pjbooks Chapter 118 The Prey Has Been Found
Chapter 118 The Prey Has Been Found
"A descendant of the Primordial Immortal Emperor." The fragment of the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit, sensing the aura of the Primordial Dao Fruit within Jiang Chen, emitted a slow, cold snort, like churning magma deep within the Earth's mantle. "Thirty thousand years. That old bastard is finally dead. He sealed me with his own Dao Fruit for thirty thousand years, and now he's given it to you. Are you here to reinforce the seal for him? Or to continue guarding this cage for him?"
Jiang Chen looked at those two dark red vertical pupils, his expression remaining calm. "Come here." Just two words, his tone as indifferent as if he were arranging an after-dinner walk.
Jiang Chen has been inside the ruins for three full days.
In the past three days, the victory celebration at Liangzhou Fortress had long since ended, and the Qingyun Academy's admission brochure had been forwarded over a hundred billion times globally. Online discussions about Jiang Chen had evolved from "Does cultivation really exist?" to "Does the Qingyun Academy dormitory have private bathrooms in rooms of several people?" But at this moment, all this clamor had nothing to do with the silent snow-capped mountain behind Chen Beiyuan.
On the dome of the spherical space, the golden light left behind after the Zhou Tian Star Array was extinguished had completely dissipated. In its place, a dark red light surged from the cracks in the black stone tablet. The light grew brighter and denser, raising the temperature of the entire space by several degrees.
Jiang Chen was still standing in front of the stone tablet. His right hand gripped the Primordial Sword, while his left hand remained pressed against the largest crack on the tablet's surface. His posture was unchanged from three days ago, but his complexion was paler. This was a natural reaction to the repeated tempering and depletion of his will after continuously engaging in a spiritual battle with the fragments of the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit using his divine sense.
"The fourth day." Zhou Tianze took the broken spear off his shoulder; the silver metal foil on the spear blade hummed slightly in the mountain wind. "Old Ye, how long did you hold out on the thirty-seventh floor when you stormed the Apostle's Hall?"
"One day and one night." Ye Wuhen gripped the hilt of the new sword, his thumb rubbing back and forth on the shallow scratch on the hilt. "Then his spiritual power was exhausted, and he was cleaved out by the apostle's projection. He had been standing in front of the seal inside for four days. He hadn't eaten or drunk anything for four days, and he hadn't even changed his posture."
"This is what it means for Immortal Emperors to fight." Zhou Tianze slammed his broken spear into the ground, the butt of the spear embedding itself half a foot deep in the frozen soil. His voice carried a rough and relieved quality, a release after ten years of suppression. "We almost didn't even have the right to watch. Speaking of which, what exactly is sealed inside that stone tablet? Thirty thousand years ago, the Primordial Immortal Emperor had to personally suppress it, and now Jiang Chen is being forced to stand motionless inside for four days?"
Chen Beiyuan put down his binoculars and turned around. His white hair was ruffled by the mountain wind, but his black eyes, smoothed and rounded by time, remained as steady as ever. "The General Bureau's Intelligence Department analyzed the ranking system of the cultivation world that Jiang Chen mentioned. In the cultivation civilization, the Immortal Emperor is the highest rank, a realm attained only by shattering the void, splitting the heavens, comprehending the three thousand Great Daos, and ascending to the pinnacle of the world. The Primordial Immortal Emperor was one of the nine strongest Immortal Emperors in ancient times, and the only one to attain the Immortal Emperor rank through the Dao of the Sword. And what was sealed in that stone tablet was the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit, which was barely sealed by the combined efforts of a hundred Immortal Emperors. A seventh-pillar demon god like Balsalon wouldn't even be considered a gatekeeper in front of the Demon Ancestor. If we had to compare them—the thirteen apostles of the Apostle Realm could probably touch the Demon Ancestor's heel. However, the difference in actual combat power between beings of this level is beyond all our current measurement methods."
Silence spread in the cold wind of the plateau. Then, the earth trembled.
Centered on the sword-mark-like fissure at the entrance to the spherical space, the entire black mountain began to collapse outwards from its waist.
The collapse lasted a full quarter of an hour. As the last wave of debris tumbled down the mountainside, the internal structure of the spherical space was completely exposed to the highland sunlight. The black stone tablet, which had been suspended for thirty thousand years, was cleanly sliced in two by a pale golden sword light descending from the sky, piercing from top to bottom. The two halves of the tablet were slowly tilting to either side, and dark red chaotic power emanated from the broken surfaces—the residual power of those fragments of the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit, completely stripped away by the sword intent, was rapidly evaporating and turning into nothingness under the dual suppression of sunlight and true essence.
Beneath the shattered base of the stone tablet, a dark red fissure was slowly closing. This was the sealed passage connecting the deepest level to the abyss, the only escape route for the fragments of the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit after they were severed. The edges of the passage were densely covered with pale golden sword intent patterns—these patterns constantly flowed, contracted, and strangled, intercepting, shredding, and evaporating every wisp of dark red chaotic power surging from the fissure. The passage was becoming increasingly narrow and thin, like a mouth being slowly clenched shut.
A golden sword light shot out from the depths of the collapsed spherical space, soaring straight into the sky. The sword light drew a graceful arc in the air before rapidly plummeting towards the valley on the eastern side of the Kunlun Mountains. The observer responsible for monitoring the airspace with the spiritual energy monitoring device shouted first, "It's in the sky! Heading east! Very fast—no, not falling, it's flying itself! It's riding a sword!"
Ye Wuhen was the first to give chase. He had no sword to wield, but he ran faster than anyone else—the Sword Saint's physical speed was still at the SSS level within the Awakened system. He transformed into a gray shadow, sweeping across the mountain ridge, each light tap of his toes on the rocks propelling him dozens of feet forward. Zhou Tianze followed closely behind, arcs of electricity crackling on the blade of his broken spear, his entire body transforming into lightning. Luo Qinghe leaped into the air on an ice plate pieced together from countless tiny ice crystals, his long silver-white hair fluttering wildly in the wind. Chen Beiyuan couldn't catch these top-tier combatants in their prime, but he didn't need to—Qi Hongyu and his large entourage behind him had already shouldered various portable devices, shouting into their communicators as they ran.
At the bottom of the valley lay an ancient riverbed, dried up for countless years. In the center of the riverbed lay a massive boulder, smooth as a mirror from the river's flow. Jiang Chen stood atop this boulder. His school uniform was covered in dust, with several tears in the hem from sword intent, and wisps of dark red chaotic power still lingered at the cuffs. He held the Primordial Sword in his right hand, tip pointing downwards, dark red liquid slowly dripping from its blade—the remnant power of the shattered fragments of the Demon Ancestor's primordial spirit. Each drop was enough to corrode a small city, but at this moment, it was merely ordinary liquid on the Primordial Sword's blade, evaporating rapidly upon hitting the boulder's surface, leaving not a trace.
But his eyes shone with an astonishing light. It was the look of a hunter after slaying a prey worthy of battle, the ultimate relief of releasing a killing intent that had been suppressed for a thousand years.