Chapter 55: This Is Not in the Same League

Ye Chen knew his own limits well enough; he had never imagined that his break with Ning Peachblossom would come so swiftly.

But when the opportunity arose, of course he could not let it slip by.

At that moment, within the Void Realm, Ye Chen shifted the gray-black current aside, causing it to miss Ning Peachblossom by the narrowest margin.

Unable to draw strength from it, Ning Peachblossom’s spirit visibly withered, and then that black flood dragon barreled in again with no sense of tact at all. It enraged Ning Peachblossom to the point that his three souls seemed ready to fly skyward and his seven apertures to pour out smoke. The killing intent in him surged almost beyond restraint, yet he had no choice but to bear it down.

Ning Peachblossom opened his mouth, but in the end he did not utter any more humiliating words. Since Ye Chen had gone this far, he must have made up his mind; not even nine oxen could drag him back. To hope for Ye Chen to change his mind was little short of a fantasy.

So Ning Peachblossom had no choice but to think of a way to resolve the present predicament. But how?

He had very little confidence, and, to make matters worse, Ye Chen would not give him much time.

With a thunderous boom, a vast and mysterious force flowed through the Void Realm. Threads of divine light surged and clashed, like an omnipresent blaze, turning into a river of scarlet that roared with waves of heat, becoming an indescribable force of destruction that shattered all things and brought ruin to everything it touched.

The rolling gray-black current was pierced by that inferno, then torn apart completely.

“You’re trying to wear down my strength?”

Ning Peachblossom felt his heart sink. That so-called gray-black current was the essence left behind after a peach branch had been shattered.

If Ning Peachblossom could obtain it, he would naturally be able to recover his vitality, and perhaps even borrow a moment of that mighty force to tear apart the restraints imposed by the Void Realm entirely, escaping this humiliating plight. All of that had been possible.

Alas, that peach branch had been destroyed by thunder, and less than one part in a hundred of its essence remained. Otherwise, how could Ning Peachblossom have been reduced to such disgrace?

“Could it be that my true body has already died? Must it really come to this?”

Resentment welled in Ning Peachblossom’s heart just as the black flood dragon lunged at him again.

“You wretched beast! Do you not even understand that grievances have their source and debts their owners?”

Ning Peachblossom was equally furious at the black flood dragon. It had no brain at all, yet insisted on coming to fight him to the death, infuriating him to the point of bursting.

“Could it simply be that the aura around me is fundamentally opposed to that black flood dragon?”

A flash of insight suddenly struck Ning Peachblossom, as though he had glimpsed the heart of the matter, but there was no time to think it through.

He saw the gray-black current rapidly being worn away, and then the Void Realm seemed to have swallowed some great tonic, swelling in an instant.

At the same time, the entire realm was shrouded in a hazy divine radiance, as though it had transformed into a vast sacred land.

Ye Chen’s pupils suddenly contracted.

In the void, a colossal hand, towering to the heavens, came slashing across.

With a deafening blast, Ning Peachblossom was sent flying at once. Countless peach blossoms fell away, blood streaming down with them. On the ground, threads of rich, crystalline radiance that had once been rooted there like vines entangled around an ancient tree, siphoning away its nourishment, now shattered outright, as though pale-white silken bands had been torn into pieces.

“So Ning Peachblossom really did interfere with it.”

Ye Chen stared at those crystalline threads, a shadow of gloom rising in his heart.

“What exactly are those crystalline threads?”

Ye Chen could feel a force of repulsion, a sense that those radiant filaments were wholly incompatible with him, and yet he had never seen them before.

How to put it? Those crystalline threads were like mist rising in white veils, yet they could sink their roots into the earth, causing Ye Chen to lose control over that patch of ground entirely.

One must know that the Void Realm should have been wholly under Ye Chen’s control, and yet authority over a single patch of earth had been stripped away.

