Ghost Immortal

It possesses neither spiritual power nor magical arts, only the brute strength of a Golden Core stage demon's physical body.

But it was this brute force that made Zhang Xuanye show a serious expression for the first time.

Zhang Xuanye raised his hand and set up six layers of black light shield in front of him.

Each layer of the light shield is formed from pure primordial spirit power, making it far more sturdy than steel.

The peak collided with the first layer of light shield, and the light shield shattered instantly.

After smashing through five layers of light shields, Gao Feng's momentum finally slowed down slightly.

The sixth layer of light shield deformed violently under his impact, and its surface was covered with spiderweb-like cracks.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Zhang Xuanye took three steps back, made a sword incantation with his right hand, and touched the incantation with his left hand.

A three-foot-long black lightsaber materialized at his fingertips, its blade writhing and thrashing with countless tiny vengeful spirits.

He swung his sword and slashed at Gao Feng's neck.

The speed of this sword strike was so fast that it was invisible to the naked eye; even the air was cut open by the blade, leaving behind a semi-transparent sword mark.

Gao Feng did not dodge.

He raised his left arm directly, using his forearm covered in iron-gray scales to take the sword head-on.

"clang!"

The lightsaber struck the scales, producing a crisp metallic clang.

A deep crack was cut into the scale, and dark golden blood seeped from the edge of the crack.

However, the sword only managed to cut in half an inch before being forcibly blocked by the demonic energy, preventing it from penetrating any further.

Gao Feng formed a claw with his five fingers on his right hand, and the ghostly flames at his fingertips condensed into five fire blades.

Five fiery blades rose from below, aiming to grab Zhang Xuanye's chest and abdomen.

This claw strike was also extremely fast. Zhang Xuanye didn't have time to retract his sword and block, so he could only lean back to barely avoid the direct hit of the fire blade.

But the tip of the fire blade still grazed his chest, leaving five charred burn marks on his fair skin.

A ghostly green flame ignited at the edge of the burn mark, spreading along the skin and deep into the muscle.

Zhang Xuanye snorted coldly, and the skin on his chest split open automatically, peeling off the piece of flesh stained with ghost fire.

The detached skin and flesh were burned to ashes by the ghost fire in mid-air, and new skin grew back at a speed visible to the naked eye, restoring the skin to its original state in less than three breaths.

"Netherworld Ghost Fire, a demon in the Golden Core stage."

Zhang Xuanye looked down at the newly grown skin on his chest, utterly astonished.

"I've been hiding underground for two hundred years, never expecting such a figure to emerge outside. Young Taoist, what's your name?"

"Li Feng".

Li Feng stood behind Gao Feng, and the Netherworld Ghost Flame in his right hand had already been fully condensed.

"Li Feng".

Zhang Xuanye read the name aloud and nodded.

"Good name, I'll remember it. If you die by my hand today, I will carve your name on the core of the formation so that future generations will know that there was once a Taoist named Li Feng who almost ruined my two-hundred-year-old plan."

He sheathed his lightsaber and formed complex hand seals in front of his chest.

As soon as the hand seal was formed, the entire valley space trembled.

The five layers of light shield shattered by the peak, the fragments suspended in mid-air, actually recombine into an even larger array pattern.

It's not a pentagram, but an upside-down giant tree.

The roots of the giant tree are embedded in the void, and its canopy hangs down, covering the entire valley.

Each leaf is formed from pure primordial spirit power, and is covered with dense runes.

The branches of the giant tree extended from its canopy, like countless tentacles reaching out to entwine the five people.

"This is the highest secret method of the Zhengyi Sect, the Upside-Down Bodhi."

Lei Jian's face turned deathly pale.

"Back then, Sect Leader Zhang Xuanqing used this technique atop Yinshan Mountain, single-handedly trapping three ten-thousand-year-old Corpse Kings for three days and three nights without being at a disadvantage. Zhang Xuanye actually learned his master's ultimate skill!"

The branches of the giant tree wrapped around Gao Feng's legs and arms.

Gao Feng roared and struggled to break free, but as soon as he tore off one branch, three more tangled around him.

The branches are imbued with the power of the primordial spirit, and each time they are tightly bound, they absorb the demonic energy within Gao Feng's body and transform it into fuel for the grand formation.

