The Modern Martial Immortal

"Yaoguang!" Perfected Lord Bu Zhou stared at the figure that had appeared out of nowhere before him with terror in his eyes.

Throughout his flight, he had pushed his mental perception to its absolute limit; never mind a person, if a single mote of dust had entered the space around him, he would have known instantly, parsed its structure, and determined whether it was conjured by a divine ability, guided by a Dao Technique, or simply natural. Yet Yaoguang's arrival had completely escaped him.

The man was like the void itself. Wherever the void existed, he could be.

Who paid attention to whether the emptiness around them had changed? Who could catch an anomaly in the void the moment it appeared?

The void was the very foundation that carried all things. Short of ceasing to exist, no one could ever be separated from it or truly escape its influence, not even by hiding inside their own grotto-heaven. After all, the structure of every grotto-heaven was itself a product of the Great Dao of void.

Perfected Lord Bu Zhou felt endless despair. "Yaoguang, what do you want from me?"

He rushed on, "I'll swear it to you. From this day on, I'll support you in becoming the sect master of the Heavenly Dao Sect. I won't stand in your way!"

"Your word isn't worth anything," Yaoguang said calmly, hand rising slightly, and the golden light of the Wandering Dragon Sword transformed into a Void Sword, a sharp killing edge that came slashing down.

That edge, condensed wholly out of the void, gave Bu Zhou the illusion that even his psychic thought was being torn apart just from sensing it.

No! It was not an illusion! Psychic thought also needed void power to sustain its existence. When void power set out to crush everything, psychic thought itself lost the ground it stood on.

"Yaoguang, you can't kill me! No matter what, I'm a disciple of the Central Heaven Dao Lord! Kill me, and even if it's only to save face, he will come for you! No Void-Shattering cultivator, however strong, can fight a Dao Lord who wields enough power to influence the universe! You'd be paying with your life! It isn't worth it!"

Bu Zhou kept pleading, trying to persuade Yaoguang. "You have a bright future. The sect master's seat is within arm's reach, and beyond it, a real chance at Dao integration and at becoming a Dao Lord. Once you're a Dao Lord, that's 129,600 years of life, a shot at crossing the Gate of the Immortal Realm, ascension, immortality! Why throw all that away to kill a Void-Shattering cultivator who doesn't have long to live anyway?"

"You think a little too highly of yourself. I can smooth things over with the Central Heaven Dao Lord even after killing you." Yaoguang extended his hand, unhurried. "Besides, simply dying by my hand would be a waste. You were never walking out of the southern domain alive. Your death should at least be worth something..."

Before he was even done speaking, Yaoguang's Void Sword, driven by the Wandering Dragon Sword, crashed down onto Perfected Lord Bu Zhou.

As the perfected lord tried to hurl himself backward and open the distance, the Heaven-Sealing Stele, which had long since been prepared, pressed down, and the stretch of void around Bu Zhou froze solid.

"No!" His terror burst outward in tsunami-like waves of psychic thought.

But being unwilling meant nothing under the weight of absolute power.

The Void Sword split Perfected Lord Bu Zhou's grotto-heaven open in an instant, and the blade's edge, unchecked, slashed through every defensive barrier inside and struck the Dao Seed at its very core, shattering it on the spot.

But before the Dao Seed's collapse could drag the whole grotto-heaven down with it, Yaoguang made a sudden sweeping motion, seized the perfected lord, now stripped of his Dao Seed's power, and hurled him into the void.

The next moment, the grotto-heaven teetering on the edge of collapse erupted with a destructive momentum unlike anything before. To anyone who didn't know better, this didn't appear to be a grotto-heaven failing; it looked like one being pushed deliberately to its absolute peak.

Almost simultaneously, Yaoguang's own grotto-heaven swung wide open. The Foolish Soul and Soul Slayer Fiend Lords, both sealed inside with their lives hanging by a thread, shot out. The two of them understood perfectly that staying trapped in Yaoguang's grotto-heaven meant being refined one after the other.

Through those dozen breaths of captivity, they had never stopped struggling by the most violent means they had. The instant they sensed the grotto-heaven tearing open, both fiend lords used every remaining scrap of strength, attempting a wild breakout.

Yet, before the newly escaped pair could even assess their surroundings, they found Perfected Lord Bu Zhou's figure directly in their path, and the destructive energy roiling off him rivaled that of a grotto-heaven self-destructing. One touch of perception, and both fiend lords' psychic minds shuddered.

"Bu Zhou!" the Soul Slayer Fiend Lord roared.

But before his fury could even finish venting through his psychic thought, the Foolish Soul Fiend Lord had already shown himself to be the more decisive of the two. "You want me dead? It won't come cheap! Hahaha! If I die, one of you is coming with me!"

In the next instant, the fiend lord detonated the power of his entire fiendish body. 99.9 percent of the heavenly fiend origin within him turned to fiendish flame that corroded the void and annihilated everything it touched, slamming madly into Perfected Lord Bu Zhou's grotto-heaven.

The fiend lord was staking everything, keeping back only a single wisp of true spirit for possession, to trade mutual ruin with Perfected Lord Bu Zhou.

"No... it's not like th—" Perfected Lord Bu Zhou's despairing psychic thought rippled out, but before it could carry, the erupting heavenly fiend origin corroded and dissolved it completely.

The fiendish flames smashing into his grotto-heaven became the last straw laid across its back. Already on the verge of ruin, the grotto-heaven lost any ability to resist, collapsed, and exploded!

Destructive power, stronger than what words could describe, and countless times more terrifying than a supernova, collided head-on with the Foolish Soul Fiend Lord's near-self-detonation of fiendish flame.

