“TOO LIGHT! Too light, too light, too light—TOO LIGHT!!!” Lu Sheng’s massive arms lashed out in a frenzy, striking at the green beam as it streaked toward him at lightning speed.
Chao Long weaved in and out, attacking and retreating in bursts, carving wound after wound across Lu Sheng’s body. Yet each bloody gash sealed itself almost instantly under his terrifying regenerative power.
The courtyard was reduced to ruins. Walls collapsed, roofs shattered, and entire structures were torn apart as the two charged and clashed.
Beyond the courtyard, flickers of torchlight hurried closer. Tea Sect disciples, drawn by the commotion, rushed toward the scene, only to be stopped at once by the Crimson Whale Sect guards.
They had already witnessed Lu Sheng’s monstrous transformation. To prevent their Sect Master’s true power from being exposed, and to avoid the collateral devastation he might unleash, they barred anyone from approaching.
“Hoo!”
Lu Sheng seized the stone roof of a nearby building with both hands and tore it free. With savage force, he slammed the massive slab, spanning more than ten meters, down into the courtyard.
“BOOOM!!”
Stone exploded into fragments. Amid the flying debris, a streak of green light sliced through the collapsing roof and shot straight toward Lu Sheng’s face.
Lu Sheng’s mouth split wide, revealing rows of viciously sharp teeth, gleaming like the teeth of a saw.
“It’s over.”
He inhaled, then opened his jaws.
“BOOOOM!!”
A pillar of crimson-red breath erupted from his mouth like a searing beam. It was the Ultimate Crimson Nine Furies Inner Qi, compressed and refined to its limit.
In an instant, the temperature of the densely packed Qi surged beyond a thousand degrees, carrying with it terrifying Yang-attribute destructive force.
The green beam collided head-on with the crimson pillar. The clash happened in a blink, leaving no room to evade.
The green light fought forward but faltered midair. Overwhelmed by the violent impact, it was smashed into the ground, drilling deep into the earth.
A thunderous crash followed. Two deep craters appeared in the courtyard, left behind by Chao Long’s legs, which had plunged into the ground to anchor himself against the overwhelming force.
In the blink of an eye, Chao Long vanished. By the time he resurfaced, he had already slipped behind a stretch of shattered wall.
The skin across his body was rapidly hardening into a pale-green outer shell. Paired with the cicada blades jutting from his shoulders and the grotesque distortion of his features, he now looked no different from a bizarre insect-man.
Yet this insect-man was gasping desperately for breath.
He hunched forward. The rear edges of the shoulder blades had partially disintegrated, and black scorch marks spread across his shell. In several places, the armor had cracked entirely, pale-green, blood-like fluid seeping from within.
Exhaustion.
That was the only sensation filling Chao Long’s body.
He turned and cautiously peered over the broken wall, staring at the five-meter-tall, monstrous figure rampaging through the courtyard.
How many years had it been since he had encountered such a terrifying opponent?
Even after activating his innate secret art, gaining terrifying speed and drastically shedding mass, he still could not gain the upper hand. A scorching heat burned through his lungs, and his shoulders screamed in pain from repeatedly striking material that was simply too tough. He knew he could not maintain this state for much longer. If he did, his body would collapse on its own, even without the other party’s assistance.
‘In Nine Heavens Mode, I’ve already stepped into the Snake realm. Even Chao Hu wouldn’t dare underestimate my strength. Then why… why…’
He lifted his gaze toward the monster that was tearing through everything in its path.
Deafening booms overlapped in chaotic succession. Dust and shattered stone filled the air.
“Where are you?” Lu Sheng’s savage, bloodthirsty roar thundered through the ruins. “Where are you, oh cute little bug?”
Chao Long’s chest rose and fell violently as he forced himself to steady his breathing, struggling to suppress the frantic pounding of his heart, which felt ready to burst from his chest.
Without warning, Chao Long’s eyes flew wide as he darted sharply to the right.
“BOOOM!!”
The wall he had been hiding behind was pulverized in an instant, smashed into dust by a gigantic hand.
There was nothing there.
Lu Sheng stood amid the rubble, one hand clamped tightly around Unlaughing Master’s neck. He slowly withdrew his other hand from the shattered stone, lantern-sized eyes sweeping across the ruins.
