Dead silence. The grounds beyond the Featherwood Guard were morbidly still.

Crack…

 A pale-white hand stiffly lifted open a coffin cover by a seam, with the end of Linghu Qian’s spell. Shortly, booms rang out, and fifteen behemoths met the deathly pale moonlight and walked out from their coffins. 

The creatures… were two-headed giants that were almost seventy meters tall!

One head was an old woman, and the other head was an old man. From head to toe, the skin on their bodies wrinkled together like crocodile scales. One of them pressed down on the ground with an aged hand and unleashed a violent howl. Like hills, they stood in front of the Featherwood Guard.

All fifteen of them were exactly the same.

“This…” In the instant the gargantuan two-headed monster stood up, a shiver suddenly traveled down Lord Zhao’s entire body, and he gritted out, “Is a massacre artifact!”

“A massacre artifact?” Xu Yangyi asked lowly, his left hand already clenching to the utmost.

For the first time, Lord Zhao’s face revealed a hint of strain. “A massacre artifact… To cultivators, a grand mountain-protector array is a strong city. Amidst long mutual invasions, the massacre artifact was naturally born. Such as… the Reincarnation Puppet from before. Also like the thing you see now.”

Xu Yangyi’s hand paused. “Is it as strong as the Reincarnation Puppet?”

“No, absolutely not!” Lord Zhao confirmed, “In the entire cultivation world, the Nalan Clan has no more than twenty Reincarnation Puppets. I am unsure what the name of this thing is, but its craftsmanship is definitely no less than the Reincarnation Puppet! No… t-that…”

His voice yet to fall, all the cultivators inside the Featherwood Guard stood up and looked at the surroundings beyond them in shock. Outside… all the giants had opened their enormous abyss-like maws, taking aim at the Featherwood Guard!

“Those… are Godslaughter Cannons!” Lord Zhao looked on in astonishment at the suddenly shining, massive, and dense qi orbs within the giant mouths. His voice trembling, he said, “Godslaughter Master-Cannons… Those are Godslaughter Master-Cannons!”

Before he even finished speaking, the two-headed monsters took united action and leaned forwards, their limbs making contact with the ground. They assumed strange stances, joints curved back in reverse. They were unlike humans and more similar to crouching spiders.

Following their actions, their wizened bellies swelled up like air was being blown into them! The wrinkled skin all over their entire bodies surprisingly followed and expanded, bursting open sliver by sliver. A several-meter-sized talisman glimmered on each of their heads. As the orb of light in their mouths became larger and more concentrated… one of the heads of each giant unexpectedly continued to shrivel. All that remained were those large pitch-black mouths aiming at the Xingtian Legion!

Huuummm…

 In less than a second, the stone and earth on the ground outside seemed to breakaway from gravity, all of it floating into the air! The ground was humming, and those fifteen orbs of light were ever increasing in size! Yet the bodies of the massacre artifacts were continuously shrinking down. The gathering process of this terrible qi, a bow pulled without release, caused everyone inside the Featherwood Guard to feel tremendous pressure!

Xu Yangyi’s gaze flashed, and he regained his wits from surprise. His eyes were fixed on the Eight Trigrams before him. “Qian as heaven, Kun as earth, Xun as wind, Zhen as thunder, Kan as water, Li as fire, Gen as mountain, and Dui as lake… Qian!”

Swoosh!

 An expanse of golden light twinkled, and the iron chains groaned again. Immediately, black clouds swiftly formed in the sky outside the Featherwood Guard!

Rumble!

 A clap of thunder rang out. A thousand meters all around the Featherwood Guard… the sky seemed to be boiled with scathing water! Without the slightest warning, a pale dragon of thunder roamed between the thick clouds and illuminated the land below in shades of azure and white.

CRACK!

 Lightning wandered, shining down on the pale ocean that was the Linghu army. Clouds converged together at the center in haste. In the middle, like a sun, a snow-white hundred-meter-sized lightning ball was faintly visible in the clouds!

The clap of thunder follows the divine army, loudly quaking the firmament!

“This…” Linghu Chaofeng glared daggers at the sky. In his heart, a stab of pain like a twisting blade was felt again.

