Chapter 326: Grand Spectacle

Seeing the spell finally reach the last bearer, Feng Xue didn't wait for the signal below—he already pulled out the Spirit-Command Talisman, fearing he might release it too slowly!

The white-bearded old master at the final station, seeing Feng Xue move smoothly, spared the effort to warn him, reached out, seized the wooden mallet from the altar, struck two bronze gongs and one ritual drum—the sounds were not loud, yet carried a mysterious rhythm.

At this stage of the spell relay, human control was impossible—but since the cultivators hadn't fled, they clearly had their own method.

For instance, this old master employed the technique of drawing upon natural forces; it sounded strange, so put another way—he drew upon the scattered pure qi within nature.

As the saying goes: the clear rises, the turbid sinks; what enters the earth is earthly yin, what lingers in the sky is heavenly yang.

Without the realm of a Grand Master, one's spiritual sense couldn't even withstand the gale winds from the nine heavens, let alone harness yang qi.

But the pure qi slightly below yang qi, closer to the earth than the realm of the Void Spirit, was already sufficient.

The old master regarded this incomprehensible spell as a chaotic, unmixed yet sharply defined, rigorously ordered mass of pure qi—he scattered his own spiritual power into countless nodes, using the ritual drum and bronze gongs as commands, like cultivating trusted officers who then commanded their soldiers, firmly controlling the entire spell.

He silently chanted military orders, his ritual drum beating faster and faster, while the bronze gongs slowed ever more—gradually shifting from ritual rhythm to the war-drum cadence of battlefield encouragement.

Amid this vibration, his spiritual power finally completed the ritual weave, granting the final link to the spiritual energy spheres gathered from the cultivators—each sphere containing their most prized spells, ranging from barely worthy of the Dao to Grand Master level.

Then…

"Go!"

His spiritual power acted like a vanguard scout, forging a path between the Yatagarasu and the altar; from the outside, a radiant sphere no more than one meter in radius shot along the spiritual track toward the Yatagarasu.

Its speed was neither fast nor slow, its spectacle neither grand nor loud—like a firework yet to burst, its only effect was the fiery glow from its flame-color reaction.

Feng Xue, already hundreds of meters away, showed no sign of stopping—he dared not use teleportation spells, fearing some elder had embedded anti-transportation rituals into the spell.

About two seconds later, Feng Xue reached the ruined harbor, taking in the shattered Dragon King Temple in full view.

From this distance, the eighty-meter-tall Yatagarasu had just finished turning around—and the sphere finally exploded, like a belated New Year firework.

No, "exploded" wasn't precise—it wasn't the kind of firecracker Feng Xue imagined, bursting on contact.

At the instant it touched the Yatagarasu, a frigid mist instantly spread; the first spell woven was an ice-sealing incantation, weak alone, but after repeated injections of spiritual power, it instantly coated the Yatagarasu's eighty-meter body in a shell of ice.

Black chains surged from the sphere, spreading across the ice shell; the spell was so intricate it inspired awe—each chain, upon close inspection, was composed of individual characters.

As if a consensus for dealing with such large demons, the next several ritual incantations were also sealing-focused; layer upon layer of net-like structures wrapped the Yatagarasu—but just as Feng Xue thought the beast was finally sealed, the spell changed.

As if struck by a sledgehammer or twisted by a gale, the Yatagarasu, now resembling a colossal statue, suddenly began to violently tremble, a piercing "crack-crack" sound erupting—Feng Xue's face darkened instantly—

"Does this guy have any sense of physics?! Doesn't he know water can't be compressed?!"

Before the thought finished, the Yatagarasu shattered instantly—the ice shards began to explode outward—but as if someone had hit rewind at the moment of explosion, the ejected ice fragments were suddenly drawn inward, collapsing toward the spell's center, coalescing into a brilliant, transparent ice sphere.

The ice-blue hue turned translucent, then an orange-red glow spread from the center, like dye frozen inside slowly seeping outward, gradually twisting the freezing blue.

A piercing "squeal" made eardrums ache; seawater that should have vaporized from the heat emitted only faint hisses.

Only now did some quick-witted cultivators realize what they'd done—they hastily summoned spirit ghosts, summoned clear winds, or simply threw handfuls of sand or yellow earth, performing the most basic earth-dodging technique.

Bai Yi, a demon who didn't understand spells, saw this and knew the cultivators had gone too far—she instantly reverted to her true form, activated her innate spiritual power, and shot away like a streak of lightning.

She had no direction—she only knew she must get as far from the ice sphere as possible—and the sphere was still shrinking, expanding, heating up.

There was no choice: at first, the added spells had room to spare, but as time passed, the spell grew more complex, leaving fewer opportunities to add new rituals.

Like a painting relay, the first few strokes had the most freedom—but after three or four passes, all that remained were minor refinements: clothing, color, background.

To increase a spell's power, there's only compression and expansion—and everyone was fiercely competitive, cramming in their ultimate techniques to amplify power.

Water, incompressible, formed the core—constantly sealed, compressed, heated, layered with sealing arrays—until finally, a streak of starlight ignited at the sphere's center.

The greatest sound is silent, the greatest form has no shape—in that instant, everyone who looked toward the spell lost their sight; all they saw was blinding white, accompanied by rolling heatwaves and currents strong enough to fling even a hundred-ton king into the air.

The terrifying shockwave hurled Feng Xue, weightless in midair, far away—and from the coastline, the sea surged into a colossal wave.

The wave rose higher and higher, until it collided with the tsunami summoned by the Yatagarasu; the nascent tsunami, powerless before this wave, was slammed back upon itself, churning into successive layers of surging tides, pushing back toward the distant shore.

Oddly, this explosion didn't trigger a major earthquake—some disaster was spared—but the heated winds still turned the harbor city's winter into a scorching summer.

The cold-hot convection instantly formed dense clouds, followed by hail falling from the sky.

Fortunately, several Grand Masters in the harbor city had already set up altars; though they hadn't awaited the demon god, they'd just managed to raise a barrier to shield against this bizarre "natural disaster"…

(End of Chapter)