Chapter 287: Past Incarnation
Chapter 287: Past Incarnation
Xi Longyi clenched his fist as power coursed through his body. This was his imagination of course, but after mastering the Law of Destruction, his whole sense of existence had been elevated.
Naturally, He had already experienced the sensation once, but he had been a true immortal at the time. Xi Longyi quickly calmed down since he knew that mastering a law only allowed him to harm a seamless immortal and not guarantee victory.
He glanced to Lei Jingye, who had somehow mastered a worldly law at the same time as him. A hint of killing intent appeared in his eyes, but he quickly suppressed it since he would need Lei Jingye’s aid to defeat or repel the immortal monarch.
Lei Jingye was currently immersed in the feeling of comprehending a complete law. Even if he lost his sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, he felt that his view of the world had undergone a dramatic transformation.
Once he opened his eyes again, lightning swirled behind his pupils. The wary gaze he held towards Tianyi disappeared, and in their place, confidence.
Seeing Lei Jingye brandish his sword, Xi Longyi said, “Don’t get cocky. Even if you master a law, we’re still at a disadvantage. He wields immortal qi, while we have true qi.”
“What are you, afraid?” Lei Jingye replied. Without waiting for Xi Longyi to respond, Lei Jingye charged forward and timed his attack with the newest bolt of tribulation punishment lightning.
Tianyi couldn’t resist a sneer forming on his face. ‘Do you really think you can defeat me just because you mastered a law!?”
Lei Jingye’s sword flew through the air like lightning. Thunder roared as the red blade inched closer.
Tianyi reached his hand out and ignored the descending bolt of lightning punishment. To Lei Jingye’s shock, Tianyi firmly grasped the crimson blade in his hand. Lei Jingye knew how sharp his sword was, he had even used it to injure a true immortal before, yet blood did not leak, and there wasn’t even a sign of the skin cracking!
Lei Jingye grunted and retracted his sword. Or, at least, he attempted to. No matter what he did, it felt like his sword had been shackled to its current position and would not budge an inch no matter what he did.
“You should let go,” Tianyi suddenly said.
“Never!” Lei Jingye shouted. The moment he did so, the lightning struck Tianyi, shrouding him in a cloak of electricity.
“GRAAHH!!” The scream of pain did not escape from Tianyi’s lip. No, it came from Lei Jingye. The lightning punishment that shrouded Tianyi also traveled to Lei Jingye through their mutual link, the crimson sword.
Even though he had comprehended the Law of Lightning, and it was true his combat prowess had dramatically increased, it was far from the point of threatening because he had not learned to utilize his new mastery.
It was like a martial artist who had only practiced spears arts receiving a legendary sword. Sure, it would increase his battle prowess, but he could not bring out the full power of the legendary sword.
In addition, what struck Tianyi was heavenly punishment. Its whole goal was to eradicate Tianyi, so it had the power to fatally injure an immortal monarch in one strike. And it would have spelled trouble for anyone but Tianyi. Lei Jingye, who got caught in it, felt his blood start to boil in less than a second.
‘I’ll die if I keep holding on!’ In an instant, he made a decision that saved his life. He released his crimson sword and retreated. The Red Dragon Lotus above his head wrapped him in its healing light.
Xi Longyi sneered. “What did I tell you? Idiot.”
Lei Jingye glared back. “I wouldn’t have offended him had it not been for you!”
“You two, do you really have the time to argue right now?” In front of them, Tianyi asked.
“You worry about the heavenly punishment more, Senior,” Xi Longyi mocked.
Tianyi smiled as another lightning punishment struck him. He had already dissipated the two characters on his palm and detected that the will of eradication targeting him lessened.
“What heavenly punishment?” Tianyi asked. The lightning shrouding him instantly disappeared the moment he said those words as if he had never spoken them before.
Xi Longyi’s expression darkened. “Hey, I hope you aren’t having thoughts of escaping right now.”
“I was just about to ask the same thing, bastard. Running from someone who controls the Law of Space is the height of stupidity,” Lei Jingye shot back.
