Chapter 1293: Tit for Tat
"They still got away? What in the world are you people doing!"
"Those cultivators are too fast! Their movements are perfectly synchronized, like a well-trained army—not a band of disorganized stragglers."
"It wasn't their speed. They vanished into thin air, right before our eyes!"
An image circulated through the Sage Dynasty's Stellar Network.
It clearly showed the attackers on the verge of being cornered by the Sage Dynasty's soldiers, only to dissolve into nothingness at the critical moment, their forms scattering into the air.
The Sage Dynasty soldiers assumed they had teleported away and tried to track their destination.
But they found no trace of spatial fluctuations.
"Requesting reinforcements. Our forces in Luoyan Province are stretched to the limit just defending the Sky City. We lack the manpower to pursue and eliminate the remaining Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance remnants within our borders."
"This is Shilin Province. We've eliminated all resistance forces here. We can mobilize immediately!"
...
Sun Erlang reviewed the stream of communications from the eastern front, contemplating whether to dispatch another contingent to assist in the encirclement of Luoyan Province.
Suddenly, a thought struck him like a bolt of lightning, and his heart skipped a beat.
But it was followed by a wave of suspicion.
He suddenly recalled something his master had once told him.
"'No, that's not right,' he thought. 'Luoyan Province... it should have been destroyed once before. Even though the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance rebuilt it, there's no way they could have that many cultivators stationed there for defense...'"
"'How could I have forgotten something so important?'"
A sharp glint flashed in Sun Erlang's eyes. Sensing something was amiss, he immediately issued a new order to all Sage Dynasty forces: "Halt all reinforcements to Luoyan Province. I will dispatch a team personally to handle the situation."
"The Thirty-Sixth Regiment, currently stationed in Luoyan Province, is to withdraw immediately."
A military command was absolute.
No one questioned it; they simply executed the order swiftly.
"This is Commander Lan Xiangwen of the First Legion, Thirty-Sixth Regiment. I have completed the withdrawal with my troops. Per your orders, we have retreated to Lueying Province."
"But... I don't see any of our forces here."
"Lan Xiangwen, what nonsense are you spouting? We've been at the rendezvous point this whole time, and there's been no sign of you! Where in the blazes are you?!"
"Wait a minute, Lan Xiangwen, your position indicator shows you're still within the borders of Luoyan Province! What is the Thirty-Sixth Regiment doing?!"
...
A thread of chaos began to unravel in the eastern front's internal communications.
Wang Xuanba, the supreme commander of the eastern front, decisively isolated their communications channel and began a detailed interrogation.
Just then, Sun Erlang's voice came over the line.
"Xuanba, there's something strange about that place. I've confirmed that after the Thirty-Sixth Regiment entered Luoyan Province, their coordinates never changed. It's as if they've all fallen into a deep slumber."
"So, don't trust any of their reports. They must be hallucinations from a dream state."
Wang Xuanba sounded slightly surprised. "I've already sent an aberrant beast avatar to infiltrate the area, but I couldn't find them. I never imagined it would be an illusion."
"We did breach the newly constructed Luoyan Sky City earlier. The first wave of soldiers did successfully evacuate Luoyan Province. This must be a new tactic deployed by the Alliance afterward. Or perhaps... it's not the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance at all..." Sun Erlang offered his conclusion.
"One of my puppet bodies has already reached the border of Luoyan Province..."
An image of Luoyan Province appeared before Sun Erlang's eyes.
The location of Wang Xuanba's aberrant beast, as pinpointed by the Stellar Network, was empty. There was no sign of anyone.
Indeed, the whole of Luoyan Province showed no signs of battle.
All was calm and peaceful.
"It can even pull a puppet body into its illusion?" Sun Erlang felt a sense of gravity.
"A pity. No matter how convincing, a fake can never become real!"
The puppet, intricately patterned in black and gold, extended its arm.
Energy surged through its frame, and in an instant, a longbow forged from pure golden energy materialized in its grasp.
