If ever you have need, I will spare no effort to help.

Just then, the figure who had defeated him—as though she had merely done something utterly insignificant—and was about to turn and leave, paused slightly.

Ling Xi did not turn around. Her voice, cold and composed, reached directly into the depths of Wang Zhan’s chaotic, collapsing mind through a transmission that only he could hear.

“The Heavenly Azure Sacred Physique is both a gift and a shackle.”

The voice held not the slightest trace of emotion, yet it was like a basin of ice-cold water, dousing the raging flames in his heart. His struggling movements abruptly froze.

“You lost—not because your cultivation was inferior, nor because your will to fight was lacking.”

The voice continued, each word striking directly at the source.

“You lost because of your Dao!”

There was a slight pause in the transmission. As though she understood the state he was in, Ling Xi continued, her tone carrying a trace of approval.

“Within the Imperial Tomb, you comprehended the Dao before the stone wall. You realized the meaning of ‘embracing, bearing, and transformation,’ and wished to take the Sacred Physique as your foundation, absorb the essence of myriad Daos, and walk a path that surpassed your former self…”

“This notion is quite good. You saw through one layer of the obstacle in cultivating the Sacred Physique and glimpsed a more distant view. That is the embryonic form of your own Dao.”

That casual affirmation sent monstrous waves surging through Wang Zhan’s heart.

She actually knew every detail of his most secret process of enlightenment?!

Yet what she said next made him feel an even more piercing chill and humiliation than her earlier defeat of him.

“But it remains nothing more than an embryonic form.” Ling Xi’s voice returned to its usual indifference, yet every word cut to the bone.

“You speak of embracing and bearing, but in that punch just now, where was the Dao of embracing that you yourself comprehended? Where was the principle of bearing?”

“Your fist carried the intent of tragic defiance. But when you struck, what occupied your heart—your artistic conception, or the thought of seeing how the power of your Sacred Physique could smash everything apart?”

“At the instant of life and death, victory and defeat, your Dao, your techniques, and your will still instinctively became servants of the power of your Sacred Physique!”

“You comprehended the Dao, but you never used it.”

“Your heart and your Dao remain trapped within your body, blinded by its power. You have yet to truly transcend it.

“You merely took an even stronger mortal body, cultivated it to the Sacred Realm, and treated the occasional glimpse of Dao rhythm as mere ornamentation.”

At this point, the transmission paused briefly. Her final words cleaved open a sliver of light within Wang Zhan’s despair, exploding across the dead lake of his heart.

“What you must do is truly make your body the seed, your physique the root, and your Dao the soul.”

“Your opponent has never been any prodigy of your generation.”

“It is your own dependence on—and submission to—the magnificent prison within your body known as the Heavenly Azure Sacred Physique.”

“Only when you can use the Dao of embracing that you have comprehended to truly control the power of the Heavenly Azure Sacred Physique, rather than allowing its strength to control your mind, can you be said to have truly set foot upon your own path.”

“You still have a very long road ahead of you.”

When her words faded, the transmission ended.

Wang Zhan was completely frozen. Lying amid the ruins, he felt as though he had been struck by five thunderbolts, his thoughts coming to a complete halt.

Ling Xi’s words were sharper, colder, and more truthful than the finger that had defeated him.

Every word was like a perfectly precise scalpel, cutting open the enlightenment he had prided himself on and exposing the deep-rooted dependence on the power of his Sacred Physique that he had never truly abandoned.

She had acknowledged his comprehension, yet completely denied his current practice.

She had identified the essence of his problem and even pointed him toward a vague yet utterly correct direction.

Being seen through so completely, with even the last trace of wishful thinking in his heart ruthlessly exposed, was more humiliating than a simple defeat. Yet it also brought him a nearly cruel clarity.

His past glory, the praise of the masses, and the honor of his Sacred Physique all began to melt away like snow beneath the sun, revealing the hollow foundation beneath—one that he had neglected for far too long.

He had always stood at the summit of the mountain that was the Sacred Physique, yet he had never considered that perhaps he had never truly possessed that mountain at all.

