Chapter 98
Translator: T_Fan
A short while later, a wave of heat surged up from deep within his stomach.
Its medicinal strength was far fiercer than that of any Essence-Cultivating Dao Pill he had taken before. The tightly packed energy unfurled, violently pushing aside the true essence that filled his body.
Lee Hyun frowned.
‘I have to take seventy-five more of these?’
For a moment, the thought frightened him.
Yet within a few breaths, that fear gave way to an entirely different kind of bewilderment.
As he followed the mnemonic formula of the Primordial One-Qi Art and put the method of Embracing Unity and Returning to the Elixir into practice, the energy throughout his body whirled into motion, from head to toe, and began devouring the medicinal strength.
Cr-r-rack!
An ordinary cultivator would have needed every ounce of concentration to control that tidal surge of medicinal strength. Yet once it dispersed throughout his entire body, a vessel fifty times the size of a single lower dantian, it was consumed in an instant, like a dipperful of water poured into parched desert sand.
The true essence throughout his body had merely grown a little denser. Not a single part of it showed even the slightest sign of condensing.
‘I needn’t have worried about taking too much.’
Without interrupting his qi circulation cycle, Lee Hyun tore the Spirit-Sealing Talisman from the next jade casket.
The second, the third, the fifth…… Only after he swallowed several pills in succession did the true essence filling his body begin to change.
The true essence permeating his fingertips and toes, his sinews and bones, and his internal organs began to condense independently in each part of his body.
Lee Hyun let out a long breath, suppressing the energy that was trying to solidify on its own and binding it into a single flow.
The essence of Embracing Unity and Returning to the Elixir was to shape the entire body into a single core. No part of it could be allowed to solidify before the rest.
He also had to balance the subtle differences in medicinal strength from one demon core to the next.
The number of empty jade caskets scattered across the floor climbed rapidly past twenty, then thirty. Large beads of sweat ran down Lee Hyun’s forehead.
By the time he swallowed the fiftieth Golden Core Condensing Pill, his body had grown as heavy as lead, and a thin, invisible boundary began taking shape just beneath his skin.
Again and again, it seemed about to enclose his entire body, only to unravel. It felt like the first sign of a forming core shell. Suppressing his excitement, Lee Hyun continued to disperse the medicinal strength evenly.
It happened the moment that medicinal strength spread throughout his body.
Hummm!
Every part of him resonated at once, from beneath his fingernails and the soles of his feet to the inside of his skull and the base of his spine.
The liquid true essence flowing in separate currents was finally beginning to coalesce into one immense whole.
Crimson heat rose like mist from every pore. Whenever medicinal strength merged with his true essence, demon markings originating from the demon cores surfaced beneath his skin. The markings, spread throughout his body along the flow of true essence, released strange pulses of demonic nature all at once.
Bzzzt! Crack!
The formation inscriptions of the Spirit-Concealing Formation carved into the stone chamber’s floor blazed wildly, and the spirit stones slotted into its formation stations exploded one after another.
Just as Lee Hyun hurriedly tried to extend his divine sense, something enormous stirred beyond the thick basalt ceiling.
Ruuumble―
A crushing shock reached deep underground, showering stone dust from the chamber ceiling.
Lee Hyun’s eyes snapped open.
‘I was afraid this might happen……!’
The heavens had reacted to his attempt to forge his entire body into one enormous golden core.
A hush settled over the sea around the volcanic island, like the calm before a storm. The rolling waves seemed to hold their breath, while brilliant shafts of five-colored light gathered high in the sky to form a vast band of multicolored clouds.
Above them, pitch-black storm clouds piled up like mountain ranges, flashing with dark-blue lightning.
…
A thousand li (about 392 km) from the island, out over the open sea.
A diminutive old man in neat silk scholar’s robes hovered motionless in the air. His amber eyes, with vertical pupils unlike those of the human race, gleamed behind the thin green jade spectacles perched on his nose.
Pointed fox ears covered in white fur twitched faintly amid his neatly combed-back white hair.
Pushing up his jade spectacles, Master Hu frowned at the tribulation cloud gathering in the distance.
He had originally come to these waters because of recent reports that Tier 3 demon beasts were disappearing along the southeastern outskirts of Cangmang Forest.
Since Tier 3 demon beasts rivaled the human race’s Golden Core cultivators, the disappearance of dozens in such a short time could mean the human race was preparing to invade Cangmang Forest.
