The battlefield was now quiet. The blood mist had dispersed, leaving only Ye Fan standing alone in the field. Every last enemy had fallen — not one dared to challenge him further.

This was a land soaked in blood. Shattered bodies and blood-streaked fragments of bone were strewn everywhere, the sight as terrifying as a killing ground from the depths of hell.

Even those who had come with reverence in their hearts felt a tremor run through them. The legendary name of Ye Fan, the Holy Body of the Human Race, had truly been earned through battle. Three hundred years had passed, and even stripped of his Dao arts, with only his physical body remaining, he was still not to be provoked.

Aside from the three figures pinned beneath his feet, every Great Saint who had come to encircle and annihilate him had been cut down — cold and ruthless, inspiring awe in all who witnessed it. In years past, he had been willing to lay down his life to fight Supreme Beings and safeguard the peace of a region. Now, he could just as readily cut down those he had once protected — swift and decisive.

“Cough…”

Mo Wentian spat out a mouthful of bloody froth, his entire body wracked with searing pain. Not only had Ye Fan crushed the Great Dao Treasure Vase he had forged through his Dao cultivation, every bone in his body had been shattered as well.

This outcome was nothing short of annihilation for him — a humiliation beyond bearing. How could he go on living like this? His opponent would never let him off.

Yi Ming was drenched in blood, his body nearly riddled through. The dragon sword he had forged from interwoven feather-transcendence azure gold had shattered, and the fragments had driven themselves back into his own flesh, leaving him a blood-soaked ruin.

Of the three, Tuoba Mo’s fury ran deepest. He let out a continuous low growl, feral light flickering in his eyes, yet he could not break free — like a wild beast trapped in a cage.

The many pilgrims who had gathered did not know how Ye Fan intended to deal with these three. Someone shouted that he should simply kill them and save himself the trouble of future complications.

Ye Fan looked down at the three of them, then slowly shook his head at the crowd gathered in the distance. He had no desire to kill them right now. Yet when that look of indifference fell upon Mo Wentian, Yi Ming, and Tuoba Mo, it cut like a blade — their faces burned with scalding shame.

The expression on Ye Fan’s face made their complexions turn ugly. He had not even placed them in his eyes at all, dismissing them as something beneath his concern, without the slightest fear that they might retaliate.

Tuoba Mo’s fury erupted. He was by nature a man without restraint — a figure akin to a demon — and now his blood boiled with a sense of towering humiliation.

Mo Wentian’s face had gone iron-dark as well. The indifference in his opponent’s gaze as he looked at them was genuine and heartfelt — and for him, that was the deepest form of contempt.

They were furious, they were indignant. The cold disinterest at the corner of Ye Fan’s mouth left them drowning in shame and torment. They were the heaven’s favorites of this age. When had they ever been looked upon with such condescension?

Ye Fan stood before them while they lay sprawled across the ground in this humiliating posture, faces pressed to the earth, not far from his feet. A fire burned within their hearts.

“So what if you’ve returned, Ye Fan? Without your Dao art fragments, you’ve lost any hope of competing for supremacy on the path ahead. That is your sorrow and your misfortune!” Mo Wentian said coldly.

In that moment, this was all he could do — pick at a wound to strike at Ye Fan, to salvage whatever shred of dignity remained. Prostrated at his opponent’s feet, his heart felt as though it were being carved open with a blade.

“So you’ve finally figured out who I am?” Ye Fan said with cool indifference.

He then raised his foot and gave the ground a light tap. All three were struck as though by lightning, sent bouncing up from the earth to stand again on their feet — though staggering somewhat as they did.

All three were proud and untamed. Mo Wentian’s gaze was cold and sharp. Tuoba Mo’s eyes blazed with the dangerous wildness of a beast. Yi Ming’s expression was one of icy contempt.

Even brought so low, none of them submitted. They looked at Ye Fan with something that bordered on provocation — a show of their unyielding spirit, their refusal to bow their heads.

This drew outrage from the powerful figures who had come with reverence in their hearts. Voices rose in loud rebuke, and the crowd continued to swell, already far outnumbering the enemies Ye Fan had cut down.

