But it was all damn useless. Xiahou Yeming, in the late Nascent Soul realm, was utterly helpless before the sword light. It slammed into his body, and a deafening crash rang through heaven and earth. He vanished instantly, along with the elders and disciples beside him, as though they had never existed.
Everyone present watched the scene before them, a flicker of fear passing through their eyes.
"This must be an expert the Righteous Qi Sect has kept hidden."
It was simply too terrifying.
The might of that single sword strike awed the Nine Provinces.
"I wonder which senior of our sect that was. What a blessing for the Righteous Qi Sect!"
That was what the members of the Righteous Qi Sect were thinking.
By the time everyone came to their senses, Li Dalong had vanished from their perception, as though he had never appeared.
After killing Blood Demon, the grand elder of the Blood Devil Race, and Xiahou Yeming, the sect master of the Rising Sun Sect, Li Dalong returned to the forbidden grounds. An hour passed quickly. Once the Spirit-Explosion Pill wore off, its side effects erupted, immediately plunging him into a weakened state. Feeling the power vanish from his body in an instant, his heart filled with the insecurity of suddenly losing control over his own fate. It was an awful feeling, and he could not let it happen again. Although the forbidden grounds on the mountain behind the sect were relatively safe for now, if he entered this weakened state and encountered a powerful enemy in the future, he would be nothing but a lamb awaiting slaughter.
Although he had slain a member of the Devil Race in the Out-of-Body realm today, that had not been his true power. He had only managed it by taking a shortcut with the Spirit-Explosion Pill. He still needed to keep improving his own strength.
Had it not been for the Spirit-Explosion Pill rewarded by the system, he would not have been able to save the Righteous Qi Sect from its calamity, and even his own life would have been threatened.
Although his late Nascent Soul realm cultivation made killing opponents of the same level a simple matter, it was still far from enough in the Cultivation World. Who knew where another few Out-of-Body realm experts might pop up? He still had to keep his head down and cultivate diligently.
Leaving aside Li Dalong, who once again set everything else aside to focus on cultivation, after he returned to the forbidden grounds, the news that he had killed Blood Demon, the grand elder of the Blood Devil Race, with one sword strike and wiped out all the senior members of the Rising Sun Sect present with another spread like an earthquake, instantly shaking the entire Cultivation World.
The Out-of-Body realm! An expert who unquestionably stood at the pinnacle of the entire Cultivation World had been annihilated by a single sword strike, without the slightest ability to resist. The fiercely ambitious Devil Race immediately lowered their banners and silenced their drums, retreating into the Abyssal Devil Lands.
No one had expected the declining Righteous Qi Sect to still possess such deep reserves. At that moment, whether they had witnessed it firsthand or merely received the news, the various factions felt a bone-deep chill. At the same time, they secretly rejoiced that they had not been the bird that stuck its head out, or they would have been the ones annihilated by that sword strike.
Previously, all the major factions had believed that the Righteous Qi Sect had long since lost its former glory and fallen completely into the ranks of third-rate sects. Never in their wildest dreams had they imagined that such a third-rate sect, with its talent dwindling and its development struggling, still had a sect ancestor who could slay an Out-of-Body realm expert with one sword strike. With such an ancestor holding the fort, the Righteous Qi Sect was about to rise.
Time passed, day after day of cultivation. While cultivating, Li Dalong did not neglect his study of formations. Through relentless practice and research, both his cultivation and his mastery of formations improved steadily.
One day, after finishing his cultivation, Li Dalong stepped outside his cave abode. With a thought, the Azure Cloud Sword appeared in his hand. He swung it toward a boulder at the foot of the mountain, and a streak of sword light shot out. With a soft slicing sound, it plunged into the boulder as easily as chopping melons and vegetables, piercing straight through it. It then bored a narrow hole of unfathomable depth into the mountain before vanishing inside.
Through arduous cultivation, combined with the insights and experience gained from the Spirit-Explosion Pill raising him to the Out-of-Body realm, he was no longer remotely comparable to his self of a month ago, even though he remained in the late Nascent Soul realm. Both his attack power and his understanding of formations had made a great leap forward.
It's time to try the ward around the Ancestral Grounds deep within the forbidden grounds. Hopefully, I can get inside today and see what's there.
Li Dalong's figure flashed, and he appeared before the ward around the Ancestral Grounds. With his current cultivation, such a distance was already negligible.
Li Dalong pressed a finger against the ward. Closing his eyes, he attached his divine sense to his spiritual power, then concentrated it at the point where his finger touched the ward. He slowly spread it over the ward and gradually let it seep inward. As his divine sense penetrated the ward, he felt an immense energy flowing toward him within it, as though it were a power from another world.
Perhaps because he had always cultivated the Righteous Qi Sect's authentic Righteous Qi Formula, the spiritual power circulating within the ward felt intimately familiar to his own, as though they shared the same roots and source. The ward neither attacked nor rejected him.
As his spiritual power and divine sense began merging into the ward, he took a deep breath and started increasing the spiritual power he poured into it. As he continued feeding in his spiritual power, he keenly sensed a subtle change in the ward's texture, as though a thick layer of ice had begun melting beneath his power.
Suddenly, he felt as though everything had become clear. Before, he had always thought about how to break it, never about merging with it. That's right-merge with it. If I can't beat you, I'll make you one of my own.
He cautiously increased his power again, testing how much the ward could withstand and searching for its nodes. At that moment, the ward began emitting a faint glow, and its power suddenly grew much stronger.
Suddenly, he felt the power within the ward begin rejecting him. A powerful surge of spiritual energy rushed toward him along the spiritual power he was pouring in. He hurriedly circulated his cultivation method faster, increasing his flow of spiritual power to withstand the attack.
He did not dare relax. While resisting the ward's attack, he continued examining it closely, searching for a way through. He discovered that its interior seemed to have suffered from its great age, having endured tens of thousands of years. Although the Righteous Qi Sect had repaired it from time to time, after the sect gradually declined, it could no longer fully restore the damaged areas, much less mend its flaws. Now, one such flaw had become his opening.
He began concentrating his power into a powerful beam of spiritual energy. While counterattacking the ward's power, he also began devouring and refining it, preparing to force his way through. He drew a deep breath, then split off a stream of spiritual power and struck hard at the flaw in the ward.
The ward's spiritual power faltered for an instant. Li Dalong hurriedly darted through the opening that appeared, passing through the ward and emerging inside the Ancestral Grounds. The moment he entered, he felt the rich spiritual energy and the profound weight of history accumulated there.
He had finally made it inside. Filled with joy, he curiously examined the ward that had kept him out for years. He knew his mastery of formations had risen another level.
Li Dalong stood at the entrance to the Ancestral Grounds, looking at the shattered palaces, smashed rock gardens, and enormous furrows carved by blades and swords in the distance. Images of the brutal battlefield of old sprang into his mind.
Tens of thousands of years ago, the Blood Devil Race had ravaged the Cultivation World. Ouyang Zhenhua, the first sect master of the Righteous Qi Sect, possessed heaven-reaching strength. For the peace of the entire Cultivation World, he had personally gone to the Blood Devil Race. Through several great battles, he destroyed most of the Devil Race's elite forces and captured the Blood Slaughter Ancestor of the Blood Devil Race, imprisoning him in the Righteous Qi Sect's forbidden grounds.
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