Si Ruo stepped up beside Xue Qing and bowed.
Xue Qing gave Si Ruo a slight nod, then glanced at Zi Tianjun and Yu Mi.
“Not much ability, but plenty of nerve. Hurry up and evacuate everyone from here. The moment you dug up that Blood River, you should have pulled all people out. But no—you left over ten million people here to sit and wait for death.
“Right now the Archaic Mountain Range is a great formation waiting to be triggered. Once it activates, every living thing within these mountains will be refined in an instant and melted into this Blood River.”
As soon as she finished, everyone present sucked in a sharp breath.
With Xue Qing’s status, position, and strength, no one doubted her words in the slightest.
Wang Ding turned to Yu Mi.
“Arrow Envoy, should I withdraw all of Kan Gang’s people at once?”
Yu Mi nodded.
Wang Ding rushed off.
Si Ruo also hurriedly summoned the Grand Marshal of the Yue Kingdom’s armies and ordered him to evacuate all Yue troops.
Zi Tianjun immediately sent word for the Xuantian Sect disciples to pull back.
Qu Yirou used a sound-transmission jade slip to have the people of Soul Chasing Pavilion retreat.
Domain gates opened, and the cultivators in the Archaic Mountain Range began to withdraw through them one after another.
After getting Yu Mi’s approval, Wang Ding led Kan Gang’s forces out along with the retreating army. He had originally wanted to leave the Mad Demon behind, but Xue Qing refused.
At the same time, all the powers of the cultivation world received the news that the person from the Demon Domain had arrived at the Archaic Mountain Range and was about to make a move.
As the Yue Kingdom, Kan Gang, and Xuantian Sect all withdrew their forces, the various powers sent spies into the Archaic Mountain Range, not only wanting to glimpse the bearing of this princess of the Celestial Fox imperial demon clan from the upper realm, but even more to witness her methods and power.
Of course Xue Qing sensed cultivators teleporting into the Archaic Mountains. For those who ignored her warning and insisted on coming here to die, she had nothing more to say. If someone is determined to court death, no one can save them.
After Xuan Yue released her divine sense and probed the situation in the Archaic Mountain Range, her brows knit tightly. She might not specialize in geomantic formations, but she could still see some hints of how dangerous this was.
“Mother,” she asked, “is the thing anchoring this feng shui formation really the upper realm Heavenly Emperor’s life-bound emperor cauldron?”
Xue Qing said, “It’s indeed the Hunyuan Emperor’s Hunyuan Heaven-Refining Cauldron.”
The Hunyuan Emperor had stood against the whole world, carving his way to the Heavenly Emperor’s throne with his bare fists. He proved the Dao through slaughter and, in his entire life, forged only a single emperor artifact: this Hunyuan Heaven-Refining Cauldron.
Back then, the Celestial Fox Demon Emperor had been a madman for forging, creating countless immortal treasures and heavy weapons. Even when it came to emperor-grade artifacts, he insisted on making them in sets of nine. The only thing that could match the Hunyuan Heaven-Refining Cauldron was his own life-bound emperor artifact—the Myriad Spirits Cauldron.
Xuan Yue asked worriedly, “Do you have any confidence?”
Xue Qing replied, “If Qingying were here, I wouldn’t say another word, I’d turn around and leave immediately.
“This cauldron was damaged when the Hunyuan Emperor fell. In his final moments, he used it to tear open the barrier between realms and take Qingying with him, worsening its damage. Later, someone from the upper realm once chased Qingying down to this world. They fought to the death together, and when the Hunyuan Heaven-Refining Cauldron was on the verge of shattering, Qingying slapped it into the void. It’s been tens of thousands of years without a trace.”
Her meaning was clear: if, with an emperor artifact of her own, she still couldn’t beat even a broken emperor artifact, then she might as well not bother.
Thinking of Qingying and her father, she sighed again.
“The Hunyuan Emperor was arrogant and bloodthirsty, but he loved Qingying more than his own life. And even when Qingying’s soul scattered and her body was reborn with new intelligence, she still remembered to find her father’s relic and attempt to repair it.”
The bond of blood could never truly be severed.
Xuan Yue blinked and, full of curiosity, hugged Xue Qing’s arm.
“Mother, you know Ba’s past? What else do you know? Tell me everything.”
Xue Qing patted Xuan Yue’s hand lightly.
“We’ll talk about it later. You and Yu Mi and the others all need to leave. This level of battle is not something you can get involved in. Remember—no matter what happens, do not step into the Archaic Mountain Range.”