He drew the bow into a crescent moon, and a silver arrow materialized on the string.
Vwong!
After a brief charge, the silver light shot forth like a dragon, piercing the sky.
The immense energy tore the very space ahead to shreds, threatening to peel back the illusion and reveal the truth beneath.
Just then, a pale hand emerged from the void without warning.
It gently closed around the Sky Patrolling Arrow.
No matter how the silver light erupted from the arrow, it remained caught fast, unable to move an inch.
Finally, the light was completely extinguished, and the arrow became an ordinary projectile in the pale hand.
The space torn by the Sky Patrolling Arrow mended itself.
The pale arm that had intercepted the arrow, completely ignoring the puppet Sun Erlang controlled, began to fade, growing dim and ethereal.
Sun Erlang scoffed.
A profound golden energy pulsed from the puppet's body.
A new pair of arms sprouted from the puppet's back.
Then another pair grew from the left side of its torso.
The process continued until a total of eight pairs—sixteen arms—had emerged.
With so many new limbs, the puppet's overall frame swelled, almost doubling in size.
The golden patterns on its surface seemed to come alive, flowing and shifting ceaselessly.
Rumble!
Like thunderbolts striking the earth, eight longbows materialized in the puppet's hands, one after another.
It drew all eight bows, nocking eight Sky Patrolling Arrows that pointed in different directions, all humming with power.
"Break!"
Sun Erlang roared.
Eight silver dragons roared to life, launching from the central puppet and shooting outward in all directions.
The clash of gold and silver light was so brilliant it briefly outshone the moon—the celestial manifestation of the Great Qi itself.
For a moment, it felt as if nothing else existed in the world but this monument to brute force.
Wherever the eight Sky Patrolling Arrows passed, space shattered like a mirror, exploding layer by layer.
But strangely, the fragments didn't fly outward.
Instead, they froze in mid-air.
The silver dragons continued their rapid advance, obliterating everything in their path.
Yet the trail of destruction they left behind seemed frozen in time.
As a result, the reality beyond the illusion was never truly revealed.
To Sun Erlang's shock, the pale arm appeared once more.
This time, however, it didn't try to stop the eight Sky Patrolling Arrows.
Instead, with a strange mix of leisure and speed, it began to pick up the frozen fragments of the illusion, carefully placing each one back where it belonged.
If the pale arm was allowed to continue, the spectacular barrage of arrows—a volley powerful enough to severely injure eight Dao Integration cultivators—would be rendered utterly useless, like a fist punching cotton.
Sun Erlang had no intention of letting that happen.
"Even against a mere puppet, you refuse to show your face..."
"Are you looking down on me that much?!"
The puppet's eight pairs of arms writhed across its body.
They squirmed and merged, and in the blink of an eye, they had transformed into a single pair of massive arms, each nearly the size of the puppet's torso.
The puppet flashed forward, appearing directly in front of the pale arm.
It grabbed on with all its might!
But the seemingly slender arm possessed an unimaginable, immense strength.
Creeaak...
Far from stopping its movement, the massive puppet arms were dragged along, forcibly pulled in the direction the pale arm intended to go.
The dark gold patterns on the puppet's body glowed with maximum intensity.
Sun Erlang could faintly sense that under this intense strain, the puppet's body was reaching its breaking point.
It would disintegrate at any moment.
A cold glint flashed in Sun Erlang's true eyes.
A remote surge of power from his other dark-gold puppets was instantly channeled into it.
Boom!
Bathed in golden light, the puppet's body swelled to several times its size.
With this sudden surge of strength, it managed to halt the pale arm's movement.
Pressing his advantage, Sun Erlang pushed the puppet's power to its absolute limit, determined to drag the true culprit out from the shadows.
The idea was sound, but just as he felt success within his grasp, an inexplicable chill crept into his heart.
And then, he felt it...
Another pale, cold arm, resting on the puppet's shoulder.
