Chapter 1124: Not About Mercy or Grudges. Either Live or Die!

Days flew past. Xu Qing was little more than a streak of afterimages in the sky. He was now so close to the God Blood River that he just needed to go through one more of the ancient teleportation portals.

Based on my current speed, I should be able to reach the portal in two days!

He reined in his aura, hid the flower petals on his forehead, and used various secret magics to head as quickly as possible toward the portal.

Time ticked by. The sense of impending danger increased. The feeling of mounting crisis seemed to confirm that his previous analysis was correct.

It made no sense that Li Mengtu

wouldn’t

qualify to seek enlightenment, considering he was the apprentice of a Lower Immortal and one of the Shining Stars. Li Mengtu had to be the other person Xu Qing had sensed during the legacy phase.

Although the information about him says that he has mid Imperial Sovereign battle prowess, it’s likely that information is out-of-date. That’s not to mention that he probably keeps his true battle prowess a secret.

Xu Qing pondered such things as he proceeded at top speed.

Half a day passed.

The aurora in the sky was back to normal, flowing like an endless red river. Xu Qing sped along beneath it, keeping a close eye around him. All of a sudden, he looked over his shoulder.

He had concealed his Immortal Capital permission medallion, but that only protected him from people whose medallions had a smaller range than his own. He couldn’t hide from people whose medallions had a greater range than his. Using his medallion, he had just spotted a dazzling mote of light around 5,000,000 kilometers away.

It was moving so fast that, only moments after he spotted it, it had halved the distance.

An instant later, thunderous rumbling sounds rose up from the horizon. Millions of bolts of lightning exploded into the air like writhing snakes. The lightning bolts rapidly spread out to fill the sky. They made it seem like doomsday had come, like heaven would collapse and the earth would shatter. A terrifying aura filled the area.

Next, a person appeared within the terrifying sea of lightning. He was a young man with black hair, clad in a black robe. His eyes were like glittering stars filled with lightning, and his features were handsome, though sinister. Astonishingly, there were six-and-a-half flower petals rotating on his forehead.

He was none other than Li Mengtu.

The moment he appeared, he seemed to replace the sun and moon, as if he was the ruler of all heaven and earth.

He took a step forward, and Xu Qing’s mind spun. An intense pressure raged out, like a tempest, causing Xu Qing’s hair and robes to whip back and forth. He didn’t speak a single word. The moment he spotted Xu Qing, he erupted with a heaven-shaking, earth-shattering mightiness.

That mightiness was the evidence of a dao lineament, and contained the aura of authority. It surpassed the authority of any Imperial Sovereign Xu Qing had faced up to this point. In fact, if you described his authority in terms of the light in a starry sky, then Li Mengtu was like a full moon.

As that aura erupted, a symbol formed in front of Li Mengtu. It was a sealing mark that emanated an intense aura of death.

The moment it appeared, Li Mengtu spoke a single word.

“Decease!”

Clouds seethed. Wild colors flashed. The entire world seemed to fill with an aura of death, causing demonic images to appear, as if the entire place had been filled with evil spirits from the Yellow Springs. Anguished howling sounds drifted about.

A seemingly unstoppable sensation of dying slammed into Xu Qing. It was invisible, unstoppable, and unavoidable. The word spoken and the authority behind it had become the inevitable. It had become natural law, a heavenly dao. It had become everything.

This was one of Li Mengtu’s four types of authority. It was a death curse!

When he attacked, he resorted immediately to authority and trump cards! That made it possible to see how decisive and murderous Li Mengtu was. It was the result of the other type of authority he had used, that of binding revelation. That was how he had learned about Xu Qing.

And after finding out what kind of opponent he was up against, he knew he couldn’t underestimate him. It was a case of either not doing anything, or going all out. If he made a move, he would kill his opponent without offering a chance for a counterattack or defense!

The truth was that he wasn’t sure if Xu Qing was the person he sought. But he knew based on the information he had procured that the person he was following had the ability to conceal sealing marks.

Along the way, whenever he ran into anyone else with a permission medallion, he had immediately resorted to trump cards. He had killed every single one. After all, if he ended up killing the person he sought, then the legacy would return to him.

And if someone he attacked

could

defend against his trump card, then it meant... that they were probably the person he was looking for. He would rather kill the wrong person than let the guilty party escape. He made no exceptions.

Meanwhile, Xu Qing’s expression flickered, and his heart started pounding. There was no way to evade this enemy, nor any way to resist the authority. In an instant, his body withered, and his life force started fading.

It was as if this curse was part of death itself, and could destroy even fate. This type of authority was very gruish, and everything Xu Qing did to fight back failed.

The sensation of death filled him. Any other person would have had a hard time surviving such a situation. After all, this attacker... was Li Mengtu. But though none of Xu Qing’s tricks worked... he could still use his timeshifting magic to reverse things.

