The moment his words fell, another divine eye took shape and gazed at the people within the Ancient World. Clearly, another king's will had descended across the boundary.
"Motherfucker! Being a king means you can do whatever you want? You shameless fucking bastard!"
Lin Yue was so furious that he cursed the other party outright!
"A king shall not be insulted! Ant, your name shall be inscribed upon the Reincarnation Stele!"
The other party sensed his words and delivered a divine decree!
"I insulted you today, and one day I'll kill you. Wash your neck and wait!"
Another world-destroying beam of black light descended!
At this moment of peril, the Wheel of Yin and Yang above the Martial Dao Divine Infant in Lin Yue's dantian burst out of his body. Black and white divine light manifested a Taiji Diagram from the wheel, swallowing the other party's world-destroying strike outright!
"Oh...! Interesting! A Primordial Chaos Ancient Artifact! It can even block a king's methods. I'll take that disc!"
The eye of the storm vanished, replaced by a giant hand descending from beyond the heavens. Divine-ability runes covered the black hand as it pierced the void, broke through the realm barrier, and descended upon this Ancient World before reaching for the Wheel of Yin and Yang!
The Taiji Diagram manifested by the Wheel of Yin and Yang also rose into the sky to block the hand.
But in less than two breaths, the formation diagram shattered, while the hand's might remained undiminished.
Though it failed to stop the enemy, buying a little time was enough! As the giant hand approached, the Wheel of Yin and Yang enveloped Lin Yue and the two members of the Heavenly Horned Ant Clan. Black and white divine light slashed open a rift in the void, and the entire disc fled into it!
"A pity! I failed to seize it. That disc managed to escape a king's grasp-its origins must be extraordinary! It deserves some study," the Immortal King lamented.
"Hmm... It may be an unforeseen variable, but it cannot stir up any waves! There is no need to concern ourselves with it. Let us deal with matters here first," another king murmured!
"This young man from our realm seems to be that one's disciple! Though he lost, his talent is exceptional. After this defeat, he may enter our domain in the future. Shall we do his master a favor?"
"Very well!"
As divine light descended, the Blood Phoenix Lion and the unconscious He Wushuang vanished.
At last, peace returned to the entire Ancient World. This battle between the younger generation seemed to have reached its conclusion. Though it had not reversed the Nine Heavens' defeat, the future stretched far ahead! Who could say what it held?
Chapter 12: Healing
In a mysterious Ancient World, the mountains were verdant and the waters clear, with birdsong and fragrant flowers everywhere. Dense forests flanked the lake, and Heavenly Horned Horses and other gentle exotic beasts could occasionally be seen moving among the trees. But no one paid them any attention. The war between realms was the urgent concern.
This place lay far from the front lines, untouched by the flames of war. Everything seemed peaceful, though no one knew how long that peace could last.
Suddenly, ripples spread through the void, and a yin-yang Taiji disc emerged from it.
Three young people stepped down from the Wheel of Yin and Yang onto the ground. Then the wheel returned to Lin Yue's dantian, continuing to turn slowly above his golden Martial Dao Divine Infant.
"Whew...!" They exhaled long breaths of stale air, all three nearly collapsing to the ground. That had been far too dangerous. They had never imagined the Foreign Realm's kings would be so shameless, attacking one after another to wipe them out!
Lin Yue looked at the two members of the Heavenly Horned Ant Clan. "You're both badly injured. Why not recover here first? Once your wounds have healed, we can decide what to do next!"
"Very well. Sorry for the trouble, Dao brother! We cannot thank you enough!" the young man said!
"Stop calling me Dao brother all the time! My name is Lin Yue, and I'm from the Lin Family of Yin-Yang Heaven. I'm actually younger than both of you, so just call me Lin Yue!"
"All right, Lin Yue! My name is Yan! This is my elder sister, Yu! Thank you for intervening this time. Otherwise, we could only have laid down our lives for the Nine Heavens. We never feared death, but with our great vengeance still unfulfilled, we couldn't accept it. It's just a pity that their kings intervened this time, preventing us from killing him!"
Lin Yue said, "There's no need for regret. He won't die here-I can say that for certain. You can deal with him yourselves in the future. I'm sure this transformation will take you both a step higher, and he'll probably improve too. But the true victory or defeat can wait for another day! The Heavenly Horned Ant Clan's illustrious name must live on through you!"
He Wushuang would not die here. He might even reach the Immortal King realm sooner than he had in the original story!
