One Hundred and Forty-Seven: The Dance of Cloudless Skies and Falling Petals

Wuyun stood there, cold sweat pouring down his face, while Luohuawu gave a cold snort, her battle armor already fully donned as she departed.

She had obtained the Emperor's Pouch, radiating vast and mighty imperial prestige. Combined with the fact that she was already just a step away from the Emperor Realm, who among the others could possibly keep her in check?

Until the sweat flowed all the way up to the clouds, piercing through the vapor below, he caught sight of the Battle King who had been lurking the entire time.

The Battle King awkwardly scratched his head and muttered, "Why didn't I hear any commotion while sleeping tonight? It's always so loud before, earth-shattering! How come there's nothing tonight?"

After Elder Bear left behind some memory fragments and Dragon One departed, Wuyun lay flat on the ground, unable to get up, gazing up at the hazy gray sky and murmuring, "Could it be that this cloud of mine is truly destined to be captured by someone?"

After reminiscing for a long time, some details remained blurry, but more prominent were grand and heroic utterances.

He looked at the Battle King, shaking his head and sighing, whereupon the latter said, "Young master, you were still saying yesterday that everything was under control, and today..."

Wuyun forced a wry smile. Looking at the scenes provided by Elder Bear, the Battle King, Dragon One, and the Ant-Camel, he suddenly understood everything.

He said, "It's a good thing you reminded me, otherwise I wouldn't have known the final outcome either!"

The Battle King was stunned and blurted out, "You believe what you say when you're drunk?"

As more and more memories surfaced, Wuyun's hazy recollections began to emerge and unfold before his eyes, gradually aligning with everyone else's recorded memories.

On that night, after being made drunk by Luohuawu, Wuyun had begun to struggle.

Who could have imagined that Wuyun's struggles would feel as though an imperial artifact had possessed him, sending wave after wave of oppressive imperial prestige surging forth.

Caught completely off guard, Luohuawu barely managed to block it before saying in astonishment, "Brother Black Horse gave you an imperial artifact for self-protection, so it makes sense. He values you so much, treating you like his own son..."

"If you don't understand, stop talking nonsense!"

Wuyun, under the influence of alcohol, spoke with extreme provocation. Enraged, Luohuawu prepared to use her power to punish this foul-mouthed habit, only to be frozen by Wuyun's next sentence.

"He's more like my son—no, even my son wouldn't be this dark! And he's still just a one-horned dwarf horse..."

Wuyun was utterly uninhibited. The more expressive Luohuawu's face became, the bolder his words grew: "What ancestral fairy vein? To put it bluntly, he's just the most ordinary horse. It's only because old Bai didn't work hard and couldn't even distill a wisp of immortal energy that this fellow foolishly gave away an imperial artifact. Bah! What terrible taste."

Wuyun was speaking the absolute truth, but thunder suddenly rumbled across the sky. It turned out that the eavesdropping Ant-Camel couldn't help but flare up in anger, and was subsequently pulled back by Dragon One. The two engaged in a fierce brawl.

Dragon One possessed the peak cultivation of a Mysterious Immortal. Since the Ant-Camel chose not to use imperial prestige, he was no match and had to rely on the residual power of imperial bones to cope. After fighting for a while, Wuyun's voice grew loud again.

"What? Why isn't the Emperor Snake eating that dragon anymore? Haha, are you kidding me? A snake is a snake; even if she grows as big as a mountain, she will never be a match for a dragon. Even if she devours all the dragons, she can never take the shape of a dragon. When the True Dragon walks the world, through eighty-one tribulations, every complete True Dragon can protect an entire world. If that poisonous witch dares to come over, I guarantee I'll let Dragon One eat her until not even her bones are left. Do you believe me?"

"I don't believe it. The Emperor Snake is facing her second tribulation, and once she overcomes the third, the entire Immortal Realm's dragon race will face complete annihilation. All dragons have already migrated out of the Immortal Realm, fleeing to other foreign dimensions. Besides, the dragon race is like a rat crossing the street; one day, they will vanish entirely!"

