The surrounding atmosphere abruptly froze, a razor-sharp, chilling intent permeating every layer of the upper atmosphere. The sheer kinetic mass of the descending sword-qi felt like an absolute, violent challenge to the fundamental laws of heaven and earth!
For the first time since the ambush began, Bian Qing's indifferent, aristocratic sneer cracked. A sudden, involuntary wave of primal panic surged deep within his gut. Staring up at the rift in the clouds, he felt an existential dread—as if he were suddenly making an enemy of the entire world.
"A strike backed by the conceptual authority of the Supreme Realm..."
Bian Qing diagnosed the structural amplitude of the incoming art in a fraction of a millisecond. Facing a localized tactical nuke of this caliber, he didn't dare hold back a single drop of his biological advantages. He violently flooded his meridians with Luck!
Innate Thunder Magic —「Thunder Control of the Nine Heavens」!
Bian Qing threw his head back, his clawed hands tearing toward the sky as he forcefully commandeered the latent atmospheric electricity of the upper realms. In an instant, bruised, ink-black storm clouds churned into a massive, screaming vortex directly above him. Cyclopean bolts of jagged purple lightning danced wildly within the funnel, unleashing earth-shattering roars that shook the mountain ranges below.
The raw current condensed into a single, blinding pillar of plasma, descending from the heavens like the wrath of an ancient deity executing judgment upon the earth!
The Supreme-grade sword aura and the divine lightning collided dead-center, generating a localized thermal explosion that fractured the local airspace. A terrifying, concentric shockwave of jumbled Luck and kinetic energy rippled outward. It was an absolute blessing they were fighting in the stratosphere; had this clash occurred five thousand feet lower, every mortal city within a fifty-mile radius would have been wiped clean off the map.
The martial intent and the ancient bloodline magic ground against each other in a desperate war of attrition. But ultimately, Bian Qing's technique—being bound by a lower baseline Realm—was forced into a structural deficit. The purple thunder fractured.
The residual momentum of the sword art swept downward like a falling guillotine. Hissing through his teeth, Bian Qing transformed his physical body into a crackling spark, utilizing a high-frequency Thunder Evasion to instantly flash hundreds of yards away, narrowly escaping the lethal radius of the blast.
He panted softly, cold sweat slicking his scales. As expected of a Supreme Realm artifact... the raw output is utterly ridiculous.
Yet, the person experiencing the greatest shock wasn't the Qilin, but Lu Yixian. That talisman was his absolute, definitive ace in the hole! He had calculated that even if the artifact failed to liquidate Bian Qing on the spot, it should have at least left the monster missing a few limbs and half its cultivation base.
Instead, this freak had used a high-voltage spell to buffer the initial kinetic impact, then seamlessly slipped into a spatial dodge, escaping the entire ordeal completely unscathed!
Now, the human trio was left entirely defenceless. If Bian Qing launched a coordinated counter-offensive right this second, Lu Yixian had zero confidence he could shield his juniors, let alone survive.
Just as the psychological pressure was about to break their ranks, three brilliant streaks of spiritual light tore through the horizon in rapid succession.
The reinforcements had made landfall: Li Xuanxiao, Immortal Master Lingwuzi, and the breathless Wu Jiangming.
Taking in the silhouettes of the newcomers—particularly the serene, unbothered posture of Lingwuzi—Lu Yixian finally let out a massive, ragged sigh of relief. The Taiyi Dao Sect was fundamentally different from the Ancient Martial Mystic Court; they didn't rely on massive numbers or heavy infantry divisions. Their lineage was elite and intensely specialized. Lu Yixian had read the grand archives regarding Lingwuzi: the old Daoist's cultivation had reached the absolute Peak of the Void Realm centuries ago.
By now, he had undoubtedly shattered that bottleneck, comfortably sitting at least within the Early Stage of the Supreme Realm! To a grand master of that caliber, swatting down a Void-level Qilin would be as effortless as flipping over a hand.
Li Xuanxiao's figure blurred, sticking a perfect landing right next to Long Hui's disheveled form. "What's the tactical breakdown here? Who's the lizard?"
"That oversized gecko systematically mistook me for you!" Long Hui barked, his voice laced with an incredibly deep, pathetic sense of grievance. "Damn it all, Li Xuanxiao! I was literally two seconds away from being turned into a premium bucket of human barbecue!"
A Qilin?!