To suffer one defeat and never recover, losing the will to contend ever again-that was the mark of ordinary prodigies, or trash who merely fancied themselves prodigies!
For the strong, so long as they survived, every barrier they encountered was merely a trial that revealed their shortcomings. They would then step over it and become stronger!
In the original story, the Desolate Heaven Emperor had been struck down when the seven gods descended to the lower realm and had nearly died. No, he had actually died, only to be saved. Not only had he comprehended the meaning of reincarnation, but he had also returned stronger than ever and fought his way into the Upper Realm!
He Wushuang would surely gain a great deal from this battle, and Lin Yue even more so!
That was all the more true for Heavenly Horned Ants. They transformed through one life-and-death battle after another, emerging stronger after every injury. This was a race that nurtured battle through battle, until at last they could fight a hundred battles without suffering a wound and achieve peerless ferocity!
Though the siblings were adults, the power of their bloodline had yet to awaken fully. They had fought too few battles, encountering a formidable opponent like He Wushuang shortly after entering the battlefield.
The old Heavenly Horned Ant, after all, had only been defeated after facing the combined assault of three peerless kings and numerous immortals alone!
In a one-on-one battle within the king domain, unless a giant among kings intervened, no king could single-handedly kill a fully matured member of the Heavenly Horned Ant Clan. They truly deserved their place among the Ten Fiends.
Beside the tranquil lake, Lin Yue had just sat down and was about to activate the repositories within his body to heal his injuries when the young man and woman approached, each holding an ancient jar!
"Lin Yue, you suffered grievous Dao injuries to save us. This is a small token of our gratitude. Please don't refuse!"
His expression solemn as he looked at the mysterious ancient jars they offered, Lin Yue did not refuse. He accepted them, finding them heavy in his hands.
For even Lin Yue, whose Void Dao Realm strength allowed him to lift great weights with ease, to find them heavy, the jars surely contained rare treasures beyond compare.
The moment he broke the seals, golden light shot into the sky. An undying, immortal, indestructible vitality spread outward, and the surrounding plants began shooting upward the instant they came into contact with its aura.
They even leaned involuntarily toward him. Exotic beasts nearby stirred at the scent, poking their heads out of the forest, clearly drawn by the aura here. Yet none dared approach!
"This is... Phoenix Blood! The purest Phoenix Blood! How is this possible? The Heavenly Horned Ant Clan even has the Phoenix Clan's precious blood!"
Lin Yue was somewhat dumbstruck! Still, since both belonged to the Ten Fiends, perhaps possessing some of the other clan's precious blood was only reasonable!
Though the Lin Family was an everlasting clan and possessed Phoenix Blood, which Lin Yue had bathed in to temper his body during the Blood Moving Realm, he had never seen blood this pure. It looked like flowing golden radiance, ready to take shape as a divine phoenix at any moment!
"The other jar contains... Could it be..." Lin Yue's brow twitched!
"The other jar contains our Heavenly Horned Ant Clan's precious blood, embodying the utmost limit of strength! It's shameful to say, but today we met two peerless talents who surpassed our clan in sheer strength. We hardly deserve to call ours the greatest strength!"
"This... How could I possibly accept this?"
"Don't be so polite. You must have succeeded in walking that legendary path, right? Using the self as the seed, relying on no external object. Your talent is truly extraordinary, even surpassing that of our Heavenly Horned Ant Clan! Besides, you are the hope of our Nine Heavens. In the future, you'll be able to do more than either of us!"
Yan spared no praise for Lin Yue.
Lin Yue said, "That's right. I was fortunate enough to succeed!"
"No wonder you could overpower He Wushuang and win back a round for the fortune of the Nine Heavens Realm! During the battle, I felt something strange when I saw you use your divine abilities. You really have walked that miraculous path."
"It wasn't too bad! For me, the water flowed and the channel formed, that was all!"
He was an optimistic young man, describing such a treacherous path with a few light words! That was what the siblings thought!
Yu said, "Using the self as the seed is different from other paths. Though it doesn't require merging with a Dao seed, its difficulty is so great that no one throughout history has ever completed it! You must use yourself as the medium to connect with the Great Dao of heaven and earth. It's hard to imagine how demanding that is on the physical body! It originally existed only in conjecture, yet today we've encountered it ourselves. What an honor! We've witnessed history!"
