Chapter 1126: Everyone’s a Schemer

The aurora was an immortal flood, still weighing down with immense pressure, but blocked by the cycle of five elements that Xu Qing had unleashed. Unfortunately, as Xu Qing knew, it was only a temporary respite. At the very most, it would have a few dozen breaths of time!

If he wanted to truly vanquish the immortal flood of the aurora, he needed to figure out a way to kill Li Mengtu. If his opponent died, then his opponent’s magical techniques would be dispelled.

And thus, as Li Mengtu fell back... Xu Qing became a string of afterimages as he blurred toward his opponent with explosive speed. He was moving so fast that it almost seemed like time had slowed down. His eyes grew even colder than before as his left hand flashed in an incantation gesture.

He shoved his hand out, and the power of space appeared. Wild colors flashed as a grid came into being. Each part of the grid was an independent space, and they now had all of Li Mengtu’s paths of retreat blocked. He couldn’t teleport. And the pressure was now weighing down on him dangerously.

Li Mengtu’s heart pounded. He knew that this ‘Xu Qing’ was no ordinary opponent. The power of the binding revelation he had used back at the Primary Dao Precipice had told him that he was dealing with someone very strong. Despite the preparations Li Mengtu had made, he was finding this to be a difficult opponent to deal with.

He had to focus completely on the fighting. If he was even the least bit lax, if he made even the slightest misstep, his opponent would seize that opportunity. And that was exactly what he had done, and now Li Mengtu had to deal with an attack of mountain-toppling, sea-draining force. This enemy was obviously proficient in finding openings to exploit.

Li Mengtu was coming to realize that this opponent had stronger mental fortitude than he himself had possessed in the fight that earned him his reputation. The thoughts flashing through Li Mengtu’s mind didn’t distract him from defending himself. Even though he was isolated by the power of space, he quickly bit the tip of his tongue and spat out a mouthful of blood. It was blood sorcery, and as a result, a host of blood-red magical symbols sprang into being in front of him.

Flowers in Mirrors spun around him, flashing as they prepared to deal with the incoming tempest. However... it was never a good idea to use the same move twice on Xu Qing, unless you could pull it off with absolute perfection. And in this case, Flowers in Mirrors had not been pulled off perfectly.

The first time it had been used on Xu Qing, it caught him off guard. But this time, he was prepared. This was not some sort of karmic magic. Rather, it was a divine ability that used the power of space.

The basic principle was magical reflection. It created overlapping layers of dimensional space that could be used to deliver deadly blows the enemy wouldn’t even notice.

In that way, its flaws were deeply hidden, though still present. The flaws were the reflections and the intangible overlapping dimensions.

Xu Qing could deal with the latter by isolating them with the similar spatial power of his grid.

As for the former... that was exactly why he had summoned Little Shadow. Little Shadow had a body of darkness that could spread out wildly in the shortest of moments to cover the reflections. And thus, what Flowers in Mirrors reflected was nothing but darkness. The dimensional spaces were isolated, and couldn’t be truly revealed, thus rendering them incomplete. All of this takes a bit of time to describe, but in reality, took place in the amount of time it takes a spark to fly off a piece of flint.

Flowers in Mirrors was limited, and Xu Qing’s immortal skills erupted.

First came Six Thieves Deceive Life. The seven emotions and six sensory pleasures that came from the immortal skill were like monsters that exploded within Li Mengtu’s mind and heart. They infected his emotions, devoured his will, and stained his dao heart.

Next came Five Dogs Cleave Immortals. The stingy dog entered the haunt and threw memories into chaos. An opened door formed, allowing the greedy dog to howl, charge inside, and bind the soul. Next, the foolish dog formed, lusting for death. The depraved dog entered, longing to fall into hell. And finally came the austere dog, and the body was lost forever!

An anguished scream escaped from Li Mengtu’s mouth. His face twisted, and his body shook violently. This was the first time in his life that he had faced a magical technique like this. In fact, at this point, it wasn’t even right to call it a magical technique.

