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Shan Heyuan: "My Swordsmanship may not have come from his teachings. At this point, you still can't recognize who I am?"

"Who are you?" Ji Li stared at him. "No, I don't know you. You're not from the Sword Reverence Sect. Don't try to bewitch me with your words!"

Shan Heyuan smiled, "I'm really not a member of the Sword Reverence Sect? Why don't you take a good look?"

Shan Heyuan spoke, his swordplay continued unabated.

Ji Li seemed distracted by his words, a look of doubt appearing in her eyes, and her swordplay became less sharp than before.

Shen Duheng's Tribulation Transcendence this time was not as vast as the Nascent Soul Tribulation, but the Tribulation Lightning had the complete power of the Heavenly Dao, making it more destructive.

He was already injured, and when struck by the Tribulation Lightning, he quickly fell into a coma.

Shan Heyuan seized the opportunity and took him into his Dantian Small World.

Seeing this Ji Li sneered, "Do you think you can protect him like this?"

Shan Heyuan: "Whether I can protect you or not, I will try my best to protect you. You sound so sour, does that mean no one has ever tried to protect you before?"

Ji Li struck again with her sword, sending Shan Heyuan flying diagonally. "This is the only time you can be so good at talking."

A horrific wound slanted across Shan Heyuan's entire upper body, splitting his sternum open and revealing his internal organs.

Having suffered such a severe injury, Shan Heyuan suddenly lost all strength.

Ji Li laughed breathlessly, "Keep going, why did you stop?"

Shan Heyuan felt as if a shadow had fallen over his vision; due to his severe injuries and significant blood loss, he could no longer see clearly what lay ahead.

Ji Li, carrying her sword, walked towards him step by step, struck by Tribulation Lightning.

The blood-red sword tip was still dripping blood, but before the blood could even drip to the ground, it was scorched by the Tribulation Lightning.

This time I'm really going to die.

Shan Heyuan tried to move, but found that he could hardly move even his fingers.

A flood of memories began to surge into his mind.

Those strange, jumbled memories that popped up out of nowhere.

He even had the illusion of watching another person flash by, with dazzling white lights flashing before his eyes. Because his thoughts were so active, his brain seemed to have stopped working.

Ji Li tilted her head and looked at them, then suddenly said, "You two are so deeply in love, it wouldn't be bad to refine you into a powerful tonic later."

Shan Heyuan's memories were already in disarray, but somehow, he heard this sentence through the gaps in the chaos.

He gave a strained laugh, a laugh that was both mocking and resigned.

Ji Li: "What are you laughing at? Are you waiting for someone to come and save you now?"

Shan Heyuan: "I laugh at your overestimation of your abilities, thinking you had everything under control, but little did you know it would all be for nothing."

Shan Heyuan could finish speaking, a large amount of flames suddenly surged from his body.

The Nascent Soul level Pu Core Fire enveloped his entire body, engulfing him in a sea of flames.

Ji Li was furious and rushed over with his sword drawn. "Suicide?!"

"No," Shan Heyuan uttered his last words amidst the sea of flames, "Escape."

As soon as Shan Heyuan finished speaking, the Pu Core Fire burned him completely.

When Ji Li arrived, enveloped in Tribulation Lightning and carrying her sword, she just happened to see the ashes left behind after he had burned them.

The ashes still retained their complete human form.

The airflow generated by Ji Li was instantly dispersed by a gust of wind.

Ji Li looked bewildered at the ashes scattered on the ground, unsure of what expression to make for the first time.

The person has disappeared.

They escaped right under his nose.

He didn't know how to track it down, or even if it was still possible to track it down.

Above Ji Li's head, tribulation clouds piled up, and the sky seemed to have leaked, with countless Tribulation Lightning bolts surging down and striking Ji Li's head, with even greater intensity than before.

He stood there for a while, trying to escape the Tribulation Lightning's embrace.

The Tribulation Lightning seemed to be enraged by him, relentlessly bombarding him with an aura of relentless pursuit. Even someone as powerful as Ji Li could not withstand such Tribulation Lightning.

