Chapter 618 – Disappointment - Part 3

Three years passed in a blink.

In that time, Li Yuan had consumed over half of the spirit stones.

Staggering, considering those stones could have sustained thousands of third rank cultivators for three years.

But the cost had brought results.

Li Yuan had broken through both the third and fourth stages of the Heaven Soul Realm. He had also ascended to the fourth stage of the Earth Soul Realm.

The fourth stage of the Earth Soul Realm, known as

Black Body,

was a step into the forbidden, the kind of strength feared and revered. And in Li Yuan’s case, his Earth Soul forbidden body could likely surpass every known taboo-level cultivator from the era of the Great Zhou. He would rank first.

In contrast, the fourth stage of the Heaven Soul Realm allowed the soul to merge with liquid, which was why it was called

Water Immortal.

The third stage,

Earth Immortal,

allowed one to fuse with the land itself.

From this, it was clear. Heaven Souls advanced by expanding its fusion targets, while Earth Souls evolved in pure power, one tier at a time. Though less dazzling, the Earth Soul was ultimately the more formidable path.

Still, the Heaven Soul had its advantages. It functioned like the Human Soul, without reducing lifespan upon use.

Now, Li Yuan had fused all Three Souls into one. Aided by Bai Xinxuan’s dual cultivation secret arts, he had achieved true internal unification.

But the unification was only the beginning. It was like forging a weapon, once the metals were melded, they needed to be tempered, to be hammered into form.

Li Yuan needed that tempering. His fusion was not yet fully stable.

As for why he hadn’t stepped into the fifth stage for either soul, it was partly due to time constraints. But more importantly, he refused to build on an unsteady foundation.

He’d planned to wait a little longer.

But those outside clearly weren’t willing to wait anymore.

And truth be told...he needed the battle too.

Thanks to Bai Xinxuan’s role as a double agent, those conspiring outside didn’t actually know his full progress. But Li Yuan knew that they had finished their grand formation.

Joining forces against him this time were not only Pang Si, Shi Jialan, Yun Ranzi, and the Earth, Fire, and Water Hall Masters.

There were also 24 other third rank cultivators, mostly trusted lieutenants of the six, or spirit town lords fiercely opposed to

outsiders

like Li Yuan.

Today, Bai Xinxuan had

arranged

everything.

Li Yuan sat cross-legged in Lotus Heart Pavilion, eyes closed in quiet meditation.

Suddenly, a presence stirred beyond the mist. Unconcealed. Deliberate.

Li Yuan opened his eyes and asked calmly, “Who’s there?”

No one answered.

Li Yuan drew in a deep breath, then moved.

The doors of the Lotus Heart Pavilion swung open, and the man, still looking no older than a youth, stepped out.

Outside, the grand formation was already in place.

All across the sky, layers upon layers of shifting energy domes shimmered like woven glass, each one reflecting illusory scenes laced with deadly intent.

Because the preparations had all been carried out in secret and within limited circles, none of the other sects and faculties’ disciples were present. Only the Faculty of Seduction’s disciples stood nearby, looking somewhat confused.

Most of them were women, naturally. The Faculty of Seduction was almost entirely made up of female cultivators, all trained in charm and seduction arts. And yet here they were, on the frontlines, wielding spirit swords, long-needled lances, fans, hairpins, and other elegant but lethal weapons, each positioned around the formation like support units, clearly backing the array’s core combatants.

After all, everyone knew Bai Xinxuan had long suffered under the Primordial Emperor’s tyranny.

As her disciples, of course they’d help her.

And from the outside, this scene looked exactly like what it was meant to be. A group of top-tier Eastern Sea cultivators, enduring humiliation in silence, finally rising to lay a trap for a foreign tyrant.

The Dean of the Faculty of Seduction stood aligned with the formation’s side, glaring coldly at Li Yuan as he emerged, his black robe snapping in the night wind.

Bai Xinxuan was tense. She was terrified that Li Yuan might lose. She could feel the terrifying pressure radiating from the grand formation.

As she watched him, Li Yuan too was scanning the scene.

He understood formations, but this sort of large-scale battlefield array couldn’t be cultivated alone. It required coordination, shared purpose, and a willingness to follow the central commander. And Li Yuan, being who he was, had never cultivated one.

In general, the larger the group, the lower the additive effect in terms of raw power.

For groups under a thousand, the effective strength was typically calculated by dividing total force by a factor between three and twelve. Once the group exceeded a thousand, the scaling dropped off even more.

