Xu Yangyi licked his lips, his mouth heavy with the foul taste of blood. His lung had just been pierced through by an unknown magik artifact… His breathing had become full of bloody chunks… 

Grimly lifting his chin, he faced towards the side and spat out. He looked at God Ming and suddenly smirked, “That’ll have to wait and be put off until later, if you’re even still alive.” 

Xu Yangyi’s killing intent didn’t need to be explained. Whoever obtained the demon core first wouldn’t only be able to borrow the support of the amassed ocean of qi within the thousand-year-old origin crystal and experience an instant resurrection in both flesh and magical energies, but would moreover be capable of forcing all to tread carefully! [1]

Regardless of Qi Condensation, Foundation Establishment, or Core Formation… none ventured whether or not the possessor would make the demon core explode!

“Hahaha!” God Ming reared his head back and cackled, yet before he could finish laughing he started to cough loudly as his wounds were aggravated. “Good… I will be waiting on you!”

There was no further talk. They were waiting… on the eruption of this great treasury, a thousand-year-old hidden treasure. Even Daomaster Jadewave’s demon body, transformed into shreds was unable to support it… However!

The demon core… would absolutely not shatter! Soon… very soon, it would appear on the water’s surface! Both of them could feel it… Down below, there was a fist-sized object breaking through layers of obstacles. Five seconds… four seconds… three seconds… it was certain to spout out!

Already at a speed too hard for the naked eye to capture, this prismatic blanket of golden light dyed the water’s top layer with a light-blue halo from the bottom of the lake!

Xu Yangyi’s gaze turned solemn. No one knew, but even now, he was teetering on the edge of collapse. He used Innersight; the small stone in his qi sea was shockingly covered with cracks! A feeling of bloodthirst and frenzy that he was almost hard-pressed to contain battered each of his muscles as a few minor cracks swiftly invaded the stone little by little. He gritted his teeth and forcibly stifled his physical discomfort, doggedly fixed on the bottom of the vortex.

The interior had already been contaminated red by a vast quantity of Jadewave’s blood. The amount could be calculated by the ton. But on every wound on Xu Yangyi’s body, bloody lakewater seemed to find a place to drain into! He was ignorant… but drop after drop of pure demon blood quietly flew into his wounds as the seed’s cracks became greater in size. It was like the blood was watering the seed!

Two seconds… one second!

God Ming and Xu Yangyi were riddled with scars, but their gazes flashed explosively. At the same time, they charged towards the heart of the vortex at speeds almost disregarded first or last!

Meanwhile, a rumble followed, similar to the sound of rolling thunder. At the eye of the maelstrom, the lake bottom radiated an aqua-blue color.

Bang… A white lightning bolt began to clamor from within the vortex. In the next moment, the second and third bolts arrive! And soon… countless lightning bolts raged! A fist-sized, aqua-blue sphere noiselessly appeared at the vortex’s bottom. In its surroundings, there was no trace of water, wind, or life. It seemed like nothing could approach it. It existed there, yet it appeared not to exist there, isolated from the world.

In the instant the sphere emerged, supremely dense qi in the vortex, qi from the shattered millennium-old treasures, unexpectedly solidified! Bolts of qi lightning resonated in this cyclonic maelstrom!

The wind was so furious, as if it could uproot mountains! The rain so overflowing, as if it could flood rivers! In an instant, the area below became a nest of thunder spirits!

Xu Yangyi’s heart seemed to palpitate with each of the origin crystal’s revolutions. Based on this light, the greatness of the terror from the qi inside it could be felt. It wasn’t the same as Vermilion Snow’s half-completed product. Only perfection could be used to describe this core.

“It… can only belong to me!!!” Cackling maniacally, God Ming continued to charge, both his eyes scarlet-red. He had left the three-headed demonbeast at his side. While Xu Yangyi’s speed wasn’t slower than his by any stretch, his deranged laughter followed. “Explode!”

In this fleeting juncture of life and death, God Ming dragged the three-headed demonbeast towards Xu Yangyi in rapid advance. In the wake of a deafening boom, the beast exploded beside Xu Yangyi!

“Fuck!” Xu Yangyi’s pupils suddenly contracted! The demonbeast’s self-detonation was an additional wound on top of his injuries, but this wasn’t the most important matter! 

