Chapter Sixty-Six: Thunder of the Steel Armor God

If it were before her rebirth, Lan Yi had a hundred ways to enter the rat hole; she could get in lying down in all manner of creative ways without any trouble. Even now, she still had a hundred ways. The problem now, however, was that they were all too time-consuming.

Within her colorless pupils, the boundary was clearly possessed of some independent consciousness, showing a wariness and resistance specifically toward Lan Yi. By rights, if it were so ravenous for innate primal energy, then faced with Lan Yi, who carried a basic spiritual energy reactor inside her, it should react like a lecherous old man spotting a peerless beauty—wasting not a single second, ignoring all else, and charging in headlong. Yet, it was wary.

This showed that whatever existed on the other side of the rat hole, able to command such a vast mental landscape, possessed a biological instinct to seek benefit and avoid harm.

Lan Yi had more or less pinpointed Yun Huaqi’s location. They should have returned to the village by now.

“You two head back down to the village and prepare the Azure Wave. I’ll go fetch some water vapor. You’ll need to maintain the vapor in this shape.” Lan Yi extracted a section of Azure Radiance and, with a flourish, shaped it into a very peculiar form.

At the center was a single point. Around that point, a series of cyclical, oscillating waves radiated outward in a repeating model.

“Is that… the nucleus and orbiting electrons?” Xiao Hongzhuan ventured uncertainly.

Lan Yi had already flown off, but before leaving, she gave Xiao Hongzhuan a look of affirmation. After all, he was an undergraduate. Most people assumed atomic nuclei and electrons looked just as depicted in textbooks, but in truth, the real model was more like what Lan Yi had shown. Xiao Hongzhuan wasn’t entirely sure, only somewhat guessing; yet seeing the model left for him, he felt as if a veil had been lifted.

Would maintaining the water vapor in this shape solve their current predicament? Xiao Hongzhuan felt he was stepping into a blind spot in his knowledge. At least, nothing in the Daoist classics he had studied addressed such a technique.

On the way, Immortal Lan Yi had offered some explanation. Though Peach Blossom Village appeared ordinary, it was in fact shrouded by an invisible, colorless mental landscape. This layer was thin—its quantity nearly negligible, yet in quality it was extraordinarily resilient, a lingering psychic force left by the being who had built the rat hole ages ago. This power had to be at least at the Nascent Void level!

It’s often said that martial prowess is unreasonable, but just how unreasonable can it be? Over thousands or tens of thousands of years, even Daoist formations constructed upon the earth’s ley lines could decay and fail for various reasons. But the mental force left behind by a martial master would not. Even after millennia, this peach grove remained unchanged, preserving its original form.

Such an interference with reality, with its near-immortal properties—was nothing less than a violation of the world’s fundamental rules!

Lan Yi soon returned with a large mass of water vapor. Using the Demon Binding Cord, she swiftly vaporized the water; the strong magnetic field of Azure Radiance ionized it. At the center, she embedded an energy crystal. Now, it was time for the Azure Wave to play its part.

Xiao Hongzhuan began, step by step, to oscillate the ionized vapor in rhythm. He wasn’t really capable of such fine work, but at this moment, he was just Immortal Lan Yi’s tool, having abandoned all personal thought and simply following orders, inputting the Azure Wave’s commands as instructed. Lan Yi could also control the shape and fluctuations of ionized water vapor, but everyone had their strengths and weaknesses—and compared to the Azure Wave, the life clusters Lan Yi possessed were certainly less adept and convenient.

Moreover, it required a high degree of precision to use spiritual energy and a simple atomic model to disrupt and deceive the mental landscape.

Xiao Hongzhuan hesitated, wanting to speak but refrained. He still didn’t understand. Of course he didn’t. This was a key, radiating ionized spiritual energy outwards in pure form; each unique frequency of energy could provoke a response in the mental landscape. It was essentially brute-force unlocking, constantly changing the key’s shape, adjusting the spiritual core to match at a frequency of three thousand times per second.

Lan Yi’s colorless pupils were pushed to their limits. Her eye sockets were stinging and feverish! Overloading her spiritual energy could destroy this solidified Daoist technique at any moment. Walking a tightrope, Lan Yi’s eyes suddenly flashed.

“Follow me!”

…

…

How could this be? How could this be!

Hadn’t it just devoured someone? By the rules, it should have lain low for a long, long while before hunting again. Yet, the truth was that barely a few breaths after the last person died, the moon above was already racing after them, its immense, chaotic shadow in the deathly silent world letting out an eerie, shrill laugh!

Dangerous, vast, ferocious—and utterly incomprehensible.

The horror that haunted Peach Blossom Village no longer cared to keep up appearances. It was eagerly hunting down Yun Huaqi and the others, its commotion shaking the earth and blotting out the stars, until only that chilling, glaringly bright solitary moon remained.

And the moon was growing larger and larger, like the eye of some colossal beast, looming ever closer, threatening to come crashing down!

Yun Huaqi was on the verge of madness.

Sheltered by the desperate cries of the martial warriors, she was nearly at her breaking point. Just a week ago, she had been a carefree university student, concerned only with her country and her people—never in her wildest dreams imagining she would one day face something more terrifying, more bizarre, and more irrational than any foreign invader. Now, she was about to be caught and devoured alive by that thing. The fact she wasn’t already mad was a testament to her will.

Something had to have gone wrong.

Clutching her ritual sword as she fled through the village, Yun Huaqi did not collapse; instead, her mind spun ever faster under the pressure of imminent death, so swiftly that the world around her seemed to slow to a crawl. The surge of innate primal energy reached its peak; her thoughts flashed like lightning, and she caught a scent in the air.

Ah, so that’s it…

It was afraid.

Just beyond the invisible barrier, outside the place from which they could not escape—someone was coming.

The realization struck her, and Yun Huaqi came to a sudden halt. Next, she did something almost certain to get her killed: she turned and aimed her ritual sword at the enormous moon behind her, now as large as a two-story house.

The sword bore Daoist techniques solidified by Lan Yi: Geng Metal Sword Qi and the Demon Binding Cord. Neither was particularly powerful, serving mostly as control mechanisms. Yun Huaqi had tried using the sword against the nameless horror before, but to no effect.

Now, turning to face it seemed a futile gesture—a senseless sacrifice.

Was it really just throwing her life away…?

She overcharged the ritual sword, pushing it past its limits until it instantly shattered. Several ferocious blades of Geng Metal Sword Qi, wrapped in arcs of lightning, shot forth, their howling wind sharp enough to make one feel cut to the bone.

The sword qi struck the “moon.”

The moon paused, but was wholly unmoved, pressing inexorably onward. Those seemingly formidable sword strikes were nothing but a trivial illusion.

From the ruined sword, a ring of Azure Radiance floated down, disintegrating as it fell.

Buzz!

It was as though a veil had been lifted.

A hand reached through from the other side, catching the falling Azure Radiance with perfect precision. Lan Yi, wreathed in vapor, stepped through. Above her loomed the massive, solitary moon, her whole form bathed in its ghastly white light.

Lan Yi’s eyes sharpened.

She raised her hand to the sky.

Southern Saint Sect Daoism—Steelclad Divine Thunder (Imitation)!