All Saints

“Bang!”

He hit the cold, unyielding ground hard. Pain wracked his entire body, and his vision was still swimming in darkness.

It took several breaths before he could barely gather a thread of focus and a faint wisp of spiritual power. Struggling, trembling, he forced himself to raise his head and look around.

He was in a dimly lit, enclosed space. Ominous sealing runes flowed across the walls, sending chills through his heart.

And not far in front of him stood six figures.

They were the very peak masters of the Qingxuan Sect whom he had encountered earlier in the valley outside.

Yet now, there was not the slightest trace left of the superficial calm and aura of the Dongtian Realm they had displayed before.

The auras surrounding them were vast as abyssal seas, condensed almost into substance.

Heavy and boundless, those auras carried an absolute pressure belonging to a higher form of life—one that made even his soul tremble instinctively.

Saints?!

They were all Saints?!

Lying on the ground, Molingzi felt a chill shoot from the base of his spine straight to the crown of his head, freezing even his thoughts nearly solid.

Six—six whole Saints?!

How could this be possible?!

It was impossible!

How could the Qingxuan Sect, a sect without even a single respectable Heavenly Being, possibly have Saints?!

And six of them had appeared at once?!

He frantically activated his divine sense, repeatedly probing the six figures before him with all his might.

There was no mistake.

That Dao resonance, vast as the sea and flawlessly complete; that unspoken resonance with the laws of heaven and earth in every gesture—these were undoubtedly Saints!

“An illusion! This must be an incredibly sophisticated illusion array! A trap meant to shake my Dao Heart!”

He abruptly shut his eyes and madly drove what remained of his divine sense, circulating a secret heart-clearing art in an attempt to shatter the illusion.

“Break! Break for me!!”

Yet no matter how he circulated his cultivation technique, the terrifying pressure of the Saints—like a bottomless abyss—not only failed to vanish, but grew ever clearer and more real, crushing down upon his senses.

It pressed his remaining spiritual power into complete stillness. His primordial spirit wailed and trembled, on the verge of shattering!

This wasn’t an illusion array!

It was actually real?!

He kept his eyes clenched shut, not daring to open them.

As though, so long as he refused to look, this absurd and horrifying scene would not be real.

Just as Molingzi’s mind was on the verge of collapse beneath the terrifying truth of six Saints appearing together—

More powerful auras and footsteps sounded in the distance.

Struggling, Molingzi turned his head toward the source of the sounds and the approaching presences.

Behind the six Saintly peak masters, one figure appeared, then two, then ten, twenty, thirty.

Figure after figure slowly made their way over, seemingly eager to watch the spectacle.

More Saints!

Every one of them was a Saint!

With a single glance, he saw a dense throng of more than thirty of them!

Their auras merged into one, like an invisible tide that flooded the entire space—and utterly drowned what remained of Molingzi’s mind.

If the Saintly cultivation of the six peak masters had been like six erupting volcanoes, leaving him stunned and horrified—

Then these thirty-plus Saints revealing their heavenly might together were like a vast, boundless continent of sanctity suddenly rising from beneath the horizon of the sea!

The suffocating, absolute pressure born from their sheer numbers seemed to freeze even space itself.

His mind was completely blank. Every shred of his ability to think had been crushed beneath the terror of the scene before him.

More than thirty—adding the six before his eyes, that made forty Sages!

The Azure Mystics Sect had actually hidden away forty Sages?!

That number alone would be enough to sweep across Xuanzhou. Even before those ancient Sacred Lands with their long-standing legacies, it would be enough to turn heads!

One had to know that even after exhausting the entire strength of the Myriad Arts Pavilion, they did not possess a single Sage!

Just then, muffled groans of pain, mixed with the dull thuds of fists and feet striking flesh, drifted faintly from deeper within the space.

Molingzi’s heart trembled. That voice sounded strangely familiar.

Almost instinctively, he cast a terrified glance toward where the sounds were coming from.

In a corner of the space, several figures were still “sparring.”

On one side was a middle-aged man with vast, surging aura. His gray robe was tattered, his hair disheveled, and the pressure he exuded was even stronger than that of a Sage!

Yet at that moment, the man was roaring in fury, struggling desperately from side to side. Several Azure Mystics Sect elders—whose cultivation was “merely” at the Sage Realm—had trapped him tightly with an exquisitely coordinated joint technique, raining fists and kicks upon him until he was in a thoroughly miserable state.

The scene on the other side was even more “tragic.”

Several Azure Mystics Sect elders were gathered around another person, punching and kicking him without mercy.

The man being beaten...

Molingzi’s gaze suddenly froze on him.

Though the man’s face was bruised and swollen, his hair in disarray, blood spilling from the corners of his mouth, and his appearance utterly wretched, those facial features...

Molingzi’s breathing abruptly stopped.

It was as if a cold, iron hand had seized his heart in a crushing grip!

He recognized that face!

Though it was swollen beyond recognition and smeared with blood, he could never mistake it!

Li Mo!

Li Mo of the Taixuan Sacred Land!

Years ago, in order to establish even the slightest connection with the Taixuan Sacred Land, Pavilion Master Yun Canghai of the Myriad Arts Pavilion had personally brought lavish gifts to pay them a visit.

As one of the accompanying elders, Molingzi had been fortunate enough to catch a distant glimpse of Sage Li Mo.

At the time, Sage Li Mo had sat high above the clouds, dressed in a magnificent purple robe. His expression was aloof, his gaze sharp as lightning. A single sweep of his eyes had caused Molingzi—a mighty King Realm cultivator—to feel his very soul ache, nearly forcing him to his knees.

Before that Sage, Pavilion Master Yun Canghai had lowered himself completely, speaking with utmost respect—almost to the point of fawning.

And Sage Li Mo had merely given a slight nod, which was already considered an immense honor.

That scene had been seared deeply into Molingzi’s mind. It had made him truly understand the majesty of a Sacred Land and the supreme status of a Sage.

After returning, he had been exhilarated for a long time, treating the encounter as the greatest glory of his life and committing Sage Li Mo’s appearance firmly to memory.

And now, that purple-robed Sage of the Sacred Land whom he had once been forced to look up to—whom even his own Pavilion Master had needed to curry favor with—

That Sage Li Mo, lofty and untouchable as a deity—

Was now inside the Azure Mystics Sect, this “run-down sect” he had once utterly disdained, being beaten by a group of elders he had regarded as mere ants.

Like a punching bag, he had been battered until he curled up on the ground, letting out pained, muffled groans. He was utterly incapable of fighting back, with not the slightest shred of a Sage’s dignity left!

Molingzi’s eyes widened to their limit, his eyeballs nearly bulging from their sockets!

The muscles in his face twisted violently, a grotesque mix of boundless terror, absurdity, and the stunned emptiness of someone whose very understanding of reality had been utterly shattered.

He looked at Sage Li Mo in the distance, being beaten like a dead dog.

Then he looked at the several dozen people from the Qingxuan Sect before him, all wearing amiable smiles as they radiated terrifying saintly might and studied him with keen interest.

Finally, he felt the searing pain throughout his body, his spiritual power sealed away, leaving him as helpless as a lamb awaiting slaughter.

“Pfft—!”

Overcome by rage and panic, terror piercing him to the bone, Molingzi spat out a mouthful of blood. His vision went dark, and he passed out completely.

In the instant before losing consciousness, only one thought remained in his mind—crystal clear, yet utterly absurd—echoing through the endless darkness.

Qingxuan Sect... what the hell kind of monsters are you people?!