The Modern Martial Immortal

The starry sky was vast. Thanks to the existence of spatial nodes, a Void-Piercing cultivator using a Dao Artifact flying vessel could cover tens of millions of light-years a year on the faster routes.

Yet delivering a message even just a few thousand light-years away remained enormously difficult. Information in the starry sky therefore traveled with tremendous delay. It was nothing strange for those who spent most of their time in the outer starry sky and rarely met other cultivators to be a full hundred years behind when it came to news.

This Void-Piercing fiendish cultivator was the perfect example. At some unknown point, he had betrayed the Golden Lion Fiend Lord and defected to the Light Divine Race. Or perhaps, when the Light Divine Race discovered the Dao Lord's cache decades ago, they had captured him, and he had submitted to save his own life.

His intended role had presumably been to lure the Golden Lion Fiend Lord into this trap, so that once that fiend lord was dealt with, the Light Divine Race could enjoy the Dao Lord's secret realm for themselves.

Except the Golden Lion Fiend Lord had already died under Yaoguang's sword. And this Void-Piercing fiendish cultivator, who didn't know Yaoguang at all, had led him into the trap just the same.

On top of that, the Light Divine Race had spent all this time tangled up with Zong Wenxian, so their news was delayed as well.

Like now, upon seeing Yaoguang, not only did they not run, but, despite having three divine sovereigns on hand, they dared to send only two to surround and kill him, leaving the third to continue working on the secret cache's grand array and prevent it from repairing itself.

They were basically delivering themselves to his doorstep one by one...

"You are bold," Yaoguang couldn't help saying.

He ignored the Void-Piercing fiendish cultivator hurriedly slipping away. Although the trap's power rivaled that of a level 12 array, it couldn't hold him at all. But he was in no rush. The two Void-Shattering divine sovereigns were the main course.

"Let me see how much of your strength is left once you're this far from your earthly divine kingdom." Yaoguang activated the Limitless Sword at once.

"However much is left doesn't matter, as long as it's enough to take you!"

"Enough. Quick and clean. See if we can take him alive first. Alive would be best. He's the Heavenly Dao Sect's deputy sect master. If we convert him into one of our believers and send him to make trouble for Zong Wenxian, Zong Wenxian will never again have the time or energy to come after us."

"Careful all the same. This Yaoguang was able to rely on a single array to slay the Eight Desolations and the Dark Fiend Lords. His combat power is probably no less than an ordinary Void-Shattering cultivator's! Do not hold back, and don't get careless! Zong Wenxian has been at our throats like a madman these past few years. If Yaoguang escapes and carries word to him, we'll be in real trouble."

The two divine sovereigns exchanged these brief words, then one of them turned into a stream of light and surged straight toward Yaoguang.

The other began preparing a Dao Technique. Behind him appeared nine treasured pearls, each one flowing with Dao resonance. They were nine Dao Artifacts.

As the Dao resonance circulated, the power of the nine Dao Artifacts seemed to fuse into one, forming an array with power surpassing even that of an ordinary high-grade Dao Artifact. If he was really allowed to unleash this Dao Technique...

He never got the chance!

Yaoguang, bearing the Limitless Sword, activated the Torrent of Time! Two Void Swords slashed toward the two divine sovereigns of the Light Divine Race in an instant.

The divine race's nature somewhat resembled that of fiendish cultivators. Where a fiendish cultivator's core was the heavenly fiend origin, the divine race's origin was the eternal divine fire. The difference was that a divine race member's divine body mattered far more than a fiend's fiendish body, and its power was greater.

Even so, faced with two Void Swords rushing toward them on torrents of void, both the divine sovereign charging in as streaming light and the one preparing his killer Dao Technique felt the same thing: that strike carried an edge sharp enough to cut through any matter.

"We can't block it!"

The realization hit both divine sovereigns at the same instant. Unless they were standing at the heart of the earthly divine kingdom, they had no chance of blocking Yaoguang's attack.

"Suoka!" The divine sovereign of streaming light gave a low shout, rapidly gathering himself into an enormous ring of light that swept out to bind one of the Void Swords.

The other, the one preparing his Dao Technique, unleashed it ahead of time as well. A shaft of rainbow light thousands of meters across streaked through the void at the speed of light and struck the second Void Sword.

And then... It was like throwing snowballs at a flying blade.

The instant they collided, both the enormous ring of light and that void-piercing pillar of rainbow radiance were reduced to shreds by the sharpness of the Void Swords.

Countless streams of light burst apart, releasing a brilliance terrifying enough to rival a supernova. Yet even that explosion could not stop the Void Swords' unstoppable advance, and the divine sovereign who had become the ring of light had his divine body cut to pieces the next instant.

"A grand-perfection-stage Void Sword!" His psychic thought quaked with terror. The divine sovereign turned his body back into a mass of living flame, and managed to escape the devouring force within the Void Sword.

Even so, nearly five percent of his fire of life was torn apart by it.

The other divine sovereign immediately set the nine Dao Artifact pearls floating before him into motion, hurling them like artillery shells, one after another, against the oncoming Void Sword.

Every impact meant the destruction of one Dao Artifact. Under that continuous bombardment, the Void Sword's edge finally began to slow, and by the time only four of the nine pearls remained, it had just barely been smashed apart.

But by then, Yaoguang's second wave, a combined bombardment of Void Swords and Great Annihilation Sword Qi, was already about to reach them.

