The Divine Land possessed no established Buddhist factions—or at least, no grand Daoist or Buddhist monasteries of any renown. Monks were strictly limited to wandering among the mortal populace, soliciting minor offerings and spreading basic concepts of karma and enlightenment. In terms of high-end, realm-altering combat power, Buddhism was entirely absent from the grand stage.
Therefore, Li Xuanxiao—who had somehow mastered a high-tier Buddhist Dharma tech—was the only viable candidate for this spiritual surveillance project.
Li Xuanxiao was naturally more than willing to cooperate. Being able to map out the Devil Race's movements ahead of time directly served his own interests anyway. The chilling, calculating way that Devil youth had looked at him before retreating made it clear that he had been earmarked as a priority target. The Devil Race might operate under severe cosmic restrictions regarding mass-scale teleportation, but what about individual assassinations?
Li Xuanxiao had only recently managed to get the troublesome Qilin Mark scrubbed from his soul, only to immediately unearth a heretical tracking Gu worm nestled inside his meridians. He was thoroughly done with being targeted by cosmic entities.
With Li Xuanxiao giving his verbal consent, Liang Jianqiu acted with absolute military decisiveness, immediately rocketing toward the elite craftsmen of Wenyuan Pavilion to draft the array schematics.
Left behind, Wu Jiangming blinked and looked around. "Brother Li, is Lord Long Hui not traveling with your squad this time?"
Li Xuanxiao scanned the chaotic crowd of arriving cultivators. "Perhaps his sector was further away and he hasn't made landfall yet? We're a five-man scouting vanguard; he and I are anchored to the same perimeter."
Li Xuanxiao offered a brief, casual explanation, but a subtle prickle of doubt suddenly surfaced in his mind. Even for a manual sweep, he's taking an absurdly long time to report in.
He whipped out his transmission jade, linking his Luck to the spatial matrix, and attempted to ping Long Hui directly. Light and shadow flickered across the surface of the stone in dense, rhythmic layers, but the frequency remained completely dead. Zero response.
What is going on out there?
His brow furrowing, Li Xuanxiao shifted to their private five-man squad channel, burning a manual text-alert into the network: "Long Hui, have you breached the perimeter? Status report."
The jade remained completely silent.
Not only was Long Hui unresponsive, but Lu Yixian and that other unfamiliar Void Realm senior who had been assigned to their flank were also completely off the grid.
A heavy, bad feeling instantly bloomed in Li Xuanxiao's gut. He glanced back at Liang Jianqiu, who was currently completely absorbed in an animated, high-amplitude technical debate with the Wenyuan Pavilion elders on how to anchor Li Xuanxiao's Buddhist eye-tech into standard spiritual tools.
Withdrawing his gaze, Li Xuanxiao turned toward Wu Jiangming and the old Daoist master, his expression turning entirely serious. "Immortal Master, Jiangming... I need to request a massive favor."
Meanwhile, in the high atmosphere roughly a thousand miles away from Niguang City, three humans and one towering humanoid Yao beast stood frozen in a deadly, high-voltage standoff.
Representing humanity were Long Hui, Lu Yixian, and the veteran Void Realm vanguard, Lü Lang.
Standing directly opposite them, radiating a suffocating, crackling pressure, was Bian Qing—a high-tier elite of the legendary Qilin Clan!
At this exact moment, Lü Lang's face was completely scorched black and withered, jagged arcs of wild, purple lightning snapping violently across his chest. His breathing was shallow and ragged; he was clearly severely injured, his baseline combat strength reduced to a mere fraction of its peak.
Long Hui and Lu Yixian were in noticeably better physical shape, though their grand robes were torn and covered in soot.
The ancient Qilin Clan was renowned across the upper realms for possessing an absolute mastery over innate Thunder Magic. In terms of raw destructive amplitude and blistering movement speed, they were a terrifying apex tier. Bian Qing had utilized a specialized 「Thunder Evasion」 technique to launch a sudden, logic-defying ambush from the clouds, aiming a lethal strike directly at Long Hui's throat!
