Li Yan first glanced at the Blood River before him, his head still buzzing. A moment later, he realized that the force he had been completely unable to match had already vanished.
With a sigh of relief, he paid no mind to anything else. He slapped his Storage Pouch, and several bottles of medicinal pills flew into the air. As the jade bottles opened automatically, he sucked down more than a dozen pills in one go.
Immediately, he resumed his cross-legged meditative posture.
An incense stick's worth of time later, Li Yan opened his eyes again. Only now did he have the time to carefully survey his surroundings. What met his eyes was a large area of fallen rubble within the cave.
At the same time, his Divine Sense detected that the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" was on the verge of collapse. Fortunately, this formation was unlike ordinary ones; after withstanding such heavy pressure, it was still striving to maintain its operation, holding open a space and preventing the cave from collapsing entirely.
Otherwise, Li Yan would have been buried alive when the entire cave caved in. Enduring the discomfort in his body, Li Yan first cast a few more incantations onto the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation."
As streams of Spirit Power surged through the formation, the originally dim purple glow instantly became dazzlingly brilliant. Streaks of purple patterns flowed unstably, making the entire cave seem dreamlike and illusory.
Seeing the formation gradually return to normal, Li Yan breathed a sigh of relief. Although with his current cultivation, being buried a thousand zhang underground would not harm him, getting out would still require some effort.
After simply wiping the bloodstains from his face, Li Yan's gaze returned to the Blood River. An answer had already formed in his heart. He saw that the silver drop of water had long since sunk back into the river, and a wave of lingering fear washed over him.
If he hadn't been consistently cautious, if he had truly gotten carried away in that moment and taken out the entire drop at once, his life would have likely ended here today.
'This Blood River can not only melt the Silver Page, but it also has an isolating effect. If I had recklessly tried to take out that drop with all my might just now, the pressure from it would have crushed me into dust.'
This single drop of "Undead Nether Phoenix" Essence Blood contained a terrifying power beyond his imagination. Even a Golden Core cultivator, or perhaps even a Nascent Soul cultivator, might not be able to directly withstand the power within it.
He had merely nudged it out of the Blood River a tiny bit, exposing just a sliver above the surface, and the resulting pressure had nearly cost him his life.
If he hadn't seen the situation turning dire and immediately dispersed the Spirit Power finger he had formed, allowing the silver drop of blood to sink back into the Blood River—if that drop of Essence Blood had been exposed for even half a breath longer, he would have exploded into a mist of blood. At that point, it was unlikely even his soul could have escaped in time.
Thinking back on his actions over the past few days, Li Yan felt a chill of lingering fear. He was fortunate that he had been trying all sorts of methods to burn the Silver Page, fortunate that he lacked the ability to refine it into blood, and fortunate for the existence of this mysterious Blood River.
Otherwise, the moment the Essence Blood was refined would have been the day his soul returned to the underworld. What kind of heaven-defying object was this Blood River? It could actually shield the terrifying pressure of the silver Essence Blood within it. Li Yan now knew that the cultivation of that Undead Nether Phoenix was definitely not something a Nascent Soul stage cultivator could withstand. Its power might have far surpassed that of the strongest experts on this continent.
After briefly thinking through his situation, Li Yan guided the Blood River before him with one hand. The river continued to churn silently, the single drop of silver-white liquid appearing all the more piercingly bright.
Li Yan immediately grasped the Blood River with one hand, while his other hand made a grasping motion in the air, storing the other two Silver Pages into his Storage Pouch.
Then, he opened the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" and flew out. As he emerged, he waved his sleeve, retracting the formation behind him. A deafening "rumble" followed. As Li Yan flew into mid-air, the large mountain he had been in collapsed with a roar.
Within a radius of a thousand zhang, a bottomless crater appeared on the ground, and dust flew up, obscuring the sky.
Then, as if a chain reaction had been triggered, a series of thunderous rumbles echoed from the surroundings. Nearby mountain ranges began to tilt and collapse, as if an earthquake had struck, changing the color of the entire landscape.
Li Yan was utterly horrified. Previously, when just the tip of a lotus bud of the silver Essence Blood had been exposed, the sliver of power it released was already terrifying enough to seem world-destroying.
Li Yan had already sped far away from this place, dragging a miniature Blood River in his hand. He didn't dare to casually put it away, nor did he dare to linger in this area. Such a huge commotion, although the far north of the Jingtu Sect was mostly remote and uninhabited, could always lead to accidents.
By coincidence, if he attracted the attention of a keen observer who saw him appear here alone, even a fool would know that the cataclysmic change in the world was related to him.
A day later, halfway up a towering mountain thousands of li away, Li Yan was once again sitting cross-legged in a cave. The "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" was activated again, and the Blood River, which he hadn't dared to store in the Li Fire Profound Yellow Fan, was still suspended in the cave.
Until he had a proper way to handle it, Li Yan dared not put this item away carelessly.
'Right now, forget about refining it into my body; even touching a sliver of it would immediately plunge me into a state of eternal damnation. But if I just leave it in the Blood River like this, I don't know what unknown consequences it might bring.
'Will it eventually be completely fused with the Blood River and become its own...'
