A Will Eternal

The sight of so many vengeful souls left Bai Xiaochun shivering a bit. Ghosts filled him with indescribable fear, and yet, right now he had no other option available but to face them.

“Shut up!” he yelled with just as much rage as all the howling vengeful souls. Time was of the essence at the moment, and the only thing that occupied his thoughts at the moment was that he only had twelve hours to get to the violet trial by fire.

Big Fatty Zhang’s life was on the line!

Even as Bai Xiaochun yelled at the souls, they flew into the air toward him. As for Bai Xiaochun, he didn’t back down, nor did he slow his pace. Instead, he shot directly toward the vengeful souls.

Outside, the cultivators of the Starry Sky Dao Polarity Sect looked on, their eyes glued to the scene playing out in front of them. All of them were incredibly intent on seeing how Bai Xiaochun tackled the cyan trial.

“It looks like this Bai Xiaochun is going to use some sort of divine ability or something....”

“This trial tests how long you can stand up to the bombardment of the vengeful souls, and how many you can take out. Anyone who wants to last any length of time has to be very careful about their spiritual power, and not waste a single bit. It requires a lot of control.”

“Gongsun Wan’er pulled off something of a miracle. The vengeful souls didn’t dare to actually fight her, although the effect didn’t do anything to the soul emperor. Even still, something like that never happened before in history.”

“I wonder how many souls this Bai Xiaochun will take out....”

Even as the discussions played out in the audience, Bai Xiaochun was inside the cyan trial, rocketing toward the incoming vengeful souls at top speed.

From a distance, it looked like a sea of souls, shaking heaven and earth as they screamed through the air.

However, in the moment before that sea crashed into Bai Xiaochun, he slapped his bag of holding to produce a medicinal pill.

It was white, and didn’t emit any medicinal aroma. In fact, it didn’t seem to be extraordinary in any way. As for the audience, they were stunned, and couldn’t imagine why Bai Xiaochun would possibly pull out a medicinal pill at this critical moment.

But then, Bai Xiaochun hurled the pill down toward the ground, simultaneously shouting, “Take this!”

The instant the pill hit the ground, it shattered, sending invisible ripples spreading out in all directions. At the same time, the faces of the incoming vengeful souls flickered as they suddenly changed directions and flew down toward the location of the shattered pill. Apparently, their soul bodies were completely beyond their own control!

Some sort of indescribably powerful gravitational force had appeared, which sucked in the vengeful souls, crushing them together. First it was ten, then a hundred, then a thousand, and then ten thousand!

Almost instantly, an opening appeared within the sea of souls, right in front of Bai Xiaochun. At the same time, more than 10,000 souls were sucked down toward the ground, screaming the entire time. In the blink of an eye, a black, fist-sized sphere took shape!

Within that glowing sphere were more than 10,000 vengeful souls!

The audience members’ minds were spinning, and they looked on with wide eyes as Bai Xiaochun flew forward without pausing for a moment. As he did, he produced another of his Soul Convergence Pills.

Every time he threw out one of the pills, all of the souls in the area would be sucked into a black, glowing sphere. Gradually, the vengeful souls grew fewer and fewer as more and more black spheres appeared, each of them filled with numerous screaming souls, none of whom could escape.

Eventually, Bai Xiaochun saw the enormous soul emperor in the middle of the cyan trial by fire. Unleashing his cultivation base power, the soul emperor shot toward Bai Xiaochun and howled, “Begone from this place!”

Power erupted from the soul emperor, causing the sky to dim, and yet, Bai Xiaochun simply waved his right hand, throwing out dozens of Soul Convergence Pills at the same time.

“Take this!” he shouted. As the pills exploded, the howling soul emperor’s face suddenly filled with disbelief and shock.

Without any warning, his body suddenly split up into dozens of parts, all of which were sucked away and sealed by the medicinal pills....

Bai Xiaochun didn’t even pay attention to the result. Instead, he continued to speed here and there, tossing out medicinal pills. After the time it takes an incense stick to burn... the cyan trial by fire which had caused problems for countless cultivators in the past... was devoid of even a single vengeful soul.

Bai Xiaochun sped past countless gravestones toward the far end of the trial by fire, and then vanished into the exit.

The spectators outside were trembling in shock. They had had their speculations about what would happen, but never could any of them have imagined that Bai Xiaochun would use a shocking method like this to pass the trial!

