The Qing Household prodigy supposedly seen only once in several thousand years, supposedly within reach of the top ten on the Heavenly Gang Ranking, proved just as ordinary before the threshold that had barred countless great Nascent Soul cultivators until their deaths.
He seemed only one final step away from Spirit Transformation.
Yet he might never take that step, even by the time his lifespan ran out.
But just as Qing Yuanjia left the wondrous site with the [Bronze Compass], Zhu Ritian, who had long been waiting outside, personally struck.
Qing Yuanjia's newly formed, once-transformed Heavenly Wave domain was indeed formidable, enough to place him among the very highest ranks of Nascent Soul cultivators throughout the Nanhua Realm.
But before a true Spirit Transformation Venerable, a Nascent Soul was ultimately only a Nascent Soul.
For every hundred li his Heavenly Wave domain shook, Zhu Ritian's Devouring Domain swallowed a hundred li.
Had the Bronze Compass not protected him and carried him away, Zhu Ritian would already have suppressed him beneath Hezhou. It was only that Zhu Ritian lacked a Spirit Treasure compatible with himself.
From Hezhou in the Northwestern Circuit to the Central Southern Circuit, a journey of over ten million li, Qing Yuanjia exhausted every means and plunged several times into dangerous places recorded by the Qing Household, yet he could never truly shake off the Devouring Domain that followed him like his shadow.
It was in a spatial rift valley on the edge of the Central Southern Circuit that he encountered Ding Buxing.
Ding Buxing had been in an even sorrier state then than he was now.
Two Nascent Soul Attendants from the Eighth Prince's Residence, two Nascent Soul Mirror-Holding Envoys from the Profound Mirror Sky-Hunting Bureau, and several thousand cultivators had surrounded the entire rift valley so