Chapter 318 – Life 76, Age 157, Martial Sovereign 1

I looked at the Emissary of the Nine Rivers Saint coldly. While I had expected this showdown, I had not expected to lose my entire cultivation base before it started. That would make things far more difficult.

“I do not believe I have any reason to swear such loyalty to a person I have never met before.” I looked from one old man to another. “You have all sent armies to attack my lands. Do you really expect me to bow down to you after suffering such an insult?”

Zhuge YeDu laughed. “You don’t have a choice, brat. You will swear the Oath, and then you will tell us everything you know about body cultivation.”

“And if I don’t?”

Zhuge YeDu shook his head. “There is no ‘if.’ This isn’t ‘swear or die.’ There is no ‘or.’ You will swear.”

I rose from the throne and walked down a short set of stairs to stand on the same level as my enemies. I just needed to be close enough. Zhuge YeDu’s words made me far more confident that my plan would succeed. If the Sovereigns had no desire to see me die, then I was free to set things up exactly how I wished.

I studied the Sovereigns and paid attention to how they were holding themselves. They were tense. They were expecting me to try something, and they were prepared. If I wanted to surprise them, I would have to lower their guards first.

I cracked my knuckles and smiled. “I’ve never fought a Sovereign before. I wonder how it will go.”

To Zhuge YeDu’s right, Ning ZeKun shook his head in feigned sadness. “Before your ascension, you might have had a chance. With a Martial Emperor cultivation base, Rank 6 body cultivation, Rank 6 equipment, and Rank 6 formations, you might have been able to fight one of us. Now, though, you are simply too weak.”

During our previous meeting at the Nine Rivers Sect’s Summit, my impression of Ning ZeKun was that he was an honest, straightforward person who I could consider working with. Aside from Emperor Li, he was the only Sovereign that I could say this about. This impression might have been influenced by my association with his descendant, Ning ChenKun, the man who had served as my Grandmaster during my time at the Yellow Orchid Academy, but it was mostly because Ning ZeKun was the only person who hadn’t seemed like he was trying to trick me into joining his clan through lies of omission.

While I could understand his presence here, the fact that he had joined this group in trying to force me to swear a poisonous Oath was a bit disappointing.

Holding back a sigh, I looked around and waved a hand at the walls of the throne room. “It’s a little cramped in here. If you want to fight, then why don’t we head outside?”

Ning ZeKun lowered his head in a mock bow and then elbowed the air behind him to create a large, black portal. He took two steps, passed through this portal, and disappeared.

The Saint’s Emissary waved a hand to collect the Oath Stone. Then, all four remaining Sovereigns followed Ning ZeKun’s lead and disappeared.

I took a deep breath. Then, I walked forward to the entrance of the Palace of Supreme Harmony and looked down upon the courtyard below.

Ning ZeKun stood upon the central bridge that crossed the river which cut through the front half of the courtyard. The other four Sovereign stood high atop the wall opposite me.

I gnashed my teeth in annoyance. I had miscalculated. The top of the wall was too high.

After years of transporting large groups of people into and out of my inner world, the distance at which I was able to do so had increased. If I had time to concentrate and extend my soul, I could take something out of my storage space and make it appear at a distance of up to 50 meters. In a hectic, rushed situation, though, I was limited to only about 5 meters.

I needed to get those damn Sovereigns back on the ground.

After taking a breath to calm myself, I slowly walked down the palace’s marble steps. I needed to get closer to the other 4 Sovereigns, but first, I had to deal with the one in front of me.

Once at ground level, I looked across the courtyard to Ning ZeKun, who was standing over 200 meters away from me. With no cultivation base, I could only rely on my body cultivation and the power of my soul. However, soul combat was exceedingly dangerous. While my soul might be powerful enough to fight a Sovereign, if it weren’t, then I could end up with serious, permanent injuries.

I needed to play this safe. I needed to rely purely on body cultivation.

So, without any better option at hand, I planted my feet and rushed forward.

As I moved, I considered pulling out a weapon but decided better of it. While my Rank 6 staff might be powerful, I was certain that Ning ZeKun would have a similarly powerful weapon, and I didn’t want to escalate things to that level, not yet.

Upon seeing me move, Ning ZeKun shifted his weight and then darted forward to meet me. His movements were far faster than they should have been, but I didn’t see any signs of qi usage. Like me, he was relying only on the strength of his physical body.

Still, while Ning ZeKun was abnormally fast, he wasn’t nearly as fast as I was. When we met, I had covered three-quarters of the distance separating us, and he had only covered one.

As a simple way to gauge others’ strength, we both punched out and slammed our fists together.

This caused me to be knocked back two steps, but Ning ZeKun was knocked back 10.

Ning ZeKun grinned wildly at me. “Excellent! True body cultivation is far stronger than that poor excuse of a blessing I was given. Still, if you think that this is enough to defeat me, then you are sorely mistaken.”

He jumped forward and attacked once more. Again, though, he didn’t use any qi. He relied only on the strength of his body.

I easily knocked his blow aside.

From there, he threw out a continuous series of punches and kicks, and from his form, it was clear that he was far more adept at fighting than I was, but knocking each of these attacks aside was as easy as breathing.

