Archfiend Chapter 55

Chapter 55: Emperor Armament (Three)

Vermillion Snow didn't have a sliver of time to react. This was because ensuingly, her opponent had vanished again!

"Where are you!" Vermillion Snow's entire body was emitting black smoke, her hoarse voice screeching: "Come out! Get the hell out here!"

Boundless golden light illuminated every crevice of the Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena. At this moment, she and Xu Yangyi seemed to be like Ye Gucheng and Ximen Chuixue locked in contest at the summit of the Forbidden City.

"Receive your death!" Vermillion Snow shrieked, her left hand madly grabbing out towards her left side. Just as she extended her hand, inches of it turned large and finally transformed into a tremendous, several-tens-of-meters-long fox claw!

Her body leaned sideways, and as she leaned, she dredged up flights of the Unrivaled Beneath the Heaven Arena's audience stands. 

"Damn you!" Her voice was incomparably mournful, and she exhausted all of her strength to claw out five several-meter deep scars that immediately appeared on the audience stands!  

"Junior!!!" On her right hand, her five fingers condensed five plate-sized black spirit pearls that exploded with a rumble!

"Boom, boom, boom!" No less than a greater half of the Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena was destroyed! Countless gravel stones surged and fell about. This was a frightened madness, a berserking used to conceal the extreme fear in her heart! At this time, the corner of her eye suddenly flickered, and a silhouette interweaved with golden light moved without warning.

"Crack!"

She saw him, yet even if it was her, she was incapable of reacting at this moment!

With a leg, Xu Yangyi leapt up and used his knee cap to slam his opponent into the ground from behind. The rumbling sound of stone shattering rang out roared and fractured apart in succession. Countless rivulets of blood gushed out from the ground. The sound of bones breaking could be heard coming from Vermillion Snow's back. Xu Yangyi could hear it quite clearly, yet it didn't stir his emotion one bit.

"This one is for the several thousand human lives here."

It wasn't enough… It still wasn't enough! The blood within his heart was boiling, and there was a voice shouting that these several punches were simply insufficient!

A cultivator's integrity. A cultivator's responsibility. A cultivator's burden. On this day, with the cost of 7000 lives as the price, he had learned these things. Now was the time for remunerations. 

From where this strength came from was not important. What was important was that he had to realize his promise to Firecloud right now and put this demon to the edge of a blade! Afterwards, he would take her demon head and lay it in the Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena in consolation to the true cultivators.

"Hehe… Hehehe…" A wretched laughed came from Vermillion Snow's mouth, whose head was being pressed down upon by Xu Yangyi. Her hair had long fell into disarray, and the veins on both of her hands were exposed. Clawing at the ground, she broke apart layer upon layer of broken stone through both of her hands! All of a sudden, she denounced: "Junior! On this day, I shall not rest until you meet your end!"

Her condition made her seem to be a devil, and her full head of black hair loosely draped over her shoulders. Even now, she was dyed unbearably filthy with blood. Her bewitchingly beautiful face was completely covered in mud and blood; not only that, her left side was bulging outwards and her right side was sunken inwards. She was essentially not of human form!

"This one's for…" Just as Xu Yangyi was about to punch a third time, he abruptly discovered a tremendous crack had materialized in his surroundings!

A spatial crack!

The feeling of the pure-black spatial crack was quite odd. If it was said the surrounding air was paper, then this paper had currently split apart. The air seemed to turn viscous, and this viscosity formed a strange black crack. Xu Yangyi was situated in the center of this black crack, and a bizarre attractive force was dragging him towards the inside of it.

He didn't know where this spatial crack would lead, and he didn't know what was inside.

Simultaneously, his entire body's spiritual force, a spiritual force that was just frighteningly abundant, receded away like a tide. Vermillion Snow sensed the pressure on her whole body ease up, and already in her mind, she was planning to exert every fiber of her being. Standing up, she discovered an astonishing scene.

"Heh… Hehehe! Hahahahaha!" She turned towards the sky and began to roar in laughter like a madman: "You still can't kill me! You're still unable to kill me!"

