The Undying Immortal System
Chapter 333: Life 77, Age 74, Martial Sovereign 1

Su HongYi opened the temple’s gates to give us our first look at the courtyard beyond. To the left and right, I could see several of the smaller buildings that I had spotted from above, but our primary destination was right in front of us.

At first glance, the main hall of the Summit’s temple didn’t look too different from any other palace-like structure that I had seen in this world. It sat upon a thick stone base, it had wide red pillars supporting a yellow tiled roof, and its eaves were painted in a variety of vibrant colors. This building might have been a bit larger than the others that I had seen, but the only thing that really set it apart was that, instead of wood, the walls were formed from stylized marble.

Of course, this was only considering things from a surface-level perspective.

The Su Clan’s Palace of Supreme Harmony sat on a slab of marble, but what kind of stone did this temple sit upon? I didn’t immediately recognize it, but that, in and of itself, told me all that I needed to know.

Unless this was simply some exceedingly obscure type of stone, it had to have been transported here from the Central Continent. But why would anyone go to the trouble of transporting such a huge rock just for it to serve as the foundation for some building? To show off? Even if the stone were rare, if it were only some random Rank 1 mineral, who would care?

My gut told me that this stone had to be at least Rank 6, possibly higher. And if it was, then it almost certainly served as a core component of the temple's defensive formation. It also likely contained one of the primary nodes in the formation protecting the sect as a whole. Stepping on top of it would mean willingly putting myself at the center of an extremely powerful, unknown formation.

But, well, that was the journey that we had signed up for when we had decided to assault this place.

I placed a hand on Liang’s and NiangBa’s shoulders and channeled a wave of the Expanding Realms Fire to engulf them both. After taking a moment to steady my mind, I then pulled out a third wave of fire and wrapped myself.

Once all three of us were protected, I motioned to the Su Clan’s elders. “Let’s go.”

HongYi bowed his head and started walking.

As our group moved through the temple complex and began ascending the stairs to the hall above, I couldn’t help but notice that the entire place was wrapped in an eerie silence. This was supposed to be the primary home of the Jiu Clan, but there were no sounds of children playing nor any echoes from people training their martial arts. There were no signs of life at all. There was only the sound of wind blowing through abandoned buildings.

Using energy vision, I searched for any signs that we were trapped in an illusion or that we were being blocked from sensing our surroundings, but there was nothing. After fleeing here, had Li NeiTang grabbed the Jiu Clan and fled even further afield?

If so, why hadn’t I heard anything from Ning ZeKun? If this place was empty, why hadn’t he contacted me? If it wasn’t empty, why didn’t I hear the sounds of fighting?

As worries swirled around in my head, our group reached the top of the steps, where we found a pair of golden double doors that stood 10 meters wide and 15 meters tall. After taking a deep breath, I nodded for HongYi to open them.

When I saw the room beyond, my breath caught in my throat.

It was the same expansive hall where I had first met the Sovereigns. The walls were formed from patterned marble that had been transformed into works of art, and a long horseshoe table sat at its far end. Behind this table stood an arch that resembled an inactive copy of one of the Nine Rivers Sect’s portals, and behind this arch, a podium rose up to tower over its surroundings. And atop this podium, there was the ornate golden throne that had once held the Emissary of the Nine Rivers Saint.

It was the same room, but there were several notable differences.

A series of raised flower beds had been positioned along the entire length of the patterned marble walls. Each bed was overflowing with brilliant, white flowers in full bloom. Even though the hall was massive and stretched a length of several dozen meters, the presence of so many flowers within a closed-off space added an unnatural, sickly-sweet smell to the air.

While these flowerbeds must have somehow been provided with light and water, their overgrown look gave me the feeling that no one had tended to this place for quite some time. Adding to this feeling of abandonment, the ornate chairs of the horseshoe table where the Sovereigns had once sat in judgement of me had been overturned and broken. It almost looked like someone had ransacked the place.

This temple was obviously not abandoned, though. ‘Obviously,’ because the golden throne atop the pedestal at the far end of the room was occupied. However, the old man sitting in it was not wearing the gaudy, multi-colored robes of the Saint’s Emissary. No, Li NeiTang was wearing the light blue robes of the Sovereign of the Li Clan.

