The Modern Martial Immortal

Without seeing it with their own eyes or experiencing it for themselves, no one would believe that a cultivator who had just advanced to the Void-Shattering Realm possessed the strength to suppress top-tier Void-Shattering cultivators.

It flew in the face of common sense. Yet, compared with notions instilled by others, people are generally far more willing to believe whatever they want to believe.

This Eerie Night Fiend Lord was the best example.

Of course, with the fate of the Eight Desolations and Dark Fiend Lords serving as a warning, she still immediately requested support from the Heavenly Prison and Slaughter Sin Fiend Lords, with whom she was on relatively good terms.

Of the two, the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord was better positioned, being fairly close by, while the Slaughter Sin Fiend Lord would need some time to arrive.

So when Yaoguang crossed the border of the Eerie Night Fiend Lord’s territory, what met him were two fiend lords poised to strike at him.

”Yaoguang, you have some nerve! Do you really think advancing to the Void-Shattering Realm has made you invincible?” the Eerie Night Fiend Lord said.

In the void above a stretch of mountains, the Eerie Night Fiend Lord and the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord blocked Yaoguang’s way.

”Two fiend lords?” Yaoguang was somewhat surprised. ”Four of your fiend lords have already fallen one after another, and despite that, only two came to stop me? I would have thought you’d send at least three or four to intercept me.”

The Eerie Night and Heavenly Prison Fiend Lords exchanged a look. Believing she had detected something, the Eerie Night Fiend Lord spoke first, ”Is this a diversion tactic? You deliberately expose yourself to draw more fiend lords against you and give the Heavenly Dao Sect an opening to operate? Seeing how confident your sect is acting... has Perfected Lord Jinghong come out of seclusion?”

Yaoguang did not care to explain.

With the deaths of the Foolish Soul and Soul Slayer Fiend Lords, the Heavenly Dao Sect had also lost Perfected Lord Bu Zhou, so while the Yin Lunar Sect would be on guard, it would not turn out in full force.

Still, however slow the Yin Lunar Sect might be to catch on, once he slaughtered this batch of fiend lords, it would finally grasp his true strength.

Once they retreated inside the sect’s headquarters, he would have little hope of breaking the Yin Lunar Sect’s grand array, which reached level 15.

Even with a bit of luck, killing another one or two before these fiend lords withdrew into their sect would leave his total at just three or four, which fell short of the eight fiend lords from the Yin Lunar Sect he had originally planned to kill.

So be it. I’ll have to make up the difference on the demon race’s side. As for the Yin Lunar Sect... every Void-Shattering fiend lord I can kill is still one more. Yaoguang thought.

He directly deployed the Heaven-Sealing Stele and began locking down the surrounding space, then stepped through the void and appeared instantly at the Eerie Night Fiend Lord’s side.

Even though this fiend lord had been fully vigilant, she was unable to detect anything amiss. Only when Yaoguang’s Void Sword came slashing down did she sense the abnormality.

Faced with the bone-chilling sharpness of the Void Sword, she did not dare block the strike, and instantly dissolved into darkness.

The Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign cultivates the Great Dao of darkness, which is why more than half of the Yin Lunar Sect’s fiend lords cultivate that same Great Dao... Does that fiend sovereign not worry about a future Dao Contest with his sect’s juniors? Or is it that, to avoid a Dao Contest, he took every Void-Shattering cultivator who practices the Great Dao of darkness under his banner first? Thoughts flickered through Yaoguang’s mind.

Almost simultaneously, the radiance of the True Spirit Light illuminated his mental world. Just as his Great Dao of void had once been countered by the Great Dao of truth, the Great Dao of soul embodied by the True Spirit Light clearly countered the Great Dao of darkness, and Yaoguang already had extensive experience using the True Spirit Light against darkness Dao Techniques.

Guided by the True Spirit Light, he instantly located the Eerie Night Fiend Lord’s true body. The Void Sword’s edge turned, and together with the suppressive force released from the Heaven-Sealing Stele, the strike landed on the fiend lord with absolute precision, cleaving her in two.

How did he lock onto me?! The Eerie Night Fiend Lord’s heart lurched as her bisected body dissolved into fiendish flames and tried to regather.

With practiced ease, Yaoguang used the Torrent of Time to send out two streams of Great Annihilation Sword Qi, striking precisely at the fiendish body the Eerie Night Fiend Lord was trying to reform.

At the same moment, the Wandering Dragon Sword unleashed another Void Sword, slashing head-on at the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord, who had sensed something wrong and moved to reinforce her.

Wherever the Void Sword passed, gods and fiends alike gave way. Amplified by the projection of the Great Dao of void channeled through the Limitless Sword, no Dao Technique could rival the sharpness of this strike unless it was a life-bound Dao Technique equally specialized in offense.

The Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord cast two Dao Techniques in succession, trying to dissolve the Void Sword’s edge, yet the unstoppable blade smashed straight through them both. He was forced to rely on a high-grade Dao Artifact similar to the Two-Realm Ruler to slip out of that stretch of space and evade the killing blow. But that left him no chance to aid the Eerie Night Fiend Lord.

In the end, he could only watch as she was once again struck by the Great Annihilation Sword Qi before she could even reform her body, the destructive power within Yaoguang’s attack obliterating thirty percent of her heavenly fiend origin on the spot.

”Not bad.” Yaoguang glanced at the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord.

