"Aiyh, so we still ended up here in the end."

Chun Yangzi, who stood some distance behind Wang Sheng, folded his arms. Even though he was part of the battle, he looked more like an outsider as he watched the surging black smoke swallow Feng Jiu whole, his gaze carrying a trace of complicated emotion.

Why do villains love using black smoke? Are they trying to make themselves look more evil?

The sharp cries of swords rang through the air one after another, forcing Chun Yangzi to suppress his wandering thoughts. He watched as Wang Sheng raised his sword and tore through the sky, charging straight into the darkness without the slightest hesitation.

Every time Chun Yangzi remembered that a small part of his own legacy, the Pure Yang Sword Intent, existed within the sword cultivator before him, a deep sense of satisfaction rose in his heart. At the very least, he had played a part in an event that would shake heaven and earth.

Inside the black smoke, the Great Dao trembled as heaven and earth cracked apart. The space within had practically formed a small world of its own. The Immortal Emperor's—no, Feng Jiu's Great Dao had expanded into an entire domain. That feat alone was already beyond anything Chun Yangzi could hope to achieve.

Concern for Wang Sheng quietly rose in his heart. Very soon, he realized he was far from the only one worried.

The first to rush forward was Erlang, whom the Immortal Emperor had once deeply valued. Haotian had even once considered entrusting him with the military authority of the Heavenly Court. His spear swept out like a dazzling galaxy, forcing back Feng Jiu's subordinates who tried to stop him.

"Let him through!"

Feng Jiu's instruction echoed from within the endless black smoke. Erlang tore through the layered domain, and for a fleeting instant, Wang Sheng flashed into view.

The sword cultivator swung his sword and thrust it. The attack itself was simple, yet in Wang Sheng's hands, Spiritless seemed capable of splitting apart heaven and earth, severing time itself, and even cutting through the Great Dao of Causality. Boundless power surged from the sword as it swept across all creation, the sword tip pointed straight at Feng Jiu.

Feng Jiu was in a long crimson dress, her beautiful face cold and imposing. At that moment, she carried an overwhelming dominance that seemed to place her above all living beings. A single glance from her was enough to strip others of the will to fight back.

She raised her right hand, and a dazzling longsword woven from seven-colored flames condensed within her grasp. The blade radiated terrifying sharpness.

The moment Erlang joined the fight, the trio vanished in a blur, and an earthshaking battle erupted somewhere deep within space.

Feng Jiu snorted coldly as she spun. The black smoke transformed into nothingness, and a massive black sphere appeared in the sky above the Nether Realm. It had no pulling force at all, yet it devoured every gaze and line of sight directed toward it.

The three experts were trapped inside. Judging from the violent fluctuations of the Great Dao, the battle within was undoubtedly fierce beyond imagination.

As his forefather, how exactly can I even help?

Chun Yangzi crossed his arms and recalled the path he had walked throughout his life. Back when the Heavenly Court flourished, rising stars like him had been spirited and dazzling figures. Once it declined, he became little more than a wandering rogue drifting across the world.

Fortunately, he had never cared much about any of that. He still wandered through endless fields of beauty without letting himself become attached.

Who cares about immortality, godhood, boundless divine abilities, and supreme power? None of those compares to my beloved's company and the rustle of her flowing skirts—

"They've already started fighting! What are you still daydreaming about?!" Zhi bing softly complained beside him.

Chun Yangzi looked up, a faint smile appearing on his face. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

The woman before him had made the wandering rogue willingly settle down beside her. Even now, he still felt she was like a hidden treasury or a Daoist Canon with endless mysteries waiting to be uncovered. She was a truly remarkable woman.

Battles had already erupted everywhere. He truly could not afford to linger on the sidelines any longer.

Chun Yangzi stored away the bronze treasure box hidden within his sleeve. Although he still had no idea what it actually did, he had a strange feeling that the item inside would cause something unexpected today.

Around Zhi Bing, one icy, treasured artifact after another condensed into existence. A frozen river spread beneath her feet as she instantly locked onto several enemy experts.

Chun Yangzi chuckled softly and casually summoned a longsword into his hand before advancing with Zhi Bing like a pair of companions traveling side by side. He showed not the slightest sense of tension. On the contrary, he even found time to observe the major experts on their side.

