Chapter 579: Approaching Myth

The process of merging weapons was a very pleasant one for Li Yuan.

"The remaining wisp of ninth-rank incense I'll hold back for later use."

In one breath he finished merging every weapon he'd accumulated over three years; feeling the dazzling divine-weapon radiance atop the Dingxin Dingxin Shitai, Li Yuan was well pleased.

For the sake of Tan Suo You Jing afterward, he naturally couldn't spend all his incense dry, and had taken that into account when merging.

Apart from the bone ornament that augmented his perceptive spirit, he merged nine pairs of eighth-rank spirit boots, and stowed away all the remaining incense.

【Thousand Beasts Thousand Spirits Boots (Eighth Rank)】

【Divine boots forged in divine fire, combining the strengths of all manner of beasts…】

【Wielding Requirement: Wielder's bloodline】

【Wielding Effect: Eighth Rank (Gold): Extreme Speed, Lightness】

"Nine pairs of eighth-rank spirit boots plus Dun Tian Zhou — even Dao Lord Long couldn't catch me."

Squinting as he felt the augmentation of the various spirit boots, Li Yuan was in high spirits; he pushed open the door and felt only that his feet were incomparably light, and with the slightest movement it was as if heaven and earth themselves were pushing him forward.

"A Great Grandmaster with the three elements unified, supported by Yi Shen Jing and bolstered by spirit aspect, exerting full strength, covers a hundred li in a snap of the fingers — I should be able to do that now too!"

In the curtain of night, Li Yuan's eyes gleamed bright.

Whoo~

Li Yuan exerted a gentle force beneath his feet.

In an instant, he felt the void around him split in two like water; the night scenery streaked past him at extreme speed, and in the blink of an eye he was already within the Mount Longhu mountain range.

Standing in midair, Li Yuan looked back — Hengshan City had been flung a hundred li behind him, leaving an extremely conspicuous white trail in the night, like violently burning air, yet without any sonic boom.

【Lightness: No trace on landing, no sound in running】

"The augmentation of these nine pairs of eighth-rank spirit boots is no less than that of a Great Grandmaster who has cultivated a divine-gong-grade lightness art to perfection; combined with my original speed, even Dao Lord Long can't match me!"

Weaving through the curtain of night, Li Yuan felt only that the void beneath his feet was like level ground; even without true qi contending with heaven and earth, he could still remain suspended without falling — only his speed dropped sharply.

"Contending with heaven and earth, transforming qi into gang…"

Li Yuan loosened his muscles and joints, striding through the night in transit; each rise and fall carried him either several dozen li or over a hundred li, his speed extreme:

"My physique is fully comparable to a top Great Grandmaster who cultivates a divine-gong-grade horizontal-training art, but full-out running still can't be sustained…"

After a short while, Li Yuan came to a stop, feeling only that his qi and blood within were seething as if on fire.

Even with his current physique, he could not endure prolonged all-out sprinting.

However…

"I still have Dun Tian Zhou!"

"Dun Tian Zhou's augmentation is teleportation; its boost to raw speed isn't as obvious as these nine pairs of spirit boots, but the teleportation effect is better."

Li Yuan's mind stirred, and he swapped on the bone ornament augmenting spirit-perception, along with the two 【Divine Fire Ten-Thousand Spirits Rings (Ninth Rank)】.

Hum~

The next instant, he vanished like a phantom into the night — already back in the rear courtyard of the Weapon-Forge, and compared to Lightness, it carried even less trace of exertion, and was faster!

"A hundred li in an instant — that's the limit of my spirit-perception, not Dun Tian Zhou's limit."

Li Yuan closed his eyes, his spirit seeming to merge mystically with heaven and earth; in a trance, an area of a hundred and fifty li around him lay within his sensing, and with Dun Tian Zhou upon him, anywhere within that hundred li he reached with but a thought:

"A Great Grandmaster, three elements unified, spirit mystically merged with heaven and earth, can sense an area of a hundred li; with these bone ornaments augmenting me, the limit of my sensing is,

a hundred and fifty li!"

Whoosh!

Silently, Li Yuan vanished from the room once more.

