Chapter 258: Sword Light?
Chapter 258: Sword Light?
Tianyi paused and turned around. He saw over ten immortals rushing from the Profound Leakless Formation. At the head was a young man around Tianyi’s age and the one who shouted.
“Naturally, I’ll stop if you tell me what happened,” Tiany said. “Though, it doesn’t really take much to guess. I’ll change my question, where are the elders?”
The man in the front didn’t say anything, and the Leakless Sect’s immortals stopped after a certain distance. “Release Elder Jia and Elder Qiang, and I’ll tell you.”
Tianyi laughed. “Do you really think I’m that gullible?”
The man frowned. “Vast Heaven Young Master, if you release them now, I can allow you to leave unharmed.”
At this, the other immortals started to furiously reject, but they were all suppressed by the young man. “What do you think? Even if you are a genius, you can’t possibly defeat all of us.”
Tianyi’s answer was to raise the martial immortal and the spear immortal in his hand and bashed their heads together, caving them in. If they weren’t immortals, they would have already died from the trauma, but Tianyi wasn’t finished as black qi emerged from his sleeve and engulfed the two.
“Stop!” The young man shouted. Two enormous gauntlets over a hundred meters large appeared and shot towards Tianyi.
Tianyi dropped the two and punched the two gauntlets but discovered the gauntlet’s strength exceeded his imagination and was pushed back. The gauntlets ignored Tianyi and grabbed the two falling elders.
The young man checked the two immortals and handed them to one of the immortals behind him, who attempted to heal the two. He then glared at Tianyi. “I originally thought since we had some friendship from the Heavenly Connection Meeting, I would spare you, but since you aren’t grateful, I can only kill you.”
“I’m sorry, but have we met?”
Tianyi’s words further enraged the young man, and he roared, “Xi Tianyi, don’t try to aggravate me!”
The two giant gauntlets shrunk down and slotted onto the young man’s hand. Then, a helmet, chest plate, waist armor, two grieves, and a cape covered him. He flicked his arm, and a spear appeared in his hand.
Tianyi blinked. He could sense that all nine artifacts were immortal artifacts, and they exuded an extremely similar aura to the young man. He snapped his fingers and said, “Oh, you’re the person with nine lifebound artifacts, San Jiuling!”
Those words only seemed to enrage San Jiuling further. “And after today, no one will remember the Vast Heaven Immortal!”
Tianyi reared his fist back and met San Jiuling’s spear thrust. Fist met spearhead, and sparks exploded between the two. Tianyi’s body shot backward a few times, and only after Tianyi stabilized did he stop.
San Jiuling also retreated a few paces in the air, but less so than Tianyi. Still, despite seemingly winning the first confrontation, he felt his inner organs disturbed from the powerful force Tianyi had unleashed.
“Again!” Tianyi said as he rushed forward. Simultaneously, an outer robe seemingly created from the night sky appeared on Tianyi’s body. His expression became even more excited. ‘It’s been so long since I’ve used the cosmic cloak.’
Upon seeing Tianyi’s cosmic cloak, San Jiuling’s nine lifebound artifacts began to vibrate and emitted a low glow. Especially the spearhead, which became electric blue and left an arc in the air as it pierced towards Tianyi.
The two exchanged over a hundred moves, but at the end, San Jiuling’s body flew back and crashed into the ground, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.
“Junior Sect Master!” The immortal following him cried out.
San Jiuling wiped the blood off his chin and glared unwillingly at Tianyi.
“Junior Sect Master, we have to combine our strengths. Otherwise, we won’t be able to defeat him.” The immortal continued to persuade.
San Jiuling finally nodded. “Form the Leakless Monarch War Formation!”
Tianyi wasn’t so idle and confident as to allow them to set up a war formation. He immediately charged forward, but a beam of light from the Profound Leakless Formation stopped him in his steps.
It was just a minor inconvenience, but it gave the Leakless Sect’s immortals enough time to form the war formation. Judging from the ease and experience, it was obviously not their first time.
A giant humanoid over five hundred meters bearing a face fifty percent similar to San Jiuling appeared. The nine lifebound weapons he had donned also increased in size and covered the war formation.
