The leading Longevity Monk was cut down in a single stroke, and the remaining nineteen instantly broke ranks.
One after another, nineteen blazing streams of power erupted, manifesting strange and varied Buddhist dharma-bodies.
There were Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Vajrapanis, Arhats, and even the Eight Heavenly Dragons.
For a moment, Jing Qian's eyes widened in wonder. The sight was dazzling, his knowledge broadened.
Wuchang Temple truly deserves its place as one of the top Buddhist lineages, with such a wealth of inheritance, each taught according to their aptitudes.
But against Jing Qian, shameless and ruthless as he was, these monks had no chance.
No matter how much power they poured into their defenses, no matter how thick the barrier, they were all enemies marked for death, swept aside with a single sword. Not even worthy of names.
Illusory dharma-bodies shattered one after another.
Nineteen Buddhist soldiers did not survive.
The sheer brutality of the scene left the island's master builders dumbstruck.
Gathering around their island lord, they formed a formation, sketching out a dragon of stone and earth to guard against assault.
But as the sun dipped westward, no new enemies appeared.
"Was this… someone coming for revenge against the monks?"
"Serves them right!"
"Judging by that swordsmanship, I'd wager it was a high cultivator from Pure Yang Ruins who struck."
The builders had no inkling that, even as they braced for battle, Jing Qian had already slipped into the Life Furnace at the heart of Earth-Dragon Reef Island, planting his own hooks into it.
The xili spirit-beast dutifully shed all the fur from its four legs, weaving it into a new Shadow Furnace, which Jing Qian successfully lodged beneath the seventh-rank Life Furnace.
From that moment, thirty percent of the island's leyline energy was siphoned into his grasp.
The foundation of the Void Furnace surged once more, its output of Whitefang Fate Fire rising to three flames per month.
Only then did Jing Qian quietly slip back out, flashing onto the battlefield.
His sudden appearance sent the builders into a panic. The earth-dragon rolled, soil and stone flying everywhere as they flung up defenses.
Jing Qian glanced at them once, then ignored them.
Instead, he busied himself rifling through the corpses of the fallen monks, collecting twenty more storage treasures.
Only then did he flicker away in a streak of light.
The builders finally let out a collective breath of relief, the tension dissolving into cheer.
They had braced themselves for a bloody toll when Wuchang Temple's monk-soldiers came knocking. Who could have guessed those hated monks would provoke such a terrifying figure, only to be wiped out to the last? Fortune indeed.
Jing Qian flew clear of Earth-Dragon Reef Island and landed directly on the Hunyi, now his prize of war.
Channeling his Tidal Force into the ship, the seventh-rank warship slowly accelerated, gliding into the distance.
Having advanced to Dragon-Elephant, his use of Azure-Wing Life Essence made the Tidal Force far more potent. Even though Hunyi was nearly five times the size of Dingyuan, he still made it fly like the wind.
Seated quietly at the bow, Jing Qian practiced on both fronts.
With his left hand, he cradled a ninth-rank Yin Bone, gnawing piece by piece, reforging the Ghost Seal.
With his right hand, he smashed one storage treasure after another, feeding their space into his Sumeru Realm, doubling its size.
Thirty treasures in total, enough to double the Void Realm's capacity once again.
Sailing the Hunyi was slower than flying on his own, but that suited him; it gave him time to cultivate as he traveled.
The Zhuo Ling Grotto-Heaven would open on the fifth day of the fifth month, three months away.
That would be his next great challenge.
And the next Academy Festival was still two and a half years off, more than enough time to reach Yingdu on schedule.
The warship cut through wind and waves while Jing Qian's cultivation advanced steadily.
In just three days, he once again arrived at what was once Xizhi Island.
This great Fate Island had changed hands repeatedly, first seized by Li Yuan's subordinates and renamed Chánmíng Island, then snatched by a band of monks and renamed Xiangshan Island. Truly a turbulent history.
Jing Qian anchored the warship a hundred miles offshore, then turned into a streak of light and flew straight into the old Xili Shrine.
The seals there had been broken and patched so many times that they could no longer stop him. Soon, the long-lost Jiao Life Furnace appeared before his eyes once more.
Though this furnace had passed through several masters, its grade remained unchanged, a Blue Furnace.
Two successive island lords had already fed it enough resources to burn steadily for another three hundred years. Worthy indeed of planting a new Shadow Furnace.