Whether the divisor was three or twelve depended heavily on how well the formation’s core leader could synchronize with the group.

For example, someone like Sheng’er, who took the role of every member in her array, could achieve a terrifyingly low divisor of just three, meaning a far more concentrated battle power.

Someone like Xie Feng, who led the elite armored cavalry, could command a divisor of six.

Once formations went into the thousands, the multipliers changed again. With sizes between 1,000-10,000, the divisor was 14. As for 10,000-30,000, the divisor scaled all the way up to 30.

Back in the day, when Naran led his 20,000-strong direwolf riders, even though his warriors, direwolves, and himself were united in purpose, the formation’s power was still limited. Perhaps his strategic talent wasn’t top-tier, or perhaps the wolf riders were simply harder to control, but his effective scaling only reached about 8. In larger ranges, it dropped to 17, or even 33.

So now, when Li Yuan looked at this formation, formed by 6 peak third rank and 24 standard third rank cultivators, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment.

But he also understood. It made sense.

These people had never trained together before. They had just three years to coordinate a battle array. Reaching this level was already impressive.

Hovering in front of his eyes was a floating combat power of 2.233 million.

Judging by that, he figured their divisor was likely around 9.

Honestly...that was commendable.

They really had tried.

They really did want to win.

Then Li Yuan looked at himself.

After years of cultivation, after draining spirit stones like water, his combat power had shifted from the original 106k~2.4mil to 106k~3.3mil.

So now...how was this supposed to be a fight?

How was this supposed to temper him?

“Ugh.” He let out a long, helpless sigh.

Bai Xinxuan shouted, voice filled with fury, “Primordial Emperor! You’ve ruled like a despot, trampling over others, drunk on your own arrogance! Everything that happens today. you brought it on yourself! What more is there to say?!”

She wasn’t just shouting to stir up emotion, she was stalling. Giving Li Yuan a few more precious moments to assess the formation.

She didn’t know the saying

villains die by talking too much

, but she was absolutely using it to her advantage.

Pang Si gave Li Yuan a cautious glance. A man of instinct and violence, he immediately sensed something was off. His voice lowered.

“Primordial Emperor,” he said slowly, “aren’t you...surprised?”

Li Yuan placed his palms together in a gesture of solemn respect. It wasn’t directed just at him, but at all the powerful cultivators stationed around the formation.

Shi Jialan let out a chilling, raspy laugh. “Begging for mercy now? Too late.”

But the others didn’t laugh.

Unless one’s brain was made of stone, Li Yuan clearly wasn’t showing deference. That gesture didn’t reek of surrender. It reeked of something else.

Something unsettling.

Even Bai Xinxuan, who knew more than most, was now holding her breath.

Then, in the next moment, Li Yuan spoke, his voice clear and calm, filled with sincerity.

“I’m not begging,” he said. “I’m hoping. Hoping each and every one of you fights with everything you’ve got. If you can give me a proper thrill today...I might just let you live.”

Then he slowly closed his eyes, rose into the air, and began to drift upward into the night sky, hands behind his back.

And just before vanishing into the clouds, his voice echoed faintly behind him, “Don’t disappoint me.”

Just a single phrase. No thunder. No killing aura. Just a quiet ripple across the battlefield, but every single one of the gathered cultivators heard it loud and clear.

Bai Xinxuan felt a chill run down her spine.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Couldn’t believe what she was feeling.

And the others? They were caught between fear and pride, too committed to back down, yet still unwilling to believe that this man could actually stand against the full might of their grand formation.

Their confidence wasn’t misplaced. The formation they’d built had surpassed peak third rank power. Anyone who hadn’t stepped into second rank was guaranteed to die within it.

They just hadn’t accounted for one thing.

Li Yuan wasn’t a peak third rank cultivator. He was something else entirely. A Great Zhou Emperor. A Khagan. A walking Dragon Vein. An anomaly unbound by the frameworks they knew.

Trying to judge him by cultivation levels was meaningless now.

“Grand formation, activate!” Pang Si roared.

At once, the grand formation surged to life. Yin and Yang energy churned, flowing like twin rivers through the air before plunging into the bodies of Shi Jialan and Yun Ranzi, boosting their Earth and Heaven Souls far beyond their usual limits.

Normally, organizing top-tier cultivators into a functional array was nearly impossible. Too much pride. Too many egos.

