The Modern Martial Immortal

The Cangbei warship sailed toward the Great Cangwu World as if no one else existed.

Outside the Great Cangwu World, every last Golden Core and Dharma Form cultivator wore a bitter expression.

"Perfected Lord Xie, what should we do next?" Lu Xi asked cautiously.

"Those who can merge into the Nine Cauldrons Sect should do so. As for those unwilling..." Xie Wu paused. "Go to the North Sea Star."

He glanced over the crowd. A trace of reluctance still lingered in a few eyes, and for a moment he couldn't help feeling wistful. "Once you've gone to the North Sea Star, learned its ways, and understood what Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang's current accomplishments really mean, you'll count yourselves lucky. More than that, you'll be grateful that Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang didn't wipe out you and the forces behind you, and you'll come to appreciate just how merciful he has been."

At that, everyone could only exchange glances.

"I'll be leaving Cangwu in three months. Those who wish to go can leave with me then." Xie Wu waved a hand, in no mood to chat further with these juniors, indulging their narrow-minded view of the world. "That will be all."

***

After passing through layer upon layer of divine lightning and astral wind, the Cangbei arrived directly at the site of Nine Heavens City, the Nine Cauldrons Sect's former headquarters.

It was plain to see that Nine Heavens City had been through war. But thanks to Xie Wu, arriving in Cangwu more than a decade ago, the fighting had long since subsided, and even the buildings once destroyed had been rebuilt. As a result, the city looked hardly any different from when they had left it.

"Alright, I know you each have your own affairs to attend to. Go on, do as you please." Yaoguang said. "Since the weakest among you is still at least at the Crimson Golden Core Realm, there's nowhere you cannot go in the Great Cangwu World."

Liang Qiu, Dong Liushui, Lou Yuyu, Murong Hui, Xu Qiexing, and the other Nine Cauldrons Sect veterans saluted Yaoguang in unison, then eagerly went their separate ways.

Just as Yaoguang had said, with their current strength, nothing in the Great Cangwu World posed any danger to them. Besides, the entire Great Cangwu World, surrounding starry skies included, lay within the perception range of Yaoguang's psychic thought. If anything happened, he would immediately sense it.

"Perfected Lord, Sect Master Li, Fenghua, you should go do your own things too. Get a sense of the Nine Cauldrons Sect's situation and plan out its next stage of development," Yaoguang said to the few people beside him.

Li Hanqiu and Li Qingshan nodded, wasting no words on courtesy.

But Tang Fenghua didn't move. "My family and friends have all gone to the North Sea Star. Nothing here holds any attachment for me, so I'll stay by your side and whatever small and trivial matters come up, Deputy Sect Master."

Yaoguang nodded, not pressing the matter.

In truth, there didn't seem to be much in Cangwu worth holding on to for him, either. Even the Yaoguang World didn't carry much weight in his heart. After all, people had feelings toward other people, not toward places. However familiar your hometown might have been, once all the familiar faces were gone, no one would feel much longing for it.

Especially since Nine Heavens City had clearly suffered damage back then. The Purple Firmament Institute still stood, but it had been rebuilt within the past decade or so, and Yaoguang could no longer find much that felt familiar inside it.

The things are unchanged, but the people are long gone. Nothing captured those words better than this.[1]

The true reason he had returned to the Great Cangwu World was to recall and bid farewell to everything he had striven for here, all those years ago. Proof that he had once lived in this place, and fought for it.

"Cangwu is simply too small in the end, and a little too fragile," Yaoguang said.

"It is. We used to think Cangwu was vast and boundless, with more mountains, rivers, and wonders than anyone could count... Yet now, if we wished, we could easily leave our footprints in every corner of it," Tang Fenghua replied.

"That's because we were weak back then. With cultivation at the Core Formation Realm, or even the Unity Realm, crossing the Great Cangwu World, which spans millions of kilometers, was no easy task," Yaoguang said.

Tang Fenghua nodded. "It reminds me of my childhood hometown. Back then, I thought our village was enormous, so big that a whole day wasn't enough to play across all of it, and every corner was a treasure trove. Looking back now, it was only because we were so small that one tiny village could hold our entire world. When we grew up and went back for another look... it turned out to be just an ordinary little village."

Yaoguang smiled. He knew that feeling too. Unfortunately, neither the Yaoguang World nor the Great Cangwu World could give it to him, because neither was truly his home.

"Let's leave it at that," Yaoguang said. "To make sure the Great Cangwu World can't be threatened or invaded easily, I'll lay down an array here to safeguard it."

With that, his figure flickered, and he appeared outside the Great Cangwu World. The world really was too small for him now, so small that a single Void Flicker could take him anywhere within it.

When he reappeared, Xie Wu was still packing his things. The moment he sensed Yaoguang out beyond the starry sky, he moved forward to pay his respects, but Yaoguang shook his head at him, and then... closed his hand.

The surrounding starry sky seemed to be seized by some vast and mighty force, contracting and collapsing toward the space where they stood. Yet through all of it, the Great Cangwu World itself was completely untouched; only the living beings outside it could see what was happening.

