Chapter 386: Azure Sky Only Needs One Move 24 |
Chen Shi looked toward the sound and saw that the newcomers were Zhang You and another young man, no older than seventeen or eighteen.
The man was outstanding in both talent and appearance, possessing a bearing as steady as a mountain. Even standing beside Zhang You, his presence was not the least bit diminished.
Zhang You was the kind of person who didn't show his hand easily, standing there like a soft, warm light, calm and composed. But this man was like a great spear, possessing a tenacious and unyielding spirit.
Li Qianyun said, "This is Xia Tianjie of the Xia Family, who also entered the Upper Realm to train alongside us."
Xia Tianjie bowed in greeting. "Tianjie pays his respects to the Child Prodigy. I have long heard of your esteemed name, and Brother Zhang has repeatedly mentioned before me your slaying of the Young Master in the Western Capital, which filled me with great admiration. But meeting you today, I cannot help but be disappointed."
His words were sharp, like a master's strike, aggressive and pressing. He stared directly at Chen Shi and said, "Yang Shaohu went to great lengths to invite you here for a duel in the Upper Realm, yet you have been injured twice, inevitably giving rise to suspicion that you are avoiding battle. And now you mention the Li Family's outer disciple Li Tianqing, exaggerating his abilities—it sounds like boastfulness. Speaking grandly without substance, you do a disservice to the names 'Child Prodigy' and 'Top Scholar Chen.'"
The Upper Realm was supposed to be perfectly safe, yet Chen Shi had been injured twice as soon as he arrived. To outsiders, it certainly looked like he was deliberately getting hurt to avoid a fight.
Chen Shi shook his head. "Li Tianqing is my brother. We've known each other for a very long time. I know very well how far his cultivation has progressed. Qianyun, when was your duel with him?"
Li Qianyun said, "Half a year ago."
Li Qianyun said modestly, "While it might not be a thousand miles in a single day, my advancement has been rapid."
"But if Li Tianqing were to fight you now, he wouldn't need to observe you for eight days."
Chen Shi continued, "He might only need a single day now, or even half a day, to see through you completely."
What Li Tianqing excelled at most was breaking down enemies' techniques and spells, finding flaws from the smallest clues. He was widely read and knowledgeable, and the more books he read, the more solutions he had. Now that he was in charge of the Library Pavilion of the Celestial Court's Ministry of Rites, which housed all kinds of techniques and spells from the True King's Tomb, his personality would certainly drive him to study them thoroughly.
He was also responsible for teaching talisman masters of Red Mountain Hall various techniques. By now, Li Tianqing could be considered a walking Library Pavilion.
On top of that, he possessed the Martial Sage Temple, enshrining Lord Guan, the Sage Emperor, and was blessed by the Three Lights Righteous Energy from the ancestral court. He was also cultivating along the new path of miniature shrine, divine embryo, divine descent, and emptiness refining, so he didn't have to worry about being corrupted. All of Chen Shi's strengths, he had. All of Chen Shi's weaknesses, he didn't.
Although he never showed off, in Chen Shi's heart, there were few who could compare to him.
Li Qianyun only excelled in the Li Family's ultimate arts. Even in the Upper Realm, she only received guidance from the Li Family's ancestors. No matter how high her achievements were, they were limited.
In front of Li Tianqing, she could be said to have no secrets at all.
Chen Shi even guessed that Li Tianqing wouldn't need half a day to see through her techniques and spells. To defeat her again might not take six moves—perhaps just two or three, or even one.
"She's a girl, and she has thin skin. I'd better not discourage her too much," Chen Shi thought to himself with good intentions.
Li Qianyun looked a little unconvinced.
Xia Tianjie shook his head. "Child Prodigy, I have always admired your skills, but Li Tianqing is merely an outer disciple of the Li Family. Praising him so highly like this makes it seem like you're biased because he's your friend. Is the Top Scholar Chen, who dared to kill the Young Master in front of the Nine Halls, nothing more than a mouthful of sharp words?"
Chen Shi pondered for a moment, then broke into a smile. "I admit, that does sound biased. I know Tianqing extremely well, and I can pick up seventy or eighty percent of his abilities myself. Brother Xia, how about this? I've lost all my cultivation right now, and my qi and blood are depleted. Give me a day to observe you, and also to recover my cultivation. A day from now, I will defeat you using Li Tianqing's methods. What do you say?"
Xia Tianjie's expression turned to anger. He laughed coldly. "Fine! Let me tell you what technique I cultivate first..."
"That won't be necessary. I've already seen it."
What Li Tianqing excelled at most was breaking down enemies' techniques and spells, finding flaws from the smallest clues. He was widely read and knowledgeable, and the more books he read, the more solutions he had. Now that he was in charge of the Library Pavilion of the Celestial Court's Ministry of Rites, which housed all kinds of techniques and spells from the True King's Tomb, his personality would certainly drive him to study them thoroughly.
