Chapter 600: The Dao of Fire and Verdure

The beam of light from Ah Man's eye slowly faded.

However, within Pang Jian's Immortal Divine Soul, it was as if mountains still crumbled, seas roared, and the skies collapsed.

A thunderous roar echoed, resonating with the Heavenly Dao of the Ancestor of Ten Thousand Mountains. An indescribable weight surged through Pang Jian's Immortal Divine Soul, exuding an ancient, boundless aura.

Pang Jian felt like the weight of ten thousand mountains was suppressing him.

The mountains and rivers scattered across the various worlds had risen and fallen since the formation of the Abyss and the rise of intelligent life.

Wars, the shifting of landscapes, and the relentless march of time had caused many of these mountains to vanish.

Despite this, the original forms of many of these mountains and rivers remained imprinted within this one-eyed giant leader's bloodline. Traces of those long faded with time could still be sensed.

By comprehending these imprints, Ah Man could unravel the history of each mountain and, in doing so, draw upon the power of the mountains themselves.

He was called the Ancestor of Ten Thousand Mountains because he had been extraordinarily gifted since birth.

Imprints that did not typically exist within the bloodlines of ordinary one-eyed giant children weighed upon him so heavily that he almost perished.

His father had always known that these imprints would be beneficial to Ah Man.

As a child with soft bones and an undeveloped body, those imprints were an unbearable burden.

Unlike the other one-eyed giant children, he struggled to walk, gasping for breath under their crushing weight.

A mere child carried the legacy of ten thousand mountains. His survival alone was a miracle.

As he grew, his bloodline advanced and his physique strengthened. He gradually unraveled the mysteries of the weakest mountain imprints, lifting their seals one by one.

After that, he had soared to greatness, growing at a speed beyond the reach of ordinary one-eyed giants.

When the imprints were fully unsealed, he became known as the Ancestor of Ten Thousand Mountains, entrusted with the will of all the mountains that had ever existed in the Abyss.

One day, when the Abyss's landscape shifted once more, he would restore the mountains that had crumbled into ruin.

"I am the chosen of the heavens, the Mountain God," Ah Man growled in the language of the Titan Race.

The fractured Ice Rock Island, crushed beneath Pang Jian's feet, trembled in response to Ah Man.

A gray-white radiance bathed the fragmented land as it started to restore itself.

Ah Man, the Titan Race from the Fifth World, charged straight at Pang Jian.

His rock-like body swelled even larger as he engaged Pang Jian in savage close-quarters combat.

Every punch, grapple, knee strike, and headbutt conjured towering phantoms of colossal mountains.

The illusory mountains materialized around his towering body and stretched endlessly into the distance.

The stars and moon emerged among these ten thousand mountains, but were dwarfed in comparison to the mountains. Their radiance was overshadowed and their might subdued.

Pang Jian's expression remained cold and unshaken. Matching Ah Man's ferocious melee, he broke down each attack with precise counters.

Ah Man's fist crashed down like warhammers, carrying the force of a thousand mountains, but Pang Jian resolutely raised his palm to meet the strike.

A lush valley emerged on his palm, complete with flowing streams, veins of iron and gold shimmering beneath the earth, and ethereal flames in the air.

The valley embodied the Earth; the vegetation, Wood; the streams, Water; and the mineral veins, Metal.

Combined with the drifting flames, the five elements naturally harmonized to create a self-contained world.

With a mere thought, Pang Jian conjured a world from the five elements to withstand the full force of Ah Man's strikes.

As the thousand illusory mountains descended, Ah Man channeled his bloodline power to make them tangible, seeking to overwhelm the five elements and crush the world in Pang Jian's palms beneath their weight.

The world constructed from a luminous five-colored radiance stood firm against the thousand mountains formed from Ah Man's bloodline power.

Pang Jian's surroundings were riddled with thousands of craters from the impact.

Ah Man's comprehension of a single Heavenly Dao dismantled the very foundation of Pang Jian's five elements.

"After reaching Rank Ten, I spent another thousand years comprehending the mountains," Ah Man bellowed. "The accumulation of a single perfected Dao is enough to shatter a thousand fragmented Daos!

"If all my years of painstaking cultivation cannot surpass the mere decades you've spent, I might as well just die!"

Ah Man's attacks were ferocious. Each punch and kick carried the crushing weight of a thousand mountains and the unyielding force of ten thousand peaks behind every devastating blow.

His combat technique was crude and simple, but it belonged to an ancient martial art long lost to the river of history. It was a style that rejected external aids and emphasized pure physical collisions of flesh and bone.

This primal method of battle was one that the ancient Fey Race had mastered, yet Ah Man, a foreign race warrior, had fully grasped its essence.

A foreign race powerhouse and a True God of the human race fought in a heavens-shaking duel, yet no destructive shockwaves spread outward.

Pang Jian wielded no weapon, neither the Abyssal Demon Sword nor any other divine artifact.

Likewise, Ah Man did not wield the Mountain Flipping Seal.

Fists and feet clashed in an evenly matched battle. Neither could gain the upper hand in the short term.

Pang Jian had originally intended to quickly eliminate Ah Man so he could turn his focus to the battle between the Fey Gods, the Abyssal Demon, and Su Wanrou. Unexpectedly, Ah Man was more formidable than he had imagined.

Having battled Li Chu, the Dark Bat, and the Water Gods, the Naga and Naji, he had incorrectly assumed that the leader of the one-eyed giants would at most be on the same level as those he had previously fought.