If those crystalline filaments were allowed to spread and continue infecting the Void Realm, the consequences would be unimaginably terrible.

“The gray-black current was the peach-tree origin extracted from a peach branch. These crystalline threads, which resemble white mist, are most likely the same thing.”

Once the crystalline radiance was pulled free, the black flood dragon unexpectedly abandoned Ning Peachblossom for the moment and rushed to the front of the radiance. Opening its mouth, it swallowed the crystalline light in one gulp.

With a humming boom, the black flood dragon’s body swelled by a full circle. Yet in doing so, its ferocity diminished somewhat, and it became a little listless, no longer lunging at Ning Peachblossom with such impatience.

Ning Peachblossom’s expression was ugly. He gave a cold snort and said, “Do you think I did what I did simply so you could escape the fate of the seven-day doom?”

Ye Chen’s heart stirred. He had been preparing to continue his attack on Ning Peachblossom, for since matters had already come this far, there was clearly no turning back. Ye Chen understood all too well the wisdom of killing a snake and making sure it stayed dead.

But Ning Peachblossom was clever. He knew what aroused Ye Chen’s interest and deliberately seized upon that subject, clearly trying to buy time.

Even if Ye Chen could kill Ning Peachblossom, he had no way of obtaining Ning Peachblossom’s memories.

If Ye Chen possessed that kind of strength, then all would be well.

Some things, Ye Chen could not help caring about.

Seeing that Ye Chen did not strike immediately, Ning Peachblossom secretly breathed a sigh of relief. But the crisis had not yet been resolved; it would not be so easily resolved.

“Once I have the time, I’ll make you regret this.”

Ning Peachblossom’s heart was vicious, but on his face there remained a blooming smile, with not the faintest trace of malice to be seen.

Now Ye Chen finally understood why that black flood dragon’s hostility toward him had been so intense. It was not because he came from the old world, but because he had severed part of the fate of the Bamboo Tribe. That portion of fate had, it turned out, been closely linked to the black flood dragon.

That made sense. Although the black flood dragon came from the underworld, it was even less plausible that the people of the Bamboo Tribe knew nothing of it.

Those who had known the truth may well have died by now, but the figures who had once taken part in laying such a heaven-shaking scheme must have been the Bamboo Tribe’s upper echelon.

To reverse destiny, if one did not bind the black flood dragon to the fate of the Bamboo Tribe, would one not fear merely sewing a wedding robe for someone else?

Ye Chen fell silent for a moment before saying faintly, “You severed part of the Bamboo Tribe’s fate?”

“Yes. To put it plainly, the reason I cut away part of the Bamboo Tribe’s fate was for your sake.”

Those words made Ye Chen glance at him sideways.

“For my sake?”

Ye Chen could not comprehend such shamelessness.

“That’s right. You, for Dream Butterfly, how are you meant to defy heaven and change your fate? If you want to escape the seven-day doom, then barring some accident, you would naturally end in failure.”

“Because you yourself are not favored by heaven’s will, while Dream Butterfly has a mysterious origin and an extraordinary destiny. In ordinary circumstances, you would die without question. But if one could borrow a portion of fate to reverse your destiny, then it might not be impossible.”

Ye Chen’s mind was somewhat unsettled. Was what Ning Peachblossom said true or false?

“If you possess such a method, you could have used it on yourself.”

Indeed, that was the logic of it.

Ye Chen knew his own limits well enough. He was no one’s beloved darling of heaven and earth. For the other party to do this without cause or reason, the stakes had to be enormous.

“You think I never tried?”

Ning Peachblossom said in a deep voice, “Besides, the difficulty of reversing fate for you and the difficulty of reversing fate for me are not remotely the same thing.”

“At the time, you had not even truly set foot on the path of cultivation. Reversing your destiny was hardly all that difficult.”

“The difficulty lay instead in cutting away part of the Bamboo Tribe’s fate, and how to make one thing stand in for another.”