Chapter 351: 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 Daoist at the final station, seeing Feng Xue move smoothly, spared the effort to warn him, reached for the wooden mallet on the altar, struck two bronze gongs and one ritual drum—the sounds were quiet, 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 Daoist employed the technique of drawing upon natural forces—strange as it sounded, it was simply harnessing 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 awareness couldn’t even withstand the gale winds of 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 more than sufficient.

The old Daoist regarded this incomprehensible spell as a chaotic yet sharply defined mass of pure qi, dispersing his own spiritual power into countless nodes, using the drum and gongs as commands—like cultivating trusted officers who then commanded their soldiers—to firmly control the entire spell.

He silently chanted military orders, striking the drum faster and faster, while the gongs slowed, shifting gradually from ritual rhythm to the war-drum cadence of battlefield encouragement.

Amid this vibration, his spiritual power finally completed the ritual’s weave, bestowing the final link upon the spiritual energy spheres gathered from the cultivators—each wielding their most potent spells, from novice to Grand Master.

Then…

“Go!”

His spiritual power acted like a vanguard scout, forging a path between the Yatagarasu and the altar; a radiant sphere no more than a meter in diameter shot along this trail toward the serpent.

Its speed was steady, its spectacle modest—like a firework yet to burst, its only visible effect the fiery glow from its flame test.

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

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

From afar, the eighty-meter-tall Yatagarasu had just finished turning around, and the sphere finally exploded like a delayed 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 surged outward—the first spell woven was an ice-sealing incantation, weak alone, but after successive injections of spiritual power, it instantly coated the serpent’s eighty-meter body in a shell of ice.

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

As if following a consensus for handling large demons, the next several ritual sequences were also sealing-focused, layering a net-like structure around 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, began violently trembling; a piercing cracking sound erupted, and Feng Xue’s face darkened—

“Does this guy have any sense of physics? Doesn’t he know water can’t be compressed?”

Before the thought finished, the Yatagarasu shattered—ice shards flew 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 until they formed a brilliant, translucent ice sphere.

The ice-blue hue grew transparent, then an orange-red glow spread from the center, like dye frozen inside slowly seeping outward, gradually warping the frozen blue.

A shrill screeching pierced the eardrums; seawater that should have vaporized from the heat emitted only faint hisses.

Only now did some swift cultivators realize what they’d done—they hastily summoned spirit ghosts, summoned gusts of wind, or simply threw handfuls of sand or yellow earth to perform the most basic earth-translocation technique.

Bai Yi, the spirit who didn’t understand spells, saw this and knew the cultivators had gone too far—she instantly revealed 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 flee from the ice sphere, which continued shrinking, expanding, and heating.

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 for new rituals.

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

To increase power, there was only compression or expansion—and everyone, brimming with competitiveness, poured in their most potent techniques for amplifying spell strength.

With water as the core—uncompressible—sealed, compressed, heated, layered with countless seals, a streak of starlight finally bloomed at the heart of the ice sphere.

The greatest sound is silent, the greatest form has no shape—in that instant, all who looked toward the spell lost their vision; a blinding white void brought rolling heat and currents strong enough to fling even a hundred-ton Long Wang into the air.

The terrifying shockwave hurled Feng Xue, helplessly suspended in midair, far away; from the coastline, the sea surged into towering waves.

The waves rose higher and higher, colliding with the tsunami summoned by the Yatagarasu—what had been brewing now seemed powerless, crushed backward, churning into successive surges that rolled back toward the distant shore.

Strangely, the explosion caused no major seismic tremors—luckily sparing further calamity—yet the scorching winds turned the harbor’s winter into a sweltering summer.

The clash of hot and cold instantly formed dense clouds, followed by hail falling from the sky.

Fortunately, several Grand Masters within the harbor city had already set up altars; though they hadn’t awaited a demon god, they’d just managed to raise a barrier to withstand this bizarre “natural disaster.”

(End of Chapter)