“HAHAHAHAHA!” Vermilion Snow’s roaring laughter spread like a ripple. “You?!”

“Just you!? By relying on yourself, a Qi Condensation insect?”

“When I was cultivating at Green-Hill Mountain, your great-grandmother hadn’t even come into this world yet!” [1]

Firecloud laughed as well, not because he felt it to be ridiculous, but instead because he was relieved. A fiendishly gifted cultivator added with a Core Formation arcane effort… He didn’t think it to be a laughing matter at all.

It was a pity… that he wouldn’t be able to see it for himself.

“Run!” Firecloud roared, and Vermilion Snow cast him off her claw in an instant!

“Detonating your qi sea?!” She looked at Firecloud in shock. Never had she imagined that he would be so unyielding. Just now, she had felt the qi sea within Firecloud’s body come to a sudden boil. This was the prelude of the qi sea’s detonation!

Xu Yangyi firmly clenched his teeth and headed behind Vermilion Snow without a second word, but her nine tails madly rushed to block off the entrance!

Just as he took a step, body-wide pain, the pain of the absence of qi and the pain of his heart—all from the aftermath of his battle with Chu Zhaonan—enveloped his entire body like a tide! His eyes reddened, and he tightly grinded his teeth. Suddenly using his leg to tread forward, he exercised all of his strength to rush towards the entrance!

The opportunity would only exist in this instant!

This fleeting moment that Firecloud had traded his life for wasn’t for him to take revenge now! Instead, it was for later on when he arrived at Foundation Establishment and stepped into Core Formation to visit this enmity again!

Bang! Less than two seconds later, a small mushroom cloud exploded in front of Vermilion Snow. Following her miserable howl, Xu Yangyi didn’t turn back but instead drew upon his full strength to urgently dash towards the entrance!

Behind him, a violent shock wave proliferated all around. All the clothes on his body suddenly surged forward because of it! It seemed that the center of his back had been struck by a hammer. He was unable to restrain himself in vomiting a mouthful of blood!

Firecloud has passed on. The eight Foundation Establishment seniors, at this moment, had all fallen. In order to allow all of Nantong’s people to escape, they hadn’t pulled back a single step.

He had to move faster! He needed to speed up again!

Firecloud had already done the utmost he could accomplish; Xu Yangyi had to flee!

Closer… He was getting even closer. He didn’t know how he was actually capable of running so quickly without spiritual force, but the door was several tens of meters away, barely twenty meters! Xu Yangyi charged with the wish to survive!

Swish… A petite silhouette now appeared before him.

Thump… He halted his footsteps without delay and swiftly drew back. In an instant, he recognized it to be Vermilion Snow’s human form. This was because the bloody smell on her body and her terrifying might were one and the same!

“What are you in a rush for?” A jade hand waved softly and was accompanied by gentle laughter like a silver bell. “He was doing nothing more than teasing you. Did you believe the detonation of an insignificant middle-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator could harm me? What ridiculous naivety.”

Bang! The hand appeared weak and powerless yet seemed to carry a tremendous force that could topple mountains and overturn seas! Xu Yangyi had already crossed both of his arms to protect his chest, but he was sent flying straight back by tens of meters without the slightest concern!

Crack! All his bones seemed as if they were going to break. Xu Yangyi painfully covered his chest. With a rip, the wound that Firecloud had recently healed tore open again, even more severe than an hour ago.

Cough… He only hacked out blood, silently taking note of his physical state. At the very minimum, this blow had fractured half of the bones in his entire body… Speech came as an impossibility to him, and all that spilled forth as he opened his mouth was blood. He was struggling to stand up, but just as he straightened his figure, a slender jade foot stepped on his back.

Boom! Like a massive thousand-catty hammer had struck him, he was firmly trampled down beneath Vermilion Snow’s foot, unable to lift a finger.

Vermilion Snow hadn’t seen it, but because Xu Yangyi was pressed down, glimmers of golden light flashed briefly from his seven apertures. It was as if… there was some hidden object radiating golden light within his body.

