Chapter 122 | No Spiritual Roots? Then My Fists Shall Shatter the Heavens!

The safest course of action was to avoid putting her life on the line in any battle where she did not have absolute certainty of victory.

“Only those with short lifespans are in a hurry to gamble with their lives. A longevity martial artist only plays the long game, waiting for the late stage to crush everyone with absolute strength,” Su Yueli sneered inwardly.

On the surface, the sect masters of the Cangyun Sect and Blue Moon Sect in the Great Li Imperial City were only in the Eighth or Ninth Realm. However, who knew how many living dead of the Tenth, Eleventh, or even Twelfth Realm and above were lying in the coffins in their back mountains?

With her current cultivation at the early stage of the Heaven-Shaking Realm, returning would certainly allow her to sweep through their middle and upper echelons. Yet, if she were to go up against those old monsters in the forbidden grounds of the sects who possessed bizarre and unpredictable methods, the risk would still be significant.

Cultivation was a highly rigorous process.

If she did not reach the Thirteenth Realm, she would absolutely not end her seclusion.

Once she achieved physical sainthood and stepped into the Thirteenth Realm, any heaven-shaking abilities or ancient protective grand arrays would be nothing more than rubble she could shatter with a single punch.

When that time came, she would make sure those immortal cultivator ancestors gasping for their last breaths in their coffins wouldn't even be able to crawl out.

Since she was going to do it, she would do it thoroughly and leave no loose ends.

Therefore, her core objective remained singular: to commit fully to her seclusion.

All the cultivation resources she had plundered from the grand tomb and the Treasure Pavilion would have to be entirely exchanged for highly nourishing ancient martial herbs.

She was going to see this hundred-year Ascetic Meditation through to the very end.

Buzz!

The moment Su Yueli made her decision, the joints of her right fingers suddenly trembled.

Xiaohei, which had been masquerading as a worn-out black iron ring, suddenly let out an incredibly sharp, dragon-like chime.

The high-pitched chime instantly kicked up a tangible physical wind pressure inside the sealed stone chamber.

The layer of mottled rust that had originally covered the blade's surface shattered and vaporized completely at this moment.

Having evolved into an Emperor-grade Divine Weapon, the malevolent qi and Ji Dao Martial Weapon Patterns contained within Xiaohei formed a subtle resonance with Su Yueli's golden bones.

The fist blades between her fingers shimmered with an understated, light-devouring black glow.

This chime was a declaration to Su Yueli:

Master and weapon were about to undergo their ultimate transformation.

Sixty years of Ascetic Meditation had already passed.

In the darkness, Su Yueli extended her right hand, her dark-gold finger bones slowly clenching.

Between her knuckles, the faint sound of spatial explosions echoed once more within the dead silence of the stone chamber.

...

Twenty years flew by in the blink of an eye.

Rumble...

Deep beneath the ten-thousand-fathom abyss of the Spiritless Dead Valley, the deathly silence persisted.

However, inside this isolated, sealed stone chamber, the scene had become utterly terrifying.

The stone chamber, which had been sealed for a full eighty years, had absolutely no air circulation.

Yet, the temperature here had been baked to over a hundred degrees Celsius by the unconscious emission of the Ji Dao blood qi within Su Yueli's body.

Heatwaves rolled through the chamber like a physical entity. If an ordinary mortal were to fall into this place, they would likely be scalded to death and vaporized in an instant by this terrifying heat.

Under the year-round baking of this terrifyingly high temperature, the surfaces of the surrounding rough, hard black-gold stone walls had actually melted completely.

The black stone bones flowed slightly in the high heat. Upon cooling, they solidified into an obsidian-like, smooth, glazed texture that reflected an eerie light.

At the center of the stone chamber, Su Yueli sat quietly on the glazed ground like an ancient, unchanging golden statue.

Above her head, the final trace of deep-red medicinal power from the Ninth Realm demonic leech core, mixed with the purest energy of the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Marrow, transformed into wisps of gold-red threads. They drilled frantically deep into her skull through her crown.

The skull was the most difficult and dangerous part of the human body to temper.

A single careless mistake, and the violent medicinal power would destroy the sea of consciousness, turning a person into an idiot.

Yet, Su Yueli's state of mind did not waver in the slightest. Under the strict suppression of her mutated Martial Soul and her powerful force field of will, those rampaging surges of Ji Dao energy were brutally crushed and forcibly poured into every single crevice of her skull.

Crack, crack.

The crisp sounds of bone restructuring echoed continuously in the silent stone chamber.

The moment the final wisp of gold-red medicinal power completely fused into her crown, the skeleton within Su Yueli's body, which had been tempered for eighty years, finally underwent its ultimate qualitative change.

Buzz!

A heavy, ancient, and overbearing pressure—completely devoid of any spiritual energy fluctuations—suddenly exploded outward from Su Yueli as the center, filling the entire stone chamber.

The Thirteenth Realm of the martial path—the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Realm!

Su Yueli called this realm the Myriad Tribulations Realm.

It signified physical sainthood, remaining imperishable through a myriad of tribulations.

The moment she stepped into this realm, the dark-gold bones throughout Su Yueli's body changed color once again.

The dark-gold color gradually receded, replaced by a tangible, warmly glowing, glazed pure gold color.

Every single bone was densely imprinted with purely physical bone patterns that exuded an endless, primordial aura.

Under the baptism of this power, her flesh and skin also transformed, becoming completely flawless.

At this moment, even without deploying any blood qi for defense, her glazed pure gold bones and the instincts of her flesh alone were enough to withstand the most terrifying heavenly lightning of the immortal sects, or even traverse a violent void storm completely unscathed.

Remaining imperishable through a myriad of tribulations was by no means an exaggeration.

“Phew...”

Su Yueli's eyes, which had been tightly shut for eighty years, suddenly snapped open.

The moment she opened them, two tangible golden beams, condensed purely from her physical essence, energy, and spirit, shot out from the depths of her eyes.

The golden light flashed like lightning, instantly piercing through the darkness of the stone chamber.

Boom!

The two golden beams struck the black-gold stone door blocking the cave entrance, which weighed tens of thousands of pounds, without any hindrance.

There was no sound of explosion, nor were there any flying stone splinters.

The incredibly hard black-gold stone door, which even an Eighth Realm cultivator's full-force strike would struggle to shake, was instantly melted through by the terrifying high temperature and physical pressure upon contact with the golden beams. It left behind two bowl-sized holes with dark-red, glazed edges.

The two golden beams passed through the stone door and shot straight into the void outside the cliff, only dispersing after a long time.

Su Yueli sat in place, staring somewhat blankly at her hands.

Eighty years.

In the mortal world, eighty years was enough for a newborn infant to finish their mediocre and hurried life, ultimately turning into a pile of yellow earth in a mass grave.