Luohuawu's hand had just reached out to grab the swaying Wuyun, when unexpectedly, Wuyun's entire body trembled. The Myriad-Life Immortal-Transforming Emperor Pouch was summoned directly into his soul river without any sign of rejection. With a backhand sweep, he wrapped his arm around her waist, gave her a casual toss like a ballroom dance, shook his head, and sighed, "You are not like her!"

"Who is she?"

"There are too many of them, so many that in the end, I could only keep running away."

"You're turning my soul upside down—Sea of Flowers, appear!" Provoked and enraged, Luohuawu—a mere greenhorn of a kid daring to take advantage of her—unleashed an invincible aura that shook the entire mountain ravine. This was a method exclusive to Immortal Kings.

She prepared to use the might of an Immortal King directly to capture this brat who relied on an imperial artifact to dream.

In an instant, flowers bloomed all over the ravine, and Wuyun and Luohuawu found themselves facing each other upon a flower bud as unimaginably huge as mountains and rivers. Then, the former smiled, and ten thousand flowers blossomed, raising wisps of immortal mist accompanied by a multitude of heartwarming fragrances.

What had Wuyun feared the most in the past? He didn't fear a head-on clash—he feared clinginess, he didn't fear stubbornness, but he feared arrays, entrapment, and softness.

Within the sea of flowers, seven figures suddenly materialized around Wuyun one by one. These seven women radiated unparalleled beauty and charm, to the extent that even shifting formations could not fully capture their faces.

Amidst Wuyun's startled dodge, the seven figures gradually blurred, but immediately afterward, another shadow appeared. Once this shadow emerged, it involuntarily began to chant divine language. Even as Wuyun tried to stop it, these divine words converged like geometric figures, symbols, and runes to form a massive array. It pierced through space, shattered time, and instantly transformed the sea of flowers into countless stars.

As the stars shrank, they revealed the signs of the entire universe; then the universe shrank, and more universes appeared like a compact river flowing through the boundless expanse of space.

Beneath the river were countless small streams, all of them devoid of light, yet supporting numerous universes. Above the universes—meaning above the river—there was a source, resembling a massive gateway, or perhaps an ancient skull. In short, whatever you imagined it to be, that was what it was.

That was the highest origin point of these universes, the high and untouchable Divine Realm.

Luohuawu was stunned by all of this. Gazing at the Divine Realm, she could seemingly hear countless voices demanding to know who was opening the dimensional tunnel and communicating with the outside world.

As the numerous universes shrank, and as the vast Divine Realm shrank, a dimension resembling a woman's tiny foot emerged. This was the true visage of the entire dimension. Yet in the boundless space, there were many more dimensions—Luohuawu could even sense them, though they could not be seen in the manifestation of the flower sea.

Until a certain distant point was reached, until she saw a giant palm stretch out from the Divine Realm to sever it all, and until a woman's voice came from the contacted alternative dimension: "You're finally dead; it's time to come and meet me."

Crack!

The entire sea of flowers was annihilated, leaving behind only a single sentence that echoed and spread continuously.

Wuyun screamed again, roaring angrily, "You're the ones who are dead, your whole family is dead, I'm still alive!"

Emboldened by alcohol, he cursed first and then ranted. After blabbering for a long time and discovering that the sea of flowers' illusions had all been severed, he immediately pointed at the sky and cursed loudly. He even drew circles with his feet and wrote characters with his hands, and every curse he cast vanished into thin air!

"I'll make you people who stand at the very top fall the hardest! In your next life, you'll all be reborn as mortals!"

Luohuawu could not distinguish whether the previous vision was true or false, but having her spell broken left her both pleasantly surprised and alarmed. She casually summoned an immortal artifact from her soul sea. This immortal artifact could not compare to the Hundred-Town Thousand-Evil Locking Tower, looking very much like a large kettle. When its tall-capped spout was tilted, a wave of fragrant aroma gushed out.

