A Pawn's Passage

While Old Master Long and Wu Luo were locked in fierce combat, Great Sage Lan began preparing the third stage of the Taiyi Supreme Technique.

So long as the Taiyi Supreme Technique was not used four times in succession, three stages posed no real burden for an Earthly Immortal and were even effortless.

Taiyi represented the beginning, before chaos began. Taiji was the end, when clear qi arose to become heaven and turbid qi sank to become earth. Thus heaven and earth come into being.

The closer one was to chaos, the more it tended toward destruction and offense. The closer one was to the formation of heaven and earth, the more it tended toward stability and defense. Thus, the Taiyi Supreme Technique at the beginning of the Five Innate Tais was the supreme offensive technique and the most powerful, while the Taiji Golden Diagram at the final position of the Five Innate Tais stood as the ultimate defense technique.

Apart from the Taiyi Supreme Technique and the Taiji Golden Diagram, the Taisu Mystical Arts occupied the fourth position among the Five Innate Tais; the second was the Taichu Incarnation, and the third was the Taishi Sword Qi.

Thus, purely from the standpoint of offense and defense, aside from the Taiji Golden Diagram, none of the other Three Innate Tais were suited to confronting the Taiyi Supreme Technique head-on.

The Taisu Mystical Arts was merely a method to mend the body and could not be used for direct confrontation.

Moreover, Chen Shuhua had exhausted her Taisu Mystical Arts.

Great Sage Lan thrust his hand forward, and the black sphere shot out, transforming into a massive black vortex and a bottomless abyss that devoured all light and elemental energy. It slowly pressed downward with an overwhelming might, giving one the sensation that the heavens themselves were collapsing.

From Wu Luo’s perspective, the black vortex was a perfect circle. From farther away, however, it appeared as an ellipse, like a black abyss splitting the sky or a giant maw poised to devour her.

Compared with the first two stages of the Taiyi Supreme Technique, the power of the third stage had already reached a level sufficient to threaten Wu Luo’s life.

Blood-red light flared in Wu Luo’s eyes, as though her pupils had turned completely crimson. Her entire body was likewise tinged with a blood-red and golden glow as she activated her Golden Body. It looked radiant and majestic, like a deity descending into the mortal world, standing in stark contrast to the pitch-black Taiyi Supreme Technique.