Chapter 131 - 130: Obsession Heart!

With a roar that shook the very foundations of his spiritual sea, Lin Yuan raised his sword to strike.

The blade of his Thunder Rain Dao Intent, crackling with the fury of lightning, descended with a terrifying momentum. Yet, despite the sheer force behind the swing, the execution was a masterpiece of god-like precision. Lin Yuan guided the razor-thin edge of the blade, sliding it flawlessly into the junction where the dual origins of the tether met.

Time within his inner world seemed to dilate, stretching a single moment into an eternity.

The blade bit into the nexus. Lin Yuan forcefully angled the cutting edge downward, directing the entirety of his will against the root anchored in the Mortal Heart. He was not severing his love for Bai Qingyue, he was executing the fear of loneliness that had infected his soul during his sixty years as a mortal man.

SNAP!

The sound was a reverberation that echoed across the vast mist of his Sea of Consciousness.

The lower half of the massive thread was violently severed. It withered instantly, turning into gray ash that rained down upon the pulsing crimson mass of the Mortal Heart, completely neutralizing its clingy grip on his psyche.

Simultaneously, Lin Yuan instantly pulled the blade back, abruptly halting the swing before it could even graze the upper half of the tether.

He had done it. The thread connecting to his Dao Heart remained intact.

Then, the immediate reaction of his spiritual foundation was cataclysmic.

The moment the restricting anchor of mortal obsession was destroyed, Lin Yuan felt his aura shooting up with an explosive might.

In the physical world, sitting within the twilight of the River of Years Pagoda, Lin Yuan’s physical body began to radiate a blinding, majestic light. The walls of the temporal artifact shuddered violently as his pressure threatened to completely breach the absolute ceiling of the Nascent Soul realm. He could feel the conceptual authority of the heavens within his grasp. The power was intoxicating, a rushing river of divine energy that promised absolute invincibility.

He was ascending. He was crossing the threshold.

But the Heavens do not allow their absolute laws to be mocked without consequence.

Just as the euphoric, rushing tide of his ascending aura reached its absolute zenith, a jarring, unnatural dissonance abruptly halted his momentum. The mist of his spiritual sea suddenly dropped in temperature, plunging from the searing heat of lightning to a freezing, absolute zero that threatened to shatter his consciousness.

Lin Yuan’s spiritual avatar opened his deep purple eyes, his brow furrowing in alarm.

He looked toward the center of his soul, toward the glowing tether of his Dao Heart that he had just fought so desperately to preserve.

Something was wrong.

From the very core of his Dao Heart—the epicenter of his conviction—an anomaly was forming. A single drop of inky, absolute darkness seeped out from the glowing tether.

At first, it was minuscule, like a drop of ink falling into a vast ocean of pure water. But the darkness aggressively multiplied. The black mist began pouring out of his Dao Heart in thick, billowing torrents. It was completely devoid of spiritual Qi; instead, it radiated an aura of abyssal dread. It was the physical manifestation of his the action he had just taken.

By refusing to fully sever his attachments, by keeping the tether to Bai Qingyue intact while possessing the power of the Spirit Severing realm, he had gone against the heavens.

So this is what my actions have led to... Lin Yuan thought.

The fear of loneliness he had experienced within the dream domain was a reflection of his deepest determination. He did not want his cultivation journey to become a lonely path, and that conviction had become so deeply rooted within him that it had formed a tether within his Dao Heart linking it to his mortal heart.

Spirit Severing existed for precisely this reason.

A cultivator had to sever everything that could hold them back from pursuing the Great Dao. Every attachment, every emotion, every mortal tether had to be cut away so that their hearts could remain completely free.

As the saying went, "The heart that carries too many attachments cannot walk the Great Dao. To reach the heavens, one must first let go of everything beneath them."

Lin Yuan remained silent for a moment before slowly shaking his head.

But those words are not meant for me.

Why should he sever the very bond that had given his cultivation path meaning?

He had never sought immortality so that he could stand alone at the peak.

He wanted to reach the heavens with Bai Qingyue beside him.

If the Great Dao demands that I abandon the people I love, then perhaps it is not my Dao that needs to change.

Perhaps it is the path itself that I should challenge.

Lin Yuan’s eyes gradually became firm.

"I will sever what holds me back from the Great Dao, but I will never sever what gives me a reason to walk it."

The black mist violently expanded, swallowing the golden light of his ascension. It churned and twisted in a sickening, serpentine way, rapidly coalescing into a solid, massive physical form within his mind.

Scales began to form within the dark clouds. Massive, jagged horns tore through the mist. Two colossal, glowing eyes suddenly snapped open, locking their murderous gaze directly onto Lin Yuan’s spiritual avatar.

The black mist had completely transformed into a colossal dragon.

It was a creature born entirely from the friction between his mortal attachments and his divine ambition. The dragon let out a deafening, soul-rending roar that completely drowned out the hum of his aura. The sound carried the whispering, seductive voices of his deepest insecurities: You cannot be a god and truly be a husband. She will drag you down. Your love is a weakness. You are a fraud masquerading in the heavens. Just stop pretending that you love her, your just doing it because of your golden finger!

FALSE! Lin Yuan roared!

With a terrifying motion, the black dragon surged forward. its massive serpentine body began swirling rapidly around Lin Yuan’s spiritual avatar. It coiled tighter and tighter, a suffocating vortex of darkness attempting to crush his soul into oblivion, aiming to consume him and permanently halt his breakthrough.

The crushing pressure was astronomical. The icy energy of the black dragon began to freeze the mist of his spiritual sea, attempting to drag his soaring aura back down into the dirt.

But Lin Yuan did not panic. If the Heavens wanted to use his own Dao Heart against him, he would simply beat the Heavens into submission.

"You think you can use my conviction as a weapon against me?" Lin Yuan’s voice boomed, completely unfazed by the crushing darkness constricting around him. "My love is not a demon. My love is the very storm that will shatter you!"

Lin Yuan’s eyes flared with a blinding purple light. He dismissed the sword in his hand, opting instead for a display of absolute dominance.

He raised both hands, his fingers moving with blurring speed as he formed a supreme hand seal.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Nine successive rings of purple lightning violently detonated outward from his spiritual avatar, momentarily pushing the coiling black dragon back.

"Thunder Art Manifestation: Sovereign of the Heavenly Thunder!" Lin Yuan roared, slamming his palms together.

He had comprehended this spell when he absorbed the Tribulation Lightning Essence from Xu Canghai’s Thunder Prison, at the same time he acquired the Thunder Step technique.

Immediately, a roar that completely eclipsed the sound of the Heart Demon shook the very fabric of his soul.

From the depths of his own power, Lin Yuan summoned his own dragon—a colossal, radiant titan of purple lightning.

The purple lightning dragon coiled protectively around Lin Yuan, its massive, glowing eyes locking onto the abyssal beast of black mist. The two dragons, one born of the Heavens’ restrictive laws and the other born of Lin Yuan, hovered face-to-face in the center of his spiritual sea.

There was no hesitation.

With simultaneous, world-shaking roars, the dragon of pure black mist and the dragon of blinding purple lightning launched themselves at each other. They collided in the absolute center of Lin Yuan’s mind, their jaws snapping and claws tearing, unleashing a catastrophic shockwave that threatened to tear his Sea of Consciousness completely apart.