Xuan Yue nodded obediently.
“Mm.”
She gestured to Yu Mi, Zi Yunshu, the Demon Saint, Qu Yirou, Jade Shura, and the others.
“Please.”
She still wasn’t quite at ease and asked Xue Qing, “Mother, you really don’t need my help?”
Xue Qing pretended to look disgusted and snapped at her.
“With that bit of strength of yours, you aren’t even enough to pick my teeth.”
Xuan Yue snorted.
“You say that like your strength is so much higher than mine.”
She pinched her little finger and said, “Isn’t it just a teeny tiny bit stronger than me? So what if you’re in the Tribulation Crossing stage—ah…”
Before she could finish, she saw her own mother curl a finger, about to flick her on the forehead. Startled, she hugged her head, her foot slipped, and she shot tens of kilometers away in an instant. At the end, she turned back, cheekily stuck out her tongue, then bolted until she vanished without a trace.
Yu Mi and the others all bowed to Xue Qing and took their leave.
Only after they had all withdrawn did Xue Qing focus on the Archaic Mountain Range, her expression somewhat complicated.
The reason she had managed to flee to this lower realm and survive by the skin of her teeth was all thanks to Qingying. If not for the fact that none of the immortals who once chased Qingying down here had made it back to the upper realm, making those who hunted her hesitate—afraid to likewise never return and thus unwilling to exhaust every means at any cost—how could she have had a way to live?
In a sense, she and Qingying were fellow sufferers in the same boat. If they fought each other with their full strength, they’d only end up with mutual destruction. Sooner or later, Qingying would awaken the memories of her past life; when that happened, they would both fight their way back to the upper realm.
With the same goal, there was no reason they couldn’t become allies—or even friends.
As for the rise and fall of the cultivation world? The Demon Domain had already been forced by the cultivation world into a single corner, nearly exterminated. As the ruler of the Demon Domain, how could she possibly help the cultivation world, this great enemy of hers?
But now Qingying had been tricked away by Bao Gu, and no one knew what kind of disaster the layouts she’d left behind would nurture—especially that Heaven-Refining Cauldron, which, in such a geomantic formation, nourished by endless blood and baleful qi, would inevitably condense a new artifact spirit from boundless bloody resentment. That would definitely be something unimaginably vicious.
A demon artifact at the emperor level—just thinking about the calamity it could cause was enough to make one’s blood run cold. Paired with this rare feng shui setup, it was no exaggeration to say it could destroy this entire world.
Xue Qing cut off her wandering thoughts as soon as they arose. Since she had decided to take action, she wouldn’t let her mind run wild.
In her eyes, blood fiends were nothing to fear. To clear away the calamity here, she had two tasks: first, subdue the nine Blood Dragons; second, seize the Heaven-Refining Cauldron.
Her toes lightly tapped the ground, and her body rose like a wisp of wind, like a drifting swan feather, flying swiftly into the sky. Her movements looked languid and graceful, but her speed was unbelievably fast. In an instant she arrived high above the center of the Heaven-Sealing Forbidden Domain, standing at the vault of the heavens.
She looked down.
Under her feet, dense clouds the color of blood boiled and churned, layer upon layer. The blood clouds reeked thickly of iron.
As the blood clouds surged, large numbers of blood fiends burst out of them, swarming toward Xue Qing in the sky like a tide, filling heaven and earth. So many blood fiends poured out that they blotted out the clouds below. They were incredibly fast, densely packed, layer upon layer. Just their sheer numbers were enough to be horrifying. Even a giant like a hill, if bitten by so many of them just once, would probably be gnawed to the bone in an instant.
Xue Qing was unhurried.
With perfect calm, she flicked her sleeve, sat down cross-legged in midair, and let her fingers float before her like willow branches. A zither, its whole body wrapped in divine radiance and jade-like in texture, appeared across her lap.
Slender jade-like fingers touched the strings.
The strings vibrated, and sound rang out.
The zither burst into light, its radiance enveloping everything within a radius of ten meters. Waves of sound washed out from the strings, resonating with the air, making that patch of space ripple and twist. Each blood fiend that slammed into the sound waves shattered as if struck by a mighty force!
The blood fiends that were shattered by the sound turned into blood rain that fell from the sky. In the snow-flurried air, threads upon threads, thousands upon thousands of streaks of resentful black qi slowly dissipated.
The zither notes rolled out from high above the Heaven-Sealing Forbidden Domain, one wave after another, spreading in all directions.
