Jiang Tang was once celebrated as a genius, but his remarkable abilities eventually turned him into a resource that powerful organizations wanted to control. After escaping that role, he enters a world filled with cultivators, factions, and larger-than-life figures who all seem determined to define him before he can define himself. Some see a future ruler, others a dangerous rival, and still others simply a useful worker. Jiang, however, insists that he wants an ordinary life. The problem is that every new encounter makes that ordinary future harder to reach—and reveals more about why his abilities matter.
Chapter 50: Discovery
In the vast grasslands, streaks of rosy light shone beside a patch of white mist, accompanied by a constant roar. More than a dozen streaks of light flashed ceaselessly in the sky, all chasing after a silent black arc of lightning. Every time the two sides collided, the power unleashed would likely send shivers down the spines of even Spirit-Martial cultivators. The elite from various sects were formidable; their bold decision to join forces in the battle for the Divine Bone clearly demonstrated their immense self-confidence. However, though they began as twenty-seven supremely confident Qi Martial experts, a full quarter-hour later, seven of them had already fallen! And their opponent was nothing more than a golem—one that, by any measure, was clearly crafted from second-tier materials. No matter how powerful it was, it should have had its limits; surely it couldn’t be stronger than the peak of the second tier? And which of these elite practitioners from the various sects didn’t possess that level of cultivation? Yet this puppet’s combat prowess was nothing short of defying the heavens! Shu Hui tapped her storage pouch, instantly summoning eight formation flags that scattered in all directions. Immediately afterward, a formation diagram unfolded at her feet, merging with the eight flags to form a single entity. The moment the Eight Trigram Formation took shape, wind and fire intertwined, and clouds and mist gathered. The next instant, lightning flashed and thunder roared; a bolt of lightning as thick as a thigh surged upward like a raging dragon emerging from the sea, snarling and lashing out toward Dongfang. The sheer might of this lightning dragon terrified many of the cultivators chasing Dongfang, causing them to turn and flee. However, a black light flashed from Dongfang’s abdomen; far from retreating, he charged forward to meet the lightning dragon head-on. Instantly, the black light before Dongfang’s abdomen resembled an endless abyss, swallowing the lightning dragon whole in the blink of an eye! Shu Hui turned deathly pale at the sight. “Well done!” Pan Qinliang noticed that although Dongfang had devoured the lightning dragon, his body had frozen mid-air. Seizing this opportunity, he stomped fiercely on the ground and shot forward like a sharp arrow, suddenly appearing behind Dongfang. With a sudden swing of his arms, the halberd blade—imbued with powerful Yuan Qi—appeared above Dongfang’s head in the blink of an eye. Eight bone spines suddenly shot out from Dongfang’s back, like four pairs of arms bare-handed against a blade—and they actually managed to force the battle halberd to a halt mid-air, no more than five inches from his head! Pan Qinliang let out a cold shout as the surging Yuan Power throughout his body suddenly poured into the halberd; in an instant, it burst into a blinding glow. However, the pure white bone spines on Dongfang’s back suddenly turned as black as ink. “What!” Pan Qinliang was stunned. He felt the Yuan Power on the battle spear draining away frantically—he simply couldn’t build up any power! With a flick of his wrist, Dongfang—whose cannon had just been aimed at Pan Qinliang but hadn’t yet had time to fire—suddenly swung his arm, aimed at the void to his right, and fired another shot. “Boom.” After an explosion, a figure suddenly materialized out of thin air, only to vanish just as quickly with a few flickers. At the same time, a cultivator appeared above Dongfang and, without hesitation, struck out with a palm strike toward Dongfang and Pan Qinliang. At first, this palm strike was silent and imperceptible, but in the blink of an eye, a massive energy palm materialized out of thin air a zhang above Dongfang and Pan Qinliang’s heads. The terrifying pressure caused every cultivator preparing to attack Dongfang to recoil in horror. “The Resonating Palm! Damn it,” Pan Qinliang roared in fury. The figure above clearly intended to wipe him out as well! Pan Qinliang was not skilled in flight techniques. Seeing that there was no way to dodge, he had no choice but to abandon his battle halberd and kick Dongfang, hoping to use the force of