Chapter 232 - 231: First Floor

As the azure light faded, Lin Yuan’s deep purple eyes meticulously assessed the entity standing fifty paces away.

It was a female cultivator. She was impossibly beautiful, her features sculpted with the flawless perfection of ancient deity statues. She wore flowing, elegant battle robes of pale azure silk that seemed to drift in an invisible wind. Her skin was as pale as moonlight, entirely unmarred by scars or the wear of a mortal life.

But her eyes shattered the illusion of humanity.

Her eyes were pitch black. There were no whites, no irises, no pupils—just two bottomless pools of dark, swirling void energy. They emitted a chilling, profoundly mindless aura, the distinct signature of a simulated soul rather than a living, breathing consciousness.

Yet, as she raised her hand and a long, wicked whip forged from crackling, liquid-blue spiritual energy materialized in her grasp, Lin Yuan instantly recognized that she was anything but mindless in combat.

Her posture shifted into a flawless, predatory stance. The pitch-black eyes locked onto Lin Yuan, calculating the angles of attack, measuring the distance, and analyzing his center of gravity in a fraction of a microsecond. She did not possess a personality, but she possessed the martial instinct of an ancient master.

Lin Yuan’s Divine Sense brushed against her aura.

Steadfast Stage, Lin Yuan deduced instantly, dissecting the dept of her cultivation. The Third Step of Dao Resolve.

A faint frown touched Lin Yuan’s lips.

If the Phantom Guardian on the very first floor is already at the Steadfast Stage, Lin Yuan reasoned, quickly doing the progression of a nine-story climb, then the scaling of this artifact is exponentially brutal. The majority of the Lower Division nominees, and even the weaker Upper Division cultivatiors, will be violently filtered out on this floor alone. By the time one reaches the middle tiers, the Guardians will easily breach the sovereign Stage.

The female Phantom Guardian did not offer a polite greeting. She did not boast of her sect’s legacy or demand his surrender. She existed for a single purpose: to eradicate the intruder.

With a sound like tearing silk, she lunged forward.

Her speed was phenomenal, a blur of azure silk and lethal intent. She closed the fifty-pace distance in the blink of an eye. With a vicious, horizontal sweep of her arm, she unleashed the crackling blue whip.

"Serpent Constricting the Heavens!"

The whip did not merely lash out; it multiplied. A dozen phantasmal, liquid-blue tendrils erupted from the primary cord, sweeping through the air like a net of fangs, attempting to completely envelop Lin Yuan, bind his limbs, and crush his meridians in a single, overwhelming strike.

Within Lin Yuan’s spiritual sea, a familiar voice echoed with bloodthirsty glee.

"Ooh, a whip user!" Ling Xi, the nine-tailed sword spirit, cheered, her ethereal tails lashing with excitement. "And she’s using ambient Qi manipulation to extend the strike zone! How archaic! Master, please tell me I can eat that whip? It looks crunchy!"

Patience, Ling Xi, Lin Yuan replied calmly through his divine sense, his physical body remaining perfectly still as the net of lethal blue energy descended upon him.

Lin Yuan did not intend to use the Dao of Three Rebirths here. To unleash the Six Arms of Reincarnation against a mere Steadfast Stage phantom on the first floor would be a colossal waste of his newfound might. He needed to keep his trump cards hidden for the higher floors, for when the echoes of the ancient gods truly bared their fangs.

He didn’t even need the full extent of his Dao Intent.

He simply raised his right hand.

With a flash of brilliant light, the Emperor’s Primordial Sovereign Sword materialized in his grasp.

He did not assume a complex martial stance. Drawing upon the sheer physical density of his Rank 10 Ancient Beast Body and the overwhelming might of his Unshaken Stage Dao Resolve, Lin Yuan executed a simple, vertical slash.

The blade of the Primordial Sovereign Sword met the descending net of the Serpent Constricting the Heavens.

The collision did not result in a massive explosion. It resulted in an instantaneous override of martial law.

The physical weight of Lin Yuan’s swing, backed by the terrifying density of a Fifth Step foundation, crashed into the Third Step whip art like a falling meteor striking a pane of glass. The phantasmal blue tendrils did not just break; they shattered into faint dissipating shards of light. The sheer shockwave traveling up the whip’s cord forcefully disrupted the Phantom Guardian’s Qi flow, causing her to stagger violently backward, her flawless combat stance broken in a single exchange.

"Aww, you broke it," Ling Xi pouted in his mind. "I wanted to taste the ancient aura!"

There will be plenty to taste on the higher floors, Lin Yuan promised coldly.

The Phantom Guardian, completely devoid of fear or frustration, instantly recalibrated. She spun gracefully on her heel, utilizing the momentum of her stagger to launch herself high into the air.

"Void Lashing!"

She cracked the whip repeatedly in mid-air. Instead of targeting Lin Yuan directly, the whip struck the empty space around him. The strikes tore microscopic rifts in the ambient spatial Qi of the arena, generating dozens of invisible, razor-sharp blades of compressed wind that hurtled toward him from every conceivable angle.

It was a brilliant technique designed to bypass physical blocking by attacking the blind spots of a cultivator’s defensive sphere.

Lin Yuan merely smiled.

Against Heaven Understanding.

To a normal cultivator, the invisible wind blades were a chaotic, unpredictable storm of death. But to Lin Yuan’s intellect, the technique was as slow and readable as a child throwing stones in a pond. He saw the exact trajectory of every single blade, mapped the aerodynamic drag, and calculated the precise moment of impact.

He then utilized the Immortal Cloud Step.

His physical body did not blur; it conceptually slipped through the fabric of the arena’s space. He stepped forward, moving with a terrifying, ghost-like grace. He tilted his head a fraction of an inch to the left, allowing an invisible blade to harmlessly breeze past his ear. He stepped diagonally, letting two more blades cross the space where his chest had been a moment prior.

He walked through the storm of Void Lashing as if he were taking a leisurely stroll through a gentle spring rain.

The Phantom Guardian landed lightly on the floor, her pitch-black eyes finally registering something akin to confusion. The intruder had bypassed a flawless, omni-directional attack without deploying a single defensive barrier.

She raised the whip again, channeling the absolute totality of her Steadfast Cultivation into a final, desperate strike.

But Lin Yuan was already there.