"With my current physique, the strain of teleportation is fully bearable… the number of times I can activate it in one breath should be thirty, which means, four thousand five hundred li!"

Teleporting and shifting through the void, Li Yuan kept adjusting various wielding combinations, and only returned to the room after a good while.

"Hah!"

His pores dilated, his sweat steaming like vapor.

"With my current spirit and body, activating Dun Tian Zhou's wielding-teleportation thirty times takes… seven seconds!"

The night wind stirred his Daoist robe; in the rear courtyard of the Weapon-Forge, Li Yuan suddenly opened his eyes, and even the night seemed lit by the gleam of his gaze:

"Morning stroll the North Sea, evening at Cangwu… not far off!"

Seven seconds, four thousand five hundred li!

Though Dun Tian Zhou could not be used to alter one's root-bone, this wondrous use of teleportation was, in fact, still hidden above all manner of Daoist Tianyun Daoist Tianyun Xuanbing.

More importantly, Dun Tian Zhou's teleportation could come after his extreme-speed sprinting!

In other words…

"With sprinting first and teleportation after, in at most three minutes I can cross ten thousand li!"

Steam rose from his sweat, shrouding the rear courtyard, as Li Yuan weighed and compared the experts he had crossed hands with or seen:

"Apart from Old Man Pang, there should be no one in the world who can catch me now! And if my spirit can sense several thousand li, and my physique can keep up…"

"One somersault, a hundred and eight thousand li?"

The night wind dispersed the steam in the rear courtyard, and for a fleeting instant Li Yuan felt a daze, as if he himself were not far from myth either?

His heart churned with stray thoughts, and he truly felt the weight of the 'Dao-Entry Pass' and the 'Dragon-Leaping Gate.'

◆￠o

This was by no means merely a rise in power.

"Heaven and earth contending…"

Li Yuan slowly closed his eyes.

For a mere physique to take a single step of a hundred li — what immense power would that require, and how tremendous would the commotion be?

Before entering the Dao, no matter how power was piled up, it would be hard to achieve; but once qi is transformed into gang, through the force of heaven and earth, it can be done directly!

"Realm."

His thoughts scattered for a long while, then Li Yuan sat down on the ground and circulated his true Qi to nourish his badly depleted body and spirit.

……

Hoo, hoo~

Morning light broke through the dawn; the sky grew bright.

A small courtyard in Dragon Mountain.

Late autumn was drawing near, the air already cold, the mountain mornings thick with frost. In the courtyard, Chi He Lian practiced her stake-posture Wu Gong, and even when sunlight fell on her she still frowned out of habit.

"The Calamity of the Suns…"

Feeling the changes within her body, bitterness welled up in Chi He Lian's heart.

These three great suns originated from the Eight Directions Temple; wherever their light shone was the zone where the Eight Directions Temple's qi radiated, and anyone tainted by that qi could not leave this stretch of heaven and earth.

This was no secret in Tian Shi Yuan, which was why, after she had detected the Eight Directions Temple, she had never let her umbrella leave her hand — but now…

'Unless the Poison Dragon God himself descends…'

Having been schemed into such a state by a pack of natives, Chi He Lian's heart was filled with regret. Had she known it would be like this, the moment she entered the temple she should have joined forces with Huang Huang Longzi to summon the Poison Dragon God.

"Hah!"

A moment later, she slowly gathered her stance, then suddenly sensed something odd behind her. She whipped her head around and saw, beneath the old tree, a robed young man holding a book and turning its pages — at some unknown point he had already been there.

"Li Yuan!"

Chi He Lian's face darkened like water.

"The Poison Dragon Academy truly deserves its name as one of the five great grotto-heavens of Tian Shi Yuan; its Wu Gong does have its own unique merits."

Li Yuan closed the book and sighed with feeling: "If even a single superior Wu Gong is already like this, how wondrous must its Daoist arts be?"

Over these three years, he would come looking for Chi He Lian every few days.

They would chat about Tian Shi Yuan's local customs and Wu Gong insights and the like — of course, the latter party was not exactly willing.

"I have told you many times: the Immortal's Guidance is a secret Daoist art of the Academy. Anyone who dares pass it on will alarm the Poison Dragon God, and both the one who transmits it and the one who steals it will be cursed to death!"