Ning ZeKun was strong. Far stronger than a normal cultivator, but that was all. He lacked the increased reaction speed that I had gained at Rank 5 of body cultivation, so he wasn’t able to fully control his strength.

I slammed a punch into his midsection and knocked him back.

Ning ZeKun grinned. “Truly amazing. I can’t wait to experience it myself. If I gave you a few months to learn to control the powers of a Sovereign, you might even pose a challenge. Unfortunately, that won’t happen.”

Sovereign Ning began cycling his qi, preparing for an attack.

I rushed forward to stop him.

We both punched out, but this time, our punches didn’t connect.

My strike didn’t meet the resistance I expected, and my body continued forward in a stumble. Then, before I could regain my balance, I was pushed from behind, right into a black portal.

I became weightless, like I was floating in the void.

Quickly looking around, I found that I was high above the Su Clan’s palace complex and falling at a rapid rate.

Not knowing what else to do, I tried twisting my body to brace for impact. While such a fall would be deadly to mortals, after Rank 3 of body cultivation, even if I did nothing to protect myself, I wouldn’t take the slightest bit of damage.

However, the frantic state I was in following my teleportation caused me to not notice when another black portal appeared above me. Ning ZeKun dropped out of this second portal and slammed a qi-empowered fist into my back.

I rocketed downward and crashed face-first into the Palace of Supreme Harmony.

Ning ZeKun landed lightly on the platform surrounding the palace and chuckled as I struggled to rise from its wreckage. After only a few seconds, though, he seemed to get annoyed by my sluggish recovery and channeled his earth qi to blast away the wreckage around me.

I climbed to my feet and looked at him. The two of us were alone atop a large, open marble platform.

However, we weren’t alone for long. With a lull in the fight between me and Ning ZeKun, the other Sovereigns were done waiting around. So, they made another set of portals and joined us.

This made me smile.

I was a bit battered from the fight, I was covered in dirt, and I looked like a mess, but I hadn’t suffered any real injuries. Sovereign Ning’s punch had been powerful, but he had hit me while we were both in freefall, so there was no real weight behind the attack.

That said, I looked like I was in a sorry state, and that was exactly what I needed.

“I told you. You are too weak.” Ning ZeKun let out a sigh and walked over to his companions. “You allowed us to enter the Wastes because you had some kind of trump card that you think can stop us, right? Go ahead, take out your little formation. Let us see what that old fool Shen was able to produce.”

I froze.

Interpreting my response as terror, the Sovereigns grinned malevolently, but I hadn’t frozen out of fear.

While I did indeed have a final card to play, it wasn’t a formation… Why did...

I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath.

The last time I saw him, Emperor Shen had given me the giant formation stone that he had spent decades working on. From the amount of work he had put into it, I knew that it was important, and I knew that I needed to study it to learn what it did. But I had gotten too distracted. I had spent all my time studying cultivation techniques and had never gone back to study that formation in more detail.

I didn’t know what it did. I only knew that it was some kind of pseudo-Rank 7 formation. However, Emperor Li had told me that if the Emissary knew I had it, he would kill me. So… how did Ning ZeKun know about it? And why did he mention it now?

I decided to trust my intuition.

The moment after Ning ZeKun returned to stand next to the other Sovereigns, I reached into my inner world and pulled out Shen’s massive formation stone. Without hesitating for even a moment, I used my affinities to tear qi from the surrounding environment and slammed it into the formation to activate it.

The Sovereigns narrowed their eyes, but they didn’t rush forward to stop me. Either they were confident that they could handle whatever I was trying to do, or they were afraid that rushing forward would cause them to fall into my trap.

Just as the formation was about to fully activate, Ning ZeKun’s eyes widened in horror. “No!”

He leapt toward me.

As he flew through the air, he reached into a storage bag and pulled out a long, vicious-looking saber.

I tensed my body as I prepared to dodge, but just as I was about to move, chains of marble burst from the platform and wrapped themselves around my entire body.

I struggled to break free. I had sufficient strength, but I didn’t have time. In only a fraction of a second, Sovereign Ning’s blade would pierce my chest.

Reflexively, I closed my eyes to receive his attack.

My body was rocked by a powerful, qi-empowered wail of agony. At the same time, the chains around my body disintegrated as Ning ZeKun released the qi that was empowering them.

Opening my eyes, I saw that Ning ZeKun had driven his sword deep into a small, pitch-black portal that hovered only a millimeter in front of my chest. With an angry sneer, he twisted the blade and tore upward.

Another wail of pain rang out from the other side of the platform.

After giving me a quick wink, Ning ZeKun turned and looked to the other side of the platform, where the Emissary of the Nine Rivers Saint had the tip of a saber sticking out from his chest.

Seeing this, the faces of the other three Sovereigns turned pale. They looked at each other, panicked, as if asking themselves, “What should we do?”

Ning ZeKun didn’t intend to give them any time to decide. He pulled back his blade and slammed the portal in front of me shut. Then, he opened another one to his right, reached through, and grabbed the body of the dying Emissary.