At the absolute critical millisecond, it was Lü Lang who had thrown himself into the trajectory. The Ancient Martial Mystic Court operated strictly on a traditional master-disciple hierarchy; shielding their junior disciples and protecting the future of the sect was an ingrained, sacred duty.
However, Lü Lang had catastrophically underestimated the sheer, reality-warping voltage of a purebred Qilin's lightning. With a single, explosive contact, the thunderous currents had completely paralyzed his nervous system and thrown his internal Qi into violent, chaotic disarray. If Lu Yixian hadn't reacted with a brilliant blade art to force a separation, Lü Lang would have been turned to ash on the spot.
"Junior Brother Lü! Can you stabilize your meridians?!" Lu Yixian's eyebrows shot up. Keeping his weapon raised and his eyes locked onto Bian Qing, he anxiously threw a diagnostic glance toward his wounded comrade.
Lü Lang gasped for air, blood leaking from his lips. The residual damage of high-tier Thunder Magic was multifaceted; it didn't just cause superficial scorching and physical paralysis, it sent violent, frequency-disrupting tremors directly through the heart meridians. That single fist had effectively cost him half his life.
Yet, he merely gritted his teeth, stubbornly wiping the crimson foam from the corner of his mouth as he forced his posture straight. "I can still hold my weapon. Focus on the front."
Lu Yixian's expression turned utterly venomous, his voice laced with pure fury. "Our Mystic Court shares zero blood-feuds with the sovereign Qilin Clan! Why has Your Excellency crossed the regional borders to launch an unprovoked assault on a human scouting vanguard?!"
Bian Qing floated effortlessly in mid-air, dense webs of purple electricity dancing across its scaled forearms and flashing intermittently through its slitted pupils. It looked down at the trio with absolute, chilling indifference, slowly raising a single, clawed finger to point squarely at Long Hui.
"My target begins and ends with him."
Long Hui was completely, utterly baffled. With me?! What the hell do I have to do with the Qilin Clan?!
I haven't so much as stepped on a single lizard since I arrived in the North! Do I look like that suicidal lunatic Li Xuanxiao to you?!
Long Hui gritted his teeth, his face a perfect picture of profound helplessness and intense grievance. But the moment his internal rant touched upon a specific name, a sudden, blinding bolt of mental lightning fractured his brain.
Wait a minute...
Li. Xuan. Xiao.
...Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
Long Hui felt like he had just unearthed the ultimate, cosmic joke. It all lined up flawlessly. This high-tier Qilin monster hadn't crossed a thousand miles of territory for some random human disciple—it was hunting the person who had slaughtered their Lower Kingdom Demon Emperor and carried their bloodline mark! But because the tracking mark had been stripped by a Daoist master right around the time they breached the upper realm borders, the Qilin scouts had suffered a massive, catastrophic data error.
They had jumbled the profiles. They thought he was the killer!
Realizing he was taking the fall for a multi-million-point heist he didn't commit, Long Hui's blood pressure instantly skyrocketed into the stratosphere. Li Xuanxiao, you absolute heretical bastard! You've completely systematically ruined my life!
Beside him, Lu Yixian glanced at Long Hui's rapidly twitching face and froze for a fraction of a second. As a seasoned senior brother, his cognitive gears turned rapidly, and he arrived at the exact same conclusion almost simultaneously.
The so-called key to the problem was, in fact, the key to the problem.
Pah! Lu Yixian cursed internally. This Qilin was definitely looking for Li Xuanxiao. But the disciples of the Ancient Martial Mystic Court didn't possess a tradition of selling out their own teammates to cover their skin. Besides, a Qilin at the absolute Peak of the Void Realm was an apex monster—if they directed it toward Li Xuanxiao, the kid would be turned into a grease spot before he could even activate his system.
It would have been fine if Li Xuanxiao was currently cocooned beside a Supreme Realm guardian like Liang Jianqiu, but if he was isolated, running into this monster meant certain death. As a purebred bloodline descended from ancient divine beasts, a Qilin at the Peak of the Void Realm possessed raw biological stats that allowed it to match a standard human at the Early Stage of the Supreme Realm!
