The wind at the mountain pass carried a bone-piercing chill, whipping Lei Zhen’s purple robes into a frantic, snapping flutter against the grey sky.
Standing atop the clouds, he looked down at Gu Yao with high-handed disdain. In his eyes, the three thousand refugees huddled in the stone forest below and the white-haired, blood-stained blacksmith were nothing more than a heap of waste in an exhausted world. Their only value was to be processed into pills, acting as bricks for the eternal palace of the Immortal Sects.
"Senior Brother, you have grown old," Lei Zhen said coldly, raising his right hand as purple electrical arcs danced across his fingertips with a dry, static hiss. "Fifty years ago, had you obeyed the Master and swallowed the distilled Rhyme of those ten thousand souls on the Ascension Platform, you would be a True God standing above the clouds by now. Yet, you chose the lowliest, most pathetic path imaginable."
"There are no high or low paths in this world, Lei Zhen," Gu Yao spat a mouthful of bloody mud onto the rock before him. His left arm firmly shielded Shen Yi behind his back, while his right hand slowly tightened around the cloth-wrapped handle of Severed Head. "There are only high or low people. You think I am lowly; I think you are filthy. Since we cannot agree, stop wasting your breath."
"Obstinate, unteachable fool," Lei Zhen hissed, a cold, lethal glint flashing in his eyes. He slammed his right hand downward with absolute finality.
"Thunder Prison—The Funeral!"
At his command, the twelve Disciplinary Guards hovering around the pass simultaneously channeled their sword seals. Twelve silver flying swords rose into the air, weaving together to form a colossal net of purple lightning that blotted out the sky above the pass. Countless bolts of thunder, thick as tree trunks and shaped like frenzied serpents, carrying the aura of total annihilation, plummeted toward the crowd of three thousand mortals below.
The refugees erupted in terrified, desperate screams. Before the sheer, oppressive might of heavenly wrath, the will of an unarmed mortal was as fragile as parched paper in a furnace. Hundreds collapsed into the mud, closing their eyes as they awaited their deaths.
Gu Yao’s pupils contracted sharply.
He knew instantly that this lightning was not aimed at him. Lei Zhen was forcing him—forcing him to use his already shattered, crippled physical frame to head-on clash with the full weight of this heavenly destruction, or watch the people he had sworn to protect be burned to ash.
"OPEN... FOR ME!!!"
Gu Yao let out an ear-splitting, soul-shattering roar that echoed across the stone spires. His once-slouched spine emitted a rapid series of thunderous, bone-grinding cracks. Deep within his cervical vertebrae, the first Immortal-Locking Nail, unable to withstand the sudden, violent eruption of his battle-intent, developed a faint, hairline fracture.
He did not leap. He did not dodge. Instead, he swung Severed Head with a brutal, upward arc into the empty air directly above his head.
BOOM—!!!
At the moment the heavy hammer swung, the blood-qi surrounding Gu Yao formed a tangible, crimson ring of compressed air. It was not spiritual power, but a physical anomaly produced by the violent friction of pure, unadulterated muscle strength against the atmosphere.
The first bolt of purple thunder descended; the heavy iron head of Severed Head met it head-on.
SIZZLE—!
A violent, blinding electric current surged through the iron hammer, instantly perforating Gu Yao’s entire physical vessel. His skin charred to a crisp; his meridians shuddered under the scorching heat; his internal organs bled from the shock. Yet, those calloused hands gripping the hammer handle did not retreat by a single inch.
"AGAIN!!!"
Gu Yao’s eyes turned completely bloodshot. In an act of supreme, self-destructive defiance, he spread his arms wide, using his own mortal body as a giant lightning rod to forcibly draw every single bolt of thunder falling toward the three thousand mortals into himself.
Countless purple thunder-snakes slithered frantically across his bare skin. They burrowed into the open wounds around his nail-holes, tearing through his muscle fibers and searing his bones. The pain was a hundred times more intense than being hacked by a thousand blades at once.
Yet, amidst that blinding, deafening forest of lightning, Gu Yao stood like an unyielding iron statue. With his bare, burning flesh, he forcibly propped up a vacuum field of absolute safety above the heads of the three thousand refugees.
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Shen Yi looked up at that silhouette standing before her—a man trembling violently under the blinding lightning, his skin smoking and blackening, yet refusing to let his knees bend even a millimeter. Her heart felt as though it were being squeezed by a pair of invisible, crushing hands. In that terrifying moment, deep within the dark recesses of her soul, the dormant, ancient fire began to stir, reaching a point where it could no longer be completely suppressed.
"Gu Yao... die!"
Atop the clouds, Lei Zhen was visibly shocked by this impossible display of physical endurance, but the shock only fueled a deeper, more frantic killing intent. He reached into his chest and directly summoned his natal treasure—the Thunder-God Chisel.
Holding the dark-purple chisel high, Lei Zhen struck it with his palm, sending a pillar of world-destroying thunder, thick as a man's embrace, plummeting straight toward Gu Yao’s head.
