In Yunzhou, above the rolling sea of clouds over Qianlong City, hidden deep in the mountains, a huge vessel slowly lowered itself.
Boom!
The hull suddenly jolted, as if it had struck a reef.
Above Qianlong City, a “shell” emerged, blocking the uninvited guest descending from the heavens.
At the instant the Wind-riding boat was intercepted by the defensive formation, a white-robed figure in a hood flew up from the vessel and looked down over the entire city.
“This formation is made up of seventy-six Earth Fiend formations. Even a fourth-rank martial artist cannot break it, a little troublesome.”
Yang Qianhuan spoke flatly.
At the edge of the Wind-riding boat, Nangong Qianrou frowned.
“Can you do it?”
Yang Qianhuan stood with his hands behind his back, speaking in a tone of unrivalled supremacy.
“Simply trivial!”
A fourth-rank martial artist could not break it, but that did not mean a fourth-rank Arcanist could not. He had deliberately put it that way to highlight how different he was.
As his words fell, Yang Qianhuan lightly stepped onto the defensive grand formation, and circles of formation light lit up beneath his feet.
To outsiders, these circular formations looked no different from one another. All were based on the Eight Trigrams, outlined with criss-crossing lines and twisted, mysterious symbols.
But when the circular formations spreading out from Yang Qianhuan merged into the defensive grand formation, the protective array enveloping Qianlong City began to shake violently. Something seemed to go wrong with the internal structure of the formation, and the seventy-six smaller formations that composed the whole rapidly disintegrated.
In the field of formations, this kind of fixed grand formation was actually the easiest to break, because its structure was set. One only had to identify the weak point and break it directly.
This had nothing to do with the rank of the one who had laid the formation. A fire formation was a fire formation, a water formation was a water formation. Even a high-rank Arcanist could not turn a fire formation into a water formation.
At most, the structure would be a little more complex.
Any formation had a corresponding method to break it.
Just as Xu Pingfeng could break the formations left behind by the Jianzheng, Yang Qianhuan could likewise break the formations he had set up.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with Nangong Qianrou, Chen Ying let out a sigh of relief. If Yang Qianhuan had not accompanied them, this protective formation alone would have been enough to give them a headache.
Wei Yuan’s lightning warfare would probably have failed to take effect.
Then Chen Ying immediately felt that thought was wrong. There would never be any accident in a lightning assault. Yang Qianhuan had been personally named by Wei Yuan to accompany the army in the surprise strike on Yunzhou.
That meant Wei Yuan had already anticipated the existence of a defensive grand formation.
“Heh, if Duke Wei had been resurrected earlier, Qingzhou would not have fallen either,” Chen Ying muttered.
As he spoke, the defensive grand formation below shattered with a thunderous crash.
Inside Qianlong City, drums burst into loud peals. After a brief moment of panic, the garrison left behind swiftly restored order, using the drums as a warning signal as they assembled in the city.
The soldiers on the walls hurriedly adjusted the muzzles of the cannons, aiming them at the sky.
“A bunch of turtles in a jar!”
Chen Ying gave a derisive laugh and was just about to order the descent when he suddenly saw a white-robed figure appear outside the Wind-riding boat.
The white-robed man wore an iron armoured mask. His faceless visage silently watched them, then he extended a palm and violently shoved outward.
A circular formation instantly spread out and slammed towards the Wind-riding boat.
Within the formation, earth, wind, water, and fire lit up one after another, exuding a terrifying aura.
Chen Ying, Nangong Qianrou, and the other fourth-rank martial artists all received a warning from their danger sense at the same time. Their expressions changed slightly, and their hearts sank with it.
It was not that the formation’s attack power could threaten them, but the Wind-riding boat beneath their feet could not withstand an attack of this level.
Once the Wind-riding boat was destroyed, the armoured soldiers aboard would be smashed to death in the fall.
At this moment, the shortcomings of martial artists were laid bare. They did not fear the killing power of formations, but with their limited methods, they had no way to break them, nor could they cast spells to protect the Wind-riding boat.
