Jing Qian glanced once more outside the dimensional veil: a lone Blueblood Lantern hung over the sea, like a hunter crouched by his trap.
The enemy's patience and persistence made Jing Qian realize this would not be over quickly. It was destined to be a long war of attrition.
Yet instead of frustration, the pressure only ignited a boundless fighting spirit within him.
He resolved to make full use of his Sumeru power and pit himself properly against this Blueblood Lantern!
He slipped out of the Void Domain, walked thirty li through the dimensional void, and then returned to his Fate-Steele space.
At last, it was time to settle things with the crocodile-dragon that had earned so much credit in his training!
This great beast, a Blue-Blood fiend, had already lost its entire right leg after hundreds of desperate clashes with Jing Qian.
It was his strongest opponent in the Stele Space and also his most loyal whetstone.
Countless life-and-death battles had left the beast scarred and weakened, while giving Jing Qian immeasurable growth in return.
Now that his Sword Fang had fully ascended, the crocodile-dragon's time of death had finally come.
Sword-light raged like a flood dragon, every strike aimed precisely at the creature's injuries. The mindless seven-grade monster fought like a puppet, only able to defend.
No matter its sturdy flesh or regenerative power, Jing Qian's patient, grinding assault wore it down.
After ten grueling days and 765,000 strikes, he finally reduced the beast's right side to bare bone and carved it to death!
Each time his essence ran dry, he would rush out of the safe zone, die once, reset his state, and come back.
When the end came, a vast mass of pure life-essence surged into him, along with a single priceless memory.
Jing Qian stilled himself, absorbing the harvest—then his mind was pulled into memory.
...
In this vision, he was the crocodile-dragon, sinking into a submarine volcano, its body encased by endless magma.
But the beast felt no harm, only the comfort of a warm bath.
"Use this sliver of Earth-Fiend Venomfire to temper your flesh and try to condense Violet-Eye Life Essence. Hold on. Don't waste my flame."
Looking up, it saw a tall, powerful merman with a human body and a fish's tail, gazing down from the shore.
The words had barely faded before a terrifying torrent of fire-energy poured from the magma into the dragon's body.
At once, the monster knew it faced a life-and-death tribulation.
The venomfire devoured it, charring flesh to coal. Its Life Patterns and Life Essence melted like mud before a flood. Its lifespan streamed away like a river breaking its banks.
Every struggle was useless. On the brink of death, the beast panicked.
It leapt from the magma, plunging into the cool sea.
The venomfire bled from its body, boiling the waters around it into clouds of bubbles.
It clung to life but forfeited a chance at transcendence.
On shore, the merman's rage erupted.
"Waste! You squandered my Solar Dragonhide Earth-Lung Venomfire!
Get out of my sight, go guard the border seas. Let me never see you again!"
A surge of Violet-Eye essence flung the crocodile-dragon dozens of li away. It fled without daring to look back.
This bitter failure had scarred the beast's soul forever.
...
When Jing Qian relived this memory himself, he felt he had gained immensely from the Venomfire body-forging to the merman's method of subjugating the dragon; it expanded his vision greatly.
At the same time, World's Insight distilled from the experience a concrete plan of escape, which flowed directly into his mind. He immediately acted upon it.
He slipped out of the Void Domain into the dimensional void, flying with all his strength toward a chosen direction.
No longer did he conserve energy. He poured everything into void-walking. In a single day, he crossed over a thousand li.
By day's end, his White-Fang Life Essence was nearly drained.
He paused to recover, then returned to the Stele Space to clash with the crocodile-dragon again, refreshing himself with battle before resuming the second day's void-training.
This time, he pushed himself to 1,100 li slightly further.
By then, the Blueblood Lantern still waited in its original sea territory. The gap between them had widened to over 2,100 li.
But Jing Qian's true destination lay far beyond.
Thus began a long journey through the void.
Compared to the sea, walking the void was a wholly different experience.
He treated the trek as a cultivation in itself, with utmost seriousness.
For the next three full months, he never paused, committing himself entirely to this vast migration crossing 100,000 li of distance.
It was the most focused, most monotonous span since his rebirth.
Yet his progress in cultivation was profound.
Daily cycles of exhausting and replenishing his Life Essence had steadily pushed Jing Qian's cultivation forward.
His control over the Sumeru Life Pattern advanced by leaps and bounds.
In combat, this was most evident: his rate of slipping in and out of the dimensional void grew markedly faster. Now, after stabbing the crocodile-dragon with a single sword strike, he could still retreat alive.
By the later stages, his void-travel speed had even doubled, allowing him to cover two thousand li in a day.
More importantly, the endless killings and brushes with death had left his heart slightly restless. But after three months of immersion in the vast void, all that agitation was scoured clean.