An instant later, a sundial appeared behind him, and fluctuations of time spread out, distorting everything. As the gnomon spun, time flowed around him. Even the will of death had to give way in the face of time.

In the blink of an eye, Xu Qing’s withered state reversed. His soul was no longer dim, and his aura was no longer weak. He was back to the way he had been moments before!

The moment he resolved the deadly crisis, he backed up, circulated his cultivation base, and unleashed his authority. His expression was uncharacteristically grave. This was the first time he had met a person who immediately resorted to the most deadly trump cards possible. What was more, this person’s actions hinted at a possibility.

There’s no way that he can use trump cards like that without paying some sort of price! Either he’s used to doing it, or... he had some way to get information about me. That’s why he didn’t want to give me a chance to fight back. He immediately went all out with a trump card in the hopes of killing me!

That thought occurred to Xu Qing almost immediately, but it didn’t discourage him from fighting back. At almost the exact moment that his sundial worked, he launched a counter attack. He didn’t waste time probing his enemy. He didn’t give time for things to develop. He also went right for a trump card!

Heaven and earth rumbled. A great wind kicked up. Even the sea of lightning was affected as Xu Qing’s five phases erupted, creating a shocking aura that filled the world. Time and space both rose up.

In the blink of an eye, metal became a godly seal, earth became a dao altar, wood became a blade trough, water became streaks of blood, fire burned, time became an axel, and space became a blade!

After coming to the western planetary system, Xu Qing’s five elements God Decapitation Altar had evolved. By adding time and space into it, he had turned it into a seven extremes God Decapitation Altar. From a distance, it was possible to see the gigantic God Decapitation Altar overtaking everything. Heaven and earth filled with flickering light. The world trembled.

𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The god-decapitating blade slashed down toward Li Mengtu!

Li Mengtu’s face had gone a bit pale. Every one of his authorities was extraordinary. And yet, because they were so terrifying and gruish, they actually hurt him when he used them. Unfortunately, his opponent had just reversed time and then used a spectacular divine ability. Eyes narrowing and pupils constricting, he suddenly erupted with a frigid coldness.

“You’re definitely the person I’m looking for!” he growled. He could sense the mighty nature of this blade, and from its horrible pressure, he could see how amazing it was. And yet, his eyes flashed, and instead of dodging, he lifted up his right hand and performed an incantation gesture in front of his chest.

“Flowers in Mirrors!”

The moment the words left his mouth, something bizarre happened. A host of huge black mirrors appeared all around him, so that he was in the middle of it all. The mirrors looked extremely ancient, and they pulsed with a terrifying aura, like that of a curse, which seemed like it came from a minor world. As the aura swirled around, reflections of Xu Qing appeared within the mirrors.

And then, though the god-decapitating blade seemed like it was about to slash into Li Mengtu... Xu Qing’s heart sank. A sense of deadly catastrophe had welled up within him. At that critical moment, Xu Qing’s eyes flashed viciously, and instead of retracting the power of the God Decapitation Altar, he actually bolstered it, making it even stronger.

At the same time, he performed an incantation gesture with his left hand and pushed down. In an instant, water seemed to spread out beneath his feet. Heaven and earth had become a well.

The god-decapitating blade fell, slashing into Li Mengtu. However, the injury actually appeared on Xu Qing.

Rumbling sounds echoed out as the magic of Fishing the Moon in the Well continued to form.

Li Mengtu was then fished out of the well. But so was Xu Qing. Fishing out the former caused his soul to leave the mirrors and sustain injury. Fishing out the latter caused him to avoid the decapitating blade and escape from the well!

In the blink of an eye, heaven-rending, earth-crushing might erupted out, shattering the sea of lightning.

The mirrors were still there around Li Mengtu, but his soul had flown out, and was now screaming and trying to use defensive techniques against the god-decapitating blade. Although the soul was not destroyed, it was sent spinning off to the side, seriously damaged.

As for Xu Qing, a tremor passed through him as the blade slashed through the well. Of course, he couldn’t escape being affected. Blood sprayed out of his mouth as he tumbled backward. Face grim, he looked at Li Mengtu.

The battle had just started and was already very intense. But that only filled Xu Qing with the desire to fight. At that point, he ceased concealing the flower petals. In the blink of an eye, five-and-a-half of them appeared on his forehead.

Li Mengtu’s soul had returned to his body, and he staggered backward coughing up mouthfuls of blood. Now the mirrors rotating around him reflected himself instead of Xu Qing. When he looked up, so did they, and all of their eyes burned with sinister killing intent. That was especially true when he spotted the flower petals on Xu Qing’s forehead.

“You definitely qualify to compete with me! Fights over great daos are not about mercy or grudges. We shall battle today, and whether I kill you or you kill me, there won’t be any hard feelings!”