That finger from Ling Xi had not merely shattered the power of his Sacred Physique. It was more like a key that had pierced through the prison of his own self-perception.

Confusion, pain, and shame still remained. But atop the ruins of those emotions, a faint yet extraordinarily clear flame of enlightenment began to burn.

The madness and emptiness in his eyes swiftly receded, replaced by a complex expression mingling extreme pain with a sense of liberation. In the end, it settled into profound calm.

Struggling, he used his uninjured left hand to support his battered body. With great difficulty, yet extraordinary determination, he slowly stood beneath the countless uncertain gazes fixed upon him.

Then he made a move no one had expected.

He faced the spot where Ling Xi had stood moments earlier. Ignoring his twisted right arm and his battered, disheveled state, he bent deeply and solemnly at the waist, offering a formal bow.

“I have received your grace today. Should you ever need me in the future, I will offer you my aid with all my strength!”

His resolute voice reached Ling Xi’s ears. Her footsteps paused for the briefest moment before she continued onward, returning to her senior brother’s side.

That bow lasted three breaths.

There were no further words, yet the meaning contained within it sent shockwaves through everyone who witnessed the scene.

Was that an admission of defeat? Gratitude? Or something else?

The wasteland erupted into an uproar.

“What is Wang Zhan doing?!”

“To whom is he bowing?!”

“Did Cyan Rakshasa secretly say something to him just now?”

“What does that bow mean? Has he truly submitted? Or is it…”

The Wang clan members were even more bewildered. The Wang family patriarch’s expression shifted repeatedly, and he was about to step forward when he was stopped by the aura surrounding Wang Zhan—an aura of absolute calm, and absolute resolve.

After bowing, Wang Zhan straightened. He did not even look toward his own clansmen. With his left hand, he slowly and laboriously took a spare robe from his storage treasure and draped it over himself, covering his body, which was marred with wounds.

He cast one final glance in Ling Xi’s direction. His eyes were complicated, but ultimately settled into a silence as deep as an unfathomable pool.

Then he turned around and began walking toward the depths of the wasteland, one slow step at a time, across the scorched earth riddled with cracks.

His back looked somewhat lonely and solitary, yet it also carried a straightness that seemed to herald an indescribable rebirth.

Across the wasteland, countless gazes followed that gradually receding figure. Whether friend or foe, everyone felt the same powerful premonition rise within their hearts.

When Wang Zhan returned once more…

It would surely shake the heavens and earth!

For a time, every prodigy fell silent.

Beyond the Imperial Tomb, the setting sun was as red as blood. A silent, oppressive heaviness settled over everyone, weighing down upon their hearts.

Wang Zhan.

That name had once again been branded into everyone’s hearts today in the most tragic and shocking manner.

Looking back over his journey during this period, he had first lost to Battle Asura Xiao Ruobai, then to Sword Whiteclad Fang Hanyu, and had even been left in a sorry state by Fatty Wang.

Time and again, he had been defeated, becoming a footnote to the glory of others.

And yet this same man, who had suffered defeat after defeat, had been the first among all the prodigies of his generation present to recklessly draw down the Chaos Heavenly Tribulation before the Imperial Tomb and break through into the Sacred Realm on the spot beneath the eyes of the entire world.

And those prodigies who had once stood on equal footing with him—or even considered themselves no weaker than he was—such as the Jiang Family's Divine King Physique, the Great Zhou Crown Prince, Yaochi Su Qingyuan, and Heavenly Secrets Pavilion Xing Lan, were for the most part still lingering at the peak of the King Realm, struggling to knock on the door to the Sacred Realm.

What was even more terrifying was that this devastating defeat had not only failed to crush him completely; instead, it seemed to have become the fiercest flame of nirvana, one that would bring about an unimaginable and far more thorough transformation!

“Defeated in battle after battle, yet growing stronger with every defeat…”

Someone in the crowd murmured these eight words, unknowingly voicing the complex, indescribable feelings in everyone’s hearts.