Southern Border.
The Supreme Immortal Aperture had already landed. Its gateway was wide open, gulping in the heaven and earth qi like a massive whale drinking water, vast quantities pouring in.
Crash!
The heaven and earth qi surged madly, vast and boundless. If others had witnessed this spectacle, they would have been stunned — no blessed land had ever been able to absorb such a massive quantity of heaven and earth qi in a single intake.
Fang Yuan's Supreme Immortal physical body hovered near the gateway, watching the flood of heaven and earth qi pour in. The qi was so dense it had condensed into clouds and mist, carrying a damp moisture.
"Drink, drink. This time, drink your fill." Fang Yuan smiled. He understood the Supreme Immortal Aperture's "hunger."
The City Market, the Reverse Flow River, and the Desolation Valley — these three great heaven and earth secret realms, though wonderful and unique in all the world, placed an enormous burden on the blessed land. Their consumption of heaven and earth qi was ferocious. So from time to time, Fang Yuan had to draw in massive quantities of heaven and earth qi from the outside world to replenish himself.
"And this is with Spirit Withering Mountain not yet fully repaired. Once it is restored, the Supreme Immortal Aperture's demand for heaven and earth qi will only grow even greater!"
From this perspective, the damage to Spirit Withering Mountain actually offered a small benefit to Fang Yuan.
Of course, the most crucial factor was Fang Yuan's own Supreme Blessed Land. It was rich in resources, like a colossal foundation stone, possessing the capacity to simultaneously bear four great heaven and earth secret realms. If it were an ordinary blessed land, it would most likely struggle to support even two.
Landing the immortal aperture and opening its gate brought Fang Yuan no small number of drawbacks.
At this moment, because of the connection between inside and outside — absorbing heaven and earth qi from the external world — Fang Yuan's location would be exposed, and Heavenly Will would immediately take notice.
If any other Immortal Gu Master happened to be divining him at this time, the difficulty of Fang Yuan warding off such divination would increase dramatically.
Therefore, Fang Yuan had previously tried his best to purchase immortal materials, refine them into heaven and earth qi, and replenish himself that way. But recently, because his focus had been entirely on repairing Spirit Withering Mountain, his funds had been dwindling, and his finances were growing increasingly tight. So he had taken the risk to land his aperture and absorb heaven and earth qi from the outside world.
The Supreme Blessed Land was an absolute glutton. The volume of heaven and earth qi it consumed was dozens, even hundreds of times that of an ordinary blessed land.
The Supreme Blessed Land was sated, yet heaven and earth qi still surged in relentlessly, pouring in without cease.
This anomalous phenomenon did not startle Fang Yuan, for he knew this time was different — the moment of his tribulation had arrived.
As a Seventh Transformation Immortal Gu Master, Fang Yuan faced an earthly calamity every ten years, a heavenly tribulation every fifty, and a great calamity every century.
Ever since Fang Yuan had employed time-path methods to adjust the flow of time inside the Supreme Blessed Land to its fastest rate, the tribulations he faced had become far more frequent than before!
This was an earthly calamity.
Whether it was an earthly calamity or a heavenly tribulation, neither posed any challenge to Fang Yuan whatsoever. Moreover, he had already mastered the Immortal Gu killer move, Heaven's Secret Stone Cave. This move used the Heavenly Secret Immortal Gu as its core, supported by other Gu Insects, and allowed Fang Yuan to directly calculate the contents of a calamity some time in advance.
So before this earthly calamity had even truly taken shape, Fang Yuan already knew everything about it inside and out.
Sure enough, the subsequent evolution of the calamity unfolded exactly as Fang Yuan had calculated.
Earth energy swirled endlessly, forming a massive yellow-brown vortex beneath Fang Yuan's feet. Meanwhile, sky energy churned and rumbled ceaselessly, with blue-green lightning flashing continuously.
Woo woo woo—!
A series of ear-piercing sounds drilled through the air, seemingly ready to rupture one's eardrums. From the center of the yellow-brown earth energy vortex, one grotesque colossus after another slowly rose into view.