At this critical instant, the man who plucked the stars from the heavens every day descended.
Yang Qianhuan appeared by the rail, reached out a palm, and lightly pressed it against the circular formation. The grand formation being pushed towards the Wind-riding boat collapsed and disintegrated soundlessly.
A teleportation formation lit beneath Yang Qianhuan’s feet. In an instant, he was already before the white-robed puppet. Then he extended a hand and grabbed for the puppet’s head.
The puppet tried to teleport away, but once Yang Qianhuan’s palm clamped over its face, all formations failed.
“Xu Pingfeng?”
From beneath the veiled hat came Yang Qianhuan’s low voice.
“I heard you sealed away that old thief the Jianzheng. Well done.”
A fire formation condensed in his palm. Flames gushed forth, forming a tongue of fire more than ten metres long.
When the flames died away, the metal puppet in his hand had already been burnt red-hot, and the position of its head had melted into bright iron liquid.
This puppet had only just entered the fourth rank. The formations it could use were those Xu Pingfeng had inscribed into it when refining it, and both their number and power were limited.
Yang Qianhuan, meanwhile, was a veteran Arcanist capable of achieving the third-rank Master of Heaven’s secrets realm. Within the same system, there was also rank suppression.
Nangong Qianrou immediately gave the order to descend. The four thousand armoured soldiers aboard were ready to go. In fighting within the city, cavalry would still hold the advantage. As for street fighting, they could simply abandon their horses if necessary.
Without their mounts, they were still heavily armoured infantry, impervious to blades and spears.
At the mountaintop, among the grand mansions filled with towers and pavilions, a middle-aged man in purple climbed a loft and, under the protection of shadow guards, gazed at the giant ship slowly descending from the sky.
“Send word at once to the stockades nearby. Tell them to return and reinforce Qianlong City.”
The purple-robed middle-aged man’s face was grave as he spoke in a deep voice.
He was not overly panicked. Yesterday, good news had come back from the front. The Yunzhou army had taken Yongzhou City without shedding blood and had completely occupied Yongzhou.
The main force would soon be able to push all the way to the capital and fight the Great Feng to decide victory or defeat, bringing this war for the realm to an end.
Although Qianlong City was now under enemy invasion, it might also be the Great Feng’s final death struggle.
Over the past year, the Great Feng had first gone through the Battle of Mount Jing City during the autumn harvest, where a hundred thousand elite soldiers died in the north. Before it could recover, the cold disaster had arrived. Right after that, he had proclaimed himself Emperor in Yunzhou, raised troops northward, and campaigned against the court.
By now, how many fierce soldiers and great generals did the Great Feng still have left?
There were still five thousand elite troops in Qianlong City. Together with those in the surrounding mountain stockades, they amounted to more than ten thousand men.
Enough to resist the enemy.
“Madam, Madam…”
In a quiet little courtyard, a maid hurried in on quick steps and pushed open the door to the meditation room.
Inside, there was only a beautiful married woman sitting in meditation. She bore herself with dignified grace, fair-skinned and lovely.
“Madam, come with me quickly and hide in the cellar. The enemy has broken in.”
The maid cried out in alarm.
The beautiful woman was stunned for a moment. Then her expression turned complicated, impossible to tell whether it was joy or sorrow.
She had long been confined to her inner chambers, forbidden to leave this place. She could only rely on the maids by her side to pass on and receive news, and thus had some understanding of the war in the Central Plains.
After the news returned yesterday, all of Qianlong City had erupted in jubilation. From the upper ranks down to the common people, they drank and celebrated through the night, looking forward to leaving Qianlong City and entering the capital as its new masters.
The Lord of Qianlong City had once promised the people in the city that once he won the realm in future, every single citizen of Qianlong City would be allowed to move to the capital and become privileged folk beneath the Son of Heaven’s feet.
“Do you know who is leading them?” the beautiful woman asked urgently.
“Is it Xu Qi’an!”
The maid looked frantic.