If the Eerie Night Fiend Lord was a Void-Shattering cultivator on the same level as Chi Yun, Gu Li, and Jing Yuntian, then this Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord’s strength was already approaching Zhen Xuanyuan’s. His combat power had to be somewhere around ninety million.

Yaoguang flicked his hand through the air, and the Heaven-Sealing Stele’s power pressed down on the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord. At the same time, the Torrent of Time surged forth, and the Wandering Dragon Sword swept out another Void Sword aimed straight at him.

Yaoguang himself kept controlling the two streams of Great Annihilation Sword Qi, sending them toward the fiendish flames the Eerie Night Fiend Lord had turned into, giving her no chance whatsoever to condense her fiendish body again.

Throughout the process, information streamed through his mind: the structure of the Eerie Night Fiend Lord’s fiendish body, its transformations, and exactly how to attack it for maximum lethality.

It was as though the Void-Shattering cultivators of the Great Dao of darkness who had died at his hands numbered not one or two, but dozens, hundreds, even thousands.

Yaoguang quickly realized it was the effect of the Dao Fruit he had obtained when the Daemon Hunter branch had advanced to the fifteenth tier: Hunting Instinct.

After subduing and killing the Foolish Soul Fiend Lord and refining the Soul Slayer Fiend Lord to death, he had funneled all the experience gained from the Daemon Hunter branch back into it, raising it to the fifteenth tier.

The fifteenth-tier Daemon Hunter branch had brought him no increase in raw strength, and the Hunting Instinct offered no direct boost to any of his stats, but the ability granted by this Dao Fruit made fighting these daemons and alien races come far more naturally.

Just like now, with only two streams of Great Annihilation Sword Qi, he could easily keep the Eerie Night Fiend Lord under control, leaving her fiendish body perpetually unable to condense, trapped in a state where she could only take the beating.

Likewise, with just a single Void Sword supported by the Heaven-Sealing Stele, he could keep the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord from even getting near him, and unable to rescue the Eerie Night Fiend Lord.

Before long, more than half of the Eerie Night Fiend Lord’s heavenly fiend origin had been destroyed. Sensing the moment was right, Yaoguang released his grotto-heaven and dragged the fiend lord into it, subduing her through the grotto-heaven’s power alone.

In the distance, the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord’s pupils constricted violently at the sight.

In truth, he had realized the moment they crossed hands that Yaoguang’s strength had not been exaggerated at all.

He absolutely had the power to fight one against two and defeat Zhen Xuanyuan and Gu Li. And more than that, he had probably even held back against Zhen Xuanyuan and Gu Li; otherwise, those two Void-Shattering cultivators could never have escaped with their lives.

Yaoguang’s combat power rivaled the invincible Void-Shattering cultivators on the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings!

So when he saw the Eerie Night Fiend Lord subjugated in such a short time, he lost every last bit of courage and any intention to keep fighting. He shot backward as he deployed a flying vessel built like a warship, tearing through the void to flee the battlefield.

Even as he fled at full speed, he pulled out a jade talisman to call for help. ”The intelligence was wrong! Yaoguang’s strength is overwhelming, not far off from Perfected Lord Jinghong’s! Eerie Night has already been crushed. Fellow Daoists, come quickly!”

Barely a moment after his message went out, Yaoguang’s figure flickered into view five thousand kilometers behind him.

That speed drained the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord’s face of color. He pushed the flying vessel to its absolute limit, and it leaped over five hundred thousand kilometers in an instant.

Yet even flying that far didn’t give him any breathing room. Almost instantly, he sensed Yaoguang’s figure appear just a few hundred thousand kilometers away, and in the very next moment, the distance between them had shrunk to just a few tens of thousands of kilometers.

By the time he scrambled to activate the vessel for another jump, Yaoguang’s figure had already appeared in front of it.

”Void Flicker!” Despair crept into the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord’s eyes.

The Void Flicker itself was not the issue! The issue was that Yaoguang’s Void Flicker was able to cover over a hundred thousand kilometers each time, and Yaoguang could use it several times in a row.

His own Dao Artifact vessel might cover five hundred thousand kilometers per jump, but that was only because vessel-type Dao Artifacts had enormous output, and each jump required a waiting period.

That was fine for steady travel, but in a life-and-death struggle it offered no flexibility whatsoever. Compared to Yaoguang’s Void Flicker, it fell considerably short.

He could not win, could not dodge, could not hide, could not escape. How could that not drive a person to despair?

”Let me see how many of my strikes you can take,” Yaoguang said calmly.

With no interference from the Eerie Night Fiend Lord, the Torrent of Time was channeled entirely into the Void Sword. Two Void Swords slashed at the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord almost simultaneously, one right behind the other.

At the same time, the Heaven-Sealing Stele’s power was roused in full. Ripples visible to the naked eye spread out from the high-grade Dao Artifact, and the space around the Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord seemed to congeal into walls of iron that no power could shake in the slightest.

The Heavenly Prison Fiend Lord barely managed to weather the first Void Sword. But against the second, not even sacrificing a death-substitution item helped. The blade smashed through his defenses with unstoppable momentum and, its force barely diminished, cleaved open his fiendish body.

With his fiendish body broken, the rest of the battle naturally became simple. The Great Annihilation Sword Qi wore him down, and once he was weakened enough, the grotto-heaven’s power swept out, absorbing him.

The entire process flowed like drifting clouds and running water, with the seamless beauty of a single unbroken breath.