Xia Tianjie laughed. "This is a hereditary technique of my Xia Family. It's no surprise that you recognized it."
Chen Shi continued, "When the Cave Deity Eight Emperor Prime Transformation reaches the Golden Core stage, you need to refine eight Golden Cores to serve as external avatars. When it reaches the Nascent Soul stage, it's also eight Nascent Souls. By the time you reach Spirit Transformation, they split into eight Primordial Spirits, called the Eight Emperors. The Spirit Transformation realm of this technique is different from all others. You must cultivate eight deities, each with its own Primordial Spirit force field, called a grotto-heaven. By the time you reach the Divine Descent and Emptiness Refining realms and cultivate a Dao Field, these eight grotto-heavens will possess immense power. At the Body Unification realm, the eight deities merge, and their power is boundless."
Xia Tianjie's face changed slightly.
Chen Shi had described the Cave Deity Eight Emperor Prime Transformation technique with perfect clarity, as if he had personally cultivated it!
Chen Shi looked him up and down, observing every detail. He smiled faintly. "Cultivating the Cave Deity Eight Emperor Prime Transformation requires that you refine your Golden Core into a pure-yang Golden Core from the very beginning, cultivating pure-yang energy. But you still have yin energy inside your body. You've lost your pure-yang essence. You've been deflowered. And the one who took your virginity wasn't clean. She was most likely an evil spirit."
Li Qianyun's face flushed slightly. *He can even tell that?* she thought.
Zhang You's heart jumped. *Lucky me,* he thought with relief. *The Zhang Family's technique doesn't require keeping one's pure-yang body. Otherwise, I might have been seen through as well.*
Xia Tianjie's expression shifted between light and dark. He gritted his teeth and said, "When I was at the Spirit Transformation realm, I went out to train and encountered an evil spirit. She seduced me, and I lost my pure-yang. But I had already cultivated the Eight Emperor Primordial Spirits by then, so it wasn't a big problem."
Even as he said this, he felt deeply humiliated.
That night, confident in his strength, he hadn't sought out a village to stay in, nor did he have a Godmother's protection. He simply found a rundown temple to settle in for the night. But while he was cultivating the Cave Deity Eight Emperor Prime Transformation, that evil spirit took the form of a woman and came to him. She called herself Moon Lady, claiming that she had died unjustly and turned into a spirit by the moonlight. Xia Tianjie had intended to refine her to death, but he thought he could use the evil spirit to temper his will, so he let Moon Lady try her seductive methods on him, testing the results of his cultivation.
During the trial, his will remained firm, and Moon Lady felt ashamed of her inferiority. She was injured by his aura.
Very pleased with himself, Xia Tianjie treated her wounds, only to be captured by Moon Lady's tender affection. His Dao Heart lost its resistance, and Moon Lady took advantage of him. By the time he came to his senses, a night of passion had passed, his pure-yang was gone, and Moon Lady had fled.
Losing his pure-yang to an evil spirit was a shameful thing, and he hadn't told anyone. But when he arrived at the Upper Realm, the ancestral masters of the Xia Family saw through it and scolded him severely.
Now, having Chen Shi expose it publicly, he felt both shame and anger.
Chen Shi shook his head. "Broken is broken. How is that not a big problem? There's a trace of yin energy inside you. You're no longer pure-yang. Your technique is flawed. Originally, when you cultivated to the Three Corpses realm, you could have refined pure-yang without having to sever the Three Corpses. Now, you'll need to."
Xia Tianjie fell silent. The ancestral masters of the Xia Family had told him the same thing.
Chen Shi continued, "In addition to the Cave Deity Eight Emperor Prime Transformation, you've also cultivated the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art as a supplementary technique. A trace of dragon energy leaks out from your body, carrying a fierce and overbearing will. It's clear you've cultivated this technique. The Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art contains a spear technique, and your talisman-weapon is a long spear. When you use it, golden dragons coil around it, and it is extraordinarily powerful."
Xia Tianjie laughed heartily. "The Child Prodigy lives up to his reputation. But this is your eyesight, not Li Tianqing's."
His laughter had a hollow ring to it.
"But because your pure-yang was broken, your spear technique also has a flaw."
Chen Shi withdrew his gaze and no longer looked at him. "The Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art is originally a technique of extreme yang and extreme rigidity. The spear art within its spells pushes that extreme yang and extreme rigidity to its limit. Your pure-yang has been broken, so when you use your spear technique, that trace of yin energy in your body will create a flaw among your eight dragons. Your weakness is much greater than Qianyun's."
