Granny Guo climbed up the tree.
Her vital blood energy had originally dissipated due to her advanced age.
Her old body had both legs clamped onto a branch, as she frantically plucked at the nearest fruit, muttering to herself.
"Absolutely impossible! To successfully cultivate an Earth-Grade technique, unless it is a heaven-bestowed technique or one perfectly suited to one's own Dao path, it would still take hundreds, if not several hundreds of years.
As for other techniques, they would be difficult to cultivate even in a thousand or ten thousand years."
With this pluck, another of the Li Clan Ancestor's techniques was destroyed.
The Daoist arts on her body dissipated, but the Li Clan Ancestor's Shadowless Void-Crossing Sword slashed a monster that had emerged from the Qiu Clan's iceberg cave.
He simply tossed the sword aside, stepped into the void, and manifested the Vajra Arhat Body!
"Granny Guo!"
Qiu Chuhui hurriedly arrived beside Granny Guo.
The Li Clan Ancestor had lost his rules, but his Daoist arts were incredibly formidable.
When the ice spikes struck him, how could early-stage Void Refining Spiritual power possibly break through the mid-stage of the Void Refining realm?
Moreover, when Daoist arts manifested in the world, they carried the effect of temporarily borrowing the rules of heaven and earth.
Looking into the distance, she saw the Arhat Dharmic Avatar behind the Li Clan Ancestor.
The Vajra Buddha was sacred and majestic. With a single palm strike, a ten-mile Buddha palm descended from the sky.
Even the rules temporarily evaded its sharp edge under the Buddha's Dharmic power, so much so that flames rippled along the edge of the palm.
As the palm descended, she used her ice and snow methods to manifest ice snakes that coiled around the Buddha palm, yet it didn't hinder the Buddha's Spiritual power in the slightest.
A peak Divinity Transformation realm demonic beast was turned into minced meat.
The remaining eighteen demonic beasts bit and tore around the Buddha.
Unexpectedly, ice appeared on the Li Clan Ancestor's body... no, that was fire burning with raging flames! A longbow appeared in his hand.
The Li Clan Ancestor leaned back and retreated, causing the Divinity Transformation demonic beasts' Spiritual power to only hit his phantom afterimages.
The sound of a bowstring echoed, and a demonic beast perished.
Qiu Chuhui also had no choice but to protect Granny Guo with all her might.
With a fierce shout, light and fire burst from her eyes, and her techniques surged to the heavens.
A massive ice sculpture of a Qilin stood suppressing the front, barely managing to block the Li Clan Ancestor's one bow and nine arrows.
"Granny Guo, what do we do? Do you have any other methods?"
Qiu Chuhui floated beside the tree, shouting sternly at Granny Guo.
Qiu Xundao's begging Granny Guo to come was absolutely their trump card against the Li Clan Ancestor's spatial rules.
Granny Guo had also confidently vowed that while anyone below the Body Integration realm could kill her, as long as she had experts by her side, she was an invincible existence.
To deal with the Li Clan Ancestor, she had brought eight Divinity Transformation experts from the family.
These eight were highly proficient in array formations and could contend against Void Refining cultivators.
There was also the family's secret treasure, the Iceberg Demon Nest, containing twenty-four Divinity Transformation beings.
Now, however, she only saw a helpless Granny Guo.
The array formation of the eight Divinity Transformation experts was neutralized by patches of tortoise shell arrays appearing in the cloudy sky.
The twenty-four Divinity Transformation demonic beasts could only crane their necks and await slaughter under the Li Clan Ancestor's Spiritual power.
"What method could I possibly have? Ah?"
Granny Guo stood on tiptoe, hugging the tree, struggling to support her neck and arms as she tried to pluck the few remaining ice fruits.
Hearing Qiu Chuhui's questioning, she stared with terrified eyes.
The Li Clan Ancestor was an existence she could not comprehend.
What she had told the Li Clan Ancestor earlier was also half-true and half-false.
She had said she was at the end of her lifespan, had no family or friends, and wasn't afraid of death at all.
But who in the world wasn't afraid of death?
