The sky was dark, and a streak of black light flashed past.
Beneath the night sky, runes covered the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow. Black light flowed over its feathers, and its eyes were crimson as blood moons, blazing with ferocity.
It spread its wings and plunged down at tremendous speed, arriving in an instant.
Its talons tore through the air amid howling wind and thunder, ripping apart the heavens.
The tiny human figure was shredded in an instant, dissolving into a sky full of drifting light.
"Hm? No, this isn't right. What kind of technique is this?!"
Yet the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow felt no joy. Instead, alarm bells rang furiously within it.
Only then did it realize that the one barring its path was merely a primordial spirit, not someone physically present.
What it had just torn apart was nothing more than a phantom formed from a wisp of a divided soul.
But how could a primordial spirit wield such combat power?
The Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow was utterly baffled, both deeply alarmed and filled with greed.
Before it could puzzle anything out, a point of light blossomed from the void, appearing right before its eyes as an overwhelmingly powerful primordial spirit fluctuation erupted.
In an instant, it was as though a great sun had appeared in the sky!
It was a primordial spirit cave heaven, opening like a gateway to the immortal realm. Shi Zhao stepped out, every strand of her hair glittering brilliantly, her eyes radiant as a river of stars and flowing with a suffocating splendor.
At that moment, every movement she made carried the resonance of the Dao, along with invincible confidence and the supreme bearing of one who would yield to no other. She seemed like a female Immortal King descending into the world, looking down upon heaven and earth.
"Come, fight me!"
Her voice was clear and cold as she unleashed her strongest means.
The next instant, the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow's head felt ready to split, and it could not help throwing its head back and shrieking.
With a hum, searing pain struck between its brows. A strange force was actually dragging its primordial spirit out, wrenching it free of its forehead bone and threatening to separate it from its flesh.
This was gravely serious. If the two were separated, it would surely be in mortal danger.
If its unconscious body were destroyed by some means, it would be finished. Without its bodily shell, its primordial spirit would become duckweed without roots, doomed to perish sooner or later.
"I won't sit here and wait to die! I can't die! I'll burn my blood and soul and fight you to the death!"
Unable to accept this happening, the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow went utterly mad. Vast black light surged through its sea of consciousness, where an immense vicious bird beat its wings against the heavens, shrieking wildly as its entire body burst into flames.
"..."
Shi Zhao blinked. She had not even attacked yet. Why had this thing started mutilating itself?
An almost imperceptible fissure appeared between the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow's brows, seeping pitch-black bloody light. It had truly resisted that strange force pulling at its primordial spirit.
But at the same time, Shi Zhao made her move. She condensed her spiritual power into a long saber, then transformed it into a war spear, and finally into a massive hammer.
Boom!
Hammer in hand, she actually charged straight into the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow's sea of consciousness. With a single blow, she unleashed dazzling purple lightning.
This was the flawless, pure-blooded Suanni Precious Technique.
Purple lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating everything as it transformed into a sea of thunder.
The Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow's primordial spirit blazed with scorching black light. Any ordinary invading primordial spirit would already have been burned to ashes and crushed to dust.
This is my home ground, after all. The advantage is mine!
Fortunately, the Tattered Cloth exerted its power, and Shi Zhao remained entirely unaffected.
Within the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow's sea of consciousness, beneath the shroud of scorching black light, she swung her massive hammer again and again, cracking its burning primordial spirit and scattering its black feathers in all directions.
Finally, with a boom, the massive hammer she had condensed from spiritual power smashed the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow's primordial spirit apart!
The Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow was terrified. After barely managing to re-form its primordial spirit, it saw her aim the hammer at it again. Frightened beyond all restraint, it ruthlessly detonated part of its own primordial spirit.
Shi Zhao was forcibly driven out. Ultimately, this was someone else's home ground, and there was little she could do against such a sudden, self-destructive tactic.
The Tattered Cloth could only protect her passively; it would not take the initiative to display any divine might.
Of course, the root of the problem was still her shallow cultivation and lack of varied means. Had she also been in the venerable realm, those few hammer blows would surely have killed the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow.
"Wooo..." Outside, the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow struggled, its eyes full of terror and every feather standing on end. Its heart-rending howls shook the mountains and valleys.
It beat its wings desperately, burning its blood essence without hesitation as it staggered into a forced flight.
"Heavens, the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow is running away again?"
"Heaven has eyes! That demonic bird has been grievously wounded!"
Below, the lucky survivors in the Thunder Marquis's territory stared, dumbstruck.
They knew this vicious bird was incomparably powerful. It was the legendary Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow, capable of swallowing hundreds of millions of living beings with a single opening of its beak, one of the most terrifying creatures in the Great Wilderness.
Yet today, the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow had met a formidable enemy, been struck down, and nearly lost its life here!
Cries of astonishment rang out within the Thunder Clan. Everyone stared in disbelief, unsure whether to cry or laugh.
Their great grievance had clearly been avenged, but their friends and family had died without even leaving bones behind. Who could possibly laugh?
At last, they recovered their senses and desperately wanted to know who had saved them.
Sadly, no one could answer them...
Naturally, Shi Zhao had no intention of showing off. Displaying her might before others meant nothing to her. Everything she did and sought was merely to set her own heart at ease, nothing more.
"Cough, cough. I went a little too far this time." She coughed lightly several times. The expenditure had been too great, and her primordial spirit was finally beginning to feel unwell.
The Tattered Cloth was not all-powerful, either. If her primordial spirit truly remained outside her body for too long, serious problems would still arise.
She was about to return her primordial spirit to her body when her exceptionally keen divine sense suddenly detected an intense threat, as though a pair of eyes had fixed on her from the shadows.
Only after a long while did that sense of danger gradually fade.
"The Bird Saint Honghu." Shi Zhao guessed who was lurking in the dark.
At this point in time, any powerful being appearing here could almost certainly be identified as the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow's nominal master.
She simply did not know whether that old bird would clean house ahead of time, taking advantage of the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow's severe injuries to dispose of its wonderfully filial, devoted disciple.
Of course, it was even more likely that it, too, coveted the Mountain Treasure.
The closer someone came to death, the less willing they were to abandon even the slightest shred of hope.
Sure enough, without the Heaven-Swallowing Sparrow, Qiongqi remained at a disadvantage throughout, pinned down and pummeled, while Zhu Yan and the Vermilion Bird seemed to have reached some sort of agreement.
The Bird Saint Honghu could no longer sit still. If Zhu Yan and the Vermilion Bird fully joined forces, Qiongqi would certainly be no match for them and would be swept out of contention sooner or later. That was something it did not want to see.
Earlier, it had been secretly investigating its "dear disciple," only to unexpectedly learn of the Mountain Treasure. That was by no means an ordinary so-called mountain
treasure, but a sacred object.
It had intended to hide in the shadows and let the four beasts slaughter one another, then reap the fisherman's rewards. It had never expected someone to suddenly jump out and disrupt its plans.
Fortunately, it could tell that the strange fellow's primordial spirit was ailing, and that her physical body definitely had problems as well. She no longer had the strength to do anything else.
"Must this old one personally take action after all?"
No one knew where the Bird Saint Honghu's true body was. What took action was one of its spiritual bodies, which did its utmost to conceal its methods, unwilling to expose its identity lightly. For a time, it traded blows evenly with the three Venerables.
Only several days later did the confrontation among the four finally end, its curtain about to fall...
Before you continue