Yuan Wuji's strength shocked everyone. Su Yan had assumed he was just an ordinary nuo immortal, someone Zhou Qiyun had defeated without much trouble. He was wrong.
The man's techniques flowed like water—endless transformations, each more dazzling than the last. Su Yan had never seen nuo arts pushed to such heights.
"No wonder Zhou Qiyun said the Yuan family produces geniuses," Su Yan thought.
Then golden light erupted. A colossal golden man rose between the mountains. Even from miles away, the chanting of millions thundered through the air, scrambling minds and souls.
The weaker cultivators around Su Yan collapsed, dizzy and disoriented, tumbling into the mercury river.
But they didn't sink. They floated.
Silver tendrils burst from the water—fine as silk, razor-sharp. They pierced skin on contact, and blood sprayed where they touched.
"Something's in the river!"
Elder Zhushou grabbed one falling cultivator and pulled. The man's flesh tore. Hundreds of silver tendrils had already burrowed into his skin, anchored to bone.
Elder Zhushou jerked harder. Half the man's body nearly came off.
He froze, horrified. The tendrils had already spread through the victim's entire body. The man's eyes turned mercury-white. Silver fluid gushed from his mouth, his ears, his nose.
It splashed onto Elder Zhushou's hand. Pain lanced through his palm. He yanked back, tearing away a strip of skin.
The mercury itself carried tendrils. They bored into flesh the instant they touched it.
Elder Zhushou looked around. Every cultivator who had tried to help was now infected. The people they had grabbed were gushing silver from every orifice.
"Stay back!" he roared. "Don't touch them! Don't touch the mercury!"
Too late. The infected ones stood on the river's surface, silver pouring from their faces. Then countless tendrils burst from their mouths and eyes, writhing like a thousand snakes.
They lunged.
Chaos erupted. The uninfected scattered, screaming. Some were grabbed. Some fell into the water. Others fled to the shore—only to be incinerated by flames or sliced apart by blades.
Su Yan stood on Avia's phoenix-feather boat. She showed no mercy to the infected. A spark of flame, and they burned to ash before reaching the vessel.
Even cultivators who tried to board her boat died by her fire. She couldn't risk contamination—or too much weight.
Yuan Qi shuddered, remembering the words he'd spoken to her earlier. "That woman holds grudges. She won't kill A-Yan, but she'd definitely kill me. Maybe I should be more like Bell and let things go."
Su Yan's mind raced with a different question. Could he slip away while Xu Fu was distracted?
An infected cultivator lunged at Xu Fu. Xu Fu caught him by the throat. Silver fluid spilled onto his arm, tendrils writhing against his skin.
They couldn't pierce him.
Xu Fu twisted his hand, gathering the tendrils. He pulled.
The entire mercury river shuddered. The infected cultivators were dragged down, sinking to their waists. Even distant screams echoed as other groups were torn under.
"Can you withstand immortal power?" Xu Fu asked softly.
He pulled harder. The river heaved. A worm emerged—massive, dozens of yards wide, miles long. It thrashed in the air, countless silver roots lashing like whips.
The creature had no eyes, no mouth, no ears. It contracted, shrinking into a writhing mountain of silver flesh covered in tendrils.
It showed no fear. Ancient sacral incense still clung to it. Long ago, barbarian tribes had worshipped this thing as a god.
The First Emperor had captured it and made it a guardian of his tomb.
The worm's tendrils lashed toward Xu Fu, denser than a swarm of hornets.
Xu Fu's fingertip ignited. The flame looked ordinary—crystalline, almost gentle. But when it touched the tendrils, they erupted. Fire raced across the worm's body in an instant.
Its flesh couldn't stop it. Its incense aura couldn't stop it. The worm burned from the inside out, mercury pouring from gaping wounds.
It crashed back into the river, still burning, explosions rumbling from the depths.
Xu Fu beckoned. The flame returned to his finger and vanished.
Su Yan whispered to Big Bell, "Did he find that flame, or did he make it?"
"He can't be an immortal," Big Bell said. "So he found it. That fire makes Pure Yang Fire look like a candle. It would melt me in seconds."
"But his immortal body, his immortal power," Yuan Qi murmured. "Did he find those too?"
Big Bell had no answer.
"The river is safe," Xu Fu announced. "Regroup. We continue."
He drifted over on Mount Fangzhang, his eyes fixed on Su Yan. "Young friend, having seen my power, who is stronger—me or Zhou Qiyun?"
Su Yan bowed slightly. "Zhou Qiyun cannot compare to you."
Xu Fu laughed, triumphant. "Your praise means more than the words of ten thousand scholars."