Dongfang’s counterattack to knock him out of the range of the Empty Resonance Palm’s power. However, his kick sent Dongfang flying three zhang away. He then watched as Dongfang transformed into a black arc of lightning, fleeing another four or five zhang in a few flashes. The next moment, Pan Qinliang was crushed and slammed into the ground by the massive Empty Resonance Palm. After a thunderous “BOOM,” he lay unconscious in a pit ten zhang wide and one zhang deep. Lin Xuyu was panting heavily; that single strike had consumed nearly seventy percent of his Yuan Power, yet even so, the puppet had managed to escape. “Stupid fool,” Lin Xuyu said with a cold laugh, pulling his gaze away from Pan Qinliang in the pit and glancing at the puppet, which was once again under attack. “It’s just as well he’s not dead—let’s take out a few more.” This was indeed a battle to annihilate the Dongfang faction—but it was also a treacherous campaign to eliminate rivals! The allure of the Divine Bone was boundless to them. Having fought this long, the enemy had only deployed a single spirit-imbued golem. Clearly, they must have suffered massive mental exhaustion from controlling a large number of golems to mine, leaving them unable to fight—or even flee! In that case, as long as they destroyed the puppet, they could claim everything—whether it was the Divine Bone, tens of thousands of Spirit Jades, or even the blueprints for crafting this bald puppet! But the phrase “they” really rankled them—they wanted to claim it all “themselves”! The seven who had fallen earlier weren’t actually all killed by Dongfang! A figure materialized out of thin air beside Lin Xuyu, but instead of attacking him, the figure said in a deep voice, “Senior Brother, we cannot ambush this puppet.” “Why?” Lin Xuyu was also puzzled. Although his junior brother Cheng Hou’s invisibility technique couldn’t evade the spiritual perception of a peer, this puppet’s spiritual energy was clearly weak. Had it not been for the chaotic situation—and his need to eliminate potential rivals—he would have long since凝聚ed the God-Shattering Needle to destroy the puppet. “Spider silk.” Cheng Hou held up a strand of black thread as thin as a hair in his hand for Lin Xuyu to see. “So that’s it.” Lin Xuyu had been puzzled earlier—the bone spines on the puppet’s back kept spewing out strands of spider silk from time to time. While this posed no threat to them since they were on guard, the puppet seemed to take great delight in doing so. It turned out this was to counter the stealth technique. “I feel like we’ve been used by this puppet!” Cheng Hou said suddenly. “How so?” Lin Xuyu asked. As he spoke, he suddenly realized something and exclaimed in surprise, “It seems to be putting up a fierce resistance, but in reality—apart from killing those two at the very beginning—it’s been holding back the whole time. It hasn’t even used those black-and-white rice-grain-sized beads. Has it run out of them, or…” “He’s stalling!” Cheng Hou declared with conviction. “Senior Brother, just keep him occupied. I’ll go investigate in the mist!” “Mm. As long as you suppress your killing intent and aura, their spiritual perception shouldn’t detect you,” Lin Xuyu said. He popped a pill into his mouth, then flew toward Dongfang, feigning a few weak “Empty Resonance Palms” that posed no threat whatsoever to Dongfang. Below, Shu Hui, watching the fierce battle above, was just pondering how to reduce the figure in Dongfang to dust when she suddenly furrowed her delicate brows. She turned her head to look at the mist-shrouded maze to her left but detected nothing unusual. Yet her expression grew even more somber. She turned back to look up at the sky, but after gazing for several breaths, she still saw no sign of that elusive cultivator making a move! “Could it be…” As this thought crossed Shu Hui’s mind, the ancient mirror in her hand reappeared. She swept a straight beam of golden light into the mist and, sure enough, spotted a figure that flashed briefly in the light before vanishing! “Senior Brother, someone is trying to pull a fast one!” Shu Hui warned. The two cultivators guarding Shu Hui turned to look into the mist upon hearing this. One of them, a man in a black robe, said, “Leave it to me.” “That person is skilled in the art of concealment. Be careful,” Shu Hui cautioned. “Mm-hmm,” the man in the black robe nodded and immediately charged into the white mist. Shu Hui remained deeply concerned. The golden light from the ancient mirror continued to sweep back and forth through the white mist, but this time it failed to catch another glimpse of the figure—clearly, the intruder had become wary! But Shu Hui refused to give up. Even if the invisible cultivator had escaped, she was determined to