Xue Qing bent her head and played, wholly focused, as if entirely oblivious to everything around her.
The scouts who had entered the Archaic Mountain Range had originally been watching Xue Qing from afar. They suddenly saw her vanish, then saw a pillar of blood-light shoot into the sky from deep within the mountains. Before they could react, an explosive wave of energy surged out from that same depth.
Someone blurted out on instinct, “Not good!” and turned to flee.
But the moment they moved, their bodies blew apart into blood mist and powder.
Those farther away were scared out of their wits when they saw this and also turned to flee—but they still couldn’t outrun the spreading speed of that zither sound!
Cultivators who’d stayed far from the Archaic Mountain Range and were observing from a distance with treasures only saw Xue Qing sitting calmly in midair, playing an immortal zither. Her bearing and grace were such that nothing in this world could compare.
But along with that were surging waves of zither sound, spreading outward from her in all directions. The vibrating notes twisted the very space they passed through. As that twisting space spread, everything between heaven and earth was shaken into powder.
The first to suffer were everything in the sky and on the surface of the ground. Almost in the instant the zither sounded, both the things in the air and those on the ground were all shattered. Right after that, the mountains below began to go. Layer after layer, they were shaken apart, collapsing one on top of the other.
The power of the sound spread from strong to weak. By the time the sound waves reached the edge of the Archaic Mountain Range, they were only strong enough to damage the surface, no longer shattering the ground layer by layer. Even so, the land still shook violently.
The Archaic Mountain Range was said to stretch a hundred thousand kilometers, its terrain complicated and unfathomable. Yet under Xue Qing’s zither sound, it was planed down layer by layer. The vast range collapsed section by section. From afar, it looked as if some colossal blade were shaving the mountains down, slice by slice.
The distant onlooking cultivators all turned white with terror.
These sound waves attacked indiscriminately. Anyone within their range—besides the woman playing the zither—likely wouldn’t survive!
Xue Qing’s very first move was to flatten the entire Archaic Mountain Range.
This was the Archaic Mountain Range that contained nine great dragon veins. A single Archaic Mountain Range was equal to nine other major ranges!
A few years ago, at the Xuantian Sect, Xue Qing had used this same zither to instant-kill a Void Tearing stage cultivator while only at the Nascent Soul stage. Later, outside Wangxian City, with a single treasure cauldron, she had crushed a hundred-zhang warship, suppressing the Wangxian Sect’s sect master Qi Jingzong so badly he didn’t even dare make a sound.
Everyone in the cultivation world knew the one from the Demon Domain was formidable—but no one had expected she was this formidable.
All of a sudden, the Heaven-Refining Cauldron that anchored the Archaic Mountain Range’s geomantic vein trembled slightly. It only shuddered a little, but an immense, boundless wave of power swept out and collided with Xue Qing’s zither sound.
A deep “wong—” rang out as heaven and earth resonated.
It was as if a violent explosion had instantly gone off in the skies over the entire Archaic Mountain Range.
Xue Qing, who had been playing calmly a moment before, suddenly flew backward clutching her zither, spitting out a mouthful of blood. Hugging the instrument, she tumbled through the air like a leaf caught in a gale. Only after several turns did she manage to steady herself. Her face was deathly pale, and blood kept pouring from her mouth and nose.
Holding her breath, she hastily circulated her spiritual power to stabilize her injuries, then lifted her gaze to the Heaven-Refining Cauldron. It still floated there as if nothing had happened, continuing to swallow blood qi.
The cauldron itself had not moved, but the nine Blood Rivers of the Archaic Mountain Range were now violently churning.
Originally, the nine Blood Rivers clung to the earth veins of the mountains, buried deep underground. Blood qi spread along fissures in the rock, and countless blood fiends were scattered everywhere to interfere with divine sense, masking the true layout and location of the rivers. It was extremely hard to pinpoint their course.
Now, shaken by Xue Qing’s zither, the Blood Rivers surged. Blood qi seeped through the mountain bodies and rose above the range, condensing into nine gigantic dragons of pure blood, their claws extended and fangs bared, all gathered like nine dragons vying for a pearl.
These dragons were not true dragons but manifestations of the qi of the dragon veins—blood qi gathered into form. Yet they drew their momentum from the mountain range. However long the mountain range was, that was how long they were. However wide the mountains were, that was how wide they were. The majesty of the entire range was gathered in their bodies.
Only upon seeing them did one truly understand the phrase “swallowing rivers and mountains.”