With the slightest pressure, the puppet's state of maximum exertion was shattered.
It staggered, thrown completely off balance.
Before Sun Erlang could adjust, he felt more pale hands emerging from the void, one after another.
They pressed down on the puppet's body.
Each hand alone did not seem particularly strong.
But together, their pressure was resolute, weighing down on the puppet like a mountain, like the sea.
In an instant, the puppet was submerged in a sea of white hands, completely immobilized.
Vwong!
A trickle of blood ran from the corner of Sun Erlang's eye as he forcibly severed his connection to the puppet.
He had a premonition that if he had remained connected and allowed the puppet to be dragged into that unknown place by those pale hands, his own body would have suffered grievous harm.
"Longevity..." Sun Erlang was now certain of his opponent's cultivation stage.
This was beyond his ability to handle. A flicker of resentment crossed his mind, but he didn't press the issue.
"You can stand down. I'll take it from here." Fortunately, at that moment, Qiao Gong's voice echoed near the puppet.
"This little treasure of mine was so hard to make. I can't just let you have it..." Qiao Gong muttered, his figure appearing beside the dark-gold puppet.
A spinning blade of light in his hand traced a simple circle around the pale arms gripping the puppet.
The myriad arms tore like paper, severing at the cuts.
"Go!"
Qiao Gong patted the dark-gold puppet's shoulder, and it shrank back to its normal size.
Then, with a flash of light, it teleported away.
In that final moment, Sun Erlang realized that the severed pale arms Qiao Gong had sliced through were nothing more than willow branches.
"A willow tree?"
Qiao Gong had the same question.
He reached for the severed branches but grasped only air.
In the moment he was stunned, the thousands of densely packed pale arms had already melted back into space, vanishing without a trace.
"Won't even show your hand now? You're really not giving me, Qiao Gong, any respect."
There was no anger on Qiao Gong's face. He simply took out a round bronze disk from his robes.
On the disk sat several small figures in comical poses.
The figures had been playing happily, but as soon as Qiao Gong took out the disk, they became tense and anxious.
They began pointing in various directions.
Without any discernible movement from Qiao Gong, a rope-like shadow shot out from his side.
It flew swiftly, then vanished into the air.
A moment later, the black rope began to tremble as if it had struck something unseen.
As long as the small figures on the disk pointed, Qiao Gong continued to launch the black shadows.
Before long, a strange and sinister black web had been woven, with Qiao Gong at its center.
The small figures on the bronze disk seemed to have completed their mission, and they patted their chests in relief.
Qiao Gong, however, reached out and plucked one of the figures from the disk.
Though reluctant, the figure was helpless. It let out a whistle, and one figure became two.
With a somersault, two became four.
Before long, the single figure had multiplied into an entire legion.
Each figure, its face a mask of misery, leaped onto the black threads of the web.
Then, to the sound of a faint, rhythmic chant, the figures began to haul on the black threads in unison.
The massive black web instantly began to contract.
The surrounding space trembled, and the mended fragments shattered once more.
Something was about to be dragged out from behind the veil of illusion.
Qiao Gong narrowed his eyes, waiting expectantly and muttering to himself, "This thing can even pull the Immortal Puppet[Zu]. You think it can't handle you?"
A sigh echoed from nowhere.
The faint sound of a zither seemed to drift from the edge of the sky.
The once-energetic figures instantly grew listless and began to slack off.
Qiao Gong's expression grew wary as he scanned his surroundings.
"Why must we fight..."
The mournful, plaintive voice echoed around him.
Qiao Gong's eyes darted about before he broke into a smile. "Well said! Why must we fight? I, Qiao Gong, am not much of a fighter myself..."
"Since neither of us wishes to resort to violence, why don't we sit down and talk this over?"
To prove his sincerity, Qiao Gong put the bronze disk away.
The small figures cheered, delighted to be done with their work. Qiao Gong, meanwhile, looked around with a pleasant smile. "I am Qiao Gong, from the Tianji Realm. May I ask your name, friend?"