Instead of an invading enemy, however, he had encountered an upheaval in heaven and earth on an unimaginable scale.
“That’s… a Human-Form Transformation Lightning Tribulation, isn’t it?” [TL Note: Human-Form Transformation Lightning Tribulation (化形雷劫): This can also be translated as “Metamorphosis Tribulation”.]
Such upheavals in the skies of the lower world were almost unheard of outside a Human-Form Transformation Lightning Tribulation.
Upon breaking through to certain realms, members of the demon race gained the ability to reshape their bodies in the likeness of the human race. The heavenly tribulation that descended during that process was called the Human-Form Transformation Lightning Tribulation.
The exact point varied with bloodline. Some faced the tribulation as early as their breakthrough to Tier 3, while others did not encounter it until reaching a much higher realm. In the lower world, however, it most commonly occurred upon breaking through to Tier 4, which corresponded to Nascent Soul.
As the tribulation cloud continued to gather, Master Hu flew toward the volcanic island, enveloped in light.
Pulses erupting from deep within the rocky mountain resonated violently with the five-colored clouds in the sky.
Rumble!
The five-colored radiance within the clouds converged on a single point. The next instant, a bolt of dark-blue lightning plunged toward the earth.
KABOOM!
The rock at the volcano’s summit split apart, and a massive fissure spread along the mountainside.
Amid the boulders hurled into the air by the blast, six blue-green shield plates and streaks of yellow sword light locked into an intricate pattern, deflecting the lightning at an angle.
CRACK!
But the lightning’s power was ferocious.
Two shield plates shattered, and the lightning that slipped through fused the underground stone chamber’s walls into glass.
As the dust settled, it revealed a young man seated in the lotus position at the bottom of the enormous crater gouged out by the blast.
Shock flashed through Master Hu’s amber eyes.
‘A human? The lightning tribulation has only just begun, yet his human-form transformation is already perfect?’
Without a single horn or scale, he looked no different from any member of the human race.
Yet strange demon markings shimmered beneath the young man’s skin, along with a metallic sheen. The fluctuations radiating from his entire body mingled with those of the tribulation cloud, leaving even Master Hu unable to judge the true extent of his demon power.
‘What bloodline is he from? Was there a genius near Cangmang Forest that even I knew nothing about?’
Just then, Lee Hyun raised his head from the bottom of the crater. The moment their gazes met in midair, cold sweat ran down his back.
‘Nascent Soul……!’
The old man had revealed only the faintest trace of his presence, but Lee Hyun, who had slaughtered Yan Wuzhen and many other Golden Core experts, recognized it at once.
It was the oppressive presence of a higher being.
That instant of alarm made the true essence within him surge, and the energy in his right arm began condensing ahead of the rest.
As Lee Hyun gritted his teeth and forced the flow back under control, the old man’s gentle mental intent echoed in his ears.
[I’ve startled you. Pay me no mind and concentrate on the tribulation.]
The voice held no hostility, but Lee Hyun had no way of knowing whether he could trust its owner. At the moment, however, he had no other choice.
When he looked away and tossed another Golden Core Condensing Pill into his mouth, Master Hu smiled with interest.
‘He’s even brought pills and magic tools. He’s learned to make good use of what the human race has to offer. Whatever clan this Junior comes from, I approve of his preparations.’
The second and third bolts descended in succession, branching into dozens of streaks.
The two yellow flying swords barring their path melted away, and the remaining plates of the Six-Leaf Shield shattered one after another.
Yet Master Hu’s gaze was fixed not on the breaking magic tools, but on the young man’s body.
Whenever lightning struck, golden pulses flared all along the young man’s body at once, from head to toe. His energy had no single focal point; his whole body seemed to function as one.
“Once the core is formed, even ghosts and gods cannot tolerate it…… So this is what the maxim in Lulin Pavilion’s Record of Transformation from antiquity meant!”
Once the core is formed, even ghosts and gods cannot tolerate it!
He had thought the words referred to an ordinary Human-Form Transformation Lightning Tribulation, but the scene before him seemed to fit them far better.
Then it happened.
Master Hu sensed something, and for a moment his expression hardened. He flicked a finger toward the sea, sending a thread of demon power beneath the surface.
Having unleashed three bolts, the tribulation cloud rumbled as it began gathering heaven-and-earth spiritual qi once more.