Whatever name outsiders gave it, this island was still one of the top five leyline cores in all of Hunzhou, of immense value.
When Jing Qian planted his fifth Shadow Furnace, his Void Furnace underwent a critical transformation.
He slipped into his Void Realm and saw the Void Furnace blazing with white fire, brilliance dazzling.
The leylines of Hunzhou Island, Earth-Dragon Reef Island, and Xizhi Island all poured their energy into the Void Furnace through the Shadow Furnace conduits.
Without hesitation, Jing Qian dumped all the storage treasures he had looted straight into the Void Realm.
Space shuddered, the world expanded, and the Void Realm's volume soared.
Within the white flames, hints of azure light began to appear. His furnace was evolving to the eighth rank!
The bald little xili cat leapt in and out of the flames, adjusting the flow of energy, keeping the furnace running smoothly.
Just one last push, and the transformation would be complete.
Jing Qian left the Void Realm and shot across Xizhi Island to the great temple newly built at its docks.
Before he even arrived, his sword-silk lashed out, slicing through every protective ward in an instant and reducing the temple to rubble.
It was like kicking a hornet's nest. Ten furious Dragon-Elephant monks burst out.
But one after another, spatial rifts opened behind their necks. Sword-silk slashed through each crack at cunning angles.
In a blink, ten heads flew skyward, blood spraying down in torrents.
Jing Qian's threads darted into the rifts, hooked ten storage treasures from the corpses, and snapped back.
Without lingering, he slipped into the Void Realm.
Space shook again as the treasures were absorbed by ten ninth-rank storage artifacts, expanding the realm by nearly twenty cubic units.
With that final infusion, the Void Furnace had enough to ascend.
A veil of azure light burst forth as the once-blazing Whitefang Fire contracted tenfold into a single rising strand of blue flame.
The Void Furnace had officially advanced to the Azure-Burning Furnace!
Jing Qian was overjoyed. The Whitefang Fire had long since lost its usefulness, but Azure-Wing Fire was exactly what he needed.
Once his dharma-body was formed, every Azure-Wing Fire he absorbed would raise his life essence limit by one.
From then on, it would truly be "pay in essence, grow in strength," a golden age of progress.
He summoned the xili cat, which had advanced alongside the furnace. Its aura swelled, its mind grew keener, though its body stayed the same, still a bald little cat with missing fur.
Jing Qian asked,
"How is it? Did the upgrade awaken any new powers?"
The xili closed its eyes, sensing carefully, then cried out in excitement:
"Master, luck's on our side! A divine ability has awakened!"
"Look!"
From the furnace, it drew out a thread of power and fed it into Jing Qian's mind.
His Insight into the World unraveled it instantly, Stomach of the Void.
This was a rare divine function that only a Life Furnace with a Furnace Spirit could awaken upon advancement.
With the Stomach of the Void, the furnace became a digestive organ of the Void Realm itself, able to consume matter and energy from the real world, break it down, and feed the realm.
At its current eighth-rank grade, it could process any ninth-rank or lower material imbued with spiritual energy.
Jing Qian waved his hand, piling up all the junk inside the Void Realm, mostly loot taken from the Wuchang Temple monks, into a mountain beside the furnace.
He couldn't be bothered to sort it. He just ordered the xili to shovel it into the furnace to be burned.
At last, he had a way to keep growing the Void Realm that didn't depend on looted storage treasures.
The xili now had a new job: boiler worker. Its status as the Void Realm's number two rose even higher.
The bald cat immediately got to work, while Jing Qian returned to the seas.
The Hunyi cut through the waves toward a new destination.
Within Hunzhou, there were still two more islands with Blue Furnaces.
Jing Qian had no intention of leaving them untouched. He would plant Shadow Furnaces on them all, seize their leyline energy, stockpile fate fire, and secure his passive income before heading for Yingdu.
The journey ahead was long, and it was best to fatten his purse before setting out.
After another three days, the Seventh-Rank Qiyue Island appeared on the horizon where sea and sky met.
Jing Qian moored the Hunyi Ship well in advance, then took flight toward the island.
This Fate Island was crescent-shaped, its terrain covered in groves of purple bamboo. Beautiful, but small in size, sparsely populated, and usually of little note.
Yet behind Qiyue Island stood the backing of Cihang Monastery on Haizhou, one of the upper continents, a powerful patron indeed.
As the upper continent closest to Hunzhou, Haizhou's influence was strongest here. Though small, Qiyue Island always enjoyed special privilege and priority.
