Chapter Forty-One: Transforming into a Rainbow

When the shells fired from the naval guns shrieked past him, Lan Yi felt nothing stir within; in fact, he almost wanted to laugh. He didn’t even need to dodge—none of these shells could hit him with any accuracy. Compared to concentrated energy lasers, pulse cannons, dense phalanx arrays, plasma shields, or extermination swarms and other aerial defense methods, these anti-aircraft guns firing blindly were utterly useless against him. If one ever managed to hit Lan Yi, it would surely mean that the Anti-Logic Tribe was interfering, and Old Demon Lan would immediately unleash the remaining twenty percent of his spirit energy in a devastating barrage.

Then he would lie in wait for an opportunity, since those Anti-Logic creatures were truly nauseating and unreasonable. Even for a top-tier spirit energy cultivator like Old Demon Lan, dealing with them required utmost caution, lest he suffer inexplicable injuries.

Clearly, the flag-bearers didn’t have such luck—good or bad. Their so-called master could do nothing to Immortal Lan Yi. In the end, Lan Yi unleashed his power upon this group of moving targets without reservation—slaughtering them with unrestrained delight.

The “Dragon Sparrow Devours Whale Map” projected a mindscape of a dragon sparrow battling a giant whale, exuding ferocious wrath: its wings blanketed the heavens, darkness eclipsed sun and moon, creating a powerful and abundant mindscape. Lan Yi emphasized the deathly pressure of the savage phoenix’s hunt, pouring the sensation of death directly into the minds of his targets.

The “Magnetic Star Technique” revealed a mindscape of thunder descending, bolstered by the Daoist arts of Divine Sky Peak and the overlay of real and illusionary lightning. Even if the enemy denied the hallucination, they would still be scorched crisp, inside and out.

Both were martial arts legacies from lost sects. Even without properly employing their mental killing techniques, Lan Yi, relying solely on his spirit energy and will, created a terrifying spectacle of annihilating foes and destroying warships.

But were they truly enemies? In Lan Yi’s view, perhaps he would encounter adversaries in Artificial Divine Realm 1909, but these ordinary people—military included—were not among them.

As the thunder phoenix cried and fell, Lan Yi clenched a thread of “Azure Splendor,” and with a swift punch, struck the deck directly. Violent discharge from strong magnetism and electricity created a pulsing spark, slicing the dreadnought horizontally like a knife through dumplings, with Lan Yi at the center.

Once done, Lan Yi soared upward, trailing mist, left a message behind, and launched himself northward. He was merely warming up, yet the targets were already exhausted! How could this be? This was unacceptable! Lan Yi knew there were more to the north—more beasts he could kill without hesitation, mercy, or guilt. Well then, the time had come!

From the perspective of spirit energy, Lan Yi’s current condition could hardly be called healthy. His body, merely at the strength of a Martial God practitioner, bore multiple tears at the chest and limb joints; the damage to his innate energy had begun to disrupt the flow of power. Viewed with colorless eyes, countless cracks marred his form—not fatal, but certainly painful.

All these wounds were self-inflicted from his earlier magnetic bursts and ship-splitting antics. Yet he felt exhilarated—so much so that he wanted to sing. Indeed, slaughtering livestock was meaningless; even fighting these mobile targets with thorns brought more pleasure than butchering pigs. Destruction and creation—only these could satisfy a cultivator of spirit energy.

“It seems I must quickly obtain and transplant ‘Flash Spirit,’ ‘Earth Fiend,’ ‘Electro-Morph,’ and other Fate Clusters,” he thought. “Otherwise, I’ll have to tread carefully when traveling, or risk wrecking my body unintentionally—my neural regulatory hormones are already a bit out of control.”

“Flash Spirit” offered supernatural reflexes, “Earth Fiend” anti-gravity, “Electro-Morph” increased physical strength. With these, even if Lan Yi couldn’t yet fly, rapid movement would be no problem. They were among the essential Fate Clusters for the Furnace of Heavenly Thunder.

For now, though, Lan Yi had another way to travel swiftly. Fate Cluster “Prison Suppressor”—activate!

A sudden rush of cold clarity surged from his neck to his crown. With blazing white light flickering in his eyes, Lan Yi raised his hand slightly, simply forming a fist—as if grasping the entire space around him.

Of course, he couldn’t actually distort space yet. He merely controlled the invisible, colorless magnetic field, gently disrupting the light. By adjusting the magnetic field within dozens of meters via “Azure Splendor,” he navigated the edge of dangerous operations with absolute rationality and cold precision.

Whoosh!

In the next instant, as the battleship belched thick black smoke in farewell, Lan Yi again moved northward, almost as if teleporting. This was the embryonic form of the Southern Sage Gate Dao skill: Magnetic Light Escape. Using body magnetism and earth magnetism for exchange, he moved at extreme speed through magnetic repulsion—almost indistinguishable from instantaneous movement.

Lan Yi had not yet mastered Magnetic Light Escape, but he traveled quickly according to its principles. He had to activate “Prison Suppressor” for control, reducing bodily damage to acceptable levels. After all, even the embryonic form of this Dao skill required several Fate Clusters for safe operation.

Even so, Lan Yi’s speed during high-altitude bursts was astonishing. If anyone looked up, they would see a sudden white rainbow appearing in the sky, stretching ever onward. Among spirit energy cultivators, this method of travel was called “transforming into a rainbow.”

While Lan Yi continued to stretch his muscles, elsewhere—

Huo Yuanjia and Geng Liangchen braved a hail of bullets, nearly exhausting their mind power, feeling dizzy and faint, before finally purging the vanguard squad of the foreign southern punitive fleet.

With “Dust of Selflessness” and “Hungry Ghost Scene” working in tandem, though their assault lacked the overwhelming ferocity of Lan Yi’s phoenix slaughter, it was more than enough to inflict deadly harm upon the foreigners lurking in the dark spaces below deck.

What enemy is most terrifying? The one you can do nothing about.

When Huo Yuanjia and Geng Liangchen—both formidable Martial God practitioners—vaulted onto the ship through gunfire, the foreign soldiers were doomed. They tasted the despair and helplessness once felt by the soldiers of the Shanghai Concession.

Rifles and pistols were useless. Grenades failed. Even heavy machine guns, once mounted, would suddenly malfunction or freeze, and then be smashed by these martial gods, who crushed chests and broke necks as easily as splitting bamboo.

Their pace in clearing the battleship was not fast. Precisely because it wasn’t, the information from these ironclads could be relayed to the foreign commanders, sending chills down their spines.

Gunfire proved futile; enemies leapt aboard with ease; ghostly figures could appear through the deck; men suddenly lost focus and forgot what they were doing; and most directly, the ease with which foreign bones were broken like snapping chopsticks—all these, once the battle went close-quarters aboard ship, resulted in a one-sided slaughter.

Yet the punitive fleet commander could do nothing.

“All cleared,” Geng Liangchen exhaled deeply, rubbing his brow incessantly.

“We’ve made a mess of things—we were too thorough,” he said.

“Hm? Isn’t being thorough a good thing?” Geng Liangchen suddenly turned to the horizon, understanding what Huo Yuanjia meant by trouble: the foreigners were shelling their own men.