Chapter 1822: The King Casts Off His Cloak (II)
Chapter 1822: The King Casts Off His Cloak (II)
The three did not hesitate as they advanced together, each sealing off an escape route.
The Daoist held a profound parasol that shone with golden light. The prince brought forth a red feather and drew upon the signs in the sky. The imperial descendant swallowed demonic qi and stood ready with his halberd. They activated their abilities together, seizing the initiative and leaving Li Zhouwei no way to escape!
But Li Zhouwei let go of the royal cloak he had pulled before him. His face was dusty from the fight, yet his golden eyes shone like stars as he said with a smile, "[Severed Crimson Arrowhead]."
As though answering his call, a black canopy immediately fell over the land. The setting sun rose again, and the whole scene fell once more under the Yang Apex. All three men's expressions changed. Doubt flashed across Changyun's face.
He dispelled it himself!
[Severed Crimson Arrowhead] was powerful, but there was no way Li Zhouwei could invoke it again immediately after it had been broken. That left only one possibility: he had let it fall apart on purpose!
Changyun's caution only deepened his suspicions. He lowered his gaze and saw that Li Zhouwei was not alone beneath the setting sun. Five immense golden bodies of Buddhist cultivators now stood beside him, each with a different form.
Five Merciful Ones.
Gao Fangjing was bewildered. Tuoba Ci stood frozen, his fighting spirit giving way to confusion and alarm.
"Has he... Has he lost his mind?"
Li Zhouwei's [Severed Crimson Arrowhead] was no grotto heaven. Though it made traveling through the great void difficult, those trapped inside could still enter it once they had taken time to break through part of the divine ability. It did not cut them off from the great void entirely...
If the five Merciful Ones formed a formation, they could calmly neutralize most of Li Zhouwei's attacks. He would be helpless before them, like a fish on a chopping board!
But the golden-eyed man merely pulled his long halberd from the desert sand. Exhilaration shone in his eyes, impossible to conceal, as he said with a laugh, "Come again!"
His laughter broke the stillness. The five Merciful Ones snapped out of their daze, greed appearing on every face. Blades, swords, spears, and halberds came down together!
Clang!
Li Zhouwei raised the long halberd [Da Sheng] with both hands, and caught five golden weapons gleaming with brilliant light before his chest. A violent storm erupted across the desert, yet his face merely paled a little.
He had deliberately provoked them, arranged his fall into the valley, maneuvered back and forth, and shown weakness to his enemies, all for this moment. In the next instant, his golden eyes turned an endless, pure gold-white.
[Sovereign In Peril]!
His resonance with the White Qilin's fate had reached ninety percent of its full potential!
The peril he faced now surpassed even the straits he had faced in his battle against Gongsun Bei. His resonance with the White Qilin's fate reached its peak and overflowed, pouring into him in a glorious rush.
Yet Li Zhouwei also had to face an overwhelming barrage of divine abilities from the Immortal, Devil, and Buddhist Daos!
As the divine abilities and arts fell on him, he did not hesitate. He brought forth no treasure and cast no escape spell. Instead, he did something peculiar.
He took off his royal cloak, the one adorned with pale purple feathers.
That was all.
[Heaven-Venerating Gate] rose beneath his feet with a thunderous roar, bringing boundless light and a sky full of figures in golden armor and robes. The only answer the cultivators received was the heavenly gate standing in midair!
Boom!
Draped over the gate, the royal cloak shuddered under the divine abilities, then dimmed and fell. The radiant gate, capable of suppressing anything, began to tremble as well. It seemed to melt within the terrible beams, where metal and fire clashed and Immortal and Devil powers canceled each other out. Yet it held its ground, aided by the opposing divine abilities interfering with one another and by Li Zhouwei's many spirit artifacts and divine abilities.
However, it could not hold forever.
Crack...
At last, a crack appeared on the heavenly gate and spread downward through the layered heavenly light.
But Li Zhouwei was nowhere to be seen.
In an instant, the domain dissolved and the sky over Baixiang Valley reappeared. [Heaven-Venerating Gate] remained where it stood, while the Great Song's King of Wei, clad in dark armor with golden scales and his eyes shining white-gold, appeared at the edge of the [Severed Crimson Arrowhead] desert.
He weighed the golden halberd in his hand for a moment, raised it, and then hurled [Da Sheng]. It roared away like a dragon piercing the sky!
The colors of [Severed Crimson Arrowhead] surged forth again without losing a beat. Forced to expand and contract beyond its limits, the divine ability began to suffer damage, and even the setting sun against its black sky appeared distorted. Still, the rolling desert spread rapidly. It carried Li Zhouwei clear of the encirclement, then extended again to draw in a monk at its far edge.
It was Guangchan.
The reach of [Severed Crimson Arrowhead] was astonishing! Though its power against other divine abilities was greatest at its center, Li Zhouwei could shift himself anywhere it extended. Moving through it twice was enough to bring him before Guangchan.
Guangchan had been Li Zhouwei's target all along.
While surrounded by Tuoba Ci and the others, Li Zhouwei had deliberately provoked them and stirred their fighting spirit. That way, when he dispelled [Severed Crimson Arrowhead] to draw in the Merciful Ones, all three would follow him instead of turning on anyone else. Then, before they realized what he was doing and while they had yet to strike with their full strength, he used [Heaven-Venerating Gate] to take his place as the focus of their attack!
