Outside Lingling City, an elaborate carriage rolled through the gates, surrounded by guards. The carriage boasted a golden roof crowned with a phoenix, golden bells hanging from each corner. The body was painted crimson and traced with gold leaf. Two bull-headed yao kings pulled it, each nearly twenty feet tall, their muscular frames rippling with infernal strength.
A few miles from the city, the carriage stopped. A guard bowed. "Prefect, starving citizens block the road with a petition."
The man inside was Prefect Zhou Heng of Yongzhou—a portly official in his thirties, with two thin mustaches drooping from his lips.
He pushed aside the curtain. Peasants with gaunt faces lined the road for miles, kneeling and crying out for mercy like ducks greeting their master.
"What do they want?" Zhou Heng asked.
The guard returned. "They say they cannot pay their taxes or buy food. The Nai River's invasion destroyed their fields. Ghosts haunt their villages. They beg for tax exemption this year."
"Wretched peasants!" Zhou Heng's face purpled with rage. "They grow food for a living, and they have the gall to say they can't eat? Excuses to avoid taxes, nothing more! Ghosts don't eat grain, do they? Shameless!"
He stood up, sneering. "If they have no money, why don't they rent out their houses in the city? Why don't they hitch their horses to carts and earn wages? These farmers leave their city properties empty and their horses idle, then kneel before officials begging for food. The nerve!"
His fury mounted. "Today they block the road demanding tax relief. Tomorrow they'll demand officials pay *them*! Pass my order—anyone still blocking my path will have their property seized and their families thrown into prison!"
The guard rushed out. Moments later, ten miles of starving peasants vanished.
Zhou Heng smiled. "I can't stand the sight of poor people. Much better now. If they had no money, why did they run so fast? Clearly they have plenty hidden away."
"The Prefect is wise!" his guards exclaimed.
The carriage thundered on, kicking up dust, heading straight for Shuikou Temple.
Inside the temple world, Zhou Yihang laughed. The sound boomed like thunder, shaking Su Yan's qi and blood.
"Send me on my way?"
Other nuo masters nearby staggered. Some lost their footing and tumbled off the floating mountain, screaming into the void.
Zhou Yihang ignored them. His back arched, muscles swelling as he activated the Vajra Body. Golden light erupted from his skin. He grew to eighteen feet, four arms spreading wide.
His Vajra Body had reached the four-armed stage—far beyond what Zhou Yang had achieved. Zhou Yang had never even manifested the extra limbs. But Zhou Yihang had mastered it completely.
He struck with the Eastern Lord's Heaven-Flattening Seal. Fire swirled in his palms.
Su Yan had seen him trade blows with Magistrate Xue before. A single exchange had injured the city god's golden body. At the time, Zhou Yihang's fused soul and flesh had seemed invincible.
Now Su Yan saw him differently. *He's not as strong as I remembered.*
Su Yan activated the Heavenly Eye the coffin girl had taught him. He studied Zhou Yihang's body, his techniques, even his Inner Realm. Everything lay exposed.
Inside Zhou Yihang, a four-armed vajra being pressed against his flesh, perfectly aligned. That was his Inner Realm, the Mud Pill Secret channeled through visualization.
Under the Heavenly Eye, Su Yan saw the flaws.
Zhou Yihang stepped forward, four palms striking in sequence. Cloud-fire followed his strikes like battle banners. The technique was called Cloud Banner Serpent.
Su Yan pushed the Titan-Ox Demon Fist to its limit. The Elephant King manifestation gathered behind him. His fist thundered out, targeting the flaw in Zhou Yihang's technique.
At the same time, Yuan Qi whipped his tail forward, White Elephant Trunk style, his massive body swinging like a pillar.
Boom! Boom!
Su Yan's Elephant King manifestation shattered, qi and blood scattering like dust. He stumbled back, his body vibrating, blood boiling.
Yuan Qi's manifestation collapsed entirely. Bones rattling, dragon-mane waving, he nearly came apart.
Zhou Yihang's qi faltered, his technique interrupted. He suppressed the disruption with sheer force.
Su Yan understood now. *His martial art is far superior. It incorporates an Inner Realm. Our Titan-Ox Demon Fist has no visualization to support it.*
Without matching technique, even finding flaws wasn't enough.
*But I just comprehended a manifestation of the Great Dao!*
Su Yan retreated, then stopped. He shrugged—and a sword qi erupted from behind him, descending on Zhou Yihang like a rainbow from heaven.
Zhou Yihang's four palms clamped together, catching the blade. Two more palms still reached for Su Yan.
The sword qi surged. Zhou Yihang's remaining hands joined the struggle, all four palms gripping the blade.