Tianyi narrowed his eyes as he began to emit a vast amount of immortal qi of primordial chaos. The qi agglomerated until it formed a cosmic giant over fifteen hundred meters tall. Its voice boomed as it glanced down and said, “How tiny!”
The cosmic giant raised its foot and smashed down. However, against Tianyi’s expectation, he didn’t manage to stomp the Leakless Monarch War Formation. Instead, San Jiuling’s spear managed to pierce his cosmic giant’s feet.
He frowned and tried to attack it a few more times, but all with the same result. He sighed and condensed the cosmic giant’s size until it was also five hundred meters.
Tianyi felt his face flush a bit. Despite his previous boasting, he was now also tiny-sized. He couldn’t help but feel like San Jiuling was laughing at him right now, so he pulled a sword out of the ring of weapons rotating behind the cosmic giant and attacked.
The Leakless Monarch War Formation returned in kind. Under the combat of the two giants, the landscape changed. Trees were overturned, new hills and craters formed, and even lava began to appear.
Still, despite condensing the size, Tianyi discovered that his cosmic giant was still the underdog. Each strike would sheer away a large amount of qi. An ordinary immortal would have died five times over from being sucked dry.
The cosmic giant released the weapons in its hand and opened its arms as if to welcome the Leakless Monarch War Formation’s spear thrust. The war formation had a moment of hesitation before committing and successfully impaling the cosmic giant.
The cosmic giant didn’t defend itself at all and hugged the Leakless War Formation as if it were the cosmic giant’s bosom friend, but the situation didn’t last long.
The Unity Realm elders from the Buzhou Immortal Sect had already fled far away. They immediately used the Xiyi Talisman to contact the sect requesting reinforcement. They originally thought Tianyi would be crushed one-sidedly, but never in their wildest imagination would they have thought they would witness such an apocalyptic battle.
Befuddlement overcame them when they saw Tianyi’s cosmic giant bearhug the Leakless Monarch War Formation, but that befuddlement disappeared when a blinding light, ear-deafening sound, and explosive force sent them careening into the ground.
When they oriented themselves again, all they saw was a giant pitch-black orb. It was like a hole had been cut in the fabric of reality.
Inside Tianyi’s Chaos Refining Formation, the less than two meters tall Tianyi stood in front of the five hundred meters tall Leakless War Formation. He held an immortal rank artifact in his hand. Naturally, he didn’t bring out the Immortal Confining Sword. It was a trump card he didn’t want to display until he reached the Seamless Immortal Realm. Otherwise, wasn’t it just asking to be targeted?
Inside Tianyi’s Chaos Refining Formation, the boundaries of the Leakless Monarch War Formation started to blur and twist. Not only did Tianyi subject the war formation to spacial twisting, but he also disrupted the time flow between each area, causing it to go out of sync.
Temporal techniques could be defined in three broad categories: time stop, time acceleration, and time reversion. Tianyi had grasped the first two, but the third was still out of his reach because he simultaneously comprehended time and space. Conversely, his time stop and time accelerations exceed those who only pursued the temporal law.
Still, it was only in his domain, the Chaos Refining Formation, that Tianyi could so easily use these two moves. Outside, it would be far more troublesome.
As time passed, coupled with the corrosive effects of Tianyi’s qi, which had reached another level after upgrading from true qi to immortal qi, the Leakless Monarch War Formation suddenly shrunk to a tenth of its size. Its power also diminished, but the stability increased.
For formation, stability was king. Any instability was a weakness and meant a point of breakthrough.
Tianyi raised his sword and attacked. It was an almost comical scene. The two-meter tall Tianyi looked like a rat poking a needle at a human. Still, when Tianyi’s sword made contact, a gargantuan force transmitted through the spear and into the war formation’s hand, almost destabilizing the formation.
San Jiuling felt as if Tianyi didn’t have the mass of a human at all. Rather, he felt as if their position had flipped and Tianyi was the giant, and he was the ant. It was as if Tianyi’s sword wasn’t a sword at all but Sun Wukong’s Ruyi Jingu Bang, the As You Will Cudgel.