“Then we only have one choice,” Xi Longyi said as he readied his saber. A dark light emerged and intermixed with the golden light shrouding his saber.
Lei Jingye snorted, and a new sword appeared in his hand.
‘Tsk, tsk. Even after losing one sword, he still has another immortal rank artifact.’ Tianyi thought as the crimson sword in his hand disappeared.
Just as the two began to attack, Tianyi disappeared from their eyes, and before they even knew it, a chilling voice entered their ears from behind. “I’m not one of those foolish people who like to play around with protagonists.”
Lei Jingye attempted to turn around, but he felt something against his face. The next thing he knew, he was over a thousand meters away as his body blasted the ground apart.
“Pak!” Lei Jingye spat out a mouthful of blood. Once done, a trail of blood continuously leaked from his lips. The right side of his face was bruised, and his hair and clothes appeared as if he had been dragged through the mud.
He tried to get up, but every moment sent over ten thousand needles through his nerves. He could tell that almost every bone in his body had been broken.
Feeling a shadow cast over him, Lei Jingye looked up and glared hatefully. “Bastard.”
After backhanding Lei Jingye away, Tianyi focused his attention on Xi Longyi. “Long Aotian, this time I will make sure you won’t be able to escape.”
“This time?” Xi Longyi repeated. He tried to search his memory for any instance of Tianyi but came up blank.
Tianyi didn’t care about his slip of tongue. He could still remember how the Dragon Emperor escaped from Lei Jingye’s body all those years ago. He clapped his hand together, and two hands seemingly formed from the night sky appeared around them.
Xi Longyi activated the power of his Law of Destruction, but he only felt as if he had shattered only a few shackles out of a hundred. As the two palms neared, he knew he couldn’t escape the range, so he attacked with all his might, but no matter what he did, his attacks just passed into the hands like it really was just a part of the night sky.
When the two hands connected, Xi Longyi expected pain, but he felt nothing. He felt a shortness of breath and an extreme chill assault his body, so he swiftly protected himself.
“This is the Vast Void?” Xi Longyi thought. Then he sneered. “Do you really think I’ll die just because I’m in the Vast Void?”
“Don’t worry. This is just to prevent you from escaping,” a voice said.
“Where?!” Xi Longyi searched around him, but he couldn’t detect the origin of the voice. Rather, he felt as if the voice was omnipresent.
“Here.”
Xi Longyi snapped his head to discover a figure. However, it wasn’t a figure he was familiar with. Floating across from him was a child of around ten with features seemingly carved out of jade, but the most eye-catching part of him was those pair of bedeviling eyes.
There was no way he could mistake those eyes. “How are you related to mother?”
The child in purple robes smiled as if mocking him and spoke out in his soprano voice. “You should give it up, Long Aotian. Did you really think you were Mother’s child?”
“And you are?” Xi Longyi shouted.
The child smiled. “Of course. And, I’m not a disgusting parasite like you.”
Normally, Xi Longyi would have long attacked, but he felt an incredible sense of danger from this seemingly harmless child. For one, he couldn’t sense any aura from him, as if the child was nothing more than an illusion, but his instincts told him that the child was really present.
“Who are you?” Xi Longyi finally asked after a terse silence.
The boy smiled. “Well, I guess I won’t mind telling you. You’ll be a dead man after all. Listen well, I am the Past Incarnation of the Nine Heavens Monarch Xi Tianyi.”
“Nine Heavens Monarch? The guy who attacked me?” Xi Longyi asked.
Mini-Tianyi laughed. “Attacked? It would be more appropriate to say retaliated, right?”
Xi Longyi’s only answer was a saber chop. However, when his saber was only half a meter away from Tianyi, he felt a familiar sensation. He had been shackled in space, but no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t even budge a smidge. It was like when Tianyi attacked him outside before the heavenly punishment, only over a hundred times worse.
“Tsk, tsk. You even added a soul attack to your strike. Your tricks don’t change much, do they?”