Li Xuanxiao's eyes narrowed, a trace of surprise sparking in his chest. His gaze swept over the distant figure of Bian Qing, taking note of the dense, highly organized purple lightning snaking across the monster's forearms. A brief flash of recognition struck him—it was almost a mirror image of that doomed New Demon Emperor he had farmed back in the lower kingdom.
Ah, so the ledger has finally caught up with me... Li Xuanxiao analyzed smoothly.
The sovereign Qilin Clan had clearly caught on to the fact that their tracking mark had been systematically scrubbed from his soul. They had been running a covert intelligence operation against him ever since! Though he couldn't quite fathom what kind of spectacular bureaucratic failure had led their scouts to flag Long Hui as the prime suspect, one thing was entirely set in stone: the Qilin Clan was actively hunting him down.
"The imperialists' desire to destroy us is unceasing..." Li Xuanxiao muttered under his breath, his gaze toward Bian Qing instantly icing over with pure, unadulterated hostility.
Granted, a monster at the Peak of the Void Realm was an apex tier that his current First Layer baseline couldn't safely solo without burning through a massive chunk of his treasury. But fortunately for him, he was currently standing behind a premium, high-tier Daoist meat shield.
The exact millisecond Bian Qing locked eyes with Lingwuzi, his biological instincts screamed at him to abort the mission. He aggressively mobilized his Luck, attempting to liquefy his physical mass back into a lightning arc to execute a total retreat!
"Planning an early exit? A bit unpolished, don't you think?" Lingwuzi remarked serenely.
With a casual, almost lazy flick of his horsetail whisk, the old Daoist bypassed the need for any visible incantations or hand seals. The ambient spatial frequencies simply shifted, and the crackling lightning cage Bian Qing was building instantly vanished into thin air.
His Evasion technique violently canceled, Bian Qing was forcefully dumped back into real-space, stumbling a few paces back.
His expression turned incredibly dark. The Taiyi Dao Sect was widely considered the most mysterious, fundamentally unfathomable entity among the Three Great Factions of the Upper Realm. They weren't like the martial brutes of the Ancient Martial Mystic Court who only understood how to chop, slash, and scream. Nor were they like the artistic scholars of Wenyuan Pavilion who spent their days composing poetry or hammering away at spirit stones. The esoteric Dao Arts of their lineage possessed a natural, reality-warping conceptual restriction against the Demon and Yao tribes! Worse, their spells were executed with zero telegraphing, making them a nightmare to anticipate.
A bitter trace of regret flashed through Bian Qing's mind. His execution had been flawless! If it hadn't been for that completely absurd Supreme-level sword talisman, the heretical brat who had slaughtered their Clan Head's imperial descendant would already be a corpse, and he would have departed gracefully back into the sovereign domains.
But now? He was trapped in a logistical nightmare. It wasn't just the incoming structural retaliation from the Ancient Martial Mystic Court once they realized their disciples had been ambushed on a routine sweep. Right now, looking at the old Daoist... he might not even survive the next five minutes.
What's the play here? Think, damn it! Bian Qing's cognitive gears spun at a million miles an hour, desperately calculating an escape vector.
Lingwuzi didn't waste a single millisecond trying to decipher the monster's inner monologue. He raised his whisk once more, prepared to deploy a high-tier binding array to completely immobilize the asset.
However, right before the spell could lock, a light, melodic chuckle drifted down from the northern horizon.
"My, my... what a delightfully chaotic little family reunion we have here~"
Every head in the airspace snapped toward the source of the voice as a towering, suffocating ocean of pitch-black Demonic Qi rolled across the sky like an encroaching localized apocalypse!
Nearly ten humanoid figures materialized from the fog, their baselines uniformly anchored at the Late Stage of the Void Realm! And standing directly at the vanguard of the flock was an entity radiating an aura so profoundly dense and heavy that it undeniably breached the threshold of the Supreme Realm!
As the mist parted, the human cultivators caught sight of the multiple, elegant tails swaying lazily behind the figures' silken robes.
"The... The Nine-Tailed Fox Clan?!" Lu Yixian blurted out, his voice cracking in sheer, unadulterated shock.
Ever since the historical disaster at the Jade Fox Pavilion, the entirety of the Nine-Tailed Fox lineage had completely packed up their operations, relocating deep within the sovereign Dream Illusion Domain located in the Western Region of the Central Continent. They hadn't stepped foot into human-monitored territory for decades. Nobody expected an entire elite strike cadre of their race to casually drop onto a remote northern coordinate today.
