Thick demonic clouds blanketed the dense forest for a thousand li, blotting out the sky and earth. The space turned icy, cold, and dim, as though one had stepped into a void.
The God of Killing, Motong, stood at the edge of his demonic realm. Behind him, an infinitely vast world churnes with violent, ferocious power, ready at any moment to surge forth and annihilate everything before it.
Wuma Jiuxing stood opposite Motong, gripping his bronze battle blade. Blade intent had already spread from his body.
He said, “Old sir, you are a spiritual-power god. I wonder, at such close range, whether you can still block a single strike from me?”
Zhang Ruochen knew full well how formidable Wuma Jiuxing was. “If your one strike fails to kill me, will you not end up gambling away your own life? You know my lifespan is nearly spent. I do not mind dragging two gods down with me before I die.”
Hearing this, Motong’s expression shifted slightly. He immediately took out a flaming divine talisman and pressed it to his chest.
One fears not an opponent of high cultivation, but one who no longer cares for his own life.
Motong’s tone softened a fraction. “Assassins kill only for money. There is no need for us to fight to the death. Taohua is a traitor to the Heaven-Slaying Organisation. Why must you, old sir, throw away your life for her sake?”
“Taohua is merely a traitor to your Heaven-Slaying Organisation, yet you, a mighty God of Killing, would throw away your own life for her?” Zhang Ruochen echoed his words.
Motong was truly enraged by this old man and was about to strike, when he saw gorgeous radiance burst from the direction behind the old fellow. The corners of Motong’s mouth curved upward.
Whoosh!
Without any warning, the bronze battle blade in Wuma Jiuxing’s hand flashed like lightning as he delivered a slash.
In that spark of flint and stone, countless blade-path divine patterns appeared across the sky, forming tens of thousands of translucent blades of qi that fell together with the battle blade.
Zhang Ruochen had been guarding against Wuma Jiuxing all along. He had deliberately turned his back on him and faced Motong precisely to bait that strike. Wuma Jiuxing’s first slash was bound to be earth-shattering.
Most cultivators who died beneath Wuma Jiuxing’s blade perished on that very first strike.
And the path of the blade places utmost importance on momentum.
How could a strike from behind achieve perfect momentum?
So long as Zhang Ruochen evaded this one slash, Wuma Jiuxing’s momentum would inevitably falter, and his battle power would be unable to reach its absolute peak.
When gods fight, it is never a simple clash of strength. From the very beginning, Zhang Ruochen had already entered a state of tactical combat: seeking flaws, disrupting the enemy’s state of mind, seizing every advantage, and creating the most favourable battlefield for himself.
Rip!
Wuma Jiuxing’s slash was incomparable, its momentum overwhelming. It effortlessly sliced through the formation that A-Le had spent vast amounts of time arranging. Divine patterns tore like paper, utterly incapable of resistance.
Seeing Zhang Ruochen about to die beneath this blade, a brilliant smile spread across Motong’s face.
There was no surprise.
Wuma Jiuxing’s slash cleaved Zhang Ruochen’s body in two.
Bang!
Yet what flew apart was not flesh and blood, but wooden dust and powder.
Even the old yellow ox dissolved into illusory shadows and vanished.
“Not good! That was a false body he created from an ancient tree!” Motong cried out in alarm, instantly deploying layer upon layer of defensive measures.
Whoosh!
A bolt of lightning as thick as a water bucket plummeted from the sky. Dragon-shaped and resembling heavenly tribulation, it struck straight toward the crown of Wuma Jiuxing’s head.
Clearly, Wuma Jiuxing had not expected his opponent’s spiritual-power techniques to be so extraordinary as to fool even his divine eyes.
He raised his blade to meet the heavens.
Blade qi poured upward like a waterfall, rushing toward the firmament.
Lightning and blade qi collided. The two immense energies erupted outward, brushing against the nearest Heavenly Sovereign divine pattern. A pattern that connected heaven and earth, bright as lightning, slashed horizontally toward the position of Wuma Jiuxing and Motong.
“Flee quickly! We’ve been tricked! If a Heavenly Sovereign divine pattern touches us, we definitely cannot withstand it!”
Carrying the pitch-black demonic clouds, Motong fled at top speed.
Yet the speed of the Heavenly Sovereign pattern’s descent was terrifying. It still pierced through the demonic clouds. Large quantities of divine blood sprayed out, and the corpse of a white python, severed in two, fell to the ground.
Zhang Ruochen stood atop a mountain three hundred li away, gazing into the distance. He saw lightning, blade qi, and demonic clouds merge into a chaotic sea of energy.
Since he had detected Motong and Wuma Jiuxing early, how could Zhang Ruochen possibly have kept his true body in place?
As a spiritual-power god, he had to fully exploit the advantages of spiritual force.
“The Heavenly Sovereign divine patterns truly are formidable. Even after millions of years, they still possess such might.”
Zhang Ruochen murmured to himself, then raised his right hand. Under the mobilisation of spiritual force, the divine qi of heaven and earth continuously gathered, forming a second and third pillar of lightning that struck separately toward Motong and Wuma Jiuxing.
Boom!
Boom!
…
Vast stretches of divine earth were levelled.
Ancient trees that took more than ten people to encircle were reduced to ash the instant the lightning fell.
Wuma Jiuxing said, “Do not clash head-on with this lightning again. Once the divine power spreads and triggers more Heavenly Sovereign patterns, our luck may not hold as it did before.”
“Damn it! Where exactly is he hiding?” Motong cursed furiously.
Wuma Jiuxing replied, “His spiritual force far surpasses ours, and he prepared in advance, concealing himself thoroughly. Finding him within these Heavenly Sovereign ruins is all but impossible.”
“Are we to remain passively beaten?” Motong demanded.
