Chapter 204: Enduring Dual Tribulations, Major Divine Ability!

High in the ink-black sky, Xuanyin's Corpse Immortal Liberation Cave-Heaven finally revealed its true form—a thunder whale as massive as a mountain.

It paired perfectly with Xuanyin's Divine Power, Profound Silence Thunder Sound. The vast ocean conjured by the Divine Power gave the whale room to roam freely, and the rumbling thunder became its heartbeat. Like the final stroke bringing a painted dragon to life, the titanic beast bore down upon the Great Shun Capital with world-shattering force.

Xuanhe was the first to bear the brunt of the attack.

"All or nothing!"

Driven to the brink, Xuanhe had no room to hold back. He immediately formed a hand seal, pointed at his brow, and his Divine Power, Corpse-Still Dragon Manifestation, flared with radiant light once more.

This time, however, a floating cloud peak rose from the brilliance of his Divine Power. It resembled an open book inscribed with countless talismans. Each talisman bore a name—the names of independent cultivators and sword immortals who had once roamed Shuzhong—and all of them materialized in unison.

The Book Mountain Blessed Land!

After being killed by Kunyun, Xuanhe's cultivation had plummeted overnight to its pre-ascension state. This Book Mountain Blessed Land was the very last asset he had left.

This debt—

Xuanhe let out a furious roar and shot straight into the sky.

A second later, the descending thunder whale crashed into the surging Book Mountain. The stalemate lasted only a fraction of a heartbeat before the mountain violently exploded.

"Pathetic!"

Xuanyin looked on with cold indifference. His Grotto-Heaven and Divine Power were inherently stronger than Xuanhe's. Even setting raw strength aside, the synergy of his combined abilities was vastly superior.

When forging the Corpse Immortal Liberation Cave-Heaven, he had spent a fortune to acquire the corpse of a Boundless Sea Thunder Whale. His goal was to push its pure killing power to the absolute limit while expanding the area of effect for Profound Silence Thunder Sound, allowing its profound mysteries to directly assault the outside world through the whale.

Because of this, his enemies could not even react to his attacks.

No matter what they tried, they would have to draw upon their magical power.

The moment they did, the expanded Profound Silence Thunder Sound would catch them. Any misalignment with the thunder's frequency would trigger a crushing blow from the Divine Power across space!

They could not defend against it, they could not dodge it, and they could not meet it head-on.

They could only wait for death.

Mastering both his Grotto-Heaven and Divine Power gave him a flawless blend of mechanics and raw power. This was the source of Xuanyin's absolute confidence. Against a self-taught inner disciple who had started as mere Human Firewood in the furnace rooms...

What right did he have to fight back?

"Boom!"

With a second deafening explosion, Xuanhe coughed up blood and staggered backward. The radiant glow of his Divine Power dissipated completely. As for the Book Mountain Blessed Land, it had shattered under the crushing weight of the thunder whale.

Right at that moment, however, a snow-capped divine peak rose to fill the void left by his defeat. Catching all the howling gales sent plummeting by the descending whale, it tore out of the earth like a pillar propping up the heavens, forcibly pinning the beast against the crumbling sky before it could crash down!

Heavenly Blade Peerless Slash!

Looking down, Chen Long stood with his long blade raised high. All five divine weapons and magical treasures covering his body activated at once, layering him in overlapping halos of protective light.

Among them was the spell-breaking mystery of the Coiling Dragon Formation-Breaking Blade. It was this exact property that forcibly cleaved through the black clouds and crackling lightning surrounding the thunder whale.

In an instant, heaven and earth were cleaved in two.

One half was an ink-black ocean where thunder echoed like tens of thousands of heavenly drums beating in unison. The other half was a blindingly white snow-peak, swung by the earth itself to cleave straight into the firmament.

Every passing second, boulders were blasted off the snow-peak by the rolling thunder, shattering and turning into burning sparks that rained down upon the world. It was clearly struggling to hold on. Yet there was no denying that, at this very moment, the supposedly unstoppable thunder whale had been completely halted.

"Hm?"

Witnessing this, Xuanyin, watching from outside the Eight Trigrams Furnace, furrowed his brow in surprise. For a moment, he could not comprehend what he was looking at.

