Archfiend

Chapter 393: Spirit Tide (3)

“This is a dream?” Xu Yangyi turned his head around and gazed towards the direction where the voice echoed. “Come out.”

There was no response.

Eventually, a long sigh rang out. “I can’t come out… You have to give me a medium. It doesn’t matter what it is, anything that can move is okay.”

Xu Yangyi sneered and waved his hand. With the sound of a fast shot, an ape-puppet appeared.

In the next moment… a yellow light arced towards the ape. The ape paused for three seconds where it stood and unhurriedly floated over to him.

“Initial-stage Foundation Establishment?” Xu Yangyi couldn’t help but laugh. “Initial-stage Foundation Establishment… dares to tell lies about the entity that the Great Sage left behind and sealed?”

“I don’t know either…” Unexpectedly, the Realm Spirit itself was tensed up in a daze. “I only know that countless years ago… someone told me that the moment the thing down there wakes up is when the Realm Spirit truly appears… Only I can seal it…”

“Then why didn’t you go yourself?”

The ape-puppet scratched its head. “The region below… is very dangerous. It’s a terrible cage. I’m only useful against it, but I’m just not able to get in front of it. I need other people to help.”

Xu Yangyi didn’t reply.

There was no way a great cultivator at such a realm as Great Sage Sun didn’t leave behind a contingency. So, based on reason, what this strange Realm Spirit was saying made sense.

And yet in his mind… he didn’t believe it!

Ziqi. He shouted in his spiritual sense and a minute passed. With a sleepy tone present in his voice, Zhao Ziqi was heard.

Big bro?

Zhao Ziqi paused for five seconds and exhaled coldly. Big bro… why did you come back there? There’s something up with this thing, something big!

Xu Yangyi narrowed his eyes and sized up the three-eyed spirit ape-puppet. There’s a problem with it?

I can’t put my finger on it… but it’s definitely not the Realm Spirit! There’s always been plenty of fake facts about the word ‘Realm Spirit’. According to the ancient tomes and recordings, once a place, object, or minor world severed by a mighty figure has a spirit, the distinct air and qi of that land is an endless strengthening to it! However, I can’t feel that at all from this thing!

Actually… I can feel that it’s within the scope of my Netherpierce Eye. It’s a supernatural being! It’s definitely not some majestic Realm Spirit! It… is fake! It’s something else pretending to be a Realm Spirit!

Big bro, you can’t trust it no matter what! This thing is pretty strange! Not even my Netherpierce Eye can tell if it’s really dead or alive!

Xu Yangyi’s gaze smoldered. After ages, he intoned softly, Look at its head. 

In Xu Yangyi’s spiritual sense, Zhao Ziqi opened his eyes and looked carefully for three seconds. Afterwards, as if he was struck by lightning, he was rendered silent.

Xu Yangyi had quite a good memory of objects he’d taken out, due to the eidetic memory granted by the pill spirit, which automatically recorded information. 

But right now… at the top of the ape-puppet’s head, a hair unexpectedly grew out!

A golden hair!

The Realm Spirit’s body in itself… Zhao Ziqi murmured, The Realm Spirit… is a hair?

He was absentminded for a few seconds. Afterwards, he almost jumped up!

This… This… Zhao Ziqi’s spirit form suddenly drifted out and looked at the hair in astonishment. There are millions and millions of the Great Sage’s incarnations… The Gold-Banded Staff is here. C-Could it be that this hair… 

He dared not continue thinking!

I’m taking it down there with me. Xu Yangyi’s gaze slightly flickered, and he said dully.

Zhao Ziqi’s lips moved yet made no objection.

This monkey hair’s arrival was too strange! Furthermore, he dared to confirm that this entity certainly wasn’t the Realm Spirit! Something was hiding in this hair, draped in the skin of a Realm Spirit. It wanted to go underneath the Taiji crack!

