Chapter 177 - 176: Ten Days
Ten full days bled away within the temporal dilation of the pocket realm, and the initial chaos had finally subsided. The weak had been purged. Those who lacked the cultivation to sustain prolonged combat, or the cunning to avoid it, had been beaten unconscious and stripped of their tokens.
What remained was a drastically thinned population, scattered across the battlefield in terrified alliances. Some had hidden themselves in caves, others in deep subterranean ravines, desperately waiting for the storm to pass. The age of the scavengers was over.
The age of the apex predators had begun.
Across the vast, shifting battlefield, the Six Peerless Geniuses of the Upper Division were demonstrating exactly why the Central Continent viewed the rest of the lower division provinces as little more than dust.
Wherever they passed, the environment itself was reshaped by their power, leaving behind shattered mountains, frozen lakes, ravaged forests, and countless unconscious cultivators.
In a decaying, petrified forest in the southern quadrant, the atmosphere was thick with killing intent.
Fifteen elite cultivators from a coalition of various Lower Division provinces had meticulously laid a trap. For two entire days, they had carved a massive Thousand-Thread Binding Array into the floor, carefully concealing its presence and calculating every detail. They were confident that their combined strength would be enough to restrain an Upper Division cultivator and seize his tokens.
What they did not know was that they had just snared Ye Ao of the Ye Province.
Ye Ao stood at the center of the glowing formation.
He did not look trapped.
He looked profoundly insulted.
"You spent two days drawing circles in the dirt," Ye Ao sneered, his voice booming with the terrifying resonance of his Eighth-Step Peerless Dao Resolve. He rolled his broad shoulders, muscles bulging beneath his robes. "You actually believed that hunting a tiger with wooden sticks made you hunters?"
"Activate the array! Crush his meridians!" the lead cultivator screamed from the edge of the formation, violently slamming both hands onto the array core.
They obviously knew who they had trapped.
But it was already too late to run.
The least they could do now was fight and pray that their combined strength could somehow force a miracle.
BOOM!
Thousand-foot-long chains of spiritual energy erupted from beneath the earth, wrapping around Ye Ao’s arms, legs, and torso. They tightened with terrifying force, attempting to drag him to his knees. The combined power of fifteen Nascent Soul cultivators surged into the formation, causing the surrounding bedrock to crack beneath the pressure.
Ye Ao merely inhaled, as his chest expanded.
Then he released a roar that no human throat should have been capable of producing.
It was the Nine Desolations Beast Aura.
A spectral projection of a colossal, multi-headed primordial ape suddenly materialized around Ye Ao’s physical body, towering more than a hundred feet into the sky. The instant the projection appeared, an overwhelming pressure descended upon the entire forest.
Ye Ao’s Qi exploded outward.
The glowing chains snapped one after another as though they were nothing more than brittle glass.
The shockwave unleashed by his roar swept across the petrified forest, shattering ancient trees into countless splintered fragments and blasting the fifteen hidden cultivators out of their cover and into the open air.
Ye Ao leaped. He crashed into the leading cultivator, his knee smashing into the man’s chest with the force of a falling meteor. The cultivator’s ribs shattered instantly, his consciousness fading to black before he even hit the ground.
Ye Ao didn’t stop. He became a blur of devastating violence. He didn’t use profound martial techniques or elegant sword arts; he used his fists, his elbows, and his knees, striking with a primal savagery that completely overwhelmed the defenses of the Lower Division cultivatiors. In less than thirty seconds, all fifteen cultivators lay groaning or unconscious on the floor.
"Mediocrity," Ye Ao spat, wiping a speck of blood from his cheek. Above him, fifteen golden Dao Tokens detached from the fallen cultivators and streamed toward him. He didn’t even bother to look at his ranking. He simply turned and walked deeper into the forest.
Hundreds of miles away, on the glassy surface of a completely frozen, subterranean lake, the atmosphere was entirely different. There was no roaring, no savage brutality. There was only the quiet, honorable exchange of absolute power.
Ling Chuan of the Ling Province stood perfectly straight, his pristine white robes untouched by the dust of the battlefield. He held a simple spear in his right hand, its tip resting lightly against the ice.
Opposite him stood the primary Participating General of the distant Yun Province. The man was panting heavily, his armor cracked, his Qi flickering dangerously low. He had fought bravely, unleashing a torrent of high-tier martial arts, but it had been entirely useless.