She had said she came to help the Qiu Clan to establish the prestige of the Northern Border.
With so many experts in the Northern Border, why would an old woman like her join in the fun for no reason? She would have been better off lying quietly on an iceberg waiting to die.
It was simply because she understood that, in the unseen world, a mysterious force had led her and Qiu Xundao to make the exact same choice.
As long as she, who had originally stayed out of it, broke the Li Clan's deadlock, she would be able to extend her lifespan and catch a glimpse of the Great Dao.
To hell with this Great Dao!
She would have been better off finding a few sunny, cheerful young men in the mortal realm and enjoying good food and drinks for her last dozen or so years!
"Granny Guo!"
The Qiu Clan girl was truly noisy, her shouting incredibly annoying.
Granny Guo gritted her teeth and slammed her fist into the tree, startling Qiu Chuhui.
Resting her palm against the tree, Granny Guo stood on the icy branch.
She stared at the Li Clan Ancestor, whose hands had manifested True Fire that was melting the ice walls.
She took a deep breath and said resolutely, "Qiu Clan girl."
"This junior is here." Qiu Chuhui's expression was grave.
A cold wind laced with Spiritual power blew through the Void Refining space, and both of their expressions were resolute.
"I want you to swear an oath.
After the Li Clan is exterminated, you must ride non-stop to slaughter your way into the Azure Cloud Prefecture and bring back life-extending pills for me.
No matter what treasures the Qiu Clan obtains, I want the best ones. And one last thing..."
Granny Guo didn't hesitate.
She knew Qiu Chuhui would definitely agree, and sure enough, the girl nodded.
Her voice was hoarse, "I will fall into a coma. Take me to see the Grand Tutor and tell him that I have finished what I needed to do."
"I still have one final method."
Granny Guo let out a low roar.
The ice crystals in the Void Refining space unexpectedly formed a whirlwind, sweeping up all the fruits on the ice fruit tree and lifting the entire massive tree into the air.
Fine cracks began to appear on the ice tree.
At this moment, all the demonic beasts besieging the Li Clan Ancestor retreated one after another.
They felt a trace of terror, as if as long as they got close to the Li Clan Ancestor, everything they possessed would be swept away.
Li Wei stood frozen in astonishment, frowning as he looked at Granny Guo in the distance.
He slightly raised his head.
In this moment, he felt the helplessness of being a mortal.
Meridians, lifespan, vital blood energy, and Spiritual power—everything was engulfed by the storm and swept up into the sky.
There was a saying in the world about 'Mortal Transformation'.
When people broke through the physical limits of a mortal and reached Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment, their realms improving step by step; the long years would make them forget the time when they were mortals.
Yet, without a doubt, only a mortal body truly possessed the deepest understanding of the rules.
For example, back then, one had to work painstakingly just to cultivate a single technique, except at that time, they had absolutely no idea what rules were.
Upon reaching an extremely high realm, it became exceedingly difficult to ever experience that feeling again.
Three people in the family had broken through in such a manner.
Like Yaowen, whose numerous clones allowed her to continuously pursue Daoist arts.
Like Li Changsheng, who could only break through to the next realm without any bottlenecks when he transformed into a mortal.
And Su Chen—the reincarnated Su Chen—who once again transformed into a mortal to seek his Dao of Sealing.
Li Wei felt that Su Chen's Dao of Sealing might be even stronger than Granny Guo's.
Looking at the Spiritual power swept up together above his head and divided into two sides, Li Wei's eyes were clear, and a flash of enlightenment suddenly crossed his mind.
Above was the Spiritual power divided into two sides:
One side consisted of Sword Dao, Thunder Dao, Fire Dao, and similar Spiritual powers;
The other side was Blood, Corruption, Darkness, Sacred Heart...
Under the whirlwind, they formed a Yin-Yang Fish diagram.
"The myriad Dharmas of the world are divided into black and white, righteous and evil, one Yin and one Yang.
There shouldn't be anyone with a Yin-Yang spiritual root occupying my Yin-Yang Dao path, right?
I know all the techniques of my descendants and have deeply researched their rules. Each and every one of these rules makes for a broad and open Dao path!"