These changes to this hall were notable, but their importance paled in comparison to the final difference that I noticed. The giant truth stone that had once sat in the middle of the table’s horseshoe had been removed. In its place, there was now a group of bound and gagged captives. It only took me a second to recognize this group as Ning ZeKun and his team of Emperors.

This was a trap. This was obviously a trap, and I wasn’t sure that it was one we would be able to handle. I tried to scan the room with energy vision to get a sense of what we would be facing, but nothing in the hall appeared to be emitting any energy at all.

Once again, I considered performing an immediate reset. The only thing that stopped me was the desire to know what we were really up against. If we wanted to take over the Nine Rivers Continent, we would have to face the formations contained within this temple sooner or later. Even if we knocked off all the Sovereigns early, the Jiu Clan would still control this place, and we would still have to fight them for it. I couldn’t help but feel that it would be better to find out what this temple was capable of now so that we could be fully prepared to face it the next time around.

I glanced at HongYi and signaled for him to enter the room with the Su Clan’s elders.

As they began walking, the fingers of my right hand, which was hanging down at my waist, started twitching rapidly. I was trying to form a portal next to Li NeiTang. Even if I could only create a small one, I would be able to pour a tongue of spirit fire through and deliver a devastating blow.

Regrettably, my efforts were in vain. The entire hall was locked down, and I couldn’t form any portals anywhere inside of it.

Once HongYi and the others were 10 meters inside the hall, I signaled to Liang and NiangBa, and we followed after them. The moment we passed the hall’s threshold, the golden doors slammed shut behind us, locking us inside.

I didn’t pay any attention to this. If we were going to escape, we wouldn’t be leaving through the front door anyway.

Once we were halfway across the hall, Li NeiTang let out a mocking laugh. “Sovereign Fang, where is your master, Miss ShouLi? Has she decided not to join us?”

With my mind focused almost entirely on maintaining a shell of spatial fire around Liang, NiangBa, and myself, I had no mental bandwidth to spare for a verbal spar. So, I just kept silent as I continued my steady forward march.

“Sovereign Fang, are you always so impolite when you enter another person’s home?”

We just kept walking.

Li NeiTang’s lips curled in a snarl. “Do you think—”

Suddenly, one of the Emperors at the rear of NeiTang’s group of prisoners broke free and started running toward us with a frantic look on his face. Recognizing him as a member of the Ning Clan, we didn’t react. We just kept up our steady march.

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That was a mistake.

The moment the Ning Emperor reached the Su Clan’s elders, he revealed a sword that had been hidden within his robes and hacked at the elders with all his strength. His sword wasn’t a refined weapon, the Emperor wasn’t a body cultivator, and he couldn’t use any qi. However, caught off guard and also unable to use qi, the Su Clan’s elders went down one after the other.

It wasn’t until after the fourth elder fell that the remaining five were able to subdue and kill their attacker.

Up on the golden throne, Li NeiTang let out a gasp. “You killed one of ZeKun’s most loyal minions? ZeKun, how do you suggest we deal with such a criminal?”

The group of imprisoned cultivators at the center of the horseshoe table stood as one and turned to face us. Then, Ning ZeKun stepped in front of them and led the entire group in a charge.

As he ran at us, ZeKun’s face was fixed in a rictus of pain and unchained fury. He didn’t utter a single word.

“Liang, NiangBa, I don’t know what’s going on. Try to immobilize them without killing them, but do what you have to do. Better to kill them now and ask for forgiveness than risk making any mistakes.”

“Yes, Ancestor.”

Liang and NiangBa charged forward, knocked the Su Clan elders aside, and engaged the horde of furious Emperors.

As most of their opponents had no physical strength to speak of, most of them were laid out with only a single blow. Ning ZeKun, however, proved to be a bit more of a challenge. He wasn’t technically a body cultivator, but his blessing gave him the strength of one.

Still, Liang and NiangBa were skilled fighters, and ZeKun’s movements were unnaturally jerky, causing him to fight far below his true ability. So, while ZeKun was a bit more challenging to take down, he never actually stood a chance.

