Chapter Ninety-Five: The Battle Ends [Request for Monthly Votes]

Die, you worthless whelp!

The giant serpent lifted its pale white skull, and within the black pupils in its brow, a shadow rose to its upper body. In those shadowed eyes, a baleful radiance of destruction was gathering.

Sensing that death-soaked light, Li Yang’s mind screamed warnings in frenzy. He had never stood so near to death. Every cell in his body seemed to possess instinct, trembling and wailing in silent despair.

“Cough... can you feel death drawing near too?”

With great difficulty, he coughed up threads of golden-red blood. Yet as he sensed the lamenting soul of the golden centipede within him, his heart remained in a calm he had never known before.

“Then come!”

“Ah... ha...”

Suddenly, Li Yang summoned every last bit of strength, forcing open a sliver of space where the serpent’s coils crushed him, and called upon the true solar fire of the divine bird within his mind.

A deafening roar erupted.

In an instant, Li Yang felt as though every drop of blood and every cell in his body had been ignited. A suffocating heat rose from within, and his whole body began to blaze with light and warmth.

“Chirp... chirrreee...”

With a clear cry, the air around Li Yang began to distort. Heat nearly equal to the surface of the sun burst forth from within him, and fierce solar flames wrapped his entire body.

For a moment, Li Yang himself seemed to have become a small sun, radiant and searing.

Zzzzt... hisssss...

As the solar fire surged, even the serpent’s scales began to warp under the heat. In no time at all, the scent of scorched flesh rose faintly, and the giant serpent let out a pained hiss before instinctively loosening its grip on Li Yang.

“Die... zzzzt...”

Looking at Li Yang, now engulfed in solar fire, the shadow’s eyes flickered with a flash of surprise. The destruction magic he had long been gathering transformed into a jet-black beam, shooting straight toward the glowing little sun in midair.

“Chirp... chirrreee...”

Sensing that deathly aura, the solar flames on Li Yang’s body changed at once, becoming a golden-red giant bird more than thirty feet high, like an outer layer of energy enveloping him.

The bird resembled a rooster. Behind it, tail feathers like tongues of flame were thrown high; on its head stood a crown-like crest, and at the center of that crest, a mass of black-and-white primal energy swirled and shifted, giving birth to heaven and earth’s myriad forms.

“Chirp...”

Facing the onrushing black demonic light, the giant bird cried to the sky. At once, the black-and-white energy above its head transformed into a great yin-yang millstone edged in black.

Crack... crack-crack...

Its surface was covered in markings of chaos, and a primordial aura spread from its form. With the appearance of the great millstone, even the void seemed unable to bear such pressure, and fine裂痕-like fissures rippled open across the air.

Zzzzt...

As the millstone began to turn, an ancient and weathered presence filled the void, as though time itself had reversed and all creation had returned to the age before yin and yang were divided, before primordial chaos had taken form. In an instant, the destruction magic was ground away and erased.

“Aaah... whelp! The day this king returns again will be the day you perish!!”

The yin-yang millstone bore down without slowing, slamming hard against the giant serpent’s forehead. The shadow had only time to release a miserable scream before that sliver of soul essence was ground to dust.

“Innate yin-yang primal energy!”

Watching the millstone in the void, the old Daoist in Li Yang’s mind was suddenly seized by realization. His voice was filled with shock.

With the giant serpent’s fall, the solar fire surrounding Li Yang contracted violently, then vanished without a trace.

“Huff... huff...”

Exhaling a long breath of stale air, Li Yang lay back on the ground, a faint bitter smile of lingering fear on his face.

“Brother Li... are you all right?”

A quarter of an hour later, Luo Lao Wai, Chen Yulou, and the others finally found Li Yang amid the ruins. Looking at the collapsed mountain and the devastation strewn everywhere, all of them were pale with shock.

From the traces at the scene alone, one could imagine how savage the battle had been.

The entire tomb of the King Who Bestowed Offerings had vanished. Even the waterfall leading to the mausoleum had been completely evaporated. The surrounding mountains were covered in cracks, and not far away, there were still traces of crimson magma on the ground. Then there was the giant serpent’s corpse, lying on the earth like a mountain.

And then there was Li Yang himself—face ashen, skin faintly splitting at the edges.

Chen Yulou and the others, while still shaken with fear, also felt a trace of relief.

Fortunately, Li Yang had firmly refused to let them come along. Otherwise, let alone helping, even the mere aftermath of that battle would have been enough to wipe them all out.

At the same time, they gained an even more direct and profound understanding of the terrifying power possessed by one such as Li Yang, a cultivator.

“Y-you... don’t... don’t move me...”

The instant Luo Lao Wai helped him up, Li Yang felt a soul-piercing agony surge from within his body, twisting his features and darkening his vision.

“Brother Li, how are you? Old Luo, put Brother Li down at once!”

Seeing the cold sweat on Li Yang’s forehead, Chen Yulou hurried forward to support him into a lying position, then called over his shoulder, “Guai Zi, quickly tell the brothers to prepare a stretcher.”

“Brother Li, this is a secret medicine of my mountain-moving sect. It may be useful for your injuries.”