The two human vanguards immediately fell into a grim, unyielding silence.
Bian Qing naturally interpreted their refusal to speak as a tacit confirmation of guilt. Without a single word of warning, it detonated forward once more!
Instantly, the atmosphere was fractured by a succession of deafening thunderclaps. Bian Qing's silhouette transformed into a jagged streak of lightning that tore through the sky, instantly embedding itself directly in the center of the three humans.
One against three! The absolute, unbridled arrogance of the ancient beast tribes was displayed in its purest form.
Bian Qing clenched its fist, the muscles tightening as it punched directly toward Long Hui's chest:
「Thunder Fist · Purple Lightning」!
A concentrated sphere of volatile, crackling violet electricity erupted from its knuckles, packing enough concentrated, raw destruction to make the spatial fabric of the upper realm tremble.
Lu Yixian's expression turned incredibly grave. Stepping horizontally, he forcefully intercepted the trajectory, swinging his heavy blade with everything he had:
Void Rank Martial Art —「Raging Waves Severing the Sea」!
Standing firm against the storm, Lu Yixian's sword aura erupted like a collapsing mountain range meeting a roaring tsunami. The moment the art was unleashed, the blade-qi transformed into a sequence of angry, rolling crests, layers upon layers of steel shadows crashing forward like giant waves breaking against an ancient cliff face. The resulting gale howled through the canyons, tearing up stone and earth as if it truly possessed the conceptual authority to cleave an ocean in two.
Yet, despite the terrifying momentum of his own technique, Lu Yixian's internal thoughts remained incredibly grim.
Their tactical position was an absolute nightmare. Long Hui was merely at the Fourth Layer of the Heaven Realm; in a high-amplitude Void-level clash of this scale, the kid was functionally luggage. Meanwhile, Lü Lang might be a veteran at the Eighth Layer of the Void Realm, but his scorched meridians meant he was fighting on pure borrowed time.
Worse still, their communication jades had been completely fried by the high-frequency electromagnetic interference of Bian Qing's initial Thunder Evasion attack. This Qilin wasn't some mindless beast; it was highly trained, had mapped out their patrol routes perfectly, and knew exactly how to neutralize the communication protocols of the Mystic Court. It was deliberately denying them any opportunity to summon a rescue squad.
Right now, Lu Yixian had to rely entirely on his own blade to stall for time. He could only pray that an elite vanguard from the other Three Great Factions happened to cross this specific sector, or that Liang Jianqiu would notice their prolonged absence and trace their dead signals.
It was an incredibly passive, desperate gamble, but they had zero alternatives.
Stall! He had to burn his life force just to buy a few extra seconds!
The starlight blade-qi and the crackling purple fist collided in mid-air, unleashing an earth-shattering detonation that sent shockwaves rippling across a five-mile radius. Luck and lightning jumbled into a chaotic, blinding tempest.
But the gap in raw biological foundation was too vast. The seemingly invincible, roaring ocean of blade-qi held for a mere second before completely shattering into harmless sparks under the weight of the Qilin's thunder.
The power of ancient bloodline magic was absolute!
Lu Yixian's face darkened completely. Without a single millisecond of hesitation, he plunged his hand into his inner robes and whipped out his ultimate life-saving trump card.
It was an ancient, shimmering sword talisman—a pinnacle creation forged by the Grand Masters of Wenyuan Pavilion. Sealed within its delicate silk fibers was the unbridled, full-amplitude strike of a genuine Supreme Realm sovereign!
Lu Yixian flooded the artifact with his remaining Luck, violently snapping the talisman in half.
Instantly, the clouds above split open as an oppressive, apocalyptic sword pressure descended upon the earth!
A thousand miles away, the sudden, violent detonation of Supreme-level energy rippled across the horizon. Li Xuanxiao and Immortal Master Lingwuzi's heads snapped up at the exact same moment.
Exchanging a single, grim look, their figures blurred as they abandoned the city perimeter, rocketing toward the coordinate of the detonation at a speed that left the sound barrier shattered in their wake!