"Senior Jing Lan!" Purple Violet Fairy let out a mournful cry.
On Chen Yi and Feng Jiuge's faces, emotions of grief, hatred, and anger were plainly visible.
Jing Lan's death was completely unexpected. None of them had anticipated that the Blessed Land of Langya still harbored the Borrowed Life Immortal Gu!
"Wasn't it said that before the Theft Heavenly Demon Venerable's mysterious disappearance, he recognized the Borrowed Life Gu was far too dangerous—should it fall into the hands of someone with ulterior motives, it would bring calamity upon the world—and so destroyed it along with its recipe?" Purple Violet Fairy frowned deeply.
Clearly, this had been false intelligence, yet the Heavenly Court had mistaken it for truth.
If Purple Violet Fairy wanted to understand the truth behind this, the only way was to capture the Langya Earth Spirit for interrogation.
After all, back when the Theft Heavenly Demon Venerable had requested Ancestor Hairy Man to refine the Gu—what internal arrangements they had made, and how they had spread the rumors that even deceived the Heavenly Court—only those directly involved would know the full truth.
"Hahahaha!" The Langya Earth Spirit burst into laughter. "Did you really think my Langya Sect was so easily bullied? This time, every single one of you will die!"
"Watch out!" Fang Yuan suddenly shouted a warning.
"What?" In the next instant, the Langya Earth Spirit let out a startled cry.
He saw that although Jing Lan had already fallen, her heart was now erupting with blinding lightning radiance. In moments, her aged body was completely melted away by the scorching currents from the Thunder Heart.
These currents flooded the entire pitch-black armor, and then, masterless as it was, the armor raised its head high, standing tall and proud. A terrifying aura erupted from it, carrying the majesty of one who could hold up the heavens and trample the earth!
"This?!"
"Isn't she dead?"
"This is bad—terribly bad!"
The variant human Gu Immortals cried out in alarm, their faces draining of color.
Fang Yuan's face was grim as he voiced his deduction: "Thunder Ghost True Lord is indeed dead, but her black armor is fundamentally of the Soul Path. Although she perished of old age, the armor remains, which is equivalent to a special soul left behind. Most crucially, her heart appears to be her final trump card—its power is immense, and we must be on guard!"
Before the words had even left his mouth, Thunder Ghost True Lord's armor shot forward like a meteor, hurtling straight toward the Silver Giant.
Boundless azure currents leaked continuously from the gaps in the pitch-black armor, gathering into a flame tail stretching dozens of feet long.
Fast! Faster! Fastest!
The armor's speed was incredibly ferocious. Though the Mao Folk's side had been warned by Fang Yuan's alert, they simply had no time to activate their killer techniques to evade.
Because the armor was charging far too quickly!
Thunder Ghost True Lord's specialty was agility and movement. Her overall strength was at the first-rate Eighth Transformation level, but in terms of speed, she had always been at the peak of Eighth Transformation.
And now, with the Thunder Armor shooting forth at full power, this speed had departed from the peak of Eighth Transformation and reached the threshold of a quasi-Ninth Transformation!
The Silver Giant had nowhere to dodge, nowhere to flee—it was struck squarely by the Thunder Armor.
"We're retreating!" Purple Violet Fairy's eyelids twitched wildly; she wanted to withdraw, but it was already too late!
BOOM—!
A violent explosion erupted in the very next instant.
Billions of lightning bolts interwove and danced wildly, and at the epicenter, the lightning had grown so dense it formed a lake of lightning plasma!
In that moment, heaven and earth turned entirely white, the light piercing beyond bearing. Countless Mao Folk commoners who had been gazing up at the sky now screamed in agony, clutching their eyes, or rolling on the ground—they had glanced up just once, and were now blind.
The light dissipated swiftly, and incomparable shockwaves began to sweep outward in all directions.
Even Purple Violet Fairy and the others were pushed apart, helpless to resist, like tiny sampans caught in a violent storm at sea.
The entire Cloud-Covered Continent had a massive void blasted from its center, stretching tens of thousands of miles across.
The entire Blessed Land of Langya trembled violently. The Refinement Path dao marks—previously visible to the naked eye, radiating halos of dao essence—within the blast radius had been completely annihilated, not a single one remaining. The Refinement Path dao marks near the blast zone had also diminished drastically in number, and those that survived had lost all their luster.
At the epicenter of the explosion, there was nothing but blankness—only a handful of Gu Immortals hovered in the vast expanse of empty air, looking like tiny ants.
"Cough, cough, cough!" The surviving variant human Gu Immortals were all Seventh Transformation cultivators with formidable combat strength. They coughed ceaselessly, vomiting mouthfuls of blood, wretched beyond measure.
The Langya Earth Spirit's entire form had become translucent and ghostly, flickering like light and shadow on the verge of dissipating entirely.
Only Fang Yuan himself remained completely unharmed. His face was ashen, his entire body shrouded by the Reverse Flow Protective Seal, yet even he was weakened to his limit! The Reverse Flow River within his Supreme Immortal Aperture had consumed a full ten percent of its total volume from this single strike!
"Truly worthy of being the Eighth Transformation powerhouse who once contended against the Spectral Soul Demon Venerable! Even in death, she can counterattack!"
"This technique concentrated all the Lightning Path dao marks in her entire body into a single point—her heart—and detonated them all at once. The power was absolutely terrifying."
"And afterward, not a single trace of Lightning Path dao marks remains on the battlefield, which proves she had pushed Lightning Path dao mark utilization to its absolute limit—she definitely possessed the realm of a Grandmaster of Lightning Path."
In Fang Yuan's mind, his thoughts flashed like lightning and thunder.
Though he had not been injured, his losses were not light.
Thunder Ghost True Lord's final strike had absolutely reached the quasi-Ninth Transformation threshold. When the explosion occurred, the Silver Giant bore the initial brunt; only after the Silver Giant was dismantled did Fang Yuan's Reverse Flow Protective Seal come into play. Even so, the Reverse Flow River had instantly lost ten percent of its total volume.
The Reverse Flow River continuously sustained the Reverse Flow Protective Seal—it was not an inexhaustible resource. Having used it multiple times, Fang Yuan now had only sixty percent of the total remaining.
Fang Yuan's situation was comparatively favorable; for the others, the casualties were devastating.
The Silver Giant's collapse, the backlash from their killer technique, compounded by Thunder Ghost True Lord's final Thunder Explosion technique—over half of the variant human Gu Immortals had perished on the spot. Their bodies were gone, their souls scattered to nothing, leaving only their Immortal Apertures behind.
The remaining immortals were all wounded, their faces masks of terror. Some had even been dazed by the blast, their expressions blank and vacant.