That had allowed him to push his resonance with the White Qilin's fate to its peak and gain a ninety-percent increase in power! That increase was akin to possessing a second Body Divine Ability. Even after he left the battle, it would take time to fade, giving him room to make his move.
He thought coldly, The Guzhou Cauldron seals the great void and banishes Jeweled Fang. The Serene Spirit Pavilion seals off every direction and anchors him in the present world.
The monk looked up in disbelief. Overhead, the [Guzhou Cauldron] had sealed away his abilities one by one, while the [Purple Throne Serene Spirit Pavilion] blocked every route of escape, above, below, and to either side.
All he could see now was a black sky, a setting sun crouched upon the earth, and the rolling desert. A dazzling halberd roared toward him like an enraged dragon. Behind it shone a comet-like radiance and a pair of white-golden eyes.
In that moment of mortal danger, Guangchan could only part his lips in vain. The white cicada in his mouth stirred faintly, the mark left by the axe still visible on its body. But no matter how he reached out, he could no longer draw upon the treasured land that had always watched over him.
Banished Essence governed the distant, lightless depths.
Had Guangchan connected to Jeweled Fang earlier, it could at least have saved his life, even with the [Guzhou Cauldron] suppressing him and Jeweled Fang itself in danger of collapsing. But the [Guzhou Cauldron] had been brought out openly from the start to deny him even the slightest blessing from the Jeweled Fang Golden Land throughout the battle...
Faced with this crisis, Guangchan, who had long relied on the Jeweled Fang Golden Land to act with impunity in the north, had no way out. He could not even reach its master in the dharma realm through Jeweled Fang!
Even his treasured pagoda had been pinned down by Li Ximing's heavenly gate!
Crack.
[Da Sheng] had arrived.
The long halberd was only a spirit embryo, but empowered by Li Zhouwei's full strength, [Sovereign In Peril], and its resonance with the White Qilin's fate, it had become astonishingly powerful. Moreover, Li Zhouwei had just escaped an encirclement, exactly the sort of peril [Sovereign In Peril] answered to!
The halberd seemed to have become an indestructible spirit treasure as it met the golden spear.
Hum...
The mighty Bright Yang divine ability bent the spear of Radiant Fire to its limit and flung it aside. The halberd pierced straight through the monk's chest, scattering glasslike fragments. Guangchan's pupils widened as his organs shattered, and cracks spread across the center of his brow.
That single strike left Guangchan powerless, pinned as he was by one of the finest spirit treasures of the age and another belonging to the Supreme Yang Dao lineage!
Despair was only beginning to form in his eyes when the man in dark, patterned armor descended from the desert sunset, fierce as a qilin. The long axe in his hands blazed with concentrated light and came down squarely upon Guangchan's smooth head.
Li Zhouwei had not thrown [Da Sheng] without purpose. Whether it struck home or not, its arrival ahead of him served as the king's proclamation that a rebel was about to be punished!
His axe blow was therefore no ambush. In the open light of [Bright Yang], he had announced the punishment before carrying it out!
[Light Splitting]!
Dazzling light gathered upon Guangchan's head. His orifices became hollow openings from which brilliant heavenly light burst forth. Jade and agate spilled from between his lips and teeth. His ten fingers fell one by one like icicles in winter, each turning into a brownish yellow bamboo tube filled with rustling scrolls of scripture.
The monk seemed to roar, but no sound left his mouth. As he perished amid that brilliant, deadly light, his final thought held neither regret nor hatred. It was a moment of understanding.
The king casts off his cloak; the cicada sheds its shell. The Great Fissure lies at the pass, the Yang Apex in the thrust. The White Qilin... He revealed the Dao to me! The White Qilin has revealed the Dao to me!
Indeed, only Guangchan, who had also cultivated Bright Yang and possessed profound Dao conduct, could fully understand the brilliance of Li Zhouwei's sequence of moves. The royal cloak draped over [Heaven-Venerating Gate] had done more than use a spirit artifact's power to withstand the divine abilities and protect the gate. It also represented the thrust of the Yang Apex and the shell shed by the white cicada!
This axe blow was the clearest expression of Li Zhouwei's Dao conduct and his resonance with fate!
So that is... that is how [Severed Crimson Arrowhead] is cultivated... I understand now... Master... I can cross the Purple Mansion Threshold... I understand, master...
I don't have to cultivate the Buddhist Dao anymore... Master!
No one answered that last, soblike thought. The jade and glass filling the sky began to break apart. The leaping qilin pattern on the [Brilliant Yang King's Axe] blazed to its utmost, and silence fell over heaven and earth.
For an instant, even the pink illusory light weaving through the mountains and the ever-moving Jade True light came to a halt. Everything seemed frozen. Dark clouds covered the sky above Baixiang Valley, as though a god had been angered.
The clouds churned without end, unlike anything anyone had seen or heard of. They lay thick as padding, yet billowed like the hem of a robe in the wind, layer upon layer, unbearably oppressive.
Then, through a gap in clouds too thick to admit light, a narrow shaft of Buddhist radiance suddenly descended. As though angry or wary, it pierced the dark clouds and Banished Essence, illuminating half the face of Great Song's King of Wei.
The four realms trembled. Li Zhouwei’s golden eyes, half in light and half in shadow, looked back at the sky. Glasslike fragments filled the air behind him, and the prison of fire lay shattered. A faint, mocking smile appeared on the King of Wei's face.
My lord, once you place a piece, you cannot take it back.
The king casts off his cloak; the cicada sheds its shell.
Now beyond the capital's bounds, the killing has begun!