Instantly, the shattered sea of flowers was repaired as good as new, and flowers even began to sprout all over Wuyun's body.

Every time a blue, red, or yellow flower grew on Wuyun's face, a layer of flower buds would wrap around his soul. When thousands of them covered his entire body, his soul was similarly entrapped.

Trapped inside, Wuyun roared loudly. The Emperor Pouch appeared, and all the flowers were sucked inside, falling into the hands of Green Leaf, who laughed happily and planted them on top of Little Bug's head. Instantly, his completely bald pate was covered entirely in floral shapes, resembling painted runes.

"Flowery monk, flowery Buddha!"

Looking at the outside world, Little Bug said with a guilty conscience, "Let's get out of here quickly and stop collecting baleful energy. Your breakthrough to the Immortal King realm is an absolute certainty, but Senior Wuyun is raving drunk—who knows, he might hold a serious grudge!"

Green Leaf nodded, sighing as he spoke of breaking back through to the Immortal King realm to visit his brothers and sisters in their territory. The latter shook his head even more fiercely, saying, "You can't go back. Don't ask why—even becoming an Immortal Emperor won't work. The price he paid this time was to start all over again, hiding his name and identity. Anyone who knows his identity must either watch him leave, follow him leave, or have their soul scattered and their true spirit obliterated!"

"Ah..."

After her divine ability was collected, Luohuawu grew a bit more serious and asked, "I couldn't tell your cultivation was actually quite peculiar, able to mobilize half the might of an imperial artifact. Did you really think you could use an imperial artifact to suppress me? Ridiculous!"

She pointed at the immortal kettle once more, and a watery creature was poured out from within. Given life through incantations, this watery creature grew from large to small, completely ignoring Wuyun's Emperor Pouch and walking straight into his soul river.

"Such minor spellcasting dare be flaunted? Let me teach you a divine ability unknown in this Immortal Realm!"

Wuyun laughed heartily, the shadow of youthful arrogance flashing in Luohuawu's eyes.

——This was curse-craft. The shadow entering her eyes began to dance, its rhythm explosive, stirring Luohuawu's emotions.

With every twist and turn, a melodious piece of music drifted over. Hearing it, Luohuawu was instantly captivated; she had never heard such music before. At its most enchanting moments, the music vaguely recounted some tragic love story.

"Yue Qi is so young, what powerful methods could he possibly have to trap himself!" Steadying her mind and listening closely, her vision suddenly shifted, placing her in a miraculous world.

In this world, there were no immortals, gods, or spells, but there was a method of breathing and cultivation akin to immortal arts. The order was different, and so-called cultivation meant conforming to the heavens and the earth.

As the music shifted, she arrived in a magnificent universe. That belonged to an era of machines, where every intelligent machine acted like an artifact spirit—ranging from meteoroids to stars, and even unimaginably massive machines the size of galaxies operating ceaselessly.

Luohuawu sighed. No matter how great a civilization was, once it lost divine power, it could only use such means as a substitute.

Just as the sigh faded, she saw another bizarre world. Cultivation here resembled magic; raising gemstone-embedded staves allowed one to summon wind and rain, making everything possible. She also saw powerful beings with strange appearances known as angels and demons.

It wasn't until she saw yet another type of world that she began to feel truly shocked. This world had no fixed size and was boundlessly vast. The beings living within it could not be seen in their true forms, yet they could create heavens and earth.

They were real, while the heavens and earth were illusory. Wherever their thoughts reached, life, star systems, and universes slowly grew.

In particular, their method of communication was extremely peculiar, consisting of clusters of unclear substances possessing unique forms, disdaining to change into other appearances. It seemed that their faces were the exclusive marks of deities and the supreme holy race.

When they fought one another with a single thought, all creation moved, constantly creating entire universes to battle each other until the creative power of one side waned and was devoured.