The spiritual energy between heaven and earth could not be summoned, but Shi Hao's body, tempered through countless brushes with death, displayed astonishing adaptability.
He closed his eyes and began adjusting his breathing.
Out.
In.
Shi Hao's breathing gradually drew closer to that vast rhythm of one cycle every thirty-six hours.
He seemed to become a solid rock, merging with the surrounding Mass Field.
When he opened his eyes again, the crushing pressure around him had actually eased considerably.
Shi Hao clenched his fists and stood up.
He glanced back toward the Heavenly Human Clan pursuers, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.
Without their magical power, the Heavenly Human Clan in this mist was nothing but a flock of lambs awaiting slaughter.
"You've chased me for so long. It's about time I collected some interest."
Then, like a humanoid tyrannosaur, Shi Hao silently slipped back through the gaps between the dust motes.
Deep in the mist.
Several True God disciples of the Heavenly Human Clan huddled together.
They gasped for breath, their eyes frantic.
Without their magical power, even standing took effort.
The Heavenly God elder leading them looked livid.
His robes were already soaked with sweat.
"Elder, what do we do now?" a disciple asked in a trembling voice.
"Shut your mouth. Let me think," the Heavenly God elder replied irritably.
He surveyed his surroundings.
Dark Gold dust floated everywhere.
The companion who had just died had left behind not even bones.
This fear of the unknown had utterly shattered their mental defenses.
Behind a crystalline rock not far away.
Shi Hao stood quietly.
He made no sound at all.
He watched the Heavenly Human Clan pursuers, his gaze icy.
Shi Hao bent down and picked up a fist-sized stone.
He silently counted his breaths.
One.
Two.
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
The dust motes ahead rose three inches.
The muscles in Shi Hao's arm bulged, and his wrist snapped forward.
The stone shot out.
It traced a straight line through the air and struck a Heavenly Human Clan disciple squarely in the knee.
"Aah!"
The disciple cried out in pain.
He lost his balance, his body pitching forward involuntarily.
A speck of Dark Gold dust happened to drift past in front of him.
The dust touched his cheek.
A scalp-prickling crack of bone rang out.
The disciple's head instantly deformed, and then his entire body became a cloud of bloody mist.
Blood splashed onto the faces of those beside him.
Warm.
Pungent.
"Who's there!"
The Heavenly God elder roared and whipped his head around.
He saw Shi Hao emerging from behind the rock.
Shi Hao made no attempt to conceal himself.
He shook out his wrist and advanced step by step.
"Old man, you've had a hard time looking for me, haven't you?" Shi Hao asked.
The Heavenly God elder's eyes widened.
"Shi Hao? You're still alive?"
"You're all still alive. Why would I be dead?" Shi Hao countered.
A Heavenly Human Clan disciple drew the sword at his waist and pointed it at Shi Hao.
"You little bastard, you actually dare show yourself!"
Shi Hao did not even glance at him and kept walking.
"Elder, let's attack together and kill him!" the disciple shouted.
The Heavenly God elder did not move.
He had noticed something wrong.
Without their magical power, they were all pinned down by the environment here, unable to move.
Yet Shi Hao walked with ease.
He was completely unaffected by the surrounding Mass Field.
"Kill me? In your current state?" Shi Hao gave a brief smile.
He suddenly drove off the ground.
Several cracks spread through the crystals beneath his foot.
Shi Hao instantly charged up to the sword-wielding disciple.
He used no Precious Technique.
Shi Hao raised his right hand and punched the man in the chest.
A dull crunch of breaking bones rang out.
The disciple's chest caved straight in.
His eyes bulged as he flew backward and slammed heavily into the ground, twitched twice, and stopped breathing.
The two remaining disciples recoiled several steps in terror.
The True God cultivation they took such pride in was utterly useless here.
Without magical power, their bodies could not withstand even one punch from Shi Hao.
"You... how are you unaffected?" the Heavenly God elder asked, his voice trembling.
"Want to know?" Shi Hao countered.
He walked straight toward the Heavenly God elder.
The elder gritted his teeth and raised both fists to meet him.
Shi Hao dodged sideways and seized the elder's arm.
He bent it hard.
Crack.
The arm snapped cleanly.
Cold sweat poured from the Heavenly God elder as he screamed in agony.
"Scream louder. No one can hear you here." Shi Hao's face was expressionless.
He kicked the elder in the abdomen.
The elder went flying and rolled several times across the ground.
Shi Hao walked over and planted a foot on the elder's chest.
He looked down at him from above.
"Your Heavenly Human Clan stands so high above everyone else. How does it feel now?"
The elder spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva.
"Shi Hao, don't get smug. Our Heavenly Human Clan will never let you off."
"That's for later. You won't live to see it."
Shi Hao pressed down with his foot.
The elder's ribs broke one after another.