Chi He Lian's face was expressionless: "If you want this Daoist art to guide your way, you can only…"

"Only by taking you along with me?"

Li Yuan glanced at her, feeling a touch of regret.

He was extremely interested in those 'Daoist arts' and 'magical arts' that could only be cultivated after reaching Xiu Cheng Shen Jing or the Spirit Phase.

"The true You Jing is full of endless deadly peril; even gods may fall. If you want to go to Tian Shi Yuan, you can only cooperate with me."

Chi He Lian suppressed her fury.

Three years of captivity had made her abandon the plan to summon the Poison Dragon God. These natives might be short-sighted, but every last one of them was a sharp old fox, and they had never given her the slightest opening.

Li Yuan frowned and said nothing.

He knew what Chi He Lian said was true.

In these three years he had also gone into the You Jing outside the Eight Directions Temple; had he not held the Eight Directions Temple's token for protection and been cautious by nature, twice he would have been trampled to death by herds of Blood-Horned Oxen.

"I have not been deeply tainted by the Eight Directions Temple's qi, and I still have a Mi Fa that can barely let me break free. If you delay a few more years, even if you wanted to take me with you, it would be too late."

Chi He Lian stared fixedly at him:

"Take me out, and I can guide you into the Poison Dragon Academy. With your talent, you'd be enough even to be ranked among the Five Veins' True Lineage…"

"Is that so?"

At that moment, a voice came from San Yuan Wai, and Pang Pang Wenlong, unseen for many days, strode in.

"That old fellow…"

At the sight of Pang Pang Wenlong, Chi He Lian's heart sank.

"Senior."

Li Yuan rose and bowed.

"Good lad."

Pang Pang Wenlong looked him up and down, his eyelid twitching despite himself:

"Quite a bit of progress."

His Great Sun Dharma Eye had long been cultivated to the Zhi Hua Jing; though Li Yuan's Wind Tiger Cloud Dragon had been deeply cultivated, it could not be hidden from him.

At this moment, in his eyes, this lad's body shimmered with an extremely dazzling radiance — far more dazzling than last time. Though it still did not match his own,

even he was somewhat shaken by the speed of that progress.

"All thanks to the senior's guidance."

Li Yuan smiled and changed the subject: "Senior, this is…?"

"Came to find her."

Pang Pang Wenlong looked him over a few more times, then withdrew his gaze and glanced at Chi He Lian:

"Has the matter I tasked you with divining shown any progress?"

"It has."

Chi He Lian's face was dark.

"Speak."

Pang Pang Wenlong's gaze was cold.

"I can speak."

Chi He Lian gritted her teeth: "But first, lift the restraints on me!"

"You have no right to bargain."

Pang Pang Wenlong swept his sleeve, and Chi He Lian let out a muffled grunt and dropped to her knees. Her face went deathly pale, sweat poured down like rain, as if she were being sliced apart by ten thousand blades.

But she didn't utter a word, only stiffened her neck and stared fixedly at Pang Pang Wenlong.

"Bold."

Pang Pang Wenlong let out a cold laugh, slowly raised his hand, seemingly about to slap her to death with one strike.

Chi He Lian was drenched in sweat, her spirit trembling. Out of the corner of her eye she glanced at Li Yuan, and what made her feel stifled was that the youth merely watched coldly from the sidelines, as if he didn't care at all whether she lived or died.

"Speak, or not?"

"I… I'll speak."

A moment later, Chi He Lian collapsed on the ground. Even without her divine realm being sealed, even at the peak of her power, she could not withstand the crushing of the divine soul by a powerhouse of the Divine Palace realm.

Pang Pang Wenlong restrained his aura.

Chi He Lian gasped for breath, and only after quite a while raised her head, speaking word by word the guidance she had obtained through Immortal's Finger Pointing the Way:

"If this battle begins, the final outcome will be… the Cloud Demon descends, and jade and stone burn together."

"Jade and stone burn together?"

Li Yuan was startled, and looked at Pang Pang Wenlong. The latter slightly furrowed his brow, yet did not seem overly surprised.

"That old ghost…"

Pang Pang Wenlong smoothed his brow: "Jade and stone burn together — not bad either."