Closest to the black sphere, Qinghua seemed dissatisfied at being looked down upon. Unable to enter Feng Jiu's domain, he fought fiercely against his old rival, the Black Emperor, and seven or eight of Feng Jiu's core subordinates.

The Great Dao of Death was tyrannical and profound, yet it also had a strange and indescribable beauty.

Life existed because death did. Without death, the meaning of life itself would become hollow and eventually fade away. Life and death stood in opposition, yet they also relied on and birthed one another. That was the true meaning of yin and yang.

Chun Yangzi's own Great Dao of Pure Yang pursued the ultimate extreme, yet it also resembled the intertwined yin-yang fish, where yin and yang gave birth to each other, where each contained part of the other. Yin within yang, yang within yin. Mutual balance, with pure yang as the exterior and a point of yin hidden within.

He closed his eyes and sensed the countless Great Daos blooming within the narrow world of the Nether Realm. Guiding the Dao of Pure Yang through heaven and earth, he moved freely across the battlefield.

Two Grand Dao Golden Immortals intercepted him. Just as Zhi Bing was about to raise her hand and suppress them with a kingdom of frost, Chun Yangzi suddenly accelerated. He turned into a streak of white light and vanished from beside her.

The Pure Yang Sword Intent balanced softness and hardness together, painting yin through yang.

The white figure flickered lightly through the air with the grace of drifting feathers, yet the two Grand Dao Golden Immortals reacted as if they were facing a deadly enemy. One unleashed endless heavenly fire that looked capable of burning the entire Nether Realm to ashes, while the other summoned streams of green astral wind sharp enough to wound even Golden Immortals upon contact and damage their Primordial Spirits.

Chun Yangzi, dressed in flowing white robes, moved like a phantom. He slipped past them in an instant and appeared right behind them, his left hand resting behind his back as he strolled forward through empty space with sword in hand.

The surrounding world fell silent.

The two Grand Dao Golden Immortals remained frozen where they stood, their eyes wide open as an indescribable white radiance reflected within their pupils.

Chun Yangzi turned the immortal sword in his hand slightly. Countless afterimages suddenly appeared behind him as dazzling sword radiance gathered into a blinding light that pierced through his two targets and swallowed them whole, leaving nothing behind.

What a pity. Fei Yu still never managed to reach the true pinnacle of the Pure Yang Sword Intent.

Smiling, Chun Yangzi shook his head before turning sharply through the air. A Great Dao linked itself to Zhi Bing and guided her movements while he himself charged straight into the area where the enemy experts were gathered most densely.

The fierce nature of Pure Yang shocked immortals. Chun Yangzi's sudden burst of power could be considered an unexpected eruption, one that made it seem as though Earth's cultivation world had countless hidden experts.

Compared to him, the experts whom Feng Jiu had nurtured were clearly lacking in actual combat. Many of them had relied on various methods to forcefully raise their Daoist realm. They could not compare to people like the Pure Yang Sword Immortal or True Lord Erlang, who had truly risen step by step after the fall of the Ancient Era and the Heavenly Court.

Even though they held the advantage in numbers, their actual combat strength was far from overwhelming. Hence, some of the people on Wang Sheng's side each successfully held off many opponents at once across the battlefield.

A full-scale war had not yet erupted. Right now, only the experts of Earth's cultivation world were fighting against Feng Jiu's selected subordinates.

The strongest forces within the Nether Realm were those who had previously gathered at Fengdu City for the King of Hell selection, along with the unaffiliated practitioners whom Feng Jiu had brought to surround the city.

Most of the famous figures from the Immortal Saint Realm and the four great sky regions were merely watching from the sidelines.

The longer one lived, the fainter the distinction between right and wrong became. Right now, they were waiting for the core battles to reach an outcome.

If Feng Jiu won, they would reluctantly lower their heads for now and look for a chance to leave later.

If Qinghua's side emerged victorious, they would naturally rally to the cause, join the campaign against the devil from beyond the domain, and then transform into defenders of righteousness protecting the world's righteous qi.

Great righteousness and reputation meant nothing compared to staying alive. That was the reality of the Immortal Saint Realm.

