IS Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The ensuing battle seemed to lack any semblance of immortal elegance.

With all their magical techniques exhausted, they could only revert to the most primitive form of grappling and brawling.

The black and white cranes returned to their masters’ bodies, and behind each of them appeared a crane-shaped phantom. Their figures instantly swelled to the size of mountains, wielding large seals as they attacked Ye Zhuo!

Ye Zhuo hadn’t learned this method of transforming into a Yuan Shen avatar.

His realm wasn’t high enough, and besides, he didn’t particularly want to become like that.

His Reverse Scale Sword was just over three feet long; growing larger wouldn’t make much of a difference.

He could only blame that black dragon named Li Yuan for not producing a Reverse Scale that could change size at will.

Ye Zhuo wielded his sword to meet the two giants.

The giants were powerful and imposing, but he was nimble and his swordsmanship was light and agile. Occasionally, he could conjure Buddhist Dharma seals to protect himself. Even though his physical and spiritual energy were flagging, he could still maintain a rough stalemate.

Tai Hao and Tai Zi observed his condition closely. Human strength ultimately had its limits, especially now that his spirit energy was depleted.

Their attacks didn’t slacken as they relentlessly drained Ye Zhuo’s power, waiting for him to reach the end of his rope.

Without spirit energy to replenish him, this man wouldn’t last much longer. This battle had been fraught with twists and turns, but fortunately, it hadn’t spiraled out of control.

Ye Zhuo didn’t seem to be doing anything special, just wielding his sword in ordinary attacks. But his swordsmanship was indeed masterful and not to be underestimated.

Amidst the constant crane cries, Tai Hao was the first to notice something was amiss.

At first glance, he simply thought that the lotus-petal-like fragments of blood-red light scattering around them were a bit excessive.

But when he looked closely at one of the fragments, it ignited like a sudden flame, instantly transforming into a sword-wielding phantom identical to Ye Zhuo. The blood-red phantom wielded a spirit sword, attacking him with the same fierce swordsmanship as Ye Zhuo himself!

Judging by its origin, it was similar to the myriad beast phantoms used by the Martial Sect Elder.

Tai Hao couldn’t help but curse the Martial Sect’s incompetence in his heart.

It wasn’t enough that they’d failed to show off their abilities and had been killed instead; now, even their martial arts techniques had been learned by others!

Filled with rage, he exchanged blows with the phantom. Looking around, he saw that all the scattered embers had transformed into sword-wielding phantoms, each using different sword forms to attack them simultaneously!

The phantoms’ swordsmanship was cold and silent, with no sound accompanying their strikes and parries. Their sword attacks were entwined with the quietly elegant growth of lotus flowers, which should have been beautiful, but their blood-red color made it terrifying.

A hundred times more eerie than the Martial Sect Elder’s myriad beast phantoms!

“He’s a demonic fiend, just as I suspected!” Tai Zi shouted angrily.

They moved closer to each other, back-to-back, facing the phantoms filling the sky.

At this moment, they noticed something else – Ye Zhuo’s true form had vanished from sight. They couldn’t see him anywhere.

He must be hiding within one of the phantoms.

But all the phantoms’ auras were exactly the same, making it impossible to tell them apart.

“Junior Brother, destroy them all!”

As soon as he thought this, their massive bodies split apart, transforming into countless black and white cranes that attacked the phantoms!

The crane phantoms were fierce and powerful. With their full-force attacks, the phantoms were quickly torn apart and shredded into countless fragments.

The cycle of creation and destruction circulated, and each time a phantom was torn apart, a surge of power flowed into their Yuan Shen, increasing the power of their next attack.

Blood threads and crane feathers scattered through the sky. Finally, only two giant cranes, one black and one white, remained in the mountains, along with the last and seemingly strongest blood-red phantom.

The two cranes let out a long cry and charged at the phantom from the east and west!

Under the intense assault, the phantom suddenly shattered.

Tai Hao and Tai Zi suddenly felt a violent pain in their internal organs, as if the sharp crane beaks had pierced their own bodies.

“Why is this happening!”

They reunited their bodies, enduring the pain as they landed.

They suddenly realized that their bodies and Yuan Shen had never been so weak, as if they had returned to being ordinary mortals.

Looking ahead, they saw pairs of black and white crane corpses falling all around them, densely packed together. The ground was covered in scattered feathers and splatters of blood.

Both of them were deeply shocked!