From ancient times until the present, no one had ever done anything like it. Everyone knew that the point of this trial was to exterminate as many vengeful souls as possible, and yet, as of this moment, the trial was completely empty....

“Th-this... this....”

“I thought Gongsun Wan’er’s performance was spectacular. I never thought that this Bai Xiaochun... would actually surpass her!”

“The vengeful souls didn’t dare to attack Gongsun Wan’er, and she fought to a draw with the soul emperor. But Bai Xiaochun... he actually absorbed the soul emperor....”

Soon, a deathly silence fell over the audience. Bai Xiaochun’s run through the trials was doing much the same as Gongsun Wan’er’s. The entire sect was shaken as word spread, and more people began to turn their attention toward the trials.

Back on Sky Quarter Rainbow, in the main temple in the Hall of Devil Slayers, Big Fatty Zhang was sitting cross-legged just like he had been before. By this point, he was completely without consciousness, and the flame of his life force was almost gone. Were Feng Youde not there to bolster him, that flame would already have flickered out.

Outside of the temple, Xu Baocai and Master God-Diviner were watching the Starry Sky Dao Polarity Superstars trials, along with Chen Manyao. All of them were completely shaken by what Bai Xiaochun was pulling off.

The other disciples in the sect didn’t really know Bai Xiaochun, but they did. Given his personality, they knew that he normally wouldn’t take risks like this. Everything he was doing was for the sake of Big Fatty Zhang.

As the news about Bai Xiaochun spread, shaking the sect, he appeared within the blue trial by fire. In total, he had used only a bit more than an hour to pass all five of the previous trials, and yet, that was not a reason for him to relax. He was now at the final challenge, after which he would be able to enter the violet stage.

In terms of ranking, he didn’t care about that, and wasn’t even thinking of it. However, he knew that this trial would be the most difficult.

After all, his opponent here would be... Gongsun Wan’er!

Or, more precisely, a statue of Gongsun Wan’er!

The dimension in which the blue trial took place wasn’t large, only about 30,000 meters across. Beyond those borders, everything was a blur. Within the very center of the 30,000-meter area was a lone statue depicting a young woman. She was beautiful, but there was something strange about her; she pulsed with a frigid aura that caused everything around her to turn a light blue color.

At almost the exact same instant that Bai Xiaochun appeared, the statue’s eyes opened, revealing an intense coldness as they locked onto Bai Xiaochun.

That gaze was like a pair of knives stabbing into Bai Xiaochun’s own eyes and piercing into his mind. A tremor ran through him, along with an intense sensation of deadly crisis.

He had fought once with Gongsun Wan’er, long ago. However, after returning from the Blood Stream Sect, he had always felt that there was something very strange about her, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on what that was. Because of that, he had always avoided her.

At long last, in this blue trial by fire, he would be tangling with her once again. Although this was only a statue representing her, Bai Xiaochun knew that it would attack him with the full power that Gongsun Wan’er had used when she challenged the Starry Sky Dao Polarity Superstars trials.

Furthermore, he knew that unless Gongsun Wan’er had held back during her own fight, this statue would be just as powerful as she was in real life. Although it wouldn’t be quite as intelligent as she was, because it wasn’t a real life-form, it wouldn’t sense any pain. In the end, the statue’s strong points would cancel out its weak points, and vice versa.

As soon as Bai Xiaochun’s gaze locked with Gongsun Wan’er’s, her body blurred, and four versions of herself appeared, almost like clones. Incantation gestures flashed, and they all waved their fingers in Bai Xiaochun’s direction.

Instantly, four streams of light shot toward him, each one a different color. As they streamed through the air, they intersected with each other, forming into an ice flower with four petals, each one a different color. Then, the flower began to rotate rapidly as it shot toward Bai Xiaochun.

As it passed along, the ground beneath the spinning flower froze up, and the temperature dropped rapidly, until cracking sounds rang out in all directions....

On each of the four flower petals was a face that resembled Gongsun Wan’er, smiling in enigmatic and bizarre fashion. Bai Xiaochun was even sure that he could hear sinister chuckling.

Despite the hair-raisingly terrifying smiles, Bai Xiaochun knew that there was no time to ponder the situation. Drawing upon his Frigid School Will-Evolving Incantation, he performed an incantation gesture with his right hand and then shoved it out in front of him!