Chapter 550: Death Not Permitted
One against thirty.
No, far more than thirty.
Endless streams of maddened cultivators surged forward, wave after wave, toward Qingxuan Mountain.
Chen Yan had lost all track of how long it had been.
He simply kept using the Great Derivation Art to replenish his depleted qi reserves in the Martial Spring, to heal his injuries, and then threw himself into the slaughter again and again.
His originally pure-white daoist robes had been dyed a deep crimson by the blood that had long since congealed.
The gilded cloud crane patterns, soaked in blood, had lost their original Immortal Qi, instead appearing even more ferocious and terrifying.
Chen Yan hovered in midair, currently besieged by four peak Unity Realm mad cultivators at once.
Their attacks, like a violent storm, left him no time to derive an immortal artifact.
Chen Yan knew exactly how to handle this situation.
He ignored the attacks of three of the mad cultivators and, fully activating his Xun Wind Step, launched a furious assault against the cultivator directly in front of him.
The sound of flesh being torn came from Chen Yan's body in rapid succession, but the pain did not make him so much as furrow his brow.
Chen Yan pressed his right hand firmly against the mad cultivator's face before him.
Li Fire Seal!
Crimson flames rapidly flowed from Chen Yan's palm into the mad cultivator's meridians, and within a few breaths, the man was completely burned to ashes.
Then, Chen Yan swiftly escaped the encirclement of the other three mad cultivators.
Immediately after, several more Unity Realm mad cultivators swarmed him.
Chen Yan did not use this brief opening to activate the Great Derivation Art to heal himself.
Instead, he quickly derived a crimson flame whip, infused it with all his spiritual energy, and fiercely lashed forward—
Crackle, boom!
After a resounding explosion, the several mad cultivators who had swarmed in all turned into fireballs, plummeting to the ground.
Also falling downward was Chen Yan himself.
Taking advantage of this descent, he began to heal his injuries while replenishing his spiritual energy.
Then Chen Yan's body crashed heavily onto the ground.
He gasped for air, panting heavily.
And beside the young man whose once pure-white daoist robes were now completely stained with blood, there were mountains of corpses, piled one atop another.
All of them were the bodies of cultivators.
At the start, the mad cultivators who came were all Unity Realm cultivators.
But as time passed, thousands upon thousands of Myriad Transformations Realm cultivators also began to surge toward Qingxuan Mountain.
This was the gap between the Middle Three Realms and the Upper Three Realms, and the difference between true qi and spiritual energy.
Even the mere shockwaves from Chen Yan's battles with the Unity Realm mad cultivators had shaken countless Myriad Transformations Realm cultivators to death, wave after wave.
By now, the foot of Qingxuan Mountain was a complete sea of corpses and rivers of blood.
Chen Yan looked up at the dozen or so mad Unity Realm cultivators diving toward the ground from the sky.
Like flies—mindless walking corpses.
Such a thought rose in his mind.
Then, he quickly rose to his feet, stomped the ground hard, and shot upward like a cannonball. Activating the Clear Light of the Hidden Immortal Art, he once again tangled with the mad cultivators.
No one knew how long had passed.
In the sky, the spatial rifts grew wider and wider. Even though, in this domain, the number of Ascended cultivators, or rather "fallen Immortals," had already fallen far below forty-nine, the laws of heaven and earth continued to collapse.
Because once heaven and earth had deteriorated to this extent, self-repair was absolutely impossible.
At this moment, at the foot of Qingxuan Mountain.
Chen Yan lay alone on the ground, staring up at the pitch-black rifts in the sky.
He had no idea how many Unity Realm cultivators, Myriad Transformations Realm cultivators, or Spirit Connection Realm cultivators he had killed.
And now, indeed, he was the only one left.
As Chen Yan gasped for breath, he heard footsteps coming from a distance.
Slowly sitting up from the ground, he looked into the distance.
A thin, elderly man, standing tall and solitary as a lone peak, dressed in dark blue daoist robes and holding a whisk, was walking slowly toward Qingxuan Mountain.
Chen Yan recognized who that old man was.
The Ascended Steward of Qingxuan Mountain, Azure Sky True Person.
But now, that thin old man's eyes held no emotion whatsoever.
They were completely hollow.
He was walking toward Chen Yan.
Though the distance was still great, each step Azure Sky True Person took brought with it a terrifying pressure of Immortal Qi, making Chen Yan's spiritual energy circulation sluggish.
His meridians were on the verge of shattering.
The oppressive aura of an Ascended cultivator pressed down on Chen Yan from the front.
And among all the cultivators in this domain, aside from the Sage of the Uncarved Simplicity Realm and the True Lord of the Returning to Void Realm, Azure Sky True Person's strength could definitely rank in the top three.
Moreover, the pressure Azure Sky True Person exuded was even greater than any Ascended cultivator Chen Yan had encountered during the Chaos of Ascending to Immortality on Chenping Continent.
The whisk in his hand was also one of the immortal artifacts held by the Qingxuan Immortal Sect.
But Chen Yan's heart remained utterly calm.
A True Person of the Ascended Realm, was it?
The last time Chen Yan had a chance to fight an Ascended cultivator was when he was intercepted by Qiu Siruo on his way from the northwestern region of Chenping Continent to Fusheng Island.
The outcome was that he had no chance to fight back at all before he was tied to the statue on the bow of the Kongshan Sect's flagship.
As for now—
He still had no chance to fight back.
Let alone that Azure Sky True Person's strength far exceeded Qiu Siruo's.
He was also holding an immortal artifact.
The gap between the Unity Realm and the Ascended Realm was three major realms.
Each major realm was like an insurmountable chasm.
And the gap between the Ascended Realm and the Nine Realms Below Immortality was especially terrifying.
But Chen Yan was not afraid.
He dragged his exhausted body up from the ground and began walking toward Azure Sky True Person.
It was time to end this—and start anew.
He raised his hand, and the Great Derivation Art manifested a silver long spear with dragon patterns in his palm.
Then, he began to channel all his spiritual energy, preparing to activate the Hidden Immortal Art to derive Immortal Qi for a final life-or-death battle.
The distance between Chen Yan and Azure Sky True Person shrank from hundreds of feet to dozens of feet, and then to ten feet.
This was the end of this life and this world.
With this thought, Chen Yan's gaze grew even more determined, and he charged toward Azure Sky True Person.
Great Derivation Art!
All of Chen Yan's spiritual energy began to condense into the silver spear in his hand, then started to transform into Immortal Qi.
His Martial Spring evaporated. His meridians shattered completely.
At this moment, Chen Yan had become nothing more than an ordinary mortal, unable to use any techniques at all.
But the silver spear in his hand was wreathed in Immortal Qi, roaring with the cry of a dragon.
Chen Yan charged forward toward Azure Sky True Person.
And Azure Sky True Person, who no longer possessed any spiritual sense and was nothing but an empty shell, raised his whisk—
In the next instant, Azure Sky True Person's movements suddenly froze.
Then, his entire body turned to ash, dissipating into the air before Chen Yan's eyes.
A flicker of confusion passed through Chen Yan's heart.
Why?
But before he could think further, a mouthful of blood burst directly from his lips.
This was the consequence of his shattered meridians. Chen Yan had only a few breaths of life left.
His vision grew increasingly blurry, and at the final moment of his life, what entered his sight was the hem of a white daoist robe.
Then, he fell completely into darkness.
"Death not permitted."
With that faint, drifting voice, Chen Yan's heart, which had already stopped beating, began to pulse again.