…
One ke (about 15 minutes) later, the sky southeast of the island seemed to split open as two streaks of light came hurtling in.
The leading light was dark and sinister; the one behind it was a cold, smooth silver, like mercury in sunlight.
When the streaks of light came to a halt, two human cultivators appeared, each surrounded by the immense spiritual pressure characteristic of Nascent Soul.
The middle-aged man on the left had skeletal, hollow cheeks and corpse-pale skin. A short black-jade flute rested in the abnormally long fingers protruding from the sleeves of his green robe.
The white-haired old man on the right wore gray robes and kept his hands clasped behind his back. Silver liquid streamed ceaselessly from beneath his fingernails, swimming through the air as though alive.
Master Hu’s gaze turned cold.
“Nascent Soul cultivators of the human race, I see.”
The pale middle-aged cultivator glanced between Master Hu and Lee Hyun at the bottom of the crater, then curled his lips into a smile.
“To think a Tier 4 great demon from Cangmang Forest would venture this far. It seems you’ve decided to take even the outer sea’s wild demon beasts under your protection. Will you be planting the forest’s prohibition markers in these waters next?”
“That is no business of yours.”
Master Hu warned them calmly.
“Try to lay so much as a finger on our Junior while he undergoes his Human-Form Transformation Lightning Tribulation, and you had better be ready for the consequences.”
The white-haired old man controlling the silver liquid gave a derisive snort.
“Does the Nanming Twelve-Sect Alliance need the forest’s permission to hunt demon beasts now? This old man is Yan Baishou of Liujin Valley. Let me hear these consequences you speak of.”
The pale middle-aged cultivator added, stroking his black-jade flute.
“I am Nie Xingya, Supreme Elder of the Yin Bird Sect’s Profound Nether Path. Five years ago, an Elder of my sect was killed in this area. That bastard down there may have had something to do with it, so I’ll be taking him with me to find out.”
After Yan Wuzhen’s death, the Yin Bird Sect’s branches had repeatedly searched the waters west of Kun Kingdom. Meanwhile, report after report had indicated that the areas where demon beasts vanished without a trace were shifting westward.
On this patrol, Nie Xingya had been investigating those reports himself. He had happened upon Yan Baishou of Liujin Valley, who was surveying the nearby waters for resources. While they were comparing their information, they spotted the ominous tribulation cloud rising in the northern sky and flew over together.
Of course, there was no evidence linking that member of the demon race to Yan Wuzhen’s death. But a pretext was all Nie Xingya needed.
Once a demon beast capable of summoning a tribulation cloud of this scale completed its human-form transformation, its corpse would be worth a fortune. There was no reason to pass up the chance to hunt it while it was trapped by the lightning tribulation.
As he dealt with the lingering effects of the lightning at the bottom of the crater, Lee Hyun swallowed back his rising nausea.
‘What rotten luck…’
He had chosen a remote island with neither a spirit vein nor a mineral vein and cleared out every demon beast nearby. Even so, he had not expected Core Formation to cause an upheaval in heaven and earth on this scale, or Nascent Soul experts to flock to it one after another.
Above him, Master Hu removed his jade spectacles, tucked them into his sleeve, and smiled.
“If I bite you both to death right here, then insist that you might have been planning to invade Cangmang Forest, would you find that explanation convincing?”
At that very moment, an enormous swell rose from the sea below.
Ruuumble―
Mountainous walls of water parted, and a hulking man nine chi (about 3 m) tall strode out across the spray. The bronze muscles and thick neck visible above his drenched dark-blue clothes were covered in a dense pattern of hexagonal turtle-shell markings. The giant spoke in a voice like thunder.
“Master, what race is that child down there?”
“I don’t know yet, Tan Yue. More importantly, those bastards of the human race intend to seize him while he’s undergoing his tribulation.”
A crooked grin spread across Tan Yue’s round, rugged face, exposing thick, sharp fangs like those of a wild beast.
“Then there’s nothing more to discuss!”
He rolled a shoulder, and his joints cracked like thunder over the sea. Yan Baishou’s eyelids twitched.
“A Tier 4 Dark-Armored Sea Turtle…!”
A sinister light flashed through Nie Xingya’s eyes as he raised the black-jade flute to his lips.
“Mere beasts! You’ll learn the hard way who rules heaven and earth.”
The instant his pale fingers moved over the flute’s holes, every sound in the world vanished as though it had never existed.