Such a powerful grand array… He had thought wrong… He had thought wrong! As of now, this mountain-protector array had already displayed two abilities much stronger than what he’d predicted!

This battle… was the Xingtian Legion’s first clash of force against the raw power of a major clan! In the same vein, this battle would determine who would stand in this final, crucial fight!

It was different from the ambush before. This… was a battle of clans! A battle of powers!

“Protect the massacre artifacts…” he said to everyone in the surroundings, “there’s still thirty seconds… Spare no cost!”

“Yes!”

However, the lightning ball in the clouds had already reached peak capacity before his voice even fell. Without warning, a sonorous boom echoed! What struck down unexpectedly wasn’t thunder, but rather a hand of lightning with electric arcs lingering upon it, no less than a hundred meters thick! 

“Fuck me!” Luo Sanfeng suddenly spat out the cigarette he was smoking and then looked to the sky. Afterwards, he looked at Xu Yangyi again. “Brother Xu… what is this formation?”

“There’s actually a formation like this in the Qi Condensation realm?” A cultivator sluggishly observed the sky. The lightning was like a sea, brightly illuminating this stretch of the world! He said tremblingly, “T-This is the boundary just before stepping into Foundation Establishment, right?”

Yes… the Taiyi Everlasting Array, Daomaster Ancientpine’s open backdoor, naturally grasped this trace.

But had the formation surpassed this mark?

No, it was still within the Qi Condensation realm.

So the formation had failed to go beyond?

Utter nonsense! Which Qi Condensation grand mountain-protector array could attack with such a powerful worldly anomaly?!

“I can’t believe it at all…”

“What is this formation?”

“Where did Branchmaster Xu get this formation from? I’m afraid our Zhao Clan’s mountain-protector array isn’t much in comparison!”

The cultivators within the Featherwood Guard all clamored, but it was not fear in their hearts, but rather excitement!

“Damn…” At this moment, the entire sky was now consumed by flashes of deathly white lightning within Linghu Chaofeng’s eyes! It was like an immortal’s might overlooking the world!

Lightning had yet to come, but its power was first to arrive! On the ground, countless stones and dug-out asphalt roads chaotically roared! Swarms of electrical arcs, like little serpents, jumped and howled on the ground. 

How could this be?

This formation… how was it so strong?

Nonetheless, he couldn’t ponder more. On the brink of crisis, he burst into a roar, “Bladefang Division!!!”

At nearly the same time he yelled out the first word, towering white light exploded out from the Linghu Clan’s great army!

The surrounding people were all scattered away with a crash, and an old man who hadn’t demonized yet appeared in the middle. Dozens of these surrounding cultivators linked up with each other’s qi, white light filling the space between them. Yet between them at the center… a broken, withered arm was floating up and down in the light’s glare.

“Under the banner of the Linghu Clan, Bladefang Division…” the old man shouted, his white hair and beard fluttering in the wind’s face. In that instant the the enormous hand of thunder struck at its apex, dozens of people in the vicinity joined their hands together and raised them up with all their might, snarling, “Clan-suppressor magik treasure… Heavenly Demon’s First Finger!!!”

BANG!!!

 A crisp noise rang out, and the withered arm suddenly gained awareness! In the blink of an eye, it knew everything throughout the world! The upper-half of the arm was solid, yet the lower-half seemed illusory. It strove to extract qi from the bodies of all the Bladefang Division’s cultivators!

The hand was crimson, no less than several tens of meters in size! Danger just a hair’s breadth away, a finger quickly withstood the thunder hand!

CRACKLE!

 Countless thunder snakes instantly seethed in the sky above and became a marvel of the human world that only cultivators could witness!

However… underneath the hand of thunder, the Linghu Clan’s finger was actually breaking down together with the hand a little!

“Heavenly Demon…” Not waiting for Linghu Chaofeng to speak, the old man’s gaze chilled, and he roared, “Second Finger!”

CRASH!

 The channel of qi light, formed through the spiritual force absorbed from the Bladefang cultivators, shockingly glimmered even more! Yet there were already quite a few people who started to take talismans and stick them to their bodies.

Nevertheless… it still wasn’t enough!

