Chapter 979: A Sword Falls, Crushing Soul and Dispersing Body!
Xu Qing stood there as if personally demarcating the border between life and death. He was positioned between Floating Fiend’s son and death itself, becoming his whole world, and blocking him off from any hope.
Floating Fiend’s son felt his heart pounding in his chest. It was as if a boulder had fallen from heaven into the sea of his heart, sending out massive waves. That was especially true considering that the severed head Xu Qing held had not closed its eyes in death. They pulsed with a deathly aura as they stared out, as if to gaze upon death itself.
Even more terrifying was the god vine that swirled around Xu Qing. The vine pulsed with starlight, which combined with the violet glow of Xu Qing to make something even more godly.
Then there was the shadow that seemed to merge with the water itself. As it gathered behind Xu Qing, it eventually ‘stood up’ to form a blurry tree. Upon the tree hung a coffin, which swayed back and forth. And there were also numerous eyes that stared with bloodthirsty gluttony at the son of Floating Fiend.
All of that made the seafloor gruish to the extreme.
Then there was the godly authority flickering everywhere. Sound was under his control. The moon was his servant. The poison had him as its source. And misfortune affected everything except Xu Qing himself. It made Xu Qing seem like a god descending into mortal dust.
Razor-sharp moonlight swept toward Floating Fiend’s son from all directions. It was accompanied by the invasive taboo poison, like marrow filling bones. It was the same with the sound. The god vine behind Xu Qing swirled toward Floating Fiend’s son at top speed. Little Shadow, unwilling to be outdone or left behind, spread out dramatically. Everything there on the seafloor converged on the enemy.
In front of Xu Qing, the seven underworld lamps flickered on the verge of going out.
Floating Fiend’s son felt overwhelmed with bitterness. In the end, he didn’t speak. And that was because the sound of his own voice could be used as a weapon by his enemy. Besides, nothing he said at this point would make any difference.
Threats weren’t going to do anything. Pleas for mercy would be ineffective. All of this had been foreordained the moment this person said that he had changed his mind. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that all of the karma that was created from the moment he made a mistake in judging his opponents battle prowess made this result unavoidable.
As his heart sank, his eyes filled with intense battle spirit, and his heart burned with the desire to live. Fighting was his only chance to live. Going all out was his only hope.
Therefore, rumbling sounds rose up as he unhesitatingly ignited his soul, his cultivation base, and his fleshly body. He even started burning his essence and bloodline!
As a member of the Vivifiend nobility, his bloodline was far purer than ordinary members of his species. At the same time, he had a very extraordinary fleshly body. His father had paid an enormous price to make sure he had it.
Now, all that was becoming kindling. Silver fire broke out all over him, incinerating the surrounding water and incinerating his madness.
At the same time, his battle prowess spiked! Previously, he was a two-world Smoldering God who could unleash four-world battle prowess. But this burning process caused his battle prowess to leap to a much higher level, and break past his personal limit. A terrifying aura erupted within him, mixing with the silver-colored fire to create a pressure that instantly weighed down on the heart and mind.
It was the power of a five-world Smoldering God! The difference between four worlds and five might seem like a minor jump in levels. But the reality was that it was massive in terms of substructure. Five worlds was actually the first major threshold of Smoldering Gods.
Before five worlds, what was ‘smoldering’ was a will of gestation. After reaching five worlds, what was ‘smoldering’ was a will of growth.
What gestated and then grew for these ‘gods’ was not something related to actual gods. Instead, it was one’s soul, which was being elevated to become a nascent divinity! When the nascent divinity emerged, it primarily governed natural and magical laws.[1]
Within that 500-kilometer area at the seafloor, a terrifying aura was building up on Floating Fiend’s son. His fleshly body was withering dramatically, and on top of it was a semitransparent nascent divinity body. The nascent divinity’s eyes were glittering and bright, and its body was magnificent. To a certain degree, it looked even more impressive than Xu Qing.
The god vine, which had been wrapping around Floating Fiend’s son, had no choice but to back away. Even Little Shadow fell back.
The needle glittered brightly as it circled in the area, blocking the godly authority. At the same time, Floating Fiend’s son extended the arm of his nascent divinity and pointed at Xu Qing. That gesture sucked in numerous natural and magical laws, making them like threads that shot toward Xu Qing to wrap him up, seal him, and lock him down. It was as if the finger could treat all daos as enemies, all immortals as adversaries, and all cultivators as rebels! In an instant, five-world Smoldering God battle prowess surged with mountain-toppling, sea-draining force toward Xu Qing.
