Li Xiaoke's Dao heart cracked at the sight of Su Yan's deliberate asymmetry. For one fraction of a breath, his aura wavered.
Su Yan seized that fraction.
He struck like a thunderclap. First, the Celestial God's arm attacked from behind, its Heavenly Dao aura scrambling Li Xiaoke's consciousness. Then the Heaven-Slaying sword qi drove into his brow, giving him no chance to recover.
Ordinary techniques could never threaten a master of Li Xiaoke's caliber. But the Celestial God's arm and the Heaven-Slaying sword qi were different — one was a true god's limb, the other a Heavenly Dao technique. Even if they couldn't kill him, they could shatter his focus.
Once his concentration broke, he lost control of the great bell. And that gave Su Yan his second opening.
Su Yan had always believed Big Bell was no mindless treasure. It had awakened to spirit long ago. Through every argument and insult, it had grown attached to Su Yan and Yuan Qi, guilty for having once suppressed Qingbi.
Whether Li Xiaoke tried gentleness or force, he would only provoke the bell's resistance.
Especially now — bringing the bell to kill Su Yan was the worst mistake he could make.
Blood poured from Li Xiaoke's eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The bell's shockwave nearly blasted his Primordial Spirit out of his body.
Su Yan grabbed the bell's nose and rang it with all his strength. He activated the "Imprison" seal script on its surface.
In an instant, a three-dimensional seal character materialized around Li Xiaoke's outer space, locking it down. A second layer sealed his physical body. A third locked his Xiyi Domain. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh layers targeted his Primordial Spirit, his three souls and seven spirits, and his indestructible true spirit.
At the seventh layer, Li Xiaoke would have no path back.
Su Yan's heart pounded with wild hope. Sealing a tribulation-transcending cultivator at the Dual Refinement stage — this was glory beyond measure.
But as the fourth seal activated, Li Xiaoke's Primordial Spirit erupted with unimaginable force. The seal character snapped like rotten twine.
Su Yan's eye twitched. He raised his golden core and poured every drop of power into the bell. Yuan Qi and Xue Ying'an, freed from the pressure, did the same.
"Sacrifice!" they roared together.
The bell absorbed their combined power and activated the "Imprison" character again.
It could trigger the seal on its own, but without understanding the character, its effect was weak. A few days ago, it had sealed Yuan Qi with this same technique, only for Jin Buyi to crack the outer spatial seal and nearly eat the serpent.
Su Yan was different. He had studied the golden runes from his Shang-era memories. His comprehension of the seal character surpassed anyone alive.
With two golden-core masters channeling power through him, the immortal seal's true potential exploded.
Yet before the seal could land, a torrent of power surged from Li Xiaoke's body. It held the character suspended, preventing its power from descending.
Compared to this flood, their combined strength was a cup of water in the ocean, a handful of sand in the desert.
The seal locking his Xiyi Domain shattered. Li Xiaoke's inner world broke free.
Su Yan's face changed. A sword qi flashed out, shaving Li Xiaoke's left eyebrow, and Su Yan flew backward. "Run!"
But Yuan Qi opened his massive jaws. Hundreds of treasures shot out and rained down on Li Xiaoke's head.
They bounced off his aura before they could touch him.
Xue Ying'an unleashed his strongest sword qi, but it dissolved into dust before reaching its target.
"Go!" Su Yan grabbed Big Bell and soared into the air.
"You think you can escape?" Li Xiaoke's voice shook with fury. "You should have hidden like rats, trembling in fear. Instead you dared ambush me!"
His second seal — the physical body seal — was cracking. Once it broke, he would move freely again.
Then a delicate hand appeared before his face. A single finger touched his brow.
Li Xiaoke's hair exploded outward. He tumbled backward, crashing through mountain after mountain on the ancient beast's back.
Before he could recover, countless jade hands appeared from every angle, every direction, striking him with different seals. Their power erupted, flattening the landscape. Only the temple remained standing.
The ancient beast suddenly felt lighter. It turned, saw the sky raining chunks of meat, and froze in terror.
Massive flesh-towers tumbled from above, each layer studded with monstrous eyes. The largest tower stood a thousand zhang tall, its gaze devastating.
The beast shuddered as the towers' eyes focused. Beams of destruction lanced toward the temple.
A black coffin fell from the sky. A petite figure landed before the temple, surprise on her face. "Heretic techniques? Who are you?"
She raised one hand and blocked the thousand beams.
The light reappeared from another space and slammed into Li Xiaoke.