Ye Fan smiled — the smile of someone regarding misbehaving children — and swept his gaze across all three. That look and that expression made all three of them clench their fists.

And then something even more infuriating occurred. Ye Fan swung one foot and kicked each of them squarely in the backside, sending all three flying through the air.

“Ye Fan!”

The three of them were beside themselves with rage. This was exactly how one scolded a misbehaving child — Ye Fan had actually kicked them in the backside. The pain on their bodies was nothing compared to the shame burning on their faces.

Who were they? All three were Great Saints, hailed as some of the most formidable young cultivators of the past three hundred years — each a rare genius in the way of cultivation. And now, in front of so many onlookers, they had been kicked in the backside. It was worse than having their bones broken.

The crowd in the distance went momentarily blank — and then erupted in laughter. This was quite a singular punishment. One had to hand it to Ye Fan for being able to pull it off.

A moment ago the crowd had been trembling with fear, the blood and bone scattered across the field enough to make anyone’s hair stand on end. But in the blink of an eye, Ye Fan had treated them to this cold piece of absurdist humor.

“You — don’t come any closer!”

Tuoba Mo was losing his mind, huffing and puffing in great gasps, eyes locked on the approaching Ye Fan as he stumbled backward. His face was written over with terror, because it was plainly obvious — Ye Fan was nowhere near finished with the kicking, and here he came again.

“Augh—!” The demonic man cried out in pain and humiliation as Ye Fan’s foot found his backside once more, sending him flying with a howl like a wolf.

Mo Wentian paled. He was next. As Ye Fan walked toward him, his face cycled between green and white, his handsome brows standing on end, his strikingly handsome face written over with furious shame. “You — you can’t treat me like this!”

Thud.

The answer was a piercing ache shooting through his backside as he, too, was sent soaring through the air as if borne aloft by clouds.

“Don’t — don’t come near me!” Yi Ming, who had always cultivated an otherworldly air that had made no small number of young women lose their hearts to him, was now red-faced and flustered — first fierce, then enraged, and now frightened out of his wits as he cried out.

But it was no use, no matter how furiously all three of these supreme cultivators roared. Across the entire Immortal-Ascending Battlefield, they were figures who could command a domain — yet now they were helpless and pitiable beyond measure, receiving kick after kick to the backside.

Great Saints three centuries old, squirming like unruly children being kicked by an adult — the very thought was beyond imagining.

“Surnamed Ye, I’ll fight you to the death!” Yi Ming was the first to snap — but it did absolutely nothing. Everything continued exactly as it had been going.

In the end, Ye Fan sheathed the faint smile at the corner of his mouth and finally ceased his kicking. The three of them winced and grimaced, particularly Mo Wentian and Tuoba Mo — one cold and sinister, the other demonic by nature — their current expressions drawing waves of laughter from the crowd.

Towering Great Saints, three of the mightiest beings in the world, had ended this way: receiving a thorough kicking before settling down and behaving themselves.

It struck people as almost absurdist — fingers pointed, laughter rang on without end.

People felt that their esteemed predecessor Ye Fan’s heart was not old at all. Young, one might say — to have been willing to do such a thing. Three hundred years had passed, yet his way of handling things had not changed all that much.

And so this battle drew to a close. The battlefield was strewn with the countless fallen, awash in blood and bone. Ye Fan expressed his gratitude to those who had come to his aid, but he did not accept any of them as followers.

Some refused to leave all the same, unable to bring themselves to go, their hearts stirred to a pitch of excitement. They pressed close, seeking guidance from him, asking him about the great battle of years long past.

Those events were impossibly distant for them — a clash with ancient Supreme Beings, like a great entry in the annals of a mythological age.

In the end, Ye Fan expounded upon the Dao and shared some of his realizations from cultivation, speaking of the great battles of the past — and still he did not permit these people to follow him.

He had lost his Dao art fragments. He needed time alone to think, to search for a way to break through his predicament, to carve out an entirely new path for himself. Beyond that, he was unwilling to let these people lose their own fighting spirit on his account, and the road ahead was full of thorns and dangers — he had no wish to drag them into that.

