"Have you refined it enough?"
The Two Sages of the West, Minghe, and Kunpeng were straining with every ounce of their focus when a voice cut through the air like a cold blade. Ling Xiao had arrived.
"Ling Xiao! Treasures belong solely to those who are fated to possess them. Do you truly intend to aggressively seize everything for yourself?"
"We are all gathered here. Do you seriously intend to fight the four of us alone?"
The Two Sages of the West spoke in quick succession, their confidence visibly swelling as they saw that Dijun and Tai Yi were still fully entangled in their grueling clash with the ancient dragon, Ao Zhan.
"Enough with the nonsense. Get lost!"
Ling Xiao's shout was a snap of cold thunder. He wasted no more breath on words, immediately lunging forward to engage all four opponents simultaneously.
In that moment, seeing the chaotic surge of the battle, the remaining members of the Yao Race and the Ancestral Witches could no longer suppress their impulses; they too surged forward, desperate to seize the supreme prize.
"Quick, quick, quick! Everyone together! We take advantage of the chaos, snatch that mirror, and hang it right on the peak of Mount Buzhou!"
Gonggong let out a booming laugh, his body coiled with an impatient urge to strike. The Ancestral Witches were born for war, and witnessing a melee of this scale, they found it physically impossible to hold back.
"Exactly! This is a peerless opportunity. Even if we ultimately fail to claim it, we cannot allow it to fall into their hands!" Ju Mang echoed the sentiment.
"Do not be rash... do not be so rash. Let them bleed each other dry first!" Qiang Liang was uncharacteristically cautious, his voice strained as he urged his brothers to maintain their composure.
As he spoke, the other Ancestral Witches turned to look at him with genuine surprise, as if they were seeing a stranger inhabiting their brother's skin.
"Qiang Liang, why have you become such a coward? In situations like this in the past, were you not always the very first to charge into the fire?" Xi Zi asked in a tone of pure astonishment.
Qiang Liang stammered, his mind racing. He felt an inexplicable, bone-deep reluctance to join the fray—an intuition that something was fundamentally wrong—but under the mocking gazes of Gonggong and the others, his pride finally snapped.
He was being looked down upon!
He was being branded a coward by his own kin!
A flare of white-hot anger ignited in his heart. Feeling his dignity was being dragged through the dirt, Qiang Liang let out a sudden, defiant roar. "Fine! If we are going, we are going! Who among us is afraid of whom?"
Before the echoes of his voice had even faded, he launched himself forward, leading the charge with a desperate ferocity.
Houtu watched her brothers with a look of helpless resignation; she knew their nature too well and realized that further persuasion was a wasted effort. In truth, even she felt the faint, tempting pull to possess the mirror.
On the opposite side of the battlefield...
The gathered elites of the Yao Race saw that Kunpeng had already thrown himself into the struggle. Reluctantly, they realized they had no choice but to follow his lead, as Kunpeng remained one of their own cornerstones of power.
Immediately, the melee reignited with a terrifying intensity. Almost every combatant was a Quasi-Saint level mighty being, all of them colliding in a desperate, blood-soaked scramble to lay hands on the Grand Void Mirror.
Ling Xiao's divine eyes blazed with a dazzling intensity. His gaze appeared to physically tear through the fabric of the Void Realm. His entire body radiated a blinding light as the Law of Strength erupted from his core, the World Power contained within every cell of his flesh and blood resonating in a low, humming frequency. He held nothing back. With a single, concentrated punch, Minghe's entire body was detonated.
The ancestor of the Blood Sea was reduced to a sky full of crimson rain, his essence scattering across the vast, rolling ocean.
"Ah...!" Every individual drop of that blood spray manifested a distorted, agonized human face, roaring and screaming in unison. Minghe was struck by a simultaneous shock and a murderous fury, having never anticipated that he could be so forcefully blasted into fragments.
Kunpeng's black hair whipped wildly in the wind, his features twisting into a fierce, malevolent mask. Seeing Minghe literally erased by a single punch from Ling Xiao, a tremor of fear seized his heart, and he abandoned all arrogance. With a shrill, long cry, he shed his humanoid form to reveal his true, ancient self.
He became a massive, Ferocious Bird that seemed to blot out the entire sky. His black wings flapped with the force of a hurricane, causing the heavens and the earth to collapse toward the center of the blow. The entire Eastern Sea surged upward, the resulting pressure sweeping up and crushing hundreds of millions of Sea Race members in an instant.
With a piercing shriek, the bird flapped its wings and dove. The Void Realm buckled beneath its weight, looking like a black sun cutting a path of destruction across the firmament.
Boom!
Ling Xiao erupted in response. His entire silhouette was wrapped in the visible manifestation of Laws and cosmic order, appearing dazzling and peerlessly brilliant. He punched upward, his fist aimed squarely at the center of the massive, descending beak.
A shrill, agonizing scream tore through the air. Kunpeng's beak—an appendage like a divine mountain that was reputed to be able to peck apart the hardest Immortal Gold—was forcefully pulverized. The impact was so severe it nearly caused the bird's entire skull to explode from the inside out.
At that same moment, the Two Sages of the West summoned their own Magic Treasures. The Seven Treasures Wonderful Tree bloomed with a Seven-Colored Holy Light, the radiance sweeping toward Ling Xiao like a prismatic scythe.
In Jieyin's hand, the Receiving Divine Banner radiated a blinding, holy light as it was smashed forward with the weight of a mountain.
"Om! Boom...!"
