Consuming Earths, Devouring Skies

In the Bodily Path, cultivators are defined by nine ranks and three stages. The three stages were initial, advanced, and peak. This was determined by the intensity of their vital energy and nothing more. In terms of flexibility in cultivation base, the Bodily Path allowed the least amount of deviation. Therefore, there aren’t many people who can exceed a rank in combat without a Mortal Dao, supreme martial arts, or top-tier armaments.

When Yun Jiangang stepped forward, his fighting intent and vital energy erupted into a torrential storm. Witnessing this, everyone took a step back. While they were formulating a plan to take action, they didn’t come to any actual agreement. However, when they saw Yan Zaizen wield the warhammer and appear abruptly, a majority of them exhibited caution.

They would wait and see the fate of Yun Jiangang before deciding their next course of action. Yun Baili also took the same stance. That warhammer caused his heart to tremble and he felt a wisp of lethal danger in his heart.

"Hmph!" Yan Zaizen coldly snorted. This Yun Jiangang was truly too slow. With a kick of his right leg at empty space, space rippled, and he soared out with ghostly speed. His speed was so fast that Yun Jiangang eyes constricted with shock. Before he could even shift his hand, a fist had already appeared before his chest.

BOOM!

Yan Zaizen used his free hand to deliver a ferocious strike. Yu Jiangang’s body didn’t shot backward. Instead, a vast booming shockwave echoed as Yan Zaizen’s clenched fist made contact, and his body craned forwards.

The sides of Yun Jiangang’s mouth had dripping stomach fluids and his eyes had lost their focus. The torrential vital energy that shrouded his body dissipated like a fire in a gust of frosty air.

"I...I..." Yun Jiangang tried speaking but his entire body, mind included, was discombobulated. It was as of the life was knocked out of him. He directly lost consciousness in that frozen and odd pose.

"...?" Yan Zaizen’s brows furrowed. He didn’t even punch with his full might or dash with his full speed. This was a probing action to get a gauge of his opponents strength. However...this felt like a mortal met a superhuman.

This was not a fight.

In the Deluge Realm, he had a remarkably difficult fight with Yu Shi. Now that he thought about it, Yu Shi had his own dao and formations of the entire realm aiding him. At that time, his strength could exceed a bestowed dao fourth-floor Heavenly cultivator.

"..." When the other younger generation members, especially the ones with a weaker cultivation base than Yun Jiangang saw this, they were aghast! Even Yun Baili and Hei Long’s pupils shrank and their hearts trembled.

Talent aside, they couldn’t even react to Yan Zaizen’s movement!

As Yun Jiangang lost the support of Yan Zaizen’s fist, he floated in outer space like a dead, bent fish. Yan Zaizen clenched his fist and felt something. His gaze traced the unnamed warhammer. Just holding it, the inscriptions lit up faintly. It was nearly imperceptible.

"It’s enhancing my strength?" Yan Zaizen’s thoughts spiraled. He had never wielded the warhammer in an actual fight and thus didn’t detect the difference. Now that he could compare himself to a rank-three Fiendgod, he realized its miraculous features.

"It enhances my physique without my vital energy. How’s that even possible?" He felt bewildered by the logic. After all, armaments were external tools, they didn’t enhance one’s strength directly from its foundations but empowered the energy that flowed through it.

Pinaka was the excellent example of this. She had her own strength and miraculous features but she combined that with her user, not her user using that for himself.

"Do you truly have a link to Herculeans?" He couldn’t help but solemnly ponder. The amplification was not minor. In fact, it was impossibly huge. It seems to be resonating with his physique, so it increases the foundation of the user by a set amount. It was like a miraculous, inconceivable law.

If a weak person wielded it, they would receive the same percentage of enhancement as a strong person. Therefore, the greater the physique, the greater the benefits.

Yan Zaizen knew this from the information funneled into his mind. It didn’t describe its passive increase but its active features. By channeling vital energy, true-essence, or other types of proper energy into Sky Shatter, it can enhance the user’s body and vital energy by a set amount.

At first, he thought ’body and energy’ were the same thing, but that evidently wasn’t the case. Sky Shatter was truly heaven-defying!

"So...is that why I only feel a reduced pressure now?" As he continued wielding Sky Shatter, this grand warhammer, the pressure he felt increasingly weakened. "With this, I wonder what is the upper limits of my strength?" He hefted Sky Shatter on his shoulder, a loud explosion occurred as warhammer met flesh, but Yan Zaizen only stably stood atop space.

With a devilish smirk filled with unyielding confidence, dark-amber eyes that blazed with infinite vitality, and a sky-shattering momentum, Yan Zaizen turned towards the group of heavenly cultivators. He took a single step forward.

"!" A vast majority of heavenly cultivators amongst the group flinched, taking a step backwards subconsciously and felt their hearts turn cold. The only ones that took no action were obvious, they were the cream of the crop such as Yun Baili, the auburn-haired girl, Hei Long, and the black-hooded figure. They stood stably. Their eyes radiating various emotions such as pride and battle intent.

This was notably so for Yun Baili. His bright gaze suffused with a tinge of madness and killing intent.

Yan Zaizen felt some respect for those who didn’t step back at his momentum. Despite this, it didn’t stop him from taunting them further, "Weren’t you deciding how to deal with me? What happened to all that zest and zeal? Or did I make you wet yourselves?" Chuckling in amusement, he took another step forward. However, his words caused the young generation cultivators, who stood at a high-standing amongst juniors, to feel their pride being personally attacked.