It was more like a gruish curse! Blood oozed out of his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. His three spiritual souls and seven physical souls howled in agony. And his memories had fallen into chaos.

But Xu Qing’s deadly attack wasn’t over yet. In fact, he had just gotten started. He defused Flowers in Mirrors. He used immortal skills to throw the enemy’s soul into confusion. And next came sword energy. Grandpa Ninth had given him five streams of sword energy, and he was now using the last of them.

Sword energy shone brightly in the sky, moving with unstoppable momentum. An aggressive sword projection appeared, slicing through everything until it reached Li Mengtu.

Li Mengtu shivered as a massive wound opened on his chest, out of which poured masses of blood.

Next came the black fire of the golden crow, which turned into a black spear. Xu Qing emerged from the flames to grab the spear. His cultivation base was surging as the powers of time and space appeared. He pulled them into the long spear. Then he stabbed out in front of him!

Rumbling sounds echoed out as the spear stabbed into the exact wound that Grandpa Ninth’s sword energy had just opened up. It pierced into his flesh, reached his heart, and stabbed through it!

𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

The aurora vanished. The five elements retreated. Yet Xu Qing’s facial expression had not turned relaxed. Rather, his pupils had constricted. Abandoning any plans to rip the corpse to pieces, he fell back. He moved so quickly that he was off in the distance only a moment later.

The moment he retreated, a terrifying explosion spread out from Li Mengtu’s corpse. It covered an area of 500 kilometers. All living things within that area were wiped out of existence!

Xu Qing’s expression was grave as he stood 500 kilometers away, as even at that distance, he could sense the terrifying nature of the blast. Had he been a bit slower, he probably wouldn’t have died, but would have suffered grievous injuries.

At the same time, a raspy voice spoke from the destroyed lands in front of Xu Qing.

“You gave me no choice but to use my third authority. Very impressive!”

Along with the voice came Li Mengtu, slowly walking out from the destruction. His clothes were tattered, but his injuries... were gone. Everything about him, from his aura to his general state to his cultivation base were back at the ultimate peak.

The power of his third authority was heaven-defying. It was called regeneration!

Li Mengtu looked at Xu Qing with a grave, complicated look. “Before I met you, I assumed you qualified to participate in the legacy phase because you were among the best of the best, and that even if you were stronger than me, it couldn’t be by that much.

“But now... even though I have an early Imperial Sovereign cultivation base and you’re only a late Smoldering God, the fact is that our battle prowess is roughly the same. When it comes to talent and aptitude, I can’t match you. But in the world we live in, nothing is truly fair. There is—”

“You talk too much,” Xu Qing said calmly. After encountering an Imperial Sovereign who used words to weave taboo formations, Xu Qing was wary of such methods. Therefore, even as he interrupted his opponent, the authority of erasure glittered in his eye. He immediately erased all traces of dao lineaments in the area.

Li Mengtu’s eyes gleamed as he lifted his right hand and pushed it out in front of him. The fragrance of flowers spread out from Li Mengtu. The sky went dark, and then... countless flowers and plants bloomed for millions of kilometers in every direction.

The entire area was turned into a sea of flowers. As for the flowers... some were beautiful, some were ugly, some were rotten, some were ferocious. But all of them... were poisonous! As for the floral aroma, it contained the aura of innumerable poisonous plants that combined into one poison! It was an astonishing aura that spread out rapidly to cover Xu Qing.

Any other person in Xu Qing’s shoes would be in a deadly situation. But Xu Qing was an expert when it came to the dao of plants and vegetation. Though he had no medicinal plants on him at the moment, he had a lot of medicinal pills. Medicinal pills were formed by refining plants and vegetation, and adjusting their internal qualities to meet a specific need.

Thus, Xu Qing waved his hand, causing a host of pills to appear. He had selected every one intentionally, and after they were out in the open, he crushed them, extracting what he needed from them, and then using his skill to combine them again.

That was how he neutralized the poison attack. Time was limited, so he couldn’t completely dispel the poison. But he could at least keep his battle prowess up despite being in the middle of the sea of flowers.

However, even as Xu Qing produced the medicinal pills and then crushed them to deal with the poison, Li Mengtu shot forward explosively, moving over 500 kilometers in an instant to appear right in front of Xu Qing. There, he launched a fist strike.

Xu Qing looked up and fought back.

Deafening booms rang out as Li Mengtu launched a storm of blows. He sometimes used physical attacks, sometimes magical attacks. He was fully on the offensive, not even bothering to mount a defense. He was fighting in a completely different way than before.

Facing such an intense attack forced Xu Qing to respond in kind. The black spear in his hand flashed back and forth. The five elements authority exploded out. The power of space and time rippled forth. In the shortest of moments, both of them were fighting back and forth with utter ferocity. There was no pause in the rumbling booms.

Of course, there were injuries. Xu Qing was being hurt both in body and soul. He was soon covered with blood.

Strangely, though... Li Mengtu wasn’t hurt at all! Put more precisely, whenever he was hurt, his regeneration abilities would return him to normal! It seemed almost as if his authority of regeneration gave him infinite healing abilities.

When Xu Qing saw that happening, his heart sank. This regeneration authority was truly heaven-defying, and what was worse, his opponent could seemingly use it over and over again.... A power like that went beyond heaven-defying.

Xu Qing had never seen anything like it. In fact, he had never even heard of anything like it. That said, his ability to reverse time could be considered comparable, so at least he had some level of understanding.

My time reversal ability is heaven-defying. But I can’t even use it twice in a row. In that case, this Li Mengtu... must have to pay some sort of price to use this authority. There’s no way he can just keep using it long term. And once it stops working, he’ll definitely have to pay that price!

With that thought in mind, Xu Qing gritted his teeth and shifted from offense to defense. As his opponent launched his flurry of attacks, Xu Qing fell back.

Despite how Xu Qing was delaying things, Li Mengtu only attacked with greater ferocity. Xu Qing’s injuries kept piling up and worsening, until he was drenched in blood.

Li Mengtu’s eyes glittered. He knew that his regeneration authority was out of the ordinary. Specifically, he could enter the regeneration state for a time, but had to pay a heavy price. What was more, once he left the state, there would be a big backlash. And he would also be unable to enter the state a second time, at least temporarily.

Though he seemed like he wasn’t worried about Xu Qing’s time reversal technique, the truth was that he was very wary of it. And thus, there were two reasons why he was pushing the attack.

The first was that, though he knew it was wasting time, that counted for Xu Qing as well. As far as he could tell, Xu Qing could only reverse time to a limited degree. At the most, it was probably an incense stick’s worth of time. In fact, that seemed generous. It was probably only a few dozen breaths of time.

Second, because of the threat of time reversal, he didn’t want to unleash any trump cards that dealt a lot of damage. Instead, he would use a flurry of attacks to cause the damage to build up steadily. That way, if Xu Qing did decide to reverse time, he wouldn’t be able to do so in a way that brought him back to his peak state. At the best, he would only go back to a point where he was

less

injured, but still injured.

Now I just need to test him out and see if he can still use that ability! If he can, then I might just have to resort to that one option.... But if he doesn’t, then this battle is over!

After doing a quick calculation to determine how much time he had left with the authority of regeneration, Li Mengtu suddenly pulled out a wooden statue.

It was pitch black, pulsed with a fiendish energy, and looked like an old man. It was very lifelike. The old man’s facial features were distorted as if with agony, and his body seemed to be writhing, as if he was expecting to die at any moment.

And then Li Mengtu did something that struck shock into Xu Qing’s heart. Li Mengtu held the statue with one hand, then stabbed himself with his other hand, shoving it into his chest and ripping his own heart out!