The other party was undoubtedly a Longevity-stage expert.
But in his brief exchange with this entity, Qiao Gong hadn't detected any trace of the reversed universal principles characteristic of the Xuanhuang Realm's cultivators.
He therefore concluded that this person, like himself, was a survivor from another, shattered cultivation world.
After a moment of silence, the gentle, solemn voice spoke again. "I... do not remember."
"I simply wish to see no conflict. I bear no malice."
As the voice spoke, an image formed in Qiao Gong's mind: throughout Luoyan Sky City, cultivators from both the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance and the Sage Dynasty were lost in a blissful slumber, their lives in no danger.
Qiao Gong breathed an inward sigh of relief.
Though he wasn't afraid, it was always best to avoid making an enemy of a Longevity-stage expert.
"In truth, we bear no malice either..."
Qiao Gong said with a friendly smile, striking up a conversation.
Back on his end, Sun Erlang received Qiao Gong's message and sighed to himself. "The gap between the Dao Integration and Longevity stages truly is as vast as the heavens and the abyss."
"However, if all my dark-gold puppets had been on site..."
"...it might not have been an impossible fight."
...
If the Sage Dynasty's setback in Luoyan Province was merely an accident, then their encounter in Tianling Province was undeniable proof that the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance still had some tricks up its sleeve.
After a considerable effort, the Sage Dynasty's army conquered Tianling City, only to discover it was an empty shell.
All important cultivators had long since been evacuated.
Only a few cultivators without backing remained, holding the line with constructs and artifacts.
The Sage Dynasty soldiers quickly realized it might be a trap, but before they could retreat, the entire Tianling City erupted.
The massive floating city, along with nearly ten thousand cultivators from both sides, was instantly annihilated.
In the sky, a cascade of phenomena heralding the fall of cultivators erupted all at once.
The myriad visions blended and warped together, making them impossible to distinguish.
In a hidden valley within Tianling Province.
"Thanks to Brother Sun's warning, our Tianling Province was able to turn disaster into fortune," said Song Mansheng, the Lord of Tianling City, stroking his beard with a smile.
Sun Liancheng's gaze remained fixed on the massive fireball on the distant horizon. "It was all thanks to the City Lord's decisive leadership. If not for your resolve, my suggestion would never have been so effective."
The other cultivators in the valley chimed in. "Indeed! According to the visual records we left in the city, at least ten thousand of those bandits died in that explosion."
"Heh, my friend, you must be mistaken. It was clearly twenty thousand!"
"...Ah, yes, yes. My old eyes must be failing me! Twenty thousand, it was definitely twenty thousand! The records prove it!"
A silent understanding passed between them.
"Speaking of which, who are these people? They attacked without warning, and most importantly, they could even interfere with our teleportation arrays and the Tianxuan Mirror," Sun Liancheng said, cutting through the celebratory mood.
"They're probably not from the Five Elders Association. I've fought their cultivators before, and the aura I sensed from these attackers was completely different."
"Who cares where they're from? Once the Alliance's central command takes action, they'll all be dead. This is just a fleeting moment of madness!"
"Lord Song, should we... launch a counterattack while they're in disarray and claim more merit?" someone in the valley suggested.
Song Mansheng mulled it over for a moment, then looked to Sun Liancheng without making a decision.
Sun Liancheng narrowed his eyes, remaining silent for a long time.
After the others had waited for some time, he finally shook his head. "The situation is unclear. I cannot make a judgment."
Song Mansheng nodded. "In that case, we'll wait. It's not wise to act rashly when we don't know what's going on."
The others in the valley naturally agreed.
Later, Song Mansheng and Sun Liancheng spoke privately, away from the others.
"Brother Sun, you weren't telling the whole truth just now," Song Mansheng said gravely.
Sun Liancheng gave a bitter smile. "I didn't dare say it in front of the others. I was afraid of shaking their morale!"
