Chapter 36: Nascent Soul Expert?
Lin Yuan stood completely frozen, his crimson-lit pupils locked onto the dark fissure hidden behind the mountain vines.
For seven days. For seven days and nights, Lin Yuan had sat cross-legged on this very precipice, his mind completely submerged in his spiritual sea.
During that entire week, his physical body remained motionless, like a sitting duck. Though his eyes stayed shut and his mind occupied, he was not completely oblivious to the outside world. A faint thread of awareness still lingered, allowing him to sense the slightest disturbances in his surroundings.
And yet, for those exact seven days, he had not sensed a single thing.
Not a breath. Not a heartbeat. Not even a faint ripple of spiritual energy.
He was standing mere yards away from a hidden cave, and someone had been inside it the entire time. The realization struck Lin Yuan like a blow to the chest. If this hidden figure had harbored even a sliver of malicious intent, Lin Yuan would be dead. His life and death had been completely decided by the whims of this stranger. He wouldn’t have even known how he died.
"Well?" The voice echoed from the shadows again, tinged with a mounting irritation. "Are you deaf as well as blind? I said, are you quite finished?"
Lin Yuan did not answer immediately. His gaze remained fixed on the cave entrance as his mind rapidly calculated the vast disparity between their cultivation realms. For someone to approach without him sensing the slightest trace of their presence, their cultivation had to surpass his own by an overwhelming margin.
The figure in the shadows let out a loud and dramatic groan, sounding exactly like a child forced to do mundane chores.
"I really, really hate it when they just stare like that," the voice grumbled.
In the next instant, without the slightest fluctuation of spiritual qi, without a gust of wind, and without the characteristic displacement of a movement art—the figure simply vanished from the cave entrance.
Lin Yuan’s pupils shrank at the mere sight of it.
Teleportation!
He actively tore through the spatial void! In the Nine Provinces, only one realm of cultivators possessed the ability to casually bend space and instantly relocate their physical forms.
A Nascent Soul Realm expert!
"Boo," a voice whispered directly into Lin Yuan’s right ear.
Every single hair on Lin Yuan’s body stood on end. The man had teleported directly behind him. He could feel the warmth of the stranger’s breath on his neck. The oppressive, unfathomable pressure of a Nascent Soul expert crashed down upon Lin Yuan like a collapsing sky, threatening to crush his newly forged Golden Core into powder.
Instinct took over. Without a fraction of a second’s hesitation, Lin Yuan channeled the dense qi from his Golden Core down to his feet. He stomped against the flat boulder, shattering it into dust, and shot straight up into the air.
He did not use the Immortal Cloud Step. He utilized the signature hallmark of the Core Formation realm: he controlled the sky.
Lin Yuan ascended hundreds of feet in a single breath, forcefully solidifying the atmospheric air beneath his feet to form an invisible platform. Hovering high above the mountain peak, he finally looked down to get a clear view of the monster who held his life in his hands.
Standing amidst the rubble of the shattered boulder was a man who looked remarkably out of place. He appeared to be in his early thirties, wearing a set of incredibly loose, mismatched robes that looked like they had been stitched together from various brightly colored tapestries. His hair was tied up in a messy, lopsided topknot, and he was currently pouting, kicking a small pebble over the edge of the cliff with an exaggerated huff.
"You ruined my front porch," the man complained, crossing his arms and glaring up at Lin Yuan.
Despite his terrifying Nascent Soul cultivation, the man possessed an unmistakably child-like behavior. He puffed out his cheeks, pointing an accusing finger at Lin Yuan in the sky.
"Look at you, fluttering about! First, you come to my mountain and kill all my favorite noisy toys! I really liked that four-headed leopard! It had a funny roar!" The man complained, throwing his arms up in exasperation. "Then, you sit on my porch and suck up all the qi for a whole week while I am trying to refine a very very important pill! And now, you break my favorite sitting rock!"
The man stomped his foot, causing the entire mountain peak to violently tremor. "You are a very rude, very annoying junior!"
Lin Yuan maintained his position in the sky, his eyes incredibly sharp. He knew better than to be fooled by the childish demeanor. The weird ones of the cultivation world were often the most lethal. A single temper tantrum from this man could wipe an entire clan off the map without leaving a trace.
"Senior," Lin Yuan spoke, his voice calm, and respectful. "This junior was unaware this peak was claimed by an expert. I apologize for the disruption."
