The moment Tang Jiyan and the woman of the Spirit Ice Pavilion collided again, the battlefield seemed to lose any sense of restraint.
Fist met fist.
Palm crashed against palm.
Each impact sent visible shockwaves tearing through the air, distorting space itself and carving fresh cracks across the already-ruined land. Dust clouds exploded upward, only to be ripped apart moments later by violent pressure. The ground beneath them trembled as if groaning, unable to bear the weight of their blows.
Tang Jiyan exhaled hard as his feet slid backward through the air.
A burst of pain flared across his shoulder.
Frost clung there again.
Pure Yin Qi had struck him once more, and this time it seeped deeper, creeping inward like living ice, crawling toward his ribs. The cold gnawed at his flesh, numbing muscle and bone alike.
He forced thunder Qi into the area, pushing back with violent pulses, repelling the corrosive chill inch by ich.
Yet if one looked closely at him, it was clear—
Tang Jiyan wasn't truly focused on the fight.
Nor was the pain what troubled him.
It was that lightning.
That strange, impossibly powerful white lightning that had erupted while his mind had been submerged in trance moments ago.
Every time he blinked, he felt as if lightning flashed at the edge of his vision—thin, sharp, unbearably pure. It made his heart tremble with a mix of awe and exhilaration he could barely contain.
'What was it…?'
That lightning had possessed a speed and power unlike anything he had ever used. It required no preparation, no elaborate seals. It answered him instantly, as if responding directly to his thought itself.
Before he could dig deeper into that realization, the woman lunged again.
Her fist smashed across his chest.
Tang Jiyan was sent flying backward more than twenty steps, space rippling behind him. Frost bloomed around the spot where her feet landed, ice creeping outward like veins.
She panted heavily.
Her robes were torn, her skin bruised and scorched, strands of hair frozen stiff while others were singed black. Blood stained her lips.
Yet her killing intent burned brighter than ever.
"How dare you hurt me like this!" she roared, voice hoarse with fury. "I'll make you regret ever standing against me!"
Blades of Yin formed instantly at her fingertips—slender, curved, glimmering with lethal frost. With a sweeping motion, she flung them in a wide arc.
Tang Jiyan moved left.
Then right.
The blades sliced past him with shrill screams, carving through space itself. He avoided most of them, but not all.
One grazed his cheek.
A thin line of numbing frost spread instantly across his skin.
Another passed dangerously close to his chest, close enough that he felt the biting cold tear at his flesh.
He clenched his teeth.
Pain flared, but it was drowned beneath his hunger for understanding.
He needed to know.
He needed to grasp what that lightning truly was.
But the woman gave him no room to think.
She pressed in relentlessly, movements growing erratic, almost fanatic.
"Fight!" she screamed. "Why aren't you fighting like before?!"
Blood sprayed from her mouth as she shouted, her injuries straining her body beyond its limits.
Tang Jiyan blocked her next strike with his forearm.
Pain jolted through his shoulder.
He swung back, hammering his fist into her side.
The impact sent her staggering. She coughed violently, blood spilling freely now—but she didn't retreat.
Instead, she slammed her palm into the ground.
Thirty-foot-long spikes of ice erupted upward in a jagged wave.
Tang Jiyan shot upward ten feet in almost an instant, narrowly clearing the frozen forest of spikes as it shattered the land below.
His breathing came out uneven, but still clear.
And again, his thoughts drifted back to that lightning.
'It wasn't a technique,' he realized suddenly. 'And it wasn't something I learned.'
To him, it had felt as if the lightning itself had been shaped directly by his thoughts, there was no delay or hesitation.
As if his will had become that lightning.
His heartbeat quickened.
Then it struck him.
'That wasn't ordinary lightning…'
His eyes widened slightly.
'It was a Dao.'
The realization sent a tremor through his soul.
Before he could fully settle into that thought, the woman's roar tore through the silence again.
She charged forward, seals flashing rapidly as Yin Qi spiraled violently around her.
A massive Yin phoenix manifested above her, at least twenty feet tall. Its wings were composed of enormous, shimmering ice shards, each one sharp enough to cleave mountains. Its screech echoed across the battlefield, chilling everything in its path.
The phoenix dove toward Tang Jiyan.
Tang Jiyan exhaled deeply.
Not from fear.
Not from exhaustion.
But from understanding.
"So that's how it is," he murmured.
The lightning that had erupted earlier wasn't random. It wasn't a fluke.
It was the power of the Thunder Dao itself.
Only a fraction of it—but still powerful enough.
He had stepped into Dao Immersion unknowingly, driven by desperation and instinct.
That pure white lightning wasn't born of cultivation techniques.
It was born of the universe.
Tang Jiyan closed his eyes.
He tried to imagine the sound of thunder—not the roar heard by ears, but the vibration felt in the soul.
The battlefield faded.
The ice phoenix vanished.
The woman's killing intent dissolved into nothingness.
In his mind, only thunder remained.
Then—
Pain exploded through his chest.
Tang Jiyan gasped as a punch slammed into him.
His eyes snapped open.
The woman had seized the opening, appearing at his side. Her icy fingers clamped around his wrist, twisting sharply as frost spread rapidly across his forearm.
"Die!" she screamed.
Her palm thrust toward his heart.