“How would this servant know? Hurry and hide, otherwise when those soldiers charge in they’ll start hacking people down. They won’t care what your status is.”
As she spoke, she tugged her mistress along and hurried towards the cellar.
…
The various mountain stockades outside Qianlong City were at this moment already plunged into fierce battle.
Groups of heavily armoured infantry climbed upward under volleys of arrows and musket fire. Bullets and arrows struck them and threw off sparks, but against these soldiers who, once they lowered their faceplates, were almost without weakness, and the defenders were utterly powerless.
After Yang Qianhuan had observed the location of Qianlong City, he drew a simple map based on the feedback from the Qi-watching technique, marking the positions of Qianlong City and the surrounding stockades.
After discussing it, Nangong Qianrou and the other generals split the heavy cavalry into two forces. One force was quietly deployed on the outskirts, then lay hidden. Once the fighting began, they would immediately seize the various stockades around Qianlong City.
The other force went out with the Wind-riding boat and was to airdrop directly into Qianlong City.
This was also because the Wind-riding boat had limited carrying capacity and could not transport an entire heavy cavalryman together with his horse into Qianlong City. In fact, even the vanguard force making the airdrop had to be carried in two batches.
…
The Northern frontier.
The tribulation clouds formed a gorgeous fiery sunset, and the fire spirit in the air gathered at a terrifying speed. The temperature rapidly warmed, entering the height of blazing summer, then continued to climb, turning this world into a gigantic furnace.
The fiercest and most terrifying fire thunder tribulation was about to arrive.
Hiss hiss…
The standing water on the ground quickly evaporated dry. One moment, the earth was full of mud, the next it was parched and cracking.
Baidi narrowed its eyes and retreated a short distance. This kind of heat made it somewhat uncomfortable.
The water spirit in the air had almost been completely driven away. Its water spirit spells simply could not be used in such an environment, though fortunately it could still control lightning.
Between its horns, a lightning sphere collapsing inwards took shape, ready to strike.
Luo Yuheng raised her head. In her black-pearl-like pupils was reflected the red glow of the clouds. A trace of melancholy and sorrow flashed through her eyes.
The previous Daoist Leader of the Human Sect, her father, had died in the final fire thunder tribulation.
Among the Four Phase Tribulations, the fire thunder tribulation was the most overbearing and terrifying. It was not like the Golden Core tribulation, which had eighty-one bolts in all, nor was it like the other three tribulations of the Four Phase Tribulations, which began weak and grew stronger layer by layer.
It had only one strike.
Endure it, and one became an earthly immortal. Fail, and all cultivation was scattered, body and soul utterly destroyed.
“It hurts, it hurtsss…”
The black ash on Xu Qi’an’s body surface flaked away, revealing tender white skin.
Baidi’s waterspout and lightning strike had very nearly killed him on the spot and sent him on his way to heaven.
Fortunately, a martial artist’s toughness was not just talk. Dead cells were replaced by new ones, and his injuries quickly recovered, so the problem was not major.
It was just that this kind of recovery consumed his stamina and qi, so his aura had weakened somewhat.
Of the spiritual essence he had gathered through diligent flower arranging, nearly a third still remained hidden within his body, not yet fully activated.
His power had already reached the peak of second rank. Beyond that was the threshold of first rank, and this was clearly not something the Flower God’s spiritual essence alone could achieve.
Xu Qi’an wiped the ash in his hand on Luo Yuheng’s feather robe, then took both her small hands in his and said with a smile:
“Don’t be afraid. Once we get through the tribulation, we’ll be an immortal couple roaming free between heaven and earth.”
Feeling the warmth from his palms and seeing his radiant smile, Luo Yuheng did not pursue the matter of him dirtying her robe. She softly said:
“What if we fail?”
She had a slight shadow in her heart regarding the fire thunder tribulation. Back then, she had personally watched her father turn to ashes in the tribulation fire.
“Then we’ll be Dao companions again in the next life,” Xu Qi’an said with a smile.
