Immediately afterward, three bursts of golden light exploded almost simultaneously on the Tournament Platform!
Yun Lan, master of the Southern Mountain branch, stood wreathed in the phantoms of nine water dragons, their cries ringing clear. Within the Battle Stele's illusion, he had overcome hardness with softness, dissolving thirty-six surging waves of Geng Metal Sword Qi before swallowing the formation's core with Nine Dragons Return to the Ruins.
Medicine King Yun He of Western Ridge held a Medicine Cauldron shimmering with azure light in his palm, pill clouds seemingly rising and falling within it. His method of clearing the trial was utterly unconventional: he had used pill flame as his brush and his own pure wood-element spiritual power as his guide to "refine pills" in the empty air inside the formation! He had actually refined an entire Nine Netherworlds Soul-Devouring Formation into a batch of Clear-Heart Dao-Enlightenment Pills.
As the pills formed, the formation broke. The ingenuity of his technique left everyone marveling.
The Northern Marsh Mountain Lord, Yun Tiexin, had been the fiercest and most domineering of all. The muscles of his bare upper body were like iron, his bronze skin gleaming with a metallic sheen, while thunder and flame intertwined around his fists without dispersing. Everyone could clearly see the savage scene within the golden phantom behind him: he had pulverized nine layers of Black Iron walls with his bare fists!
That sense of pure strength set their blood boiling even through the illusion.
Golden light then flared in succession as the masters of the various branches each displayed their Divine Abilities:
A Sword Dao grandmaster split yin from yang with a single blade's chilling gleam; a Formation Dao master walked steps of unfathomable mystery, breaking formations with formations; a beast-taming cultivator sent ten thousand beast phantoms charging forth