Volume One, Chapter 81: A Gem in the Coal Ash

“What do you want?”
Zhang Xuewen pulled Li Xuan behind him, his gaze burning as he stared at Li Ming and the others, fists tightly clenched.

“Why are you disobeying again?”
Tantai Tu truly lived up to his title as the Young Prince. This victory celebration had cost him no small effort. The guests crowded in like clouds, and of course, no one dared come empty-handed.

Looking left and right at two doors that seemed identical, Zhou Yi, by habit, chose the one on the right. But when he approached the glass door and peeked inside, the scene made him freeze in astonishment.

Nero watched as the bagheaded creature, karate-chopping its way forward, moved away from him and tried to approach Takashi Furui instead. He thought to himself: back in Fortuna, these bagheaded monsters would never voluntarily come near him. Now that the demon inside him was fully awakened, these lesser demons were even less likely to seek trouble with him.

Liu Feng hadn’t expected Sun Shangxiang and Zhou Zi to stoop to such lows, but with things having come to this, he couldn’t very well run around explaining himself. He could only accept his bad luck.

Suddenly, white motes of light shot out from Sang Kui and, at the sound of her voice, flew into the bodies of the kneeling stone figures. Gradually, they began to glow brighter and brighter, until each one transformed into a kneeling figure of pure white light.

Meanwhile, Gao Qian had already obtained the coordinates for the Sea King Realm where Lotus resided. From his analysis, it was on the other side of the world that contained the Sea King Realm’s coordinates—a mirror image, much like the digital world’s setting, where the world of the Great Treasure was the surface, and the Sea King Realm was the “inside” like the digital world’s reverse.

She was calculating: if the Marquis of Huaiyang’s estate could help Consort Zhao bear a prince, it would be a great achievement. Then there’d be no place for Zongzheng Sheng and Duanmu Huan. The Xu family was thin in numbers, and the Marquis of Huaiyang’s house would be Consort Zhao’s main support.

“This time I don’t believe you can still survive, that you can still survive…” Lu Liusu’s features twisted and contorted with malice.

Hearing this, Zhou Yi was taken aback and quickly inquired about the details. With Cai Xia’s explanations, he finally understood the other party’s reasoning.

Fibers sharp enough to cut steel only managed to embed themselves in the wild beast’s muscle—they couldn’t sever his arm.

Shao Heng’s expression changed at once, but before he could say anything, Xuan Ying returned from outside and interrupted him.

But at that moment, a light as pure as the blue sky enveloped both himself and Ning Qingyun, shielding them from all wind and rain.

With a heavy breath, two sharp claws suddenly thrust from the black mist, one to the left, one to the right, tearing apart the thick darkness as if breaking out of a cocoon.

“Sounds pretty good,” Li Yunchen nodded in satisfaction, thinking that the Alchemical Codex was indeed worth a visit.

He was no longer the man he once was. The pressure of a Golden Core cultivator unconsciously radiated with his anger, surrounding Jiang Shi with an overwhelming force that left his face pale and his breath short.

In his limited understanding of cultivation, he had never heard of a practitioner losing contact with their star lamp. For anyone who had ignited their star, unless they died, the lamp would remain lit, never losing its connection to its master.

Before the venomous toad with jade-green eyes could react, Lin Tianxuan swiftly struck first, raising his sword and slashing at the nearby Nethergrass.

Was that disciple negligent? But even if he had devoted himself, he couldn’t have claimed the top spot. Tai Chuan Sect’s meteoric rise depended entirely on Mi Dou’s contribution—everyone knew it. Bai Cailiang still tried to push someone else’s merit, but Mi Dou simply tossed him a fat bribe to shut him up.

Since the founding of Feather Transformation Sect, upon the awakening of the path to cultivation, it had weathered countless cycles of calamity and chaos, yet never once fallen.