What met it head on was the Seven Lamps Underworld Fire Curse. In the blink of an eye, the flames were extinguished. But they didn’t bring death. Instead, they just collapsed. They couldn’t block the natural and magical laws from that finger. Thus, the laws became a tempest that instantly swept over Xu Qing, covering him.
Rumbling sounds echoed out. There was no longer a lack of sound. At last, a cold voice spoke out, like sounds of nature, surpassing all other living things.
“Backtracing.”
As the word echoed out, an enormous sundial appeared within the tempest of laws. As it hung in midair, it let the threads of law pass by it, and seemed completely unaffected. The gnomon on the sundial was spinning backward. It started out slow, but after only a few breaths of time, it sped up. Astonishingly, time in the area was now moving backward. The water flowed backward. The tempest retreated.
Floating Fiend’s son shook from head to toe as the natural and magical laws from his nascent divinity faded away, and his nascent divinity body collapsed. In the briefest of moments, it disappeared without a trace. At the same time, the withered flesh of his body started recovering. Everything was going back to the moment before he ignited himself! That was when he was a four-world Smoldering God, not a five-world one.
Floating Fiend’s son was flabbergasted by what he was seeing. His face fell, and immediately prepared to ignite himself again. Except then...
Xu Qing appeared on the sundial, radiating boundless light. It was as if it had turned into a sun, illuminating everything in the area. And all of that light turned into a binding force.
It shot toward Floating Fiend’s son. Wherever it went, it destroyed darkness, smashed the air, and devastated everything. It was Xu Qing’s profound sun immortal light. It was as domineering as a sun and brought a tribulation of immortal might.
It reached Floating Fiend’s son in an instant. He couldn’t stop himself from screaming out in terror, despair, and pain. His fleshly body was instantly mangled so badly it was hardly recognizable, and was clearly on the verge of being completely wiped out by the immortal light. At that critical moment, Floating Fiend’s son felt a madness that turned into howl that hardly sounded like it came from the mouth of a sentient being.
“Come to me, immortal skill!”
Immortal skills were a creation from Ancient Emperor Dark Serenity’s time, and were also considered forbidden magics. In Revered Ancient, they were largely lost, and those that did survive were fragmented. But clearly, the holy lands had a lot of immortal skills.
As Floating Fiend’s son howled, the Grand Emperor’s needle shone with dazzling light and began spinning around him rapidly, leaving a red thread behind it that created various shadowy forms. They looked like souls. In fact, they were the nine dao protectors that Xu Qing had cut down earlier.
Specifically, they weren’t actually souls, but rather, they were karma. The needle was stitching together the karma of the nine deceased individuals, then linking them together. After it was done, the needle shot into the forehead of Floating Fiend’s son. In an instant, the wounds covering Floating Fiend’s son ceased to worsen. And yet again, silver flames covered him.
He began burning again. He was fighting back against Xu Qing’s immortal light. Next, his nascent divinity appeared again, and the immortal light began to dim.
Floating Fiend’s son had survived a moment of near death, and was now powering up again. With a vicious facial expression, he looked at Xu Qing.
“My Smoldering God cultivation base has been permanently weakened to use this magic. I refuse to believe... that it won’t affect you!”
The light of his nascent divinity erupted, reaching a height of some 3,000 meters, and sending waves out over the Forbidden Sea that were even more majestic than before. Then, he once again took a hand that could control natural and magical laws... and thrust it toward Xu Qing.
The dazzling power of that strike surpassed anything from before. Great vibrations filled the seafloor.
This time, he wasn’t just burning his bloodline. He was adding in the karma of the nine dao protectors, as well as their fate. To a certain extent, he was burning their future. In that manner, he was able to temporarily gain power equivalent to a five-world Smoldering God. Thanks to the stability provided by the Grand Emperor’s needle, it would be very difficult to reverse time on him now. This was his final move.
Howling, he sent the huge hand shooting toward Xu Qing. At the same time, the air around him seemed to fill with sealing power, making it impossible for him to flee.
Xu Qing looked as calm as ever as he looked at the forehead of Floating Fiend’s son, where the needle had entered. “That’s a very interesting needle.”