The most important matter was… that the qi shock wave born from the detonation had forcibly taken him across and pushed him out! The origin crystal… was there at the bottom of the vortex!

“Mortal!” God Ming laughed heartily, “You are undeserving to touch this object!”

“When I refine it, the Ming Clan will be certain to personally visit your doorstep to demand repayment!!! HAHAHA!!!”

God Ming’s laughter reverberated throughout the vortex. At the beginning, neither of them gave way to the other. For a time, God Ming had believed his opportunity was lost, yet by a freakish combination of factors, mistakes and errors of both Yin and Yang, he’d arrived at this moment!

In this terrible storm, everyone had been run haggard by scars now. Although the loss of the tenth coffin’s explosion was great, how could it compare to a Core Formation origin crystal? The self-detonation this time was finally enough to fling away that repulsive tick!

“It… is mine!” Already, God Ming’s speed was so fast that it was difficult to make him out! The closer he neared the vortex’s bottom, the more magnificent the blue color was! Even now, he could sense the colossal might akin to holy light inside the origin crystal within reach! 

His hand—already his smile crazed and his eyes scarlet-red—snapped forward with incredible speed. Behind him, Xu Yangyi had been battered away a good ten-odd meters because of the detonation just now. Presently, he’d taken the lead, but there was still ten meters!

It’s mine… It’s mine! This supreme treasure belongs in the possession of I, God Ming, by all rights! I am THE favored son of Heaven and Earth! So long as I touch it… it will immediately hail me as master! Even if a Dao Master stands before me, they won’t dare to act against me! Confronted with another Core Formation cultivator’s origin crystal, do they venture whether I risk detonating it or not?

God Ming didn’t look back at Xu Yangyi. A small, merciless smile hung at the crook of Xu Yangyi’s mouth. As God Ming’s hand came closer and closer to Jadewave’s core, Xu Yangyi took out his watch again and looked at it.

“Two hours and twenty-three minutes…”

Xu Yangyi closed his eyes and growled, “Li Zongyuan.”

Swoosh! There were two slender tongues, yet they were incomparably precise! At the instant God Ming’s hand was on the verge of touching the origin crystal, the tongues suddenly shot out from above the vortex! One tongue had hooked around God Ming’s middle finger with great accuracy! The other tongue… had hooked God Ming’s entire soul! The Core Formation origin crystal!

God Ming was stunned. He almost dared not believe in this tremendous reversal. Time appeared in slow motion. The fist-sized origin crystal, in the wake of his eyes and his slowly opening mouth, followed his line of sight… and flew upwards.

The enormous disparity between reality and dream caused the inside of God Ming’s brain to become an empty white expanse. Only after three full seconds did he react!

“NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!” Tearing at his heart and splitting his lungs, a miserable scream echoed at the bottom of the entire lake!

This was Xu Yangyi’s true ace! From the beginning, he’d been taking note of his watch, always waiting upon the time when Li Zongyuan would regain consciousness! From the start, he hadn’t been planning on having a proper talk with God Ming! 

Presently, they were in the water! And Li Zongyuan had just completed his evolution recently! There was only one opportunity. Xu Yangyi had continued to endure, enduring for this moment! In his spiritual sense, he’d long since finished communicating with Li Zongyuan.

God Ming exhausted every fiber of his being as he charged towards the direction from where the tongue had disappeared, like he was insane! However, as soon as he turned around, he saw a giant fist!

WHOMP! The fist heavily smashed into his face!

Bang! At the same moment, a qi-condensed thunderbolt struck Xu Yangyi’s body!

“Puh!” A mouthful of blood sprayed out from between the gaps of Xu Yangyi’s rigidly gritted teeth. His whole body was covered with countless wounds of all shapes and sizes, bubbling into a spring of blood in an instant! 

All of a sudden… an unknown number of his bones broke. Even his qi sea was madly shaking, no end in sight! He simply didn’t dare to examine his own injuries. Mustering his strength, he used all of his power to raise his fist and pound it into God Ming’s face for a second time!

Yet he hadn’t discovered that at this moment, the small stone inside his qi sea was close to completely shattering! A shiver-inducing aura wildly launched from there within!