Yan said, "Though the difficulty is immense, the rewards are rich. The battle earlier already proved this is an invincible path! Next, I'll teach you our clan's Indestructible Scripture! I don't expect it to win this war, but at least we should preserve a thread of hope for the Nine Heavens."
There was no helping it. A war between realms could not be won by one or two people, and the Foreign Realm had far too many kings! They had not even turned out in full force this time. Many giants among the Immortal Kings, like the king-level giants of the Immortal Domain, had gone to the Boundary Sea in search of an opportunity to break beyond kingship and become emperors!
"All right!"
Meeting their sincere gazes, Lin Yue offered no refusal.
"This time, we'll carry the Nine Heavens' battle banner forward!"
Beside the lake, the three sat facing one another. Ancient divine characters of the Great Dao flowed through this Ancient World, occasionally emitting heavenly sounds, as though heaven and earth themselves were expounding the Dao! The surrounding exotic beasts gathered to listen!
Though the Heavenly Horned Ant Clan had obtained only half the scripture, it was powerful enough. This supreme scripture had been nurtured by the Great Dao of heaven and earth through a chance convergence of circumstances, pointing directly toward the ultimate Dao of body refinement. Only beings with the proper destiny could encounter it.
Lin Yue now studied the Indestructible Scripture in conjunction with the Yin-Yang Body Tempering Chapter he cultivated. Though the Yin-Yang Body Tempering Chapter focused on refining the inner universes of the human immortal martial Dao, it was no weaker than the Indestructible Scripture.
Indeed, its extreme yin and extreme yang were even better suited to humans, who were born with Dao bodies.
But the Indestructible Scripture could be cultivated by any race! Its indestructible divinity and divine marks of Dao fortune were exceptionally outstanding!
After this, Lin Yue's physical body would surely reach another height!
Chapter 13: Escape One
As time passed, the Divine Infant in Lin Yue's dantian began radiating indestructible divinity!
Before long, the transmission of the Indestructible Scripture was complete, and Yan and Yu, the Heavenly Horned Ant siblings, both began comprehending the Dao and healing their injuries.
Lin Yue looked at the siblings, then at the two jars of precious blood and the divine lotus beside him. This was the Soul-Guiding Lotus, an immortal medicine the Heavenly Horned Ant Clan used to temper the primordial spirit. It released waves of fragrance, and merely breathing it in made his primordial spirit rejoice.
Next, he began tempering his divine body.
Phoenix Blood was the Phoenix Clan's supreme precious blood. Carrying the vitality of rebirth through nirvana, it was the blood richest in life force between heaven and earth. Combined with the Heavenly Horned Ant's precious blood, which embodied the utmost limit of strength, the two made Lin Yue's entire body radiate light as he bathed in them!
The Dao injuries upon his primordial spirit began to heal. It even shone with golden light as though undergoing rebirth through nirvana, becoming more solid and resilient!
The Phoenix Blood and the Heavenly Horned Ant Clan's precious blood slowly flowed through the twelve great circulatory divine meridians within Lin Yue's body, then spread throughout him, reaching his three hundred and sixty-five grotto-heavens and seven hundred and twenty divine repositories! Within those repositories, one divine embryo after another began gestating, waiting only to take shape and assume the forms of all things in the world!
Streaks of divine radiance tempered Lin Yue's flesh, while threads of golden light tempered his primordial spirit! Outside his body, the Great Dao's divine radiance enveloped him like an enormous silkworm cocoon!
An unknown amount of time passed. Beside the lake, the Heavenly Horned Ant siblings had long since awakened.
Both looked composed and calm, their auras dense and weighty. The pressure radiating from their bodies seemed capable of crushing space itself!
Both wore crimson-black battle robes, ready for combat at any moment. All their Dao injuries had healed, and they had taken another step beyond the top of the hundred-foot pole! Every word and movement revealed their peerless bearing!
Such was the Heavenly Horned Ant Clan of the Ten Fiends. After their bloody battle with He Wushuang, they had ascended to a higher realm in an even stronger state, their physical bodies transformed once more!
"Lin Yue still hasn't awakened!" Yan said!
"That's a good thing. The longer he tempers himself, the greater the benefits. It's said that in the previous era, someone kept tempering himself and entered the ranks of the extreme Dao upon emerging!"
Just as the siblings spoke, golden light pierced the great cocoon. Lin Yue rose like a deity, nodded at them, and felt the divine power within his body that had reached its utmost limit.
Lin Yue was already prepared to cross into the next realm!
