Heaven and earth tore apart like a gaping maw. Infinite bolts of lightning raged in a frenzied bombardment, met head-on by savage tornadoes.
Meng Qiuzhen hovered high above, gazing down at the land below.
"Lightning, come!" he roared, and the next instant, ten thousand lightning spheres plummeted from the sky, slamming into the tornadoes with earth-shattering booms.
Over a dozen tornadoes were blasted apart, but more than a hundred still remained, standing like colossal pillars propping up the small world.
Meng Qiuzhen gritted his teeth, recognizing the crux of the matter: he had to locate the exact position of this dream realm's Heaven Spirit as quickly as possible and deliver a targeted strike. Otherwise, with this many tornadoes, even if he could destroy them all, it would drain him completely — a terrible outcome for the dream exploration that lay ahead.
With Fang Yuan's main body providing cover, Meng Qiuzhen had not encountered any further complications since that one close call.
He continued to explore the Heavenly Dao dream realm, not only dramatically advancing his Heavenly Dao comprehension but also rapidly growing in strength within his Dream Immortal Gu cave. His transformation from an Earth Spirit to a Heavenly Court-grade spirit meant his capabilities were now entirely incomparable to what they had been at the start.
Meng Qiuzhen could now manipulate the power of heaven and earth to unleash devastating, calamity-like attacks!
Moreover, he had discovered that Heavenly Dao dream realms would devour one another, providing him with a constant stream of both risks and opportunities in his exploration.
"Ice, come!" Seizing the right moment, Meng Qiuzhen's small hands shot open into full palms, then slammed downward with force.
Hailstones rained from the sky in a violent barrage, crack-crack-crack.
In just a few breaths, the hailstones grew larger and larger, some reaching the size of small mountains.
When they struck the tornadoes, most were quickly swept inside.
The originally dark-green tornadoes were rapidly coated in a layer of blue-white frost, and their rotation speed plummeted.
"So that's where you are." Meng Qiuzhen had successfully created an opening, spotting a white-feathered flying fish hidden within the leftmost tornado.
This white-feathered flying fish was the Heaven Spirit from another Dream Immortal Gu cave!
When Heavenly Dao dream realms devoured each other, the manifestation within the dream was the merger of two Dream Immortal Gu caves. As a Heaven Spirit of one cave, Meng Qiuzhen had to lead his own cave, suppressing the opposing cave until it was fully absorbed.
A critical step in this process was locating the opposing Heaven Spirit and utterly destroying it.
"Die!" Meng Qiuzhen unleashed technique after technique, battering the Flying Fish Heaven Spirit until it was dazed and disoriented.
Lightning crackled, torrential rain poured, meteorites fell from the sky, lava erupted — after this onslaught, the Flying Fish Heaven Spirit was obliterated by Meng Qiuzhen.
Without its Heaven Spirit to command them, the tornadoes still existed but scattered in disarray, their directions shifting randomly. They were no longer the orderly military formation they had once been, and their threat level immediately plummeted to rock bottom.
At the same time, Meng Qiuzhen's own Dream Immortal Gu cave dramatically accelerated its absorption of the enemy cave.
Once the Flying Fish Heaven Spirit was eliminated, it was like a general beheaded at the head of ten thousand troops — no matter how powerful the enemy army, it was plunged into chaos and rout.
Meng Qiuzhen pressed his advantage, ultimately expanding his Dream Immortal Gu cave by another substantial portion.
"Wind Path Dao Marks surged — excellent haul. Hmm? Another Dream Immortal Gu cave is making contact." Before Meng Qiuzhen could even rest, he saw a hazy crimson shadow manifest outside his cave.
The hazy crimson shadow blotted out the sky and eclipsed the moon, then slammed into Meng Qiuzhen's Dream Immortal Gu cave with a thunderous boom.
The cave's boundary wall shattered. As the two Dream Immortal Gu caves connected, a brutal campaign of annexation began.
"Wait — this Heaven Spirit seems different!" Meng Qiuzhen's expression shifted slightly. He found the opponent to be remarkably shrewd, responding with clever tactics and a diverse arsenal no less formidable than his own.
"Could it be..."
Huawen Grotto-Heaven.
Qi Tides rolled and churned, forming countless Qi Monsters that blanketed the sky — a catastrophic calamity upon the world.
Huawen Grotto-Heaven was home to a vast population of mortals. Under the rampage of the Qi Monsters, they were reduced to lifeless corpses.
"Hateful!"
"We must hold on!"
" These Qi Monsters are endless — when will it ever end?"
The Gu Immortals of Huawen Grotto-Heaven fought desperately to resist, and Elder Hua Yu personally joined the battle, only barely managing to hold the line.
This was not a natural disaster or heavenly tribulation — it was Qi Sea Ancestor's Qi Path killer move, assaulting the Stars Across the Sky Calculation Formation.
The Stars Across the Sky Calculation Formation had numerous formation nodes. Once Fang Yuan's three great clones had destroyed the Immortal Gu within some of those nodes, the formation's foundations were exposed.
Those foundations were the Grotto-Heavens themselves — Huawen Grotto-Heaven, Skull Grotto-Heaven, and others.
If these Grotto-Heavens were destroyed, the Stars Across the Sky Calculation Formation would lose its bedrock and vanish entirely.
"Had we known this would happen, why did we go through all that trouble to defect?"
"Sigh, it's too late for such talk now. All we can hope is that Immortal Venerable Star Constellation has sufficient means to protect our homes."
The Grotto-Heaven Gu Immortals felt varying degrees of regret.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion roared out, and air currents surged like ten thousand galloping horses. The figure of Qi Sea Ancestor gradually materialized within Skull Grotto-Heaven.