Chapter 88: Not Even Heaven Can Stop Me

The ancient words kept echoing through Su Ye’s mind, while thunder rolled more and more clearly across the sky beyond. He could also feel eight archaic characters seeming to manifest around him, and it was these very characters that drew the alchemical fire from all around into his body.

The first acupoint, the second, the third—

Within each major meridian point, there had originally only been heavenly thunder, and even the fire qilin blood he had previously absorbed could only merge in a tiny amount. But this time, the flames of the cauldron were actually being drawn in as though they were some peerless treasure, directly pouring into the various acupoints of his body.

“First heavenly thunder, and now alchemical fire—just how powerful is the technique I’m cultivating?”

Su Ye was utterly astonished. With his thunder meridians and his insight into heavenly thunder, he could just barely accept that he could absorb thunder into his body.

But now he was absorbing these flames as well. Could his body even contain them? Could it withstand them?

If he said this aloud, no other martial artist would believe him.

Still, he could clearly feel that these flames were no ordinary fire. Or rather, within this first cauldron, the most precious thing was not any immortal pill or divine elixir, but these flames that could burn everything to ashes and had refined who knew how many medicines...

The fire formed within an alchemical furnace was the true treasure!

By now, Su Ye could feel his body slowly rising into the air. Within his various major acupoints, flames had appeared around the heavenly thunder.

If anyone could see through his flesh, they would surely find that one hundred and eight flames were distributed all around his body.

Only then did Su Ye suddenly remember the Sea Folk being, Qian Liluo, whom he had once met on the island. She had said that his technique was not thunder, but a current of energy.

Could it be that all along, even he himself had mistaken his cultivation art for a thunder technique? Otherwise, how could flames now be merging into it?

No matter what the truth was, this was undeniably causing his cultivation to soar.

Those mysterious eight ancient characters still hummed and echoed, frantically devouring the fire within the furnace.

The flames inside seemed nowhere near enough to satisfy his absorption...

Boom, boom, boom—

Outside the furnace, the rain gradually began to ease, and even the thunder seemed to be fading.

Yet the intensity of the battle did not weaken in the slightest; if anything, it only grew fiercer.

Ouyang Man charged over furiously, and the moment she saw the cauldron smashed to the ground, with a longsword still stuck in it and crackling with thunder, she trembled with rage and shouted:

“You useless fools—kill Jiang Liuying at once! Kill her!”

At that moment, Jiang Liuying was being chased by a pack of martial artists. Her cultivation was not very high, but she was astonishingly nimble, and within the estate’s buildings hardly anyone could catch up to her.

As she ran, she kept up a sharp tongue, calling out, “Old hag, if you kill me, heaven’s punishment will surely come for you! Even if I die and become a vengeful spirit, I’ll haunt you day and night. I’ll stand at your bedside in the middle of the night and watch you sleep...”

When the martial artists chasing her heard this, even the timid ones shuddered all over. Jiang Liuying was simply too terrifying! If she really turned into a resentful ghost, and every time you went to sleep found a ghost standing at your bedside, what kind of ending would that be?

Still, they were all martial artists, and they did not fear ghosts and demons all that much. If anything, it only made them even more determined to catch her.

Meanwhile, the alchemists of the first residence saw the cauldron topple and cried out in anguish, “What are you all standing there for? Put the cauldron back where it was! Who kicked it over? We absolutely cannot let our furnace be ruined—someone, move!”

“Damn it, seize Ouyang Yunfeng immediately!”

Chen Yu also saw that his cauldron had collapsed, and he immediately fought with his life on the line, trading injury for injury as he attacked Ouyang Yunfeng without any defense at all.

Bang, bang, bang!

In an instant, he took several of Ouyang Yunfeng’s palms head-on, and in turn blasted Ouyang Yunfeng flying.

That old woman Wen had formidable cultivation. With a flash, she leaped forward, her withered hands performing an incomparably bizarre technique. Her hands seemed to split into six, and she struck Ouyang Yunfeng’s chest acupoints with a flurry of blows.

“You are—people of the Illusory Sea Sect!” Ouyang Yunfeng’s pupils suddenly contracted as he recognized her identity.

