FIRST IMMORTAL OF THE SWORD

Chapter 976 - You Cannot Escape

Within the tunnel carved into the mountainside.

The curtains fell on a brief battle.

Severed limbs and fragmented treasures were scattered amongst pools of blood.

“Dammit!!!” Gu Ziming’s face was ashen, and his chest heaved with anger as he gnashed his teeth.

More than ten Emperors had fought together, but they didn’t just fail to capture a Spiritual Revolution Realm cultivator; they’d even let him cut his way through their encirclement!

This was unquestionably an enormous humiliation.

“How could that kid… be so terrifying…?” someone asked in a quavering voice.

The battle had ended in an instant.

But five of their Emperors now lay dead, and the others all had varying degrees of injuries!

“Senior Apprentice Brother, should we give chase?”

Shangguan Jie’s expression was hideously contorted. “In this blasted place, we couldn’t unleash our full strength. If we chase after him, we can surely capture him!”

He was boiling over with murderous intent, and he couldn’t constrain his fury.

During the earlier battle, all of them were squished together, and due to this constraint, they couldn’t attack with full abandon. This was what gave Su Yi an opportunity to break through their encirclement.

Gu Ziming took a deep breath, then rapidly issued orders. “Junior Apprentice Brother, I’ll go check on those four seniors. You lead the others after that kid.”

“Got it!” Shangguan Jie nodded his assent.

……

Su Yi shot out of the Divine Cave of the Six Paths, then continued ahead without so much as pausing.

He was covered in blood and numerous still-bleeding wounds. His handsome face was a bit pallid.

The earlier battle might have seemed brief, but in truth, it had been perilous to the extreme.

Given that he needed to break through their encirclement as quickly as possible, it was hard to avoid injury even when going all out.

The crux of the matter was that his cultivation base was too weak.

Even though he had the power to cross Daos and slay Emperors, when ten-plus Emperors attacked him on all sides, there was no avoiding injuries.

However, these were all minor wounds. As someone who’d overcome countless bitter struggles, these wounds were negligible to Su Yi.

His expression remained calm and composed right from the start. He wasn’t the least bit flustered.

It would have been no exaggeration to say that, had he wanted to kill those four Profound Serenity old-timers then and there, it wouldn’t have been difficult.

However, he would have needed to borrow external power. He didn’t plan to do that this time.

This time, he wanted to rely on his own power to slay his enemies personally!

He wanted them to pay an unbearable price for what they’d done here!

The old blind man’s suffering had utterly provoked Su Yi’s murderous intent. It also told him that the exquisitely prepared trap the Abstruse Force Alliance had placed in the Burial Ground of the Dao was targeted at him!

As for the old rooster? It was already obvious that he wasn’t in the Divine Cave of the Six Paths. In other words, Fu Donghua of Nine-Star Sword Mountain had lied to him!

“Stop right there!”

A woman’s voice reverberated throughout the night sky, and a group of cultivators shot over from afar.

Their leader was an icy, aloof woman in a black skirt. This was none other than Pi Mo’s disciple, Ni Shuang.

Behind her was a group of Emperors from the Divine Blue Lightning Sect.

Boom!

As Ni Shuang shot toward him, she took out a glittering silver Dao Sword and attacked Su Yi from afar.

The Emperors behind her dispersed, sweeping out to surround Su Yi in a fan-like formation.

Su Yi’s gaze was cold and indifferent. He didn’t so much as pause to look at them. He just swung his sword through the air.

Clang!!

A heaven-shaking impact rang out, and that glittering silver Dao Sword was sent flying backward.

Ni Shuang quivered, and her beautiful face paled. She found this difficult to believe. How could a Spiritual Revolution Realm cultivator possess such power?

Meanwhile, Su Yi was already shooting into the distance.

How could he waste his time fooling around with small fries like them?

“Die!”

Up ahead, two Emperors attacked together.

One swung a bronze battleaxe with all his might. The radiance of its edge tore open the skies.

The other took out a purple alms bowl, which he overturned. Divine purple flames poured forth, like a river of fire breaking through a dam and sweeping toward Su Yi.

Su Yi didn’t retreat. Instead, he advanced, slashing twice in rapid succession.

One strike was like a dazzling beam of flowing light. It flashed through the air, splitting the bronze battleaxe on impact.

The streak of sword qi continued, its power undiminished. When it struck the axe-wielding Emperor, he exploded in midair, splitting into pieces with a rain of blood.

The other strike was like a raging tidal wave. It crushed the divine purple flames filling the sky and enveloped the Emperor who’d unleashed them.

Boom!

Beneath the explosive rain of sword qi, the Emperor didn’t even have time to scream before they died on the spot. Not even a corpse remained.

Too tyrannical.

Just two strikes released nigh instantaneously, and he’d exterminated two Emperors!

Despite themselves, Ni Shuang and the other Emperors were so alarmed that they almost dared not believe their eyes.

This battle had broken out suddenly, but in just a few blinks of the eye, it was over.

By the time Shangguan Jie and his allies rushed over, Su Yi had already disappeared into the distance.

“Senior Apprentice Brother, just… just who is that guy?” Ni Shuang’s beautiful face looked bleak, and her expression was full of lingering terror.

“I’m afraid only Senior Apprentice Brother Gu knows the answer to that.” Shangguan Jie let out a long sigh. He looked utterly unresigned.