None of them revealed fearful gazes any longer. Their gazes shifted towards anger and killing intent.

"Haha!" The auburn-haired woman, Bing He, coldly laughed. The mere thought of Yan Zaizen insulting her left a putrid taste in her mouth. Amongst the many people here, she had immense pride in herself and her group. She turned towards Hei Long, "Apologies, I’ll take the first move. Excuse me for my rudeness," with that, she performed a handseal.

When Yan Zaizen saw this handseal, he felt his soul tremble suddenly. It was an odd sensation, as if it was being assaulted but not. It was very distinct, and the environment hadn’t changed but it was as if what he saw was illusory.

"Careful! She’s a soul cultivator, you’re under an illusory soul art!" Pinaka voice advised. As she was directly linked to Yan Zaizen’s soul, she could sense irregularities that occur within.

"Illusory soul art?" Yan Zaizen was startled. He recalled the Asura Phantom Realm. During that time, the moon in that realm held an illusory formation that projected falseness. As a soul cultivator himself, he was interested in how that was done. The unfortunate part left him crestfallen; the Anime Syndicate did not have such profound arts. Even Pinaka didn’t understand conventional soul path illusory arts or methods. If she did, she couldn’t actually use them.

Before he could respond, he felt space shift suddenly and an unusual surging pressure enveloped his body. The pressure wasn’t overly strong, something he could resist, but it made him feel sluggish and disorientated.

"Hmph!" Coldly snorting, Yan Zaizen aurora astral star erupted with soul energy. This soul energy, at eruption, shattered some invisible binding that seemed to have latched onto his soul. The surrounding area suddenly shifted in his perception.

"What?!" Confused, Yan Zaizen found himself surrounded by eight mountain-sized, grey coffins. Each coffin emanated ripples of profound soul energy and vital energy. They were interconnected, establishing a small space with him at the center. He could feel his body and soul under pressure, fortunately, his soul cultivation base and physique was far too strong to be subjected to any disadvantage.

"This is a formation array!" Pinaka exclaimed. Just as Pinaka was about to go in-depth, the coffins ripples started to surge like oceanic waves, pummeling Yan Zaizen’s body and soul ferociously. His body twitched slightly but nothing else. His soul absorbed all soul energy ripples that touched it, as if it was a never-ending black hole that seemed to wish to consume, devour, and exceed all existence!

"A fourth-grade heavenly formation?" Yan Zaizen calmly analyzed. Even without Pinaka’s explanation, he could conclude this himself, after all, he did study for thousands of years. Formations, arrays, alchemy, and armament creation, he knew the very basics. These coffins were array flags. They surrounded the target and emitted soul and vital energy to pressure both the soul and body.

Each array flag was being handled by a heavenly cultivator. He suspected that this formation wasn’t actually a fourth-grade heavenly formation, but just a small part of a much larger formation. Alas, this method would be effective on any fourth-floor Heavenly Genesis cultivator and likely weaken fifth-floors, but to Yan Zaizen?

This was a tickle.

"ROAR!!" With a thunderous shout, Yan Zaizen stomped his feet causing space itself to tremble. This shocked Yan Zaizen a little. He intended to collapse the surrounding space, disrupting the formation, but space had been stabilized to a much higher degree than normal. It was only a second later that he came to an enlightened realization, the spatial formation they activated must’ve stabilized the spatial void, causing it to be much harder to shift within or collapse.

"Alright, this is how I like it!" With an amused chuckle, his body erupted with his Mortal Dao. It was as if a sovereign had ascended, releasing tyrannical ferocity unmatched and ice-cold decisiveness that could cause even the most sinister of monsters hearts to turn cold.

"Let’s see if these coffins are as sturdy as they are big! Haha!" Yan Zaizen liked this, in his thousands of years of cultivation, he rarely could let loose and experience true combat. Seeing the myriad of methods used by experts against him, he was filled with an unmeasurable amount of expectation.

With a kick-off dash, his body shifted like a shadow. The pressure emanating from the grey coffins couldn’t hinder his movements in a single step. With a raised Sky Shatter, he faced one of the grey-coffins and smashed heavily in a downward arc. The coffin couldn’t withstand a millisecond of force as it shattered like glass. From the hammer head of Sky Shatter, an invisible ripple emerged and engulfed the entirety of the coffin.

Pieces of its existence erupted outwards from the point of impact, but these pieces didn’t simply fly off, they disintegrated into dust.

A hellish scream resounded filled with endless pain as a heavenly cultivator, male, and at the second-floor, appeared from behind the coffin in retreat. His heavenly shrine was igniting, his eyes filled with profound heavenly might, but his face wasn’t one filled with decisiveness but one of unimaginable horror.

As he peddled backward, the ripple that surged from Sky Shatter touched his body. The first to come in contact with it was his fingers. They disintegrated like dust in a calm gust of wind. The young man felt his mind numb at the sight and couldn’t stop screaming. He could feel his physical body shatter from a cellular level, and even though he tried to fight it off with his true-essence, it couldn’t delay the disintegration

The others watched him with widened gazes, some even stepped back, and a few took a step forward, but nothing more. Initially, they were thinking about stepping in to save this man, forcing him to owe them a favor in the future, but what happened left them all bewildered and lost.

The ripple was simply too fast and seemed to be honing onto the man’s existence regardless of how much he attempted to maneuver. It started with fingers, then hand, then arm, then torso, then everything. It vanished like dust in the wind.

Yan Zaizen watched this and felt deeply startled. Sky Shatter was marvelous, this he knew, but was it this marvelous?