“Oh… not here…” Disappointment crept into his voice.
“PU.”
Behind another mound of wreckage, Chao Long spat out a mouthful of murky green blood. With trembling fingers, he gently pulled at the crushed stone embedded deep in his right chest.
His face grew even paler. Though it was no more than an ordinary fragment of rubble, its force had been magnified beyond reason by Lu Sheng’s monstrous strength. Worse still, he was already in a severely weakened state after taking the full brunt of that crimson Qi pillar, which had destroyed more than half of his black membrane.
“The passageway… it’s mine… my passageway!!” His teeth clenched tightly as stubborn resolve flared once more in his remaining eye.
“GOTCHA!”
A deep voice thundered behind him without warning.
A massive hand blotted out the sky as it crashed down mercilessly, leaving Chao Long no time to react.
“BOOOOM!!!”
The impact sent a visible tremor rippling across the entirety of Tea Town.
Lu Sheng’s right arm plunged deep into the ground, sinking all the way to his elbow.
He yanked it back up, dragging with it a pale-green figure, shattered beyond recognition.
“This time, it’s over for real.” Lu Sheng held Chao Long up before him. The man’s life now hung by a single, fragile thread.
“The winner… takes all…” Summoning his last strength, Chao Long cracked open his remaining eye and spoke weakly. “You’ve won… the passageway… is yours…”
“What passageway? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” Lu Sheng frowned in confusion.
Suddenly, something occurred to him.
His gaze swept through the surrounding ruins until he spotted Dong Qi lying unconscious in a corner. The Tea Sect Sect Master had been buried beneath a heap of collapsed stone, her body motionless.
Lu Sheng’s massive form began to contract. Flesh and bone shrank rapidly as he reverted to his original size, returning to Yin Extreme Mode.
Lu Sheng was thoroughly satisfied with his current level of strength.
If Yin Extreme Mode amounted to ten units of combat power, then Yang Extreme Mode, after full transformation, reached two hundred. As for Yin Yang Integration Mode, it hovered around three to four hundred units. And if he detonated liquefied inner Qi while in that state, the output could surge to nearly a thousand units.
A thousand units. That was the power Scarlet District Mistress Hongfang Bai had once wielded at her peak, after being reinforced by the Scarlet Dragon Tribulation shard.
Yet that strength had never truly belonged to her. She could not sustain it for long, and that was precisely why she had ultimately fallen to Lu Sheng.
Holding Chao Long aloft, Lu Sheng hesitated. In the end, he did not strike.
Chao Long knew far too much. He was tied to the Three Sacred Gates, and he understood the connection between the so-called passageway and the Unlaughing Master.
By comparison, Lu Sheng realized how little he himself knew. Crimson Whale Sect felt almost laughably ignorant beside forces like Wandering Heart Society.
“Why don’t you kill me?” Chao Long’s green shell slowly receded as he reverted to his original human form, his voice hoarse and weak.
“What benefit would killing you bring me?” Lu Sheng replied calmly. “Other than provoking Wandering Heart Society, there’s nothing to gain.”
As he spoke, he circulated Yin Yang Jade Crane Aquarius Qi and injected several threads into Chao Long’s shattered body.
“Puuuu!”
Jets of bright red blood burst violently from Chao Long’s mouth. His jaw stretched wide as his face twisted in agony.
Lu Sheng frowned slightly. He could clearly feel fierce resistance. The Yin Yang Jade Crane Aquarius Qi struggled to establish a Yin Crane Web, as though Chao Long’s body were a swamp saturated with mire. Every inch of progress required ten times the usual effort.
‘Is it impossible to control him? Or is my inner Qi insufficient?’ Lu Sheng increased the outward flow of Qi.
“PUUU!!”
Chao Long’s head snapped backward as he spewed another mouthful of blood. His body sagged, head lolling to the side. Cracks spread across his skin as fresh wounds tore open, pale-green blood pouring out in thick streams.
Chao Long’s life force ebbed away by the second. Lu Sheng stood helpless, watching as blood continued to drain from the man’s body.
Before long, the light in Chao Long’s eyes dimmed, then vanished entirely, swallowed by darkness.
