Tantai Wuji knew Lang Jiuchuan’s character as well as she knew his. She was brilliantly gifted, and moreover possessed a naturally pure Dao-body from birth. Whatever she learned, she grasped swiftly and with innate understanding — drawing from one insight to illuminate a hundred, understanding one passage and mastering the rest. She was a true and extraordinary seed of the Dao, gifted to a degree that defied the ordinary.

Yet this child was also born with a bone of defiance. She never played by the rules. He had managed to control an imperial princess of the Tantai line — shaping her growth to match his will and turning her into the perfect puppet. But he had never been able to do a single thing with Lang Jiuchuan.

She was like an untameable wild wolf — the sovereign of the open steppe. No one could do anything with her, let alone reshape her into what one desired. In her reckoning of right and wrong, merit and fault, she held no concept of correctness or error — only cause and effect.

She could watch a person universally praised as virtuous die without lifting a hand to save them. She could equally rescue a malevolent ghost that the entire righteous path was clamoring to destroy. The measure by which she weighed good and ill had always been — and only ever was — karma.

This person was the most stubborn of asses.

No — that wasn’t quite right either. There was always something that could make her lower her head. Like the common people of Pan City. Like all the living souls beneath heaven.

Tantai Wuji had simply never imagined she could bring herself to go this far.

Using her own body as the sacrificial anchor for the formation, placing herself as the eye of the array — burning everything that was her soul and spirit to drive the formation’s power. This was equivalent to burning away all that she was in order to seize the authority of heaven and earth.

“You sacrifice yourself to the formation… just to slay me?”

To cast life and death aside utterly, to leave herself no way of retreat, all to destroy him — the master who had once raised her?

Tantai Wuji’s crimson eyes were filled with sinister, piercing malice, as though he had been incensed. His demonic form grew even more suffused with wicked energy. The resentful souls assailing the monks and Taoists turned even more ferocious.

“Only to slay you.”

The moment Lang Jiuchuan’s words fell, the entire formation shuddered violently. At the eight cardinal positions she had designated, a pillar of light erupted from each one simultaneously, soaring into the sky. Their brilliance intertwined with the main column of light behind her, forming one enormous, all-encompassing Taiji Eight Trigrams pattern — like a great grinding wheel that could cover all of heaven and earth. Gazing upon it, everyone present could only stare in wonder, their souls trembling.

Tantai Wuji’s demonic energy surged wildly. His expression changed enormously, and an unprecedented sense of mortal threat descended upon his heart with crushing weight.

He fixed his gaze on the figure at the summit. King facing king — today, at last, had come the moment for them to meet in open battle.

The auspicious moment was almost upon them. Whether they rose or fell — it would all be decided in this single battle.

He stared as Lang Jiuchuan’s entire Dao-body was enveloped in dazzling golden light. His gaze flickered rapidly, and a thread of greed and calculation appeared in his eyes. Such a body of chaotic Dao…

Lang Jiuchuan formed her seals, using her soul to commune with the formation and achieve the unity of person and array. She drew down the power of the heavenly stars by force, and those blinding silver pillars of light descended like the swords of divine punishment, piercing the demonic clouds and pouring into the formation.

Boom!

The entire formation came alive in an instant.

The five elemental forces of heaven and earth intertwined, flowing together with the Eight Trigrams runes, converging into the phantom forms of ancient divine beasts — the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger, and their kin — roaring and howling as they lunged and snapped at Tantai Wuji.

Since time immemorial, righteousness and evil have never been able to coexist.

They sought to devour all demonic energy — to tear apart and destroy every trace of malevolence.

Tantai Wuji sneered. “It seems you and I, master and disciple, are at last drawing blades on one another. Then let us see what strength you, the rising wave, truly possess!”

He summoned his demonic core. A black void opened behind him, and endless demonic energy poured from it, becoming a vast, viscous domain of darkness. Countless demonic shadows shrieked and howled, resisting both the constantly descending pillars of star-light from above and the so-called Taoists below who seemed utterly indifferent to death.

Among them, three black dragons roared toward Lang Jiuchuan, their demonic energy mixed with a pungent blood-laden force. The air around them was thick with dust and grit, twisted and crackling under the assault.

“ROAR!” Jiang Che let out a thunderous battle cry. His body expanded and transformed — he became a true White Tiger, a great beast of divine might. Carrying the sovereign killing energy of a sacred beast’s royal wrath, his power blazed skyward. He tore apart the head of one of the black dragons.

One of the other black dragons coiled toward Lang Jiuchuan — yet she merely shook with a pulse of golden light radiating from her entire body, and it dissolved into wisps of smoke and scattered.