The more Gao Feng struggled, the more demonic energy he lost.

"it's useless."

Zhang Xuanye's figure merged into the trunk of the giant tree, and his voice came from all directions.

"The upside-down Bodhi's ability to absorb all spiritual energy is the nemesis of demonic energy. No matter how strong your demonic energy is, it cannot surpass the primordial spirit power that I have accumulated over two hundred years."

Li Feng saw that Gao Feng's struggles were becoming increasingly futile.

The iron-gray scales covering his entire body were dull, and the dark gold patterns along the edges of the scales were fading.

The ghostly flames were still burning on his body, but the flames grew weaker and weaker, gradually fading from a ghostly green to a pale green, and then to an almost transparent white.

If this continues, the peak will be completely drained.

Li Feng took a deep breath and made the boldest decision of his life.

He withdrew the Netherworld Ghost Fire, sank all his spiritual power into his dantian, and poured it into the end of his ten-inch spiritual root.

At the tip of the spiritual root, the origin of the Netherworld Fire was fully activated.

This time, instead of releasing the ghost fire, he ignited his own spiritual root.

Spiritual roots are the foundation of a cultivator and the bridge connecting the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.

Once the spiritual root is ignited, cultivation level will increase several times in a short period of time.

However, the spirit itself will also be burned by the flames, at best losing all its cultivation, and at worst being reduced to ashes on the spot.

As Li Feng ignited his spiritual root, he pulled out the last item from his pocket: a shard of broken porcelain from the bald old man.

The blue patterns on the porcelain shards are the same as the soul-suppressing talismans pasted on the Ghost King's coffin.

He never knew the specific purpose of the porcelain shard, but he knew that it could suppress the zombie king's actions.

If something can suppress even the Zombie King, will it also have an effect on Zhang Xuanye's primordial spirit?

He infused the burning spiritual energy into the broken porcelain shards.

The broken porcelain shards immediately began to vibrate violently, and the blue patterns on their surface shone with a dazzling light.

The patterns rise from the surface of the porcelain shards and intertwine in the air to form a huge runic pattern.

The image features a vertically oriented eye.

It looks exactly like the eye that was previously pieced together on the map, but it's hundreds of times larger.

A single word was clearly written in the pupil of his eye.

"mountain elf."

The moment the vertical eye appeared, Zhang Xuanye tensed up instantly.

His voice came from within the giant tree, filled with horror: "Impossible! How could you have the eyes of a demon?!"

"Chi" is the core of the Corpse-Dissolving Immortal, a remnant of the immortal's molted body left behind by the ancient Fangxian Dao.

Zhang Xuanye waited two hundred years to find the demon and complete the final step of achieving immortality through corpse liberation.

He originally thought that the demon was in some unknown secret realm, and that its location could only be sensed after the Five Elements Guiding Array was fully activated.

But now, it's right in front of him.

It was the broken piece of porcelain in Li Feng's hand.

No, to be precise, the broken porcelain shards themselves are part of the demon.

The Chi is not an ordinary porcelain shard, but a complete porcelain piece that was broken in ancient times and its fragments were scattered in various places.

Each fragment contains the primordial power of the demon, and the one in Li Feng's hand happens to be the most core component of the demon—its eye.

"So you've been carrying it with you all along."

Zhang Xuanye was overjoyed.

"I've been searching for it for two hundred years, turning over every inch of land within a hundred miles of Qingyan City. I even set up a Five Elements Guiding Array to sense its aura, but I never imagined it would have been hiding right under my nose all along!"

Zhang Xuanye's figure burst out from the giant tree and pounced towards Li Feng.

His speed was so fast that he left no afterimage.

He teleported directly from the trunk of the giant tree to in front of Li Feng.

But there was someone who was faster than him.

That is Gu Zhenren.

Gu Zhenren had been accumulating power the moment Li Feng ignited his spiritual root.

He poured all the remaining Gu energy into his natal Gu core, which swelled up in his abdominal cavity, almost bursting his stomach.

The moment Zhang Xuanye burst out of the giant tree, he also made his move.

Instead of attacking Zhang Xuanye, he lunged directly at the Eye of the Demon hovering in the air.

