Chapter 178 - 177: Ten Days (2)
"The sword only knows truth," Jiang Wan whispered to the howling wind.
Then, a veritable river of golden Dao Tokens streamed down from the cliffs, a flowing ray of light that merged into his collarbone. He continued walking down the canyon, his eyes still closed, moving onto the next truth.
High above the canyons, seated upon a solitary, desolate mountain peak that pierced the silver clouds, was Feng Yao.
The frail, sixteen-year-old anomaly was not fighting. He was sitting cross-legged, his head tilted back, watching a spectral, bioluminescent butterfly flutter aimlessly through the stagnant air. His pupil-less, milky white eyes followed its erratic path with childlike fascination.
A mile away, creeping up the sheer face of the mountain, was an elite assassination squad from a notoriously ruthless Lower Division province. They had cloaked their auras using supreme stealth artifacts. They carried specialized crossbows loaded with Soul-Locking Poison Needles—weapons designed to bypass physical defenses and instantly rot a Nascent Soul.
They reached the summit edge. The leader signaled. Ten crossbows were leveled at the back of the frail boy’s head.
They pulled the triggers.
Ten poisoned bolts tore through the air, completely silent, moving at supersonic speeds.
Feng Yao did not turn around. He merely reached out a pale, thin finger, allowing the spectral butterfly to land softly on his knuckle.
A hundred yards away from his back, the ten poisoned bolts hit an invisible, conceptual wall. They did not bounce off. They simply stopped, frozen perfectly in mid-air, stripped of all energy by a force that defied understanding.
The assassins froze, their eyes widening in shock.
Feng Yao smiled at the butterfly.
In that exact instant, the passive aura of his innate Primordial Spirit reacted to the hostile intent. It was not an attack, but a reflex, much like a human blinking away dust.
The ten assassins suddenly dropped their crossbows. They grabbed their own heads, their mouths opening in silent, agonizing screams. Blood began to pour freely from their eyes, ears, and noses. The sheer, unfathomable intent of the Primordial Spirit’s aura had effortlessly reached out and crushed their fragile Nascent Souls like grapes in a vice.
Their nervous systems completely overloaded. All ten assassins collapsed simultaneously, twitching violently before falling completely unconscious on the jagged rocks, foaming at the mouth.
Feng Yao giggled softly as the butterfly fluttered away from his finger, entirely oblivious—or entirely indifferent—to the massacre he had committed without even looking. Ten golden tokens detached from the drooling bodies and floated over to him, adding to his massive collection.
But it was in the absolute center of the Void Ascension Battlefield where the true, and undisputed monarch of the battlefield held his court.
Xuan Mingzhe!
The landscape around him was a testament to apocalyptic ruin. He had flattened a mountain range, turning it into a massive, perfectly smooth crater of crushed gray rock. In the center of the crater, a throne hovered ten feet in the air, held aloft by localized anti-gravity.
Xuan Mingzhe sat upon the throne, his chin resting on his fist, looking utterly bored.
Surrounding the crater was a coordinated strike force of over seventy cultivators. It was a massive, desperate alliance composed of two entire Lower Division provinces who had realized that individual survival was impossible. They had brought war drums, supreme-grade formation banners, and ancient artifacts.
"We strike together!" the coalition leader roared, hoisting a massive, glowing war-hammer that pulsed with the power of heaven and earth. "He is only one man! He cannot defend an all round bombardment!"
"Kill the king!" the cultivators roared, charging down the slopes of the crater, unleashing a tsunami of fire, lightning, and destructive energy that blotted out the silver sky.
Xuan Mingzhe looked at the incoming attacks with half-lidded eyes.
"You bore me," he whispered.
He lifted a single finger from the armrest of his floating throne.
He activated his Gravity Dao Intent.
The air across the entire mile-wide crater suddenly became heavy, as if it had turned into liquid lead. The gravity did not simply double. It increased by ten thousand times.
The charging cultivators screamed as the sudden increase in gravity slammed into them. Their knees shattered instantly. Their spines bent and cracked. Seventy elite Nascent Soul cultivators were violently forced face-first into the ground, completely unable to move. They could not even lift a finger, while the immense pressure threatened to crush even their Nascent Souls!
But Xuan Mingzhe was not finished.
He raised a second finger, activating his Space Dao Intent.
The massive tsunami of fire, lightning, and destructive energy that was currently falling toward him suddenly hit a spatial fold. The fabric of reality bent inward like a funnel. The entire bombardment was swallowed by a spatial rift hovering right above his throne, only to be instantly spat out from dozens of smaller rifts opening directly above the paralyzed cultivators on the ground.
They were violently bombarded by their own attacks. The crater exploded in a blinding display of self-inflicted destruction.
As the smoke cleared, revealing seventy unconscious, and paralyzed bodies pinned to the ground, the coalition leader was the only one still conscious, protected by the glowing barrier of his supreme-grade war-hammer.
He looked up at Xuan Mingzhe in absolute terror.
Xuan Mingzhe raised a third finger. The Annihilation Dao Intent.
A single, faint speck of black light drifted from his fingertip, floating lazily across the crater until it touched the supreme-grade war-hammer.
The artifact, said to be forged from the power of Heaven and Earth, simply ceased to exist. It did not break or shatter. It was completely erased, turning into a puff of gray ash.
The coalition leader’s mind finally broke. He fainted from sheer terror, collapsing into the dirt.
Xuan Mingzhe lowered his hand, his expression entirely unchanged. From the seventy fallen bodies, a massive, swirling of golden tokens flew upward, orbiting his floating throne like a halo of absolute supremacy. He closed his eyes, waiting for the next batch of insects to arrive.
In the outside world, scarcely ten hours had passed.
The Grand Court of Sky Jade City was bathed in the warm light of the afternoon sun, but the atmosphere among the tens of thousands of spectators was freezing cold.
Above the arena, the colossal array panel chimed, flashing with a brilliant golden light as it updated the official rankings for the entire Central Continent to see.
Emperor Tianxu smiled from his throne, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction as the names settled into place. The gap between the Upper and Lower Divisions was now in place.
VOID ASCENSION BATTLEFIELD - PRELIMINARY RANKINGS (DAY 10)
1. Xuan Mingzhe (Xuan Province) - 103 Tokens
2. Jiang Wan (Jiang Province) - 75 Tokens
3. Ye Ao (Ye Province) - 70 Tokens
4. Feng Yao (Feng Province) - 65 Tokens
5. Ling Chuan (Ling Province) - 60 Tokens
6. Chu Kuang (Chu Province) - 60 Tokens
...
The list scrolled down, showing that a mere 37 tokens remained distributed among the other 464 participants. The Six Peerless Geniuses had effectively consolidated the entire wealth of the pocket realm!