If one died and one lived on, then I’d be an undead knight… at the critical moment, his mentality was instead very steady.
Their eyes met.
Luo Yuheng’s flawless immortal beauty was no longer so cold and aloof. There was an added trace of tenderness.
Just then, within the layered tribulation clouds, a magnificent pillar of fire as thick as a water vat descended from the sky.
It was so powerful that it twisted the surrounding air, and the heatwave it raised ignited the clothes and manes of the beyond-mortal experts present.
In an instant, it swallowed Luo Yuheng and Xu Qi’an, this “infatuated man and resentful woman”, and turned the ground beneath their feet into surging molten lava.
Now… from between Baidi’s horns, that lightning sphere which had long been gathering power suddenly shot out.
There was a flash of light as the brilliant lightning sphere shot forth, leaving arcs of electricity in its wake.
Boom!
The lightning sphere blasted apart the pillar of fire. Tongues of flame shot in all directions. In the gap where the fire pillar was scattered, Baidi did not see Xu Qi’an or Luo Yuheng. The two had vanished.
The next moment, the fire pillar returned to its original state, scorching the earth.
At that moment, a high dragon’s roar came from the sky. The beyond-mortal experts present looked up and vaguely saw, within the pillar of fire, a gigantic golden dragon soaring upwards against the heavenly fire.
Up there?
What was he trying to do?
Baidi and Agaruka Bodhisattva frowned. The latter stopped and temporarily spared al-Asura, who had been beaten so badly his own mother would not have recognised him.
In the flames, Xu Qi’an held Luo Yuheng as he charged ever higher against the pillar of fire.
Luo Yuheng already possessed a body unwearied by ten thousand tribulations. Her flesh remained intact within the pillar of fire, but that did not mean she was unhurt. In truth, she was enduring unspeakable agony, her four aspects and physical body on the verge of collapse.
If she could not endure it, she would turn to ashes.
So unbearable, so unbearable… Luo Yuheng’s fair skin grew paler and paler. No, not pale, but transparent. Her whole person looked like a statue cast from glass.
If this continued, all her life force would be completely burnt away, and then she would vanish in ashes and smoke, just like her father.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m here!”
Xu Qi’an’s whisper came to her ear.
Luo Yuheng’s heart instantly settled, like a small boat in a raging sea entering a sheltered harbour.
She turned her head and saw a charred black human figure.
Xu Qi’an’s skin rapidly carbonised, the outer ash peeling away to reveal fresh red flesh streaked with blood. That fresh flesh carbonised again, then turned to ash and peeled away. After several repetitions, Luo Yuheng saw his glowing red skull.
Next would be the primordial spirit burning…
Just as she was about to raise her Dharma Aspect to shield him from the tribulation fire, she suddenly sensed a vigorous life force rising from within him.
This immense and pure life force was like a clear spring, pouring into the withered bodies of Luo Yuheng and Xu Qi’an.
Xu Qi’an closed his eyes and began to focus on tempering his body, qi and blood, and spirit.
His flesh and blood were constantly burnt away, then continually reborn. In this process, his essence, qi and spirit were tempered again and again and rapidly fused together. In the span of only a dozen breaths, he had walked the road that took others decades.
This tribulation battle had been a near-certain death, no, a certain death situation. The Yunzhou beyond-mortals believed so, and the Great Feng beyond-mortals believed so as well. The facts proved it was indeed so.
If there had been no trump card, the fire thunder tribulation would have been the end of Xu Qi’an’s life. If Luo Yuheng had not brought him into the area covered by the heavenly tribulation, Xu Qi’an would already have died by Baidi’s hand.
And Luo Yuheng had had no chance to consolidate her cultivation. After passing the Golden Core tribulation, either she would help Xu Qi’an resist the enemy, then wait for the next heavenly tribulation to descend and fail her tribulation because her magic power had been too greatly depleted, or she would disregard the lives of Xu Qi’an and the others, hide away to consolidate her cultivation, and the price would be the deaths of Xu Qi’an and the other beyond-mortals, and the destruction of the Great Feng.