Bian Qing stared at the arriving foxes, his eyes lighting up. Recognizing the leading aura—a depth of cultivation that even his Peak Void baseline couldn't map—he felt like a drowning man who had just been thrown a premium golden lifeline.
"Sisters of the Nine-Tailed Fox Clan, lend me your aid!" Bian Qing shouted urgently, discarding his Qilin pride. "Intercede on my behalf, and the sovereign Qilin Clan will guarantee a historic bounty to your lineage in the upper domains!"
Lu Yixian and the wounded Lü Lang stared at the fox vanguard, their postures locking into a state of maximum, high-amplitude red alert.
The Nine-Tailed Fox, the Qilin, the Bai Ze, and the Golden Crow. These were the undisputed Four Great Ancient Beast Tribes—entities boasting immaculate, pristine cosmic heritages. In terms of biological stats, latent lifespan, and inherited bloodline magic, they were lightyears ahead of standard, lower-tier monsters. If this fox division decided to form a strategic coalition with the Qilin vanguard right here, the humans would be systematically slaughtered.
Lingwuzi narrowed his luminous eyes, locking his gaze onto the leading entity—a figure possessing the appearance of a poised, middle-aged noblewoman. There was zero doubt. This woman was firmly entrenched within the Supreme Realm, and her latent energy pool felt noticeably deeper than his own.
The old Daoist's expression turned thoroughly solemn. Beneath his wide, flowing sleeves, his fingers rapidly blurred through a sequence of esoteric hand seals. An invisible, high-frequency spiritual resonance rippled across the spatial fabric, instantly transmitting their exact tactical coordinates to every active member of the Taiyi Dao Sect operating within a three-thousand-mile radius.
Within seconds, columns of Daoist light began to ignite across the horizon as human masters warped toward the beacon.
Meanwhile, well before making landfall, the practical and cautious Li Xuanxiao had already burned a priority alert directly into Liang Jianqiu's private channel, sharing their live telemetry. Sensing the severe spatial anomaly, the Supreme Realm vanguard of the Mystic Court was already rocketing toward them at mach speed.
But the cosmic chaos didn't stop there. From the eastern and western horizons, distinct plumes of azure mist and blazing solar fire began to crest over the cloud line—the elite scouts of the Bai Ze Clan and the Golden Crow Clan were simultaneously closing in on the coordinate!
Through a bizarre, highly improbable series of geographical coincidences, this random patch of sky had suddenly transformed into the absolute epicenter where the highest echelons of the Human and Demon factions converged!
In a matter of minutes, the sky was completely packed. Brilliant flashes of sword-qi and burning plumes of demonic pressure illuminated the stratosphere as powerhouses from both sides materialized by the dozen.
"Well, well, well! What kind of cosmic wind managed to blow the reclusive Nine-Tailed Fox Clan all the way out to these frozen borders?"
"Tsk! A Qilin and a Fox standing on the same platform? Now that is a historical anomaly worth recording!"
"Hey, you oversized, overgrown chicken! Who gave the arrogant bastards of the Golden Crow Clan permission to march their feathered asses into our northern surveillance sector?"
"A peasant crow is just a peasant crow! Stop calling yourselves 'Golden Crows' to inflate your egos, it's embarrassing!"
The Four Great Ancient Tribes had fully assembled, their elite warriors snarling and flexing their domains.
Directly opposite them, a massive wall of humanity—comprising the grand masters of the Taiyi Dao Sect, the heavy vanguard of the Ancient Martial Mystic Court, and the high-tier array masters of Wenyuan Pavilion—formed an unbroken defensive line.
"Holy hell... all Four Great Ancient Tribes packed into one grid? This is a premium historical event!"
"Honestly, the last time a standoff of this scale occurred... was literally the last time it occurred!"
"What's the play here, boys? Are we hosting a massive, cross-faction battle royale? Because my Ancient Martial Mystic Court is claiming the vanguard slots right now!"
The human side was chattering away with intense, high-octane battle intent, the atmosphere incredibly lively and volatile.
Finally, an elder from the Golden Crow Clan stepped forward, his voice booming across the clouds like cracking thunder. "Humans! You have mobilized an unprecedented, massive military vanguard across our borders. State your intent! What business does humanity have invading the Northern Region?"
The moment the Golden Crow voiced the formal inquiry, the bickering among the other three ancient tribes vanished instantly. A heavy silence fell over the sky. They had all mobilized precisely to gather intelligence on humanity's sudden, aggressive troop movements—and now, the Crow had laid the ultimate question squarely on the table.