“Little Xuan, give this venerable one another jar of wine!”
“Tsk, do I owe you or something? Here, here, here.”
Wang Xuanyi impatiently threw it to the old woman who had been following behind him.
Ever since he collected the Phoenix Blood Pool and the Immortal Phoenix's inheritance, this old woman's remnant soul had followed him all the way here, drinking quite a bit of his wine along the way.
Her drinking capacity was a match for the old geezer's.
Hearing this, the Immortal Phoenix approached him with a flushed, drunken face. She poked his cheek with her finger and said, her breath reeking of alcohol, “Hey, hey, hey, what's with that attitude? You took this venerable one's immortal corpse and even did that kind of thing to me, so you should take responsibility to the very end.”
“Crap, what did I do to you? Don't talk nonsense, alright? Or is this just how all you older women are?”
Wang Xuanyi immediately cursed.
This one was, if not completely unrelated to Su Qian, practically identical to her.
“Look at you. This venerable one only said it in passing, yet you're getting worked up.”
The Immortal Phoenix pouted.
“No, make yourself clear. What did I do to you? What you just said is a slander against a pure youth like me. I have every right to refute it.”
“Anyway, I don't care. This venerable one is sticking to you.”
“...”
Wang Xuanyi sighed softly. Eccentrics existed every year, but there seemed to be an especially large number of them this year. No matter where he went, he always managed to attract them with pinpoint accuracy.
Sometimes he even wondered if he possessed some sort of built-in radar that specifically targeted weirdos.
“By the way, aren't you going to fade away?”
Wang Xuanyi asked.
In the original novel, it was described that once a deceased immortal chose a successor, their remnant soul would dissipate and completely vanish.
Yet the Immortal Phoenix's half-dead, half-alive state showed no signs of disappearing at all. On the contrary, her soul body actually grew more solid in places rich with spiritual energy.
“Little Xuan, who do you think this venerable one is? This venerable one is the greatest existence in the world, the Immortal Phoenix who has undergone nine nirvanas and rebirths! How could a mere ancient immortal completely refine me?” the Immortal Phoenix said proudly.
“Oh, so can you still undergo nirvana?”
“Yes, but not here.”
“Why?”
At this point, the Immortal Phoenix took a deep gulp of wine and explained, “A True Immortal is already the strongest living being in the world. How could refining one be easy? Even when the ancient immortals were alive, they couldn't completely refine this ancient battlefield. They could only open it up as a secret realm and then use great divine abilities to set up restrictions, separating the True Immortal's physical body from their soul so they could never revive.”
“You mean the ancient immortals wanted to use the power of time to wear down these immortal souls?”
“Yes and no. The catastrophe of the Dharma Ending Age was too severe, leaving less than one in ten cultivators in the Nine Provinces. In order to prevent the path of inheritance from being completely severed, the ancient immortals deceived heaven and earth as well as the three thousand Great Daos to preserve this secret realm, precisely so that future generations could continue to embark on the path of cultivation.”
The Immortal Phoenix's expression was complex, as if she was unwilling to bring up those sealed years.
Seeing this, Wang Xuanyi didn't press further, only asking, “Can I take you out?”
“Yes, anyone who is human can take this venerable one out.”
“Then why didn't you let someone else take you out to undergo nirvana and revive before?” Wang Xuanyi was puzzled.
This old woman seemed to have calmly stated something quite unbelievable.
Who would have thought that the Immortal Phoenix would suddenly become shy, squirming as she said, “Well, as for finding someone, it's this venerable one's first time, so I didn't have any experience. Besides, I didn't want to go out with those random, messy cultivators.”
“...”
Wang Xuanyi was utterly speechless. This silly bird had actually stayed here for tens of thousands of years just like this. She really was one of a kind.
“Someone is coming!”
The Immortal Phoenix put away her playful expression, her face instantly turning cold.
“Over a dozen of them.”
Wang Xuanyi saw them too. Over a dozen cultivators were rushing toward this place at high speed, and among them was a Golden Core Realm cultivator.
“Kill them? Or bypass them?”
“Why bypass them? They're clearly coming for me.”