"You want to use the demon to achieve immortality through corpse liberation?"

Gu Zhenren's face was distorted and terrifying by the green light of the Gu Pill. He laughed loudly, his laughter filled with all the resentment and unwillingness that had accumulated over two hundred years.

"Then I'll make sure you never get it!"

He opened his mouth and spat out his natal Gu core from his throat.

The Gu Dan traced a green arc in the air and struck the surface of the Chi Eye.

The moment the Gu Dan touched the Eye of the Demon, all the Gu Qi was released, transforming into a dark green cocoon of light that enveloped the Eye of the Demon.

The Gu Qi of Gu Zhenren is the Yin Sha Gu Qi of the Taiyin Destiny, which is of the same origin as the Yin Si Yuan Yuan Power of the Chi Zhi Yan.

After the cocoon of light enveloped the demon's eye, it began to spin wildly.

The rotation speed increased rapidly, until the naked eye could only see a blurry, dark green sphere of light.

"stop!"

Zhang Xuanye roared and slapped Gu Zhenren with his palm.

This palm strike contained the full power of a Nascent Soul cultivator. The palm wind plowed a three-foot-deep trench in the ground, and the rubble on both sides of the trench was crushed into dust by the palm wind.

Gu Zhenren didn't dodge; he couldn't dodge it anyway.

He simply turned his head, looked at Li Feng, and used his last strength to say four words.

"Avenge me!"

Zhang Xuanye's palm instantly struck Gu Zhenren's chest.

Gu Zhenren's chest cavity collapsed on the spot, all his ribs broke, and the broken bone fragments pierced his heart and lungs.

His body flew out like a kite with a broken string, crashing into a pile of rubble several dozen feet away, creating a deep, human-shaped crater.

But just as Zhang Xuanye's palm struck Gu Zhenren...

The dark green cocoon of light on the surface of the demon's eye finally stopped rotating.

The cocoon of light collapsed from the outside in, and then exploded with a bang after collapsing to its limit.

What exploded was not shattered porcelain, but extremely pure Yin-Yang primordial power.

The force of the exploding cocoon sent Zhang Xuanye flying.

He tumbled several times in the air before he could barely regain his balance.

Looking down, he saw that the skin on his chest had been blown up, revealing his white sternum underneath.

The sternum was covered with cracks, and at the broken ends of several ribs, there were still traces of dark green Gu Qi, which continued to corrode the surface of the bones.

After the demon's eye disappeared, a black hole the size of a fist was left in the air.

The edge of the black hole shimmered with a dark purple light, and an extremely distant echo emanated from within, as if something was calling out from the other side of the black hole.

The Five Elements Guiding Array sensed the disappearance of the Eye of the Demon, and all the array nodes simultaneously emitted piercing, strange noises.

The branches of the upside-down Bodhi tree withered, and the runes on its leaves went out one by one.

The fog barrier surrounding the valley also collapsed, revealing the true mountain forest landscape outside.

But Zhang Xuanye became even more excited.

"The offerings for the Five Elements and Five Hells are all within the formation; the formation has long been saturated with resentment. Even if the demon is destroyed, its physical fragments remain. I can use my own primordial spirit to fill the formation's core!"

He spread his arms, and a large amount of black primordial spirit power surged from the wound on his chest.

The power of his primordial spirit condensed into a huge phantom behind him.

Unlike the previous fog giant, this phantom is his real appearance.

The phantom was ten zhang tall, entirely black except for its blood-red eyes, and looked down at the group of people in the valley.

The primordial spirit and true form.

Zhang Xuanye completely exposed his primordial spirit, using it as a guide to forcibly activate the Five Elements Guiding Array, the final step.

The earthy yellow mist within the formation spun wildly, forming a massive vortex.

The vortex generated an extremely strong suction force, drawing in all the resentment, spiritual energy, and even the life force of the living within the formation.

Qiu Sheng was the first to give up; his spiritual power was the weakest, and his life force was drained away by the vortex the fastest.

Her skin dried out at a visible rate, her lips cracked, her eye sockets sunken, and she looked like she had aged ten years in an instant.

He mustered all his strength to plant the iron whisk in the ground, gripping the handle tightly with both hands to avoid being sucked into the vortex.