Living Proof

With every strike, his soul body—once on the verge of swelling until it stood as tall as the heavens—shrank bit by bit.

At first, Liao Pantu’s soul trembled violently, and he had to use every ounce of strength he possessed just to keep himself from being shattered into oblivion by the thunderous blows. But eventually, he grew accustomed to it. He could close his eyes, empty his mind, and let the lightning batter his body without pain or discomfort.

Perhaps a very, very long time passed.

Then, without warning, the roaring lightning vanished.

When he opened his eyes again, he found that his soul body had returned to its normal size.

He had assumed that this was the end.

But to his surprise, waves of piercing sounds suddenly erupted within his sea of consciousness, shooting outward in every direction like needles!

They seemed to be calling for something.

Liao Pantu appeared to sense something. He abruptly raised his head and looked into the distance.

It was coming!

It had returned!

In the distance, a humanoid gust swept toward him.

Or, more accurately, a gust of wind was carrying an invisible, human-shaped thing as it sped toward him.

If there was no wind, no dust, no light, then there was nothing at all.

Yet that wind, raised by yin energy; that dust, formed from yin energy; and that light, cast into relief by yin energy—all of them bore that figure, which should have been formless and invisible, as it rushed toward Liao Pantu.

In an instant, they collided head-on.

Suddenly, he felt warmth return to his once cold and temperatureless soul body.

He raised his hands and looked down.

Veins were slowly spreading across what had once been a black, semi-translucent soul body.

Thump. Thump.

A long-forgotten sound reached his ears.

He looked down at his chest.

There, a vivid crimson heart had appeared.

It was beating!

Liao Pantu lifted his trembling hands and gently pressed them against his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his heart.

This was the unique, living proof of a physical body.

With a heart, the blood vessels seemed to have found their source. They rapidly spread toward every corner of his body, covering him from head to toe in the blink of an eye.

Blood flowed from the beating heart, trickling through those vessels.

The next moment, bones began to form within his soul body, like a framework becoming the foundation that supported him.

Then flesh gradually grew over the stark white skeleton.

The red flesh expanded outward, wrapping around the blood vessels and slowly enveloping his entire soul body.

Finally, a layer of skin formed across the surface of his body.

The moment his physical body was completely restored, a mass of jet-black hair burst forth from his scalp.

It continued growing until it reached the ground.

When everything was over, cool breezes began to stir around him, lifting his hair and the hem of his robes as they fluttered in the wind.

Liao Pantu stood there in a daze, feeling the body he had regained and the changes he had undergone. The shock in his heart had long since turned into a joy so immense that it felt unreal.

But he knew it was real.

Because not only had he regained his physical body—he had also advanced to the Deity Transformation Realm.

The lightning strikes just now had been his tribulation lightning for reaching Deity Transformation.

Everything that had happened before remained incomparably clear within his sea of consciousness.

His cultivation method had advanced, allowing him to step into Deity Transformation in a single leap.

It was also because he had reached the Deity Transformation stage that he was able to break through the shackles of space and the seals to reclaim the last part of his soul that had been left outside. After the lightning tribulation, he had even reforged his physical body.

Liao Pantu’s heart was filled with a hundred conflicting emotions.

In the end, however, they all turned into sheer exhilaration.

“Hahahaha—”

He threw open his arms and laughed toward the heavens.

What a refreshing feeling. What a complete feeling. It had truly been far too long since he had felt this way!

As his consciousness returned, he had already left that void behind. When he turned around, he found himself still within Changming Mountain.

Changming the White Fox was crouched nearby, licking its paw. Seeing that he had awakened, it narrowed its long, slender eyes and said leisurely:

“Congratulations on successfully attaining Deity Transformation, Elder Liao. The sect master instructed this little fox to tell you to return to the floating island once you emerged from seclusion.”

Looking at the white fox, Liao Pantu felt somewhat dazed.

He had the distinct feeling that a very long time had passed. Yet, judging by Changming’s carefree appearance, it seemed as though it had barely been any time at all.

He made a quick calculation and discovered that only a little over a month had passed.

After looking around, he realized that there was no sign that a lightning tribulation had taken place.

Seeing his expression, the white fox narrowed its eyes again and said:

“Rest assured, Elder Liao. While you were undergoing your tribulation, this little fox isolated you from the outside world. It did not affect anything beyond these grounds in the slightest.”

Though its explanation was vague, Liao Pantu understood.

While he had been undergoing his tribulation, this Tomb Guardian had isolated a section of space within Changming Mountain. It had even possibly concealed the strange phenomena that appeared in the sky above Changming Mountain from the outside world.

He was greatly astonished. Changming was clearly only the spirit of Changming Mountain, and Changming Mountain itself had been created by the sect master, Lin Xiao. Yet this formation spirit, born from and dependent upon Changming Mountain, had actually been able to independently isolate a space where he could undergo the Deity Transformation tribulation without affecting the outside world in the slightest...

Their sect’s Changming Mountain was truly extraordinary!

“Thank you, Guardian. I shall return and pay my respects to the sect master.”

Liao Pantu bade Changming farewell for the time being, then left Changming Mountain and flew toward the floating island.

——

Far away in the cultivation world, Yin Xuanzi had been meditating in his own residence when a strange disturbance suddenly arose in his sea of consciousness.

He opened his eyes, feeling somewhat puzzled.

Before long, he suddenly sensed a change coming from the stone coffin deep within his residence.

He immediately rose and went over to inspect it.

Had Liao Pantu been there, he would certainly have found the stone coffin extremely familiar.

It was identical to the stone coffins used to suppress each of the fragments of his soul.

However, the one in Yin Xuanzi’s residence did not contain one of Liao Pantu’s soul fragments. It contained his physical body.

Yin Xuanzi came to the stone coffin. Its exterior showed no change whatsoever, nor were there any signs that it had been damaged.

But the disturbance he had sensed from within just now was certainly real.

Because of the stone coffin’s unusual material, it was impossible to see through it and observe what lay inside. Thus, Yin Xuanzi pushed the lid open in confusion.

Yet the moment he opened the stone coffin, Yin Xuanzi discovered that Liao Pantu’s physical body, which had originally been sealed inside and preserved as though it were alive, was slowly turning to dust!

His heart lurched. He hurriedly cast a spell, trying to stop the change.

But it was all in vain.

The physical body he had painstakingly preserved with a secret technique disintegrated into ashes before his very eyes in the blink of an eye.

Staring at the now-empty stone coffin, Yin Xuanzi stood there in a daze.

“Junior Brother…”

He reached inside and touched the powder at the bottom of the coffin, his gaze vacant.

His junior brother—so gifted that he had inspired envy in others, the man he had hated with every fiber of his being for centuries—was simply gone like this...?

Yin Xuanzi stood before the stone coffin in silence for a long while.

No. Something was wrong.

Back then, his junior brother had been hunted by him for so long, and his soul had been split for so long as well. The secret realms Yin Xuanzi had chosen were all ones suited to opponents of comparable soul-body cultivation. Even weakened, his junior brother had still been a Nascent Soul cultivator. No one capable of entering those realms should have possessed the power to destroy him completely.

Besides, Yin Xuanzi had even added an extra layer of protection to the stone coffin...

How could he have died so suddenly?