Once all of our opponents were either dead or unconscious, I hurried over and assumed a position next to my fighters so that I could continue to maintain the shell of spatial fire around them with as little difficulty as possible.

As I was moving, Li NeiTang growled at us. “So, you did learn how to cultivate your bodies. As expected, that bastard GuiYang was holding out on us. Once I find him…”

Ignoring Li NeiTang’s ranting, Liang, NiangBa, and I resumed our slow march forward.

Seeing this, Li NeiTang let out a snort. “Don’t think that beating up that trash is enough for you to defeat me. The moment you entered this hall, you were already dead.”

The Li Sovereign’s eyes darted to the flower beds that lined both sides of the room.

An ominous feeling came over me, and I took up a defensive posture next to my two fighters.

As I did, the flower beds burst apart as a purplish miasma exploded out of them.

Having been knocked away during the fight with the Emperors, a couple of the Su Clan’s elders were standing right next to one of these flower beds when this miasma appeared. Unaware of what was happening, they didn’t react in time and were consumed by the mists almost immediately. The moment it touched them, their skin rotted away, and in only a few seconds, the elders were nothing but piles of rotten meat.

I wanted to do something to protect us from this miasma, but if I did, I would lose my grip on the spatial fires that were protecting us from the suppression formation. I didn’t know what to do.

Before I could come to a decision, NiangBa looked at me. “Ancestor, I need stone.”

Maintaining three shells of spatial fire had caused my thoughts to become rather sluggish, but I could still understand his plan easily enough.

I reached into the center of Chang’an and found the few piles of loose rubble that still remained from when GuiMing had carved homes into the city’s outer wall. Over time, these piles had been turned into ornamental hills, but they were still, in essence, nothing more than a collection of loose stones.

I pulled on these piles and scattered them in a circle around the three of us. Then, NiangBa channeled his qi and formed the loose stones into a solid rock dome. Aside from NiangBa, Liang, and I, only Ning ZeKun and one of his Emperors were close enough to be under this dome’s protection when it formed.

NiangBa gritted his teeth. “That poison is eating through the stone, I need more.”

Heeding his call, I pulled out all the loose rubble that was easily accessible.

Liang looked at him. “Can you pull up the floor?”

NiangBa shook his head. “No, it’s… Either the stone is too high a Rank, or there’s energy from a formation flowing through it. I can’t…”

I tried to think through our options, but my thoughts were muddled. “The… Three Thousand Flames Fire. You won’t be able to survive the seed, but your earth-based body cultivation might allow you to survive absorbing the spirit fire. You could use that to burn away the poison.”

Again, NiangBa shook his head. “No, Ancestor. My fire affinity is… non-existent.”

I could try doing it myself, but there was no way that I would be able to control the Earth-Rank fire while also maintaining the shells of spatial fire. Maybe…

Liang looked at NiangBa and nodded. “That was a wind-based poison. Let… Let me take care of it.”

Before I could understand what was happening, NiangBa nodded, turned, and opened a hole in the rock wall surrounding us.

Not willing to give the miasma a chance to flood in and attack us, Liang let out a thick beam of lightning qi that neutralized every wisp of poison it touched.

Realizing too late what the boys were thinking, I tried to stop them. “For… Formation. A lightning formation.”

Unfortunately, Liang was too fast. He had already rushed out of the dome.

Seeing him appear, Li NeiTang snarled. “How!? You shouldn’t be able to access your qi! How–”

With all the speed that his Rank 6 body could muster, Liang was closing the distance to the Li Sovereign at an astonishing pace.

“Fine!”

Li NeiTang pounded a fist on the Emissary’s golden throne, and the suppression field surrounding us vanished. The moment it did, a greenish-purplish flame sprang up and surrounded the Sovereign in its ominous glow.

As soon as I saw this, I wanted to reach out and pull Liang into my inner world, but he was already too far away.

A blast from an Earth-Rank wind-based fire seed shot out of Li NeiTang, aimed directly at Liang.

