Chapter Ninety-Six: Shadow

Above the tip of the sword.

Within a radius of dozens of li, the sky had already been swallowed by dark clouds that seemed to herald the end of the world. Countless people looked up and felt the spiritual power within their bodies begin to stir, as though they too were standing beneath heavenly tribulation.

Then, at the very center of the black cloud vortex, a brilliant and terrifying radiance burst forth, and a bolt of violet divine thunder descended from the heavens.

At once, the onlookers restrained their auras and fled from the thunder’s reach.

Only the honest-looking man in the field went straight toward it, driving his right fist into the Purple Heaven Divine Thunder.

There was no sound at all.

The heavenly thunder vanished three chi before Li Yi.

And three cun before Shen Yu’s chest was Li Yi’s right fist.

Li Yi withdrew his fist and said calmly, “Daoist thunder arts truly are without equal beneath the heavens.”

Shen Yu sheathed his sword at the same time and said, “A martial artist’s realm lies entirely within himself. You could withstand one of my bolts of thunder, but I could not take one of your punches. The outcome is hard to say.”

His expression remained tranquil. He had never thought he would lose, but neither had he expected to win so easily.

Martial artists of the world relied on their formidable bodies in combat.

And for Li Yi to suppress his own cultivation, he had even restrained the blood and qi within his body. He had, in truth, cut off one of his own arms.

Li Yi brushed the dust from his clothes and smiled. “Whatever the case, this was a very satisfying fight.”

Shen Yu asked, “Done already?”

“You’re not at a high enough realm yet. It isn’t all that satisfying to fight you.”

Li Yi shook his head. “When you truly reach the Upper Three Realms, we can fight again.”

Shen Yu considered it and said, “Very well.”

The great battle that had drawn the attention of all suddenly seemed to have ended just like that, even with something of a rushed feel.

Yet many in the field felt that this might have been the best ending after all.

The two of them would one day surely become supreme cultivators of the world. If they had insisted on deciding life and death here and now, how regrettable that would have been.

He Feifei of Jade Pool said, “It seems I’ve gained another formidable rival.”

Wan Jianyi looked at Shen Yu’s profile and frowned slightly.

He had discovered that the other man resembled him in one respect: that pride in his gaze, revealed without any need for action.

The two disliked each other at first sight, and Wan Jianyi suddenly found himself somewhat disgusted by this person.

“In three years, at the Academy, we’ll decide life and death in one battle.”

Wan Jianyi said this to the man in short attire.

“I hope that within three years, you can truly step into the Spirit Roaming Realm.”

Then he turned to Shen Yu and said the same.

Afterward, he rose straight into the air, and in the blink of an eye drew a long line across the horizon.

Wan Jianyi of Kunlun came and went with peerless grace.

Shen Yu looked up at that figure roaming swiftly through the sea of clouds above and felt a little puzzled.

Because he had once again clearly sensed a trace of hostility in the other man’s words.

And that hostility... he seemed to know it very well.

After thinking for a while, Shen Yu came to one possible answer. His expression immediately turned strange.

After the battle, the one remaining good place in Return-Cloud Immortal Sect had once again become ruins.

Many disciples of the immortal sect began rebuilding on their own, and unexpectedly, Li Yi had also taken the initiative to help.

Li Yi was astonishingly skilled at repairing ruins. He worked more deftly than most people.

Shen Yu, however, clearly lacked such awareness. He stood casually by the lakeshore and asked, “Doesn’t the Academy’s third floor open only after one year?”

Li Yi lifted a huge stone from the river with one hand and tossed it onto the open ground by the lake, explaining, “The Academy has delayed the deadline. It’s now three years from now. The news will spread through the Spirit Wasteland very soon.”

Shen Yu asked in confusion, “Why?”

Li Yi shook his head. “I don’t know. It seems the Academy has run into some trouble.”

Shen Yu looked toward the lake and nodded.

This news was, in fact, excellent for the Dao Sect.

Among the younger disciples of this generation, most had begun cultivating at a much younger age than the other young cultivators of the Spirit Wasteland. Three years would be enough for many people of the Dao Sect to truly enter the leading ranks of the world’s younger generation.