Ling Chuan, recognized as the "weakest" of the Six Geniuses at the Sovereign stage (Seventh Step), possessed a martial foundation so incredibly structured, so flawlessly clean, that it was practically impenetrable.
"Your Blazing Phoenix Spear Art is commendable," Ling Chuan said, his voice calm, respectful, and completely lacking the arrogant venom of his Upper Division peers. "Your foundation is solid. But your footwork in the third stance creates a faint delay in your Qi circulation. In a battle of attrition, that flaw is fatal."
The Yun Province cultivator gritted his teeth, raising his weapon with trembling hands. "I am the pride of my province. I do not yield without drawing blood."
Ling Chuan let out a soft, regretful sigh. "Pride is a heavy burden, Daoist brother. But I will honor your resolve."
The Yun general charged, funneling the absolute last drop of his Nascent Soul energy into a desperate, fiery thrust aimed directly at Ling Chuan’s heart. The ice beneath his boots melted instantly, creating a trail of boiling steam.
Ling Chuan did not meet force with force. He executed the Clear Mirror Still Water Art.
He stepped diagonally, sliding across the ice with frictionless grace, completely bypassing the raging inferno of the thrust. As he moved past his opponent, Ling Chuan reversed his grip on his spear and brought the blunt wooden shaft down in a lightning-fast arc. It struck the Yun cultivator precisely on the pressure point at the base of his neck.
The strike carried no killing intent, but the shock instantly short-circuited the man’s nervous system and severed his connection to his spiritual sea. The fiery aura vanished. The cultivator collapsed onto the ice, completely unconscious, but entirely safe from permanent harm.
"Rest well," Ling Chuan murmured, bowing slightly to his fallen opponent. A cluster of golden tokens floated from the cultivator’s chest, drifting over to Ling Chuan. He accepted them quietly, his face solemn, treating the battlefield not as a game, but as a sacred martial duty.
In a sprawling, jagged canyon echoing with the howling wind, Jiang Wan was dealing with an entirely different kind of annoyance.
The sole heir of the Wan Jian Sword Sect walked slowly down the center of the ravine. His eyes were closed. They had remained closed since the moment he stepped into the Void Ascension Battlefield.
Surrounding him on the high cliffs were over forty cultivators from a specialized alliance of illusion and formation sects. They had spent days weaving a multi-layered labyrinth of hallucinatory Qi, a trap designed to confuse the senses, invert gravity, and turn a cultivator’s own fears against them. The canyon was filled with phantom beasts, shifting landscapes, and disorienting echoes.
"He is trapped in the Mind-Severing Labyrinth!" the leader of the alliance shouted from a hidden perch. "Bombard him! Strip his tokens while he is blind!"
Dozens of flying swords, poisoned needles, and elemental spells rained down from the cliffs, a chaotic storm of death aimed at the lone swordsman walking with his eyes shut.
Jiang Wan did not stop walking. His hand rested lazily on the hilt of the sword at his waist.
"Illusions," Jiang Wan spoke, his voice quiet, yet carrying a strange resonance that vibrated directly into the blades of his attackers. "Illusions are merely flaws. Lies told by the air."
The storm of weapons was inches away from piercing his flesh.
Jiang Wan’s thumb flicked upward.
He drew his sword exactly one fraction of an inch from its scabbard.
He did not execute a swing. He did not unleash a beam of destructive energy. The mere exposure of the blade to the open air released his Absolute Severance Sword Intent—a manifestation of the Profound stage (Sixth Step) Dao Resolve.
The world turned monochromatic. A silent, invisible shockwave of pure cutting force expanded outward in a perfect sphere.
The incoming flying swords froze in mid-air, then neatly fractured into hundreds of perfectly bisected pieces. The elemental spells were sliced apart on a molecular level, dissolving into harmless mist.
But the sword intent did not stop there. It rushed up the canyon walls, ignoring the physical rock entirely, and struck the hidden cultivators. It bypassed their flesh and directly struck their spiritual seas. It did not kill them, but it cleanly severed their consciousness from their bodies.
The massive, multi-layered illusion matrix shattered like a mirror struck by a hammer.
Over forty cultivators tumbled from the cliffs, their eyes rolling back in their heads, falling unconscious before they even hit the ground. Protective talismans shattered in a chorus of popping glass.
Jiang Wan clicked his sword back into its scabbard, the blade completely sheathed once more.
"The sword only knows truth," Jiang Wan whispered to the howling wind.