Each of these colossal statues stood three zhang tall, their frames thick and burly, with fangs jutting out past their lips. In an instant, their crimson eyes snapped open, and the purple bat-like wings on their backs unfurled with a violent spread. They launched into the air and charged straight at Fang Yuan.
"Yellow Spring Ghost Warriors," Fang Yuan hovered in midair, hands clasped behind his back, his expression calm as he looked down upon the colossi bearing down on him.
He was perfectly at ease. Despite the ferocious onslaught, at this critical moment, he raised his head and looked up toward the sky.
In the sky, cyan lightning violently split through the thick clouds, and colossi strikingly similar to the Yellow Spring Ghost Warriors made their imposing entrance.
The Yellow Spring Ghost Warriors moved with bared fangs and flailing claws, but these new giants stood in perfect formation like an army, their expressions stern and solemn. They possessed equally imposing physiques, and each bore a pair of broad, powerful eagle wings on their back.
"Qingtuo Divine Martial Statues." Fang Yuan identified the second type of giant at a glance, a faint smile crossing his mind.
By now, the Yellow Spring Ghost Warriors had already closed in on him. Their massive claws swept through the air, their gaping maws of blood opened wide as they lunged to tear him apart.
Fang Yuan remained perfectly still. A faint layer of ripples materialized across the surface of his body.
It was none other than his immortal killer move that had already made its name known throughout the world — the Reverse Flow Protective Seal, a technique he had created himself!
Whether it was the assaults of the Yellow Spring Ghost Warriors or the Qingtuo Divine Martial Statues, every strike was reflected back, inflicting damage upon their attackers. Meanwhile, Fang Yuan stood completely unscathed, firmly positioned in an unassailable state.
"Scatter," Fang Yuan commanded with a wave of his hand. His immortal killer move, Myriad Flood Dragons, erupted forth. Silver scales flooded like a sea as ten thousand flood dragons soared through the air, endless and inexhaustible.
Though the Yellow Spring Ghost Warriors and Qingtuo Divine Martial Statues were numerous in number and continued to be produced by the ambient forces of Heaven and Earth, they could not compare to the sheer volume of Fang Yuan's Myriad Flood Dragons.
At first, they put up a brief resistance. But before long, they were swallowed by the vast army of flood dragons, suffering devastating losses. Even the condensed clusters of Heaven and Earth qi that sustained them were scattered by the onslaught. The Heavenly Will, unwilling to concede, tried to recongeal — only to be torn apart once more by the ferocious flood dragon army the very next moment.
A short while later, the calamity had been weathered. The gate to the immortal aperture closed, and within the supreme immortal aperture, calm returned — peaceful and serene once more.
Fang Yuan nodded inwardly, taking stock of his gains and losses. "This earthly calamity was originally nothing more than a simple Yellow Spring Ghost Warrior manifestation. But I hadn't actually weathered my previous earthly calamity — I deliberately used the immortal killer move Endless Consequences to postpone it."
The immortal killer move Endless Consequences came from Black Fan's True Inheritance. It allowed one to shift a calamity forward to the next, causing two tribulations to erupt simultaneously. The drawback was that this method relied on a shortcut, which provoked the wrath of Heaven, making the combined tribulation far more powerful than the sum of two separate ones.
Heavenly Will harbored ulterior motives. In order to suppress Fang Yuan's cultivation progress, it deliberately kept the power of each tribulation to a minimum, ensuring that Fang Yuan gained very few Dao marks from each tribulation he weathered.
Under these circumstances, the drawback of Endless Consequences actually became an advantage that worked in Fang Yuan's favor!
And so Fang Yuan had exploited this killer move, layering two calamities together and weathering them simultaneously to increase his Dao marks — leaving Heavenly Will utterly helpless.
"The Yellow Spring Ghost Warrior manifestation was merely an earthly calamity, but the Qingtuo Divine Martial Statues had already reached the level of a heavenly tribulation. This time, the Dao mark gains are quite substantial!" Fang Yuan examined himself. The increases were concentrated in Soul Path and Transformation Path Dao marks.
All of these were useful to Fang Yuan.