Xia Tianjie laughed. "Besides the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art, I've also cultivated other combat methods! Fixating on the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art alone won't do you any good."
Chen Shi shook his head. "There's no need to observe your other combat methods. In the presence of my Li Tianqing, you'll only be able to use the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art against me. If you use any other method, you'll lose even faster. I need to cultivate now."
He slowly activated the Sixth New Talisman, integrating his Primordial Spirit, Dao Field, and physical body into one, refining them internally without any outward signs of abnormality.
The Xiao Lang Imperial Chapter Technique produced astonishing phenomena, transforming the Primordial Spirit Dao Field into nine layers of heaven, drawing in the righteous energy of heaven and earth. Refined through the Nine Xiao Imperial Chapter, it enhanced itself—this was the first immortal method Chen Shi had cultivated. This technique was indeed fierce and aggressive, advancing at a rapid pace!
Chen Shi had previously cultivated the Eight Extremes Golden Palace Divine Chapter, which could be seamlessly integrated into the Xiao Lang Imperial Chapter Technique. Therefore, his cultivation progress was much faster than that of his peers.
But the immortal formula that the white-robed fairy had deciphered from the Heaven-Measuring Iron Ruler yesterday was different.
The Heaven-Measuring Iron Ruler recorded nine immortal formulas, which could be cultivated in sequence. The technique chapter within it was even more domineering than the Xiao Lang Imperial Chapter Technique, especially the Sixth New Talisman. When cultivating it, there were no external phenomena at all. But all the phenomena were concentrated inside the body!
Chen Shi appeared normal on the outside, but the righteous energy of heaven and earth flowed continuously from the small temple into his body, transforming into ancestral energy within him and forming the Northern and Southern Dippers.
The two great constellations operated, generating yin and yang energy. The two energies refined and churned without ceasing, gradually moistening his body, which had been drained dry by the Seventh New Talisman, like sweet rain falling from heaven. His qi and blood slowly became abundant.
"Oh! I've cracked open a fissure!"
Chen Shi exclaimed. Zhang You and Li Qianyun quickly looked over. Li Qianyun asked with concern, "Where are you injured?"
She was puzzled. When she had carried Chen Shi to bed yesterday, she had clearly checked him over and found no external injuries.
Chen Shi didn't answer. He examined his own interior.
Inside his body, there was a Dao Field. Now, a crack had appeared in that Dao Field. The crack wasn't big—only three inches long—but it was extremely conspicuous!
Strangely enough, this crack clearly existed, but when his yin-yang energy circulated to that point, it passed through without any obstruction, as if the crack didn't exist at all.
"Could it be that activating the Seventh New Talisman really opened the Realm of Emptiness?" Chen Shi wondered.
He carefully sensed it and vaguely felt that there was a surging, immense power within this crack, but he couldn't mobilize it.
Xia Tianjie leaped into the air, flew out of White Pearl Palace, and stood in the sky. He called out, "Chen Shi, I'll show you all the combat methods I've learned! I won't take advantage of you! Watch closely—this is the Yellow and Black Transformation, which I spent seven months of bitter training to master!"
He executed his techniques and spells one by one, condensing his own qi and blood into yellow and black energy, transforming them into twin serpents that coiled around him as he moved. With each movement, he could strike a hundred miles away!
"This is the Overturning Heaven Seal Method!"
Xia Tianjie then roared as he performed the seal technique, wide and open, as if mountains of deities were descending from the sky, crushing everything in their path. The force was astonishing!
"And this is the Dipper Mother Demon-Breaking Art!"
...
Xia Tianjie performed his techniques in the sky. His moves grew increasingly powerful, each one executed with the precision of a master craftsman, without a single flaw. He fully displayed the extraordinary qualities of the Xia Family's strongest heir.
A few more young people were drawn by the power of his techniques and came to White Pearl Palace. They greeted Zhang You and Li Qianyun. One woman asked with a laugh, "Has Brother Tianjie gone mad again?"
These were the next-generation heirs of other great clans, sent to the Upper Realm for training. In the past, they hadn't had the qualifications to enter the Upper Realm for cultivation. They would have had to wait until they actually took over their positions before being allowed to know about the Upper Realm, and only then could they enter to pay respects to their ancestors.
But now, with the darkness advancing and the days growing shorter, the Thirteen Great Clans had to prepare in advance. They sent the strongest heirs of each great clan to the Upper Realm first.
Zhang You and Li Qianyun explained the bet between Chen Shi and Xia Tianjie. Upon hearing it, the others were all quite surprised. The woman was named Zhai Yuanyuan, the next Sect Leader of the Zhai Family. Her gaze fell on Chen Shi, and she smiled. "Does the Child Prodigy really have such confidence? You look unwell, as if you're sick."