“Heh. If I didn’t use my Illusory Sea Sect’s killing arts, I wouldn’t have been able to take you down. Recognizing us now is too late!” The old woman Wen unleashed several more moves in succession, directly capturing Ouyang Yunfeng.

Ouyang Man showed no mercy whatsoever. With several dull thuds, a few long spikes were driven straight into Ouyang Yunfeng’s limbs.

Clenching her teeth, she said, “My dear brother, after you die, I’ll take good care of the Martial Alliance! Rest assured.”

Ouyang Yunfeng’s face twisted in agony. Blood gushed from his mouth, and even his teeth were stained red. In a grave voice he said, “Even if you kill me, you will never sleep soundly. They will avenge me!”

“Relying on Jiang Liuying, or on that little sweetheart of yours, Chen Jiani? They’ll both die—” Ouyang Man seized Ouyang Yunfeng by the throat with one hand and shouted toward Jiang Liuying from afar, “Jiang Liuying, if you don’t come down right now, he’s going to die right before your eyes!”

Jiang Liuying cursed furiously, “You old hag, are your eyes failing you, or have you gone mad? What does he have to do with me? You want me to come down and die? If you want to kill him, then kill him!”

“Haha, is that so? He is the dignified Young Alliance Leader. It hasn’t been long since he saved your Jiang family, and now you don’t even recognize him? Very well—then I’d like to see whether the Jiang family so often praised by all of you will truly abandon the life of its benefactor!” Ouyang Man took up another long spike, feigning as if she were about to drive it into Ouyang Yunfeng’s eyes.

Jiang Liuying froze.

Indeed, if Ouyang Yunfeng had not intervened earlier, her Jiang family would already have been plunged into catastrophe. And yet only a few days had passed—was she really going to watch him die before her eyes?

That momentary hesitation was enough. The martial artists pursuing her had already surrounded her, leaving her with nowhere to escape.

And that Shi Hao, who had been chasing Jiang Liuying all along, no longer wore the hypocritical mask he had shown before learning who she was. He rushed up and stomped viciously at Jiang Liuying, kicking her to the ground as he shouted,

“You filthy bitch! Go on then, keep running!”

Jiang Liuying fell face-first into the dirt. Since the rain had only just stopped, her whole body became filthy at once, her hair disheveled, her condition utterly miserable.

Her gaze swept toward the cauldron, and seeing that there was still no movement, her delicate body trembled. A pain so sharp it was almost impossible to describe surged through her entire being, choking her with anguish, burning through her internal organs as if they were being consumed by fire:

He had, in the end, still died. At last, he had still left her...

Seeing that Jiang Liuying had also been captured, Ouyang Man burst into wild laughter. “So you think you can save someone too? Once we bring Chen Jiani back as well, I’ll kill you all together, so you can go on your way at the same time and accompany that Su Ye in death!”

Just then, the cauldron suddenly began to shake violently, thudding over and over, the tremors growing more and more intense.

A cold, harsh voice came from within:

“You won’t kill a single one.”

Everyone was stunned. They all knew that voice well, and in shock they looked up at the trembling furnace.

How could it be? That voice had come from inside the cauldron.

And it was Su Ye’s voice!

“He’s not dead—” Ouyang Man screamed, her face turning deathly pale as she stared at the thunder sword embedded in the cauldron.

But she forced herself to remain calm and shouted, “So what if the furnace can’t refine you? You think you can still come out? Stay trapped in there forever! I refuse to believe you can survive after being sealed away for a hundred days!”

Hum, hum, hum!

The thunder sword seemed to sense something and began to tremble continuously.

Then, suddenly, a bolt of heavenly thunder crashed down from the sky and struck the cauldron directly.

For a brief instant, the cauldron went still. All sound, all trembling, vanished.

Across the entire battlefield, whether martial artist or alchemist, every pair of eyes was fixed unblinking on the cauldron. Their hearts seemed almost to stop as they waited for the next moment to arrive.

Then, on the furnace wall, the carved flower-bud pattern began to wither and peel away as though it were decaying. Beneath it, streaks of red light, like split crimson fire or blazing thunder, tore free from within.

The entire cauldron let out a sound like an explosion.

Rumble—

“The heavens themselves cannot stop me! Much less this mere cauldron!”