He’d already realized that it would be difficult for them to catch up to that young Spiritual Revolution Realm cultivator. Furthermore, with their power, even if they caught up to him, they’d have little hope of victory.

The other Emperors, regardless of origin, all had unsightly looks on their faces. All of them looked surprised and alarmed.

They were Emperors. What wind and waves hadn’t they experienced?

But this was their first time seeing such a terrifying Spiritual Revolution Realm cultivator. Alone save for his sword, he’d suppressed an entire group of Emperors!

Furthermore, it all happened so suddenly that it caught them completely off guard. The thought of what had just happened filled their hearts with alarm and dread. How could it not?

Before long, Gu Ziming and the four Profound Serenity Emperors arrived.

When they learned that Su Yi had already fought his way through their encirclement, Gu Ziming and the Profound Serenity old monsters’ expressions were utterly dark.

“He turned our trap against us, like the story about the hunter who spent his days hunting geese, only for one to peck out his eyes,” said the dark-robed elder with the snow-white fly whisk.

His voice was filled with loathing. Earlier, within the cave’s depths, Su Yi used the Immortal-Beating Mallet to shake the thousands of chains and trigger a calamity. Although the four Profound Serenity Emperors had survived, all of them were injured, and the struggle left them covered in dirt and as unsightly as could be. Naturally, all of them were enraged to the brink of madness.

“Senior Apprentice Brother Gu, by now, shouldn’t you tell us just who that boy is?” Shangguan Jie couldn’t help but ask.

The other Emperors looked over as well.

Gu Ziming’s expression shifted. “It’s not that I’m deliberately keeping it a secret. It’s just that the boy’s origins are highly suspect.” He paused, then added, “Please, rest assured. Once we’ve captured him, I’ll share the full truth with all of you!”

The four Profound Serenity Realm old monsters nodded along.

The fewer people who knew the blue-robed young man’s origins, the better.

“But he’s already escaped,” Ni Shuang said dejectedly.

“No, he cannot escape!” Gu Ziming’s eyes flashed with imposing luster. “Come on, let’s go to Broken Souls Ridge.”

……

Broken Souls Ridge.

When Gu Ziming arrived, he walked into a grand hall alone. Then, he slipped a strange talisman of snow-white bone from his sleeves and used his divine sense to carve a message: “Martial Uncle, Su Yi, the suspected descendant of our founder, has appeared! But we can only blame our own incompetence, as we failed to capture him.

“Martial Uncle, if you receive this message, please hurry back!”

After finishing this message, Gu Ziming strengthened his grip and activated the bone talisman.

Bang!

The bone talisman exploded, transformed into a resplendent, dazzling streak of misty light, ripped open a spatial rift, and disappeared.

Once this was complete, Gu Ziming let out a turbid breath. His gaze was cold and serene. “Su Yi, I don’t care if you’re the founder’s descendant. You’re not getting away this time!”

……

Collapsed, ancient buildings lay strewn across a rolling field of ruins. The dense wreckage stretched as far as the eye could see.

Above the ruins, the skies were perpetually shrouded in strange, blood-colored lightning. The unsettling rumble of thunder echoed throughout the surrounding area.

The Mausoleum of the Gods was one of the most perilous places in the Burial Ground of the Dao.

Rumor had it that in ancient times, these ruins were a holy nation inhabited by experts akin to gods.

But then, a disaster of the Grand Dao reduced this holy nation to ruins overnight. All of its godlike experts perished inside.

This was where the Mausoleum of the Gods got its name.

Of course, that was just a rumor. Despite the passage of countless years, as of yet, no one had uncovered the full extent of this forbidden ground’s secrets.

A young man in fiery Daoist robes and a strikingly handsome face stood with his hands behind his back atop a hill off in the distance, far from the ruins. He was focused on the ruins, the Mausoleum of the Gods standing beneath skies enveloped in blood-red lightning.

“According to the Peach Haven Mountain Monarch, Master ventured into that forbidden ground alone, but even at the pinnacle of his strength, Master was trapped inside for a full three years.

“What happened to Master during those three years? And was it in the Mausoleum of the Gods that he discovered the secrets of reincarnation?”

…The young man’s eyes flashed, and his fiery Daoist robes fluttered in the night breeze.

A little while later, he sighed, a nigh imperceptible hint of hatred on his brow as he muttered, “Master, oh, Master, why keep this from us? If not for the re-emergence of the Burial Ground of the Dao, who would have known that reincarnation truly exists in this world?”

The look on his handsome face shifted erratically, and he gnashed his teeth. “But if you realized this a long time ago, why didn’t you tell us?

“To think I used to see you as a father! You kept your disciples completely in the dark. You… really are selfish!”

Deep-seated, lingering resentment was written all over his face.

It was then that the young man sensed something, and he plucked the pendant hanging from his waist. The pendant quivered slightly, and dazzlingly bright ripples appeared on its smooth, crystalline surface.

The young man gently brushed his fingertip across it.

Kccch!

Spatial ripples suddenly spread through the space in front of him, and a strange, bone talisman appeared in thin air.

The young man reached out and grabbed it. After examining its contents, his eyes glinted with imposing light and blazed with divine firelight.

“Su Yi… you’ve finally shown up…” The man muttered to himself, a hint of excitement on his face. “I hope… you really are who I think you are!”

This young man’s name was Huo Yao.

The third disciple of the Swordmaster of Abstruse Force.