Chen Shi shook his head. "It's not that I have this confidence. It's that Li Tianqing has this confidence. Right now, I am Li Tianqing."
Zhai Yuanyuan stuck out her tongue and laughed. "What a strange person."
Chen Shi did indeed look sickly, with depleted qi and blood. In contrast, Xia Tianjie was full of vitality. Between the two of them, Xia Tianjie looked like the one with the pure-yang body, while Chen Shi was the one who had lost his pure-yang.
Xia Tianjie finished demonstrating all his techniques, descended from the sky, and sat cross-legged on the ground. Above his head, his qi and blood surged and gathered into a cloud, his aura soaring. He stared wide-eyed at Chen Shi.
But Chen Shi kept his eyes closed, his gaze inward. He didn't look at him.
A day passed without anyone noticing. Xia Tianjie leaped to his feet and fixed his gaze on Chen Shi.
Chen Shi opened his eyes. "We can begin."
Xia Tianjie's feet erupted with a blast of thunder and fire, launching him into the sky. Everyone looked up and saw him shrink to the size of an ant, a tiny point of light.
A rumbling sound of thunder came faintly from the sky. It was Xia Tianjie activating the Cave Deity Eight Emperor Prime Transformation, merging his physical body, Primordial Spirit, and Dao Field into one. With a shake of his body, he grew to several feet tall, standing in the sky like a deity. Behind him appeared his other seven Primordial Spirits!
The other seven Primordial Spirits quickly dispersed and took up advantageous positions, forming a battle array.
While everyone was still looking up, there was a sudden whoosh, and Chen Shi shot up from White Pearl Palace, turning into a streak of light as he raced through the air.
Li Qianyun laughed. "Brother Tianjie definitely won't use the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art..."
She had just said this when suddenly a dragon's roar shook the sky. Chen Shi's body expanded violently, his qi and blood condensing into a great spear, which he thrust toward Xia Tianqing from afar!
The great spear was unmatched in its dominance in his hands. As he thrust it, the shaft vibrated, and streaks of true dragons flew out. In an instant, there were over a hundred of them, rushing toward Xia Tianjie, who was dozens of miles away, from all directions!
With Chen Shi's charge, the distance between them closed rapidly. The true dragons roared, the spear's might grew stronger, and the pressure suddenly skyrocketed!
Faced with such an overbearing strike, Xia Tianjie didn't hesitate. He immediately activated the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art.
Because he sensed that using any other combat method would only cause him to be directly crushed by the overwhelming momentum Chen Shi had built up. Only the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art could counter the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art!
After all, Chen Shi had only just begun to practice this method, but Xia Tianjie had been immersed in it for a long time. Using the same technique, his chances of winning were higher!
Moreover, he possessed eight Primordial Spirits. Using the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art, its power would be even greater!
He activated the Eight Powers Dragon Summoning Art, and indeed, his power was even more formidable. The sky was filled with swirling dragon energy!
Just then, a giant celestial being slowly drifted past nearby. The thousand-foot-tall deity was as majestic as a mountain, splitting the two of them apart!
They couldn't see each other, but their combat techniques had already been unleashed. Passing by the giant celestial being, they raced forward, giving full rein to their spear techniques. The dragon energy bypassed the immense body of the thousand-foot deity and attacked the other person behind it!
For a time, a thousand dragons danced in the sky. The sound of dragon roars echoed endlessly. Suddenly, with a rumble of thunder, the dragon energy that had been swirling around Chen Shi at lightning speed abruptly dissipated.
The celestial being's face was expressionless as it slowly drifted past.
Chen Shi stood in the air, spear in hand.
On the other side, more than ten miles away, Xia Tianjie looked down in shock. He saw that there were more than a dozen holes in his body, from which blood was gushing.
In that instant, as they had fought across the distance, he had been besieged by Chen Shi's dragon energy. All of the techniques Chen Shi used were familiar to him. But the moment they clashed, the pure-yang lightning contained within the dragon energy exploded, triggering the trace of yin energy inside him and creating a flaw in his technique!
Then, Chen Shi's spear had thrust straight in, breaking his technique, penetrating his defense, and punching more than a dozen holes through his body!
Chen Shi dispersed the spear in his hand. The spear turned into qi and blood like a dragon, circled around once, and then poured back into his body through the Heavenly Aperture at the top of his head. He said calmly, "If Li Tianqing had been the one to kill you, it would have taken only one move. I used two."
In White Pearl Palace, Ma Zhe, Zhai Yuanyuan, and the others felt a tremor in their hearts. *Is Li Tianqing really that strong?*
Li Qianyun suddenly called out loudly, "Li Tianqing, I don't believe you're that strong! Give me one day!"
Chen Shi's cold gaze fell, and his voice came down from above. "If Tianqing were to kill you, it would take only half a day."