Chapter 726 – Second Rank Power, World Destroying Finger - Part 1

With just a lift of his hand or a shift of his foot, Li Yuan could truly destroy heaven and earth. Yet he felt no joy. Power that erupted without control was not truly mastered.

It was clear. He had hit the same wall as before. His cultivation had reached the peak of second rank, but he still hadn’t grasped the corresponding

skills

of that level.

All the power he was wielding was through the crudest methods.

Granted, these crude methods would already seem like untouchable divine arts to most. They were lofty, profound, and terrifyingly strong.

But the measure of power wasn’t how he compared to those below him. It was how well he could wield it himself.

So, could he properly control his power?

The answer was no.

Mountains that once loomed tall, a landscape once steeped in the bleakness of late autumn... Now, all of it was reduced to ruin. The deep, cracked chasm that stretched across the earth looked like a great abyss. But from Li Yuan’s perspective, it resembled something else entirely. A painting he had just torn apart.

The canvas had split open, and now the edges were slowly re-knitting themselves back together, forming this strange terrain.

𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

He extended his senses. Off in the distance, an earthquake rippled out, but it was nothing major. Clearly, this world had a strong ability to heal itself.

His gaze lingered on the massive rift, before sweeping across the nearby forest, where strange darkened figures lurked. They were humanoid, clearly influenced by the black mist from the locust tree.

Looking closely, Li Yuan could still make out faint traces of people from the Central Plains in these twisted forms.

Over the years, countless people had traveled west, many of them vanishing without a trace. Now, it seemed, those people hadn’t necessarily died...they had become these strange cryptid-like beings.

Some old travelogues even recorded distant sightings of such beings, calling them the undying folk.

Now, these undying folk had formed villages and were living in them.

The earthquake had thrown them into a panic. One by one, they dropped to their knees, palms pressed together, bowing deeply to the sky in fear and reverence.

Li Yuan gave up the idea of taking them with him. After all, they were still living beings, not monsters.

Withdrawing his gaze, he fell deep into thought again.

He recalled how, back then, the Human Emperor had severed the Ancestral Land’s connection with the Underworld. The commotion had been immense, but it hadn’t caused this level of upheaval, certainly not the kind that reshaped the very land itself.

The Human Emperor's power definitely wasn’t as great as what Li Yuan held now. And the power he wielded hadn’t even been his own. So in theory...Li Yuan should’ve surpassed him.

So why was it...

A moment later, Li Yuan arrived at a conclusion.

If we categorize realms by their visibility, then sure, you could divide them into the seen realm and the unseen realm. But there’s another way to look at it, material and immaterial.

The Underworld clearly belonged to the immaterial, to the soul realm. When the Human Emperor severed it from the Ancestral Land, it wouldn’t have caused a massive shift in the physical world.

But the Deathless Tomb...whatever it is, it clearly exists in the physical world. To destroy something like that, it’s only natural it would be far more difficult.

But if every move I make ends up shaking the heavens and ripping the world apart...that’s not ideal either. There has to be a way to be more precise, right?

Li Yuan stood in silence, deep in thought.

At his current level, there were no footsteps to follow, no path already carved out. Techniques, skills, understanding, all of it had to be figured out on his own.

He stood atop a high cliff overlooking the great rift.

Then he widened his stance and let loose.

What was once the Ruling Blade had evolved into the Ruling Fist. His fist now shrouded in a black membrane, tearing through the air with a thunderous howl. This was power from the seventh rank, the early phase of his path, when shadow blood wrapped his body and began to seep into his bones.

With a single thought, everything around him began to shift, stones and dust lifted and spiraled violently, forming a whirlwind. That was the essence of sixth rank, the initial transformation of life itself. Then came the fifth rank, the mastery of spirit artifacts, and the fourth, the power of shaping one’s own domain.

Suddenly, the swirling chaos stilled.

Li Yuan’s golden body emerged, seated atop a ghostly lotus. In the void, his blade became a fist once more, punching out with the same immense forces of the Heavebinding Ribbons and Great Moon Blade.

Then, in an instant, his golden body vanished. The ghostly lotus disappeared. Even the massive fist dissipated.

In their place, 36 lotus petals spun solemnly around him, sacred and resplendent.

The petals turned, and with them, the rivers and mountains surged. All around him, the characters for

dusk

and

darkness

danced across the air, countless and flickering, as a strange force stirred. It was one that reached not just across this world, but beyond its edges, into the realms outside.