His state of mind soared to a higher level.
Compared to three months ago, Jing Qian had once again undergone a complete rebirth.
And after expending such effort, he finally reached his destination.
Through the void, he could clearly see, in the depths of the sea trench, a cluster of towering volcanoes.
Magma surged upward, vaporizing seawater, forcing open a pocket of air deep beneath the ocean.
Inside that fiery cavern, venomous gases from lava and seawater churned together an absolute deathtrap for living beings.
The only figure within was a merman, soaking serenely in the molten lava, eyes closed in meditation.
This undersea volcano was precisely the secret hidden place Jing Qian had unearthed from the crocodile-dragon's memories.
The merman's name was Yang Jia. He had long since mastered a Spiritual Construct, possessing the true cultivation of a sixth-rank Spirit-Subduing Realm cultivator. He ruled a sea territory a hundred thousand li across, adjoining Hunzhou itself.
In sheer power, he stood high above the masses, second only to the shadowy "Zhou Lords" whose lives and deaths remained hidden.
Before such a mighty fiend, Jing Qian was but an ant.
Yet it was precisely this kind of towering monster that Jing Qian had painstakingly journeyed to find because such a being was the perfect gift he had chosen for the Blueblood Lantern.
He circled the volcano, choosing a spot with a broad, open view, nowhere to hide.
The place was seven or eight li from the merman. Safe enough.
Extending his right arm, left hand resting across his elbow, Jing Qian assumed a strange, dramatic posture.
He gathered all his focus, slipped from the void, and shouted across the magma and sea:
"Come at me!"
His voice rang with surging power, carrying far. At the same time, his forefinger crooked ever so slightly, dripping with provocation.
He left his body in the real world for less than a single second before vanishing back into the Void Domain.
Even so, his legs nearly buckled in fright.
In that fleeting second, Yang Jia had almost appeared right before his face!
From within the void, Jing Qian stared intently at the merman prowling the spot where he had vanished, eyes alight with expectation.
For though he had retreated, a shadow of himself still lingered faintly in the real world.
...
Above the waves, the Blueblood Lantern suddenly stirred from its three-month vigil.
At last, it sensed the thief's aura again.
The opponent had hidden well, but finally left a trace.
Without hesitation, Blueblood Lantern summoned forth the Road of Shadow-Chasing, manifesting the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts.
The Spiritual Construct power ignited, spanning a hundred thousand li in an instant, and deposited him right over Jing Qian's lingering shadow.
He had waited three months, his patience stretched to breaking.
The moment he descended, boundless lampfire blazed out, illuminating the seas.
His divine sense swept forward, locking onto a human figure ahead.
Blueblood Lantern rushed forward only to see clearly who it was.
His mind thundered blank, and an icy chill shot from his tailbone to his brow.
The great Blueblood Lantern, scourge of Hunzhou, master of a Blue-Flame Life Furnace, had just landed in the domain of Yang Jia, lord of the abyssal volcano.
Of course, that was Jing Qian's fantasy. The truth was far crueler.
Have you ever heard a lantern scream? Jing Qian did.
It was miserable.
A thousand-year Longevity Realm cultivator, master of a Blue-Flame Life Furnace, now shrieking as he was pinched like a toy in the clammy, fish-reeking hand of a merman.
Yang Jia's Violet-Eye Life Essence locked him tight, the lantern utterly suppressed.
The merman himself was dumbfounded.
He'd been relaxing in his lava bath when suddenly a provocation echoed nearby.
Curious, he swam over and found a human Longevity Realm cultivator had come offering himself up.
Among seventh-rank beings, human Longevity cultivators were often far more valuable than ordinary Blue-Blood demons.
And this one even carried a Spiritual Construct of fine quality, one so fine that even Yang Jia's eyes glittered with greed.
Turning the Blueblood Lantern over in his palm, he couldn't hide his delight.
Recently, he had lost two Blue-Blood monsters under his rule, a serious blow.
Now, in exchange, this Blueblood Lantern practically fell into his hands. There could be no sweeter compensation.
He tore at the Road of Shadow-Chasing, intent on refining the Longevity cultivator and raising a mighty demon under his banner.
Just as his power was about to crush the lantern completely, Blueblood Lantern let out a frantic howl:
"I am a true disciple of the Mirror Cloud Shrine, you cannot kill me!
Our shrine has claimed two true stars within the last three thousand years. Our name is written on the Sacred Court's rolls!
If you kill me, heavenly star-tribulation will descend and take your life!"
From the other side of the dimension, Jing Qian also heard the Blueblood Lantern's words.
He didn't understand their meaning, but strangely enough, they seemed to have an effect!
