The Precious Vase Dharma King truly hadn’t reacted in time.

He sensed that something seemed to have happened by the Sacred Lake, but walking all the way from the Saint Hall, he hadn’t discovered any anomalies at all, let alone any obvious human figures.

Yet somehow, he developed an ominous feeling.

After all, he was a powerful cultivator at the mid-stage of Void Refining, and the Precious Vase Dharma King was not weak.

After Soul Departure and Heart Interrogation, cultivators shifted from cultivating the body to cultivating the heart. After the “Heart Interrogation Dao Tribulation,” they were considered to have gained heaven and earth’s recognition, establishing a subtle connection with nature and the Heavenly Dao. Thus, their perception of the surrounding world would become more acute with rising cultivation levels.

He couldn’t see anything, yet always felt there was something in the void.

Therefore, he became secretly vigilant, approaching carefully step by step, not daring to swagger forward. This was because if his premonition was true, an opponent capable of concealing themselves so thoroughly from his investigation without leaving any trace would definitely be an incredibly powerful enemy beyond his imagination.

But he never expected the scene before him would unfold!

The originally calm Sacred Lake, showing no abnormalities, suddenly exploded, and that youth in snow-white monk robes falling toward the lake was clearly the Saint Son they had searched for decades without finding!

Not to mention the figure so close at hand!

That female cultivator from Yashan who had smashed the entire temple with a single palm twenty years ago, lawless atop the sacred mountain!

Jian Chou!

The moment he clearly saw those moon-white robes almost etched into his memory, impossible to gouge out, the moment he clearly saw that female cultivator’s suddenly turned, ruthless and emotionless face, the Precious Vase Dharma King’s heart already erupted with an uncontrollable panic!

If it were normal times, in close combat, he naturally wouldn’t fear!

But at this moment, this female cultivator was attacking the unprepared with preparation, and her reaction speed was more than ten times faster than his!

Twenty years ago, Jian Chou was merely a Nascent Soul Peak cultivator who hadn’t crossed beyond Soul Departure, yet she still fought fiercely atop the snowy domain, fearless and bold, daring to battle them Dharma Kings to the death. Twenty years later, Jian Chou had consecutively crossed Soul Departure and Worldly Engagement, madly entering the ranks of Void Refining powerhouses with unstoppable, peerless momentum—what terrifying combat power would she unleash?

In this extremely brief instant, the Precious Vase Dharma King’s heart exploded with indescribable fear!

A crushing sense of crisis!

He had no time to react at all. The only thing he managed was to raise his shocked and enraged eyes, letting the dark cold light of that Randeng Sword penetrate his gaze!

“Puff!”

The sharp sword entered flesh as if meeting no resistance!

His unprepared body, only maintaining the defensive posture raised when initially approaching the Sacred Lake shore, was utterly fragile as paper before Jian Chou’s sudden fierce strike. In an instant, it was burned through by the Randeng Sword’s blazing power, and before even a few drops of blood could flow, a fist-sized hole had been pierced through!

“Ahhhhh—”

The unprepared, suddenly penetrating pain was unbearable even for a Void Refining cultivator who should have amazing endurance. The Precious Vase Dharma King’s face immediately became twisted and fierce, unable to control his anguished screams!

Simultaneously, the pain triggered all his defenses!

“Bang!”

In his haste, he instinctively summoned all the power he could muster at this moment, striking toward Jian Chou who had suddenly closed in on him!

But how could Jian Chou be unprepared?

From the moment Saint Son Jiye had looked toward the Saint Hall and told her someone was coming, her mind had been filled with thoughts of ambush and preemptive strikes. Even after personally witnessing the Precious Vase Dharma King walking toward her, she had already run through the sequence of actions and response plans in her mind more than ten times!

It was just that Jiye’s sudden actions had caught her somewhat off guard.

But she had already considered the sequence of all actions too many times in her mind, and her combat instincts were too sharp. Perhaps even now Jian Chou hadn’t figured out what Jiye was trying to accomplish by diving into the Sacred Lake, but the moment her first surprise sword strike launched, the other responsive moves she had conceived in her mind had already subconsciously followed up with her advanced intuition!

“Boom!”

She didn’t let the Precious Vase Dharma King’s counterattack reach her at all!

Almost the instant he struck out, Jian Chou’s palm immediately followed up, precisely and accurately blocking the Precious Vase Dharma King’s strike!

Moreover, it was at least an eighty-percent-prepared Heaven-Flipping Seal!

The moment their palms met, the Precious Vase Dharma King realized something was wrong, suddenly feeling chilled to the bone.

But it was too late to withdraw now!

The instant his palm force erupted and surged forth, an even more powerful and domineering force came thundering down with unstoppable, supremely tyrannical momentum!