Li Yi leaped out of the river, and the water on his trouser legs instantly dried away.

Shen Yu asked another question. “Do you know where you rank on the Cloud-Ascending List?”

For many people, that was an extremely secret matter.

Aside from the Academy’s elusive old master, almost no one knew the truth.

To Shen Yu’s surprise, Li Yi answered frankly, “Either second or third.”

Shen Yu raised his brows slightly. “Why not first?”

Li Yi’s nature suited Shen Yu’s taste, so since he was willing to speak, Shen Yu knew he would not bother lying.

After thinking for a moment, Li Yi said, “Because years ago, I once overheard my master chatting with someone and mentioning that the current number one on the Cloud-Ascending List is an existence beyond all former understanding, one that stands outside the laws of heaven and earth. Naturally, that would not be me.”

His voice was very low, and only Shen Yu heard it.

Upon hearing this, Shen Yu’s expression truly became grave for the first time.

He understood the meaning of standing outside the laws of heaven and earth far better than these young disciples did.

For Shen Yu, who had once seen the scenery from the highest point of the world, the entire world was composed of countless invisible laws. Whether dao arts and cultivation techniques, or the true essences of the three traditions, all of them emerged and transformed from the rules of heaven and earth.

What is a genius?

It is someone who can more clearly sense the changes in the laws of heaven and earth than ordinary people, and thereby gradually grasp the mighty force of the world.

To stand outside those laws meant being bound by none of them at all.

That was an incomparable and terrifying power.

Shen Yu lifted his head slightly and thought: could a monster truly appear in this era?

But who would it be?

Li Yi suddenly looked into the distant sky, narrowed his eyes, and said, “I have to go.”

Shen Yu also realized something and nodded.

In the next instant, Li Yi’s body sank, then shot upward in a great leap, landing far away in an instant and leaving a deep pit in the hard earth.

After several leaps, he vanished completely in four or five breaths.

Shen Yu watched the horizon.

He Feifei of Jade Pool walked slowly up beside him from behind and said, “A concealed aura just flew past. It should be someone from the Land of a Thousand Rivers.”

Shen Yu narrowed his eyes and sensed the sudden spiritual fluctuation in the distance. Suddenly frowning, he said, “Something’s wrong.”

Far from Return-Cloud Immortal Sect, in another stretch of heaven and earth, Li Yi no longer suppressed his cultivation. He raced like a tiger descending the mountain, running with wild abandon, covering a thousand zhang in the blink of an eye.

High in the air, Li Yi suddenly threw a punch into empty space.

A sharp cracking sound rang out, like window lattice shattering.

A black shadow seemed to fall out of the void, crashing straight down into the barren mountain range below.

Li Yi landed.

Within a collapsed mountain hollow before him, an old man in black robes slowly climbed out of a huge crater, his eyes sinister.

He rasped with a smile, “As expected of Li Yi of Azure Emperor City. What formidable skill.”

Expressionless, Li Yi flashed forward and sent a kick straight at the man’s head.

Boom.

The other man had no chance to resist and was kicked flying again for dozens of zhang.

Li Yi clenched his fist and strode forward, never uttering a single unnecessary word.

The old man in black casually wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. The corners of his lips curled slightly into the smile of one who had succeeded in a plot.

Li Yi suddenly stopped, his gaze shifting slightly.

A faint ripple of spiritual power appeared.

Two more masses of black mist emerged from the void.

The three men trapped Li Yi in the center. At the same time, a voice rang out: “Form the array!”

Countless dense traces of spiritual energy appeared upon the ground, profound and inscrutable, bursting with light in an instant.

At the edge of the barren mountains, black mist billowed out and completely shrouded the small hill, sealing it like a prison.

The mountains became hazy and elusive, flickering between presence and absence beneath heaven and earth.

Then endless spiritual power surged into the backs of the three black-robed old men, and their auras instantly swelled to a terrifying degree.

The earlier sinister old man seemed to have settled the matter in his heart and laughed coldly, “Boy, this time you won’t escape even with wings.”

