Chapter 118: Killing Kongzhi, a Massive Harvest!

Within the stretched timeline, Wang Ping moved.

'This time is different.'

Before this, his strikes had relied purely on brute force, using an unreasonable hyper-acceleration to crush his opponents. Below the level of a Loose Immortal, the method never failed.

However, against a Loose Immortal, this same technique fell somewhat short. Loose Immortals had mastered Borrowing Qi to Manifest Magic, allowing them to alter reality with magic power. They could accomplish things impossible under normal circumstances, stepping completely beyond the realm of a Mortal.

Take the battle between Chenlong and Kongzhi, for example.

Even though Chenlong could accelerate to a hundred times the speed of sound—or even a thousand times, reaching near-light speed—the deciding factor of their fight was never speed.

It was his blade.

The Coiling Dragon Formation-Breaking Blade, a divine weapon capable of shattering magic, was the main reason Chenlong's speed allowed him to fight Kongzhi to a standstill.

The secondary reason was his astral force.

By reaching the Grandmaster Rank and Seeing Divinity, his Internal Force had transformed into astral force. Much like a cultivator mastering magic power—though slightly less potent—it also possessed the ability to alter reality.

The same principle applied now.

'Speed alone isn't enough. Ji Wuhen is right there, and he doesn't have the strength left to dodge the explosive shockwaves caused by moving at a hundred times the speed of sound.'

So this time, Wang Ping did not pin his hopes on speed. Instead, he channeled all the astral force he had condensed from the world's spiritual energy upon recently Seeing Divinity into the Dragon Head Guillotine. Only then did he accelerate. He still moved at a hundred times the speed of sound, still slashed forward, but the result was entirely different.

This time, there was no explosion.

Sound was naturally left behind, but the sonic booms, shockwaves, and explosions that should have accompanied breaking the sound barrier never appeared. Everything remained deathly silent.

Under normal circumstances...

A slash at a hundred times the speed of sound should have unleashed massive devastation capable of shaking and engulfing the entire county. The mere shockwaves would have leveled forests.

But not this time. Defying the laws of reality, that thin layer of blood-red astral force locked all the destructive power onto the Dragon Head Guillotine. The force condensed into a single point of incandescent light on the blade's tip before he slashed lightly down toward Kongzhi's head.

"What is this?!"

In that instant, Kongzhi's eyelids twitched violently, and his glabella throbbed with pain. The divine sense he used to look directly at the blade's incandescent light transmitted a scorching, boiling sensation.

Then came the overwhelming sense of crisis.

Sensing danger through Divine Intent was originally an ability exclusive to martial artists, but right now Kongzhi experienced something similar—a chilling sensation exploding up from his tailbone.

It made his scalp tingle with dread.

"Empty!!!"

In the nick of time, discarding all other concerns, Kongzhi forcibly drove his divine sense and roared the single-word mantra that had previously shattered Chenlong's Heavenly Blade Peerless Slash.

Immediately, the world in Wang Ping's eyes was cast in shadow. His senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind vanished entirely. All perception of form, sound, scent, flavor, sensation, and dharma ceased to exist. It was as if he had been tossed into a pitch-black abyss, falling endlessly. In an instant, it neutralized the full-power slash Wang Ping had been so certain would land.

—If he had been fighting alone.

"Gather!"

A sharp shout drifted across the cratered battlefield, instantly drawing Kongzhi's gaze. In the distance, outside the immediate fray, he caught sight of a figure.

That massive blade left no room for doubt.

It was Chenlong!

As his command echoed, a sudden variable emerged on the battlefield. Tiny, shattered fragments of armor suddenly rose into the air, igniting with raging flames before flying toward Wang Ping.

'Those are... the remnants of the magical treasure he shattered when he sacrificed himself to self-destruct earlier?!'

Kongzhi instantly realized the truth.

But he was too late.

Under Chenlong's control, the shattered fragments of the divine armor reassembled in a heartbeat, restoring themselves to perfection before seamlessly equipping themselves onto Wang Ping's body!

Only at this moment did Kongzhi finally understand: 'Did that martial artist plan for this from the very beginning? Even though his martial arts are vastly superior to this bandit cultivator's, he was willing to play a supporting role. He didn't hesitate to fight me, destroy his treasure, and suffer severe injuries, all just to place the key to victory in the hands of an outsider?'

He couldn't comprehend it at all.

Whether in the Brahma Nation or the Immortal Gate, such a concept was pure fantasy; "better a dead fellow Daoist than a poor Daoist" was the most common landscape on the path of cultivation.

And that included Wang Ping.

How could he trust that Chenlong would actually help him? What if the man got cold feet after being severely injured and just ran away? Wouldn't Wang Ping die? How could he entrust his life to someone else?

Was he not afraid of death?

'A bunch of Mortals... To think you could push me this far!'

Kongzhi completely lost his composure. His eyes turned bloodshot as he desperately squeezed every drop of magic power and divine sense he had, trying to bridge the temporal gap created by the Time-Stealing Thief.

On the other side, clad in the Divine Armor, Wang Ping felt boundless strength flood his exhausted body. The movements that had felt sluggish at a hundred times the speed of sound suddenly became feather-light again. It was as if he had returned to Longxing County, back to the most unforgettable day in his memories.

The near-light-speed domain.

An ultimate strike that transcended physical limits. After several months, having donned the Divine Armor he had yearned for, Wang Ping finally re-entered this realm.

"Exhilarating!"

Wang Ping stepped forward and slashed down. Under the influence of his astral force, all the destructive power generated by moving at near-light speed was condensed onto the tip of his blade.