Naturally, there were still hot-blooded figures among these experts, but the overwhelming majority chose to observe in silence.

In comparison, the factions under Feng Jiu had already started slowly retreating. Most people deceived into joining Feng Jiu still had some kind of dream or belief in their hearts.

Still, none of them dared move recklessly. The direct forces under Feng Jiu were terrifying enough to keep everyone intimidated.

The battle went on.

No one outside the black sphere could see what was happening within, but everyone could sense the horrifying clash unfolding there.

The laws of the Nether Realm had practically fallen into chaos.

Around the black sphere, the great figures of the Ancient Era once again displayed their brilliance. Among them, Qinghua stood out above all. Despite facing numerous enemies alone, he completely dominated them. His long hair danced wildly around him as black shadows of death circled him. With one palm strike, he could sever the life veins of heaven and earth, and with one punch, he could shatter countless celestial bodies.

He had already heavily injured several experts. One among them had even been absorbed into his coffin and refined into incomparably pure primal qi, allowing his strength to rise yet another level.

Xu Zhongliang led over a dozen veteran Star Deities in a chaotic battle to the left of the black sphere.

That battlefield was the most disorderly and fiercely contested area of all. No victor would emerge anytime soon, and other battlefields would inevitably influence the outcome there.

Chun Yangzi, whose sudden rise and astonishing combat strength had already drawn repeated glances from many female immortals, could be one of those elements.

There was also Mu Wanxuan, who had openly rebuked Feng Jiu moments earlier. Like the splendor of heaven and earth itself, she had left a deep impression on everyone.

Her fusion with the Great Dao of Life was already 99% complete. Although she had not reached perfect completion, with guidance from Qinghua, she could already unleash its full power.

Right now, she faced dozens of Grand Dao Golden Immortals and Golden Immortals alone. Though none among them were truly famous powerhouses, their combined strength was still terrifying.

They had not intentionally gathered to attack Mu Wanxuan, though. The Great Dao of Life itself had simply dragged them back and forced them to deal with her divine abilities.

Among everyone present, Mu Wanxuan was probably fighting the most comfortably.

At the start of the battle, she took out a pack of carefully nurtured seeds and scattered them through the Great Dao of Life. In moments, a dense forest rose around her from thin air and formed a natural restricting array.

Hidden within the forest, she continuously sent countless vines outward. Imbued with the Great Dao of Life, they could detain living beings themselves. She fought with remarkable ease, capturing dozens of experts and sealing them within the array in mere moments.

Unfortunately, while the Great Dao of Life possessed endless profundity, it didn't have enough power to kill. Mu Wanxuan could only trap enemies for now; she had no means of quickly ending the experts inside the array.

The Great Dao of Life itself had many limitations. It was one of the drawbacks of dedicating oneself entirely to it and spending ten thousand years mastering divine abilities.

The battle grew increasingly intense. Bloody light burst across the battlefield as experts from both sides fell one after another, though the losses Feng Jiu's side suffered were especially severe.

"What are you all still waiting for?!" Feng Jiu furiously and coldly shouted from inside the pitch-black spherical domain. "Attack! Kill every last rebel here! This world still belongs to us!"

War drums thundered from Feng Jiu's array as countless people surged forward from every direction.

In the middle of the battle, Xu Zhongliang laughed softly. His voice spread everywhere through the resonance of the Great Dao.

"So you're getting anxious now? Looks like Fei Yu and True Lord Erlang are doing pretty well in there."

That single sentence caused most cultivators on Feng Jiu's side to hesitate once more. He was now putting his schemes on full display.

In one corner of Feng Jiu's army, Shi Qianzhang wiggled his eyebrows and asked through voice transmission, "Yo, should we take the lead in switching sides?"

The cultivators from Earth around him all appeared to hesitate.

"Not yet. Wait a little longer," Huai Jing transmitted back. "There are too few of us. We have to make our move at the critical moment and turn the tide with minimal force. Honestly, the most important battle today is still the one inside that black sphere. Everything depends on Fei Yu and True Lord Erlang."

The Daoist elders, Daoist masters, and instructors all nodded deeply in agreement. They all wished they had some device capable of recording this scene.

Sadly, their gadgets had all run out of battery long ago.