Even so, three individuals continued to accompany him, and they lay well outside the scope of his attention. When he needed time to think alone, he could ignore them entirely, treat them as nothing more than air.

Their presence was purely functional — to serve as temporary laborers, clearing mountains and excavating ancient cave dwellings.

The Immortal-Ascending Battlefield. From ancient times until now, who could say how many heroes had perished here. Their blood and souls, the treasures they had left behind, the undying Dao imprints they had inscribed — all of it had, over the long eons, coalesced into countless runic seals branded onto the mountains, forming many cave dwellings well worth exploring.

Most precious of all were ancient scriptures, Blood Crystal Divine Essences capable of granting long life, and the various divine traces left behind by great emperors of the past — treasures that could be found here by those who searched with care and devotion.

Ye Fan had already learned something of the situation of his old companions and friends. Three hundred years had passed, and no ill news had come of them. The details he still did not know, but it was enough to let him breathe easier.

“The Ji Family and the Jiang Family suffered grievous losses — they took heavy damage in that battle, but they have since been revered by all clans and become sacred lands. No one would dare court the wrath of all under heaven by making trouble for them.”

“A great sect known as the Heavenly Court is flourishing with tremendous vitality, spreading its influence across an entire star domain.”

These were the details filled in by the three laborers. As Ye Fan heard this, a distant look crossed his face. He nodded slowly. For now, he was not in any hurry to seek out his old companions and friends.

He had reappeared. That news — destined to shake the mortal world — would inevitably spread, and he believed it would not be long before he was reunited with those people.

Ye Fan built a few thatched-roof cottages at the foot of a certain mountain. The setting was one of natural beauty, mountains at his back and water nearby. Here he began once more to contemplate the road that lay ahead.

His reappearance, of course, could not keep this place peaceful for long. Those who had insisted on following him continued to cultivate in the surrounding area, unwilling to move far.

As for Mo Wentian, Tuoba Mo, and Yi Ming — each day they dug and excavated, following Ye Fan’s instructions to open many mountain peaks marked with runic seals, sweat flying in all directions. Then they burrowed down deep into the bedrock, extracting blood crystals.

The Emperor’s Pass erupted in an uproar. When the news reached there, it sent tremendous shockwaves through the entire place. Almost no one believed it — that after three hundred years since the chaos of the dark blood disorder, Ye Fan still walked among the living.

“Go and see it for yourself — go and take a look around!”

Within the Emperor’s Pass, no matter how fierce the covert struggles, no matter how impossible it was to tear oneself away, many who received the news found themselves unable to remain sitting still. They set out for the Immortal-Ascending Battlefield to see for themselves and confirm what they had heard.

Naturally there were also those who held themselves in check, who, though shaken when they learned the news, let their eyes quickly grow deep and still — making no immediate move, but waiting and watching.

The Immortal-Ascending Battlefield. One after another, gates of light blazed open. Figure after figure stepped through. In region after region, vast and mighty auras spread and surged — evidently some who had come had not had their Dao cultivation severed.

This was a shockwave of heaven-shaking magnitude, and it heralded the imminent eruption of a world-shaking catastrophe. The return of Ye Fan had left many unable to sit or rest in peace, filled with profound unease.

Peerless cultivators of supreme power had arrived — figures who had shaken the world for three hundred years — each of them like a blazing sun at its zenith. Over these long years, every one of them had forged an unmatched reputation for invincibility.

Some were old acquaintances of Ye Fan’s. Others were figures whose legendary names he had heard in years past without ever meeting in person. One after another they descended upon the Immortal-Ascending Battlefield.

People speculated that conflict, whatever form it took, would now be unavoidable. For some of them were Ye Fan’s mortal enemies — and with him now at his weakest, the opportunity was too rare to pass up.

“Master — I have come!” At this moment, a great roar shook the mountains and rivers. From afar, a silhouette charged forward like a dragon, shattering everything in its path.

“If you wish to see my Master, pass through me first — who dares fight me?!” The newcomer’s voice thundered and shook the vault of the sky. Heaven and earth rang with the echo of it, carrying with it an aura of peerless, world-conquering might.

“It’s him!” A heavy feeling settled over every heart, and solemn expressions spread across every face.