Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 423
"I've been training crazily and making myself stronger all the time because I want to protect my homeland, my compatriots, and the very planet below our feet!
"If I have to sacrifice my home, my family, and everything that I swore to protect in order to be mightier, such strength is definitely not what I want!"
Ninety-seven square meters. Ninety-eight square meters. Ninety-nine square meters!
Amidst the endless, reverberating fighting will from countless qi-trainers, Xiong Wuji improved himself, reaching the 99th level of the Refinement Stage, the highest state for the qi-trainers of Iron Plateau over the past five thousand years!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Yan Xibei's bloody aura formed another hundred claws and bashed Xiong Wuji's spiritual gas. Every blow made Xiong Wuji's body tremble and his wounds bleed fast!
"Even if the universe is as dark as you described, we will not abandon our emotions or the things that we swore to protect!"
As if pressed by a pair of invisible, giant hands, Xiong Wuji bent, and his knees fell to the ground beyond his control.
However, no matter how many new wounds were added to his body, no matter how many bones were broken, and no matter how badly his internal organs were torn apart, he gritted his teeth through the agony and even stood straight again without giving in!
Xiong Wuji laughed aloud. "What you see as burdens and nuisances are the only motivation for us to stride forward in my eyes! We will carry everything on our back and walk forth until we get out of the dark forest!"
"Just wake up. There are no roads in the dark forest. We will never walk out of it!" Yan Xibei roared. The veins on the apocalyptic body became as thick as boas. A boundless ocean of blood swept at Xiong Wuji!
"If there are no roads, we will make one. If we can't walk out, we will set the dark forest on fire and burn it to the ground!"
Xiong Wuji uttered a deafening roar. The range of his spiritual gas was supposed to have reached its limits, but it continued magnifying, despite the suppression of Yan Xibei's blood ocean. Finally—
The range of his surging spiritual gas reached a hundred square meters!
Chapter 629: Strongest Strike! |
"This is—"
The qi-trainers were very sensitive about the range of spiritual gas. With their bare eyes, they could easily measure that Xiong Wuji's surging spiritual gas had reached a hundred square meters, which meant that he was in the 100th level of the Refinement Stage, an accomplishment that no expert in the five thousand years of history of Iron Plateau had ever achieved!
What was the difference between ninety-nine and a hundred?
The difference seemed as insignificant as one square meter, but a change in quantity always led to a change of quality eventually. The last one square meter was the critical threshold!
Hot water at 99 degrees Celsius would boil if it was heated one degree higher!
Xiong Wuji's spiritual gas was boiling!
For a moment, everyone felt that Xiong Wuji's spiritual gas had experienced a drastic change.
It had nothing to do with the coverage. His spiritual gas was now granted with something entirely new, as if it boasted an independent will. It was expanding and constricting uncontrollably like everybody's heart that was beating faster and faster!
"This is—"
Yan Xibei sensed that a strong force was spurting out despite the suppression of his bloody mist, like a patch of grass that was crawling out of the crevices and growing stubbornly despite the heavy rock above its head.
Confusion appeared in his blood-red eyes for the first time, but it was soon replaced by endless brutality. The scorpion tail was spinning at an even larger angle, while the two mantis forelegs were raised high!
"He!"
Streams of spiritual gas jetted out from Xiong Wuji's eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, and the pores all over his body. They interweaved and melded with each other, forming a raging, dominating cloud of spiritual gas above his head that was confronting Yan Xibei's apocalypse cloud not far away!
He suddenly bellowed and exerted his strength. His countless veins immediately bulged wide and exploded below his skin!
Xiong Wuji's hands clutched Yan Xibei's scorpion tail like two pincers. He then pulled it so hard that Yan Xibei almost fell over. Shaking the scorpion tail crazily, Xiong Wuji was swinging Yan Xibei, who was unable to stand on his feet steadily.
Xiong Wuji was only slightly more than two meters tall, but he was like a hammer throw athlete. Standing in the center firmly, he used Yan Xibei's tail as his chain and swung Yan Xibei, who was almost five meters tall, around almost a hundred times!