The world slowed.
Tang Jiyan's vision narrowed.
His heartbeat thundered once.
"Will."
"Lightning."
His hands moved.
A crackling arc burst from his palm, intercepting her strike and destroying the ice phoenix.
The lightning wasn't white—
But it wasn't fully blue either.
It pulsed between shades, unstable and trembling.
The clash blasted both of them apart.
The woman tumbled across the ground, coughing blood violently. She forced herself upright—but her vision wavered, and she nearly collapsed.
Her limbs shook.
Her Qi sagged dangerously.
She had burned through too much Yin Qi, too quickly.
Tang Jiyan steadied himself.
Lightning crawled across his skin—wild, sharp, but growing clearer with every breath.
Understanding washed over him like a storm.
'Thunder moves with resolve.'
'Lightning strikes without doubt.'
'If I hesitate… the Dao will reject me.'
Chaos within his mind began to settle, piece by piece.
Thunder Dao wasn't about destruction.
It was about will and certainty
A will that becomes action. An action that becomes will.
The woman staggered upright again.
Her eyes were bloodshot, hair disheveled, face twisted with disbelief.
"Why aren't you tired?!" she demanded. "Why aren't you falling?!"
Tang Jiyan met her gaze calmly.
"I am tired," he replied evenly. "But I'm also understanding something fundamental."
She spat blood.
"Understanding won't save you!"
With a scream, she formed a final seal, pouring every last drop of Yin Qi into it.
The temperature plummeted instantly.
Frost spiraled violently above her, forming an enormous ice spear. The surrounding air froze so suddenly that Tang Jiyan's breath turned into thick mist.
She hurled it down with everything she had.
The world seemed to dim beneath its shadow.
Tang Jiyan stepped forward.
Lightning gathered around him naturally, effortlessly, as if it had always belonged there.
Thunder echoed—not from the sky, but from within him.
Pale arcs wrapped around his arms and chest.
His fist rose.
The spear descended.
His punch met it head on.
A beam of lightning erupted upward.
Space shattered.
Ice and thunder collided—and for a single breath, sound ceased to exist.
Then—
Explosion.
Cracks.
The ice spear shattered.
Ice dissolved into mist, swept away by surging thunder.
The ground beneath Tang Jiyan fractured outward in a perfect circle.
Spatial cracks sealed shut.
The woman staggered back, terror etched across her face.
Lightning danced across Tang Jiyan's body—pale, refined, stable.
It was an incomplete Dao comprehension.
But a Dao comprehension nonetheless.
His breathing steadied.
His eyes gleamed with serene sharpness.
The woman turned and fled toward the distant mountains.
Tang Jiyan raised his right hand.
Lightning curled obediently around his fingers.
His injuries had also vanished.
He had even recovered all the lost blood.
His voice rang out, clear and calm.
"To understand the Thunder Dao," he said, gaze sweeping across a thirty-thousand-kilometer radius, "one must make their will the action and the action the will."
His eyes then went to Shen Yuan.
They locked gazes.
Seconds passed.
A silent exchange. It was as if they had a whole conversation just from that.
Then Tang Jiyan looked away, and at the woman.
"It's enough," he said. "It's time to end this."
His eyes turned black once again.
"Descend."
The sky darkened.
Black clouds spread across hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
White lightning crackled within them.
Fear was the only thing on the woman's face as she fled desperately.
Shen Yuan whispered with slight surprise, "That's…"
"…Quasi-Elysian," he finished softly.
However, the next moment, he had a smirk on his face, internally smiling with a rare excitement, as he declared internally. 'Tang Jiyan… Three hundred years ago, it was your fist that first forced me to taste blood. Today, it is your dao. To manifest a pseudo-domain from incomplete comprehension… forcing immersion through sheer will. Your understanding has already pulled ahead of mine. Heh, so what? I, Shen Yuan, will not trail behind. Even if it disrupts my foundation, I too will force my immersion!'
Tang Jiyan on the other hand, even though in a trance state, had a hidden smile, if one looked closely they would notice, it was as if he already knew what Shen Yuan declared without uttering a word.
Then the lightning sounds intensified as Tang Jiyan pointed two fingers.
The clouds parted slightly.
A colossal palm of pure white thunder descended slowly.
If one measured it, they would see it was about one hundred feet long.
At first it was so slow, that even the mortals outside the pocket world could see it.
However, at that moment, the thunder palm went after the fleeing woman in a blinding flash.
It struck her and then the earth.
Hundreds of thousands of kilometers almost instantly vanished.
The mortals could only see the destruction after it had happened, the palm imprint moved too fast to see anything for them and even for Nirvana cultivators.
The woman ceased to exist, her body had been reduced to nothingness.
To mortals Tang Jiyan too now fit perfectly in the category of cultivators, who were monsters in their view.
When the light of the thunder faded, Tang Jiyan descended gently, landing on the ground.
His trance faded
His body staggered.
Xiang Xiaoli and the others rushed to support him quickly.
He smiled weakly, clearly exhausted.
Then all of their eyes turned toward Shen Yuan and Ma Bingxue.
Ma Bingxue spoke coldly.
"It's your turn."
Shen Yuan nodded.
"I know. Tang Jiyan was injured, so I will fight you and your other teammates. I am a man of my word, after all."