Chapter 370: Tier 5 Beast Egg

The iridescent vapor coiled around his boots, shifting in an instant to a thick, suffocating haze of lurid pink.

First came the mist of Lust.

Shimmering phantoms of jade-skinned fairy maidens and celestial consorts drifted from the fog.

Silk robes slipped like water from porcelain shoulders; cold, fragrant fingers reached out to stroke his lacerated chest and trail along his bloodied collarbones, whispering intoxicating promises straight into his ears.

“Trash,” Shen Yu snarled, not breaking his stride for a fraction of a breath.

To an ordinary ascetic, desire was a hidden demon waiting to derail centuries of meditation.

But Shen Yu was a dual cultivator down to his very marrow.

He did not suppress carnal desire, nor did he fear it, he commanded it as a tool of cultivation.

A mind that had long mastered the ebb and flow of raw Yin and Yang could never be snared by mere phantom flesh.

He didn’t waste time trying to see through the illusion.

With a vicious, backhanded swipe, the sheer kinetic shockwave of his iron-tempered arm detonated the air, shredding the celestial phantoms into scattered wisps of pink smoke.

Next surged the blinding gold mist of Greed.

Mountains of Heaven-grade spirit stones, immortal artifacts humming with divine light, and jade bottles overflowing with longevity pills materialized along the chasm’s edge, their spectral glow promising supreme authority over the mortal realm.

Shen Yu trampled straight through them.

The illusory treasures crunched and shattered like cheap glaze beneath his heavy boots, ground to worthless dust under his indifferent tread.

Then, the air turned a violent, bruised crimson as the mist of Wrath flooded the chasm.

This fog did not bother with nameless temptations.

It reached directly into the cracked, bleeding fissures of his Sea of Consciousness, latching onto the deepest scar buried in his reincarnated soul.

BOOM!

The subterranean cavern vanished.

The air was suddenly filled with the searing scent of ozone and burning clouds.

Shen Yu found himself standing on the jagged peaks of his final past-life battlefield.

Floating in the heavens above were the grand elders of the ten righteous sects, their divine artifacts encircling the horizon, heavenly lightning illuminating their arrogant, self-righteous scowls.

“Demon! Submit your soul to the Heavenly Dao!”

“Filthy scum, you are unworthy of the Dao! Kneel and accept your execution!”

The roar of ten thousand voices crashed down with suffocating psychological weight.

To a normal cultivator, this raw soul trauma would have triggered a total Dao Heart collapse, driving them into either paralyzing despair or a reckless, blinded fury that would send them plunging into the abyss.

Shen Yu’s blood-red eyes widened, his pupils contracting into pinpricks of pure, unhinged malice.

“Submit?”

A low, guttural growl rumbled from the depths of his throat, bubbling past the black blood pooling on his tongue before erupting into a wild, screeching cackle that drowned out the roaring abyss below.

“In my past life, I bathed the world in blood and slaughtered across mountains of corpses, doing everything in my power in the pursuit of supreme strength! And now you dead phantoms dare bark that I am unworthy of the Heavenly Dao?!”

His crimson gaze blazed with tyrannical madness as he bared his bloodied teeth toward the swirling heavens.

“The real question is, is your pathetic Heavenly Dao worthy of ME?!”

With a mocking snarl, Shen Yu threw all caution into the wind and stepped directly onto the thread-thin Yin-Yang Balancing Silk.

TWANG——!

The thin cord bowed violently over the abyss.

Beneath his left foot, the Absolute Yin frost bit deep into his boots, freezing his blood into brittle slush and turning his skin an icy, bruised blue.

Beneath his right foot, the Supreme Yang fire flared, scorching his flesh and threatening to ignite his bone marrow into ash.

Crack… hiss…

The sheer elemental conflict tore through his lower meridians.

Blood sprayed from the pores in his shins, boiling on the right and freezing solid on the left before it even hit the silk.

The agony was blinding, threatening to throw his center of gravity into the void.

Shen Yu didn’t attempt to delicately balance the currents.

In his state of primal demonic instinct, he treated his own body as a slaughtering field. He drove the “Asura Blood-Forging Sutra” to its absolute limit, turning his obsidian-tempered bones into an anvil.

Clamping down on both extremes, he forcibly dragged the freezing Yin and scorching Yang straight into his thighs, forcing the two diametrically opposed energies to smash into one another.

CRACKLE— BOOM!

The chaotic reaction detonated inside his legs like compressed gunpowder, unleashing a terrifying surge of concussive propulsion.

