Translator: Tamon
Rumble!
The earth cracked and mountains splintered.
The forest around them swayed to breaking point from the devastating earthquake. Trees snappd, rocks were flung about, the earth broke down, and the animals stampeded to safety. All within fifty kilometers were plunged into this quaking mass with no end in sight.
“What the…”
He Luohua paled like she’d seen a ghost, watching the very ground beneath her being reshaped.
The view worthy of the end of days gave her a horror like no other.
“The Mountain Tying Gulf?”
As the fifth Sect Leader, she knew of Augury Sect’s strongest earth magical art.
She heard the first Sect Leder hundreds of years ago came to possess it through an exchange with Ancestor Ban Shan, and an abridged version no less.
Since then, the original price of one million contribution points fell to what it was today, a mere three hundred thousand.
He Luohua recalled the large snake puppet.
She saw it engrossed in reading a jade slip when she sprung the ambush in the Augury Pavilion. [It learned it that fast?]
“Time to go!”
Fake or not, she wouldn’t risk it, choosing self-preservation above all as she fled.
Boom~
A mountain jutted from the earth a full mile in height, imposing and dauntless like a giant, barring her escape.
This was only the beginning, with another mountain springing up to block another escape route.
Boom~
What took nature millions of years to form, an entire mountain range sprouted in that instant, reshaping the landscape and displacing rivers, all to keep this old Golden Core cultivator from leaving.
[Ban Shan, Shifting Mountain, moving mountains with a thought. This power is inhuman!]
Of all Golden Core cultivators, only Ancestor Ban Shan could pull off something on such a grand scale.
Xu Hei’s eyes were bleeding, and Hei Huang went all in.
Countless mountains linked as they went to finish not only He Luohua but the world.
“To think I’d be pushed this far! Have it your way!’
Her eyes flashed, and she placed a talisman on her forehead.
“Transfer!”
The air around her warped, and He Luohua popped outside of the enclosing mountain range.
“Minor Transfer Talisman!” Hei Huang gasped.
It was just like a minor Transfer Array, just that the talisman had a higher price and worked instantly. It also needed a space stone to truly exhibit a Nascent Soul cultivator’s inherent skill, Blink.
That was one of He Luohua’s aces down.
Her look was one of pain at the used talisman, a gift from her Dao companion ages ago.
She didn’t get to enjoy her newfound freedom, for the mountain range detoured the forest like a gargantuan snake, with its foremost mountain, the head, upon her.
“Is this really the Mountain Tying Gulf?” The art’s display contradicted the one in her memory.
“Old crone, today is the day you die!”
Xu Hei forced himself to roar through the agony from the Divine Sense spread throughout his body. As his mind slipped into darkness, the last vestige of Ancestor Ban Shan’s Golden Core vanished.
The mountain range took the shape of a huge snake, its hissing pressing down on the world as it attacked He Luohua.
She felt death as she stared into the rocky maw.
[I can’t block it!]
“Impossible!”
She scrambled to throw all the magical treasures on her while using her top speed to flee.
The mountain range snake lunged, built from miles upon miles of rock and cliffs, like a world-ending snake, slamming into the dazzling and bright barriers made from all those magical treasures.
Boom~
The Golden Core magical treasures snapped one after the other. The head mountain crumbled to pieces, but there was still its endless body to worry about, relentless in its pursuit.
The neck was the next to go, then the body, as the endless mountain range snake lost half its length, the blown rocks peppering the ground like a stone hail.
The remaining part kept going after the old bat, slamming hard into her.
Bang!
With a climactic explosion, He Luohua spurted blood, and the copper mirror inside her disintegrated while she was flung with heavy wounds into the air with such speed that she vanished in seconds.
Rumble~
The mountain range snake lost its strength and dropped to the ground, turning into the area’s new landmark.
As for Ancestor Ban Shan, his Golden Core was no more and sat limply on the ground.
Hei Huang eased a breath, feeling spent, and on the verge of passing out.
“That move was Xu Hei’s creation, pure madness!”
He turned to Xu Hei to get them to leave, only to stare into the snake’s empty eyes.
Xu Hei had blacked out with eyes wide open, sending his Divine Sense out of instinct and talking in his sleep.
“She’s still alive… I need more, more…”
“More your ass! Keep this up and she’ll finish you off instead!”
Hei Huang huffed and carried the snake off.
A yellow glow covered Xu Hei, Earth Armor, while the jade close to his skin added its own defensive shield.
“Wha…” Hei Huang was speechless.
[You’re putting up defenses even knocked out? Just how paranoid can you get?]
“Lighten up, I won’t harm you.”
Hei Huang sighed, putting Ancestor Ban Shan in his storage bag along with the three scattered flying swords. These things were Golden Core magical treasures, worth high spirit stones.
The swords ended up stuck in the Earth Shield in battle. At least they got something out of this fight.
Off on the horizon, Hei Huang noticed black dots growing in size, cultivators drawn in by the sudden commotion.
“I’ll turn this all around one day, just wait!”
He used an Invisible Talisman and his figure phased out.
…
An old woman fled towards Augury Sect, bloodied, wretched, and damaged.
Her flight was wobbly and her control lapsed, dropping to the ground just outside.
“Ancestor!”
Sect Leader Shen Qingzhu cried out and rushed to her side with all the elders.
He Luohua wrestled out of their support, flustered and panicked. “The demons are near death. Everyone must scour the mountain and dig the earth! Do everything to find those demons!”
He Luohua drew a dog and a snake on paper with the last vestige of her consciousness, both black, before coughing blood and passing out.