The merman across from him actually paused his hand.
Yang Jia was no fool, powerful, deeply connected, and well-versed in the hidden truths of the cultivation world.
Two "True Stars" meant that the Mirror Cloud Shrine had once produced two legendary Star-Seizing masters.
In the hierarchy of cultivation, a fifth-rank Earthfiend True Person was already hailed as an "Earthly Immortal."
But a fourth-rank Star-Seizer? Those were beings of myth, elusive as dragons and phoenixes.
Even if Blueblood Lantern were bluffing, Yang Jia had to weigh the risks.
For centuries, he had guarded the border seas against the humans. His greatest talent was knowing exactly where the line lay, never tipping too far, never misstepping.
At that moment, Blueblood Lantern spoke again:
"If you let me live, I'll trade you a secret from Hunzhou's prefecture, something worth far more than my death."
For the first time, Yang Jia opened his mouth.
"Speak, then. Your life rests in my hand. If your secret is worthless, don't blame me for being ruthless."
Blueblood Lantern seized the chance:
"Over thirty years ago, Hunzhou's Governor, Luo Yao, lost his life, and his death remains unknown!"
The words instantly darkened Yang Jia's gaze.
Countless suspicions he'd carried suddenly strung together in his mind.
This wasn't news among the upper echelons of Hunzhou; every prefect, every great clan, every Life Furnace master already knew.
But such a secret had never once passed to demon ears.
After all, within all of Hunzhou, only Luo Yao had reached the sixth-rank Spirit-Subduing Realm. He was the sole pillar holding the province against the tides of the sea demons.
To let such a fact leak to the monsters was the same as exposing humanity's weakness, handing over their lifeline.
No human cultivator would willingly commit such folly.
But Blueblood Lantern had just done it.
A true traitor to his race.
Yang Jia was deeply pleased. This single piece of information could tip the balance in the coming struggles between sea demons and men.
Yet even if he intended to spare the man's life, he had no intention of letting him walk free.
He gripped Blueblood Lantern in one hand, and with the other, ripped the Spiritual Construct, The Road of Shadow-Chasing straight from him.
The Spiritual Construct was his now.
Then, with a cruel grin, he shoved the lantern into his mouth and bit down.
With one crunch, Blueblood Lantern's once-seamless dharmic form shattered like glass.
Yang Jia chewed and swallowed the Longevity cultivator's law-body as though it were a delicacy.
Then, gripping what remained of Blueblood Lantern's true body, he hurled him across the seafloor.
The man tumbled for over a li, finally landing in the cold ocean outside the gas cavern.
"Get out of my sight."
Blueblood Lantern fled like a pardoned criminal, body mangled, bones broken, skin torn.
His shattered dharmic form would take three to five months to re-condense, three years of bitter cultivation to fully restore.
And he had just lost not one, but two priceless Spiritual Constructs.
In all his thousand years of cultivation, he had never been so utterly ruined.
The arrogance he carried into battle was now reduced to a pitiful wreck.
Without his dharmic form, he reverted to his true shape: a grotesque, big-headed child. Most of his divine arts and secret methods were gone.
He couldn't even ride his lantern-light through the skies anymore.
So he swam through the demon seas, full of hatred and humiliation.
He swore to himself this grudge would never be forgiven.
Once he returned, he would beg his sect for aid, pay whatever price necessary, and seek vengeance.
Jing Qian and Yang Jia were both etched into his heart, enemies unto death.
He cursed them as he swam, cursing his fate.
The journey back to the Tsushima-style Isle was long. Without flight, it would take him months.
The thought alone filled him with fury.
Weakened, distracted, he never noticed the masked figure gliding just ten zhang beneath him.
The figure struck. A sword light flashed!
Blueblood Lantern reeled in shock, forcing what little Blue-Blood Life Essence he still had into a hasty shield.
But the sword arc was subtle as a hanging antelope's horn, landing perfectly on a flaw in his own barrier, a weakness even he had not noticed.
The blade slipped through, piercing straight into his chest.
Jing Qian had shadowed him all this way, using World's Insight to track every change. Now was the moment to strike.
It was the chance of a lifetime.
The enemy, crushed by the merman's hand, was barely a tenth of his former power.
This was no longer an unshakable Longevity cultivator.
Now he was prey.
The enmity between them was set in stone; there could be no reconciliation.
If Blueblood Lantern lived, time would restore him, perhaps make him even stronger.
But if he died here, it would be forever.
As the Sword Fang pierced his heart, Blueblood Lantern's body resisted with the weight of boundless longevity power and lifeblood.
Yet his eyes showed not fear, not despair
but a savage, unfathomable ferocity.
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