These cranes weren’t just their spirit pets, but their Yuan Shen, which they had painstakingly cultivated!

Why would this happen?

In a daze, it was as if the thousands of phantoms hadn’t dispersed and were still silently watching them from the void.

Tai Hao suddenly remembered an ancient ruin in this realm called the Thousand Buddha Illusion Cave. The stone cave was densely packed with countless colorful Buddha statues carved from top to bottom, each with a different posture. None of the Buddhas were very large, about the same size as a real person, but with thousands upon thousands of statues carved into the cave, illuminated by the sky, it made people feel as if they were surrounded by countless gods and Buddhas, and they would suddenly feel insignificant.

The scene before them was like a vivid recreation of that magnificent Buddha cave.

But instead of feeling any holiness, they only felt eerie coolness and a lack of vitality.

“Fiend…” Tai Hao gasped, looking ahead, “What evil illusion technique are you using!”

Ahead, the thousands of crane corpses vanished and dissolved, and the myriad phantoms also turned into nothingness. And within this nothingness, Ye Zhuo’s figure stood where he had originally stood, as if he hadn’t moved at all.

The man’s long hair was now loose and disheveled around his shoulders.

His robes were also rumpled from the fighting, his knuckles were white, and his hands were stained with blood.

His features were still distinct.

His eyelashes drooped slightly, perfectly obscuring his usually icy eyes. Suddenly, a trail of blood flowed from his right eye.

It revealed a certain empty compassion.

“It’s not an illusion,” Ye Zhuo said, noticing the warmth beneath his eye. He raised his hand and casually wiped away the blood.

Forcibly merging completely unrelated sword techniques, Buddhist teachings, and Martial Sect supernatural powers when his strength was exhausted was indeed beyond his ability to withstand. It was already considered a feat of body refinement that he wasn’t bleeding from all seven orifices.

There was a brief residue of Buddhist Dharma on his body, which made him feel much kinder. He even heard someone ask a question and answered, “It’s a heart devil.”

However, this expressionless wiping away of blood tears, in the eyes of Tai Hao and Tai Zi, was a terribly bizarre scene.

Coupled with the blood-colored beads on his wrist, shining faintly.

“…Heart devil?”

As he spoke, the brief kindness was expelled from his body. Ye Zhuo stopped speaking and walked towards the two men where they had landed, his sword in hand.

The heart devil is nothing more than an attachment.

When Tai Zi and Tai Hao tried to find his true form within the phantoms, they fell into their own attachments. From that moment on, everything they slashed at were illusions of their own obsessions. If they couldn’t see through their attachments, they would only hurt themselves.

His true form had never disappeared. It was just that once people developed an attachment in their hearts, they naturally couldn’t see anything else.

Ye Zhuo came before the two injured men, his long sword dripping blood.

The Real Man Tai Hao suddenly said, “That’s the Buddhist meditative power ‘All forms are unreal,’ isn’t it?”

“A righteous Dharma technique originally intended to clarify one’s own mind and illuminate one’s attachments, but you’ve transformed it into a murderous power with wicked and demonic methods. Am I right?”

Ye Zhuo wanted to answer this seemingly sharp question, but he couldn’t be bothered.

He was a sword cultivator.

He knew that the sword was a weapon of killing, as were all the other weapons forged by humans.

Then all the supernatural powers that people comprehended were also powers for killing people. What was the problem?

Finally, Ye Zhuo asked, “Aren’t you two going to escape with your spirits?”

According to his experience, it was now time for the final stage of a life-or-death battle.

Escaping with one’s spirit when one couldn’t win was always the unchanging principle of the Immortal Dao.

Real Man Tai Hao felt that his lifelong cultivation was about to be ruined: “Ye Zhuo, the Immortal Sect will never allow you to live!”

After speaking, he exerted all his Yuan Shen to press a strand of will into his Junior Brother Tai Zi’s body, forcing him to self-destruct!

Today, he would kill Ye Zhuo here no matter what!

In an instant, Real Man Tai Zi was filled with horror and disbelief, but his body was already glowing with golden light and bleeding from all seven orifices, about to be detonated by his Senior Brother.

Escaping was impossible, so self-destructing was also the norm in the Immortal Dao.

Ye Zhuo wasn’t surprised and had even activated his spirit to defend.

Ahead, the dazzling light was already blinding.