"But Zhou Qiyun attempted the heavenly tribulation," Su Yan added. "You have not. So the question remains... open."
"I care nothing for public opinion," Xu Fu said. "Only your opinion matters."
Mount Fangzhang drifted onward.
Su Yan looked ahead. Yuan Wuji fought one of the golden men, trading blows that shook the heavens. And he wasn't alone—other nuo immortals had joined, their cave-heavens piercing into other realms to draw power.
Ancient ultimate treasures against the strongest immortals of the age.
Su Yan frowned. "They've all grown stronger. Did someone teach them cultivation techniques?"
He didn't know the answer. But he would find out soon enough.
* * *
A golden man reached the shore. Incense ribbons coiled around it like living smoke. Behind it, a Xiyi Domain manifested—five sacred peaks, celestial mountains, a river across the sky, the Jade Pool, the divine bridge. Impossibly vivid, impossibly real.
Its power pressed down like a mountain. The weaker cultivators went mad, attacking friends and foes alike.
The golden man swept its hand. Sword-qi filled the sky, hundreds of blades descending to wipe them all out.
Avia transformed. Her phoenix body rose, wings beating storms that deflected the rain of steel.
A burned-crimson hand shot from the flames, reaching for her.
She dodged, slashing with her wing-blades. Then the golden man's other palm flew in, both hands clapping together with a thunderous boom that nearly matched Big Bell's strikes.
Big Bell intercepted, ringing against the impact. The shockwave rippled outward, a spinning disc of destruction.
Around them, hundreds of cultivators attacked with everything they had. Their magical treasures, inherited from ancient ancestors, blazed with terrifying power.
None of it mattered. The golden man's surface rippled with patterns that deflected every attack.
Big Bell hammered at it, denting its own body in the process. A direct collision only staggered the giant.
Every part of its body was a weapon. Fingers like spears. Palms like seals. Elbows like axes. Legs like whips.
A roar sent everyone flying, blood spraying from their mouths.
"True fire and true water!" Hua Xianchen shouted.
Cultivators who had mastered samadhi true fire and true water unleashed both. The golden man barely noticed. Its surface patterns shifted, and suddenly it was launching the same techniques back at them.
Su Yan stepped forward. Pure Yang Fire erupted from his mouth, meeting the returned flames head-on.
The explosion threw him back. He raised his stone axe and struck the golden man's chest.
Blood-light surged. A sea of blood manifested behind him, corpses of gods and demons floating in its depths.
The axe left only a shallow scratch.
Su Yan's hands split open, blood pouring from shattered fingers. He summoned new arms from his armpits—Mud Pill regeneration—and struck again. Again. Again.
Yuan Qi spat heavenly fire from his serpent mouth. The golden man's surface pulsed once, and the flames died.
"A-Yan, how do we fight this?" Yuan Qi wailed.
Su Yan ran up an incense ribbon, sprinting along its curve. The ribbon transformed into attacks—storms, blades, crushing force.
He flipped, becoming sword-light himself, and plunged into the golden man's shrine.
The shrine was the source of its incense power. Inside, the chanting overwhelmed Yuan Qi. He passed out.
Su Yan ignited Pure Yang Fire. The shrine blazed. The golden man's own attacks shattered it from the outside, fragments raining down in flames.
Su Yan leaped clear, but the shockwave tore through his Xiyi Domain. Blood ran from his eyes and mouth.
The golden man still fought, even without its shrine. Big Bell was battered and dented. Avia's feathers were stained with phoenix blood. Half the cultivators were dead.
Then a young girl landed on the golden man's shoulder and punched its neck.
Zhu Chanchan.
She ran around its neck, striking again and again. The golden man's hands froze. Its feet locked. Its patterns dimmed.
"Cut off the power flow at the neck," she said, dusting her hands. "Let's see you move now."
Su Yan swept her up and ran.
The golden man's eyes ignited, twin beams of fire scything across the sky.
"Flying Peak!" Zhu Chanchan shouted.
A bronze mountain crashed down, slamming the golden man's head into its own chest.
Its eyes still burned, reddening its torso from within.
"Is it dead?" Su Yan asked.
"No." Zhu Chanchan shook her head. "Half magic treasure, half god. You can't kill it that easily."
"Hit it again."
"I can't. That was my limit."
Su Yan nodded. "You embezzled too much when you forged treasures for the Zhou kings, didn't you?"
She kicked at a pebble, embarrassed. "The prison warden never made me confess. Don't slander me."
Big Bell wobbled over, covered in dents. "A-Yan, I'm hurt again... Chanchan, hit me a few times! I need to get back in there!"