Chapter 596 - 536: The Ultimate Is Imminent.

Chapter 596: Chapter 536: The Ultimate Is Imminent.

Mist and waves stretched endlessly between the sea and the sky, where a figure in green robes hovered high above.

Chu Mu scanned the area as a projection appeared before him, sourced from his Cyan Bird Puppets that were monitoring a radius of hundreds of miles.

A moment later, with a wave of his sleeve, the projection vanished.

’So... the news about the ruins hasn’t been leaked?’

Chu Mu wore a thoughtful expression, a hint of confusion in his eyes.

The Cyan Bird Puppets that had been scattered in all directions began to converge on his position.

According to his theory, these ruins were a cornerstone of the Xie Clan’s power. For hundreds of years, the Xie Clan had even used this place as their private Trial Land.

Every time the ruins opened, they would mobilize on a grand scale, even having a Nascent Soul Great Power lead large groups of the Xie Clan’s disciples here.

And yet, for all these hundreds of years, the Xie Family had acted with such secrecy that they were never discovered.

But ever since the Battle of Jingmen, the colossus that was the East Lake Xie Family, while not utterly destroyed, had been reduced to a shadow of its former self, barely clinging to life under the banner of the Righteous Alliance.

And now, the East Lake Xie Family was essentially a thing of the past, just another of the countless legends in the history of the Cultivation Immortal Realm that had gone from glory to ruin.

Given such a dramatic turn of events, he had guessed it was entirely possible that other factions had discovered the ruins.

But now, with the ruins about to manifest, this stretch of sea showed no signs of anything unusual. Besides his own small group, there was no trace of any other Cultivators.

He had reviewed the surveillance archives from his Cyan Bird Puppets, which had been monitoring this area for decades. Other than the appearance of a Giant Eagle that subjugated a Tier Three Violent Ape, there had been no other anomalies.

’Was it never leaked, or are there other unknown factors at play?’

Chu Mu frowned slightly. He pondered for a moment but couldn’t come to any conclusion. He scanned his surroundings once more and decided not to dwell on it.

Whatever the reason, the fact that no one else had noticed these ruins was the best-case scenario for him.

After all, if anyone did come—be they human or Demon—to a place as remote as this deep sea region, they would undoubtedly come in a group.

They might even be led by a Nascent Soul Great Power, just as the Xie Family had been in the past.

If that were the case, he would have no choice but to flee.

A fortuitous encounter was a fine thing, but not worth his life.

In his current state, he had no way to resist a Nascent Soul Great Power. Fleeing was his only option.

After a moment of contemplation, Chu Mu’s eyes drifted shut, and his mind sank into his Sea of Consciousness. The Divine Soul Blade lay within, as majestic and chilling as a blade that could pierce the heavens.

After decades of being nurtured and refined, the Divine Soul Blade had now returned to the pristine color of moonlight. The mottled, pale-gold hue that once marred it had vanished completely.

This seemed to signify that the bond between them had grown ever more perfect.

With a mere thought, ripples spread across his Sea of Consciousness, and the Divine Soul Blade lying within it slowly split into two Giant Blades.

In an instant, the two Giant Blades hovered above his Sea of Consciousness, looking like two Spatial Rifts stretching across its entire expanse.

Even under the scrutiny of his Divine Sense Perception, the two Giant Blades appeared virtually identical.

Both shared the same pristine, silvery-white luster of moonlight, and their forms were completely identical.

Even his Divine Sense could scarcely tell them apart.

But as their master, Chu Mu could naturally perceive the distinction.

One was illusory, the other substantial.

The illusory blade was the Divine Soul Blade, the very source of his Sword Intent. The substantial one was, naturally, the Sword Intent Supreme Treasure he had refined.

The union of the illusory and the substantial was the final form of this Sword Intent Supreme Treasure.

It was a Lifebound Treasure, and also a special Divine Soul Blade Pill.

However, due to its unique nature, the power of this Lifebound Treasure couldn’t be measured by the conventional Grade system used for ordinary Magical Treasures.

After all, ordinary Magical Treasures unleash their inherent power through the forging of Spiritual Materials and the inscription of Array Prohibition Runes.

This Sword Intent Supreme Treasure, however, pursued ultimate purity and harmony. Its very existence was a natural evolution; not a single Array Prohibition or Rune had been inscribed upon it.

Therefore, this treasure had no Grade to speak of.

But as things stood, after decades of being nurtured and refined, the treasure’s evolution had not shown any anomalies that exceeded his predictions.

The changes in its power and its future potential were all developing as he had anticipated.

With a mere thought, Chu Mu swept his hand through the air before him. The void rippled, and a faint, silvery-white edge appeared. It seemed both ethereal and substantial, but in the blink of an eye, it rapidly solidified, transforming into a Three-foot Blade that hovered before him.

He slowly gripped the hilt, and a torrential tide of Supreme Yang and Firmest Magical Power poured into the Three-foot Blade. In an instant, the pristine, chilling blade was cloaked in a blazing crimson glow.

His green robes fluttered in the wind. The blade’s edge was brilliant and cold, wreathed in a blazing Crimson True Flame. He slowly raised the blade in a seemingly ordinary motion, and then... brought it down.

There were no fancy flourishes, just a simple downward slash, like a basic move from a Mortal Blade Technique.