Luo Yuheng herself, on the other hand, might well have survived.
Luo Yuheng had chosen the former, but the former was still a dead end.
So they had to live through death.
But how to live?
The idea Xu Qi’an proposed was to use the tribulation to advance to first rank.
For him to advance to first rank.
When al-Asura, Daoist Jinlian, and Zhao Shou heard his suggestion, they had almost thought the boy had gone mad.
He had only advanced to second rank half a month ago, and now he was already thinking of stepping into the ranks of first rank martial artists?
This was disrespect to cultivation, disrespect to the beyond-mortal experts under heaven, and disrespect to Kou Yangzhou.
But Xu Qi’an’s next words persuaded them, making them decide to throw all caution aside and accompany Xu Qi’an in taking a gamble.
Xu Qi’an’s inspiration to advance to first rank had come from Luo Yuheng’s detailed description of the heavenly tribulation on the night the beyond-mortals had discussed matters. When she mentioned the fire thunder tribulation, a bold idea had arisen in his heart.
Before the tribulation battle, he had gone to the Southern Marches to ask Shenshu how to advance to first rank, and had obtained the answer from him.
Normally speaking, using the body as a furnace and tempering essence, qi and spirit into one to achieve a first rank physique was a long process. Along this road, there were bound to be dangers at every turn, and it was limited by talent. Not every first rank martial artist could become a half-step Martial God.
As one blessed by national fortune, Xu Qi’an certainly did not lack talent. What he lacked was time.
Whether it was raising himself from the early stage of second rank to the peak of second rank, or tempering essence, qi and spirit, both required time.
But through his diligent flower arranging, he had received the Flower God’s gift, borne spiritual essence, and comprehended the “Dao” of growing stronger the more he fought. It happened to make up for the deficiency in his cultivation.
Although the peak of second rank was not his normal state, and sooner or later he would fall back to his proper realm.
He intended to seize this brief state and use the fire thunder tribulation to temper his body, fusing essence, qi and spirit together and successfully stepping into first rank.
Such an operation was equivalent to directly skipping the slow tempering process and completing it in one step. It was basically suicide.
At this moment, the benefits of diligent flower arranging showed themselves again. As long as he conserved the expenditure of spiritual essence and kept a portion within his body, then when the fire thunder tribulation tempered his body, the Flower God’s spiritual essence would be his greatest support.
This was the spiritual essence of the Undying Tree.
Besides that, he still had Dragon Qi, all the Dragon Qi he had obtained during his travels through the jianghu.
With Dragon Qi entering the body, fortune and karmic luck would be profound.
Added to that was the half share of national fortune he had already possessed. Xu Qi’an felt that he could absolutely gamble on it.
The reason al-Asura and the other two had agreed was also because they felt it was worth taking the gamble.
As the fire thunder scorched him again and again, the nearly tangible golden dragon plunged into Xu Qi’an’s body. His gradually carbonising and weakening body was once more infused with life force, allowing it to continue enduring the tempering of fire thunder.
Luo Yuheng tightly held Xu Qi’an’s hand. Even at the most painful moments, she never once let go.
Another dozen or so breaths passed. The terrifying fire thunder began to weaken. The pillar of fire as thick as a water vat slowly shrank, becoming the size of a bowl’s mouth, then the size of a fist, then the size of a chopstick, and finally vanished completely.
High in the sky, Luo Yuheng wore a feather robe condensed from magic. Her beautiful hair and robes fluttered fiercely in the wind. In her hand she held a charcoal-like humanoid figure with no sign of life at all.
“I’ve advanced to earthly immortal,” she murmured softly.
Crack!
The charcoal split apart and flaked away, revealing a flawless body white as jade before everyone’s eyes.
Xu Qi’an looked down at Agaruka Bodhisattva, Xu Pingfeng’s puppet, and Baidi below. The corner of his mouth lifted, and his gaze turned icy.
“I’ve entered first rank!”
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