The cultivators who had originally gathered around the arena platforms all began to retreat, trying to avoid being scorched by this deadly temperature.

Li Haoran’s Martial Spring began to spin.

An endless stream of true qi flowed from his Martial Spring, surging into his meridians.

Then, his body shuddered. As his true qi burst forth, the hem of his pure white daoist robe swayed, and his true qi formed a barrier. It first shattered the onrushing wave of heat, then transformed into a shield to isolate the temperature.

The fact that Li Haoran’s Protective True Qi could withstand his own Flame Burning Qi, capable of melting steel, was well within Chai Xing’s expectations.

After all, his opponent was no ordinary figure—he was Li Haoran, the chief disciple of Kongyuan Mountain of the Kongshan Sect!

Immediately after, Chai Xing suddenly pushed both palms forward. The golden light swirling around him rapidly gathered toward his palms, coalescing in an instant into a golden orb of energy, no larger than a fist, blazing like the sun itself.

Flowing flames, like serpents and dragons, coiled and slithered across the orb’s surface. The terrifying energy contained within had already begun to show signs of melting the arena platform, and the range of its influence seemed even wider than before.

Seeing this, Dongfang Bo, the Imperial Envoy Elder of the Star Heaven Sect seated on the viewing stand, stirred a thought. A strand of his natal spiritual energy flowed from his fingertip, heading toward the arena. It sealed the destructive temperature that was about to escape, confining it to the platform to prevent it from harming the watching cultivators.

“What a domineering fire technique!”

Xia Song, the Heavenly Summit Mountain Dao Inquirer from the Crimson Phoenix Tower seated on the other side of the viewing stand, showed an expression of utter shock.

A fellow practitioner of fire techniques, he had been thoroughly defeated when facing Li Haoran, and to this day, Xia Song still felt a lingering weakness in his limbs from the Meteoric Fire Flying Star he had used that day.

As the chief disciple of the Sun Radiance Gate of the Star Heaven Sect, Chai Xing had reached the top four of the Heavenly Summit Mountain Dao Inquiry, leaving no doubt about his strength.

Then, he forcefully pushed his palms forward again—

“Sun Incineration Art, Condensed Fire Pearl!”

The veins on Chai Xing’s forehead bulged, as if he were pouring every ounce of his strength into this micro-“sun,” which gathered a full eighty percent of his current true qi, sending it hurtling toward Li Haoran.

The Condensed Fire Pearl tore through the air, carrying the terrifying power to incinerate all things as it approached.

Wherever it passed, the bluestone arena platform was gouged open, leaving a scorching trench of molten rock in its wake.

And Li Haoran’s Protective True Qi, which he had raised before him, began to buckle under the strain, melting and evaporating under the onslaught of this terrifying Condensed Fire Pearl.

Then, he took a slight step back.

And an intangible field quietly expanded outward from him.

“Void Absorption Guidance.”

Li Haoran softly uttered those four words. The Condensed Fire Pearl, which had crashed into this domain of emptiness, suddenly came to a halt, suspended within the intangible field like a bug trapped in thick mud.

Then, Li Haoran raised his hands and began to wave them through the air.

What followed left everyone present—including Chai Xing, and all cultivators below the Spirit Connection Realm on the Daoyan Arena—utterly stunned.

Above the Condensed Fire Pearl, frozen in that intangible field, the wildly writhing flames began to peel away, strand by strand, under the guidance of Li Haoran’s hands.

Thread by thread, the flames were drawn out from the Condensed Fire Pearl, and yet the originally violent flames showed no sign of aggression—they were as docile as real silk threads.

Li Haoran was unhurriedly dismantling this Condensed Fire Pearl, formed from a full eighty percent of Chai Xing’s true qi.

Then, under Li Haoran’s fluid movements, the originally ferocious Condensed Fire Pearl slowly dissipated and decomposed, ultimately reverting into ordinary true qi that dissolved into the air.

The entire scene fell silent.

This was no duel between top-tier cultivators—this was Li Haoran showing off!

He was flaunting just how terrifyingly advanced his Void Absorption Guidance had become, to the point where he could dismantle the ultimate killing move of Chai Xing—also a chief disciple of one of the Five Great Sects and a top-four Dao Inquirer at Heavenly Summit Mountain—in such a breathtakingly stunning way.

This was a resounding declaration of the gap between Li Haoran and Chai Xing!

Someone on the viewing stand couldn’t help but swallow, almost forgetting to breathe.

No wonder he was the strongest contender for this year’s Heavenly Summit Mountain Dao Inquiry champion.

“I lost, Chief Disciple Li.”

After that terrifying fireball had completely dissipated, Chai Xing—now left with only twenty percent of his true qi and unable to muster any further resistance—clasped his hands and offered a bitter smile.

“You yield, Chief Disciple Chai.”

Li Haoran replied.

After that, only the final match remained in the Heavenly Summit Mountain Dao Inquiry for the champion title.

A swordsman clad in a cyan daoist robe stood on the arena platform, his waist bearing the sword scabbard once used by Realman Cangyue of Heavenly Summit Mountain. Inside the scabbard rested a pure white Swift Sword, its blade engraved with flowing flame patterns.

But the other side of the platform was completely empty.

The cultivators below the platform and on the viewing stand buzzed with discussion.

“Where’s Shao Yuchen?”

“What’s going on? How can someone go missing at such a critical moment?”

“Could it be that he’s afraid?”

And Su Hongzhen simply stood there quietly, waiting.

But Shao Yuchen still did not appear.

After another half-incense stick’s worth of time, another outer sect disciple of the Star Heaven Sect appeared beside the manager disciple originally tasked with overseeing this match, whispering something into his ear.

Su Hongzhen could hear what that Star Heaven Sect disciple said.

It was—

“Shao Yuchen, chief disciple of Weaving Dreams Tower of Mirage Palace, forfeits! The winner is the Rogue Cultivator, Su Hongzhen!”

The Daoyan Arena erupted into an uproar.

...

At the foot of Qingxuan Mountain.

Chen Yan sat alone atop a massive boulder, panting as he gazed at the pitch-black spatial rifts torn open by the collapse of the laws of heaven and earth.

At this moment, he was left with only one arm.

After resting for a while, he began to circulate his natal spiritual energy. Under its influence, his severed arm began to regenerate at a visible speed.

At this very moment, this domain of heaven and earth was already on the verge of collapse.

Ultimate Sage of Heaven’s Extremity, Zuo He, had vastly overestimated his control over this domain.

Indeed, that young man in the black daoist robe—as an Uncarved Simplicity Realm Sage—was more than enough to crush all enemies, including the four Returning to Void Realm True Lords.

But it was precisely because he had been invincible in this world for hundreds of thousands of years that he had underestimated the determination of this domain’s cultivators.

After the Xiaori Immortal Sect launched its surprise attack on the Zhaoyuan Immortal Sect, the Qingxuan Immortal Sect immediately declared war on the Sumeru Immortal Sect as well.

But the war quickly spiraled out of control, expanding and descending into chaos as more and more factions joined the fray.

All twelve Immortal Sects were fighting independently, each hostile to the other eleven.

Within a few years, several Ascending to Immortality Realm cultivators had already fallen.

And at the same time, cultivators at the Half-step Immortal Ascension quickly seized the opportunity to ascend.

All twelve Immortal Sects of this domain were tottering on the brink, and just as Zuo He believed everything was still developing according to his expectations, those Half-step Immortal Ascension cultivators began to disregard the constraints of the Great Dao and the Sages, forcefully pushing their way to immortality.

This was the beginning of the collapse of this domain’s laws.