Waves still battered the reefs and rocks still tumbled down. Only the sound was gone, leaving an eerie, unnatural silence.
Black sonic inscriptions rose behind Nie Xingya and overlapped one another. The magical power concentrated at the tip of his flute streamed out as an invisible sonic current, carving a long gash through the sea’s surface.
Water froze white in its wake as the Profound Nether Yin Frost Qi swept toward Master Hu’s throat.
Master Hu’s amber pupils narrowed to slits.
Cr-r-rack!
The neatly dressed old scholar’s jaw gaped wide as silver fur and sharp teeth sprouted in an instant. The savage likeness of a white fox overlaid his face, and four white tails unfurled behind him, seeming to fill the sky.
Fwoooosh―
The pure-white true flame Master Hu exhaled opened like the maw of an enormous beast and tore into the air.
KRAAANG!
Only then did the suppressed roar of the collision burst forth all at once.
The white flame, capable of burning primordial spirit and magical power alike, ripped the sonic current apart on contact. The sound waves deflected to either side carved deep channels a hundred zhang (about 330 m) long through the sea and obliterated an entire cluster of black reefs farther out.
“Crude tricks!”
Master Hu kicked off the air. His four tails snapped out to propel him, and his slight figure vanished without a trace, as though he had used the Distance-Shrinking Art. Then he appeared above Nie Xingya, behind him, and on both sides, all at once.
Claws wreathed in white flame ripped Nie Xingya’s body-protecting magical light to shreds from every direction.
“Hmph!”
Without removing the flute from his mouth, Nie Xingya formed a hand seal with his left hand.
Three palm-sized jade gui tablets slipped from his sleeve. The holes pierced through the centers of the flat jade tablets pointed toward Master Hu.
Nie Xingya took the flute from his lips.
Yet the sound art did not stop.
The empowered sound he had just played burst from the three jade gui tablets, each sounding on a different beat!
BOOM! KRAANG!
While the white flame was still tearing apart the first sound wave, the next slipped through it. Just as Master Hu swung a tail around to block it, the third jade gui tablet sent a blast of sound hammering into his chest.
Blood trickled from the corner of Master Hu’s mouth.
‘So those magic treasures store sound.’
Master Hu spread his four tails. Two knocked aside the sound waves, while white flame extending from the other two swept over the sides of the jade gui tablets.
Nie Xingya immediately scattered the jade gui tablets and changed the note he was playing on the flute.
When Master Hu struck one of the retreating jade gui tablets with his claws, the vibration inside it traveled up his claws and into his arm.
The demon power in his wrist threatened to freeze solid. Baring his teeth, Master Hu wreathed even his own arm in white flame.
White flames and dark-blue cold qi continued erupting across the sky.
…
At the same time, Yan Baishou and Tan Yue were clashing over another stretch of sea.
Yan Baishou spread both hands. Silver liquid poured from his sleeves like waterfalls, transforming in an instant into more than a hundred sharp silver flying swords and chains.
A rain of metal swords filled the sky, their paths crisscrossing as they plunged toward Tan Yue.
Tan Yue did not dodge. He stamped down with both feet, striking through the air to pound the sea’s surface.
KABOOM!
A vast Dharma manifestation of a Dark-Armored Sea Turtle rose behind Tan Yue and roared, its dark-blue form spanning a hundred zhang (about 330 m).
The surface waters within a radius of several li converged beneath his feet. Massive currents coiled upward into the sky, forming layer upon layer of barriers.
Suffused with demon power, the water became as heavy as heavy water. As the hundred-odd flowing metal flying swords pierced those barriers, they slowed sharply, as though mired in a swamp.
Krrrrrk―
Silver chains and massive blades that broke through the heavy walls of water struck Tan Yue’s shell and forearms, throwing off sparks.
As Tan Yue was driven back several zhang, the silver blades liquefied and spread like a web, seeping into the gaps around his joints and the nape of his neck.
“That tickles!”
Tan Yue laughed viciously, grabbed the silver liquid wrapped around his arm with his left hand, and brought it to his mouth. Black plates sprouted on his cheeks, and his jaws filled with the crushing power of a gigantic sea turtle.
CRUNCH! CRACK!
Demon power surged through his fangs, crushing even the restrictions within the flowing metal. When Tan Yue spat the severed mass of silvery metal into the sea, Yan Baishou’s expression turned cold.