clear the way for her senior brother. Since the other party had backed down, she would let her senior brother pull off his scheme. She was also eager to find out who the Kui City cultivator in the mine shaft really was. This person was incredibly bold—completely unlike any of the talented young cultivators from Kui City she knew. Most importantly, they’d dared to seize her Eight-Array Disk. Didn’t they know who she was?! Lost in her rambling thoughts, Shu Hui momentarily lost focus, allowing the golden light to drift away from her senior brother’s vicinity. By the time she refocused her attention to search for him, she could no longer find him anywhere! “Huh?” Startled, Shu Hui swung the ancient mirror around, scanning the area frantically, but still saw no sign of him. Instead, the mirror illuminated an extremely lecherous-looking cat’s face! “A cat?” Just as Shu Hui stood there dumbfounded, suddenly, both she and another senior brother standing beside her felt a bone-chilling cold sweep over their entire bodies! “Oh no!” Shu Hui cried out in alarm just as a figure burst from the mist, raising a dark-gold pumpkin hammer and swinging it toward her. The cultivator beside Shu Hui abruptly shoved her out of the way, then unleashed his full spiritual energy without hesitation. Golden light blazed from his fists, as dazzling as the Sun, as he met the dark-gold hammer with a double punch. “Boom!” The terrifying force of the dark-gold hammer’s impact cracked the ground, leaving a fissure several zhang in diameter, while the cultivator who had dared to block it head-on was reduced to a pile of shattered flesh. “Senior Brother!” “Take him alive!” As Shu Hui cried out in pain, Dongfang—who was engaged with over a dozen cultivators—suddenly spoke up. “That’ll be a challenge.” Jiang Tang picked up the massive hammer and swung it around, as if to stretch his arm—but the gesture terrified Shu Hui, who stood before him, and even the cultivators surrounding Dongfang began to feel uneasy. Everyone had witnessed that strike just now! A cultivator whose cultivation level was on par with theirs had been instantly reduced to mincemeat—and that was while he was fighting at full strength! “The force of that single blow must have been as great as fifty or sixty thousand jin. Could he be a Spirit-Martial Physique cultivator?” “He’s wearing Xian Zong robes, isn’t he?” “That’s impossible. Xian Zong definitely doesn’t have anyone like that. Two months ago, I fought Gao Heng at the Immortal Garden Ruins, and we were evenly matched. I’ve heard that her strength ranks among the top in Xian Zong!” Lin Xuyu shot a withering glance at the man who’d spoken and said coldly, “Then he’s the very best.” Others might not have noticed, but the moment Jiang Tang made his move, Lin Xuyu sensed something was off! As the young man swung the black-gold hammer from his sleeve, his hand had turned as black as ink, devoid of any luster. Lin Xuyu enjoyed reading ancient texts, especially those chronicling strange tales and legends. One such text described how cultivators, if wounded by the Sea Demons of the Boundless Abyss, would lose their sanity and become mindless, bloodthirsty walking corpses! For this reason, cultivators across the Four Directions all feared the Sea Demons. In particular, five thousand years ago, several expeditions—each comprising tens of thousands of cultivators—had ventured deep into the Boundless Sea to exterminate them, and it wasn’t until two thousand years ago that the Sea Demons were finally driven into obscurity. The mysterious black light he had seen on Dongfang earlier had already puzzled him. Upon seeing Jiang Tang, Lin Xuyu immediately recalled that the fissure leading to Spirit Island was located in the Boundless Sea—and since the Boundless Sea was closest to Xian Zong, could it be that a disciple of Xian Zong had ventured deep into the Boundless Sea, been injured by a surviving sea demon, and then fled to Spirit Island? Regardless of the truth, Lin Xuyu dared not confront him, for ancient texts described demon-possessed cultivators with four words: “unbeatable among peers.” Although Jiang Tang’s aura was only at the mid-stage of the Qi-Martial Realm and seemed somewhat unstable, Lin Xuyu did not want to take any risks. “Junior Brother, don’t make any sudden moves—prepare to retreat!” Lin Xuyu didn’t dare to be the first to act, so after silently warning Cheng Hou, he looked for an opportunity—ideally, for everyone to surround and kill the demonic creature, allowing him to escape safely. However, after sending the mental message, Lin Xuyu suddenly sensed a pair of eyes staring at him—not from the demonic creature, but from a cat! A little cat with horns, wings sprouting from its back, and a lecherous grin!