But they had devised a clever workaround. They would use the Human Soul as the array’s core, and circulate the Yin-Yang flow to empower the others.

In this case, Shi Jialan and Yun Ranzi were designated as dual formation hearts, a double safeguard, and a nasty surprise for the Primordial Emperor.

The effect was immediate.

Yun Ranzi’s body expanded, transforming into a towering cloud giant, over 2,000 feet tall, looming across the heavens like a mist-wrapped deity staring down from the firmament.

And Shi Jialan? He let out a strange, distorted

Amitabha

.

And from all over his body, thousands of ghosts began to crawl up his limbs.

Together, they formed a grotesque image, a Buddha made of ghosts.

“Close your eyes now!” Bai Xinxuan shouted.

The disciples around her scrambled to obey.

But for those too slow to look away, those who caught a glimpse of the ghastly Buddha, their minds were instantly consumed by overwhelming desire. Some couldn’t help themselves and began tearing at their robes, stripping off their clothes in a frenzy of lust. The scene turned eerily decadent and bizarre.

The power surging through Yun Ranzi and Shi Jialan had already gone far beyond their natural limits. With the formation amplifying them, they had stepped into a realm they could never have reached alone.

Above them, Li Yuan stood still. his palm upraised.

And from that open palm, a strange, awe-inspiring lotus bloomed.

A total of 36 petals, the numbers divided equally between red, gold, and black.

The lotus spun slowly in his hand, not smoothly, but with a distinct roughness, like gears grinding against each other. The fusion wasn’t perfect yet.

To the outside eye, that was all there was to see.

But to those who could peer deeper, each petal told a story.

Each red petal held the essence of

destruction

, not outward chaos, but the terrifying calm of collapse turned inward.

Each golden petal shimmered with divine radiance, an image of

immortality

, drawing in the land and water, linking seamlessly with the surrounding world.

And each black petal was a

prison

. Within its smoky depths swam countless points of white light, each one binding a ferocious ghost. These ghosts, though shackled, were more powerful precisely because they were contained.

And yet, Li Yuan himself looked utterly unremarkable, just a young man standing beneath the clouds, above the ghastly Buddha, holding a lotus as if he were simply admiring its beauty.

BOOM!

The clouds above exploded as the massive cloud giant, Yun Ranzi’s transformed Immortal Form, struck out, its attack like the heavens falling.

But a single golden lotus petal floated upward and stopped it cold.

The petal spun slowly in the air, orbiting around Li Yuan, gently swaying like a guardian spirit.

Yun Ranzi attacked again, swirling clouds into a vortex as his fists rained down like meteors.

But the golden petal still floated, still blocked.

Li Yuan, meanwhile, remained calm, holding the lotus as he reflected on the imperfections in his soul-fusion skill.

“Amitabha,” a gravelly voice suddenly came from the ghastly Buddha below.

Shi Jialan extended his hand, and from a legion of desire-fueled ghosts, a massive spectral hand formed, rising from the ground to clutch at Li Yuan.

Compared to it, he was no more than an ant.

Li Yuan plucked a black petal and let it drop.

The black lotus petal fell into the ghost hand, and with a shriek like tearing souls, the impact echoed across the battlefield.

Li Yuan smiled slightly and dropped two more black petals.

Instantly, black smoke surged beneath him, and ten thousand ghosts began to dance in agony and rage.

“Hmm.”

With a quiet sound of curiosity, he plucked two golden petals and tossed them upward to intercept the giant’s renewed assault.

The clash continued.

And after all that, after all the power poured into the grand formation, the most they’d managed to do was force Li Yuan to use six black petals, six golden ones.

He never once looked strained. His strength seemed endless.

But the grand formation? It was cracking.

Finally, Li Yuan reached out, casually plucked six red petals.

The red petals twisted into the shape of a blade.

He raised the blade. And with a single upward slash, Yun Ranzi’s cloud giant shattered into mist. A downward flick, and Shi Jialan’s ghastly Buddha crumbled into nothingness.

Silence fell. The world itself seemed to empty.

Then, turning toward the core of the great formation, Li Yuan moved his hand.

The blade scattered into six red petals once more.

He flung them outward, never even looking back.

And with that, he drifted calmly toward Bai Xinxuan.

Under the stunned gazes of everyone watching, Bai Xinxuan, her cold, aloof mask finally melting, curled up gently against his side like a kitten finding warmth on a winter night.