Yan Baishou twisted his wrist.
The remaining flowing metal pulled taut and became two enormous metal rings lined with inward-facing spikes, closing around Tan Yue’s shell from above and below.
Krrrrk!
The rings spun in opposite directions, tightening as they bit into the seams between his shell plates. While Tan Yue forced them outward with both arms, the remaining flowing metal outside them transformed into dozens of serrated discs.
The discs shot past Tan Yue’s back toward the uninhabited island where Lee Hyun sat.
“Not so fast!”
Tan Yue inhaled, and enough seawater to engulf a ship was sucked into his mouth in an instant.
The shell plates on his neck and chest bulged as his torso expanded to its limit. The spiked rings around his shell could no longer hold; they were forced open and fell away. A moment later, he spat out a rapid barrage of compressed water projectiles.
BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Every water projectile exploded hard enough to make the surrounding space buckle, crumpling the silver serrated discs and hurling them in all directions.
The stray shockwaves smashed the reefs around the island to pieces, and they vanished in clouds of spray.
Even Yan Baishou could not withstand that ferocious force head-on. He had to conjure several flowing metal shields to deflect the projectiles.
Yet there was no sign of panic in his eyes.
Amid the scattering spray, flowing metal divided into particles too fine to see was seeping into cracks in the island’s bedrock.
…
While four Nascent Soul-level monsters wreaked havoc across sea and sky outside the crater, five-colored core tribulation lightning rained down relentlessly on Lee Hyun.
KABOOM-BOOM-BOOM―
One after another, the remaining yellow flying swords burned through their sword qi and disintegrated. Even the Three-Molt Silkworm Robe’s three protective spirit molts, his last defense, burned to ash as they absorbed the lightning.
He angled his treasured Sinking Moon Sword to deflect a bolt of lightning, but a hairline crack appeared along its blade, forcing him to put that away as well.
At last, the robe covering Lee Hyun’s upper body was torn to shreds, and ferocious lightning power poured directly into his bare flesh.
“Urgh……!”
When the lightning power first pierced his shoulder, it was not the pain of his scorched skin that made him cough up blood. His true essence had surged toward that spot all at once, trying to solidify there before the rest.
Yet amid the agony, Lee Hyun recalled the alchemy process for the Essence-Cultivating Dao Pill, which he had spent more than 330 years struggling to master at his pill furnace.
‘Heaven and earth are the pill furnace now, and my body is one enormous pill!’
Deep within his sea of consciousness, Lee Hyun calmly set the mind seal he had forged through the Sutra of Refining Intent into Vow aglow.
The unwavering focus he had honed by painting the same branches and refining his brushstrokes tens of thousands of times now held fast to the energy threatening to run wild throughout his body.
He tightly bound the true essence throughout his body, allowing none to escape. The heavenly lightning crashing down on him became a giant smith’s hammer, pounding and tempering his body inside and out as though it were a mass of red-hot iron.
With his right hand paralyzed, Lee Hyun groped for the jade caskets on the floor with his left and tipped the remaining Golden Core Condensing Pills into his mouth one at a time, even as he coughed up blood. The rate at which their medicinal strength was released, the degree of compression in his true essence, and the time the lightning power took to complete a qi circulation cycle through his entire body all meshed like clockwork in his mind.
As he swallowed the sixtieth Golden Core Condensing Pill, Lee Hyun felt that his body had taken in all the medicinal strength it needed.
‘Time to finish this!’
The long years of his life passed through his mind.
He had read countless popular novels, yet there were still so many stories he wanted to read.
He had known love and become a father.
His thoughts flickered to the spirit fields he had left in the tunnel far away, the fuzzbees proudly ferrying water, and the Heaven-Origin Divine Tree that still had not formed a flower bud.
Memories of all he had learned and lost in more than three thousand years of life settled quietly within him.
Lee Hyun raised his eyes to the sky.
As he faced the lightning tribulation descending upon him, stubborn defiance stirred within him.
‘Come at me, then!’
As though in answer to Lee Hyun’s thoughts, the five-colored clouds and black storm clouds covering the island began rapidly folding inward from their outer edges.
The clouds were not dispersing; all the heaven-and-earth spiritual qi and lightning power were being compressed into a single point.
Still fighting outside the crater, Master Hu sent out his mental intent.
[Tan Yue! This is the final strike of the lightning tribulation!]
That was when it happened.