"Bastard! This is your last chance! Next time we meet, I shall pull out your tendons and flay your skin!" Her luxurious cascade of ebony hair danced disorderly, and blood flowed from her seven apertures. The present her was just like a berserk demon.

Xu Yangyi's entire form was slowly sucked into spatial crack.

"Crack, crack, crack…" Time seemed to have reverse, and his wounds of three seconds prior had returned in their entireties. A pain that caused his five viscera and six bowels to shift made him unable to restrain himself from vomiting a mouthful of blood.  

What the hell was this object? It could reverse time? Supply spiritual force? It appeared to do all these things, but in his heart, Xu Yangyi kept on feeling it wasn't so simple. His wounds became increasingly greater and more severe until he felt that all the bones in his body seemed to break, and he released a heavy groan. 

"Remember…" Vermillion Snow was ten-odd meters away from Xu Yangyi. She said with her voice hoarse, her body seemingly inhuman, and blood spilling from her seven apertures: "Dreg… You best pray you don't meet me again…"

Xu Yangyi stifled the surging sharp pain within his body, and before his entire body's spiritual force drained dry, he suddenly pointed out with his finger and a golden brilliance formed a tiny snake, which fluttered towards Vermillion Snow. 

Vermillion Snow's laughter immediately died, and she screeched as she used both her arms to protect her head. However, there was nothing. No… She had carefully seen that as the spatial tear nearly joined seamlessly, nonetheless… 

Her… jade chest that she was holding with an arcane effort inside had disappeared! Furthermore… the unconscious man that was just on the side had vanished, as well!

"Solution Eighty-One… Stealing Heavens, Swapping Sun…" At the center of the spatial crack, Xu Yangyi and Chu Zhaonan were glued together, and Xu Yangyi's hand that was dragging the jade chest was trembling. He laughed bitterly: "Fuck…"

Afterwards, he blacked out, too. His wounds had returned, reversed to when Vermillion Snow had slapped the spiritual force-less him down into the ground by several tens of meters. He had long since lost the capability to support himself.

If it weren't for the heart-like hot blood sustaining him, perhaps he would've fell over early on. Merely, his hand still grabbed onto the jade box. This was the establishment source of his cultivation path.

Vermillion stood dazed where she was, looking at the spatial crack in the air that ultimately vanished. The crook of her mouth suddenly raised strangely. 

"Ahahaha…" Gentle laughter rang out a couple times, and soon after, she turned to the sky and laughed heartily: "Go… Go well, go very well! Hehehehe!" Her heart finally eased, and her gaze turned absolutely icy again.

"Little Bastard… Just wait…" She sneered: "For you to actually be in possession of such an item… even if you don't find me to settle the score, I will search for you…"

Vermillion Snow sucked in deeply and she fiercely clenched her teeth. Her loss this time was great, and her blood sacrifice had went incomplete. Finally, that nameless junior's explosive strike had brought her foundation to near instability. She would have to recuperate for at least over a decade to slowly mend it.

She didn't expect these damned human Foundation Establishment cultivators would be so fearless of death… It was out of her calculations that Chu Tianyi would have Immortal Intoxication at hand.

But her error above all errors was that she didn't foresee that there would still be two other people within the qi walls! And among one of them, he could actually injure her that was of half-step Core Formation! All these threads had completely come together in the end to form a whole necklace.

If the situation was normal, she would be able to kill such cultivators with a breath of air!

This was her humiliation. She, a magnificent half-step Core Formation demon, only below ten people and above myriad masses, had been beaten into such disgrace by a Qi Condensation cultivator! Even more critical was that her breakthrough to Core Formation was unsuccessful. The kill order of China's human cultivators was bound to follow! This major affair was enough to sentence her to a death of a thousand cups a hundred times! With her present situation, if a couple of humanity's true geniuses made a move, she would be unable to force an escape, as well!

"Bastard…"

Inhaling deeply, she transformed into tendrils of black smoke, fading away at the center of the arena stage.

It wasn't known how long it had been, but the desolate arena stage was quiet without a soul. In a flash, all the stones on the floor all began to lightly tremble!

