"Boom-"
Another earth-shaking clash sent both sides hurtling back a hundred yards under the savage recoil. Bai Ling suddenly withdrew his attack, a calculating gleam flickering in his scarlet beast eyes. "Human, to contend with a supreme expert at your age is rare even among the descendants of primordial Fierce Beasts. The power behind you must be extraordinary. The Wind-Thunder Leopard clan is now hunting you with all its strength. Why not work with our White Ghost Race?"
Shi Yi sneered, and the Thunder Patterns on his Void Halberd abruptly flared. "Work with you? I just killed your clan's prodigies right before your eyes. If I followed you back to your lair, would I ever come out alive?" Mockery flashed in his eyes. "A mere early-stage venerable thinks he can make decisions for his entire race? Do you take me for a three-year-old, or did your cultivation go awry and fry your brain?"
"You don't know what's good for you!" Bai Ling flew into a rage, the lightning around him instantly turning blood-red. "Then stay here forever!"
Venerable Bai Ling's face twisted hideously. His blood essence boiled as he poured his lifetime of cultivation into the ancient Thunder-Avoiding Divine Needle. The ancient markings on its surface lit up one after another, and the lightning power throughout Heavenly Thunder Valley converged madly, forming a Thunderstorm Vortex more than a hundred yards across in midair. Its destructive energy fluctuations had already brushed the threshold of the Divine Fire Realm!
Shi Yi's pupils contracted sharply, and every hair on his body stood on end. The might of this strike was beyond what an ordinary venerable could withstand. He drew a deep breath and formed seals with both hands, his blood surging like vast, mighty rivers.
"Qilin Step!"
With a long, heaven-shaking roar, a wholly purple Qilin manifestation appeared behind Shi Yi. It trod upon auspicious clouds, the sun and moon held within its eyes, its mountainlike body radiating suffocating pressure. Shi Yi merged with the manifestation, and all heaven and earth trembled beneath its sacred aura.
"Thud! Thud! Thud!"
He took six steps in succession, each resonating with heaven and earth. Dozens of surrounding peaks collapsed beneath that pressure, exploding into clouds of dust.
"So that's it." Shi Yi's icy voice emerged from within the Qilin manifestation. "You didn't refine this Thunder-Avoiding Divine Needle yourself. You can't even unleash thirty percent of its power."
Before Bai Ling could react in horror, the seventh step descended upon his head with the might to destroy heaven and earth. His hastily erected defensive barrier shattered like paper, and he was slammed deep into the ground. Before the dust settled, two brilliant beams of divine light suddenly burst from the Qilin's eyes-
"Pfft! Pfft!"
One pierced his dantian; the other bored through the center of his brow. Disbelieving terror remained frozen in Venerable Bai Ling's wide eyes. This supreme expert, who had roamed the Cave-Dwelling World for thousands of years, had fallen in Thunderclap Valley just like that.
The purple Qilin manifestation slowly dissipated, and Shi Yi drifted to the ground. Traces of chaotic energy still lingered in his Double Pupils. He gazed at Bai Ling's corpse, a thoughtful gleam passing through his eyes. In that final strike, he had deliberately employed the origin power of his Double Pupils to ensure that this venerable expert had no chance of survival.
"Hum-"
As he grasped at the air, the ancient Thunder-Avoiding Divine Needle trembled and flew into his palm. The needle was dark gold, its surface inscribed with intricate primordial Thunder Patterns. Even now, it continued to draw in and release the lingering power of lightning.
"It can ward off lightning and summon it..." Shi Yi ran a fingertip along the needle, sensing the immense power within. "A pity it takes too long to charge. In a fight to the death, that becomes a fatal opening instead."
He suddenly looked up toward the horizon. What Bai Ling had revealed before his death put him on guard-the Wind-Thunder Leopard clan was actually hunting him.
"With my current strength, my chances against a Divine Fire Realm expert are less than thirty percent." Shi Yi put away the needle, and the markings of the Primordial Chaos Heaven-Refining Grand Formation began appearing around him.