“First, leave these Heavenly Sovereign ruins.”
Wuma Jiuxing merged man and blade into a brilliant shuttle of light and fled.
They dared not charge blindly; they retreated along their original path.
Zhang Ruochen had long anticipated this. When Wuma Jiuxing and Motong reached the vicinity of a thousand-metre-tall mountain, the entire hill exploded with a tremendous boom.
Shattered rock and earth filled the sky.
Those fragments of stone and soil condensed into stone warriors wielding long spears, descending like a thousand troops and ten thousand horses to assault the two gods.
“Turning stones into soldiers? A parlour trick.”
Without slowing, Motong swung his arm. Divine qi surged forth, hurling hundreds of stone warriors away.
When the stone warriors crashed to the ground, they appeared completely unharmed and charged at Motong once more.
“How is this possible?” Motong was horrified.
With his cultivation, forget stone warriors, even saint-realm cultivators of the Stone Clan would be reduced to dust. How could he not be shocked by this sight?
“This is a Heavenly Sovereign ruin. The soil is divine earth, the stones are divine stones; they are not so easily destroyed. His spiritual force is immense; he directly bestowed spirit upon them and awakened their intelligence. These divine stones have become divine troops and divine generals. Do not get entangled. Go!”
Wuma Jiuxing swept his blade horizontally.
Wherever the blade light passed, every stone warrior crumbled into rubble.
Wuma Jiuxing knew the elder hiding in the shadows was crafty and calculating. He would never rely on mere stone warriors alone; there had to be a follow-up. Thus, he did not linger in battle for even a moment and charged straight out of the dense forest.
Seeing that he had successfully separated Wuma Jiuxing from Motong, Zhang Ruochen swiftly raced toward the lagging Motong.
When he was only a dozen li from Motong, Zhang Ruochen pressed his palm toward the ground and released his spiritual force. The divine earth was directly torn asunder, forming a long fissure.
Watching the fissure spread toward him, Motong’s expression changed drastically. He roared, “Old thing, have you gone mad? This is a Heavenly Sovereign ruin! If you trigger the Heavenly Sovereign patterns, we all die!”
“No. Only you will die.”
Zhang Ruochen stood at the end of the fissure. His body shot backward like a released spring, widening the distance between him and Motong.
The Heart of Truth had fused with Zhang Ruochen’s blood, flesh, tendons, bones, soul, spirit, and marrow. After his spiritual force reached godhood, his perception had become even keener than before. Within a certain range, he was nearly omniscient.
Precisely because of this, he had a rough understanding of the distribution of the Heavenly Sovereign divine patterns.
Near that mountain, there were more than ten such patterns.
The spot from which he had just attacked, however, lay in a gap devoid of patterns.
Rumble!
As the earth split, thirteen Heavenly Sovereign divine patterns were triggered in succession. Some surged up from underground, others descended from the sky, streaking like bolts of lightning.
The energy contained within these lightning bolts surpassed ordinary lightning by tens of thousands of times.
Destructive fluctuations spread outward, making even Wuma Jiuxing, who had fled far away, feel his heart tremble.
The patch of earth where Motong had stood was carved by the thirteen divine patterns into thirteen bottomless ravines. Thick smoke billowed through the forest, the demonic clouds were shattered.
The ground was stained red with divine blood. Two white pythons ten thousand metres long were reduced to charred corpses.
Before the might of a Heavenly Sovereign, the lives of pseudo-god-level divine beasts appeared so fragile. All their vaunted vitality amounted to nothing.
Only after the roiling energy had calmed did Zhang Ruochen slowly emerge. With aged steps, he walked to the side of the python corpses and sensed the lingering majesty of the Heavenly Sovereign.
“Die!”
The ground cracked open.
Motong, covered in blood, demonic patterns writhing like centipedes across his body, struck Zhang Ruochen’s back with a palm.
That palm carried billions of rule divine patterns.
A ecstatic, bloodthirsty smile spread across Motong’s hideous face.
“Amitabha!”
Zhang Ruochen bent his left arm, raising it before his chest. His five fingers naturally extended, palm facing outward, forming the fearless mudra.
Hum!
The instant Motong’s palm struck his back, the power of the Buddha’s sarira erupted. Countless seven-ancestor Sanskrit characters formed a ring of golden Buddhist light ten thousand zhang wide behind Zhang Ruochen.
The seven-ancestor characters were no different from Heavenly Sovereign divine patterns. They surged backward onto Motong.
Motong’s divine body was flung away, shattering into pieces. Purified by the Buddhist light, his flesh burned and dissolved into motes of light.
Only fragments of divine bone and a rain of golden light fell to the ground.
Zhang Ruochen remained unharmed. He had long sensed that Motong was not dead and had hidden underground, so he was prepared. While performing the fearless mudra and unleashing the sarira’s power, he had also mobilised his spiritual force to form seventy-two layers of barriers that protected his body.
Of course, it was also because Motong had already been gravely wounded, and the force of that palm was no longer sufficient.
…
Wuma Jiuxing escaped the dense forest and turned to gaze back.
Within the pitch-black forest, brilliant Buddhist light burst forth, purifying the demonic clouds and forming a vast, sacred expanse of Buddhist radiance in the sky.
That Buddhist power was immense and pure, yet it left Wuma Jiuxing deeply puzzled.
Could a true Buddha truly be dwelling in seclusion here?
“Wuma Jiuxing! You dared to kill my closest friend Motong. Even if you flee to First Divine Maiden City, even if you flee Xinghuan Heaven itself, this old man will cut you down!”
Carrying Motong’s broken divine bones, Zhang Ruochen flew out of the forest. Beneath his feet, spiritual force manifested as a bridge of clouds. With every step, he seemed to cross vast distances through space.