Another flat voice sounded. “Stop wasting breath. The longer we delay, the more things may change.”

Then the man on the right laughed and said, “Under my Land of a Thousand Rivers’ Yin-Lock Array, the three of us are enough to match three great cultivators of the Upper Three Realms. Even for a martial artist like him, what can he possibly do?”

Li Yi’s expression remained unchanged.

The sinister old man laughed and said, “This is the first time my Land of a Thousand Rivers has ever launched an assassination against a genius ranked in the top five of the Cloud-Ascending List. We had originally prepared to deal with Wan Jianyi of Kunlun, but since you’ve come instead, that’s even better.”

“Move!”

In the next instant, the three men roared in unison and formed seals rapidly with both hands.

Three terrifying auras shot into the sky. The once quiet spiritual energy between heaven and earth became boiling and violent.

At the very top of the black prison, above the clouds, a hundred-zhang giant hand descended from the heavens, lightning coiling around it, and an aura of destruction immediately surged forth.

Countless people in the distance sensed the terrifying commotion and turned to look this way.

“Extinction Palm,” the three shouted together.

That giant hand, as though covering the heavens and earth, descended upon Li Yi, and all spiritual energy within a thousand zhang was swept clean away.

Black clouds churned.

Decisive and ruthless, without leaving the slightest reserve.

Yet beneath the strange phenomena of heaven and earth, Li Yi merely crossed his arms before his chest and lifted his head slightly.

With a thunderous boom, after the earth shook and mountains trembled, the giant palm suddenly stopped just one zhang above the ground and could no longer descend even the slightest bit.

At the same time, the three from the Land of a Thousand Rivers revealed expressions of utter disbelief.

Because the formidable man who had never spoken a single word from beginning to end had raised one hand.

And that one hand had forcibly lifted the giant palm formed from countless streams of spiritual power.

“My master once said that when traveling the world, if you meet the ground-rats of the Land of a Thousand Rivers, kill them without mercy.”

“I remember that in those years, three of my people from Azure Emperor City were killed by you. I’ve never forgotten that debt.”

“Conveniently, I didn’t get enough of a fight today, so I’ll play with you a while.”

With every sentence spoken in this world, the man’s aura surged by another degree.

By the end, torrents of spiritual energy like waterfalls were pouring upward from the body of the middle-aged man into the sky.

That so-called Yin-Lock Array began to tremble on the verge of collapse.

Only then did this unremarkable-looking man let out a comfortable breath, as though he had finally been released from some sort of restraint.

“Trash,” he said. “Not to mention three men—what can even thirty do to me?”

At last, no longer deliberately suppressing his own realm, the man stamped his right foot down.

Within a hundred li, the earth quaked and mountains roared, and the array formed from black mist instantly shattered into pieces.

Then Li Yi strode forward, seized the elder at the center by the throat, and vanished in an instant.

Deep in the distant mountain range, thunderous explosions followed one after another.

From south to north, they came without pause.

Suddenly, from the farthest peak to the north, countless stones burst apart, and a figure like a flood dragon appeared once more.

Li Yi landed back on the ground and casually flung away the corpse in his right hand, now devoid of all life.

“Damn fool, are you blind? How could such a man be something we could handle?”

“Run!”

The remaining two men acted decisively and shot skyward.

Li Yi curled the corner of his mouth and smiled faintly.

“Can you escape?”

Veins bulged along Li Yi’s legs, and then he leaped. The ground collapsed and shattered completely beneath him, while his entire body shot straight up into the ten-thousand-zhang sky.

Like a primordial beast of heaven and earth, shocking and monstrous beyond belief.

Far above the sky of Eastern Ancestral Province, from south to north, wind and clouds churned and spiritual energy scattered in all directions.

Half an hour later, two black figures were smashed one after another from the sky, down from who knew how many layers of heaven, their life and death unknown.

A tiny black shadow, visible to the eye, quietly emerged from one of the corpses.

Unfortunately, before it could get far, a violent fist intent descended from the sky.

The three souls shattered instantly.