“What the fuck is this formation?!?!” Linghu Chaofeng nearly jumped up. “The Heavenly Demon Finger… the clan-suppressor magik treasure of the Bladefang Division, two fingers actually can’t withstand this hand?!”

“Third Finger!!!”

The faces of the Bladefang Division were all a shade of green. This time, a large stretch of people took out pill-elixirs and drank them without the slightest hesitation.

Rumble!

 The thunder hand’s speed still hadn’t slowed down by too much! As before, it was pushing down little by little! This scene greatly resembled the time the Xingtian Legion had been originally fighting the Reincarnation Puppet lured by the Screaming Wind Legion!

They could hold on, but sooner or later the hand would still come.

“Fourth Finger! Fifth Finger!” The old man was almost shouting his heart out, and all of the Bladefang cultivators stood up. Linghu Chaofeng painfully shut his eyes. That was because in this instant, all of the Linghu Clan could see ribbons of blood bubbling out from the channel of spiritual light! No longer was the channel emitting qi light, but the Bladefang Division’s flesh and blood!

But if they couldn’t bring their hands against the attack, at least a thousand Linghu cultivators would become flying ash in the following aftermath!

Crash!

 The enormous hand flared with grand light all around! A trace of determination flashed through the old man’s eyes, and he gritted his teeth and promptly spat out a mouthful of blood.

“Heavenly Demon… Hand!” The wind scattered the old man’s hair bun. He seemed to go insane and smiled bitterly. “I sacrifice my blood to the Heavenly Demon!!!”

Here and now, at least dozens of the Bladefang Division had their blood drained empty! With wretched screams, they turned into dried-out husks! The pupils of the remaining people nearly slackened, and their faces paled in a twinkling!

Buuuzzz… 

All of a sudden, the amount of red inside the spiritual light passage increased explosively! Followingly, the Linghu Clan’s hand exploded into a swath of red light, and its five fingers oddly folded and intersected with the great hand of thunder above! After a strange noise rang out, white light flickered at the point of contact, akin to world’s genesis. Both sides returned to nothingness! 

“Puh, urgh, puh!” All of the Bladefang Division sprayed out blood and tumbled to the ground, without any further battle strength!

One trigram had exterminated one division!

At the same time, a spell of weird calm arrived.

Linghu Chaofeng stared blankly, but immediately looked to the massacre artifacts soon after!

Right now, the orbs of light in the fifteen massacre artifacts’ mouths were no longer glimmering. Instead, they had become balls of black light, condensed to the utmost and extremely thick!

“Mongrel…” A ruthless smile hung at the corner of his mouth, and he looked unyieldingly towards the Featherwood Guard. “Accept death!”

His hand and the pale-faced Linghu Qian’s hand rose up at the same time.

“Massacre artifacts…” Linghu Qian licked her lips with a thirst for blood. “Godslaughter Master-Cannons…”

“FIRE!!!!!!”

BOOM!!!

 Between heaven and earth, all the remained was this sound!

Fifteen black tides pervaded everyone’s eyes!

Even more terrible than deathly silence, and deeper than the darkness. What the massacre artifacts jetted out was not pillars of qi, but rather tracts of black runes! They were unexpectedly like living creatures, shrieking and howling, racing towards the Featherwood Guard like lightning!

Inside the Featherwood Guard, a peal of regret, so faint that it couldn’t be heard, sounded. Xu Yangyi said nothing, but rather gazed outside. He could even see Linghu Chaofeng’s ashen face. She was surrounded and protected in the middle of dozens of people. Abruptly, he smiled.

“Raiding my base from so far away. You sure got guts.”

“But while you’ve left the protection of my grand array at the same time…” He didn’t continue to speak. In his heart, an idea that had always existed could no longer be contained. Forcing down his wild hopes within, he pursed his lips and waved a hand. “Dui!”

Crash!

 Outside the Featherwood Guard, the stone caltrops instantly shattered, but they didn’t vanish. On the contrary, a hundred meters of earth outside surged with roaring waves in a flash, the asphalt roads simply unseen! The ground was instead like a marsh!

Dui as lake!

The Linghu Clan’s fully mobilized. In that case… let’s test out who comes out on top, you or the magik artifact bestowed by a Core Formation Dao Master!

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter