Chapter 140: The Defensive Barrier Shattered! Four Academies Unite!

"Based on what you said, three of us should be enough to shatter the barrier," Wen Ziming stared at the Serene Void Academy's gate, sneered coldly, and charged forward. "Then let me join you this time. I'll do what my lord can't bring himself to do."

"

Heh

, I didn't expect you to be even more pretentious than your lord. In the end, you're both just hypocrites." Yun Ping released his Jade Flame-style sword qi, slashing directly at the Serene Void Academy's gate.

"Enough with the nonsense. My lord is a true gentleman through and through," Wen Ziming released a streak of White Cloud-style sword qi at the gate. "If you dare speak ill of him again, I'll fight you to the death."

"

Hmph...

let's deal with the gate first." Yun Ping unleashed an ice-attribute palm strike, its chilling spirit qi snapping Zhou Fan and Song Kuang back to their senses. "Zhou Fan, let's attack the barrier together."

Zhou Fan shook his head, trying to shake off his dizziness. "

Ugh...

"

He circulated his spirit qi to steady himself before resuming his assault on the Serene Void Academy's gate.

The combined force of the three chief disciples caused visible cracks to spread across the barrier. As their strikes grew fiercer, the cracks widened even faster.

"Yun Ping, let's push harder." Zhou Fan clutched his hair with his right hand, shouting fiercely at the cracking barrier. "Once we break through the Serene Void's gate, I'll tear Song Xiao'er apart myself!"

"Keep going! Feng Wunian has already left," Wen Ziming called out, running two fingers along his blade. The sword flared with a stronger surge of spirit qi. "Once we take down the Serene Void Academy, the resources meant for Tranquil Mind Academy will be divided equally among us."

Yun Ping cast a cold glance at Song Ping, his eyes merciless. "We'll split it two-two-five."

He had already decided to seize half for himself.

This kind of plundering system was a hallmark of the Heavenly Mandate Hall. Whoever held a chief disciple token could challenge the chief of another academy. The victor would seize the loser's cultivation resources.

Still, there was an unspoken rule: the plunderers could only seize up to ninety percent, and must leave at least ten percent for the defeated to recover. The losers were also barred from issuing another chief challenge for six months.

"This is bad... we're in real trouble." Song Xiao'er's face paled as he watched the three chief disciples batter the barrier. "Senior Martial Brother Lu isn't here yet. What should we do?"

"What else can we do? Release your spirit qi to reinforce the barrier. Maybe we can hold them off for a while."

Song Ping shouted, "Lu Chen has the chief disciple identity token. He should have already sensed the barrier being attacked!"

At the same time, he rallied nearby disciples to channel their spirit qi into the weakening defense.

From within the Spirit Gathering Formation, Lu Chen saw everything outside clearly with his divine sense. "With just the three of them... where do they get the confidence to assault the barrier? Fine, I'll let them suffer."

He condensed the spirit qi gathered within the formation into a sharp sword. It shot upward, tearing through the teleportation chamber's roof before merging into the defensive barrier.

At the same time, he infused his primordial spirit qi into the formation. The energy it produced now carried faint traces of that primordial spirit qi, flowing along the etched lines underground into every corner of the Serene Void Academy.

Only one thread of primordial spirit qi existed among ten thousand streams of spirit qi. Yet in a world starved of spirit qi, even such a fraction made the formation far stronger than any other of its level.

The surging spirit qi swelled under Lu Chen's steady control, its aura continuing to climb without an apparent limit.

"That's..." Wen Ziming, always keenly attuned to spirit qi, was the first to sense the change in the barrier and the shift in spirit qi across the Serene Void Academy.

Song Ping stared at the column of spirit qi erupting from the teleportation chamber. "The formation has awakened at last!"

He drew in a deep breath before leaping into the air in excitement. "This spirit qi... It's nearly on par with Earth Ocean Peak's in quality!"

His eyes gleamed with spirit qi as he surveyed the revitalized academy. "Looks like I made the right call letting him enter the teleportation formation first. In less than half an hour, he awakened it... No, that's not right. The blooming flowers, the birds returning, the mountains cleansing themselves, and the high concentration of spirit qi... These are signs that only manifest once the Spirit Gathering Formation ascends to the second level!

"What took Mountain Ocean Peak decades of careful nurturing, Lu Chen had achieved in half an hour? That's decades of effort by a hundred of their top cultivators! How is his spirit qi already this formidable?"

"So that was why Senior Martial Brother Lu was sent to the Scripture Hall first!" Song Xiao'er's eyes lit up as he watched the cracks in the barrier mend rapidly, a faint smile tugging at his lips. "Now that the formation has recovered, shall we begin?"

Song Ping frowned. "Begin what?"

He suddenly had a bad feeling and quickly turned around, only to see Song Xiao’er striding toward the Serene Void Academy's gate with a frying pan in hand, playing the role of a grand doctor.

Song Xiao'er swung the frying pan down onto Zhou Fan's battered body. "Zhou Fan, where's that confidence you had earlier?"

Zhou Fan retreated and pulled out the Wind Lightning Academy's chief disciple identity token from his waist. "Yun Ping, Wen Ziming, one last push! The formation may have recovered, but the spirit qi it generates can't possibly withstand all of our combined attacks. I don't believe it can simply become this strong out of the blue."

The token was engraved with twin swords entwined with the patterns of raging wind and lightning. He gripped it in his left hand and channeled spirit qi into it with his right. "Disciples of Wind Lightning Academy, move out! Wind Lightning, Unite!"

On the platform before the Serene Void Academy's gate, thousands of cultivators hurled their tokens skyward. Each then drew their weapon and charged toward the barrier.

"Yun Ping, Wen Ziming, what are you waiting for? Once the Spirit Gathering Formation fully restores its spirit qi, it will be impossible to break this barrier. By then, we'll be a laughingstock!

"Three chief disciples, leading tens of thousands under their banners, outmatched by a group of Serene Void weaklings? If we fail to break the barrier, this will be remembered as the biggest joke in the Heavenly Mandate Hall's history!"

Zhou Fan stopped channeling spirit qi into the token. Instead, he pressed his fingers against it repeatedly. After dozens of taps, he flung it into the air. It released a thousand beams of spirit qi that quickly linked with the tokens of the Wind Lightning disciples.

"You... what are you doing? Why aren't you attacking yet?"

Zhou Fan cast a cold glance at the two behind him. When he saw them standing still, merely watching as the disciples of the Wind Lightning Academy bombarded the barrier, he sneered. "Forget it. Seems Feng Wunian was right. You'll only end up shaming yourselves."

His voice dropped to an icy chant. "Wind Lightning, Unite."

The moment he uttered the words, more than three thousand tokens in the sky fused into one, which swiftly descended into his grasp.

Zhou Fan clutched the fused token with both hands and charged at the barrier. "I don't care what you're scheming. This time, the Wind Lightning Academy's disciples will shatter the Serene Void's barrier, and none of you will get a share of the spoils!"

Standing at the edge of the barrier, Zhou Fan activated the fused token and organized the disciples into a formation. "Wind Lightning disciples, take your positions! Unleash the Twin Blade Formation!"

The cultivators split to the left and right, each wielding Wind Lightning Twin Blades. As they struck, arcs of white-blue light flashed across the formation.

"Wind Lightning disciples, give it everything you have! Failure is not an option!" Zhou Fan roared, gripping the fused token as though it were the hilt of the Twin Blade Formation itself.

Zhou Fan stood firmly on the platform, controlling the formation as he unleashed the enormous twin blades against Serene Void's gate. "Wind Blade! Kill! Lightning Blade! Break!"

After more than a hundred blows, a visible crack finally split across the defensive barrier.

"It's... broken!" Song Xiao'er cried from the gate's edge, staring wide-eyed at the sudden rupture. "How could the defensive barrier be breached? Senior Martial Brother Song, run!"

"We miscalculated." Wen Ziming's gaze fixed on the crack as he drew out the White Cloud Academy's chief disciple identity token. "The Spirit Gathering Formation has only just recovered. It can't fully sustain the barrier yet.

"Yun Ping, bring out your chief token. If we join forces this time, we can shatter the barrier at once."

Placing his right hand on the token, Wen Ziming slowly rotated the White Cloud engravings. "Zhou Fan may seem reckless, but he's right. With tens of thousands of disciples, failing to breach the Serene Void Academy's gate is shameful. If word spreads, we'll be a laughingstock."

"In that case, let's go," Yun Ping also took out his chief disciple identity token, his gaze still fixed on the towering column of spirit qi rising within Serene Void Academy. His voice carried a note of caution. "Still, we should be careful. Something about that spirit qi feels off."

"I understand," Wen Ziming nodded firmly before rallying his disciples. "White Cloud, Unite!"

Yun Ping followed, commanding the Jade Flame disciples into formation. "Good. Jade Flame, Unite!"

Together, the three academies launched their combined might—Wind Lightning Twin Blades, White Cloud Blitz, and Jade Flame Ghostfire—against the Serene Void Academy's gate. Their relentless strikes widened the crack at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Exhausted from pouring spirit qi, Song Xiao'er collapsed to the ground with a groan. "What do we do now, Brother Song? The Spirit Gathering Formation may be back, but it still can't stop their assault."

"We trust Lu Chen," Song Ping said, his eyes remaining steady. "If we could storm their mountain gate before, a small crack won't bring us down. He hasn't emerged from the teleportation chamber yet. He must already have a plan."

As he spoke, Song Ping caught sight of a surge of overwhelming spirit qi stirring within the formation markings beneath them. "As for us, we'll prepare the Serene Void Formation. I can still control part of the chief disciple's power. We should be able to hold on a little longer."

With that, Song Ping pressed his chief token against the black tree at its center and shouted, "Serene Void, Unite!"