It was a strike designed to crush a Golden Core cultivator into dust.
Gu Yao looked up at the oncoming light of total destruction. Through his charred, blood-caked lips, a savage, terrifying smile hooked the corners of his mouth.
"Fifty years ago, I could shatter the Sky-Ladder," Gu Yao growled, his voice carrying the deep vibration of the earth itself. "Today, I can smash your thunder!"
Instead of using his physical strength to resist the incoming strike, Gu Yao did something unthinkable. He channeled the violent, destructive force of the descending thunder itself, funneling the raw kinetic impact straight down his arms, through his chest, and directly into his spine—using the heavenly lightning to inversely strike the second Immortal-Locking Nail, the Ju-Que Nail!
SNAP—!
A sharp sound of fracturing bone, audible only to Gu Yao, echoed from deep within his spinal column.
Under the irresistible, crushing onslaught of the thunder, the second nail was forcibly driven outward from his vertebrae by another half an inch!
Vrummm—!
A tide of dark-red blood-qi, as deep and vast as a dormant ocean, was instantly resuscitated within Gu Yao’s withered meridians. His hair, which had turned snowy-white from over-exertion, was dyed in that miraculous moment with an eerie, dark crimson once more as his life-force flared back to life.
Gu Yao straightened his back.
Not by an inch, not by a fraction—he stood perfectly, impeccably straight!
BOOM—!!!!!!
That pillar of world-destroying thunder, sufficient to annihilate a Golden Core master, was smashed into millions of fine, harmless fragments of purple light by the heavy hammer swung with a single hand.
Lei Zhen spat out a massive mouthful of fresh blood in mid-air, his eyes wide with utter disbelief as his natal treasure cracked.
"Impossible! Impossible!" Lei Zhen shrieked, his voice cracking with terror. "You have been sealed for fifty years! Your blood-qi should have long since dried up! How can you... how can you still possess such power?!"
Gu Yao did not answer the dead man's question.
He stomped his lead foot down, the stone floor beneath him shattering into powder, and transformed his body into a streak of red lightning. He shot into the sky, tearing clean through the lightning net formed by the twelve Disciplinary Guards.
He materialized directly before the first guard, his hammer sweeping horizontally through the air.
"The first strike—to pay the debt of the three thousand living sacrifices of Qingzhou!"
The guard, possessing a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivation, had no time to channel a spell, nor even the breath to scream. He and his silver flying sword were hit simultaneously, pulverized into a blur of mangled, unrecognizable flesh and bone.
Gu Yao forcibly twisted his waist in mid-air, using the massive recoil of the strike to spin toward a second guard.
"The second strike—to return the Rhyme you stole from this world!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
For a span of ten heartbeats, silver sword-light fell continuously from the sky like a tragic, bloody rain. Before the dark-red, relentless trajectory of Severed Head, the so-called elites of the Disciplinary Hall were as fragile as clay dolls before a sledgehammer.
"Gu Yao! You are incinerating your own soul!" Lei Zhen shrieked like a madman, retreating frantically into the clouds. He felt a terror he had forgotten for fifty years—the same terror that had dominated the Cloud-Soothed Sect when this man reigned as First Disciple. "You will die! Pulling that nail by even another fraction... your lifespan will not last the day!"
"And so what?" Gu Yao’s voice resonated through the clouds.
With a final, thunderous impact, the last of the twelve guards was hammered out of the sky. Gu Yao descended from the air like a meteor, his boots slamming heavily into the muddy water at the entrance of the mountain pass.
He stood tall before the three thousand mortals, his body covered in blood and char, holding Severed Head in his right hand.
He turned his head slowly, looking back toward the clouds. The remaining Disciplinary Guards, their souls terrified beyond recovery, dared not obstruct the pass any longer, fleeing in panic alongside the wounded Lei Zhen into the deep sky.
Gu Yao turned his gaze back to Shen Yi and the refugees.
"The path..." Gu Yao rasped, his voice dropping back to a quiet, heavy murmur. "...is open."
As his words fell, the three thousand mortals looked at the blood-stained figure standing straight, and then at the open mountain pass ahead that was no longer shrouded by lightning or death.
They began to run.
No longer a sluggish, hopeless trudge, but a frantic, desperate run for their lives. They crossed the Watershed, their feet stepping onto the soil of the Middle Three Provinces.
Gu Yao leaned heavily on his hammer, watching the long line of people pass him by. As the last of the refugees crossed the boundary, he felt his vision begin to blur. The violent tide of blood-qi in his body receded rapidly, replaced by a profound, soul-crushing weakness that threatened to collapse his consciousness.
His knees buckled.
Thud.
Before he could hit the stone floor, a pair of warm, thin arms caught him from behind, bracing his heavy, smoking frame.
"A-Yao..." Shen Yi whispered, her face buried against his blood-stained neck, her tears washing through the soot on his skin.
Gu Yao squeezed out a pained, weary smile, resting his white-and-crimson head heavily against her shoulder.
"Yi-er..." he murmured, his voice fading into the wind. "I’m tired... I want... barley tea."