He then stopped suppressing his cultivation, relaxing his entire body and allowing his divine power to pierce the firmament like a pillar reaching the heavens.
Almost instantly, wind and clouds surged around Lin Yue. The Great Dao sensed him, as though a being who had reached the utmost limit had emerged, and sent lightning gathering directly in the void!
The lightning tribulation descended. Others faced lightning bolts, but Lin Yue's tribulation transformed into one thunder dragon after another, circling through the sky as though waiting for him to challenge them. Lin Yue hesitated no longer! He flew into the firmament.
Neither sibling looked worried. The lightning tribulation was the final trial in crossing into self-slaying. It was difficult for ordinary people, but for someone like Lin Yue, who had forged an invincible path, it was merely a formality!
Self-slaying-what did it mean to slay the self?
After understanding one's nature, one saw the true self, then severed oneself and clarified the path of the Dao!
Lin Yue's human immortal martial Dao followed the path of an invincible physical body, wielding invincible arts nurtured by the divine universes within him.
Looking at the thunder dragon charging toward him, he lightly raised a jade-like hand and crushed it mercilessly.
Thoughts arise, past lives return to memory! With divine power, I sever the chains! I must slay not only the self, but also my thoughts of good and evil!
High in the firmament, thunder dragons lashed Lin Yue's body. Every bolt of divine thunder carried earth-shaking divine power. Ordinary beings could never withstand such a lightning tribulation. Yet Lin Yue remained completely unmoved! His physical body had attained divine mastery and reached its utmost limit. The thunder dragons could not harm him in the slightest!
Let the Martial Dao Divine Infant house the spirit of my true self.
Within his dantian, the Martial Dao Divine Infant stood and opened its eyes, radiating golden light as it severed Lin Yue's true self!
Let the bodies of yin and yang house my good and evil selves!
The black and white figures seated within his Spiritual Platform rose, instantly absorbing a mass of black divine essence and a mass of white divine essence from Lin Yue's divine consciousness.
Apart from the self, the human body also contained thoughts of goodness! Humans possessed innate Dao bodies, products of the union of extreme yin and extreme yang. Their combination gave rise to the self.
But that did not mean yin and yang ceased to exist. They remained within the human body at all times and would sometimes manifest under the influence of thoughts!
The Yin-Yang Body Tempering Chapter did more than temper the body; it also condensed the extreme yin and extreme yang Dao bodies. Lin Yue now used them to house his thoughts of good and evil, while his Divine Infant housed his self!
He severed everything cleanly in one stroke! He crossed the entire Slashing Self Realm and entered the escape one realm!
Within his Spiritual Platform, after absorbing his thoughts of good and evil, the black and white phantoms of gods and demons slowly began taking on Lin Yue's appearance!
Feeling the surging divine essence within him, Lin Yue opened his eyes. Seeing the thunder dragons still striking him, he lightly raised a fist and punched!
The storm of lightning clouds exploded outright, revealing a seven-colored divine pool bathed in thunder dragons high in the void!
The divine liquid in the pool shimmered with myriad colors, like flowing golden light. Lin Yue swept his sleeve and gathered it all! This was excellent stuff. Whether drunk directly or used to refine pills, it was a treasure one could encounter but never seek at will, comparable to peerless medicines. It also had an effect those medicines lacked: cleansing the uncanny and the inauspicious. Its lightning divinity could destroy demons, monsters, and all ill omens.
Such a thing did not simply appear at higher cultivation realms. It was a gift of the extreme Dao bestowed only upon those who had surpassed their utmost limits!
In other words, even when a supreme being broke through, they would not receive this multicolored Tribulation Lightning Liquid unless they had reached the extreme Dao within their own realm!
Lin Yue landed and smiled faintly at the siblings!
"Lin Yue, you truly deserve to be called the strongest of our Nine Heavens' younger generation. You crossed the entire Slashing Self Realm in one leap and became an Escape One Supreme!" Yu offered her praise as she looked at the young man before her!
Yan said, "Perhaps this is exactly how using the self as the seed ought to manifest! In physical strength alone, you even surpass our Heavenly Horned Ant Clan! You can truly be called unrivaled throughout the ages!"
"There's no need to praise me like that. Escape one is simpler than self-slaying. As long as you have enough divine essence, you can enter escape one. For us, slaying the self and clarifying the Dao is what matters most!"
"That's right!" Yu agreed!
"What should we do next?" she asked.
Before you continue