spiritual energy and the towering ferocity and baleful intent of a primordial ferocious beast as it thrust straight toward Yun Chi's heart!
This thrust was faster than thought, beyond perception!
Squelch!
A muffled sound of flesh tearing.
The spearhead pierced his chest and emerged from his back, trailing a string of dark red blood droplets.
Yun Chi's body suddenly stiffened. He slowly lowered his head, staring at the dark shaft jutting from his chest. His spirit-devouring body worked frantically, trying to devour the invading chaos spiritual energy, only to suffer a backlash and collapse instantly before that higher-order power, like ice and snow meeting boiling water.
He could feel his vitality draining rapidly, could feel the essence of his spirit-devouring body collapsing.
Yun Chi's eyes filled with disbelief, along with boundless regret and resentment over the peerless fortune that had been within his grasp, only to be lost forever.
"You..." Beneath his hood, Yun Chi's eyes widened into circles. He managed only that single word.
Holding the spear shaft, Yun Qing could clearly feel life rapidly ebbing away. Warm blood flowed down the grooves in the shaft, staining his distinctly jointed hand.
Across his two lifetimes, this was the first time he had truly killed someone.
And the one he had killed was a fellow clansman. Though their blood ties were already distant, by their standing in the family, calling him a younger cousin would not have been amiss.
Yun Chi's falling figure was reflected in his double pupils as Yun Qing calmly assessed himself inwardly: he was calmer than expected, without much emotional upheaval.
But it was his first time, after all.
He could feel his heart beating a fraction faster than usual. His grip on the spear remained steady, but the warm, sticky sensation of blood against his fingertips still made his nerves tighten slightly.
This was an instinctive bodily response, unrelated to his will. The moral principles formed over more than twenty years in his previous life and the rules of survival learned through nineteen years in this cruel world completed their final handover at that moment.
Yun Qing lowered his eyes and flicked his wrist.
The power of nirvana and the ferocious baleful aura within the Silent Abyss Spear erupted, instantly crushing Yun Chi's sea of consciousness and divine soul, eliminating any possibility of possessing another body and cultivating anew. Yet at the final moment, a slight shift of his intent quietly wrapped the power of his chaos dao embryo around a wisp of true spirit untainted by sin, preserving it.
"On the road of reincarnation, be an ordinary person."
This was the last mercy he could offer. Not for Yun Chi, but to keep his own Dao heart free of flaws.
My first order with KillMe... Here, have a discount coupon for a reincarnation 'clean slate' in the Underworld, Yun Qing joked self-deprecatingly in his heart, trying to dilute that trace of unease. Call it a grand-opening special?
Suddenly, certain lessons from his previous life set alarm bells ringing in his mind-Finish him off! Villains die because they talk too much. When you kill someone, you have to make sure they're dead!
He immediately drew Yun Chi's limp corpse before him. The eerie light of his double pupils enveloped it completely as he carefully scanned everything from the flesh to the remnants of the soul.
He confirmed it beyond doubt: the divine soul was utterly destroyed, with no possibility of revival or further mischief.
Without hesitation, he thrust his spear into Yun Chi's dantian, thoroughly shredding the essence of his spirit-devouring body as well!
Only after finishing all this did Yun Qing feel completely at ease. He casually flung Yun Chi's corpse aside, then turned to face the battlefield, which had fallen deathly silent at the sudden reversal.
The entire process had taken only three breaths.
From his sudden lethal strike to his inspection and finishing blow, every step had been utterly calm.
Only Yun Qing knew how many images had flashed through his mind in those three breaths-the laws and morals of his previous life, the rules of survival in this one, the Second Elder's teaching in the Primordial Chaos Ancient Cave to "leave no enemy alive," and Yun Huang's indifferent golden eyes that nevertheless saw through everything.
"Once you choose this road, there's no turning back," he told himself, his gaze growing ever stiller, like a deep abyss.
"An immortal... immortal king... You... you've already entered the immortal king realm?!" The Twelfth Elder's voice came from every direction within the formation, distorted and warped by extreme shock. "Impossible! You're not even twenty! An immortal king under twenty... How is that possible?!"