Ling Xiao did not even attempt to evade the strikes. He stood his ground, forcefully enduring the collective blow. A Golden Law Light coated his physique, making him appear like a resurrected, ancient God of War. The attacks from the Two Sages landed squarely against him but failed to penetrate his skin by even a hair's breadth; instead, the offensive energy was continuously ground down and dissipated by his own aura.
To cultivate the Law is to cultivate the self. In this moment, he possessed a power that felt infinite and boundless. His might shook the very foundations of the heavens, a level of terrifying strength that far eclipsed his previous showings.
"This... this is impossible!"
The Two Sages of the West froze, their expressions paralyzed with stunned disbelief. In the next heartbeat, they were seized by a cold, immense terror. Ling Xiao's body burst forth with a Divine Radiance so bright it blinded the sky, and the air was suddenly filled with countless feather-like shards of Law. These were transformed from the Divine Feathers of the Golden Crow, rushing outward from every pore of his body in a lethal, 360-degree explosion.
Chi!
In an instant, the Two Sages of the West were riddled and pierced by the sky-filling storm of Divine Feathers. They tried desperately to conjure a defense, but the Divine Feathers—evolved from the convergence of multiple fundamental Laws—were impossible to block.
"Ah...!"
Ling Xiao flicked his finger again. The Divine Feathers transformed mid-air into razor-sharp swords of light. Golden radiance gushed out like a streak of silver river silk, slashing horizontally across the horizon.
The Two Sages of the West were instantly bisected at the waist, their Magic Treasures failing to react in time to protect their physical forms.
They roared in agony, their essence working frantically to restore their severed bodies. At their high Realm, such physical damage was no longer a death sentence, but the pain and humiliation were absolute.
Ling Xiao casually struck the Sages down toward the sea and then flashed through the void. He reached out, grabbed Kunpeng's massive wing in a vice-like grip, and tore it clean off the bird's body. A rain of golden-black blood poured down, staining a vast section of the ocean below.
Kunpeng let out a discordant roar of scream and rage, only for Ling Xiao to reach out again and rip the other wing from its socket.
The group of Great Yao who had been rushing forward to save Kunpeng were frozen in terror. They immediately abandoned their rescue mission, turning instead to try and seize the Grand Void Mirror before retreating.
Simultaneously, the Ancestral Witches struck. Massive hands that seemed to blot out the very sun reached for the Grand Void Mirror, intending to physically seize the entire section of the Void Realm in which the treasure was embedded.
"You are seeking your own death!"
Ling Xiao's cold shout echoed through the battlefield. At this moment, his entire form was a beacon of light, and Law Divine Chains shot out from his body in every direction. He fought with a supreme, terrifying courage, engaging every faction at once in a world-shaking confrontation!
Bang!
The massive, reaching hand of the Ancestral Witch was instantly repelled by a violent force, shattering a section of the Void Realm and the surrounding Sea of Clouds.
Ju Mang staggered back several miles, his massive feet unknowingly crushing countless members of the Sea Race beneath him. The seawater around his ankles instantly turned a dark, murky red.
"Ling Xiao! Hand over the Grand Void Mirror this instant, and we will retreat from this place immediately!" Candle Nine Nethers shouted, his gaze fixated on the injured Ju Mang. His expression was one of grim solemnity.
Ling Xiao's raw combat power had begun to instill a sense of genuine fear even in him, but having committed this much blood to the struggle, how could they possibly retreat empty-handed?
"Even if I were to hand it to you, do you honestly believe you could use it? To give such a prize to the likes of you would be a tragic Waste of Heavenly Resources!"
Ling Xiao let out a soft, mocking chuckle. His entire body began to glow with an inner heat, and endless, surging Divine Fire began to spill out from his silhouette.
Between the heavens and the earth, above the endless sea, Ling Xiao's figure began to expand at an impossible rate. A Golden Crow Dharma Idol manifested, reigning over the firmament and traversing the sky as streaks of golden light tore through the clouds.
In this moment, he was the literal twin of the Sun Star. His killing intent shook the heavens, and he possessed the supreme, crushing bearing of an ancient king. He could no longer be measured by the common sense of cultivators; his Magic Power was boundless, and his Divine Ability appeared infinite.
This was a heaven-shaking manifestation of power. Every living being present felt as if they were being suffocated by the heat and pressure. The moment the "Golden Crow Traversing the Sky" appeared, even beings watching from outside the boundaries of space and time could feel the shift in the world's axis.
Looking toward the peak of the Eastern Sea, it appeared as though a second Golden Sun was slowly rising from the waves, identical to the Sun Star in the firmament. Its terrifying might and murderous intent reached into every crevice of the world, illuminating the earth with a harsh, judgmental light.
"Ah...!"
The lesser mighty beings of the Yao Race were instantly melted into nothingness, their bodies crushed into fine dust by the mere presence of the heat. Some even had their very Divine Souls extinguished before they could realize they were dying.
Bai Ze, who had wisely remained in the rear, had long since fled, escaping into the depths of the sea. He had previously warned the leadership against opposing Ling Xiao, but his counsel had fallen on deaf ears.
They have only themselves to blame!
"I shall return to the Yao Race headquarters to take charge of what remains. If you will not listen to reason, then no one in this world can save you!"
"Do not dare to blame me when you meet your end!"
Bai Ze thought to himself, fleeing ten thousand miles in a single burst of speed, escaping toward the Primordial Shore without ever looking back.
Nuwa's expression was deathly grim. Gritting her teeth, she watched as the core members of her race were melted away. Gazing up at Ling Xiao's massive Dharma Idol standing between the heavens and the earth, she felt a profound sense of powerlessness, hesitating on the razor's edge of whether she should step forward and engage in a final, suicidal fight to the death.