“Let me guess… You’re this graduation’s paragon?” Vermilion Snow didn’t pay any heed to the mixture of blood and mud all over Xu Yangyi’s body, and laughed dazzlingly, “Take a look, there’s no one here now. The annoyances have all died. I killed thousands this time. Shouldn’t I take a little interest from your body?”

A long snow-white leg appeared before Xu Yangyi, and Vermilion Snow crouched down. Using her hand to raise his chin, she gently helped him push aside his hair. “I want to ask you a question.”

Xu Yangyi gazed forward. Vermilion Snow’s left hand had raised his chin and her right hand was continuously spinning a jade chest.

Seeing his gaze, Vermilion Snow said matter-of-factly, “Do you want this item? That won’t do. Old ghost Firecloud was protecting it to his death… It’s certainly a good item.”

That belongs to me… Xu Yangyi closed his eyes. This time, he wanted to kill. He wanted to chop off this demon’s head, place it in the Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena, and use her blood to offer sacrifices to all of today’s fallen martyrs.

“Be good now; it won’t do to behave too greedily.” Her gaze followed all the way down from Xu Yangyi’s pectorals to his abdominals, and she extended her foot to rub against them in passing. “Say, weren’t they idiots? They were fully aware that they were going to die, but they still blocked me?”

Xu Yangyi’s Adam’s apple stirred, and he closed his eyes, not speaking. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to say anything, but rather every inch of his body was surprisingly in pain! It was a sensation like being set aflame, a scorching terror!

Vermilion Snow was unaware that he didn’t have qi right now, but he knew. With his constitution several times better than a normal person’s, he had been slammed from the highest point of the tens-of-meters-tall audience stands into the arena ring! A great circle of spider webs broke, yet he actually hadn’t died?

“Fuck you…” After ages, Xu Yangyi finally gained a sliver of qi and used it without the least bit hesitation for his most familiar insult.

Crack Before his voice even fell, Vermilion Snow picked up his broad hand and effortlessly broke one of his fingers. “I’ll say it again. Weren’t they idiots?”

Severe anguish spread into Xu Yangyi’s brain, but he didn’t scream. Instead, he stared unwaveringly into Vermilion Snow’s emotionless eyes. His cheek muscles stirred and he said clearly and concisely, enunciating each word, “Listen up.”

“Fuck you.” He laughed fiercely, yet the corner of his mouth was rich with a delighted arc. “F-U-C-K Y-O-U.” [2]

“Got it? Whore.” If he was going to die, he absolutely wouldn’t choose to go down kneeling!

Vermilion Snow sighed gently, raising her head to look at the already scar-covered Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena. “The first time I saw you, I felt you were carrying an extremely familiar but extremely loathsome scent to me… so I will gently remind you…”

She pinched Xu Yangyi’s chin and thoughtfully propped her neck on her hand and said faintly, “An era seems quite far ago, no? Let it be… I can’t remember.”

Releasing Xu Yangyi’s face, she took her hand back, laughed, and calmly snapped another one of his fingers. “Little boy, be obedient, I’m giving you another chance. Say that you’re my servant and then kneel on the ground and kiss my feet. I will grant you bliss.”

“Haha…” Xu Yangyi didn’t even groan as he heard his finger snapping like a firework. The ten fingers were linked to the heart, yet the pain didn’t cause him to scream at all, only bringing blood and laughter. [3]

The burning inside his body… was becoming hotter and hotter. If it weren’t for his whole body presently being drenched head to toe in blood, the redness of his skin would’ve long since become visible.

Inside his body, something seemed to be erupting. Something that his skin, his flesh, and his bones were unable to stop. He truly was without strength; to say more would be superfluous.

Vermilion Snow’s face chilled. She sighed gently, “Then… go to hell to accomplish your sweet dreams, alright?”

In the next second, her hand thrust straight into Xu Yangyi’s heart. His gaze shrunk; he didn’t even feel the pain. He only felt his heart burst and his blood ceasing to flow, an icy-cold body-wide sensation.