At that moment, even the Owl Who Becomes a Wild Goose stepped forward, taking out a medicine bottle from his robes and pouring out a brown pill to feed it to Li Yang’s lips.

“No need. Ordinary medicine has no effect on my body. Use mine instead.”

Forcing out a faint smile, Li Yang declined the pill offered by the Owl Who Becomes a Wild Goose.

Croak...

With a thought from Li Yang, the golden toad crawled out from beneath the rubble with difficulty and spat out a porcelain-white medicine vial.

“Boss, the stretcher’s here!”

After feeding Li Yang a Renewal Pill, Guai Zi behind them led a few Tomb-Removing strongmen over, carrying a crude stretcher.

“Come... quickly carry Brother Li up. And be careful, move slowly!”

“Wait...”

Just as Chen Yulou and the others were about to lift Li Yang onto the stretcher, Li Yang suddenly spoke to stop them.

Croak... gurgle...

Meeting Li Yang’s gaze, the golden toad seemed to understand something. It spat out a clay-yellow vial of bloodline stimulant from its mouth.

“Not enough. This serpent is far too large. At the usual dosage, you probably won’t be able to swallow it all.”

Looking at the bloodline stimulant in the toad’s mouth, Li Yang’s mind moved as he said aloud.

Croak...

Hearing this, the golden toad spat out two more vials of bloodline stimulant. Then it wrapped them in its tongue and injected them beneath its jaw.

Croak, croak...

In merely an instant, after all three vials of bloodline stimulant entered its body, the toad’s ugly skin began radiating scorching heat. Wisps of white steam poured from within it, and its body started expanding uncontrollably.

In less than a moment, the golden toad had swollen to nearly a hundred meters tall. Its wrinkled skin burned red, and the coin-shaped yellow spots upon it gleamed brilliantly under the sunlight.

Croak, croak, croak... whoosh whoosh... gurgle...

Under the shocked gazes of the crowd, and with a muffled drumlike croak echoing through the void, the golden toad clamped its mouth around the giant serpent’s head and swallowed the entire body whole, as though eating a strand of noodles.

Then its size rapidly shrank, soon returning to a palm-sized toad before sinking into a deep sleep.

“What... what in the world is this frog made of?”

Only after a long while did the others come back to themselves. Luo Lao Wai picked up the unconscious golden toad from the ground and turned it over and over in his hands to inspect it.

“All right, Old Luo! This isn’t the time to discuss that. Let’s get Brother Li out of here first!”

Snatching the golden toad from Luo Lao Wai, Chen Yulou placed it beside Li Yang. Then he called to his men and led everyone toward the floating island.

The next morning, the sun rose bright and clear.

Morning on the floating island was full of the scent of spring and blossoms. Amid a sea of flowers, Li Yang lay with his eyes closed, resting languidly among the blooms. With the rise and fall of his chest, the blood within him flowed slowly, nourishing every cell in his body.

In yesterday’s battle, every bone in his body had been crushed by the serpent, and half his blood had even been boiled away by the heat of the solar fire.

For an ordinary person, such injuries would have meant certain death. But for Li Yang, they were not necessarily a bad thing.

His bones had long accumulated too much energy from the Six-Winged Golden Centipede; being shattered this time would allow them to be rebuilt anew.

In truth, judged by the centipede’s cultivation, it was absolutely no weaker than the giant serpent in the King Who Bestowed Offerings’ tomb.

Even with the soul enhancement of the Queen of Perfect Mystery, it could not have been injured to such a degree.

At the root of it all was Li Yang’s own technique, which had restricted the centipede’s full battle potential. To put it plainly, most of the Six-Winged Golden Centipede’s power had been trapped within him and could not be brought to bear.

By its true level, once the Six-Winged Golden Centipede had survived a heavenly tribulation, it already stood with one foot inside the realm of immortals. Although it had only passed through one tribulation and was still a step behind ordinary earth immortals in realm, its innate supernatural powers as an ancient beast meant that in terms of combat strength it was by no means inferior.

Among the ancient fivefold immortal ways, those who had passed one of the three calamities were called earth immortals in the heavenly immortal path, blessed immortals or free immortals in the earthly immortal path, and yin spirits in the ghost immortal path. As for so-called ghost kings, they were not a realm at all, but a special kind of ghost, like a beast king among wild creatures, born with the ability to command all beasts. A ghost king was a similar existence.

In the divine path, only gods granted golden decree generally rivaled earth immortals who had passed through one of the three calamities. In the human immortal path, passing through one of the three calamities meant becoming a martial sage, invincible among men.

Ordinary beasts had to survive three heavenly tribulations before they could be called demon immortals, capable of standing alongside cultivators who had passed one of the three calamities. Though the centipede had only passed one heavenly tribulation, it was still half a step into immortality, and with the extraordinary gifts of an ancient beast, it was by no means weaker than the common denizens of the immortal realm.

After this incident, Li Yang had finally made up his mind: he must refine the divine power of the Six-Winged Golden Centipede as quickly as possible. All else was secondary.

Otherwise, in the long run, even if the golden toad and the divine bird of rising dawn both completed their transformations, he would still lack the power to fuse them, and his cultivation would inevitably be slowed to a crawl.