He was dead.
“Hoo!”
Without warning, Chao Long’s corpse turned inky black and hardened. In Lu Sheng’s grasp, it rapidly withered into brittle fragments, which crumbled further into fine black powder and drifted to the ground.
“Oh…” Lu Sheng withdrew his hand, his brows knitting tightly. “Why was the resistance so strong? It didn’t feel like it came from Chao Long’s own will.”
He had never intended to kill him. His goal had been control. With a Snake realm subordinate, many obstacles would have become far easier to deal with.
Instead, the outcome was completely unexpected.
“What a pity… Then what about this one?” Lu Sheng shifted his gaze to Unlaughing Master, still gripped firmly in his other hand.
Now that Lu Sheng’s body had returned to its normal size, Unlaughing Master’s bones had long since been crushed to dust, leaving him little more than a living husk. Escape was impossible.
Yet what truly astonished Lu Sheng was that Unlaughing Master continued to struggle desperately despite having no bones left at all. From within his abdomen, a faint ball of black light pulsed weakly.
Encircling the black glow was a thin rim of pale silver light.
“Passageway…” Understanding dawned on Lu Sheng.
He reached out and tore viciously into Unlaughing Master’s abdomen.
His fingernails mutated instantly into razor-sharp blades. With a single scoop, he ripped out a large chunk of blood-soaked flesh.
A foul, putrid stench billowed out, reeking like a corpse that had rotted for countless ages.
Carefully, Lu Sheng carved away the remaining flesh, exposing the source of the glow at its center.
What lay within was a translucent black crystal pearl, roughly the size of an egg, radiating that eerie light.
As he held it up, Lu Sheng noticed something strange pulsing within the pearl. Curiosity stirred. He lifted it closer and peered inside.
Within the translucent crystal, he saw a passageway.
Within the pearl, the passageway coiled and wound like a serpent through layers of gray fog. It stretched endlessly into the mist, its end nowhere to be seen.
The sensation was profoundly unsettling.
Lu Sheng lowered the pearl. The strange vision vanished at once, and the world before him returned to normal.
He raised it again to eye level. Just as before, the passageway reappeared, clear and distinct. It was as though the pearl were linked to some distant, unknown realm.
‘Such a small passageway. If one could enter the pearl and walk along that path… could this be the passageway Chao Long spoke of?’ Realization slowly dawned on Lu Sheng.
This was a passage hidden within a pearl, leading deep into an unfathomable fog toward an unknown destination.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that an immense secret lay at the heart of it all. Otherwise, a Deputy Chief of the Wandering Heart Society would never have traveled this far merely for an Unlaughing Anomaly released by the Three Sacred Gates.
‘Could it be that a joke is the key to opening this passageway?’ The rumors surrounding Unlaughing Master surfaced in his mind.
‘No… even the one who told the joke only escaped danger briefly. In the end, he still died.’ Lu Sheng glanced down at Unlaughing Master’s remains. With the pearl removed, the body had already begun to wither and decay, on the verge of collapsing entirely into ash.
There was no doubt about it.
The pearl itself was the true enigma.
‘I’ve already made an enemy of the Wandering Heart Society. But I’m not Scarlet District.’ Lu Sheng’s gaze hardened. ‘With the Shangyang Family backing me, there’s nothing they can do to me.’
‘Moreover, I’ve only exposed myself as being at the Three-Vein level. As long as I stay silent, and Dong Qi does the same, no one will ever know that Chao Long died by my hand.’ Lu Sheng remained unafraid of the Wandering Heart Society, but even so, keeping trouble to a minimum was the wiser choice.
He walked calmly over to Dong Qi.
She lay buried beneath a heap of shattered stone, her breathing faint, her life hanging by a thread. From the signs, she appeared to be suffering internal injuries, likely severe bleeding.
After a brief moment of consideration, Lu Sheng decided not to leave her to die.
Dong Qi was a rare talent, someone who had single-handedly guided the Tea Sect to prosperity. Allowing her to perish here would be a needless waste.
Lu Sheng placed his palm gently against her forehead and rapidly channeled strands of Yin Yang Jade Crane Aquarius Qi into her body, doing his best to pull her back from the brink of death.
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