He launched himself across the thread.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

He sprinted over the narrow line, alternating shockwaves of black frost and golden fire exploding behind his heels.

The phantom righteous elders descended like locusts, their spectral swords raining down in an executioner’s storm.

Shen Yu didn’t evade.

Laughing like a madman, he drove his fists straight through the descending blades, his newly tempered bone tearing the phantoms limb from limb, scattering their golden essence into the boiling river below.

Forty paces… seventy paces… ninety paces!

With a final, desperate burst of strength, Shen Yu leaped off the vibrating silk.

THUD!

He crashed onto the solid stone platform of the far side, skidding across the rock in a shower of sparks.

The iridescent mist recoiled violently, unable to anchor its illusions to a soul already steeped in madness.

Shen Yu collapsed into a low crouch, violently coughing up a mouthful of clotted black blood that hissed and ate into the stone.

His chest heaved with ragged, shallow gasps, every muscle screaming from the brutal toll of the crossing.

Wiping his chin with a shredded, bloody sleeve, his gaze locked onto the center of the chamber.

Before him sat the Taiji Samsara Altar.

Suspended within a slowly rotating sphere of black and white spiritual radiance was an ancient beast egg the size of a human head.

One half was pitch-black, absorbing all light, while the other was a radiant, pearlescent white glowing with boundless life.

Along the center seam, a slow, deep heartbeat resonated through the chamber.

Thump… thump… thump…

The slumbering egg of a Tier-5 Taiji Samsara Serpent.

Beside the pedestal lay a cracked, dark-gold spatial ring and an ancient slab of petrified dragon bone.

Shen Yu bared his bloodied teeth in a feral grin, pushing himself up to claim the prize.

CLANG— CRASH!

Before his boot could touch the altar steps, the heavy iron archway on the opposite side of the chamber, the entrance from the third trial, was blasted apart in a shower of shattered stone and green, corrosive sparks.

“Hahahaha! The heavens do not blind me!”

A haughty, venomous voice echoed through the cavern as a figure strode out from the settling dust.

It was Du Sha.

He looked disheveled, the hem of his green-embroidered robe was torn, and his pale face was slick with sweat, yet his breath was steady, his aura surging with triumphant malice.

Behind him staggered Ou Ba, his remaining eye bloodshot and filled with grief, clutching his saber with trembling, white-knuckled fury.

Having lost his man to the magma array, Du Sha had abandoned all caution in the third trial.

Relying on a tier 3 Corpse-Soul Poison Pill to completely numb his nervous system and a pair of Earth-grade defensive talismans to deflect the magnetic pressure, Du Sha had bulldozed straight through the bone-grinding mill in record time, outpacing Shen Yu’s grueling physical refinement.

Du Sha’s black serpent hissed violently, tasting the rich primordial vitality emanating from the altar.

Then, Du Sha’s eyes shifted from the glowing egg to the blood-soaked, tattered figure kneeling near the platform.

His pale lips twisted into a cruel, sickening grin.

“So it was you, little rat,” Du Sha sneered, stepping forward as dark, toxic miasma seeped from his wide sleeves.

“You paved the road with your blood, yet you think you have the life to enjoy the harvest?”

The subterranean cavern fell into a suffocating, lethal silence, punctuated only by the deep, resonant heartbeat of the Taiji Samsara Serpent egg.

Thump… thump… thump…

Shen Yu slowly rose from his low crouch.

His dark robes hung in tatters, drenched in his own clotted blood and blackened soul-sediment.

His face was pale as death, lined with drying streaks of black gore running from his eyes and ears.

Yet, as he turned his head to look at Du Sha and Ou Ba, there wasn’t a single shred of fear, panic, or rational calculation in his crimson irises.

There was only the unblinking, feral void of an unleashed demonic beast.

A low, rasping chuckle rattled from deep within Shen Yu’s chest, dark and laden with mocking venom.

“A filthy snake crawling through the mud dares to call this sovereign a rat?”

“Impudent to the death!” Ou Ba shrieked, veins bulging across his bald, tattooed skull.

The gruesome memory of his twin brother dissolving into the boiling magma flashed violently before his eyes, igniting a hysterical, murderous frenzy.

He raised his venom-dripping saber to charge, but the yawning gorge and the churning, primordial currents of the River of Seven Desires stopped his boots dead in their tracks.

The thread-thin Yin-Yang Balancing Silk was the only way across, he still had to cross the deadly trial to reach his target.