The blood fiends hidden deep underground had narrowly escaped Xue Qing’s zither assault, but they couldn’t escape the great geomantic tide her music had triggered. Once the nine Blood Dragons appeared, everything in the Archaic Mountain Range that still had a breath of life was melted into them.
In this vast range, aside from the injured Xue Qing in the sky, there was not a single living thing left. It was complete annihilation.
Xue Qing saw the nine Blood Dragons of the Archaic Mountains form a Nine Dragons Guarding a Pearl configuration around the Heaven-Refining Cauldron at their center.
Even damaged, this cauldron had once been the life-bound treasure of an emperor-level powerhouse and ranked among the very best of emperor artifacts. Her zither had been forged by that crafting-maniac Celestial Fox Demon Emperor—the Demon Emperor’s Zither. It might not match the Demon Emperor’s life-bound Myriad Spirits Cauldron, but it was still an emperor artifact. She had refined it as her own life-bound treasure through weapon-merging methods.
Yet a mere pulse from the Heaven-Refining Cauldron had shattered it and injured her.
And now, the aura of the nine Blood Dragons far surpassed that of the cauldron.
Before this, she had never personally seen a killing formation built from nine top-tier dragon veins using a heaven-overturning geomantic technique. All she could do was speculate. Now that she saw the fully activated formation with her own eyes, she realized she had still underestimated it.
Adding one dragon vein to another was not as simple as one plus one equals two. This was a Nine Dragons array that resonated with the structure of the great Dao and linked to the laws of heaven and earth. Every parameter—their number, positions, courses, and layout—was full of subtleties and mysteries. Once such a formation was triggered, even Xue Qing, who had mentally prepared herself, couldn’t help but suck in a breath of cold air.
Fortunately, the one who had arranged such means—Qingying—had been tricked away by Bao Gu. If Qingying were here, fully controlling the geomantic power of the Archaic Mountains, Xue Qing would have turned tail and fled without any hesitation.
Qingying wouldn’t even need the broken Heaven-Refining Cauldron. Just with the power of the formation, she could flatten Xue Qing. If she then added the cauldron and Qingying’s own combat power, even with the Myriad Spirits Cauldron, Xue Qing wouldn’t be able to withstand it.
Even without Qingying’s active control, this passively triggered geomantic formation still made Xue Qing’s scalp crawl. She didn’t dare underestimate it at all.
But since she had already interfered here, there was no backing down halfway. Besides, the difference in lethality between this formation being actively controlled and passively activated was like the difference between heaven and earth.
Once she’d caught her breath, Xue Qing rose even higher, focusing her gaze on the nine giant dragon veins below.
From so high up, she could only see that all nine mountain ridges were shrouded in blood mist. Fortunately, the mist was denser in some places and thinner in others. If one were to trace the thickest parts with a brush, one could clearly outline dragons—horns, heads, necks, bodies, four limbs, tails—each different in posture. The roiling, ever-changing blood mist only made those clawing, twisting silhouettes seem more ferocious and majestic.
Xue Qing was not a professional geomancer. She understood feng shui, but she didn’t specialize in it. Compared with true feng shui masters—those who could seek out dragon veins as easily as reaching into their pockets and draw earth qi with a stomp of their foot—she was far behind. If the Blood Dragons were still hidden deep underground, she’d be fumbling blindly.
But now, having “startled the grass and scared the snakes,” she had triggered the grand geomantic tide. All nine dragon veins of the Archaic Mountains were laid bare to her eyes.
In the Dao of feng shui, the hardest part was finding the dragon and touching its eye. Now that these dragon veins were exposed so clearly, even someone who had only skimmed a beginner’s feng shui manual would know where to stick in a nail to suppress them.
However, knowing how to suppress dragon veins was one thing. Actually suppressing an array of nine interconnected Blood Dragons, reinforced by the Heaven-Refining Cauldron, was another matter entirely. Put simply, ordinary things would never hold them down.
If she used items that weren’t powerful enough to suppress the geomantic current, they’d be ground to powder by the dragon veins or the cauldron before they even settled in.
Judging from the current scene, she’d likely need emperor-level objects to pin down these dragon veins. And not just one or two—she would have to suppress all nine at the same time to be able to take the Heaven-Refining Cauldron in the middle. In other words, at least nine emperor artifacts.
After so many generations and after suffering catastrophe, the Celestial Fox royal clan had only two emperor artifacts left—the Demon Emperor’s Zither and the Myriad Spirits Cauldron.
