Chapter 432: Nine Cauldrons
On the Great Cangwu World.
The Cangbei warship slowly drifted in, instantly drawing every eye. Golden Core and Dharma Form cultivators appeared one after another, gazing up at the vessel. Worry showed in many of those eyes, as no one knew whether the newcomers were friend or foe.
But most gazes converged on a middle-aged man who bore the strength of a Void-Piercing battle immortal.
A Void-Piercing battle immortal might lack the stability and endurance of a true Void-Piercing cultivator, but he was still an existence capable of roaming a star system, and even destroying one outright. Yet even an expert of that caliber, one who could roam freely among the stars, felt utterly powerless before the boundless vastness of the universe.
No one knew what terrors and dangers lurked in its depths, or what kind of beings dwelt there. So it was with grave caution that he watched the Dao Artifact warship's slow approach.
"Perfected Lord Xie Wu, they decelerated upon reaching our Great Cangwu World. Judging by that, they shouldn't mean us harm, should they?" Johan asked carefully.
"That warship... is of a very high class. Whoever's aboard must have a staggering background," said the Void-Piercing battle immortal called Xie Wu. Then, not wanting to spark a panic, he added, "Still, the strongest powers of this whole vast region of stars are gathered on the North Sea Star, and the Taiyi Immortal Sect behind me is one of the North Sea Star's Ten Great Immortal Dao Sects, standing at the very peak of the North Sea. With that credential, they should show us some courtesy."
He studied the ship. "After all, its style leans toward human craftsmanship."
"Could it be..." At this point, Ye Lin of the Thousand-Beast Sect ventured in a small voice, "That sect is coming home?"
That sect! She hadn't named it, but everyone present knew exactly which faction she meant.
More than a decade ago, Perfected Lord Xie Wu had returned to Cangwu from the North Sea Star. Yet his purpose in coming had not been to remake this world into the Heavenly Venerable's domain, but into Yaoguang's world.
It was only then that everyone learned what colossal achievements Yaoguang, who had already shown astonishing potential back in his Cangwu days, had racked up on the North Sea Star.
He had beaten Heavenly Venerable Jiang to the Void-Piercing Realm, a realm fit to dominate a galaxy, then advanced to the Void-Refining Realm at unbelievable speed and risen to deputy sect master of the Heavenly Dao Sect, itself one of the Ten Great Immortal Dao Sects, ruling an entire domain.
An existence like that counted as a true titan even by the standards of the North Sea Star.
If he wished, powers on the scale of the Great Cangwu World would have lined up to pledge themselves to him.
And even that had not been his limit. Not long after, in the southern domain he governed, he had harnessed the might of his arrays to slay two supreme fiend lords of the Void-Shattering Realm.
Void-Shattering fiend lords! Beings with such power that it all but exceeded their imagination.
Heavenly Venerable Jiang, whom everyone in the Great Cangwu World had schemed to please, had won their wholehearted support not only for his talent, but above all because he had become the direct disciple of the Supreme Jade Emperor of the Taiyi Immortal Sect, a Void-Shattering expert standing at the summit of the North Sea.
And now Yaoguang had the power to slay two Void-Shattering cultivators... How could they not be alarmed and shaken?
Had they not all seen the great figures of the Cangwu lineage make a point of returning, bringing cultivation resources in abundance, transforming the Great Cangwu World and propping the Nine Cauldrons Sect back up, as if intent on remaking the entire Great Cangwu World into the Great Yaoguang World?
Hearing Ye Lin's words, Xie Wu pondered a moment, then nodded. "That's likely."
He wasted no more time. "Either way, let's go forward and make contact. Friend or foe, this step can't be avoided."
Ye Lin, Feng Ao, Johan, Mi Le, Janko, and the other Golden Core and Dharma Form cultivators nodded and fell in behind him. But before they could reach the warship, a figure flickered across from it ahead of them.
"Xie Wu? What are you doing here?"
Sensing that somewhat familiar psychic thought, Xie Wu froze for an instant, then exhaled in open relief. "Perfected Lord Wan."
Looking at Wan Liugui standing before him, he grasped at once who had come, and asked with some trepidation, "H-Has... that great Lord arrived?"
Wan Liugui didn't answer right away, lost briefly in thought. So Xie Wu has turned up in the Great Cangwu World... Apparently this is the Cangwu lineage's way of showing yet another token of good faith.
He gave a slight nod.
"He has truly come!" Xie Wu drew a deep breath, and his whole bearing turned careful and constrained.
"That Lord..." Johan's pupils constricted, and he blurted, "Yaoguang came too?"
His Infinite Star Palace had not exactly parted with Yaoguang on friendly terms in those days.
"Insolence!"
The word had barely left Johan's mouth when Wan Liugui's furious roar crashed down. The pressure of a Void-Piercing battle immortal, carried on a psychic thought nurtured by a Nine Refinements of Star Ring cultivated to the cusp of the mastery stage, slammed into Johan's psychic mind with the force of a falling thunderbolt. The Golden Core battle immortal's mind convulsed; his face went deathly white, and he could barely hold his Golden Core state together.
The Void-Piercing battle immortal's frigid gaze swept across the ashen Johan and the visibly frightened Lu Xi, Feng Ao, and Janko. "Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang's name is not yours to speak."
Beside him, Xie Wu rounded on the group as well. "Do you have any idea what kind of person Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang is? Who gave you the right to speak his name?"
Wan Liugui's eyes moved from one of them to the next. His immense psychic thought pressure bore down on everyone present, Dharma Form and Golden Core battle immortals alike, giving them the feeling of mountains toppling and seas being overturned.