Just as he finished speaking, a Violet Palace Realm cultivator had already rushed in front of Wang Xuanyi, swiftly slashing a sword toward his neck.
Swoosh!
Wang Xuanyi dodged the strike with a side-step. He grabbed the person's skull with one hand and squeezed slightly. With a sharp crack, he cracked open their head, splashing brains and blood everywhere.
“Whoa, that's a really bloody method,” the Immortal Phoenix said, covering her mouth.
She had seen plenty of killings and treasure-lootings, but it was her first time seeing such a cruel and efficient method. Startled, she took a sip of wine to calm her nerves.
Wang Xuanyi gave the Immortal Phoenix a flat glance, then charged toward the dozen or so cultivators.
He was no saint; if the other party wanted to kill him, he wasn't going to smile and try to reason with them.
“Kid, hand over the immortal treasure!”
As the Golden Core Realm cultivator spoke, his fist had already swung out. The fierce momentum of his fist carried the power of heaven and earth, and his majestic spiritual pressure was as formidable as a tidal wave.
The wind of his fist howled as magical power surged.
Wang Xuanyi didn't waste any words either. He threw out his own fist as well, with several runes attaching to his arm as his fist's light rose to meet the incoming wind.
Boom!
The two fists collided, and the fierce wind from the impact raged, sending ripples through the air and kicking up a powerful draft that forced back several people trying to close in.
“Shatter!”
Wang Xuanyi barked. His fist light flared brilliantly as runes swirled, directly tearing apart the Golden Core Realm cultivator's fist wind and pulverizing his arm along with it, striking straight toward his forehead.
With a loud bang, before the Golden Core Realm cultivator could even utter any last words, his head was blown to pieces by Wang Xuanyi's fist, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
The Golden Core Realm cultivator's headless and armless corpse immediately plummeted.
Realizing things had gone south, the remaining people scrambled to flee, but they couldn't escape.
Wang Xuanyi threw out several fists in succession, striking the cultivators one by one and causing them to die on the spot. In just a few breaths, all of the dozen or so cultivators who had come were dead.
Having done all this, the roles of the robber and the robbed were reversed.
Wang Xuanyi began to loot the cultivation resources on their bodies.
“How terrifying. You don't even show any expression when you fight; it's just pure slaughter.”
The Immortal Phoenix had noticed that during combat, Wang Xuanyi seemed like a completely different person. His moves were calm, and his killing was decisive, leaving his opponents with absolutely no chance to react.
Moreover, this kid was absolutely not in the Foundation Establishment Realm.
The Foundation Establishment Realm did not possess such terrifying strength.
Yet the Immortal Phoenix couldn't sense any traces of a Violet Palace being opened or a Golden Core being formed within Wang Xuanyi either. He possessed only that single, ordinary foundation platform.
“Eh, I'm used to it.”
Wang Xuanyi collected the storage rings of the deceased. There was nothing of much value inside, not even a shadow of an immortal treasure. No wonder they had resorted to robbery.
“Tell this venerable one, what realm are you really in?”
The Immortal Phoenix suddenly asked this rather ill-timed question.
When she fought him earlier, she had been too focused on his eyes and had ignored Wang Xuanyi's cultivation level.
“Me? My realm is rather unique. I could be considered Foundation Establishment, but also Violet Palace, and maybe even Golden Core,” Wang Xuanyi said.
“What is it specifically?”
“If I had to say, it should be Golden Core,” Wang Xuanyi replied after a moment of thought.
“What do you mean?”
The Immortal Phoenix was even more puzzled. This was the first time she had ever heard someone describe their cultivation realm using the phrase “could be considered.”
“Well...”
Wang Xuanyi pondered for a moment and explained, “When I break through to the Golden Core Realm, no matter how I condense my Golden Core, it always ends up shattering. Up until now, I've already shattered over a hundred Golden Cores.”
“...”
“I don't really care about the shattered Golden Cores. The key point is that my Violet Palace shattered along with them, and my ten-layer Foundation Establishment also plummeted back down to a single-layer Foundation Establishment.”
“Wait! What did you say? Ten-layer Foundation Establishment?”
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