This was a new body, forged from true insight. And when it fused with the 36 lotus petals, each petal became a vessel of terrifying power, brimming with the raw strength of space itself. This was the real force of second rank, enough to tear space apart at will.

Then, with a twist of his fingers, the 36 petals were drawn back into his palm.

With another thought, the sky several dozens of kilometers away split open.

A colossal, golden hand materialized, shining brilliantly as it tore through the clouds. Flames licked its edges like meteors burning through the atmosphere, as it descended toward the earth.

The mountains below began to crumble.

Wild beasts fled in terror. The undying folk who had been kneeling now looked up in horror, thinking the end of days had arrived, a divine punishment sent from above.

One man, brave and strong, rushed to the front of the crowd, tears streaming down his face. He screamed something toward the heavens, voice hoarse, eyes wide. Staring up at that divine hand, his throat bobbed, his entire body trembled, but he clenched his jaw, balled his fists, and stood his ground.

But just as the golden hand was about to descend fully, it paused...and then withdrew, vanishing into the sky without a trace.

Li Yuan had only been testing it, a demonstration of power at the Heavenly Will Realm.

He didn’t care what anyone thought or felt. That was never the point.

And clearly, even though this wasn’t a true second rank, only a false version, it was already far beyond the strength of his original body.

He moved his fingers again, raising his palm as if to cradle something in the air.

Within that open palm was not just the power of space itself, but the seeds of countless unborn worlds.

It seems there’s not much difference between a pseudo second rank and a true one. And when it comes to the shadow blood path, from ninth to third rank, it hardly seems to affect second rank combat at all.

No wonder that in the Age of the Ancient Gods and the heavenly seal, no one bothered cultivating the shadow blood path.

Both pseudo and true second rank cultivators could create worlds. Just like how Polaris birthed the Dragon Vein, or how the Radiant Treasure Buddha could give rise to 3,000 Worlds.

And both could destroy worlds, too, just as the Human Emperor once severed the Underworld.

The only true distinction was that a genuine second rank possessed something more, a voidship.

And as for the voidship, Li Yuan had long since come to understand its nature.

The voidship wasn’t just another fragment of the mortal world. It was something entirely different. It didn’t function like the countless small pocket-worlds that clung to the mortal world like barnacles. No, it was a world of its own.

Even if all spiritual energy in the mortal world were cut off, the voidship’s flow of Yin and Yang would remain utterly unaffected.

In other words, the spiritual energy inside his voidship was now far denser than that of the mortal world.

Why? Because it had become fully independent, sustained solely by the light of the Sun and Moon.

Li Yuan looked down at his palm, then lifted his gaze. In his eyes, the cosmos appeared in three distinct layers.

The first layer was the mortal world.

The second was the greater world, or perhaps one could call it the universe.

And above that, the third was the voidveil beyond.

The mortal world floated like a star within the vast sea of the universe.

And the universe itself floated within the boundless voidveil.

His voidship had anchored itself in the voidveil, but was still tethered to the mortal world.

Meanwhile, the Ancestral Land, connected to his voidship via the string of miniature worlds he had just created, was not set in the voidveil at all. It hovered instead in the universe layer.

As he observed, something caught his attention.

One of the small pocket worlds he had casually created to wrap around the Deathless Tomb...was already dimming. Its light flickered, like dying embers.

It wouldn’t last long.

Li Yuan quickly realized why. The small world he had created on a whim might’ve stretched a few dozen kilometers across, but it was empty, fragile, and utterly hollow. Something like that, devoid of essence, could only survive for a short time before collapsing on its own.

He glanced at his voidship again. Its surface was dense and seamless, brimming with an overwhelming, unmatched force, impossible to replicate.

If the voidship were made of high-grade alloyed metal, then that fragile worlds encasing the Deathless Tomb were no more than paper balloons.

These worlds of a perfected second rank, everything about it was completely new to him.

He had no idea how long these small worlds could hold together...but from the looks of it, not long.

Just to be safe, he extended his hand again. With a gentle motion, he began to conjure another miniature world in the unseen starscape, crafted to the same scale as before.

But this time, he didn’t rush.

This time, he steadily poured in power, carefully shaping it, unlike his earlier, offhand attempt that cut the Deathless Tomb off from the main world.