“Crack—”

What a teeth-grinding sound! The Precious Vase Dharma King almost watched helplessly as the palm that had met Jian Chou’s, along with his entire arm, was shattered by this unreasonably fierce strike!

Blood and flesh flew everywhere!

The exchange was instantaneous!

The outcome was also instantaneous!

In an instant, as a powerful cultivator who was even a small realm higher than Jian Chou, the Precious Vase Dharma King had already suffered two unprecedented major losses!

His originally gloomy, narrowed eyes immediately turned blood-red!

After paying the price of having a huge hole pierced through his left chest and his entire right arm shattered, he finally gained a moment’s respite. After all, it was a rushed affair, and Jian Chou wasn’t some multi-armed monster either. Launching two consecutive attacks in such a short time was already her limit; immediately following up with a third attack wasn’t realistic.

So the Precious Vase Dharma King suddenly took a deep breath, his abdomen swelling up! A ring of strange luminous white light emanated from his entire body, as if protected by a golden body. His power suddenly rebounded, actually directly colliding with Jian Chou’s body, knocking her entire person back!

The feeling was like someone colliding with porcelain, except this layer of luminous white light on the Precious Vase Dharma King’s body wasn’t as fragile as porcelain. On the contrary, it was extremely hard and extremely cold, faintly emanating an awe-inspiring, inviolable majesty.

Jian Chou hadn’t expected this strike either, and her internal qi and blood immediately churned.

But compared to the Precious Vase Dharma King who had suffered major losses in his haste, this really wasn’t much for her—it didn’t even count as a minor injury!

At this moment, she had merely been pushed back a bit by the Precious Vase Dharma King, gaining him a moment’s respite. But her two swift and fierce attacks just now had already achieved excellent results.

She was only at early-stage Void Refining, while the Precious Vase Dharma King was at mid-stage Void Refining.

At the level of powerful cultivators, so-called “cross-realm killing” had almost become impossible, because the higher one went, the greater the gap between realms. Even just a small realm difference could mean vastly different strength levels that couldn’t be easily overcome!

But now it was different: Jian Chou had struck first, and the Randeng Sword had some connection to Buddhism. Any sword that could enter Yashan’s arsenal was no ordinary blade—how could the wounds it inflicted be mere surface injuries? Not to mention the Heaven-Flipping Seal she had comprehended after leaving the Extreme Domain, which already possessed some of the momentum that Shangren Buyu had used to dominate the Star Sea years ago. Directly shattering the Precious Vase Dharma King’s arm—how could he be comfortable?

Thus, this small realm difference had been equalized.

Even in a certain sense, Jian Chou, who had originally been slightly inferior in cultivation, now held the advantage!

However, she dared not be even slightly careless.

Others might not know, but she was clear in her heart: when she was in the Snowy Domain years ago, she had briefly fought with the injured and weakened Precious Mirror Dharma King. Although she had unexpectedly taken his life, the power of the Heaven-Illuminating Precious Mirror she had felt then still made her feel chilled when she recalled it!

She didn’t dare underestimate any of the three great Dharma Kings who possessed powerful artifacts!

Not to mention, she had also experienced the methods of this Precious Vase Dharma King before!

Knocked back, while Jian Chou was in mid-air, the spiritual power throughout her body began circulating madly. A nearly golden octagonal Wanxiang Battle Disc, measuring five zhang and six chi, brilliantly flashed for a moment. Two golden Dao seals on the disc simultaneously lit up, then along with the entire shockingly massive disc, suddenly vanished!

Her eyes were immediately tinged with faint gold.

A golden dragon scale appeared faintly at her brow, and due to her cultivation advancement, it vaguely emanated a trace of pale, stern purple qi!

The dragon scale Dao seal originally from Dragon Gate and the wind-riding Dao seal she had comprehended in Black Wind Cave activated simultaneously, with no distinction of priority!

The former Jian Chou hadn’t possessed this ability.

But now, she was already a Void Refining powerhouse. The hundreds of years of cultivation in Chanzong’s Sumeru Seed had not only allowed her to transcend cultivation realms, but also made her spiritual consciousness and power reach a level where she could completely handle dual-tasking without worry of inadequacy or backlash!

How cruel was the wind on the snowy ice plains?

Cold as knives, each blade cutting to the bone!

Jian Chou almost just with a thought concealed herself in the endless winds beneath this firmament, leaving no trace, as if she had vanished from heaven and earth.

After that great battle twenty years ago, the Precious Vase Dharma King had heard various things about this female cultivator from Yashan. He knew that when Jian Chou had come to the Snowy Domain with that Xie-surnamed person from Kunwu, it was to investigate the cause of that batch of Yashan and Kunwu cultivators’ deaths in the Snowy Domain. It could be said that even sixty-six years ago, the Snowy Domain’s esoteric sect had become something that everyone in Jiushijiu Zhou wanted to destroy. The current relationship had no possibility of reconciliation—on the contrary, it would only add insult to injury, becoming worse and more terrible!