Dust was raging out around the two of them, as if a tornado was soaring and charging at the sky!
The two streams of immense spiritual energy disturbed the balance of nature. Dark clouds crowded close from various directions and swept across the night sky like a black tide. Bolts of lightning were swimming in the ocean of blackness like dragons extending their sharp claws. The earsplitting thunder seemed to be competing with the roars of the two experts on the ground!
The cold raindrops were smacking every qi-trainer's face hard.
A storm was coming!
BOOM!
After the hundredth swing, a deafening explosion burst out in the middle of the tornado. Cracks immediately spread out on the ground. A spider net hundreds of meters in diameter emerged. Xiong Wuji had bashed Yan Xibei to the ground hard!
The sand was flying about them, and the spiritual gas was on a rampage. Everyone's eyes were wide open, and yet they could only see a mist of blood. Even if they perceived the battlefield with their spiritual energy, they could only sense a raging ocean of blood and a torch that was burning through the heavens!
In the sky, the cloud of spiritual gas formed by Xiong Wuji and Yan Xibei's apocalypse cloud were still crashing and mauling each other like two ferocious animals. The cracks on the ground, which were getting denser and denser, were also demonstrating the intensity of their fierce battle!
Everyone, including Li Yao, could do nothing except watch.
The formidability of either Xiong Wuji, who had reached the 100th level of the Refinement Stage, or Yan Xibei, who boasted the apocalyptic body, was much higher than themselves. Even if they managed to stand up and join the fight, they would merely be distractions to Xiong Wuji.
Therefore, they could only grit their teeth and clench their fists while they released their fighting will and reverberated with Xiong Wuji, who was becoming more and more determined!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
In the end, nobody was able to tell whether the sounds were the noises resulting from the combat of the two experts in the mist or the thunder that was breaking out in the sky!
BOOM! CRACK!
An extremely thick lightning hit the mist brutally like an upside-down gold tree!
A muscular man was blown backward from the mist and crashed into a True Qi tank, which lead to an explosion. He then stood firmly in the flames!
Li Yao blinked his eyes hard and looked. It was Xiong Wuji!
Xiong Wuji seemed to have just returned from the bottom level of hell after slaying some crazy devils on his way; he couldn't have appeared more wretched.
The scorpion tail that had been stabbed into his left shoulder had been torn off from Yan Xibei's body by brute force and was dangling softly from his shoulder.
But the tail had pierced so deeply that his left shoulder blade had been entirely broken. His left arm was swinging beside his body, apparently crippled.
As for his right arm—
Xiong Wuji had lost his right arm in the previous battle against the apocalypse. Li Yao made an iron artificial arm for him later.
The very artificial arm had been twisted into a cluster of wasted copper and iron in the fierce fight. It was even blown away in the end. What was left was a bare elbow on his right shoulder.
Since only several days had passed after the battle of the apocalypse, the wound on his elbow had not fully recovered yet. During the fierce battle, it had torn apart and was bleeding again, making Xiong Wuji look as miserable as anyone could.
Xiong Wuji's two arms had both been broken!
Deep laughter came from within the bloody mist.
No words could describe Xiong Wuji's eyes. The fury in the eyes of all the qi-trainers on the spot seemed to have been condensed in the depths of his!
He waved his broken arms, the aura around him increasing instead of diminishing. The tremendous spiritual gas of the 100th level of the Refinement Stage was consolidated and further consolidated in front of his broken arm in helical forms!
He seemed to have grown two thick arms of spiritual energy. His new hands that were condensed by his fighting will and fury were clenched, and his fists became a bright ball that was even more dazzling than the sun!
As the bright ball continued expanding, Xiong Wuji was withering at a visible speed. His brawny and healthy body was becoming dry, as if the bright ball had drained all of his vitality.
In a moment, Li Yao realized what Xiong Wuji was doing.
He was burning his life and soul. He was going to let out all of his spiritual gas in the purest, most violent, and most direct way!