Was it possible that something was hiding inside what might’ve been a strand of Sun Wukong’s hair? Or had this hair cultivated into a demon?

Was it personally enlightened by Great Sage Sun, or… something else?

If it was something else… then who could be tempted to act on the entity that Sun Wukong had sealed? And yet who… could hide inside one of Sun Wukong’s hairs?

“Follow me.”

With the fall of these words, black and white inverted in an instant, and Xu Yangyi appeared again underneath the black sky.

He looked all around. The world was like a black cage. He said in a heavy voice, “Realm Spirit, is there a passage leading to Earth down there?”

“Earth?” The Realm Spirit was dazed and pondered for a short moment. “I don’t know what Earth is, but I can feel… that there really is a place down below that leads to another world.”

Xu Yangyi nodded. He was then like an arrow piercing through the clouds, hurrying straight to Baizhai City.

Time waited for no man!

Something underneath… had already awakened and was in the midst of frantically engulfing the Clearcloud Realm! A step late, and if the thing sealed by Sun Wukong truly rose from slumber… then everyone, the Clearcloud Realm’s billion-somewhat inhabitants, had no choice but to all die here!

Swoosh! After drawing closer to middle-stage Foundation Establishment, his speed had become even faster, to the extent that he drew a silver-white air wave in the sky. Below the black curtain of the sky, he didn’t have the slightest thought of concealing his Foundation Establishment cultivation! The streaks of Foundation Establishment qi lingering upon him were also telling everyone that those who blocked his path would die!

He directly stormed through all checkpoints, straight to the State of Shangchen’s Post Horse Station!

Beep… Beep… Beep… At the same time he reached max speed, all of the Defense Department’s devices inside the station screeched. Countless red lights flickered!

“Enemy invasion?!”

“Impossible! Airplanes can’t fly in the sky right now! Under the black clouds, anything that flies gets torn to shreds.”

“What the fuck is that thing!”

“Shut up!” A senior colonel nervously fixed his eyes on a screen and gritted out, “Immediately… calculate the spiritual force intensity!”

“Yes!” A young officer’s fingers flew over his keyboard. After no less than thirty seconds, he almost jumped out of his seat!

“It can’t be calculated! It exceeds the sum of qi that a single spirit-master can hold in their body! What… what is thing?!”

No one said anything. All that was heard in the entire room was ear-piercing beeps. Brows beaded in sweat, everyone looked at each other in dismay. What was going on? The entity on the screen was clearly alive, but how could a living creature have such terrible qi! The upper bound of the Defense Department’s devices for single-body qi calculation was a kiloton! But this thing… in a range around two meters… this thing contained over a kiloton of qi?!

Everyone looked to the senior colonel, but he too was dumbfounded at this moment.

What could be done now? Should a report be made? If reported… would the higher-ups believe it?

But regardless of whether the information was sent… this horrific entity would reach Baizhai City’s air space in ten minutes!

However, without even waiting for him to consider the matter for three seconds… a second red dot rumbled and rose up on the screen!

Swoosh! If said, Xu Yangyi was an airplane, and this red dot was an intercepting plane’s missile!

BEEP BEEP BEEP!!! This time, even the back-up equipment blared furiously! If said everyone was shocked just now, then their minds currently were all blank!

“A… A second entity that exceeds a kiloton of single-body capacity?”

Swoosh! Xu Yangyi’s silhouette was like a sword, cleaving apart wind and slashing through waves. He made a beeline to Baizhai City, but in the moment he neared the rim of Baizhai City a giant palm appeared in the sky! All around it was fifty meters in size! Along with streaks of white qi, it seemed to stretch out from the clouds and seize towards Xu Yangyi!

Middle-stage Foundation Establishment!

“Impudent!” Xu Yangyi roared, and the surrounding space appeared to shake. Soon… ten purple fire-dragons rushed out from behind him. Bringing forth a boundless sea of fire, they charged everywhere!