"Clatter, clatter, clatter…" It seemed like the charge of ten million-strong cavalry. Subsequently, all shattered stones flew back to their original positions like magic! "Crack, crack, crack!" It appeared that an invisible hand was manipulating these blocks, as if time had turned back once again. Less than thirty seconds later, the entire Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena had already returned to its initial state!

"Swoooosh…" An illusory silhouette gradually took shape and substance. If there was anyone here, they would definitely be awed in shock. This was because… this person was clearly standing in front, yet his appearance was incapable of being clearly seen. It was to the extent that even his height and external characteristics had strayed past the head, entirely unable to be imagined!

He appeared like a foreign being isolated from this space. He didn't exist in the world and perhaps he had surpassed it, transcending above all living things. 

In the ravaged landscape all around, he seemed to suddenly hear something. His indistinct hand gently grabbed at the wind, and a voice uncertain as to even whether it was a man or woman fluttered in the air: "Ming Di?"*

After several seconds of silence, the silhouette faintly swayed: "So it turns out you've already reached half-step Core Formation, eh… In order to prevent our perception, you went so far as to arrange a formation that covered the entire sky. You sure have given it much thought… For Core Formation, you have already walked upon an evil path, what a pity…"

At the tip of his nose a fragrant scent arrived. It was the aroma of flowers. 

Xu Yangyi's nose faintly stirred. He didn't distinguish what flower this was, but it was rather clean and new, causing a person who smelled it to feel their state of mind and senses to be refreshed. His body seemed like a block of wood, slightly unstable. A familiar feeling revolved around his body, cool and moist. It was water.

His bear upper torso, especially some wounds that were itching, seemed to have something sucking on it incessantly. According to his deductions, what he should've been feeling was fish. 

It was like creek water in summer. His sweat carried a salty nature and after it fell into the water, it kept on drawing in little finger-sized fishes sucking on his toes. It was the privilege only a carefree person with mountains on one side and water on the other could have. 

It was unfortunate he wasn't privy to it.

"Swish…" His eyes slightly opened and his body surprisingly felt not a sliver of pain. He opened his eyes, looking at the sky, and sorrow arose without warning. This graduation ceremony, he had experience far too many things… In the end, the only person left behind had been himself.

That was incorrect… There was also Chu Zhaonan.

Thinking about this, he discovered that the bullet lodged in his chest had already vanished at some point. Subconsciously, he revolved the Hundred Solutions to absorb spiritual force, yet he found... 

There wasn't a scrap of spiritual force here! There were no birds in the sky and neither were there clouds. All that existed was a dark-blue sky. He looked all around him and was incredibly stunned posthaste. At this moment, he was actually soaking in the center of a tremendous lotus pond!

He couldn't see the sides of it, and he couldn't see the end of it. The depth of the lotus pond water was simply unknown. The pond appeared clear, yet likewise, the bottom could not be seen.

Lotus flowers swayed gently in the wind, as if the pink-snowy color even reached the ends of the sky. Below, clusters of lotus leaves calmly drifted on the surface of the water. It truly should've been heaven's welcome of the boundless jade of lotus leaves, a classical poem of the different reds of lotuses cast by the reflecting sun.

Chu Zhaonan's figure that he had pulled in could not be seen in sight. Within this vast, limitless lotus pond, there were no frog croaks or bird cries. It was if this corner been forgotten by the world.

However, he was the only one here! It wasn't limited to this. In the next second, his hand subconsciously grabbed at something and his gaze suddenly sunk.

The jade chest had vanished! The arcane effort he had risked his life for… An arcane effort that would lead straight to Core Formation wasn't in his hand right now!

"Fuck!" He didn't give it any thought a second more and sucked in fiercely, immediately diving beneath the water. He couldn't lose it!

This was his take off-point; it was not an option to lose here! How many cultivators could only beseech a glimpse at its exterior? How many cultivators because of this arcane effort had raised up an astronomical price during the segment to snatch up talent?

He had refused Daomaster Floating Cloud's recruitment; this item was his lifeline! How could he possibly lose it here!

* 明帝 - Ming Di. I am unsure if this is a title or name at this point. Will change in the future. Could very well be "Emperor Ming" Or I could be dumb and this Vermillion Snow's real name. But who names a girl BRIGHT EMPEROR

Chapter end