But as the blade fell, time and space themselves seemed to stutter. In the next instant, a blazing crimson streak shot across the sky like a meteor, carrying a cataclysmic sharpness.

The clouds shattered explosively. Space itself trembled, seemingly unable to withstand such terrifying sharpness. A web of fine Spatial Rifts spread out, but they were quickly filled and consumed by the spreading crimson flames.

For a moment, it was as if the very heavens were set ablaze. A blinding crimson radiance split the sky in two.

But the strike wasn’t over yet.

The crimson radiance that had torn through the sky finally crashed into the sea. In that same instant, with a world-shaking roar, a deep abyss—hundreds of meters long and dozens of yards deep—was violently carved into the calm surface of the water.

The sharp Sword Intent lingered, spreading out in a crisscrossing pattern along with the blazing True Flame. Steam billowed into the air. The sea, violently torn asunder, was slow to close. The water churned like a tsunami but could only rage outside the chasm, unable to breach the newly formed abyss.

As this shocking scene unfolded before him, Chu Mu was visibly stunned. He stared in a daze for a long moment, his expression filled with astonishment.

When his gaze shifted back to the Three-foot Blade before him, the shock in his eyes deepened.

’The Three-foot Blade... a union of the illusory and the substantial...’

’Its power...’

’It seems to have far exceeded my imagination...’

"Unrivaled Attack... the Sword Pill... and the Blade Pill..."

Chu Mu muttered to himself.

After his breakthrough to the Golden Core Realm, once the illusory Divine Soul Blade had fully merged with the perfectly compatible, substantial form of his Blade Pill, the so-called ’Unrivaled Attack’ finally revealed its true, formidable nature.

At the same time, he finally seemed to understand why True Cultivators of Sword Intent and True Cultivators of Blade Intent needed no external artifacts.

’A Sword Pill, a Blade Pill... when the illusory and the substantial merge, that is the ultimate form of Unrivaled Attack. For a True Cultivator of Blade Intent or Sword Intent, any external artifact is... insignificant compared to this union!’

’The ultimate purity and harmony of the substantial, paired with the ultimate sharpness and ferocity of the illusory... that is the ultimate... Unrivaled Attack!’

Chu Mu pressed his lips together. In that moment of profound insight, countless epiphanies flooded his mind. The future path of evolution and growth for this unique Sword Intent Supreme Treasure, which had no precedent, suddenly seemed crystal clear.

’Harmony and purity.’

’As long as its evolution centered on those two principles, he could not go wrong.’

He let out a long breath.

Chu Mu took a deep breath, suppressing the excitement in his heart as he inscribed these new insights onto a Jade Scroll.

With his thoughts expanded by the Spiritual Radiance Blessing, these few key insights blossomed into countless new inspirations, which he then extrapolated upon.

After nearly half an hour of recording, Chu Mu finally lowered the Jade Scroll. The glow of the Spiritual Radiance faded. When he looked out at the sea again, the lingering traces of the blazing True Flame and the sharp Sword Intent were being eroded by the water, and the deep chasm had begun to slowly close.

Within a few days, the scar left by his blade would be erased completely.

With a wave of his sleeve, Chu Mu’s immense Divine Sense swept out, gathering all the remnants of the True Flame Sword Intent. The scar from his blade vanished instantly. Seawater rushed in to fill the abyss, and in a flash, nothing remained but the churning sea, with no trace of what had occurred.

Chu Mu scanned his surroundings, then brushed the Storage Ring on his finger. A faint spatial ripple emerged, and the Compass appeared, hovering before him.

He formed a hand seal and pointed at the Compass. Several rays of light shot into it, causing the dim Array Prohibition Patterns on its surface to light up with a soft glow. The needle on the Compass began to waver.

He studied it for a moment, then took a single step. His figure flickered through the sky, and in an instant, he had returned to the trench on the seabed.

"Senior!"

Zhao Shuang and her two companions had clearly been waiting for some time. When they saw Chu Mu arrive, all three bowed in succession.

Chu Mu gave a slight nod. With a wave of his sleeve, the Sky-Breaking Flying Boat, which had been concealed in the void, vanished into his Qiankun Bag.

At the same time, Wangcai, who had been lying beside the Flying Boat, scurried over and crouched at his side.

Chu Mu’s gaze shifted back to the Compass in his hand, his eyes following the direction its needle pointed.

This time, the spatial fluctuations from the ruin’s entrance were close at hand.

It was coming from a coral reef less than a hundred meters ahead of him.

"How long until the sixty-year cycle is complete?"

Chu Mu asked slowly.

Hearing this, Zhao Shuang and her companions exchanged a glance. Xie Yu stepped forward and bowed respectfully. "Replying to Senior, there are approximately twenty-one hours until the ruins are scheduled to appear."

’Twenty-one hours...’

Chu Mu glanced down at the Compass again. From what he had observed, although the spatial coordinates of the ruin’s portal changed completely at random, it always remained stationary for a period after each shift.

With only twenty-one hours to go, the chances of it moving again were slim.

"The portal to the ruins is here. We will wait for it to manifest."

Chu Mu glanced at the three, who were standing respectfully, and spoke in a level voice.

He then sat down on the spot and closed his eyes to rest.

Seeing this, Zhao Shuang and the others exchanged a look, then also sat down and began to wait in silence.

...