Using the Demon Emperor’s Zither to suppress the dragon veins wouldn’t be enough in terms of number, not to mention that it was her life-bound treasure. If it was eroded by all that bloody resentment, the backlash to her would be devastating.
As for the Myriad Spirits Cauldron, that went without saying. She was counting on it to go head-to-head with the Heaven-Refining Cauldron.
There were many kinds of things that could suppress feng shui. Emperor artifacts were only one type. If there were no emperor artifacts, there were still other options.
As Xue Qing’s thoughts turned, she suddenly remembered something Bao Gu had done earlier that had left her both exasperated and amused—since there was no Nine Dragons Ascension formation, and since her cultivation was still too low to ascend anyway, leaving the Five Elements Immortal Stones lying around was a waste. So she used them to set up arrays instead, treating them as “trash” to be repurposed.
Xue Qing’s cultivation was still far from ascension. She was in no hurry to build a domain gate. The Five Elements Immortal Stones Bao Gu had given her back then were all piled in her void treasure realm.
In truth, those Five Elements Immortal Stones were meant to be used precisely on a geomantic structure like the Archaic Mountain Range. Placing them here was even more appropriate than using saint artifacts.
Thinking of Bao Gu, Xue Qing couldn’t help sighing inwardly. That child looked slow and simple, often doing things that made one want to laugh and cry, yet she always wanted to praise her with a “brilliant.”
Xue Qing took out the Five Elements Immortal Stones from her void treasure realm. With a sweep of her sleeve, eighty-one stones shot out precisely toward the nine mountain ridges below—nine stones per ridge—suppressing the horns, head, neck, back, tail, and the four limbs, nine points in total.
These nine dragon veins had once formed a Nine Dragons Ascension formation, one that echoed the heavenly Dao and brimmed with mysteries. Xue Qing didn’t know whether the way she placed the eighty-one Five Elements Immortal Stones happened to match some higher-order array, or whether the stones themselves were simply too domineering.
The moment she drove them into the dragon veins, she felt the momentum of the entire Archaic Mountain Range change abruptly. A powerful tremor came through the air. The mountains boomed dully, as if something were shrinking inward while some other force was trying madly to burst outward.
Xue Qing probed with her divine sense and found the mountain range’s aura in complete chaos. The blood dragons that had been whole a moment before were ripped into nine sections. The blood mist flooding the range was frantically surging toward the Five Elements Immortal Stones. The Blood Rivers that had risen to the surface were drying up at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Once the Blood Rivers were gone and the blood mist dispersed, it was as if every ounce of strength had been sucked out of the mountains. Soil, rock, ore veins, sunken spirit wood accumulated over endless years—countless heavenly materials and earthly treasures—all crumbled into yellow sand.
With a deafening roar, the Archaic Mountain Range, which stretched tens of thousands of kilometers, collapsed into a sea of sand!
The sacred ascension ground of ages past was reduced, in the span of a moment, to a desert that stretched out of sight. Only at the spots anchored by the Five Elements Immortal Stones did sheer, jagged peaks still stand.
The Blood Rivers vanished.
The blood sea in the dead center of the Archaic Mountains rushed outward on all sides, soaking into the endless sands and dyeing them scarlet, only to be rapidly drawn away again by the Five Elements Immortal Stones scattered everywhere.
Xue Qing could clearly sense that beneath each Five Elements Immortal Stone a lake-sized pool of blood had formed, like a great marsh. Within those blood lakes, filthy bloody miasma coexisted with extremely dense spiritual qi. Yet under the suppression of the Immortal Stones, they were as calm as mirrors, not even a ripple.
Suddenly, the Heaven-Refining Cauldron, now a “lonely orphan,” shook violently and let out a deep “wong.” Immediately, the surrounding spiritual qi of heaven and earth went mad, pouring toward the cauldron.
With the Blood Rivers gone, the cauldron had lost its supply of energy and was now pulling directly from the ambient qi!
The Heaven-Refining Cauldron seemed enraged—or perhaps disgruntled. Its body shuddered constantly, the humming booming louder and louder. Even with the Demon Emperor’s Zither protecting her, Xue Qing was shaken until blood streamed from all seven orifices. Startled, she hastily summoned the Myriad Spirits Cauldron to shield herself.
The moment the Myriad Spirits Cauldron appeared, Xue Qing lifted it above her head to protect herself. Before she could even draw a breath of relief, she felt it shudder violently, emitting an earth-shaking hum. Then it tore free from above her and shot straight toward the Heaven-Refining Cauldron, humming “wong, wong, wong” as it flew. Its posture made one feel like it should have been a bell instead of a cauldron.