Yan Baishou, who had been waiting for an opening, sent Nie Xingya a brief voice transmission.
[Hold them there for a moment!]
His eyes blazing, Nie Xingya bit the tip of his tongue and spat essence blood onto the black-jade flute.
Blue veins bulged in his neck. The three jade gui tablets shot off in different directions, and the sonic inscriptions engraved inside them flared to life at once.
Along with the empowered sound he had played into them earlier, the Profound Nether true sound he had nurtured over many years was unleashed all at once. The glow of the jade gui tablets rapidly grew murky as demonic notes of different pitches overlapped.
KABOOOOOM!
Assailed by lethal sound waves that bored directly into flesh and primordial spirit, the Dark-Armored Sea Turtle’s Dharma manifestation reeled, while the white flames rising from Master Hu’s four tails scattered.
A fleeting opening appeared.
Yan Baishou vanished from the air, leaving only a silver afterimage.
The flowing metal hidden in the cracks of the island’s bedrock linked together. Enveloped in metallic light, he raced along the route he had prepared and shot straight to the lip of the crater.
It was an escape art from Liujin Valley’s secret teachings!
“You bastard!”
Tan Yue whirled around at once, but a jade gui tablet in front of him released its remaining true sound. He was stopped in his tracks as the impact drove deep beneath his shell.
Swallowing a mouthful of blood, Master Hu blocked the sonic current with one tail, compressed the remaining white flame at the tips of his claws, and fired it toward Yan Baishou’s back.
Five streaks of white fire caught up with the streak of silver light.
Yan Baishou twisted his body. Three streaks were blocked by flowing metal armor he hastily drew around himself, but the other two grazed his left shoulder and tore away chunks of flesh.
Blood sprayed from the wound, but Yan Baishou pressed on without slowing and crossed the crater’s rim.
There, however, he paused.
At that instant, the lightning, condensed to a single point at the center of the now-clear sky, descended upon the crown of Lee Hyun’s head.
FLASH!
───!
A beat later, an explosion thundered out, and Lee Hyun’s vision went pure white.
There were no more magic tools he could use. The pressure was so extreme that even the boundaries between his hands and feet, his bones and internal organs seemed to vanish. The true essence he had built up throughout his body with sixty Golden Core Condensing Pills compressed with terrifying force.
He was poised on a razor’s edge. A moment’s delay would let the lightning power tear through his organs; sealing the core shell too soon would make his body explode from the pressure within.
With every fiber of his being, Lee Hyun held on to the remembered sensation of that split second at the pill furnace when he formed the final Pill-Condensing Seal.
Every part of his body was perfectly united, from head to toe. There was nothing left to adjust.
‘Now!’
Hummm!
The sound of the Dao rang out from deep within Lee Hyun’s flesh and bones.
Countless points of golden light beneath his skin joined as one, from his fingertips to his shoulders, from his neck to his chest and waist, from his toes to the crown of his head, leaving not a single gap.
Rather than escaping, the light sank into the skin itself and solidified into the Leakless Golden Body, whose golden radiance surpassed that of any divine iron in the world!
The last remnants of lightning power flowed along that smooth golden skin before vanishing without a trace.
Yan Baishou lunged at him the very next instant.
‘The material is ready!’
Greed blazed in his eyes.
A demon beast that had just completed its Human-Form Transformation Lightning Tribulation would have severely depleted its qi and blood as well as its demon power, and would not yet be accustomed to its new body.
It was the perfect moment to hunt it!
Yan Baishou was a Nascent Soul old monster, and he kept his guard up to the very end.
He wrapped his chest and neck in three layers of flowing metal to form thick armor, fashioned flowing metal chains in his left hand to bind his opponent’s limbs, and invoked a secret art in his right that would seal demon power and primordial spirit on contact. Then he reached for Lee Hyun’s shoulder.
Just before his fingertips touched him, two eyes flashed open amid the blackened ash.
‘!?’
BANG―
With a deafening crash, something shrouded in silver light was hurled away at tremendous speed.
BOOOM!
The figure tore into the sea, throwing up a plume of spray dozens of zhang high as it plunged beneath the surface.
Tan Yue and Nie Xingya both stared wide-eyed.
Master Hu landed at the rim of the crater and stared down, his mouth hanging open.
The bedrock below was scorched black and cracked.
The young man slowly lowered his fist.
⚬──────────✧──────────⚬
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