BOOM!!! In almost the exact moment of contact, both sides simultaneously exploded! A stretch of purple flame along with golden qi dyed the edge of Baizhai City with a hundred meters of purple twilight! The blast could be seen from anywhere in the city!

Swoosh… In Baizhai City, countless spirit-masters all raised their heads and suddenly looked to the north of the city.

“This…” An old man shivered from head to toe and almost kneeled over. “This… This is a spirit-master?! This is a spirit-master?!?!”

“Heavens…” In the lobby of the Post Horse Station, a young man wearing a rat mask bolted up to his feet, along with over twenty other people inside the room. All of them looked to the horizon in shock.

They could sense… that a stifling, powerful spiritual pressure had erupted there! Even the sky seemed to shake because of it!

“This… Master Xu?!” He cast his senses for three seconds and cried out involuntarily, “It’s Master Xu! Master Xu came!!! Master Xu left seclusion!!!”

The gazes of everyone present quickly brightened! Master Xu… in these twenty years, although this mysterious name wasn’t widely spread, nearly everyone knew of it! While some believed the name to be a legend and some believed it to be a deliberate embellishing, no one would deny that this Master Xu’s realm was supremely high! Far above the Three Great State-Magi!

“In that case… who’s the person fighting Master Xu?” Fifth Dragon sluggishly watched the sky. “The Clearcloud Realm… actually has someone else who can match Master Xu?!”

BOOM!!! In the sky, the golden palm groaned and collapsed, transforming into motes of starlight. But at this time, an imposing and grand voice, a voice like the Celestial Emperor, was heard all around Xu Yangyi. “Heavenly Works Activation… Myriad Beings Possess Spirits…” [1]

Swish… In a flash, the originally collapsed golden palm formed again, tens of meters all around Xu Yangyi. It turned into birds and beasts, and a cascade of golden sword-rain poured down in the next second!

Swoosh swoosh swoosh!!! Endless gold shined upon the area to turn it into a golden sea! Already, the masses below were totally stunned.

“Spirit Transformation Divine Palm!!!” A sky-shaking roar boomed. Unexpectedly, the sword-rain of birds and beast turned into a giant golden palm again. Without a shred of leniency, it fiercely closed shut where Xu Yangyi was at the middle!

There was no sound. Dazed, Twelfth Boar watched the horizon. “Master Xu… lost?”

Before his voice even fell, a cold voice echoed from the palm. “Heavenly Opening… Fourth Erosion…”

Swish! In the sky, at the sides of the palm, infinite azure netherflame suddenly flashed to life, illuminating the golden palm to turn it into the color of clear jade. In the next second, Xu Yangyi’s voice sounded again. “Devour Spirit!!!”

BOOM! The giant golden palm answered and exploded! A surge of golden light flooded the sky! And in the golden light, two people were standing.

Xu Yangyi indifferently stood at the left, and an old man who could hardly mask his amazement stood at the right.

He wore a short buttoned gown, black pants, and black cloth shoes. He hovered in the air, looking at Xu Yangyi with a little disbelief.

“This is the first time we’ve met.” Xu Yangyi nonchalantly patted his camouflage attire. “I’m Wolfbane.” 

Several seconds later, the old man took a deep breath, settled down, and studied Xu Yangyi intently. “No man strives to cross at daybreak, the waning moon’s cold light beaming on sandy shores… This Throne, is Moonless.” [2]

For the first time, the Clearcloud Realm’s two only-existing cultivators finally met face-to-face!

  Spoiler 

1. You may remember that “Heavenly Works Activation” was used by Grandmaster Gao Muya. The Chinese here is actually the same as back then, based off the title of a work known as The Exploitation of the Works of Nature compiled by Ming-era scientist and encyclopedist Song Yingxing.

2. “No man strives to cross at daybreak, the waning moon’s cold light beaming on sandy shores”. This is a poem from the Tang poet Qian Qi (710-780 CE).