Yun Qing flicked the blood from his spearhead without answering. His black robe fluttered beneath the crimson moonlight as a dark red drop of blood slowly slid from the spear's tip.
Across the vast Heavenly Origin Continent, the path of cultivation was divided into two major stages.
The seven mortal realms: foundation establishment, golden core, nascent soul, spirit transformation, void refinement, body integration, and Mahayana. Among mortal cultivators, those who reached Mahayana in their lifetime were as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns. In the lower world, they could be called venerables and enjoy a thousand-year lifespan.
But the Immortal Dao was vast and boundless, a realm unto itself.
To "shed mortality and become immortal," one had to undergo tribulation transcendence. Once the tribulation was overcome, Spiritual Power could transform into immortal origin, allowing ascension to the far more stable and expansive Three Thousand Great Worlds!
Not even one in a hundred survived this step. It was a true leap to a higher order of life.
Given the spatial stability of a great world, a Mahayana cultivator who could tear apart the void with a wave of the hand in the lower world would likely struggle to raise even a single spatial ripple there.
Thus, the nine immortal realms of the Heavenly Origin Continent were profoundly mysterious and lofty.
And the Immortal King realm was the sixth realm of the Immortal Dao!
The ability to freely traverse space was one of the hallmarks of the immortal king realm! It stood just below the seventh realm, immortal lord, and the eighth, immortal venerable.
As for immortal emperors?
The Heavenly Origin Continent still had only aristocratic clans and no Emperor Clans, precisely because no one throughout its history had ever taken that final step!
While lower-world cultivators were only just establishing their foundations, and even the prodigies of the upper world were merely within the seven mortal realms, Yun Qing had already risen to become an immortal king!
Hidden in the shadows, the Twelfth Elder stared at Yun Chi's corpse, his aged face twitching violently. Grief first flashed through his eyes, only to be replaced by even more frenzied greed!
"Hahahahahaha!" He suddenly threw his head back and laughed strangely, looking utterly deranged. "How unjust the Heavenly Dao is! Some struggle bitterly for half their lives and still cannot take that step to shed mortality and become immortal! Others begin as immortals from the moment they're born!"
When the Twelfth Elder had been Yun Qing's age, he had only just shed mortality and become immortal, and others had already hailed him as a genius seen once in a thousand years. After nearly a thousand years of bitter cultivation and exhausting his resources, he was still only at the peak of immortal lord, having just touched the threshold of the immortal venerable realm!
Yet Yun Qing... an immortal king at twenty!
This meant that Yun Qing had probably never experienced the so-called "mortal realms" at all since beginning his cultivation. His starting point had been the Immortal Dao! It meant his chaos dao embryo defied heaven enough to ignore conventional cultivation barriers! It meant that, so long as he did not perish along the way, he would surely become an immortal venerable—and might even have a sliver of a chance... to reach the pinnacle as an Immortal Emperor!
His laughter stopped abruptly. The look he fixed on Yun Qing was that of a starving wolf beholding peerless flesh and blood.
"Yun Chi is dead... No matter." The Twelfth Elder licked his cracked lips, blood-red color spreading through his eyes. "He and I share the same lineage... I'll devour this chaos dao embryo myself!"
"Once I obtain your chaos dao embryo, with my thousand years of cultivation, I may well be able to forcibly refine and fuse with it! When that happens..."
A terrifying blood-red light and greed erupted in his eyes, and his voice trembled with excitement:
"I will possess the supreme potential of a chaos dao embryo, along with a thousand years of experience and accumulated strength! I will use your dao foundation to aim straight for immortal venerable, and even... glimpse that supreme Immortal Emperor Dao!"
Thank you to Vinegar-Tossed Cherry Maruko for the Inspiration Capsule, Bobo Milk Tea, and Like Flower gifts.
(It feels like I'm reciting a menu, hahaha. This sweetheart has been supporting the author all along QAQ)
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