It looked a bit like a martial artist.

But weren't the martial artists inside the Eight Trigrams Furnace just Human Firewood meant for artifact refinement? When did they become strong enough to match him in a head-on clash?

What a joke!

With that thought, Xuanyin instantly channeled his magical power, driving his Divine Power and Grotto-Heaven down even harder. The haunting whale cry became the only sound left in the world.

"Roooar!"

The whale's song overlapped with the thunder generated by the Divine Power. The ink-black sea churned into towering waves, crumpling the very sky as they crashed down upon the snow-peak.

In an instant, a glaring fissure appeared right down the middle of the peak. It rapidly spiderwebbed across the entire mountain, accelerating its destruction. Even this unparalleled blade of stars was swallowed by the immense, suffocating whale song, exploding into countless scattering meteors amidst the thunder.

"Rumble!"

Following the world-shaking collision, Chen Long felt as if his internal organs had been ground into paste. The collapse of his Divine Intent left him with a splitting, agonizing headache.

This was exactly how Xuanhe had been defeated.

Yet facing the same situation, a different change came over Chen Long. Knitting his brows, he stubbornly remained standing in place.

"I didn't lose!"

"Even though my Manifesting Divinity shape was smashed to pieces in that strike while his Divine Power stayed intact, the sight of my shattering was way more magnificent."

"So I won!"

Chen Long muttered to himself. Though tears of blood streamed down his face, his gaze remained blazing, and he somehow forced his collapsing Divine Intent to halt its own destruction!

"I am truly invincible in this mortal realm... Again!"

The next second, Chen Long's shattered Divine Intent knitted itself back together in a completely inconceivable manner. Immediately after, a second divine peak tore out of the ground!

Compared to the first time, this manifested mountain was a size smaller, lacking the overwhelming momentum that had previously pierced the heavens. Yet, considering Chen Long's internal organs were currently pulverized—to the point where he was relying entirely on his Divine Armor just to hold his physical body together—this was already nothing short of a miracle!

"What is going on..."

Outside the Eight Trigrams Furnace, Xuanyin's frown deepened. He hadn't taken Xuanhe or Chen Long seriously, but he certainly hadn't held back when striking.

Both of his attacks had been launched with his full strength.

It was one thing for Xuanhe to block a strike, but what was up with this martial artist? Had the Martial Dao inside the Eight Trigrams Furnace spiraled out of control? Was this going to be a repeat of the Divine Farmer Cauldron incident?

"Roooar!"

The whale's song echoed again as the third strike came crashing down.

Seeing this, Chen Long drew his blade and slashed upwards without hesitation. At the same time, the Sun-Perching Heart-Guard Armor on his chest erupted with blinding light, instantly unleashing the arcane power it had been stockpiling.

The armor shattered, and a sun rose!

"Boom!"

Because the thunder whale had already descended to a dangerously low altitude, this third collision finally rippled down into the foundations of the Capital below.

Rooftiles shattered across the city. When the commoners looked up, all they saw was an ink-black sea and a snow-capped mountain colliding. A blazing sun slowly rose from the snowy peak, while deafening thunder cascaded from the depths of the dark ocean. If even a fraction of the fallout from their clash reached the Capital, it would be enough to level an entire district.

Right at that moment, however.

"Hm!?"

Chen Long, who was pouring everything into resisting the falling whale, suddenly felt a jolt. His Divine Intent screamed a warning. He snapped his head up, staring at a patch of empty space beside him.

Then, the void shattered!

A figure darted out of the pitch-black rift like lightning. Clinging to Chen Long like a shadow, cold eyes locked straight onto him, a glowing sphere of magical light already pooled at the intruder's fingertip.

It was Xuanyin!

As a proper disciple of the Immortal Gate, Xuanyin had no particular love for fair fights. Since the frontal assault had hit a temporary stalemate, he simply pivoted to securing a victory through a sneak attack.

It was a bit degrading for a grand Divine Power cultivator like him to ambush a piece of Human Firewood who wasn't even a true cultivator. But bullying weaker practitioners was a time-honored tradition of the Immortal Gate. Thus, Xuanyin felt absolutely no hesitation or doubt. In fact, high immortals were supposed to ruthlessly humiliate their inferiors!

