When the fist-light of the Six Paths of Reincarnation Fist shattered the void and pulverized mountains and rivers, giving full expression to the mighty fleshly power of the Sacred Body Lineage...
A cry of "Six Paths of Reincarnation" likewise echoed between heaven and earth, seeming to stir up dust.
It looked like the most ordinary dust, visible everywhere, with nothing wondrous about it, yet it had settled through hundreds of millions of years of cosmic time, enduring alongside the world.
It also looked like a handful of ashes, the remnants of all beings and all things burned away by... the fire of time!
Hum!
Patterns of unfathomable profundity spread outward from Feng Jiu, branding themselves upon the entire landscape in an instant. Dust filled the sky, blurring his figure.
Wushi was momentarily taken aback.
When he suddenly heard "Six Paths of Reincarnation," he thought his opponent had fortuitously obtained the Sacred Body Lineage's peerless art and meant to use it against him. He did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Without belonging to the Sacred Body Lineage, with its supremely powerful flesh, how could anyone fully unleash the might of this peerless fist art?
And right before him, no less!
Was that not like showing off an axe before a master carpenter?
But a moment later, he realized something was wrong. Both were called "Six Paths of Reincarnation," yet they were two entirely different things!
Dust filled the sky and swept across mountains and rivers, suffused with a miraculous power that threw even his perceptions into confusion. At times, an instant endured forever; at others, eternity stood frozen...
"The power of time? No! Not entirely. It's a shortcut!"
Wushi focused his mind and shouted, "Is that all? Great Dao Descending into Dust, Immortal King Opening the Heavens!"
Six phantasmal universes rumbled into motion. His Dao, his arts, his essence, vitality, and spirit all blazed forth here!
At that moment, each phantasmal universe bore an art, a technique, a forbidden power. These were imperial techniques, crystallizations of the Dao Fruit into which the Queen Mother of the West had once poured her heart's blood-the six strongest forbidden chapters of the Western Emperor Scripture!
Without question, the Six Paths of Reincarnation Fist had become something different in Wushi's hands. It was as though he had transformed into six people, unleashing six forbidden chapters at once, waging war until all eternity was reduced to emptiness!
In that instant, perhaps it was no longer merely the Six Paths of Reincarnation Fist. Calling it the Six Paths of Reincarnation Heavenly Technique would not have been amiss.
For a fleeting moment, Wushi seemed to become an Immortal King fighting here-an Immortal King Descending upon the Nine Heavens!
His presence was astonishing. Mountains and rivers across the ages faintly thundered for him, and the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands honored him as one!
Until a ray of light shone upon him!
Boom!
Heaven and earth grew hazy!
At the same time, the faint sound of a rushing river arose, first a murmuring stream, then an unstoppable torrent, thundering and roaring!
Every particle of dust dancing across the sky shone, together reflecting a river that was both real and illusory, and the figure who stood above it!
Feng Jiu!
Like a Heavenly Emperor, he strode upon time at that moment!
Every inch of his flesh, every bone, became crystalline, taking on the same nature as the dust particles filling the sky. It resembled a transformation, yet also a disintegration. His person was "dying," ashes returning to ashes, dust to dust. All acquired, external things remained in the world. He truly mingled his light with the dust, existing alongside all things.
Only the radiance of a soul that even heaven and earth could not bind remained shining... If reincarnation were real, if rebirth were real, this soul-light would be the most transcendent of all, breaking through the universe's limits and escaping the shackles of space and time, so light it could scarcely be measured, so transcendent it would remain forever free!
When all external things were gone and only a single intent remained, light enough to verge on nonexistence, just how fast could he become?
Wushi witnessed it!
Boom!
Feng Jiu struck again. His speed matched the speed of his thoughts. Time fell into chaos, and his figure could not be seen at all. Only a blade's light remained, reflecting a blue sky washed clean!
Pitter-patter!
Rain suddenly fell from the sky, golden, dazzling, and radiant. It was the blood of the innate sacred body dao embryo!
Wushi had been cleaved apart!
Six phantasmal universes revolved, spatial divine laws intertwined, and a Karmic Curse shrouded everything. Yet at that moment, none could stop the blade-light. They seemed to occupy parallel lines that would never intersect, until a certain thought descended!
"A true... domain of time!"
Wushi retreated, half his body split open. The secret healing art recorded in the Western Emperor Scripture was working, and the Sacred Body's vast vitality surged as well, restoring him to full health almost in the next instant.
Yet the blade-light was endless. It never ceased!
Crack!
Wushi's arm snapped off. Even the flesh of the innate sacred body dao embryo, with its potential unleashed to the fullest, was not enough. It could not withstand that peerless blade-light!
"He transformed his flesh, offered his body as a sacrifice, and permeated the mountains and rivers of all ages, using the rings of years upon his own wheel of life to resonate with the traces of time the greater universe left upon all things..."
Another of Wushi's arms flew off. Hundreds of millions of blade-lights bloomed at once, reducing that flesh to pulp. No speed of recovery could keep pace with such destruction!
Without question, he was advancing step by step toward defeat and death, swept away like rotten wood before a certain mechanism, without the slightest hope of turning the tables.
A little pagoda hidden deep within him was already trembling, and the deity inside it grew restless.
Even she had to admit that in a battle like this, even the Western Emperor who had once forged her would have died without any suspense at this cultivation realm!
In fact, even if the Western Emperor at the level of severing the Dao had come, she would probably have struggled to escape alive through sheer luck!
Yet Wushi was, after all, stronger than his parents.
Even as he drew infinitely close to death, his mind grew more focused and radiant. The more battered his condition, the keener his spiritual perception became!
When the most breathtaking blade-light descended and shattered his flesh, he seemed to enter an extraordinary spiritual state!
The words of the Western Emperor Scripture flowed through Wushi's mind. It was widely held to be the strongest scripture for the dao palace secret realm among humanity's Emperor Scriptures.
The dao palace secret realm was deeply mysterious. Legend held that it housed the "departed self" and the "Dao self," distinct from the "original self."
The "departed self" chanted scriptures in the past for this present life, while the "Dao self" stood in the future, illuminating the mind and discerning one's true nature, comprehending the supreme truths of heaven and earth and realizing one's own Great Dao.
The Western Emperor had exhausted its mysteries and traveled far in this domain. Among the emperors and sovereigns of antiquity, few could surpass her.
After all, she possessed an innate dao embryo, born close to the Dao and able to perceive the transformations of the myriad Daos at the deepest level.
Here, however, in this desperate brink of death, Wushi had been forced into a fatal predicament. His flesh had been blasted apart, his corpse cut into countless pieces. His original self was nearly withered away, reduced to flesh and shattered bones filling the sky.
The Western Emperor's scripture flowed through him, allowing him to glimpse a thread of survival within the "departed self" and the "Dao self."
Of course, more crucial still was that terrifying prodigy of the Assassin Heavenly Court. His actions, and the unfolding of his Dao and his arts, had provided tremendous inspiration.
The wheel of life within one's own body, the rings of years eroding the universe's traces of time...
If I could mark a point in time, within the "departed self"...
...copy the mysteries of heaven and earth, reverse every "present" unfavorable to me, reset it and send it back...
Wushi's corpse lay scattered across the sky. Sacred blood drenched the mountains and rivers, and every inch of bloody pulp contained his will and his Dao laws.
At that moment, all the bloody pulp ignited. The qualities of his innate dao embryo aspect erupted, resonating with the greater universe and making the "past" overwrite the "present"!
"Wu... shi..."