For a time, Li Yan was caught in a dilemma. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. He just stared blankly at the Blood River floating before him.
Just like that, Li Yan fell into deep thought. After a long while, his tightly furrowed brows suddenly relaxed. "Worry leads to confusion. I've really backed myself into a corner. Why can't I refine and absorb it?"
Li Yan realized that he had been so frightened by the terrifying power of that drop of "Undead Nether Phoenix" Essence Blood that he had lost his composure. He had subconsciously concluded that it was untouchable, which made refining and absorbing it his biggest problem.
But in fact, he had touched the Essence Blood with his Spirit Power before, of course, while it was inside the Blood River. Now, as Li Yan carefully recalled, the "Undead Nether Phoenix" Essence Blood had been firmly restrained by the strange power of the Blood River.
Therefore, although the power of the Essence Blood still existed in the river water, it was a minuscule amount that he could withstand. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to form a finger out of Spirit Power to nudge the Essence Blood out.
Undoubtedly, under the protection of the Blood River, that tiny sliver of Essence Blood power that could leak out was precisely what Li Yan could use to absorb and refine. This was equivalent to having a transmission medium between that drop of "Undead Nether Phoenix" Essence Blood and himself.
Having figured this out, Li Yan's brow relaxed. He took a few deep breaths and then cautiously extended his Divine Sense into the Blood River. He soon felt a great force slam into his Divine Sense, but since Li Yan was prepared, no accident occurred.
Under the careful observation of his Divine Sense, Li Yan saw that starting from the perimeter of the silver water drop, there were countless fine threads, visible only to Divine Sense. One end was tied to the silver water drop, while the other floated in the Blood River, like the numerous tentacles of a jellyfish in the sea.
They varied in thickness, scattered and undulating with the currents. Li Yan then found the thinnest floating silver thread. Gritting his teeth, he carefully placed one of his fingers into the Blood River and began to try and guide that thinnest silver thread to wrap around his finger.
This time was vastly different from before. Previously, Li Yan had deliberately used a finger formed from Spirit Power. Now, it was direct physical contact.
The moment the silver thread wrapped around his finger, the power transmitted was surprisingly small. Then, Li Yan began to silently chant an incantation, slowly drawing the silver thread into the pad of his finger.
In just an instant, Li Yan felt a piercing pain, so searing it could burn away everything, travel up from his fingertip. Even though Li Yan was prepared and was a man of strong will, in that moment, his body trembled violently, and his mind felt as if it had been struck by ten thousand bolts of lightning.
The pain reached the depths of Li Yan's soul, so immense that he couldn't help but let out a muffled groan. His soul almost dissipated and floated out of his body. The clothes on his body were instantly soaked through with sweat from the inside out, making Li Yan look as if he had just been fished out of water.
An extremely cold and icy killing intent suddenly sprouted in Li Yan's soul, while his body felt the complete opposite, as if it were being roasted in an alchemy furnace.
These two extremes of cold and heat intertwined and spread through Li Yan's soul and body, creating a stark contrast. The silver thread possessed an unyielding will, a will that reigned supreme over all things.
It seemed to sense that it was about to be devoured. It wanted to devour its enemy first, before the enemy even had the thought, and cast Li Yan into the Asura hell for eternity.
The veins on Li Yan's forehead bulged, like the gnarled, blue knots of a tree root. The pain almost made him lose his reason and clarity for a moment. Fortunately, when Li Yan had cultivated the Qiongqi Purgatory Art, the pain from the depths of his body and soul was no less than what he felt today.
So, just before he lost his sanity, Li Yan managed to control his mind.
"Damn... it! Just... the will of something... that's been dead... for years! You... will be... extinguished..."
Blood seeped from Li Yan's mouth and nose, his face contorting into a ferocious grimace. His body trembled like a sieve, like a vengeful ghost reborn. He knew this was the inherited will from the "Undead Nether Phoenix" bloodline. If he could not resist it, in the next moment, he would become a walking corpse.
From then on, the person known as Li Yan would only exist as a mindless being in this world, until one day he would die in some unknown manner.
He was lucky that he had carefully chosen the thinnest silver thread. Otherwise, whether he could have withstood this inherited will would have been an unknown.
Of course, the current Li Yan no longer had the capacity to consider these things.
The pain he endured was not only from the continuous infiltration of the "Undead Nether Phoenix's" inherited will, which attempted to separate and occupy his soul.
At the same time, a searing power, like a blade, was tearing Li Yan's muscles and meridians into strips. This pain even surpassed the agony Li Yan experienced during his first "Fragmented Poison Body" separation.
At this moment, Li Yan's body was like a finger from which a force was peeling out a meridian, inch by inch, pulling it out from within. This pain of being torn from his own flesh and blood made Li Yan groan incessantly.
And that wasn't all. It felt as if an invisible, fine, searing hot knife was meticulously scraping away the excess from this meridian.
If not for Li Yan's cultivation of the Fragmented Poison Body and the Qiongqi Purgatory Art, which gave him a tolerance for pain far beyond that of an ordinary person, his consciousness would have likely collapsed in an instant. He would have fainted or even died directly from the pain.