He searched the spot three times, but couldn't find any trace of Shan Heyuan and the others, so he had no choice but to leave in resentment.

Inside his Dantian Small World, Shan Heyuan lay exhausted at the bottom of the now-empty Tribulation Lightning Lake.

Shen Duheng was lying next to him.

He burned his own body, allowing his Dantian Small World to exist as an independent microcosm, wandering in the boundless void.

Fortunately, the Dantian Small World had become an independent world, rather than something that could only depend on them; otherwise, they would surely have died today.

At that moment, he himself had no idea where he was.

It's certain that no one else knows either.

Even with Ji Li's extraordinary abilities, he couldn't find them.

We're safe for now.

Shan Heyuan closed his eyes, but he couldn't fall into a coma.

Losing my physical body and only having my Nascent Soul left is incredibly painful.

This is the second time he has lost his body.

More than three thousand years ago, when he was the Azure Cloud Dao Ancestor, he also lost his body once.

Shan Heyuan's mind was in a jumble, sometimes suddenly enlightened, sometimes completely confused.

He said his memory was so strange, he couldn't remember anything from before.

So he'd thrown away everything, including his body, from what happened before.

Tens of thousands of years ago, a world adjacent to the cultivation world was invaded by the Devil Race, resulting in a massive explosion that destroyed the entire world.

In order to protect the cultivation world, the powerful beings at that time used various methods to solidify the exploded world into a "shell" as a patch, repairing and wrapping the cultivation world.

In order to prolong the lifespan of the cultivation world, a large number of powerful beings sacrificed themselves to fill the void. For a long time, the cultivation world even experienced a gap in cultivation levels, with the highest-level cultivators only reaching the Spirit Transformation.

Later, when other cultivators successfully entered the Tribulation Transcendence Stage, they discovered that there was a complete "shell" outside the cultivation world, preventing the entire world from interacting with the upper world, and the cultivators inside could not ascend.

Later, people discovered that being unable to ascend was actually the least of their worries.

If the Heavenly Dao are severed, this world cannot survive.

The desperate struggles of the saviors could only delay the demise of the cultivation world.

It seems that fate has ordained that the cultivation world is destined to suffer this calamity.

Everything has its rise and fall.

However, when the fate of destruction truly befell them, the cultivators were unwilling to submit to slaughter.

The cultivators of this realm have used all sorts of methods to try and break the code.

Behind this lies a prophecy from a supremely talented being, suggesting that half the hope for deciphering the prophecy lies in the outside world. Thus, the top sects attempted to draw souls from other worlds through the rifts in space and time.

Shan Heyuan was drawn in under these circumstances.

More than three thousand years ago, Shan Heyuan was the Azure Cloud Dao Ancestor of the Sword Reverence Sect, who pulled Sword Reverence Sect out of decline.

Shan Heyuan led the Sword Reverence Sect for hundreds of years until his cultivation reached the peak of the Tribulation Transcendence Stage.

He wanted to Tribulation Transcendence, tear open space, and return home, but this world had already begun to die, and there was no longer any inheritance of the Heavenly Dao. Even if Tribulation Transcendence, it would be difficult for him to ascend.

Two choices lay before him: should he strive to revitalize the entire cultivation world, wait until he connected to the upper realm, and then Tribulation Transcendence to ascend to immortality; or should he gamble directly, hoping that, as an outsider soul, he could connect directly to the upper realm?

Both options have their advantages and disadvantages, and both have a high failure rate.

He hesitated for decades, collected countless intelligence reports, and consulted the oracle countless times.

Finally, when faced with the inevitable Tribulation Transcendence, he chose to save the world first.

At that time, he didn't have any lofty ideas; he just thought that the success rate of direct ascension was relatively small, while revitalizing the world might offer a glimmer of hope.

Furthermore, he couldn't bear to part with the old friends he had made along the way of cultivation, or the innocent young disciples in the sect.

If there's any chance of saving them, then we should try.

Unexpectedly, he ultimately failed and met a tragic end, dying without achieving his goal.

So many divination results clearly indicated that choosing to save the world would offer a glimmer of hope.

Before he died, he couldn't understand where that glimmer of hope predicted by the divination came from.