Surprisingly, Ah Man's combat prowess was far beyond that of a low-ranking Outer God.

A strange sensation suddenly surged in his heart.

A second wave of Fortune had appeared near the barrier!

The barrier looming over the Abyss, isolating the True Gods and restraining all life within, had become connected to him in a way it never had before.

Before, he could only perceive anomalies in the barrier when he projected his divine sense into it in the First World.

Now, he could directly sense that unfathomable construct of endless mysteries even while outside the First World.

At the core of this second surge of Fortune, he sensed the Dao of Verdure.

Li Chu had fallen!

Another True God had fallen after Lin Qiyang!

Luo Hongyan had descended upon the First World and had already fulfilled her promise to Pang Ling before even dealing with Zhu Ji in the Eastern Land!

Pang Ling was set to absorb Li Chu's body and his accumulation of a thousand years of wood-attribute divine power to ascend to Rank Ten.

After doing so, she would reach a level rivaling that of the Star Devourer in the Shadow Abyss.

A crimson and emerald beam of Heavenly Dao radiance, perceptible only to Pang Jian, descended from the sky and merged into his organs.

The crimson beam fused into his heart, which embodied Fire, while the emerald beam disappeared into his liver, which corresponded to Wood.

When the radiance of the two Heavenly Daos fused into his heart and liver, Pang Jian realized that they contained Lin Qiyang's and Li Chu's insights into their respective Daos.

Lin Qiyang had ascended to godhood through the Dao of Fire, while Li Chu ascended through the Dao of Verdure. The Heavenly Daos they had used to forge their divine paths had returned to the barrier upon their deaths.

During their ascensions, the Dao of Fire and the Dao of Verdure that had led them to godhood had already started to fill in the missing gaps within the barrier.

The more True Gods there were, the greater the number of Heavenly Daos incorporated into the barrier, reinforcing its unyielding structure.

Conversely, as more beings broke through the barrier, its power would gradually weaken.

At its most unbreakable state, the barrier was a cage forged through the rise and fall of generations of True Gods, each ascending only to perish within the Abyss.

This mysterious barrier held within it the Heavenly Dao of every True God since ancient times.

Despite this, following Lin Qiyang and Li Chu's deaths, the Heavenly Daos they had comprehended had instead descended to Pang Jian in his understanding.

Whose will is driving this?

I'm not at the Stargazing Platform, so why do I feel an unfamiliar closeness to the barrier?

Pang Jian instinctively glanced at the well-shaped domain of sword light.

Within it, he sensed an undeniable aura of imprisonment alongside faint traces of something eerily similar to the barrier.

It's my master!

Pang Jian realized.

Master, in his ascent to godhood, has already gained the ability to influence the barrier, albeit within a limited scope!

A part of his will has already harmonized with the barrier. In essence, he's aligned with the barrier!

No wonder Lady Feng said he'll ascend to godhood as long as no external forces interfere!

He was certain that Li Zhaotian had seized the moment of Lin Qiyang's and Li Chu's deaths to project their Dao of Fire and Dao of Verdure into Pang Jian's Immortal Divine Soul.

A miniature Flame Dragon lay half-dead in his heart, which burned like a molten furnace within its membrane of flesh and blood.

When the crimson beam descended, Lin Qiyang's lifelong insights into the Dao of Fire manifested as subterranean magma veins, lightning, fire lotuses, phoenixes, and countless other variations of flames.

The phantom manifestation of the Rank Eight Flame Dragon dissipated into smoke.

His molten heart merged with Lin Qiyang's insights into the Dao of Fire.

The Primeval Demon Fusion Art instinctively activated and absorbed Lin Qiyang's lifetime of insights.

Meanwhile, towering trees rose endlessly within his liver, radiating a boundless vitality. When Li Chu's Dao of Verdure descended, it seamlessly merged with the ancient trees within.

Wood counters Earth.

This thought surfaced in Pang Jian's mind

It felt like the wisdom of Li Chu, yet it was also a fundamental truth.

A divine tree can pierce through the worlds beneath the heavens, its branches powerful enough to collapse any foundation.

Pang Jian envisioned the legendary World Tree in his mind, an unparalleled existence that rooted itself in the starry skies, its limitless branches stretching across the cosmos to pierce celestial bodies.

The divine power, infused with the Dao of Verdure within his liver, started to manifest.

The prismatic radiance surrounding Pang Jian's Immortal Divine Soul shifted to pure green with razor-sharp branches extending outward from the emerald ring of light.

These branch-like extensions pierced Ah Man's vast mountains.

The seemingly unyielding mountains crumbled in an instant.

Although Pang Jian was still exchanging fierce punches and kicks with Ah Man, he also no longer felt like himself.

He had become the World Tree, with his limbs transforming into otherworldly branches.

Ah Man's phantoms of ten thousand mountains were mere reflections of his gathered divine power, manifestations of his bloodline and divine abilities intertwined.

Meanwhile, Pang Jian was using his Immortal Divine Soul as a foundation to envision himself as the World Tree, channeling the divine power in his liver to bring to life the image of branches piercing worlds beneath the heavens.

This was the power of a divine being—the ability to bring the visions of one's heart into reality.

The World Tree stood as the ultimate embodiment of the Dao of Verdure across the starry skies. Harnessing its power, Pang Jian suppressed Ah Man's mountains in accordance with the five elements' cycle of mutual restraint, destroying them in a single blow.