Chapter 1433: Destruction

Swoosh! Within the secret passage, alight with crimson flame qi and the glow of the seal, Qin Sang fled at full speed and felt with perfect clarity the powerful presences closing in behind him. Two had entered the passage, one after another, and the faster of the two was unquestionably the Chaotic Devil Elder.

So fast. The thought surfaced in his mind.

He had heard a saying before that because the Divine Transformation Realm bottleneck was so nearly impossible to break through, marked differences in strength existed even among great cultivators. The Chaotic Devil Elder clearly did not belong to the weaker sort.

Powers who stood at the summit of the world of immortal cultivation had, across their long lifespans, both the time and the means to patch every weakness in themselves. They left no obvious shortcoming in any area.

What puzzled Qin Sang was where the ghostly spirit had gone, the one the Chaotic Devil Elder had used against Valley Master Mu. He had never come into contact with it, yet a single glance had been enough to feel the profound malice radiating from it. It had to be a terrifying devilish monster.

The Spiritual Infant Talisman Puppet had been meant to deal with it. Had the Chaotic Devil Elder released the ghostly spirit, Qin Sang doubted things would have gone so smoothly. Escaping with the pearl and the Empowerment Vajra would have counted as a fortunate outcome, with no chance at contesting the seven-story stupa, unless he had been willing to accept far greater risk.

Perhaps the ghostly spirit is bound by some restriction. Qin Sang mused as he flew.

Amid the racing thoughts, he arrived back at the edge of the mountain pass.

Boom! Boom! Muffled roars issued from deep within the mountain. The tunnel walls bulged, and the ancient seal and the Buddhist barrier both released blinding light. It was the last flare before the dark. The fissures in the seal were splitting and spreading at a rate visible to the naked eye.

The violent, terrible power sealed within was about to break free!

It could be imagined that once it erupted, not only this mountain and this passage but all of Pure Sea Sect would be leveled and erased from the world entirely.

Feeling the force behind the seal, Qin Sang's scalp prickled, and he didn't dare hesitate a moment.

Swoosh! He shot past along the opposite wall, sweeping his sleeve hard at the same time and hurling out the Devilish Flames of Nine Hells that had been wrapped around him.

The flames' target wasn't the pursuers behind him. It was the seal!

The seal hadn't collapsed the instant the golden roof's barrier broke, and that delay had given Qin Sang his chance to escape the tunnel. It could also be turned to his use, to drive back the ones chasing him!

Passing this way earlier, Qin Sang had picked out the seal's weakest point and rehearsed this moment in his mind.

The devilish flames condensed to their utmost and slammed into that fissure. Already at its critical point, the seal took the blow from outside and could hold no longer!

At the point of impact, a fissure swelled open like the yawning mouth of an abyss. Crimson flame qi, so close to silver-white and so dense it moved like liquid, spilled out through the gap and set off a chain of reactions. Wherever it flowed, the walls vanished at once and the two seals dissolved.

The swastika runes went dark in an instant. The ancient seal was the stronger of the two, but already broken as it was, it collapsed almost in step with the Buddhist barrier.

"Crap!" The Chaotic Devil Elder had chased into the passage, and his pupils constricted to pinpoints.

Even now he hadn't laid eyes on his opponent. The last image in his field of view was the devilish flames rushing the seal. In that instant he understood what the man intended. The passage ran past the seal itself.

The next moment the entire passage flooded with blinding light, as though a second sun had been born.

The Chaotic Devil Elder's heart lurched. He swore aloud, saw no other option, and hurtled backward at once, thrusting the Chaotic Devil Token out before him without a moment's hesitation.

Qin Sang's ears rang once and then went deaf on the spot. His eyes lost the passage's outline entirely, leaving nothing in his vision but searing light.

I've overdone it... The thought flashed through his mind. The crimson flame qi had erupted with far more terrifying force than he had projected.

Fortunately this was a disaster of his own making, and he had prepared for it well in advance. Still fleeing at full speed, he summoned the Spiritual Infant Talisman Puppet to shield his back.

Then the colossal force arrived.

Bang! Qin Sang felt an explosion of pain and let out a muffled grunt as the puppet slammed into him, after which the force drove him staggering forward through the air.

He felt as though he were being roasted alive, on the verge of burning to ash. With no time to check the puppet's damage, he recalled it, gritted his teeth, and poured everything into his divine protective aura, holding his form together long enough to burst into the meditation hall and spot the exit.

Tan Hao had already withdrawn from Pure Sea Sect ahead of time. Qin Sang plunged through without hesitation and felt an immediate wash of cold. He had come out on the seafloor near the sect.

"Brother Qin, are you all right?"

Tan Hao had only just gotten clear himself. He turned, saw Qin Sang's battered figure, and felt a flash of relief that gave way at once to alarm.

"Go, now!" Qin Sang barked the words, seized Tan Hao, and lunged forward with all his strength.

An instant later a torrent of blistering heat vented through the passage and poured into the sea, its force staggering, and it swatted them both clean away.

***

Inside Pure Sea Sect, the newly arrived Spiritual Infant cultivators were split. Some had been drawn to the herb garden. Others were still deciding where to go.

Before the pagoda, the Precept-Keeping Sage and his companions were on the verge of breaking the barrier. The Chaotic Devil Elder's roar startled them, and they looked toward the grand hall in alarmed uncertainty, unable to guess what had happened.

The instant the seal collapsed, every Spiritual Infant cultivator felt an inexplicable lurch in the chest, and every gaze snapped to the mountain pass as one.

Crack! The mountain burst apart from within its belly, and a torrent of flame shot out like an arrow, stabbing at every pair of eyes.

At almost the same moment two figures came scrambling out of the grand hall, the Chaotic Devil Elder and the Feathered Robe Primordial Lady, both wearing expressions of fury.

Then... Bang!

A torrent of flame overturned the grand hall beneath the golden roof, blasting it apart on the spot. The Buddha and the stone statue had barely seen daylight again before the flames swallowed them whole.

"The seal has collapsed!"

Everyone grasped the truth at once.

Before they could react, a sound like muffled thunder rolled up from deep underground. All of Pure Sea Sect shook violently, and the ground itself seemed to heave upward.

At the pass, the slowly rotating golden swastika stamp froze, then disintegrated.

The crimson flame qi was finally unbound. A column of flame of monstrous thickness roared straight into the heavens.

***

Outside Pure Sea Sect, the strange phenomena had never faded, though their force had weakened considerably from the outset.

Spiritual Infant grandmasters, rarely glimpsed in ordinary times, had appeared here one after another and entered the array.

The low-level cultivators who remained didn't dare follow them in, but they couldn't suppress their curiosity either, and with hearts full of longing for opportunity they lingered nearby, unwilling to leave.

Some Golden Core Realm cultivators, confident in their own attainments, had descended into the sea pit to probe the array's edge and wait for a chance to slip inside.

"What's that sound?" someone spoke up in confusion.

Everyone stopped where they stood and turned toward the array as one.

The seawater churned for no apparent reason.

They sensed a terrible fluctuation coming from within, a power beyond anything they had imagined, about to erupt.

What on earth have those Spiritual Infant grandmasters done in there?

"Run!"

Their faces drained white in an instant. Terror welled up in them, and with panic written across their features they bolted for the rim of the sea pit without a backward glance.

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