His entire body convulsed with pain, and he could not even speak.
Seeing this, the other two True God disciples turned and ran.
They fled blindly.
They paid no attention at all to the rhythm of the dust motes' rise and fall.
One of them ran straight into a dense patch of dust.
His body was instantly crushed into bloody mist.
The other stopped, collapsing to the ground in terror as yellow liquid flowed from his crotch.
Shi Hao walked over, seized his collar, and lifted him up.
"Don't kill me! Please, don't kill me!" the disciple begged loudly.
Shi Hao did not answer. He simply twisted his neck until it broke.
He casually tossed the corpse to the ground.
Now only the Heavenly God elder still had a breath left in him.
Shi Hao walked back to the elder.
The elder's eyes were filled with fear.
He had lived for long ages, yet this was the first time he had felt death so close.
"Shi Hao, how exactly did you do it?" the elder asked weakly.
"Adapt to the rules here," Shi Hao answered.
"Impossible. What exactly is this place?" the elder pressed.
"I'd like to know too."
Shi Hao raised his head and glanced into the deepest part of the mist.
A rhythmic vibration suddenly came from the direction of the enormous pit.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The sound was very muffled.
The ground shook along with it.
Shi Hao frowned.
He felt the gravity around him increasing.
The rhythm of the dust motes' rise and fall quickened.
What had been once every eighteen breaths was now once every nine.
The Heavenly God elder felt the change too.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the suddenly intensified gravity forced him to vomit fragments of his internal organs.
Without magical power protecting it, his Heavenly God body could no longer withstand this terrifying physical pressure.
Shi Hao paid him no further attention.
He left him writhing in agony on the ground, his bones shattering inch by inch.
Shi Hao turned and looked toward the enormous pit.
That fist-sized Dark Gold fragment was glowing.
The light was dim, yet it pierced the thick mist.
Shi Hao retreated a few steps.
An instinctive sense of danger made every hair on his body stand on end.
I can't stay here long.
The fragment at the bottom of the enormous pit had undergone some kind of abnormal change.
The mist in the sky began churning violently.
An enormous vortex formed in midair.
All the surrounding Dark Gold dust was converging at the bottom of the enormous pit.
The Three Thousand Dao Provinces.
The Heavenly Human Clan's ancestral grounds.
Inside the ancient hall housing the life tablets.
The disciple guarding the life tablets was dozing.
Crack, crack, crack.
A series of piercing cracks jolted him awake.
He rubbed his eyes and looked up at the jade tablets above.
His face instantly turned deathly pale.
In the topmost row, the life tablet belonging to the Heavenly God elder who had led the hunt for Shi Hao had crumbled to powder.
Below it, the life tablets of the several True God disciples who had accompanied him had all shattered as well.
Not one had survived.
The entire force had been wiped out.
The disciple's legs went weak, and he stumbled out of the great hall.
"Something's happened!"
"The elder has fallen!"
His cries shattered the tranquility of the Heavenly Human Clan's ancestral grounds.
Soon, several terrifying auras descended upon the great hall.
The old Heavenly Human appeared in person.
He looked at the powdered life tablets littering the floor, his expression so dark it seemed water might drip from it.
"Investigate!"
"Go to Sin Province and find out exactly what happened!" the old Heavenly Human roared.
A Self-Severing Realm expert dropped to one knee.
"Ancestor, the wasteland on the Sin Province Border has been sealed off by fog. Our scouts can't get in at all."
"We've lost contact with everyone who forced their way inside."
The old Heavenly Human clenched his fists.
"That junior Shi Hao could never have the strength to kill a Heavenly God and so many True Gods."
"There must be something there we don't know about."
Beyond the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands.
In the boundless Chaos Void.
Gu Xian remained coiled there.
The countdown continued ticking steadily.
He knew nothing of what was happening outside.
He merely felt a trace of hunger in his sleep.
To supply energy for his body's reconstruction.
He opened his mouth and inhaled a great mouthful of chaotic currents.
That single breath triggered a storm in the void beyond the realm.
It also caused the piece of dead skin that had fallen onto Sin Province's wasteland to resonate.
At the bottom of the enormous crater.
The Dark Gold fragment absorbed all the dust.
It grew a size larger.
The patterns on its surface lit up.
A physical pulse visible to the naked eye spread in all directions, centered on the enormous crater.
The pulse swept past.
The poisonous miasma over Sin Province's wasteland instantly dispersed.
The hard crystalline ground was plowed flat.
Shi Hao pressed his body against the ground with all his might.
He adjusted his breathing, matching his own frequency to that of the pulse.
The pulse skimmed over his head.
Several great mountains behind him were reduced directly to powder beneath its sweep.
Shi Hao turned to look at the vanished mountains and swallowed.
He stood up and, without the slightest hesitation, sprinted frantically out of the wasteland.