The man stopped stomping his foot. He tilted his head, looking at Lin Yuan with a sudden, eerie curiosity. Then, a wide, playful grin stretched across his face.
"Apologies are boring!" the Nascent Soul expert giggled, clapping his hands together. "But... I am in a surprisingly generous mood today. Since you managed to form such a shiny, flawless Golden Core, I will make you a deal!"
The man held up a single finger.
"Take one palm strike from me. Just one!" The man’s eyes twinkled. "If you take it, I will forgive you for cultivating here. If you turn into a messy paste... well, I’ll just use you as food for the beasts! Do we have a deal?"
Lin Yuan’s eyes narrowed. A palm strike from a Nascent Soul expert was an absolute death sentence for anyone in the Core Formation realm. The disparity in their realms was an insurmountable chasm. However, running was simply not an option. If he tried to flee, the man would simply teleport in front of him and crush him instantly.
He had to take the strike.
"I accept," Lin Yuan declared, his voice echoing across the heavens.
"Yay!" the man cheered, bouncing on his heels. "Here I come! Don’t dodge, or I’ll be really mad!"
The eccentric man casually pushed his right hand upward toward the sky, and the moment his palm moved, the energy of Heaven and Earth violently contorted in submission.
A colossal handprint, easily a hundred feet wide, materialized in the sky. As it shot upward toward Lin Yuan, the very fabric of space groaned and warped around it, creating a terrifying vacuum that sucked the surrounding clouds into oblivion.
Lin Yuan’s expression turned utterly solemn.
Whoosh!
With a flick of his wrist, he materialized a qi sword. Lin Yuan swung it downward in rapid succession, erecting three massive barriers. Each barrier was thick enough to withstand a sustained bombardment from peak Core Formation experts. He followed this by condensing a thick shield of his own qi directly in front of his body.
The Nascent Soul handprint crashed into the first barrier.
CRACK!
The barrier shattered instantly, breaking like fragile glass. It didn’t even slow the handprint down for a fraction of a second.
CRACK! CRACK!
The second and third barriers disintegrated upon impact, the absolute pressure of the Nascent Soul realm completely overwhelming. The handprint slammed into Lin Yuan’s qi shield, tearing it to shreds in a microsecond.
Lin Yuan realized instantly that magical defenses were entirely useless against the brute force of a Nascent Soul strike.
He had to test his new foundation. He had to try the body forging he had endured over the last two weeks.
As the massive handprint closed in on him, threatening to crush him, Lin Yuan’s pupils flared with defiance.
Ancient Beast Body, Rank 1!
With that, the phantom roar of a giant elephant and a four-headed leopard echoed simultaneously from deep within his body. Then, Lin Yuan wrapped the entirety of his qi around his right arm, compressing it until his fist glowed like a miniature sun.
Instead of bracing for impact, Lin Yuan roared, utilizing the explosive speed of his beast-forged muscles to dive directly into the attack.
He threw a devastating, head-on punch right into the center of the handprint.
BOOM!
The collision between Lin Yuan and the palm strike created a shockwave that defied any description.
A ring of concussive force exploded outward in the sky, instantly vaporizing the cloud cover for a ten-mile radius. The sheer backlash forced the atmosphere to scream, sending a hurricane-force gale tearing down the sides of the mountain, snapping iron-wood bamboos like brittle toothpicks.
High in the sky, Lin Yuan was violently thrown backward like a shooting star. He flipped uncontrollably through the air, his right arm trembling violently, the skin cracked and smoking from the intense strike. He skidded across the air, dragging his feet for nearly fifty yards before finally coming to a halt.
He coughed, a thin trail of blood escaping the corner of his lips. His arm felt as though it had been slammed in a heavenly forge, aching excessively, but the bone had not broken. His meridians had not ruptured.
The Ancient Beast Body had held. He had survived.
Down below, the massive handprint had completely dispersed, as the dust and debris slowly cleared around the mountain peak. The eccentric man was standing perfectly still, his childish pout completely gone. His eyes were wide, tracing the trajectory of Lin Yuan’s flight and staring intently at the young man’s fist.
A low, appreciative whistle escaped the man’s lips.
"Oh, my," the expert murmured, his voice dropping its childish pitch entirely, taking on a tone of genuine astonishment. "What an incredibly sturdy body."