And so the sight that unfolded before them was of tens of billions, even hundreds of billions of kilometers of void streaming endlessly toward the Great Cangwu World like flowing water. The spectacle was so vast, so staggering, that even a Void-Piercing battle immortal like Xie Wu stood transfixed.

Golden Core and Dharma Form cultivators like Ye Lin, Lu Xi, and Feng Ao, watching what seemed like a cosmic catastrophe beyond words, were too horrified to speak.

It was unimaginable! Tens of billions, hundreds of billions of kilometers of void, pouring, contracting, collapsing toward the Great Cangwu World like water! This was nearly the equivalent of condensing an entire star system onto a single world.

Such divine ability, such vastness, such power went beyond the comprehension of everyone who witnessed it. This was power they would never have dared to imagine in their lifetimes.

"This kind of power..." Only after who knew how long did Ye Lin manage a moan, as if she had forgotten how to speak.

"An ant," Lu Xi said in a low voice. "Before power like this, I feel like an ant."

At the absolute limit of their strength, they could rival a star. But a star was only a few million kilometers across. Against Yaoguang's casual workings on the scale of tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions of kilometers of void, what did star-rivaling brilliance amount to? It was the difference between a man who could lift a boulder half a meter wide and another who could move mountains and fill seas!

That shock, that complete overturning of everything they understood, instantly shattered the composure of every Golden Core and Dharma Form cultivator from the Infinite Star Palace, the Immortal Alliance, the Thousand-Beast Sect, and the rest. Only at this moment did they truly understand what it meant to be as lowly as an ant, gazing at the sky from the bottom of a well.

"It's not a feeling." Xie Wu swept a glance in their direction. "Before a great existence like Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang, Golden Core battle immortals are like ants... Even tens of thousands of Golden Core battle immortals swarming him at once couldn't harm him at all."

Those words extinguished the last hopes these battle immortals had.

***

Yaoguang paid no attention to the Golden Core battle immortals outside Cangwu. The gap between their levels was simply too great.

He was channeling the surrounding void, reinforcing and reshaping the periphery of the Great Cangwu World.

The array he was laying down was called the Thick Earth Void-Suppressing Array. Its grade was not especially high, merely level 13.

For one thing, you can't make bricks without straw; the environment around the Great Cangwu World made it hard to set up anything of a much higher level. For another, he had no intention of spending too much time or energy on this array.

At level 13, with a Void-Piercing battle immortal left presiding over it, even a Void-Piercing cultivator arriving in person would meet its doom, and even a Void-Refining cultivator would be trapped inside, finding it difficult to escape.

And that was with a mere battle immortal at the helm. In the hands of a true Void-Piercing cultivator, trapping and killing Void-Refining cultivators would be no difficult feat.

***

One year later.

If any Golden Core battle immortal native to the Great Cangwu World were to look out at the surrounding starry sky just then, they would have seen that the structure of the void around the Great Cangwu World had completely transformed, even showing a hint of the marvels found only on the North Sea Star.

The level 13 array had taken shape.

"That should do it," Yaoguang said. "At the very least, the Great Cangwu World's safety is now assured."

Of the Void-Piercing, Void-Refining, and Void-Shattering cultivators in this region of stars, perhaps not every last one lived on the North Sea Star, but eight or nine out of ten had ties to it.

The remaining few were figures of towering renown across the cosmos, easy enough to inquire about. And anyone who could be inquired about would, in turn, know about the North Sea Star and the illustrious figures of the surrounding starry skies.

Yaoguang reckoned that after he had beaten the Yin Lunar Sect into sealing off its sect, a place on the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings was surely his. A powerhouse of that caliber, though not as renowned as a Dao Lord, could still make his name resound across millions, even tens of millions of light-years.

Once they learned of this world's connection to him, any Void-Refining or Void-Shattering cultivators capable of breaking the array would hardly be so foolish as to move against the Great Cangwu World, given how little value it held.

As he finished laying down the array, Li Hanqiu and the others who had been waiting nearby stepped forward together and bowed respectfully. "Thank you, Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang, for laying down this grand array to protect the Great Cangwu World."

Yaoguang nodded to them, then took out three implements shaped like imperial jade seals and handed them to Li Hanqiu. "These are three array talismans I condensed. Each carries the power to control the grand array. Distribute them as you see fit."

Li Hanqiu hurriedly accepted them.

"Also, the Thick Earth Void-Suppressing Array will change the structure of the Great Cangwu World, drawing it closer to the North Sea Star. Of course, the change will happen gradually, taking about a century to fully complete. Once it does, the Great Cangwu World's spiritual qi will be several times denser than before. With richer spiritual qi, the ordinarily rare Foundation Building cultivators will naturally grow in number, and there will be no shortage of Golden Core cultivators. In an environment like that, Golden Core battle immortals like you would each have a real hope of reaching the Void-Piercing Realm."

Yaoguang paused for a moment. "Consider this array my last gift to the Great Cangwu World."

1. This is a famous Chinese idiom. ☜