"Hum..."
Yun Mo's figure slowly appeared within the world of the Martial Dao Tower.
He looked up at a land shrouded in gloom, starkly unlike the beauty of the Great Thousand World outside. Beneath a dim sun and moon, astral gales raged.
Clearly, several great battles had already taken place here, filling the entire space with savage battle intent and baleful aura. Even the distant mountain ranges lay veiled in gray mist, their slopes crisscrossed with ravines.
Yun Mo drew a deep breath. Light shone between his brows as, for the first time since entering the Heaven Transformation Realm, he unleashed his divine sense, which far surpassed this realm, and swept it across the entire surrounding area.
The moment he extended his divine sense, he discovered that others were doing the same.
Vast streams of divine sense touched in the sky. They, too, discovered Yun Mo's presence, but when his powerful divine sense swept over them, their expressions briefly stiffened in surprise.
"Who's there!" someone demanded in a low voice.
Although that powerful divine sense startled them, they felt little fear. Instead, they immediately turned and flashed toward Yun Mo's location.
Sensing several people approaching, Yun Mo remained calm.
Behind him, however, strands of the Rain of Time began drifting down, exuding a hazy aura. They made his figure seem even more ethereal and dreamlike, as though he were a child of spacetime, unfathomably mysterious.
"Hah, since when was there someone like this in the Heaven Transformation Realm? He seems strong." Someone arrived a short distance from Yun Mo and slowly raised his longsword as he studied that hazy figure.
Boom!
His soaring battle intent erupted. Fierce Sword Aura blazed from his longsword, stirring spiritual energy storms that formed one vortex after another.
But just as he moved to step forward and swing his longsword in a killing slash, two more people arrived.
They had also sensed Yun Mo's powerful divine sense earlier and turned toward this place, actively seeking a fight.
The people of the Martial Spirit Academy loved battle. On encountering someone so powerful within the same realm, their first instinct was to come and fight him to gain experience, rather than hesitate and choose to flee.
Brows furrowed on their illusory faces, but all three knew their bounds and disdained joining forces. Each merely occupied a separate stretch of space, watching and guarding against the others.
Unfortunately, Yun Mo had no intention of remaining in a standoff with them.
His bearing grew increasingly detached as a flexible sword materialized in his hand. Then a vast surge of spiritual power swept from his body, bearing down on the entire area. The three-way standoff shattered beneath it, and their expressions changed violently.
Facing that spiritual pressure felt like facing the crushing weight of heaven and earth. Even space seemed to congeal.
"Great Void, Yin-Yang Dusting."
Yun Mo held his flexible sword upright before him. The profound mysteries of spacetime emanated from within his body, instantly dyeing the blade in yin and yang as black-and-white radiance spread outward.
Within the void, that black-and-white radiance even began merging into one, becoming a mysterious beam of light that coiled around the flexible sword.
At that moment, the flexible sword snapped straight. The sword breath along its edge seemed about to drain all color from this world.
As he slashed, those beams burst into brilliant bloom. A sword light more than a hundred zhang long erupted and descended upon all three, seemingly slow yet fast, wavering between illusion and reality.
"You! How is this possible!"
Their expressions changed drastically as they stared at the sword light. Horror gripped their hearts; they could clearly sense that the power within it was far beyond anything they could block alone.
Any one of them would crumble in an instant upon touching that beam of sword light. Moreover, its mysterious aura was something they had never encountered before.
Yet their years of experience allowed them to react swiftly. The three who had been confronting one another just moments earlier instantly chose to become allies against Yun Mo.
"Heaven-Falling Sword Art, Flame Sword!"
"Mountain-Sealing Seal!"
"Spirit-Breath Divine Finger!"
Suppressing their terror, all three shouted and unleashed their most fearsome power.
They had never imagined that someone would unleash such terrifying might the instant they met. But they had no other choice; they could only meet it head-on. Waiting helplessly for death was not the Martial Spirit Academy's way.
Unfortunately, those three forces were ultimately too scattered to unite as one.
"Hum..."
The sword light shone down, enveloping their attacks and causing them to wither, decay, and turn to dust.
Even the already yellowed vegetation nearby began aging and rotting beneath that sword light, losing every last trace of life.
Yun Mo watched the three vanish without any change in expression. He merely murmured inwardly, "The Great Void Art, and the secret power of spacetime... ever since they suddenly appeared within my body, gaining further insight into them has been difficult.
Although my contact with spacetime has gradually deepened, how can I continue comprehending it without any real point of reference...? I hope the ninth floor of the Martial Dao Tower truly lets me observe myself."
Yun Mo shook his head. This move still consumed an enormous amount of power. Although advancing to the Heaven Transformation Realm had caused the spiritual power within him to soar, it clearly still was not enough to let him wield this move as naturally as his own arm and fingers.
He put those thoughts aside and strode through the void in another direction, toward several terrifying fluctuations from ongoing battles.
Outside the Martial Dao Tower, two more elders of the Spirit Academy had appeared beside Wu Ji.
The three stared at the scene before them, eyes widening and the corners of their mouths twitching, as though they had witnessed something unbelievable. Shock and uncertainty filled their faces.
"What exactly is that move of his? Why did I seem to see a strand of the secret power of spacetime? Is that rain of time behind him made of spacetime fragments?"
"He used space to immobilize their attacks, then time to diminish their power. Afterward, decay spread until everything crumbled completely. Are you sure this is a divine ability someone in the Heaven Transformation Realm can cultivate?"
"Is this a divine art or a divine ability? Does our Martial Spirit Academy have a spirit art capable of comprehending spacetime like this?"
"Hah, you're asking me? Who am I supposed to ask? Our academy does indeed have a few spirit arts related to spacetime, but none are anywhere near this frightening."
Watching the shock in the other two elders' eyes, Wu Ji gently stroked his white beard, his hand trembling slightly.
But the white whiskers he had plucked out also revealed that his own heart was anything but calm.
At first, he had thought Yun Mo had come here merely to adjust a little and vent the gloom pent up in his heart. He had never imagined that this venting would be so terrifying. With his strength as someone who had just
entered the Heaven Transformation Realm, the power he unleashed was far beyond what the other students could match.
Those three were by no means ordinary figures in the Martial Spirit Academy; they had even earned some renown. Yet in the blink of an eye, their entire bodies had turned to dust, without the slightest chance to resist.
"Thud..."
Their consciousnesses returned to their physical bodies, their faces deathly pale. The last thing they had felt was their bodies becoming stark white bones, before a spiritual wind blew through and reduced them to dust scattered across heaven and earth.
"When did someone like this appear in the Martial Spirit Academy? Why have we never encountered him before...?"
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