Once the attack was released, Xiong Wuji's veins and nerves would all be destroyed, and he would become useless, if not killed on the spot. He would be even weaker than those in the first level of the Refinement Stage!
Li Yao's eyes bulged, and he held his breath. He was not able to utter anything, but his heart was beating faster and faster at the same pace with the hearts of Xiong Wuji and all the other qi-trainers and Cultivators in the battlefield.
There were no shocked exclamations at this moment.
There was no useless crap such as 'No, Chief Xiong, don't!'
Everybody simply gritted their teeth and tightened their muscles, while they stared at the strongest man on Iron Plateau launching the strongest strike of his life!
"Hooo!"
There was no telling whether it was thunder in the sky or the roars from Xiong Wuji's chest, or maybe it was the sound of Xiong Wuji's blast blowing into the bloody mist.
The chuckles inside the bloody mist came to an abrupt stop, replaced by an exclamation of disbelief. However, the exclamation only lasted half a second, because it was soon buried by an earsplitting explosion!
The bloody mist turned into shields, trying to block the blast that had been condensed out of Xiong Wuji's lifelong spiritual gas. The entanglement of the two clusters of immense spiritual energy attracted the thunderbolts in the sky like two super magnets. Lightning fell into the bloody mist nonstop, dying it dazzling white and making everybody unable to keep their eyes open. Hot tears and cold rainwater mixed and covered their face. Blood and sweat, a bitter and salty combination, flowed in their mouths!
The explosion continued for another ten seconds.
A storm finally embraced the earth.
Everybody raised their head and found that the place where Yan Xibei and Xiong Wuji fought had become a deep crater from which crimson steam was popping out nonstop. There was no sign of Yan Xibei at first glance at all.
"Big Xiong!"
"Father Xiong!"
Wu Mayan and Sha Yulan rushed toward Xiong Wuji.
Xiong Wuji's short hair had turned purely white. His muscular body was now as skinny as a skeleton. He shivered and slowly turned around, opening his broken arms with a big smile, before he finally collapsed to the ground.
The moment he collapsed, Wu Mayan and Sha Yulan reached him. The three of them held each other in the pouring rain.
Is Yan Xibei dead?
Li Yao's heart was still beating fast, not because of the influence of Xiong Wuji's fighting will anymore, but because he vaguely sensed that danger was not gone yet.
The crimson steam from the crater was darker and more furious!
Soon, before the smile on the qi-trainers' faces vanished, their uneasy eyes were focused on the crater again.
Even Xiong Wuji, who had only closed his eyes in Sha Yulan's arms for half a second, suddenly gawked wide-eyed at the crater in disbelief.
Desperation appeared on the face of the best warrior of the six tribes of Iron Plateau for the first time!
"Hehe. Hehehehe…"
Coarse laughter came over from the crater, as an extremely ugly thing slowly crept out!
Yan Xibei's upper body was tilted to a weird angle. A shockingly giant hole appeared on the right part of his chest. Half of his body had almost been blown off. The right side of his face had been affected, too, where his many body parts, including his right eye and right ear, were gone!
It seemed that a meteorite had just pierced through his body.
However, the blood stripes tangling him were wriggling and repairing his body crazily.
Granulated tissue covered the wounds, which were being healed at a visible speed. But he was even more hideous than before.
A cluster of bloody mist enshrouded the right side of his face and quickly fixed his right eye. However, when the bloody mist faded, what took its place was a crimson compound eye that made everybody feel chilly.
"Xiong Wuji, I didn't expect that the 100th level of the Refinement Stage, the ultimate level that the qi-trainers of Iron Plateau had been dreaming for five thousand years, should be first broken into by a space resident! I feel very happy as your teacher!
"However, as I said, the apocalyptic body boasts a combat ability close to the Nascent Soul Stage!
"No matter how many breakthroughs you make, whatever mutations you experience, you think you can defeat me with only the 100th level of the Refinement Stage?