At the Sin Province Border.
Shi Hao ran at full speed the entire way.
He drove the Kun Peng Technique to his current limit, the wings on his back trailing two long afterimages.
Only when he had nearly exhausted all the strength in his body did he stop on a towering mountain ridge.
He gasped for breath.
Shi Hao turned around and looked back the way he had come.
As far as his eyes could see, the uninhabited No-Man's Land, shrouded year-round in poisonous miasma and covered in lofty mountains and steep ridges, had vanished completely.
In its place lay a crystalline plain of utter flatness.
Beneath the sweep of that immense physical pulse, soil, rocks, and trees had all been compressed into a translucent, glasslike substance.
Sunlight shone upon it, reflecting a cold luster.
There was no sign of life.
Not even a wisp of wind could blow into it.
The gravitational field of that region had become entirely independent of the Three Thousand Dao Provinces.
Shi Hao swallowed.
He touched the Supreme Bone in his chest.
Had he not adjusted his breathing in time and merged his own frequency with that pulse, he would long since have become a blood-colored speck on this crystalline plain.
"Magical power rendered useless, pure physical crushing..."
Shi Hao murmured under his breath.
This upheaval had shattered everything he had previously understood about cultivation.
Those lofty Heavenly Gods had not even been qualified to struggle before the fluctuations emanating from that Dark Gold fragment.
"I can't stay in the Three Thousand Dao Provinces anymore."
"Once the Heavenly Human Clan's old monsters make their move, my current strength won't be enough to handle them."
Shi Hao withdrew his gaze, his eyes becoming utterly resolute.
"I'll go to Boundless Heaven."
"Only by entering the Celestial God Academy and encountering a wider world can I become stronger!"
He lingered no longer, turning and disappearing into the mountain forest.
Half a day later.
Above Sin Province's wasteland, the void was forcibly torn open like a scroll painting.
An enormous Heavenly Human Clan flagship descended with a thunderous roar.
The warship's deck was packed with the Heavenly Human Clan's elites.
The old Heavenly Human stood at the bow, his hands clasped behind his back.
This peerless expert, who had once summoned wind and rain throughout the Three Thousand Dao Provinces, now wore a frozen expression.
The several Self-Severing Realm elders behind him trembled at the knees, not even daring to breathe loudly.
The sight before them overturned their common sense.
There were no mountain ranges.
There was no poisonous miasma.
There was only a vast, boundless Glazed Crystal Plain.
The plain's surface was smooth as a mirror, reflecting the Heavenly Human Clan's enormous warship.
"Th-this... what happened here?"
An elder pointed below, his voice trembling.
"When the scouts reported back a few days ago, this was clearly a deadly region filled with lofty mountains and steep ridges!"
"Even if peerless mighty beings had fought here with their arts, they couldn't possibly have made the terrain so flat and uniform!"
The old Heavenly Human said nothing.
His brows were tightly knitted, uncertainty and alarm flickering in his eyes.
He unleashed his vast divine sense, attempting to probe the depths of the crystalline plain.
His divine sense had barely touched the edge of the crystalline plain.
"Hum."
A strange, high-frequency vibration instantly surged back along his divine sense.
The old Heavenly Human gave a muffled grunt, his body swaying on the deck.
His primordial spirit, supposedly capable of breaking through anything, actually felt a trace of tearing pain.
"Ancestor!"
The elders paled in alarm and hurried forward.
The old Heavenly Human raised a hand to stop them.
Deep wariness showed in his eyes.
"There is something profoundly uncanny about this place."
"Laws do not function here."
An array elder who refused to believe it stepped forward, holding up an ancient eight-trigram mirror.
"Ancestor, allow me to use the Heaven-Observing Mirror to probe the true nature of this place."
The old Heavenly Human did not stop him, giving his tacit permission.
The array elder bit his fingertip and dripped a drop of essence blood onto the precious mirror.
The mirror instantly blazed with light, and a beam as thick as a bucket shot into the depths of the plain, attempting to reveal the scene within.
The beam reached ten li into the plain.
A hundred li.
A thousand li.
Everything seemed calm.
But just as the beam was about to illuminate the area containing the Dark Gold fragment at the bottom of the enormous crater.
The mirror's surface suddenly began to tremble violently.
There was no warning whatsoever.
"Bang!"
That supreme mirror, passed down for tens of thousands of years, exploded directly into powder in the array elder's hands.
Fragments flew everywhere.
The array elder screamed, two trails of bloody tears streaming from his eyes.
He suffered the mirror's backlash, the nerves and meridians governing his sight snapping inch by inch, blinding him on the spot.
The deck fell utterly silent.
Every Heavenly Human Clan elite felt a chill shoot from the soles of their feet straight to the crown of their head.
They couldn't even probe it?
Before you continue