“Who are you?!” Xi Longyi shouted using his spiritual sense.
He had noticed a grave danger. The icy sensation of his nemesis appeared again with greater intensity. He could feel little microns of himself slowly break off and disappear. Those microns soon enlarged into sands, and eventually, bits and pieces of his fingertips slowly vanished.
“Are you wondering why I seem to know you so well, or are you asking about my power?” Past Incarnation Tianyi asked with a dark smile that should have never appeared on a child’s face.
“We fought before. I won, of course, but you won’t know since I come from another timeline,” Tianyi boasted. “Oh, and don’t bother struggling. Your fate was sealed the moment you came here, so even if you knew I was an outsider, it wouldn’t help.”
“Anything else to say?” Tianyi asked with a smirk.
Xi Longyi stayed silent for a second. His body and facial expression stayed the same under the suppression, but he still radiated confidence that borderlined smugness. “When we fought in the other timeline, you must not have been able to kill me. I still remember the first words you spoke. That you brought me here to prevent me from escaping. Do you think I won’t have my ways even if you brought me to the Vast Void? Fool!”
Tianyi said nothing as his smile disappeared. ‘Tch, I thought beating him down was supposed to be cathartic. Now I have a bad taste in my mouth. Just wait, let’s see who gets the last laugh.’
The rate of Xi Longyi’s disintegration increased, and soon, only his torso was left, but Tianyi couldn’t feel any fluctuation from him at all. Finally, only a single eye was left, yet it still emitted absolute confidence.
When all of Xi Longyi disappeared, Past Incarnation Tianyi frowned. Then, he slowly smiled.
‘Dammit, where is the Huang Realm? Even a lower realm is fine, but I can’t find any. I’ve successfully hidden my soul, but the Vast Void is still hurting me. I won’t be able to last long at this rate!’
A fragment of the Dragon Emperor’s soul flew off. It didn’t carry much, only the Dragon Emperor’s memories and his comprehension of the Law of Destruction, but without a physical body, it wouldn’t last long.
Then, the soul fragment heard a voice that plunged him into the deepest abyss of despair.
“Found you.”
Past Incarnation Tianyi held a little orb in his hand. Inside, there was a silver wisp swirling around. “I told you, your fate was sealed the moment you came here. But what should I do? Crush and kill you right now?”
He felt a bit reluctant. The Dragon Emperor was practically a treasure trove, but the problem was that he wasn’t skilled in soul techniques like soul search. “Maybe I should hand it to Daoyi.”
Tianyi instantly vetoed his idea. He could already imagine her reaction upon discovering the state of his Past Incarnation. “Oh my, you’ve gotten really cute.”
He had developed the skeleton for an incarnation technique that created a Past Incarnation, Present Incarnation, and Future Incarnation, but the problem was that he only comprehended the Past Incarnation. Although he understood the Law of Spacetime, it did not mean he could actually see into the future either.
He wouldn’t allow it. He definitely wouldn’t allow anyone to see his childlike Past Incarnation!
Tianyi sighed. He also wanted to keep the Dragon Emperor’s soul close to him. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, after all. “I guess I can only wait for myself to finish Lei Jingye.”
In the Huang Realm of the Silent Lightning Timeline, he allowed the heavenly punishment to strike him continuously until it ran out of steam. Each bolt of lightning punishment would be absorbed and converted into energy by him.
When it finished, Tianyi reappeared in front of Lei Jingye, casting a shadow over him.
“Bastard.”
Tianyi ignored him, and a miniature sun appeared in his palm as he aimed it at Lei Jingye. He didn’t want to take this chance, so he used a powerful technique from the start.
Suddenly, he stopped and shot his technique, Stellar Silence, in a direction. There, five energies corresponding to the five elements collided with his technique, and a gigantic explosion engulfed the surrounding.
Once the explosion dissipated, Tianyi saw an elderly man exuding the aura of an immortal monarch bearing the insignia of the Five Element Sect. “Release my disciple at once.”
Tianyi only had one thought. ‘Not again.’