"How about a second strike exactly like the previous one? Maybe I will be defeated by you if so. Haha. Hahahaha!"
Instead of waiting for his body to be fully recovered, Yan Xibei waved his broken forelegs and crawled toward everyone!
Desperation. Everybody was grasped by endless desperation!
How could Xiong Wuji possibly perform the strongest strike that he had just unleashed by burning his life and soul at the cost of his lifelong Cultivation a second time?
Would any of the remaining warriors be able to take Yan Xibei's one attack, if they could stand up at all?
"Huala! Huala!"
The heavy rain poured on Li Yao's head as well as into his heart, drowning all his messy feelings.
All the methods had been tried. But he still needed a day and a night to dissolve all the spiritual energy and break the remaining three shackles of the Black Spider Death—
Li Yao's eyes suddenly widened.
To his surprise, he found that the Black Spider Death Curse, which had been confining his heart, had only two shackles left. One of them had vanished into thin air!
He squinted and thought carefully, recalling that Yan Xibei had bashed his chest precisely where his heart was when he charged at the monster.
Could it be that Yan Xibei blew up a shackle of the Black Spider Death Curse when he was trying to blow up my heart?
Chapter 630: Make a Legend! |
Seeing that Yan Xibei was crawling closer and closer and his veins were becoming thicker and thicker, making his face so twisted that it could barely be called human, Li Yao gritted his teeth, picked up a broken saber, and charged at Yan Xibei, while he roared, "Don't be fooled, everybody! This old fart is bluffing!
"How can he be unharmed after enduring a full-strength strike from Chief Xiong? His capability must be at the rock bottom right now! Let's kill him while he's injured!"
Li Yao bellowed and jumped up!
The very next second, he was already slapped away by the enormous hand formed by Yan Xibei's bloody mist, as if he were but a fly. After waving his hands and legs crazily in the air, he crashed into a hill heavily and cracked many rocks!
His head dizzy, Li Yao felt that every bone in his chest had been fractured into multiple pieces. A mouthful of blood was stuck inside his throat, neither going up or going down. He couldn't have felt more uncomfortable.
Yet, a smile of relief beamed on Li Yao's face, because, when he sensed his body carefully, he found that there were only… There were still two shackles of Black Spider Death Curse!
You've got to be kidding me!
Li Yao was dumbfounded. His eyelids were jumping crazily while he remembered the previous blow. It seemed that he had failed to adjust his body to the perfect angle at the last moment. Therefore, Yan Xibei's strike did not hit his heart precisely, veering a little bit to the right.
Li Yao spat the blood in his mouth out. Looking at the lightning flashing in the sky, he was of a mind to roar to cheer everybody up. However, he finally gave up after three seconds of preparation due to lack of strength. He gnashed his teeth. "You've seen it, everybody. Yan Xibei has been heavily wounded and is weaker than ever. The blow is soft and entirely strengthless—Pu!"
A mouthful of blood was finally thrown out. Illuminated by the lightning, Li Yao's face was paler than that of a corpse.
The qi-trainers and the Cultivators, on the other hand, realized that it was true. After Xiong Wuji broke into the 100th level of the Refinement Stage, he was at least equal to a Core Formation Stage Cultivator. The strongest strike at the cost of his life and all his Cultivation wouldn't be harmless for Yan Xibei at all.
Flesh and blood could be repaired quickly. However, the combat ability could not be recovered so fast.
Right now, Yan Xibei was at his weakest.
But his capability was recovering quickly with every passing second!
"Let's go! This is our last chance!"
With a roar, the dozens of qi-trainers and Cultivators all burnt their life and soul while they staggered and lunged at Yan Xibei for their last strike!
Yan Xibei's face was extremely gloomy under the bloody aura. He glared at Li Yao with the utmost hatred.
He had suffered heavy wounds when he had just melded with the apocalyptic body that was not even mature yet. Li Yao was quite right that he could not have recovered instantly.
He had planned to bluff to buy himself more time just as he did in the beginning. But the wretched 'Sand Scorpion' saw through him this time!