Su Yan lunged. His finger struck Zhou Yihang's chest. Sword qi exploded.
*Ssssh!*
A blade of qi pierced the Vajra Body and drove into his heart—only three inches deep before the golden flesh stopped it.
Then Su Yan's fingers blurred. Like rain striking pear blossoms, each fingertip pressed a vital point.
Yuan Qi watched, bones turning to jelly. He recognized the snake catcher's bone-breaking technique—the same method Su Yan had used to capture him.
To Zhou Yihang, each touch felt like a steel nail piercing his body, severing his qi channels.
*What is this technique? How does he see my energy pathways?*
His strength failed. The sword qi broke through his four palms and crashed into his skull.
This was the sword dao manifestation Su Yan had comprehended before the temple gate—a blade that grew stronger against resistance. Against emptiness, it held no power. But against a mountain, it would split the peak and surpass its own limits.
Against Zhou Yihang's four arms, the sword qi multiplied in force, overwhelming him completely.
Yuan Qi struck again. His tail cracked like a whip, faster than sound, slamming into Zhou Yihang's body.
The old man's clothes exploded. Blood sprayed. The sword qi drove through his brow, splitting him to the bridge of his nose.
Zhou Yihang's eyes went dull. His mind fractured.
Su Yan pushed harder. The blade refused to advance further—some immense resistance blocked it.
Then the sword qi in Zhou Yihang's skull trembled violently. Su Yan's hands split open. He released and leaped back.
The embedded sword qi detonated. The nail-like blades Su Yan had driven into Zhou Yihang's body exploded in sequence.
Su Yan's heart sank. He had dominated the exchange, but the cultivation gap was too vast. Superior technique couldn't overcome raw power.
He roared, circulating the Grand Unity Daoyin Art.
"A-Yan, breaking through requires medicinal support! You don't have the blood and qi for this!" the great bell warned.
The sky blazed. Countless light particles gathered, forming a half-acre field of golden light—ten times denser than outside.
Under that light, Su Yan's qi and blood surged. The great bell went rigid. Su Yan looked like he had swallowed a breakthrough pill. His blood pounded toward the black iron gate in his Realm of the Subtle.
"The solar essence here is ten times stronger than outside. Could this really be the Immortal Realm?"
The intensity made medicinal support irrelevant.
"A-Yan, breaking through is about the 'knock'—knocking on the gate, comprehending heaven and earth's root. A poem says: The primal breath knocks on the pass, the great medicine dwells in deepest darkness..."
Su Yan's blood crashed against the gate. It groaned and began to open.
He had skipped the contemplation entirely. Pure force drove against the tailbone gate.
The gate shuddered. Thunder rumbled inside him. Inch-long rays of light burst from his skin. A dragon of light coiled down his spine, attacking the gate at his tailbone.
The great bell panicked. *If I hadn't stolen half his blood and qi for my own recovery, he would have broken through in one try. I need to make this right.*
It activated its own breathing technique, growing and shrinking with each breath. The half-acre light field expanded to a full acre.
Su Yan's blood erupted. With a thunderclap, the tailbone gate shattered.
A heavenly river poured through. Water from the nine heavens flooded his Realm of the Subtle, carving channels, forming lakes and waterfalls. The inner world bloomed with life.
His organs nourished by the river, his qi cultivation soared past its previous limits. His blood grew thicker, purer.
The rainbow sword light in his Realm of the Subtle blazed brighter.
Su Yan steadied himself and looked at Zhou Yihang, whose wounds were already healing. *Let me face him at full strength.*
"Be careful," the great bell said.
Su Yan felt his qi reach its peak for the first time since meeting the bell.
A voice drifted across the floating peaks. "Yihang, why so battered?"
A fifth mountain rose in the distance. Prefect Zhou Heng's carriage waited at its base, windows thrown open, the portly official seated inside.
"So this is the yao criminal Xu Ying? The one who can decipher yao cultivation arts?"
Everyone nearby turned to stare at Su Yan.
Zhou Yihang saw Prefect Zhou Heng and panicked. He roared, driving Vajra Body and Heaven-Flattening Seal to their limits, charging Su Yan.
He would kill the boy and present his head to honor Zhou Yang.
A sword light blazed across the sky. The light was so intense that shadows vanished entirely.
The blade shrieked through the air and vanished.
Nearby, leaves hung suspended in the air. Then every single one split cleanly in half.
Not a single leaf was misaligned.
Wind carried the divided leaves down. The onlookers felt a bone-deep chill, as if a blade pressed against their throats.
Hair drifted past a man's face and parted down the middle, sheared by invisible sword qi.
In the falling leaves stood a boy. Before him, Zhou Yihang's divine body split down the center, slowly falling apart.