But ever since Wuchang Temple extended its reach, everything had changed.
Xiang Yu, as Hunzhou's newly installed governor and disciple of one of the Twelve Great Dao Lineages, had no interest in humoring subordinate powers of rival sects. He began a thorough purge, and even Qiyue Island was not spared.
Trusting in its powerful background, Qiyue Island resisted without hesitation.
By the time Jing Qian arrived, the two sides were already fighting tooth and nail.
Of Wuchang Temple's hundred monks, forty had already fallen to Jing Qian's sword. The remaining sixty were all here.
The battle raged fiercely. Dragon-Elephant cultivators could not even get close; they watched anxiously from the fringes.
Seven Longevity-stage monks hovered around the island, each wielding their Dharma bodies and pouring torrents of life-force into the assault.
It was as if seven rivers of power crashed down upon the island's wards.
But a phantom of purple bamboo stood tall against them, shielding the island without yielding an inch.
Jing Qian recognized it immediately as a powerful external "Moon of the Outside Path" Spirit Construct:
Spirit Construct: Cloud-Bamboo Fifth Seed
Category: External Moon
Grade: Sixth Rank
Suppression Requirement: Bamboo Manifestation
Lifespan Cost: Six hours per day
This Spirit Construct carried the strength of a sixth-rank Subjugator, holding back seven Longevity monks with ease.
Beneath its shadow stood a middle-aged Longevity cultivator in white robes, calm and unhurried.
He held a jade sword, its tip flicking out waves of sword-light like falling rain, bolstering the bamboo spirit against the Buddhist assault.
This was Sun Jue, island lord of Qiyue and known as the "Moon-Bamboo Immortal."
He was, in fact, a disciple of Cihang Monastery. Though he had never achieved Spirit Construct Embodiment, he was still considered a core member of his lineage.
With this Spirit Construct at his command, he single-handedly repelled seven monks. Were the Cloud-Bamboo Seed truly his to suppress, he would have slaughtered them outright.
Sun Jue knew Hunzhou's politics had shifted, but as a disciple of Cihang Monastery, he could not bow to monks so easily. Unless the governor himself arrived, he would yield not one step.
Meanwhile, Jing Qian slipped closer through dimensional space, using Worldly Insight to dissect the weaknesses of the combatants.
To him, none of the eight fighters was worth much. None were Spirit Heirs of a Dao Lineage. Only the Spirit Construct itself was of real interest; the rest could be dispatched with a single sword stroke.
Rather than interfere, he flew deeper into Qiyue Island.
There, he saw the island's cultivators had already mustered. Six Dragon-Elephants and over twenty ninth-rank Fatebinding formed a great formation around the Life Furnace, locking down the Moon-Watching Pavilion.
He studied the setup carefully. To his annoyance, the Life Furnace sat openly in the main hall, completely exposed.
Even if he shattered the defenses, he could not stealthily plant a Shadow Furnace without being discovered.
It seemed his plan to siphon Qiyue Island's energy would fail.
Still, with so many of Wuchang Temple's "friends" here, the trip would hardly be wasted.
He crept closer to the battlefield, preparing to fish in troubled waters.
Just then, a strange flicker of power appeared at the edge of his vision through Worldly Insight.
It flashed faintly high above Qiyue Island, hidden in the clouds so subtly it would have gone unnoticed without his vigilance.
Shifting his focus, Jing Qian pierced through the sky in an instant with Bian Yuan Weiyang.
Within moments, he reached the thick clouds and discovered two hidden figures.
No, not men, but two beasts.
One was a burly figure clad in armor, purple jade horns sprouting from his head, his aura extraordinary.
The other was a small black dog, its neck gripped tightly in the horned man's hand.
Jing Qian was stunned. Both were sixth-rank Violet-Pupil demons!
Their bodies brimmed with dense Violet-Pupil life essence, no different from the six-rank creatures he had encountered before.
The two beasts were concealing their aura, quietly watching the battle below.
The little black dog spoke up:
"Dragon Bro, see? I wasn't lying!"
"There really is a sixth-rank Spirit Construct here, and it's held by nothing more than a Longevity cultivator. He's no match for you."
"My nose never lies, just a sniff and I can smell treasure!"
"Remember our deal: I find you a Spirit Construct, and you let me go free!"
The little black dog thrashed again, struggling to break free of the armored man's grip.
But its strength was far inferior. No matter how fiercely it writhed, it couldn't budge that ironclad hand.