Song Mansheng's expression grew grim. "Is it that serious?"
Sun Liancheng replied, "It is. As you know, my ability to predict the enemy's surprise attack came entirely from sensing our Sun family's fortune. That day, I was chatting with my nephew when I suddenly felt our family's luck flickering like a candle in the wind, on the verge of collapse..."
"Terrified, I spent a great deal of effort to determine that the threat was external, not from within the Alliance. I thought it would be a raid from the Five Elders Association, but I never expected it to be a group of unknown bandits."
"Since then, our family's future fortune has been in constant flux. One moment it shows signs of immense prosperity, the next it's a terrible omen of our bloodline being severed. It's truly terrifying..." Sun Liancheng sighed.
Hearing this, Song Mansheng's brow furrowed even deeper.
Sun Liancheng advised, "Regardless, with the merit from destroying the city, you will surely be rewarded handsomely. Your contributions are more than sufficient, so why take unnecessary risks? Their reinforcements will likely arrive soon, and those bandits are quite formidable. Instead of taking a chance, we should remain hidden in this valley."
"With the cover of this natural formation, they shouldn't be able to find us..."
Song Mansheng was finally persuaded, suppressing the restless ambition in his heart.
Sun Liancheng's judgment seemed to be uncannily accurate.
Just half a day later, Song Mansheng saw a large number of bandits swarm into the area.
Their faces were filled with fury as they meticulously searched every corner of Tianling Province.
When they flew over the valley, the hearts of everyone inside stopped beating.
Fortunately, luck was on their side, and they remained undiscovered.
"How many of them are there? Did we poke a hornet's nest?"
"Why do we only see their reinforcements? Where are our people from the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance?!"
Inside the valley, everyone was on edge, constantly glancing at the sky and whispering among themselves.
The earlier mood of relaxed confidence was completely gone.
Sun Qi of the Sun family quietly approached Sun Liancheng.
"Uncle, something isn't right."
Sun Liancheng froze, then glanced around cautiously. Seeing that no one was paying attention, he began to communicate with Sun Qi via voice transmission.
"The wavering family fortune has started to stabilize—in one direction. If we stay here, I fear there is only death."
A tremor went through Sun Liancheng's heart.
He had absolute faith in his nephew's words.
It was thanks to Sun Qi's miraculous premonitions that he had set the ambush, detonated the city, and annihilated a large wave of bandits.
Within the world, a family's branches spread, but as people scattered, the family's luck would wane.
The Reversing the Heaven and Earth Record that Sun Qi cultivated could reverse this trend, causing the family's fortune to condense and grow stronger.
The price was that the more prosperous the family became, the more all the accumulated forces of decay would concentrate on the cultivator of the technique.
Every breakthrough was as difficult as ascending to the heavens. Only a peerless genius could succeed.
And Sun Qi was such a genius.
"We move immediately," Sun Liancheng decided without hesitation.
"Everyone is watching. How can we leave? And there are so many of us Sun family members," Sun Qi said, unnerved.
"I've already made preparations," Sun Liancheng replied confidently.
The members of the Sun family quietly gathered within the valley.
Yet, to the eyes of the others, they hadn't moved at all. They remained where they were, chatting with them.
"This treasure, the 'Golden Cicada Sheds Its Shell,' is something I found on an adventure in my youth. I've never been willing to use it, but now I have no choice," Sun Liancheng lamented.
Unbeknownst to the other cultivators in the valley, the entire Sun family had already slipped away through a secret passage known only to Sun Liancheng.
"Quickly, the treasure's aura concealment won't last long. We need to find another hiding place," Sun Liancheng urged.
Just as they were escaping, several white streaks of light tore across the sky, coming from the distance.
Their target was the very valley they had just left.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The white light struck its mark, and an unimaginably terrifying blast of energy erupted from the valley floor.
As the earth roared, a shockwave swept outwards.
It sent the fleeing members of the Sun family tumbling through the air.