Then, he didn’t do anything to dodge or evade, and just let the nascent divinity’s hand hit his head. A huge boom rang out, but Xu Qing stood there unmoving.
Floating Fiend’s son stood agape, his mind spinning, his heart filled with incredulity.
“Th-that... that....”
Yet again he unleashed the power of his nascent divinity, giving the attack everything he could muster, filling it with natural and magical laws.
RUMBLE!
Xu Qing just stood there.
Without a word, Floating Fiend shot into motion, trying to circle around Xu Qing, and keeping about 3,000 meters of distance between them. He knew that he couldn’t keep up his current level of battle prowess. Xu Qing’s gruishness surpassed anything imaginable, to the point where he had never even heard of anything similar. At the moment, he didn’t even want to think about what could be the reason for it. By now, his mind was overwhelmed with terror, despair, and shock. All he wanted to do was get away.
Turning to look at him flee, Xu Qing extended his right hand and pushed it out gently. It created a new boundary within the 500-kilometer area. That boundary was a well. The seawater inside became the well water. It was none other than Fishing the Moon in the Well.
Floating Fiend’s son lurched to a halt as all of his magical techniques, treasures, and everything else about him were reflected in the water. That included the Grand Emperor’s needle. Around that time, his immobility caused the burning of his cultivation base to naturally cease.
Xu Qing pulled back his hand as if to fish something up out of the water. A needle flew out.
When that was done, the rumble of a sword echoed out from within Xu Qing. Sword light glimmered as a heaven-shaking, earth-shattering stream of sword energy swept through the Forbidden Sea. Fate shattered as it slashed toward the soul and fleshly body of Floating Fiend’s son.
The sword shattered his soul and shredded his body! The scream of the sword also became the authority of sound, devastating the battlefield. Floating Fiend’s son had been destroyed in body and soul!
Having accomplished that, Xu Qing looked back into the depths of the sea. After cleaning up the mess, he would go back to waiting for the giant and the dragon chariot.
However, before he could go more than 3,000 meters, he stopped in place and looked over his shoulder. For the first time, a serious expression could be seen on his face, and his heart rate increased. It seemed that great danger was on the verge of arriving.
He had just sensed a terrifying gaze locking onto him! It didn’t come from the giant and the dragon chariot. Instead, it came from the Vivifiend holy land, where Floating Fiend had been in seclusion for the past hundred years.
***
A terrifying figure sat cross-legged in the Viviefiend holy land, and his eyes had just opened.
As a result, the sky outside of the holy land went dark. Endless black clouds churned, and the sea reacted violently, sending huge waves out everywhere. Boundless energy swept through the cosmos, causing natural laws to bow their heads, and magical laws to prostrate. Surrounding islands trembled, and countless species on the Forbidden Sea were inexplicably shaken to the core with terror.
As for the Vivifiends in the holy land, their minds and hearts were spinning.
The might of an Imperial Sovereign rose up, along with a voice that surpassed heavenly thunder. When it spoke, it contained a horrifying killing intent that rolled out over the Forbidden Sea.
“You killed my son?? I see you!”
1. In this case, I’m using the term ‘nascent divinity’ because it’s the same term that often appears in other Er Gen works. The word ‘divinity’ here is the same character for ‘god’ that appears in the god cultivation system. It also appears in Smoldering God, even though that’s from the cultivator system and not the god system. It follows the same pattern as ‘nascent soul’ and in other Er Gen works is often a higher-level version of a nascent soul. Up to this point, I’ve generally been rendering that character as ‘god’ (as opposed to deity, divine, etc.), in an attempt to maintain some continuity as it relates to gods and the god system of cultivation. That character (god/divine/divinity) is common, and appears in ordinary words such as mind, nerves, energy (certain types of it), as well as things like divine sense and divine will. Many instances of the usage of this character have nothing to do with the ‘god’ cultivation system, which is why I’ve been trying to maintain consistency in that regard. Hopefully all of this makes sense. At this point, Xu Qing is basically on a completely different and unique path of cultivation, so as often happens in Er Gen works, the more orthodox system of cultivation becomes less relevant the further you go on, and that’s the case here. Minor spoilers in that this ‘nascent divinity’ concept does not seem to be a major factor later in the story, at least as of me translating this chapter. It could theoretically become important in later chapters that have not been written yet. ☜