The armored man chuckled lightly and said:
"Don't be so hasty."
"I haven't even gotten my hands on this Spirit Construct yet."
"Besides, since you've got such a keen nose, why don't you sniff out whether there are any traces of Yanfudisciples here in Hunzhou?"
"Find me a Yanfudisciple, and I swear on my Dao I'll not only set you free, but even gift you three strands of Solar Dragon Firefiend."
He hadn't even finished when the little black dog squirmed harder than before.
It barked furiously:
"You shameless brute!"
"That Firefiend was mine to begin with. You only stole it by force, and now you parade it around as if you're being generous."
"There are no Yanfu disciples left in this realm! At most, you'll find some unlucky wretch who picked up scraps of their legacy."
"How do you expect me to pull people out of thin air for you?"
The armored man roared with laughter.
"I don't care. If you can't find one, then you're not going anywhere. You'll follow me into the Ghost Sea and sniff out more prey."
With that, he drew a thin cord from his belt and bound the dog tightly from head to paw.
Then he tossed the little creature onto the clouds above and himself became a streak of jet-black light, diving toward the Cloud-Bamboo Seed.
Jing Qian saw it with his own eyes: midway through the dive, the armored man's body unfurled into the true form of a black dragon.
He was no man at all; he was a true dragon that had taken human shape!
A genuine sixth-rank Great Demon, and among sixth-rank beings, dragons were among the very strongest.
At equal cultivation, their power was second only to the Spirit Heirs of the great sects and the Blood Bead Sons of the demon clans.
Across all of Hunzhou, unless Xiang Yu came himself with the White Elephant Spirit Construct, no one could hope to stop this dragon.
Its clash with the Cloud-Bamboo Seed triggered a devastating explosion of spiritual power, scouring everything within ten li into blinding emptiness.
With the very first strike, the dragon killed five of the seven Longevity monks outright.
The surrounding Dragon-Elephant cultivators fared even worse, mowed down like grass in the storm.
Then the dragon coiled around the purple bamboo phantom and began tearing at it greedily, already claiming the Spirit Construct as its own.
Jing Qian watched closely, poised to reap the spoils. Without a high cultivator actively guiding it, the Cloud-Bamboo Seed could not unleash its full power. Against the dragon, it was no match.
What shocked him, though, was that Sun Jue, the island lord, abandoned the Spirit Construct entirely and fled.
He led the remaining Qiyue Island cultivators into the Moon-Watching Pavilion, sealed it tight with their formation, and ignored the carnage outside.
Such a passive response!
At that moment, Jing Qian noticed the little black dog struggling once more atop the clouds.
It funneled power into its jaws, gnawing furiously at the cord binding it.
Soon it had chewed a gap wide enough to free its head.
The dog immediately began to chant a strange incantation at breakneck speed.
Activated by its Violet-Pupil essence, the chant released a ripple of profound Daoist resonance.
But instead of directing it toward the battlefield, the ripple shot northward, vanishing into the skies.
The black dragon noticed nothing. It was lost in the ecstasy of devouring the Spirit Construct.
Demonkind, for all their powerful bloodlines and indomitable bodies, were notoriously poor at mastering the subtleties of Daoist arts.
Refining Spirit Constructs was an advanced skill they barely understood.
That was why most sixth-rank Violet-Pupil demons lacked proper Spirit Constructs of their own.
This dragon, after surviving in the seas for so long, was finally about to claim its first Spirit Construct.
It swallowed mouthful after mouthful of the Cloud-Bamboo Seed's energy, brimming with pride, its future seemingly boundless.
But it failed to notice: the bamboo's power never truly fused with its essence.
The dragon might be mighty, but it was far too ignorant. A few more years among human cultivators, and it would have known better than to be so reckless.
The purple-bamboo that grew on Cihang Monastery's island was no ordinary plant; it was a fourth-rank Star-Seizer Spirit Construct.
Through the ages, it had borne twenty-seven bamboo seeds, each one a Spirit Construct of the fifth or sixth rank.
This set of Cloud-Bamboo Spirits was the sect's ultimate trump card.
Anyone with sense would give them a wide berth. Even high cultivators would at most spar lightly, never dare try to destroy them.
But this dragon? It was actually trying to devour a bamboo seed whole.
Jing Qian nearly laughed aloud.
The black dog had dug the dragon a pit so deep it was the very definition of a deathtrap.
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