“Mongrel!” With mad eyes, God Ming tilted his head. His wounds were even more severe than Xu Yangyi’s! Without one or two years of rest, they would be practically unhealable… But before this thought even vanished, a fierce ache graced his nose. Subsequently, it extended to his entire body! Xu Yangyi’s fists were falling down on him like raindrops! 

“Puh! Bah! Hurk!” Arrows of blood flew into the air. The qi lightning was so dense that it was solid. Inevitably, there were several that struck the two of them. Xu Yangyi tenaciously clenched his teeth. Even though the roots of his teeth were trembling, he wouldn’t relinquish this opportunity to defeat God Ming whatsoever!

The golden core’s disappearance right before his eyes caused God Ming to lose his support pillar. It was an absolute drop from the paradise of heaven to the inferno of hell. He… no longer had the slightest will to battle!

Boom! Boom! Boom! Like Xu Yangyi was beating leather, his final punch brought God Ming’s body to drag out a long, bloody line in the sky. God Ming wailed miserably as he fell into the vortex.

It wasn’t that Xu Yangyi was unwilling to use qi, but rather… he was already drained of qi! The combination of Life Sacrification and the Ten Cardinals Red Lotus, added on top of resisting the spirit treasure vortex formed from the ruin of a thousand-year-old treasury, had ultimately delivered him to the stage of a lantern depleted of oil! His qi sea was a void. So long as he wanted to use a scrap of qi to even come bubbling around his fist, he would feel a stabbing pain akin to a scraping blade!

In his body, pain swelled forth like a tide, injury upon injury. He moved his hand straight behind him, his vision somewhat hazy, and murmured, “Li Zongyuan…”

His voice was marred by the blood that continuously spilled out from between his teeth.

“Mongrel!” God Ming flew back ten-odd meters, yet surprisingly stood up in madness. His fingers moved, and he learned of an emptiness on his middle finger! The storage ring on his middle finger was gone!

That damned gremlin! That fiend of an inferior bloodline! That toad had actually plundered his storage ring and ran off as he was preoccupied with the human trash in front of him!

Damn… Damn! Dammit! Damn it all to hell!

His rationale had already been driven insane! To lose something and then regain it, to gain something and then lose it…. The core was right before his eyes! In a mere blink, it was a difference of two to three meters, but in the end the core still wasn’t his!

He was already so beaten that his facial features were beyond all recognition. Even standing was challenging. Blood flowed from his seven apertures, and he looked on with wide eyes… at Xu Yangyi’s hand which stuck out behind. A tongue delivered a fist-sized object that radiated blue light into Xu Yangyi’s hand. 

“AAAHHH!!!” God Ming turned to the sky and screamed in anger. That item… was the origin crystal that had almost fell into his grasp just now!

“Origin crystal?” Presently, several hundred kilometers away in the sky, a blazing rainbow paused, seemingly in a state of immense shock. But in the next instant, it rushed towards the Four Great Joint Pools with an even swifter speed!

“Did someone… attain Jadewave’s Core Formation origin crystal?” Likewise, a few hundred kilometers elsewhere in a different direction, a startled flush appeared on the face of a woman who was wearing a qipao. Thereafter, she was a thousand meters away as her next step settled!

At every location her high heels fell, a lotus was born at each pace. Rootless lotuses swayed gently in the sky as if they were supporting her advance. At the same time, there were also several charging auras cursing loudly!

“This bastard!” 

“Who could possess such fortune?! To actually seize a Core Formation origin crystal?! One that was even right in front of us! 

“Urgh… a Core Formation origin crystal… a Core Formation origin crystal! This son of a bitch’s luck is straight out of this world!”

Xu Yangyi held onto the origin crystal. At this instant, his entire body was dripping with blood from head to toe, his breathing labored like an ox. However, in that sliver of time that he grasped the origin crystal, he knew that everything had been worth it.

Streaks of blue qi, like a river entering an ocean, quickly and violently flooded his qi sea, and his body was restored at lightning speed. In nearly the blink of an eye, qi immediately poured into his body, filling him to the brim! It moreover continued to rejuvenate him at an incomparably frightening rate! In practice, this was the same as pressing the resurrect button in a game!