After pulling the Emissary through the portal, Ning ZeKun jumped up, slammed the Emissary’s body onto the top of Emperor Shen’s formation, and severed the man’s head.

The Sovereign of the Jiu Clan, who had been standing immediately to the right of the Emissary, took a step back. “Ze… ZeKun… what… what do you think you are doing? The Saint will kill you. He… He will destroy your entire clan…”

Ning ZeKun shook his head slowly. “No, he won’t. This formation is capable of maintaining the fire in the Emissary’s Soul Lamp. It won’t go out, so no one on the Central Continent will even know that he is dead. Unless someone is sent here to investigate, the Saint won’t even be aware that anything is wrong.”

Zhuge YeDu was the first to regain his composure. He looked quickly at the two remaining Sovereigns next to him. “We need to alert the Saint. Destroy the formation.”

Putting his words into action, Zhuge YeDu pulled on his qi and opened a portal to the side of the formation stone.

Before he could attack, though, Ning ZeKun opened his own portal and threw a punch at Zhuge YeDu’s back. This wasn’t enough to cause any damage, but it interrupted the man’s concentration and made his qi spiral out of control.

Ning ZeKun turned his head to look at me with sweat beading down his face. Opening so many portals in quick succession had taken its toll. “Su Fang, if you’re going to act, do it now. I can’t hold all three of them off on my own.”

I was having a bit of trouble keeping up with all the changes, but I still sprang to my feet and leapt toward the enemy Sovereigns. As I moved, I sent a thread of consciousness into my inner world and moved a couple of stones around.

The Sovereign of the Jiu Clan gave me a nasty look. “Kid, you should have stayed down.”

The Jiu Sovereign cycled his qi to launch an attack at me. Next to him, the Sovereign from the Li Clan had already opened a portal and was preparing to send a wind attack at Shen’s formation stone.

Knowing that I didn’t have much time, I chose to tank the Jiu Sovereign’s attack in a bid to get as close to him as possible.

When I was only three meters from the pair, an arm-thick bolt of lightning shot from the Jiu Sovereign and directly impacted my chest. I tried to ground this energy like I had when fighting Liang, but the Sovereign was far too powerful for that.

Lightning burned through my skin and tore into my internal organs. Thankfully, at Rank 6, I had strengthened my viscera, so this attack didn’t do nearly the damage that it could have, but I was still severely injured and fell to the ground.

I smiled. I could barely move, but the Sovereigns were within range of my space affinity. I reached into my inner world and pulled out Liang and NiangBa.

They appeared directly behind my opponents with their most powerful attacks fully charged and ready to go. Before the Sovereigns even knew what was happening, they were both struck squarely in the back.

Unfortunately, the older men’s robes flashed to life and absorbed most of the power from these impacts. Liang’s and NiangBa’s strikes weren’t nearly as lethal as when Ning ZeKun had struck the Emissary. The Sovereigns were only knocked forward. They didn’t suffer any serious injuries.

Now angered that someone had the gall to attack them, the two Sovereigns whirled around to face their opponents, but Liang and NiangBa had already disappeared back into my inner world.

Then, the moment their backs were to me, I pulled out four more Peak Emperors who all unleashed powerful attacks on the Sovereigns in quick succession.

Again, the Sovereigns’ robes were able to absorb these strikes, but this time, they had at least been damaged.

The Li and Jiu Sovereigns were not complete fools, though. They knew that I had to be the one controlling things, so instead of turning to their attackers, they both turned to face me. In response, I reached into my inner world and pulled out Liang, NiangBa, and two more Peak Emperors.

There were now eight Emperors facing down two Sovereigns. With their equipment advantage, the Sovereigns might be able to win this fight, but neither of them was in any position to care about me any longer. So, severely injured, I hobbled my way over to the formation stone and placed a hand upon it.

I covered the whole thing with my intent and pulled it into my inner world, corpse and all. The only thing left behind was the Emissary’s storage bag.

I was slightly worried that this might disrupt whatever effect the formation was having on the Emissary’s ‘Soul Lamp’ that Ning ZeKun had mentioned, but I didn’t have time to care about that. The only way to ensure that no one had a chance to sneak attack the formation was to put it outside of everyone’s reach.

When the massive formation stone disappeared, it caused air to rush in to fill the vacuum that had been left behind, drawing the attention of everyone on the platform.

The three enemy Sovereigns disengaged from their opponents and jumped backward, to the far side of the platform. Their faces were masks of gloom, and it was clear that they no longer knew what to do. They could try to kill us, but that would mean losing the secrets to body cultivation, and that was unacceptable.

The Sovereign of the Jiu Clan glared at Ning ZeKun. “I hope you realize what you’ve done here today. When the Saint finds out about this, the Ning Clan will be annihilated.”

Ning ZeKun bowed his head in mock apology. “I appreciate your concern. Please, send him my regards.”

The Jiu Sovereign shook with anger but said nothing more. He simply created a portal and vanished. The Li and Zhuge Sovereigns followed soon after.

After looking around warily for a moment, Ning ZeKun slumped in exhaustion. His eyes fell on me. “I hope you’re worth it.”