In response, Liang pulled upon his own lightning-based fire seed. I hadn’t even known that he had such a thing, but he must have picked it up during his years in the sect. Unfortunately, Liang’s seed was only Yellow-Rank. Even when combined with his Emperor-level qi, it wasn’t enough to affect Li NeiTang’s blast in any way.

However, a mere instant before the Earth-Rank fire found its target, Su HongYi pushed his way out of a thick cloud of miasma, leapt, and shoulder-checked Liang out of the fire’s path.

A wave of poisonous wind-based flames ripped through HongYi’s body, tearing it apart.

Shoved out of the way by HongYi, Liang avoided the majority of the flames, but not all of them. They still shredded his right arm and right leg. Somehow, though, Liang was able to force himself to keep moving forward. With one last leap, he reached down with his left hand, pulled his sword from its sheath, arrived in front of Li NeiTang, and landed a powerful blow squarely across the man’s torso.

If Li NeiTang had been anyone else, this strike would have bisected him, but as a Sovereign who was wearing a Rank 7 robe, it was only enough to stun him.

Still, that was enough. With the suppression field down, I could once again create portals.

Dropping my focus on maintaining the spatial fire shells, I punched the air, reached through, and hauled the Li Sovereign backward through my portal. Then, before he could gather his wits, I punched the air again and hauled the Sovereign to the spot in the Su Clan’s compound where the final Anti-Soul Lamp Formation was buried.

By this point, Li NeiTang was starting to fight back, but his struggle was weak and ineffective. Li NeiTang might have been decent at setting up death traps, but his actual combat abilities were non-existent.

Still, I needed to hurry, so I summoned ShouLi from my storage space, and together, we killed him before he could do any further damage.

Then, the two of us portaled back to the Summit’s temple together.

At first, ShouLi only noticed the broken bodies of Ning ZeKun and his last remaining Emperor, but when she turned to the golden throne and saw Liang’s dying form draped atop it, she burst into tears and ran toward him.

Before she was even halfway there, I had already portaled over and pulled RuLan from my storage space.

“He was hit by wind-based spirit fire.”

She nodded, and together, we quickly examined Liang’s body.

Nothing remained of Liang’s right arm below the elbow, and his right leg was gone entirely. Worse, some kind of poison was continuing to eat through his body at the site of the open wounds.

Without wasting any time, I reached into my cache of pills and pulled out the most powerful Rank 6 healing pills I had. When Liang swallowed them, they seemed to help, but not much. The poison was still eating away at his body.

Seeing this, RuLan drew a saber from her waist and began viciously hacking at the poisoned limbs, but she was barely even able to pierce Liang’s skin.

At that moment, ShouLi arrived, saw what we were doing, and ripped the saber from RuLan's grasp. Then, she swung down with all the strength of a Rank 6 body cultivator and separated Liang’s rotten flesh from what was left of his body.

With the poison successfully amputated, I popped a couple more pills into Liang’s mouth to help him begin the healing process. It would be difficult, but with enough dedication, he should be able to make a full recovery.

“Not good!” RuLan was staring at Liang’s wounds in horror.

Quickly running my eyes over Liang’s body, I tried to understand the problem, but I didn’t see anything.

Then, I turned on energy vision.

Poison hadn’t just infected Liang’s physical body, it had entered his energy body as well. And in the time that it had taken us to amputate Liang’s limbs, the poison had seeped all the way to his dantian.

RuLan looked at me with wide eyes. “What… What do we do?”

I shook my head. “I… don’t know.”

Early on, I had spent decades learning how to make poisons, and since then, I had always taken time to research and improve my suicide pills each time I advanced to a new realm. However, I had never spent much thought on how to cure poisons. I had no idea how to even begin treating a poison in someone’s energy body.

We could try some form of energy-body amputation, but… how? And if we amputated his dantian…

ShouLi frantically looked between RuLan and myself. “What… What do we do?”

I looked at RuLan.

She shook her head. “Nothing. There’s nothing we can do.”

We could only watch as poison ravaged Liang’s body.

When it was all over, with the pills we had access to, Liang wouldn’t have any trouble healing his physical wounds. On the outside, he would look entirely normal. However, he would never be able to cultivate again.