Fortunately, the treasure's concealing effect still held, and they were not exposed.
Sun Liancheng and Sun Qi stared in horror at the valley, which had been transformed into a perfectly circular crater of nothingness. Their bodies were rigid, their minds blank.
"A Dao Integration attack! That explosion just now definitely had the power of a full-force strike from a Dao Integration expert!"
"Are those... arrows?"
Just as Sun Liancheng stood dumbfounded, he was horrified to see several more white arrows of light screaming across the sky.
He instinctively ducked his head. Seeing that the arrows were not aimed at him, he scrambled to lead the Sun family toward their next planned hiding spot.
"No, the entire Tianling Province is no longer safe. We can't stay here. We have to find refuge somewhere else."
Halfway there, a sudden insight struck Sun Liancheng, and he abruptly changed course.
He fled toward Shanteng Province, which bordered Tianling Province.
Just as they were about to reach the white mist barrier at the border, the ground of Tianling Province began to tremble violently.
What happened next was a terrifying scene that the Sun family would never forget for the rest of their lives.
In the sky, five interconnected rings materialized, shifting from illusion to reality as they descended upon the world.
Countless tentacles extended from the five rings, reaching down toward Tianling Province below.
And one of them was heading straight for the Sun family.
"Look out!" Sun Qi's face changed dramatically as he cried out in alarm.
But Sun Liancheng had already acted.
He no longer cared about his family.
Alone, he transformed into a streak of blood-red light and shot toward the white mist barrier not far away.
But his escape technique, fueled by burning his own soul, began to slow at a visible rate. It was as if the air around him was filled with countless tiny tentacles, dragging and obstructing him.
The blood-red light dissipated, revealing Sun Liancheng.
He seemed to have lost his ability to fly, plummeting from the sky.
The black, writhing tentacle from above quickly locked onto him.
It plunged violently into Sun Liancheng's body.
Sun Liancheng desperately tried to cast a spell to fight back, but the spiritual energy in the air seemed to have solidified, refusing to obey his commands.
Unable to resist in the slightest, the black tentacle quickly pierced through him.
Amidst the screams of the Sun family, they too were seized by the tentacles that split off from the main one.
The wailing lasted only for a moment before Sun Liancheng's body was assimilated, transformed into another black tentacle.
Not even the phenomenon heralding a cultivator's fall appeared in the sky.
It was as if Sun Liancheng hadn't died, but had simply become that black tentacle.
One by one, the members of the Sun family were captured, leaving only Sun Qi, whose heart was a block of ice.
He didn't dare to move.
Yes, of the entire Sun family, only he, Sun Qi, had been spared.
Because the instant those terrifying tentacles had locked onto him, he had felt an inkling in his heart.
Amidst a thousand paths to death, he had found the single, shining possibility of survival.
Without a moment's hesitation, he had used the Dissolution Chapter of the Tai Shang Primordial Scripture to scatter his own cultivation.
He expelled every last bit of spiritual energy from his body.
Holding nothing back, he had become a complete and utter mortal.
A black tentacle, as thick as an arm, slowly drifted past him.
It circled him once, as if with a mind of its own.
Being so close, Sun Qi could finally see that these black tentacles were actually formed from countless, densely packed black insects.
He didn't dare to breathe, his body frozen stiff.
Fortunately, after determining that Sun Qi was just a mortal with no cultivation, the black tentacle let him go.
It took the rest of the Sun family, now also transformed into a swarm of black insects, and departed with a roar.
Sun Qi remained frozen in his original posture, not daring to move.
It wasn't until half a day later that his body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground.
"What in the world was that..."
A thousand thoughts raced through his mind. After a long while, he managed to gather himself.
He looked at the white mist barrier not far away, and at the five rings in the sky, which were gradually fading.
Sun Qi gritted his teeth and began to cultivate anew.
Shortly after closing his eyes to cultivate, he opened them again.
He had keenly sensed that the spiritual energy of heaven and earth...
...was different from before.
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