The sheer savagery of it shook even the Soul Slayer Fiend Lord to his core. Who knew the Heavenly Dao Sect's people fought this viciously? Self-destructing at the drop of a hat, without any hesitation! The two of them had truly fought to mutual annihilation.

But after watching for only a moment, the fiend lord's sharp instincts caught something. "Something's wrong!"

Something was very wrong. Just now, Perfected Lord Bu Zhou hadn't been driving his grotto-heaven to its peak to intercept them as they broke free of Yaoguang's grotto-heaven. No, it was more like he could no longer hold the grotto-heaven together at all, like it was already on the verge of collapse!

Now that he thought about it, he became sure that his hypothesis was correct!

𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

His life-bound Dao Seed had already been destroyed, his grotto-heaven moments from failing. That was why the instant the Foolish Soul Fiend Lord's dying counterattack hit him, he directly self-destructed, taking the fiend lord with him!

And the one who had destroyed his life-bound Dao Seed...

"Yaoguang!" The fiend lord's gaze snapped to Yaoguang, whose grotto-heaven was spreading open once more.

Killing with someone else's hand! The lord of the southern domain had carried out a murder using another's hand! No, it went further than that. He meant to use Perfected Lord Bu Zhou's death as the justification for the Heavenly Dao Sect to declare war on the Yin Lunar Sect!

How... Why would anyone ignite a war between two sects?! How many cultivators die in a war like that? How many families get torn apart, and how many are ground into dust? Is this deputy sect master of the Heavenly Dao Sect insane?! Disbelief filled the fiend lord's eyes.

Just then, a cry rang out, grief-stricken, yet carrying somewhere inside it the trace of a smile, confirming his every guess.

"Perfected Lord Bu Zhou! What a terrible way to die!"

Recording Stone in hand, Yaoguang's psychic thought rolled through the void, and his mighty grotto-heaven came down over the Soul Slayer Fiend Lord once more.

"The Yin Lunar Sect dares murder a supreme elder of my Heavenly Dao Sect, and a direct disciple of our Dao Lord at that! We will not tolerate nor forget this! Yin Lunar Sect, prepare yourselves for the Heavenly Dao Sect's fury. You will pay for what you've done!"

"No... that's not what happened!" The Soul Slayer Fiend Lord tried to explain.

But even as Yaoguang's psychic thought thundered, the Great Annihilation Sword Qi was already raining down on the Soul Slayer Fiend Lord. Four strands in succession blasted apart his fiendish body that the fiend lord had only just managed to pull back together.

Given no chance to re-form it, the fiend lord was swept up by the unfurled grotto-heaven and once again sealed into its depths.

That done, Yaoguang immediately took out a communication jade talisman and sent word straight to Supreme Elder Zhen Xuanyuan. Before long, the chief supreme elder's psychic thought surfaced from the talisman.

"Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang?" There was wariness in it, and confusion.

"Perfected Lord Bu Zhou is dead. He fell to a joint ambush by the Yin Lunar Sect's Soul Slayer and Foolish Soul Fiend Lords," Yaoguang said directly.

The emotion in the talisman spiked instantly. "Perfected Lord Bu Zhou is dead?! H-He was the Central Heaven Dao Lord's own direct disciple... H-How could he die?"

"He's dead. I did everything I could to save him, but I was still too late. In the end, I could only watch him and the Foolish Soul Fiend Lord destroy each other," Yaoguang said.

"This... How..." For a long moment, Zhen Xuanyuan seemed unable to accept the news.

"What's done is done, and grief serves nothing. The Heavenly Dao Sect must make its stance clear and teach the Yin Lunar Sect the price of murdering one of our supreme elders!" Yaoguang said gravely.

Zhen Xuanyuan did not answer for a long while. Another one dead. First Jing Yuntian, now Perfected Lord Bu Zhou. In such a short span, two of the supreme elders the Heavenly Dao Sect had spent so long accumulating were gone. It was simply...

"Supreme Elder Zhen Xuanyuan, I want you to mobilize immediately and prepare for full-scale war with the Yin Lunar Sect. If it comes to it, you'll lead our forces into their territory directly. For now, prepare and make our position known; beyond that, act on my orders. If the Yin Lunar Sect knows what's good for it and is willing to pay the price, the Heavenly Dao Sect doesn't have to fight them till mutual destruction." Yaoguang laid out his plan.

Zhen Xuanyuan didn't take up any of it. He was silent for a long time, then abruptly asked, "Perfected Lord Bu Zhou... did he really die at the hands of the Yin Lunar Sect's fiendish cultivators?"

"Absolutely. I have solid proof, and a Recording Stone of it. The recording isn't complete, but I can guarantee this much: Perfected Lord Bu Zhou died at the hands of the Yin Lunar Sect's Foolish Soul Fiend Lord!" Yaoguang confirmed it flatly, then added with a sigh, "Perfected Lord Bu Zhou brought Perfected Lord Jinghong to my southern domain for friendly talks. Perfected Lord Jinghong even agreed to support me in becoming the sect master. Who could have guessed that on the way out, Perfected Lord Bu Zhou would meet with something like this?"

"Perfected Lord Bu Zhou brought Perfected Lord Jinghong to the southern domain?! And... Perfected Lord Jinghong agreed to back you as sect master?" Zhen Xuanyuan was stunned all over again.

"Of course. If you don't believe me, ask Supreme Elder Gu Li," Yaoguang said evenly.

Zhen Xuanyuan said nothing for a good while, his thoughts in disarray. At long last, he spoke. "Understood. On your orders, I'll gather our forces at once and prepare for war with the Yin Lunar Sect!"