Am I going to die…? His defeated eyes carried heavy irreconciliation. Am I going to die like this?

He had just seized the paragonship… and now he would be killed here by such a demon?

Swoosh! At this instant, his entire body suddenly erupted with golden radiance! The golden rays illuminated the entire Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena! It spilled forth from within his qi sea like the descent of a holy child! Not only was Xu Yangyi, who was knocking on death’s doorstep, sent into a daze, even Vermilion Snow was completely stunned!

What was this?

Xu Yangyi didn’t know. He only felt… that within these several seconds, his entire body had unexpectedly underwent an astonishing restoration! This was a kind of restoration that transcended all he knew about pill elixirs! In almost a twinkling, he had recovered to his original state!

“This…” He even nonchalantly raised his hand, looking in shock at everything happening before his eyes, a transformation which had surpassed his imagination.

Vermilion Snow slightly gaped. She, who had lived for several centuries, had never seen a sight like this. With her own hands, she had pinched his heart to rupture, so how was this be possible?!

Buzz… In an instant, the golden rays become more and more magnificent! Xu Yangyi finally discovered from where these golden lights were coming from! They originated from above his qi sea to the outside of his body from a palm-sized golden box that was frantically trembling!

A humming sound akin to Buddhist chants seemed chaotic, yet came through with an extreme rhythm from the box. Every ray of light appeared like the red afterglow of the heaven’s horizons, the color of the setting sun at night, a boundless magnificence with such sacred purity that none dared look at it closely!

It was a kind of indescribable heavenly might. A mere glance and one would know that while these rays held not a shred of a power, one dared not even touch them at all.

As the box rolled over and over about, Vermilion Snow couldn’t help but seize the jade chest and recoil. She sensed… that the object inside the upper half of this box, this item… was very terrible, extremely terrible… so terrible that even she felt coldness come to life on her back! Furthermore… this sensation was incredibly familiar!

Yes… That was right! What caused her to glance many times at this brat as he entered the branch was this certain feeling! This sensation… nauseated her so much that she wanted to vomit, yet because it had been ages, she still felt a shred of danger!

How long had it been since she had last encountered it? Fifty years? No… a century?

Yes! 113 years ago, the item that damned eunuch took out in his hand to slay me with had this feeling!

In her veins, this ancient memory exploded with a rumble, a kind of fright that had come bestowed by the heavens. In a flash, it took hold of her thoughts.

“Emperor Armament!!!” A resounding screech quickly erupted from her throat, and she turned back to flee without the slightest hesitation!

At the same time, the first level of the Fengyi City Heavens Law branch was already filled with corpses. However, a tremendous mechanical face on the ceiling now snapped open its eyes, zeroes and ones circulating within its eyes.

“Spiritual force fluctuation… Unable to be calculated… Spiritual force intensity… Unable to be calculated… Spiritual force persistence: three to five seconds…”

“Retrieving guidance procedures… Located on an organism in the Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena. Retrieving all data. Recording…”

Before the machine’s voice fell, it opened its mouth and a tiny green leaf, perhaps only one-third the size of a palm, fluttered down unhurriedly. Subsequently, this green leaf, like it had transformed into a bolt of green lightning, charged towards the Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena with a speed beyond the scope of the naked eye!

Simultaneously, in all of China, ten pairs of eyes that seemed to be long dormant in slumber suddenly opened. Almost in harmony, two words came out from their mouths.

“Emperor Armament?!”

1. Green-Hill Mountain - I want to make note that this is an actual mountain in China where a nine-tailed fox is supposed to be. Mentioned in The Classic of the Mountains and Seas.

2. Author actually uses english here to for the spelled out swearing.

3. “Fingers linked to heart” I feel this requires some explanation + I think this is considered a chengyu. The idea behind this phrase is that the fingers are used a lot for sensory task, so that when you hurt them, it goes straight to the heart and is very painful