Seeing the Myriad Spirits Cauldron charge at the Heaven-Refining Cauldron with such murderous momentum, Xue Qing no longer cared about her injuries or how miserable she must look, bleeding from all seven orifices. She kicked off and fled from the Archaic Mountain Range at her fastest possible speed.
She truly had no face to admit to anyone that the Myriad Spirits Cauldron had an artifact spirit and simply couldn’t stand seeing the broken Heaven-Refining Cauldron go berserk in front of it. It was rushing over to “discipline” it—to teach the Heaven-Refining Cauldron what it meant to be a proper cauldron.
Even among emperor artifacts, there were levels of superiority and inferiority. Compared to something on the level of the Myriad Spirits Cauldron, her Demon Emperor’s Zither wasn’t even fit to carry its shoes.
As for her own strength, there was nothing to say. Even at her peak in the upper realm, she couldn’t get close to the combat radius of a battle between emperor artifacts like the Myriad Spirits Cauldron. And now she was only at the Tribulation Crossing stage.
Just those few hums from the two cauldrons had made her feel like her heart would burst and had her bleeding from seven orifices. If they actually started fighting, ten lives wouldn’t be enough for her to die here.
Xue Qing fled at full speed. In almost the blink of an eye, she shot clear of the Archaic Mountains and appeared beside Xuan Yue, Yu Mi, and the others, who were watching from not far away. She scolded angrily,
“If you’re going to watch, at least have the sense to stand farther away and find a safe spot!”
As she spoke, she swept her sleeve, stirring up a gust of wind that wrapped around the group of onlookers and dragged them away at a dead run.
Many cultivators had decided that being near Yu Mi and the others was the safest place to be, so they had clustered not far from them to watch the show.
Now Xue Qing had suddenly appeared, barked that line, and hauled Yu Mi’s group off with her, scaring the surrounding cultivators out of their wits. They scrambled to flee for their lives.
Anyone who dared to come here and watch this kind of high-level battle from ten thousand years rarely came empty-handed. One after another they either deployed portable teleportation platforms or burned movement talismans to tear open the void and escape.
There were a lot of people—tens of thousands had come to witness this rare clash of such lofty experts. Now they were all trying to use teleportation platforms or speed talismans at once, crowding together. Collisions were inevitable.
Crashing teleports in the void were a far more serious matter than colliding flying treasures in the sky. The combined speed and force of two teleport platforms slamming together meant both platforms exploded on the spot—and in this case, two at once.
The lucky ones—those whose teleportation had barely begun—might get blown back out into the great world. If their cultivation was strong enough to withstand the blast, they’d just be injured and still keep their lives.
The unlucky ones… their endings didn’t bear thinking about.
For a time, some escaped, some scattered, some met tragic ends. The scene devolved into utter chaos.
Even unluckier were those who had just stepped onto their teleport platforms and entered the void, only to immediately crash into someone else’s platform and be blasted back out. If their strength was sufficient, they could survive the blast—but the delay cost them dearly. A violent energy wave suddenly rippled out from the Archaic Mountain Range, and they were erased before they could even let out a single scream.
Xue Qing carried the juniors who’d been watching the spectacle all the way to the border of the Yue Kingdom before she finally released her divine sense again.
What she sensed made her pause.
The eighty-one peaks that had been pinned down by the Five Elements Immortal Stones had been smashed flat. The stones themselves had been blasted who knew how far away.
As for the two cauldrons, the Myriad Spirits Cauldron was chasing right behind the Heaven-Refining Cauldron. Whenever it caught up, it rammed into it viciously, each collision setting off a resounding “wong—” that she could hear clearly even from this far away.
The Heaven-Refining Cauldron fled, and in its flight it kept diving into blood lakes that had begun to churn again after losing the suppression of the Immortal Stones, gulping down blood qi like mad.
Whether it was reluctant to abandon its “blood food” or its damage was so severe that it couldn’t endure the pressure of the void, even as the Myriad Spirits Cauldron battered new cracks into it, it didn’t flee far. Instead it only bounced frantically between the eighty-one blood lakes.
Watching the Heaven-Refining Cauldron darting from one “pit” to another to escape, with the Myriad Spirits Cauldron right behind it, slamming into it again and again, Xue Qing could only fall silent.
She was so speechless it hurt.
