Nie Kong, Tai Yan, and Yu Longyue had long since departed. Illuminated by the magnificent twilight, the mountain forest, ravaged by the recent fierce battle, appeared even more devastated.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh... A series of light sounds, the disturbance of air by fluttering robes, rang out one after another. One figure, two, three... a full ten silhouettes arrived swiftly from the distance.
They either hovered in the void or descended upon the forest, seemingly inspecting something closely.
"Judging by the residual auras, a major battle occurred here about half a day ago," declared a white-haired elder in crimson robes decisively. "Three of those auras were present at the Immortal Qin Divine Palace, and also at the Rift Sky Island over there. They must be the three we are looking for!"
"Besides those three, there are four other auras, likely all three-rank Spirit God avatars."
"Before us, the Grandmist Celestial Mansion and the Pill Immortal Sect each sent two avatars. It seems Yu Longyue and the others triggered the teleportation illusion formation on Rift Sky Island, arrived here, and immediately encountered them, leading to the fierce fight we see."
"..."
"The one dead here is Li Yu, a five-rank Spirit God from the Pill Immortal Sect. I had the chance to meet him years ago; I remember his aura clearly, there can be no mistake," an elder in black suddenly spoke near a massive crater.
"Four Spirit God avatars, all at the three-rank strength level, were actually all killed!" Beside this black-robed elder, a young woman surveyed the scene with disbelief. "Judging by the richness of the remaining auras, it seems only one person fought against the four of them. How incredibly strong has he become?"
"Judging by the intensity of the aura, he should also only be a three-rank Spirit God."
"..."
The group continued to deduce based on the lingering auras and the traces of the battle, but the more they analyzed, the more astonishing the results became.
After a long pause, everyone exchanged glances, left speechless.
The white-haired elder in crimson sweeping his gaze across the void commanded, "Everyone, gather all the auras belonging to Yu Longyue and the other two!"
"..."
Several minutes later, the ten silhouettes shot skyward almost simultaneously, giving chase toward the southeast...
...
One day later.
The ten Sea Clan Spirit Gods finally caught up to Nie Kong, Tai Yan, and Yu Longyue.
A great war erupted between the two parties.
This battle was devastatingly fierce, spanning thousands of miles. The strength Nie Kong exhibited far surpassed everyone's predictions; the ten Sea Clan Spirit Gods fell one after another: four two-rank Spirit Gods, five three-rank Spirit Gods, and one four-rank Spirit God. After the fight, both Nie Kong and Yu Longyue were wounded, and Tai Yan's divine power was completely depleted.
...
Five days later.
Six four-rank Spirit Gods from the Grandmist Celestial Mansion and the Pill Immortal Sect tracked down Nie Kong and his companions.
After a fierce struggle, all six perished.
...
Half a month later.
Fifteen Spirit Gods from the Sea Clan, Grandmist Celestial Mansion, and Pill Immortal Sect converged upon Nie Kong and the two others.
Eleven were captured or killed; four managed to escape. Among the eleven captured, nine were four-rank Spirit Gods and two were five-rank Spirit Gods. The three escapees were four-rank Spirit Gods, and one was a five-rank Spirit God.
...
Twenty days later.
Twenty Spirit Gods from the Grandmist Celestial Mansion and the Pill Immortal Sect surrounded Nie Kong, Tai Yan, and Yu Longyue, including eight six-rank Spirit Gods.
Nie Kong slew ten five-rank Spirit Gods and two six-rank Spirit Gods, successfully breaking through the encirclement with Tai Yan and Yu Longyue. Half a day later, they encountered thirteen more Sea Clan Spirit Gods.
They were all annihilated!
...
One month later.
A joint force of over fifty Spirit Gods from the Grandmist Celestial Mansion, the Pill Immortal Sect, and the Sea Clan cornered Nie Kong, Tai Yan, and Yu Longyue at the southeastern edge of the Divine Void Realm.
After the battle, twenty-three were captured or killed!
Nie Kong, Tai Yan, and Yu Longyue fled into the continent fragment belt.
After regrouping with ten six-rank Spirit Gods and thirty five-rank Spirit Gods who arrived subsequently, the powerful formation of nearly seventy members from the three major factions aggressively pursued them into the fragment belt, but they never encountered Nie Kong and the two others again. Their auras had vanished without a trace, as if they had completely disappeared from the Divine Void Realm.