"Halt!"

A split second later, Xuanhe finally reacted. Squeezing out every last drop of his magical power, the light of Corpse-Still Dragon Manifestation flooded out, desperately trying to block the rushing Xuanyin.

But it was too late. The magical light at Xuanyin's fingertip had already flared!

This was not a Divine Power, but a spell art. It didn't rely on explosive force; all its arcane properties were concentrated entirely on speed. In the blink of an eye, it was inches from piercing straight through Chen Long's brow!

Time seemed to freeze at that exact moment.

"Hm?"

No, it didn't just seem to freeze. It truly had stopped... Or rather, an action that should have been completed in the blink of an eye was now being violently dragged out!

...Time-Stealing Thief?

Xuanyin instantly recognized what kind of arcane art this was.

Yet before he could fully process what was happening, his entire field of vision was swallowed by the blinding flash of a blade. The heavy sword slammed squarely into his face.

"Gah!"

Instantly, Xuanyin—who had just been rushing in for the kill—was sent flying backward even faster than he had arrived, smashing headfirst into a mountain just outside the Capital.

Xuanhe hurriedly turned his head.

Where his gaze landed, a sea of magical light brimmed across heaven and earth. Wang Ping, who had been sitting absolutely motionless ever since condensing his Divine Power, had finally stood up.

Seeing this, Chen Long didn't waste a single word. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he passed out cold on the spot.

Immediately after, the magical light swirled and took physical shape. Pavilions and towering pagodas tore out of the earth, bustling streets filled with carriages sprang from thin air, and a scroll of magnificent proportions unrolled across the sky.

Right on its heels came a gentle, warm breeze.

"Whoosh!"

The breeze swept past, as though an invisible giant hand were wiping away every trace of color between heaven and earth.

Whether it was the beam of lightning about to pierce Chen Long, the ink-black ocean filling the sky, the snowy peak, or the thunder whale... all the supernatural phenomena vanished into nothingness in that single moment.

Meanwhile, a lifelike pattern of a thunder whale appeared on the massive scroll. It was tightly surrounded by the myriad gods depicted in the painting. The ink-black sea around the beast churned as it desperately tried to break free, yet it couldn't breach the edges of the scroll. It shrank smaller and smaller, finally reducing into a completely unremarkable speck of ink on the parchment.

A second later, the magnificent sights rolled backward and retracted.

Not only were the anomalies gone, but even the displaced air currents and churning seas of clouds caused by the three collisions were swept away, revealing ten thousand miles of clear, unblemished sky.

Watching this scene, the joyful surprise on Xuanhe's face gradually shifted into something more complicated. A trace of envy flickered in the depths of his eyes, and he exhaled a long, deep breath.

"Enduring a dual tribulation... It truly is a Major Divine Ability!"

It was the symbol of an Immortal Gate true transmission. Cultivating one meant gaining a stronger chance of eventually stepping into the realm of Qi Refining Entering the Dao. Its arcane might had already revealed a sliver of its potential just now.

Embracing unity as the model for the world, unmatched by immortal and Brahma alike; its primary function was Governing Myriad Spells, it pacified all qi, executed Subduing Immortals and Demons, and possessed the merit of a Heavenly Being—it was called the Ten Thousand Gods Terrestrial Chart!

"You've worked hard, Sir."

Wang Ping raised a finger and flicked a medicinal pill into Chen Long's mouth to help stabilize his injuries. The wounds he sustained this time were far more severe than when he killed Kongzhi.

After doing this, he finally looked at Xuanhe. "I must also thank you for protecting me, Fellow Daoist."

Xuanhe waved his hand. "Save your thanks. Let's be practical—not a single copper of my payment can be missing, and you absolutely must reimburse me for my Book Mountain Blessed Land!"

"Naturally," Wang Ping said with a light chuckle.

With that, his gaze locked onto Xuanyin in the distance.

"There is no time like the present. Please wait a moment, Fellow Daoist. Once I tear apart his Grotto-Heaven, that should be enough to cover your efforts today, as well as the loss of your Book Mountain."