When this fed back into reality, the environment around him remained entirely undisturbed. There was only a single invincible blade galloping freely through the fissures of time. He left not just sound behind, but even his own shadow; unable to keep up with near-light speed, it fell out of sync with his true body.

Swish—!

The blade fell.

Behind Kongzhi, an illusionary figure had begun to manifest within the seething Buddhist light. Bearing a golden wheel behind its head, its majestic features revealed a trace of furious shock.

"Insolent..."

The voice never even reached Wang Ping's ears.

Because before it could, Wang Ping's near-light-speed blade had already swept effortlessly through Kongzhi's head, piercing his glabella and exploding out through his groin in a spray of blood.

Clang—!

Only then did the hum of the blade arrive. His displaced shadow followed close behind, stepping past Kongzhi's body alongside Wang Ping as a torrential geyser of blood erupted into the air.

"How delightful. I probably won't forget you for the rest of my life."

"..."

Kongzhi didn't answer. He simply stood there in a daze. A thin line of blood slowly began to spread from his glabella down through his facial features, neck, and torso. Wherever the line passed, his magic power, divine sense, Sanskrit chants, Buddhist light, and Zen hymns were all effortlessly torn apart.

A suffocating stench of blood rocketed into the sky.

Ji Wuhen, who was closest, merely inhaled a breath of it and immediately looked as though he had consumed a miraculous elixir. His pale, exhausted face flushed with renewed color.

Thud!

Kongzhi's body split clean in two and crashed to the ground. Blood poured out like a fountain, actually infusing the scorched earth with a sliver of renewed vitality.

It was a testament to just how overwhelmingly vigorous Kongzhi's life force had been. Wang Ping immediately reached out and grabbed at the air, activating the Life-Stealing Thief. Without wasting a single drop, he sucked all the dissipating vital essence back in. The energy transformed into a massive bounty of Life Essence Primordial Qi Pills that rolled neatly into the Great Peace Mortuary.

'Mine! Mine! It's all mine!'

Wang Ping took a deep breath. His face was flushed, and blood rushed to his head. Feeling as though he had limitless energy coursing through his veins, he fought the urge to deliver another slash just to celebrate.

He had really hit the jackpot this time.

'With this many Life Essence Primordial Qi Pills, my progress in Drawing Kan to Fill Li will skyrocket. The day I pass my Human Tribulation isn't far off.'

'Not to mention the four top-tier magical artifacts Kongzhi so graciously gifted me right before he died.'

Checking the storage space inside his banner, Wang Ping grew even more excited.

'They're all semi-divine weapons! They're perfect for completing my Sacred Lord of Five Weapons. With this, the time it takes me to break through to Grandmaster Rank will be even shorter!'

'On top of that, there's a cultivation method from the Brahma Nation—a complete version of the Other-Transformation Freedom Control Desire Realm Celestial Manual. Its grade should be on par with my Taiyin Form-Refining Heaven-Ascending Talisman Scripture. They're both immortal arts that lead straight to Qi Refining, more than enough to guide my future cultivation path.'

'And even better... there's a scripture scroll!'

Unlike before, this was the corpse of a bona fide cultivator, one who had crossed the Human Tribulation and forged magic power. The quality was unprecedentedly high!

If he processed this, what grade of scripture scroll would it yield?

Thinking of this, Wang Ping came to a conclusion:

'Murder and arson bring golden belts. If you want to walk far on the path of cultivation, you have to kill. No wonder the Immortal Gate's bandit cultivators keep popping up like weeds, completely impossible to exterminate.'

But right at that moment.

A lingering trace of the Buddhist light Kongzhi had summoned still remained around his fallen corpse. Within that light, the illusionary figure with the golden wheel stared fixedly at Wang Ping.

"Demon!"

"You dare kill my believer and obstruct the reincarnation of all living beings? You have already stepped onto the demonic path!" The voice boomed like thunder, yet by the time it pierced through the Buddhist light and entered reality, it was as faint as a mosquito's buzz.

Clearly, with Kongzhi dead, the Buddhist light had lost its anchor. The golden wheel figure behind it was drifting further away, unable to genuinely interfere with reality.

Seeing this, Wang Ping sneered. "So what if I've stepped onto the demonic path? Do you even know who I am?"

"No matter who you are..."

Boom!

Before the voice could finish, Wang Ping launched a slash that pulverized the Buddhist light. The golden wheel figure shattered alongside it, erasing every last trace of its divinity.

"If you don't even know who I am, then what the fuck are you blabbering about!"

Wang Ping grinned. Soon after, his bones and muscles crackled and popped. Before long, he morphed from the teenage Ye Chao back into his original muscular, young adult form.

—That was right.

When he had put on that act with Ji Wuhen earlier, he had transformed into Ye Chao. He hadn't changed back since, keeping Ye Chao's face the entire time!

'If they really want to cause trouble, they can go look for Ye Chao.'

'And it would be even better if tracing Ye Chao led them straight to the Immortal Gate disciple backing Book Mountain... Either way, no matter how hard they look, it won't lead back to me!'

Thinking this, Wang Ping stretched his back with deep satisfaction.

Nearby, a pale Chenlong walked over, his eyes also brimming with joy. "Good, well done! Lending you the Divine Armor wasn't a waste after all."

"It was all thanks to your immense contributions, sir," Wang Ping replied.

Wang Ping quickly cupped his hands in a respectful salute.

Chenlong waved him off. "Drop the flattery... Alright, give the Divine Armor back first. My energy and spirit are completely drained; I can't command it for the time being."

Hearing this, Wang Ping blinked in surprise before tilting his head innocently. "Do what first?"

"Give it back," Chenlong said, the corner of his eye twitching slightly.

Wang Ping looked even more innocent. "Give what back?"

Chenlong: "..."

My Divine Armor!

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