The search within the fragment belt lasted half a month, ending fruitlessly.
...
In the boundless fragment belt, a patch of terrain shrouded in shadow possessed a peculiar formation: the center, spanning dozens of meters, was sunken, resembling a scooped-out hemisphere.
At the bottom of this depression, three figures sat cross-legged quietly. They were indeed Nie Kong, Tai Yan, and Yu Longyue. Beside them, Lan Ling also sat motionless on the ground, while Qing You undulated gently, only retaining a fingernail-sized mass of "Taixu Divine Water" within its core.
The two little ones, Hulu and Xiangxiang, however, were playing merrily not far away.
"Hoo!"
It was impossible to tell how much time had passed when Nie Kong finally opened his eyes and rose to his full height.
The Chaos Divine Power within him had expanded countless times. It felt as if, with every casual movement, he could shatter heaven and earth. This feeling of immense power caused Nie Kong’s eyebrows to twitch, his face filled with unconcealable joy. Now, merely with a flicker of thought, the events within a radius of several hundred miles could not escape his perception.
This colossal range far exceeded what he could sense immediately after first advancing to the Spirit God realm.
Tai Yan also quietly opened her beautiful eyes. After glancing at Nie Kong, she immediately jumped up in surprise, cheering, "Brother, are you a six-rank Spirit God now?"
"Correct, I finally reached the sixth rank."
Nie Kong grinned as he gently pinched Tai Yan's delicate cheek, feeling profound emotion. In the single month since leaving the Immortal Qin Sea and entering the fragment belt, although the frequency of battles against the Spirit Gods from the Grandmist Celestial Mansion, the Pill Immortal Sect, and the Sea Clan was not high, the number of Spirit God avatars they captured and killed numbered seventy or eighty.
Among these Spirit Gods, excluding the Water Spirit God and the Dark Spirit God, there were forty-eight in total.
Of the forty-five, there were four six-rank Spirit Gods alone.
The divine power from so many Spirit Gods had only managed to elevate Nie Kong from the fourth rank to the sixth. To achieve such a level in just over a month was already a terrifying legend.
The Grandmist Celestial Mansion, the Pill Immortal Sect, and the Sea Clan pursued them relentlessly for thousands of miles, yet the more they pursued, the stronger Nie Kong became. All those Spirit God avatars, in the end, could not defeat him. The news—which Nie Kong gleaned from the memory of one of the Spirit Gods—was already causing a massive stir throughout the Supreme Being Spirit Realm.
"It's a pity those Spirit Gods didn't show up again, otherwise, our strength could have increased further," Yu Longyue also awoke from her cultivation, her face alight with joy.
Nie Kong had advanced to the sixth rank, and Yu Longyue and Tai Yan had both reached the fourth rank.
Yu Longyue had refined nearly twenty Water-element Spirit Gods. Tai Yan had absorbed far fewer Dark Spirit Gods, only about a dozen, but one of them was a six-rank Dark Spirit God, which made the speed of their power growth roughly equivalent.
However, this method of increasing cultivation easily led to unstable foundations. At the southeastern edge of the Divine Void Realm, this tendency had become increasingly apparent in both Yu Longyue and Tai Yan.
It was precisely for this reason that Nie Kong decided to stop capturing Spirit Gods.
Furthermore, Nie Kong made this decision for another critically important reason: he had remained stuck at the fifth rank for a long time, unable to break through, while the number of six-rank Spirit God avatars dispatched by the Grandmist Celestial Mansion, the Pill Immortal Sect, and the Sea Clan was continuously increasing. He was confident he could handle ten or fewer six-rank Spirit Gods, but exceeding ten, he would be willing but unable to fight effectively. If they had continued fighting, all three of them could have faced extreme danger.
Ultimately, Nie Kong concealed Tai Yan's and Yu Longyue's auras with Chaos Divine Power and retreated deep into the fragment belt, where the spiritual energy was sparse. In such an area, it would be impossible for the Spirit Gods to track them via aura guidance. Thus, the three were able to calm down and stabilize their respective cultivation bases.
... ...RO