He had expected Tianyi to suddenly enlarge the sword to smash him, but he had other pressing matters than fantasizing.
“Junior Sect Master, we can’t go on like this. Our qi is depleting at an increasing rate. If we don’t break out of this formation, only death will await us,” one immortal said.
San Jiuling stayed silent as he continued to fend off Tianyi’s attack. He sighed and said, “Do you have a method to escape?”
“No matter how powerful a formation is, there is always a limit. As long as we can escape that range, we’ll be safe. We can’t fight the Sword Sovereign’s son head-on. We’ll need at least a hundred more immortals or use the Profound Leakless Formation’s strength,” The immortal said.
San Jiuling nodded.
The Leakless Monarch War Formation suddenly disengaged from Tianyi, turned tail, and fled in the opposite direction. Tianyi didn’t chase, but a knowing smile appeared on his face.
“Is he chasing?” One of the immortals asked.
San Jiuling glanced behind him. They had already fled for five minutes, and Tianyi’s figure had long disappeared. It puzzled them why Tianyi didn’t give chase, but they didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, so they continued to flee.
After another ten minutes, San Jiuling’s brows furrowed, wondering why it took so long to leave the range of Tianyi’s formation. Although the Leakless Monarch had the power of an immortal monarch, in theory, that was only the full version that took one hundred immortals. He only had little more than ten, and he hadn’t fully comprehended a complete law. The only reason they barely reached the threshold of an immortal monarch’s strength was due to his nine lifebound artifacts.
Suddenly, they spotted a figure ahead, and the Leakless Monarch War Formation came to a screeching halt. The figure was none other than the backside of Tianyi.
Tianyi turned around with a knowing smiled and asked, “Yo, back so soon? I thought you didn’t want to play anymore.”
San Jiuling’s expression turned livid. He almost engaged Tianyi again, but the immortals woke him up. Instead of talking, he controlled the Leakless Monarch War Formation to turn and flee to another direction.
After the third attempt, they finally gave up on escaping.
“Junior Sect Master, I once heard the news that Xi Tianyi could use a temporal healing technique. Techniques are created based on laws and concepts, and those that use temporal techniques often comprehend the temporal law. Although not every cultivator of the spatial law comprehended the temporal law, everyone who cultivates the temporal law has some mastery of the spatial laws,” The immortal said. After a moment of hesitation, he continued. “To prevent the Leakless Monarch War Formation from escaping and linking space, I’m afraid that he is only one breath away from mastering the full Law of Space.”
Upon hearing this, San Jiuling’s expression turned ugly.
When most cultivators thought of the Laws of Space, they mostly thought of its auxiliary capabilities such as teleportation or their powerful domains, but spatial techniques included devastatingly powerful physical attacks as well.
Worst, if you were weaker than a spatial cultivator, then escape was all but impossible. Even an immortal monarch might not be able to escape from an immortal lord that specialized in space.
Those in the Pathfinding Immortal Realm had two titles, true immortal and immortal lords. True immortals were all those who still were in the process of comprehending the worldly laws and forming their daoseeds. Immortal lords, in contrast, were those just one step away from comprehending a full law or those that comprehended it but did not enter the Seamless Immortal Realm.
“Done running?” Tianyi asked as he floated in front of the Leakless Monarch War Formation.
San Jiuling didn’t answer as the war formation brandished its spear toward Tianyi. A moment later, nine different colored lights encased the nine lifebound artifacts, and their strength dramatically increased. It seemed like San Jiuling wanted to defeat Tianyi to escape his formation.
Tianyi smiled and raised his sword. He charged towards the giant war formation fearlessly with his sword raised. Unlike the previous time, the difference between the two wasn’t as great, and Tianyi even felt hints of suppression from the war formation, but it was far from enough.
He had near unlimited qi while San Jiuling and the Leakless Monarch War Formation were on borrowed time. As Tianyi continued to fight, he suddenly discovered that his sword strikes became stronger and stronger, and the Law of Mass that he had mastered was fully integrated into his sword.
Tianyi slashed forward, and an arc of light followed. With a large sound, he rebuffed the Leakless Monarch War Formation’s spear backward. He glanced down at the light covering his sword. “Sword Light?”