So he was very clear—

Given the opportunity, Jian Chou would definitely not spare his life, and his goal was also to fight with all his might to put this female cultivator to death!

But hearing about something was one thing; truly fighting against Jian Chou was another. Only now did he realize that beneath her great reputation and arrogance lay genuine substance.

He released his spiritual consciousness but couldn’t sense even a trace of Jian Chou!

What kind of mysteriously unpredictable movement technique was this!

The bloody hole in his left chest was healing at a pace so slow it was almost invisible, and the stump of his shattered right arm was a mass of bloody flesh. A layer of dark golden pure spiritual power that didn’t belong to him clung to the wound like a bone-deep poison, hindering the wound’s recovery.

The Precious Vase Dharma King was in agony, yet didn’t dare divert even a fraction of his power to treat it.

Because the vanished Jian Chou was surely watching from the shadows, and the moment he became distracted might be the moment his soul was utterly destroyed!

But tonight, the god of fate seemed to show him no favor at all—

Everything’s development was beyond his expectations, everything he most worried about and feared!

From arriving at the lakeside and encountering sudden change to being ambushed by Jian Chou, suffering this hateful loss, was merely the work of a lightning-fast moment. Until his arm was shattered, he actually hadn’t realized what had happened.

But now, Jian Chou had mysteriously vanished.

So his attention, originally fixed on Jian Chou and unable to move away, was finally forced to shift to the surrounding environment, forced to observe in all directions and listen to all sounds, and thus finally noticed the anomaly occurring on the Sacred Lake!

In this instant, the Precious Vase Dharma King’s color changed in horror!

The Sacred Lake, which had been silent in time for hundreds of years, seemed to have been injected with some kind of tremendous power the moment Saint Son Jiye fell into it. Countless waves on the lake surface rolled up, transforming into countless smooth silks and satins!

Jiye’s body did not sink to the lake bottom.

Instead, a pair of gentle hands reached up from the lake bottom, supporting his sinking body. Neither floating up nor sinking further, he was suspended and immersed in the lake water.

The next moment, that deity who appeared in Snowy Domain legends revealed her pure and natural form in the lake water. The sun-like blazing snow-blue radiance that Saint Son Jiye embraced illuminated her mutton-fat jade-like lustrous white skin, making her water-like translucent eyes transform into a glass-like deep purple under the reflection of the crimson Sacred Ritual formation in the firmament.

She was both demonic and sacred.

Yet anyone who saw her could not generate even a trace of blasphemous thoughts, only pure appreciation for beauty.

But such a soul-stirring scene, falling into the Precious Vase Dharma King’s eyes, was no different from the most cruel and shocking scene in the eighteenth level of hell!

No one understood the meaning contained in this scene better than he did!

At this moment, how could he still care about Jian Chou who was now hiding in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity? His entire heart full of fierce killing intent went mad the instant he witnessed this scene!

That Saint Son Jiye was born from the most devout faith and belief of the Snowy Domain’s faithful was common knowledge, but few people in all of Jiushijiu Zhou knew the Sacred Lake’s origins!

If the Saint Son was born from the purest and most benevolent place in human hearts, then the Sacred Lake was born from the most yin and most evil place in human hearts!

But now, these two seemed about to merge into one!

A Saint Son Jiye alone was already fearsome enough—adding a Sacred Lake “deity” who had only appeared in legends, what kind of terrifying force would they become?

The Precious Vase Dharma King didn’t dare imagine!

A Jian Chou at most was just an early-stage Void Refining powerhouse. Even in a death battle, she could at most severely injure him; the chance of completely destroying his soul was almost nonexistent. But the consequences of a merged Saint Son and Sacred Lake required no thought.

So in just a moment, the Precious Vase Dharma King had already weighed the options. How could he still care about fearing Jian Chou in the shadows? Almost as if going mad, he roared!

“Hum!”

His entire body suddenly trembled, his dark red monk robes billowing. The strange luminous white light immediately came alive, rapidly condensing into a huge vase phantom around him!

Pure Heaven Precious Vase!

The moment the phantom appeared, it rapidly expanded and solidified.

Hidden in the wind, having already circled undetected to directly above the Precious Vase Dharma King’s head, Jian Chou almost immediately saw through the depth of this technique and couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath.

The magical artifact’s substantial and insubstantial forms followed the heart—this was clearly the realm of human-artifact unity!

Although she didn’t know the reason for Jiye’s actions just now, seeing the Precious Vase Dharma King witness this scene and unhesitatingly abandon her to target Jiye, she could understand that for the Snowy Domain’s New Esoteric sect, this should be an extremely terrifying matter.

And what the New Esoteric sect feared was what they should promote!