Tantai Wuji’s soul trembled faintly. He stared fixedly at Lang Jiuchuan, his gaze as though it sought to swallow her whole.

The power of the Golden Core — this was the Golden Core realm’s force that he now faced head-on, directly. It was righteous and pure, innately carrying the authority of heaven’s might. Ten thousand evils could not touch it.

If his schemes had not been shattered by Lang Jiuchuan and that thieving villain, why would he have fallen to demonic corruption? Why would he have sunk to this state? By now, he would have already knocked upon the gates of heaven with this formation, riding this overwhelming surge of auspicious fate and meritorious golden light to once more ascend toward the supreme throne.

It was this woman who had destroyed his thousand-year scheme!

Rumble!

Light and darkness, Dao and demon, righteousness and evil — two diametrically opposed, irreconcilable ultimate forces collided thunderously in this land of dead silence.

The very space around them warped and twisted. Wind howled, sand and stones flew, mountain peaks were ground to dust by the absolute force of it. The might radiated outward without limit, driving every last surviving creature in the area into a frantic, desperate flight.

Lang Jiuchuan stood at the eye of the storm, immovable as a mountain.

Her face had long since gone pale and bloodless. Her soul felt as though it had been placed over a raging fire and scorched — every single inch of it was enduring pain of a magnitude that ordinary people could scarcely conceive.

Even so, her eyes remained calm — calm, and even clearer and brighter than before. Golden light flickered within her gaze. She summoned her talisman brush and, using her spiritual intent alone, drew a talisman in the void.

The Lunar Yin Demon-Slaying Talisman — the talisman as the arrow, the brush as the bow, slaying demons and obliterating evil.

With the talisman unleashed, the golden core true essence within her grew even more faint and shallow — yet it carried an awesome divine authority as it shot toward Tantai Wuji like a bolt of light.

Danger. Deadly danger.

Tantai Wuji’s soul trembled violently. He urgently sought to recall his demonic core to protect himself — but in that moment, the heavenly star force suddenly descended with the force of a thousand great weights, pressing down upon his demonic form with a resounding crack. Countless points of brilliant light scoured and cleansed his demonic bones, like karmic fire consuming bone — crack after crack, fractures forming, demonic energy continuously escaping outward, his demonic bones growing ever more brittle.

Shocked and furious, he drove his demonic arts to their peak, channeling his demonic core to the absolute limit in an attempt to protect his demonic form.

This star force was unlike the previous instance where that villain had cleaved off his arm with the golden righteous sword — even when an arm was severed, it could be re-condensed. This power carried within it the will of heaven and earth and the wishing-force of ten thousand common souls. Its might was far greater.

He could not withstand it — even though he was a demon.

Rumble.

The Lunar Yin Demon-Slaying Talisman had arrived. It pierced through his demonic form and erupted in radiance comparable to broad daylight.

“No!” Tantai Wuji let out an unwilling howl. His soul was flayed as though by ten thousand blades of light, on the verge of collapse. He had no choice but to retreat into his demonic core, which had also sustained grievous damage from the talisman’s power. The moment his soul exited it, his demonic form was instantly scorched by the divine light — shattering inch by inch, crumbling apart, reduced to powder.

Lang Jiuchuan watched as that demonic form turned to powder, while the demonic core cracked open in countless fractures and spun at a frenzied pace.

Still not enough. Just a little more.

As long as the soul does not die, the demon endures.

Lang Jiuchuan looked up at the full moon overhead. At some point, that moon stained with blood energy had lost its perfectly round shape. It seemed as though blood-demonic energy was encroaching upon it bit by bit, dyeing it, swallowing it.

The dark moon. The Celestial Hound devouring the moon. The hour of absolute Yin.

It had to be decided without delay.

Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes sharpened to a cutting edge. She chanted incantations rapidly under her breath and expelled a mouthful of soul-essence onto the Azure Dragon Jade Seal in the five-colored altar. The jade seal trembled, and the entire formation trembled with it. The Taiji Eight Trigrams grinding wheel and the pillars of light converged upon the demonic core — encircling it, imprisoning it, tearing it apart.

Abruptly, the demonic core vanished. A demonic shadow erupted from it — Tantai Wuji himself, lantern in hand. He held aloft the Blood Soul Lantern and charged directly at Lang Jiuchuan.

“Wretched creature — you destroyed my demonic form. Then return to me my heaven-born Dao-body!” Tantai Wuji let out a rasping, sinister laugh. “Boundless Demonic Domain — Swallow Heaven, Devour Earth.”

The depth in Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes darkened. His final hidden card — had been forced into the open at last!