Although their cultivation had been exhausted in the previous battle, they hadn’t damaged their foundations. But at this moment, facing a Tribulation Transcendence self-destruction, some things had to be burned.

It didn’t matter.

His entire cultivation had only been for a little over twenty years. Even if it was burned away, he could just start over.

At least, it wouldn’t be him who died.

Ye Zhuo raised his hand to block.

Just then, a familiar voice reached his ears.

“Ye Zhuo, catch!”

A subconscious intuition surfaced in his mind. Ye Zhuo faced the brilliant light but didn’t burn his spirit.

In the next moment, a vast wave of spirit energy suddenly poured into his body!

At this moment, Tai Zi’s body and soul exploded into a cloud of blood mist and fireworks. The terrifying shockwave crashed towards him.

At the same time, the ocean-like spirit energy poured out from Ye Zhuo’s palm!

The vast and endless spirit energy lifted Ye Zhuo’s robes behind him and pushed the shockwave from the self-destruction back towards Tai Hao!

With a loud explosion, a pale soul escaped from Tai Hao’s body, instantly soaring into the sky and rushing towards the Upper Purity Mountain in the east.

He had finally escaped with his spirit.

The eastern horizon was instantly filled with surging winds and clouds. A Yuan Shen Dharma form of a black dragon that stretched across the sky suddenly appeared, its head facing Tai Hao’s soul and opening its massive mouth.

With a magnificent dragon roar, Tai Hao’s soul was instantly pushed back above his body.

Ye Zhuo suddenly stabbed his sword into the ground. Red Lotus Karmic Fire instantly burned across the sky!

As if a pre-arranged net had fallen, Tai Hao’s newly escaped soul was forcibly pushed back into his body!

Tai Hao, his soul returned, looked at Ye Zhuo approaching him with a terrified expression.

“…How dare you touch me!”

“I am under the command of the Immortal, the Supreme Purity True Man–”

Ye Zhuo had no intention of drawing his sword, and Tai Hao breathed a sigh of relief.

“We never touched the Azure Mountain Spirit Vein—”

Without warning, Ye Zhuo struck out with a palm. He had always been vindictive and showed no mercy. The chaotic and vast spirit energy only added to the power of this palm.

Tai Hao’s head instantly shattered into a spray of blood mist.

Ye Zhuo gasped for air, his fingers trembling slightly as if he had exerted too much force.

But he still didn’t stop. He took a small jade bottle from his storage ring, poured out the powder, and sprinkled it on Tai Hao’s corpse.

The corpse immediately dissolved into a transparent powder, leaving no trace.

Two storage treasures fell to the ground.

Li Yuan, who was watching from the side with his arms crossed, saw a few scribbled words engraved on the jade bottle.

“Essential for destroying corpses and erasing all traces”

“Jiang”

He shifted his gaze back to Ye Zhuo and saw that the man wasn’t even looking at him. He was picking up the items and walking to the other side.

Li Yuan followed.

He saw Ye Zhuo walk up to the other corpse and meticulously sprinkle the powder on it.

Li Yuan was speechless. He struck out with two palms, destroying the remaining two corpses.

Only then did Ye Zhuo look at him.

He didn’t know when the dragon had started watching. Maybe he had been there from the beginning.

This person had the same aura as his own natal sword. If he was following him, it would be difficult for him to notice.

Ye Zhuo stepped over a pile of rocks and walked a few steps towards him.

“I heard a saying in Sword Casting Valley,” Li Yuan suddenly said, standing in front of a pool of blood, “That gold and stone are inherently without heart, and swords are also without guilt, but–”

He paused slightly at this point and looked at Ye Zhuo.

Ye Zhuo: “…But the human heart is filled with darkness and turmoil?”

“That’s the sentence,” Li Yuan said, “I have already buried the Swordsmith’s body.”

Ye Zhuo didn’t commit to an answer.

He just took a few more steps forward.

He didn’t even know why he was walking there.

Li Yuan watched Ye Zhuo walk towards him with a dazed expression, step by step. Then, when he reached him, he closed his eyes and collapsed into his arms, covered in blood.

Li Yuan: “…”

To be honest, he had collapsed later than he had expected. This person was really good at holding on.

Ye Zhuo’s consciousness faded into darkness after a brief blur.

In the last moment before losing consciousness, he thought that there were still other people here. He was always vigilant and should have been able to hold on a little longer to leave this place.

Perhaps it was because this dragon was so similar to his own Reverse Scale Sword.