Already during her fight with the Precious Vase Dharma King, Jian Chou had used a messaging spirit pearl to relay the news that they had found the Saint Son and were already fighting to Qu Zhengfeng and Master Xuelang stationed at the foot of the sacred mountain. The time required to activate the teleportation array was definitely not long.

That meant reinforcements would arrive soon.

So at this moment, Jian Chou acted without any reservations. Almost the instant she saw the Precious Vase Dharma King raise that huge vase phantom to envelop Saint Son Jiye in the Sacred Lake’s center, she spread her five fingers, and tremendous Five Elements power immediately surged from her wide sleeves!

Metal, wood, water, fire, earth—mutual generation and mutual restraint, mutual restraint and mutual generation!

Power colliding with power had already created a heart-palpitating, terrifying might!

During the hundreds of years trapped in the Sumeru Seed, Jian Chou had never neglected her cultivation.

The techniques recorded in the “Qingfeng Hermitage Forty-Eight Records”—the quantity she had learned might be difficult to compare with Xie Buchen who had been in the Sumeru Seed at the same time, but in terms of depth and precision, she far surpassed Xie Buchen!

Not to mention, this Great Five Elements Prohibition-Breaking Technique was something they had jointly deduced!

Setting aside past hatred, both could be considered among the top outstanding figures in current Jiushijiu Zhou. Their understanding of cultivation and techniques each had unique insights. In the past, any one person’s understanding could make other cultivators of the same level sigh in admiration, let alone something they had been forced to jointly discuss and comprehend under circumstances!

Extremely deep, extremely strong!

The Precious Vase Dharma King’s Pure Heaven Precious Vase might have numerous techniques, but summarized, its functions were nothing more than three: purifying hearts, imprisonment, and suppressing demons!

At this moment, descending from heaven like a vase, inverted downward, it was clearly activating the imprisonment ability.

So Jian Chou didn’t hesitate for a moment, immediately unleashing the “Great Five Elements Prohibition-Breaking Technique” specifically created to break restraints!

Over the years, the Precious Vase Dharma King’s Pure Heaven Precious Vase’s imprisonment ability, relying on his high cultivation and the vase’s strength, had always been invincible. Even if someone wanted to do something to him while he was casting this technique, they could at most target him personally, unable to target the technique he was currently casting.

So at this moment, he dared to stake everything on this gamble!

But unfortunately, this time he faced the most unexpected opponent he had encountered in his thousand years of cultivation, and this opponent unleashed the most unexpected attack!

“Hum—”

“Rumble…”

The sound of the Great Five Elements Prohibition-Breaking Technique’s attack arose almost simultaneously with the sound of the vase’s descent! The five-colored lights of the Five Elements arranged in an incredibly mysterious sequence, and when they violently struck the Pure Heaven Precious Vase’s surface, they actually transformed into a profound and void “white”—a nearly colorless white that seemed to devour all surrounding light, leaving only a vortex in perception.

The Pure Heaven Precious Vase’s snow-white surface was inscribed with line after line of golden scripture. It was precisely these connected together that transformed into imprisonment power when the Precious Vase Dharma King urged them with hand seals, like golden chains condensed from text, binding people.

But at the moment the Great Five Elements Prohibition-Breaking Technique struck—

These countless golden “chains” were all devoured by that white vortex, collapsing completely, not leaving even a trace of residue!

The Precious Vase Dharma King, who had cultivated to the human-artifact unity realm, had his mind connected with the vase itself. At this moment, he almost immediately spat out a mouthful of heart’s blood!

His already withered face showed even more indescribable deathly gray!

In shock and rage, he raised his head, his expression already extremely fierce, his eyes bloodshot as he looked toward Jian Chou who had finally revealed her position in the void, gnashing his teeth sinisterly: “Ignorant child, dare to ruin my esoteric sect’s great plan! Seeking death!”

Fighting to this point, it was obviously impossible to end well. Although Jian Chou knew the opponent surely still had trump cards in reserve, she hadn’t come unprepared today either! On the contrary, the Precious Vase Dharma King’s currently fierce demeanor—where was even half a trace of a Buddhist high monk’s appearance? It almost instantly reminded her of what she had seen and heard on this “pure land” in the past, what she had experienced and hated!

Those mediocre but innocent commoners…

Those naive and pure young women…

And Yashan, including the dozen or so heroic souls including Yu Zhifei who had fallen in the Snowy Domain!

Seeking death?

Sorrow and hatred emerged together, then transformed into even more blazing killing intent in her chest boiling with hot blood, provoking Jian Chou to laugh coldly.

Randeng Sword in hand, Wind-Thunder Wings deployed!

She rode the wind in concealment, carrying the most turbulent and magnificent might, instantly transforming into the most oppressive and swift golden wind beneath this dark firmament!

“Then let’s see whether I’m seeking death, or you’re paying with your life first!”