"H-How is he this fast?!" Divine Sovereign Suoka, who had sacrificed five Dao Artifacts to stop a single Void Sword, felt his psychic thought shudder as he was forced to gather his Dao Technique again, firing another blazing white pillar of streaming light against the Void Swords.

On the other side, the divine sovereign who had earlier become a ring of light to bind Yaoguang had no such luck. Under the bombardment of the Great Annihilation Sword Qi, the radiance around him began crumbling at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"Qiming!" he cried out to the divine sovereign holding down the Dao Lord's cache, while also moving to trigger an array to trap Yaoguang.[1]

But his array was only at level 12, one level below even the old Heavenly Dragon-Slaying Array before its modification. When the environment didn't allow it, laying down a level 13 array was no easy feat.

And a mere level 12 array... The moment Yaoguang brought out the Heaven-Sealing Stele and its void-sealing power rolled outward, the grand array shattered on the spot.

"A high-grade Dao Artifact!" Feeling the Heaven-Sealing Stele's terrifying void-suppressing might, both divine sovereigns paled at once.

Yaoguang took out the Wandering Dragon Sword, which instantly transformed into golden light and followed after the Void Swords.

Amplified by the Torrent of Time, the attacks came at the absolute limit of frequency, giving the two divine sovereigns no chance to catch their breath, battering them like an endless storm.

In the span of a few breaths, Yaoguang unleashed five successive rounds of the Torrent of Time, six Void Swords, and eighteen streaks of Great Annihilation Sword Qi.

Every attack carried his full strength. Grand-perfection-stage and perfection-stage attacks flowed from his hands one after another. One on one, every single Dao Technique of his outmatched these divine sovereigns, who were cut off from the earthly divine kingdom and unable to bring out their full power. And the keen battle sense granted by Hunting Instinct pushed the threat of his Dao Techniques to its very peak.

With the sixth round of the Torrent of Time, the divine sovereign who had first become the ring of light had his eternal divine fire blasted apart. What remained of it, less than thirty percent, was swept into Yaoguang's grotto-heaven to be subjugated and refined.

As for Divine Sovereign Suoka, after Yaoguang had worn away every protective treasure he owned and pulverized sixty percent of his divine body, he, too, was pinned beneath the Heaven-Sealing Stele.

The reason Yaoguang had subjugated him rather than killing him directly was that the last of them, Divine Sovereign Qiming, had sensed the battle going wrong and decided to run.

But he had only just brought out his Dao Artifact flying vessel, and hadn't yet finished gathering momentum for a void jump, when Yaoguang appeared before him with a single Void Flicker.

The Great Dao projection held within the Limitless Sword made Yaoguang's command of void power nothing short of absolute.

With one light press of his hand, the Great Dao of void throughout the region was thrown into total disarray, and the Dao Artifact flying vessel, poised to leap who knew how many hundreds of millions of kilometers in one breath, ground to a halt with it.

Before Qiming could even understand what had caused that interference, the golden light of the Wandering Dragon Sword jumped through the void, shooting out at an impossible angle to cut clean through his Dao Artifact flying vessel.

Dao resonance collided with Dao resonance, and something like a black hole opened at the artifact's core, devouring and destroying all matter around it, leaving the vessel nearly destroyed on the spot.

"Heavenly Dao Sect! Is this your declaration of war on our divine race?!" Divine Sovereign Qiming roared at the sight.

What answered him was Yaoguang's next Void Sword, slashing down without the slightest hesitation.

Where the sword light fell, nothing could stand in its way. This divine sovereign, whose strength, even far from the earthly divine kingdom, still approached the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord's, was stripped of his protective Dao Artifacts and protective Dao Techniques on the spot!

And knowing all too well how sharp Yaoguang's Void Swords were, he didn't dare entertain the slightest thought of fighting to the bitter end. With a fierce sweep of his hand, he cast out a Great Translocation Divine Talisman and vanished from that stretch of starry sky in an instant.

But Yaoguang had already learned to prepare against such talismans during his battle with the Golden Lion Fiend Lord. Under the illumination of the True Spirit Light, he quickly recaptured the divine sovereign's position and unleashed Void Flicker after Void Flicker.

If the scale of space could have been stretched out indefinitely at that moment, Yaoguang's figure would have been seen flickering onward without pause, each flicker covering tens of billions of kilometers, nearly the span of an entire star system.

Flickering onward like this, he soon caught up with Divine Sovereign Qiming.

"Such strength..." Despair crept into Qiming's eyes.

Unwilling to accept it, he fought back with everything he had, casting out every last killing treasure on him. But the outcome never changed.

Before long, this divine sovereign, too, had his divine body crushed and his eternal divine fire extinguished by the combined force of Void Swords and Great Annihilation Sword Qi.

With that done, Yaoguang made his way back to the battlefield by repeatedly using Void Flicker. Divine Sovereign Suoka had still not broken free of the Heaven-Sealing Stele's subjugation.

The handful of remaining Void-Refining and Void-Piercing members of the Light Divine Race had no time to get far at all.

A few dozen Void Flickers later, every divine race expert's aura he could sense had vanished from that entire stretch of starry sky.

1. TL note: Qiming can also have two meanings. 1. The ancient Chinese name for Venus. 2. Being enlightened by something. As with most names, this has been transliterated, and this note is left to show the symbolism of this term. ☜