Those battle immortals whose Golden Cores were not too stable to begin with felt their minds unravel, and their cores slip toward chaos, nearly losing control and detonating where they stood.
"Perfected Lord Wan... w-we know we were wrong," Mi Le said, his psychic thought trembling.
"I don't think you've grasped the situation yet." Only now did Wan Liugui rein in his pressure a fraction. "The one standing before you is the youngest Void-Shattering cultivator in the history of the Heavenly Dao Sect. Deputy sect master of the Heavenly Dao Sect. Lord of the southern domain. The man who crushed the Yin Lunar Sect single-handedly, slew seven of its Void-Shattering fiendish cultivators in battle, and forced one of the Six Great Fiendish Dao Sects to seal itself shut. A great figure standing equal to those on the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings!"
At those words, Xie Wu's pupils constricted sharply.
Void-Shattering?! Wasn't it Void-Refining? When did he become a Void-Shattering cultivator? He broke through to the Void-Shattering Realm? How can it be so fast?! And the rest of it... Crushed the Yin Lunar Sect alone, cut down seven Void-Shattering fiendish cultivators in a short time, and forced the Yin Lunar Sect to seal its gates?!
H-How is that possible?! Yaoguang has only been cultivating for... how long? How could he possibly have climbed to such heights?!
As for Mi Le, Janko, Ye Lin, Feng Ao, and the others, they were simply stunned senseless.
When Xie Wu had first told them that Yaoguang, aided by arrays, had barely managed to slay two Void-Shattering fiendish cultivators, they had already been terrified, hoping only that by the time they saw Yaoguang again he would have forgotten small folk like them.
Who could have imagined that in a mere dozen or so years, Yaoguang would accomplish an even more impressive and brilliant feat?
Crushing the Yin Lunar Sect, one of the Six Great Fiendish Dao Sects?! Slaying seven Void-Shattering fiendish cultivators?! Forcing a Fiendish Dao sect that rivaled the Taiyi Immortal Sect and the Heavenly Dao Sect to seal itself away?! What kind of power was that?!
"You, a lowly Golden Core battle immortal, not even a true Golden Core cultivator, what right do you have to speak Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang's name?"
Wan Liugui pressed down with an empty palm, and Johan's already unsteady Golden Core lost all control and began to collapse.
"No! No! Perfected Lord Wan, I was wrong, I..." Johan's cry was pure terror.
But Wan Liugui's cultivation now stood on the brink of transformation; never mind a lowly Golden Core battle immortal, even a great sect's true disciple with an Azure Golden Core could not have resisted him in the slightest.
Under his hand, the Infinite Star Palace's Golden Core battle immortal was given no chance to beg. The Golden Core in his body simply caved in, collapsing into a blaze of gorgeous light, and before that radiance could fully erupt, the perfected lord closed one hand, twisting space itself, and wrung every last trace of the energy within it into nothing.
Xie Wu, a Void-Piercing battle immortal himself, watched the whole thing unfold before his eyes and did not dare move an inch, let alone intervene.
The rest of the Infinite Star Palace's Golden Core cultivators stood deathly silent, shaking from head to toe, despair flooding every corner of their beings, the same despair of a lamb going into a slaughterhouse.
Then another figure emerged. At the sight of him, a flicker of hope rose in the eyes of Ye Lin and Fu Long. "Per-Perfected Lord Li..."
But when Xie Wu saw Li Hanqiu appear, his eyes went wide. "Wait... this feeling..."
His face filled with disbelief. "Void-Piercing?! A true Void-Piercing cultivator?!"
Li Hanqiu gave him a nod. These Void-Piercing battle immortals had once fought and bled on the North Sea battlefields for the Great Cangwu World's future, and for that they were owed a measure of respect.
Without them, there would have been no Great Cangwu World to come home to. And so...
"From this day forward, the Great Cangwu World becomes the private territory of the Nine Cauldrons Sect, and this world will be renamed the Nine Cauldrons World," Li Hanqiu announced.
It was what they had settled on during the voyage. Not one member of the Su family had returned with him to the Cangwu world, so Yaoguang had let go of any notion of renaming it the Yaoguang World.
And with the strength of a true Void-Piercing cultivator, Li Hanqiu carried more than enough weight to claim a world of his own.
"As for the other factions of the Great Cangwu World: leave outright, or be absorbed into the Nine Cauldrons Sect and become its members. From this day on, no faction shall exist in the Nine Cauldrons World outside the Nine Cauldrons Sect."
With that, Li Hanqiu turned to Xie Wu. "For those who decide to leave, I'll trouble you, Perfected Lord Xie, to escort them to the North Sea Star."
"Of course. Leave it to me," Xie Wu said at once, then added, "In fact, ever since I returned to Cangwu over a decade ago, I've been pouring effort into building up the Nine Cauldrons Sect. After all these years, it has grown to a considerable scale. It has recovered every inch of its former territory and taken in some of the surrounding lands."
Li Hanqiu had little trouble guessing his motive, and nodded his head slightly. "You've been thoughtful."
"Serving the Nine Cauldrons Sect is my honor," Xie Wu replied, all smiles.
He had come to the Great Cangwu World early and thrown his weight behind the Nine Cauldrons Sect precisely for the sake of those words.
"Three months from now, no power outside the Nine Cauldrons Sect will remain in the Great Cangwu World." Li Hanqiu issued the warning once more to the Golden Core battle immortals of the Infinite Star Palace, the Immortal Alliance, and the other factions. Then, caring nothing for whether they were willing, he swept his hand, signaling the warship to move forward into the Great Cangwu World.