"Fortunately, the third layer of the formation is complete. It's time to venture deeper into the forbidden zone..." Before his words faded, he had become a streak of light and vanished into the depths of Heavenly Thunder Valley.
Shi Yi did not know that Lei Jie was currently the only venerable guarding the canyon's outskirts. Had he known, he would likely have fought his way out already.
After putting away his spoils, Shi Yi headed deeper into Heavenly Thunder Valley. The farther he went, the more violent the lightning between heaven and earth became. Black bolts as thick as millstones tore through the sky, weaving a web of light among the clouds. Every thunderclap shook the ground. The lightning here was no longer a simple natural phenomenon; it seemed more like the will of some eternal existence.
Finding a place to sit cross-legged, Shi Yi set his Double Pupils revolving, and the Primordial Chaos Heaven-Refining Grand Formation formed a radiant wheel of light around him. With his left hand, he manifested the Wind-Thunder Leopard clan's lightning runes; with his right, he worked through the White Ghost Race's lightning Treasure Art. Under the analysis of his Double Pupils, these two utterly different lightning inheritances gradually revealed a shared Dao resonance at their source.
During a month of arduous cultivation, Shi Yi's understanding of the Dao of lightning underwent a qualitative leap. He discovered that lightning was not merely a force of destruction-when a bolt split the heavens, a special spiritual energy was born in the air; when lightning fire consumed dead wood, astonishing vitality lay within the ashes. This profound cycle of creation and destruction brought him into contact with the essential truth at the heart of the Thunder Dao Laws.
A dazzling flash of lightning suddenly burst across the horizon, as though tearing a fissure in the sky. Riding a thundercloud, Lei Shang arrived in an instant. The purple lightning serpents coiling around him ionized the air within a hundred yards, filling it with a scorched tang.
Lei Jie hurriedly said, "Welcome, Supreme Elder! Did the banquet go smoothly?"
Thunder boomed as Lei Shang's sleeves swept through the air. His keen gaze passed over the canyon entrance. "As usual. Has that human ant been behaving?" The lightning dancing at his fingertips betrayed his agitation.
"This disciple has kept watch day and night. Not a single living creature has left the valley. It's just..." He hesitated. "A month ago, three White Ghost Race cultivators entered the valley to practice their Treasure Arts. Your subordinate feared stirring the grass and startling the snake..." Lei Jie reported respectfully.
"Fool!" Lei Shang suddenly roared, blasting a nearby boulder to pieces with a bolt of lightning. "That old ghost Bai Ling excels at fishing in muddy waters!" He spun toward the depths of the canyon, where thunderclouds churned. "We must capture that human brat before the White Ghost Race notices. Otherwise, the secret of the Cave-Dwelling World..."
Cold sweat suddenly seeped down Lei Jie's back. He realized how serious the situation was-the two White Ghost Race prodigies should have attended that great personage's banquet, yet they had been absent without explanation. Sooner or later, their elders would trace them to Thunderbright Valley. More terrifying still, an entire month had passed, and the three who had entered the valley had vanished like stones sinking into the sea...
The thought made his hair stand on end. Bai Ling's cultivation was on par with his own. If even that veteran venerable had perished inside... Lei Jie unconsciously touched his neck, as though he could already feel the breath of death.
"Supreme Elder, the White Ghost Race..." He was about to ask how they should respond when Lei Shang suddenly raised a hand to stop him. A fierce light blazed in Lei Shang's eyes as he stared fixedly at a spot within the valley.
Lei Shang suddenly transformed into a dazzling streak of lightning and shot into the valley. The ground where he had stood was now a charred pit of molten rock.
Deep within Heavenly Thunder Valley, Shi Yi stood at a strange boundary. Before him lay a deathly silent wasteland, without a single blade of
grass or the slightest trace of lightning, in stark contrast to the flashing bolts and booming thunder behind him. Fierce winds swept up grit and lashed it against his face, yet eerily made no sound at all, as though this stretch of space swallowed every sound.