Su Yan, Yuan Qi, and Xue Ying'an darted out of the temple, then scrambled back inside. The explosion ripped across the beast's back. Even hidden inside, they felt the shockwave tear at their golden cores.
Big Bell rang out, shielding them from the heretic power's impact.
The ancient beast collapsed, legs folding beneath it, trembling.
After the blast, laughter echoed from the sky. "Li Xiaoke, look at you now!"
Su Yan looked up. Dark clouds churned. A massive shape dove from above.
"A celestial god? But not quite."
The creature carried Heavenly Dao breath. Su Yan recognized it — he had faced this aura at the stone mountain's ruined temple. One glance into the dry well had nearly cost him his mind.
Now he saw it clearly. A dragon subspecies — dragon-headed, but with a triangular maw and scaled body. Powerful and agile.
"Not a god," Su Yan realized. "A god's mount."
The creature had Heavenly Dao runes on its body, but far fewer than the Dragon Abyss Celestial God. It lacked that terrible pressure.
Someone had mistaken it for a rogue god and sealed it.
The girl before the coffin was Qingbi. She glanced at Su Yan, puzzled by his single eyebrow and mismatched shoes.
Su Yan stood there with one shoe on, one pant leg higher than the other.
Suddenly, violent ripples erupted behind Li Xiaoke. Bright grotto-heavens rose one after another, twisting time and space. The dragon mount panicked and retreated into the clouds.
Li Xiaoke rose slowly, more grotto-heavens manifesting behind him.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Su Yan felt the "Imprison" seals shatter one by one inside Li Xiaoke's body.
Qingbi stepped forward, her face grave. She stared at the grotto-heavens.
A normal dual-cultivation cultivator could open at most fifty-four grotto-heavens — nine each for Mud Pill, Jade Capital, Crimson Palace, Jade Pool, Yellow Court, and Bubbling Spring. Each corresponded to one of the six immortal medicines.
Opening nine grotto-heavens in any single secret realm made one a nuo immortal. Unifying all six with fifty-four grotto-heavens was the theoretical ideal. No one had ever achieved it.
But Li Xiaoke had surpassed the ideal.
He possessed two to three hundred grotto-heavens.
His Jade Pool grotto-heavens alone numbered forty-five. That meant five times a nuo immortal's power in pure mana, plus his own cultivation.
His strength exceeded anything a dual-cultivation cultivator could theoretically achieve. Even celestial gods did not possess such boundless power.
His physical vitality, consciousness, strength, yin-yang energy, and Primordial Spirit had all reached impossible heights.
"So it was Qingbi and the celestial dragon I suppressed back then." Li Xiaoke wiped his face with a handkerchief and walked toward the temple. "What a day. All my old enemies gathered in one place."
His every step made the world tremble. The grotto-heavens behind him twisted the sky into impossible shapes.
"Now you see the real me." He smiled at Qingbi. "I'm a nostalgic man. I don't care that you ruined my name. If you return to me, I'll take you back. Look — I'm invincible now. I have immortal flesh, immortal power, immortal strength, immortal consciousness, immortal Primordial Spirit. I can kill gods with a glance."
Black and white light shot from his eyes, shearing toward the dragon mount in the sky.
The heavens parted. The dragon barely dodged, its tail nearly severed.
Li Xiaoke stopped before the temple. "What reason do you have to refuse me now?"
"You disgust me," Qingbi said.
Su Yan stood in the temple doorway, smiling. "Friend Li, if you're so powerful, why won't you face the tribulation?"
Li Xiaoke's face twitched.
"You won't face it because the immortal medicines in your body aren't fully refined, are they? You planted your cultivation methods as traps. Your disciples cultivated them, grew into nuo immortals, and when they ripened, you ate them to harvest the medicines. You transplant their grotto-heavens because you need them to refine the medicines."
Su Yan watched Li Xiaoke's expression darken. "And someone older and stronger has marked you as their crop. You've sensed it. That's why you need the primal Dao essence so desperately — to refine the medicines before they consume you."
Li Xiaoke's face went green. "I'm invincible! Who would dare? Who is worthy?"
Su Yan pulled a bronze mirror from Yuan Qi's mouth. "I have a technique that shows who's watching. Look."
Li Xiaoke peered into the mirror. He saw only himself. Then he noticed his missing eyebrow.
"Attack!" Su Yan shouted.
Qingbi moved without thought, pushing the Gourd Heaven Immortal Scripture to its limit. She reached out and began stripping Li Xiaoke's grotto-heavens from his body.