"Go!" the old hunched man commanded, pointing at Mo Lingtian. The eerie metallic skull floating behind him, glowing with a dark red luminescence, obeyed. Its empty eye sockets burned with a strange, corrosive dark fire as it moved majestically toward Mo Lingtian.
Its rusted jaws unhinged, expanding wide enough to swallow the entire remaining horde of cultivators whole.
As it moved, it screamed. This time, the sound waves it emitted weren't just a mental attack; they could also severely injure the physical body. A few unseen lashes landed on Mo Lingtian, searing open his flesh as it oozed with fresh blood.
"Senior, what should we do? Should we still attack?" one of the cultivators asked, watching the eerie skull approach Mo Lingtian.
"Under no circumstance. That kid is too strange. If he really is from one of those factions, then he won't die easily. Let's continue to observe," said the senior brother, Wang Ping the cultivator who had a dispute with another earlier.
Now the skull was just inches away from Mo Lingtian. He was still struggling to forcefully fuse the cores as the skull opened its gigantic mouth to swallow him whole, revealing an entirely different realm inside it.
"Senior...he," a cultivator whispered as they all watched the gigantic mouth slowly engulf Mo Lingtian, encompassing him in darkness.
Will he really die here? Wang Ping thought to himself. For a fraction of a second, he wanted to take that hit for him. In that brief instant, he felt an inexplicable bond with Mo Lingtian that he couldn't describe with words.
"Done!" Mo Lingtian yelled, moments before the eerie skull and its dark red fire could touch him.
Directly in front of Mo Lingtian, a spatial tear opened, expanding continuously. It stood like an absolute barrier between Mo Lingtian and the dark red metallic skull.
When a spatial tear opens, it has the power to devour an entire space until that region is completely erased. If a practitioner at the late or perfection stage of the immortal pathway opened a spatial tear, one-third of the entire ocean below could be instantly devoured.
The skull had no choice but to be sucked violently into the expanding spatial tear.
"Is that....th....?" Wang Ping stuttered in shock. Almost immediately, he firmly grabbed the hand of his junior and evacuated from the region like a madman. In a matter of seconds, he was already more than a hundred metres away from Mo Lingtian and that distorted space in the air.
All the remaining cultivators followed suit, relentlessly pursuing Wang Ping. Even though some of them didn't know why they were running, previous scenarios like this had played out, and anyone who wasn't fast enough to stay away from Mo Lingtian paid the price. It was a subconscious survival instinct they had developed, although their greed wouldn't allow them to simply give up and go home.
"Come here!" Mo Lingtian said to the old hunched man. He stretched his fingers wider, causing the spatial tear to increase its suction power by more than a hundred times. Mo Lingtian wanted to pull the old man into the rift, devouring him into nothingness.
"I'm in serious trouble," the old hunched man gasped as he felt his body being forcefully dragged toward the void.
He immediately made a deep cut on his hand, allowing blood to drip profusely. Then, fueled by his dark fire energy, the blood began to boil, slowly taking the shape of a two-headed, dragon-like serpent. It was covered in a thick blood mist and exuded the same dark fire energy as the colossal eerie skull he had formed earlier from his Dao intent.
"In the name of Ancestor Yie Meng, I purge yo—"
"I said come in here!" Mo Lingtian's voice echoed like thunder as he arched his fingers more tightly. The spatial tear resonated with him. In one massive expansion, it grew so large that the old hunched man looked like a mere needle in front of it.
The two-headed blood serpent lunged forward to clash with the rift, but the resistance lasted barely a second. The serpent's dark fire flickered and was instantly devoured by the sheer void, dissipating completely along with the old man's desperate trump card. Before the old man could finish his incantation, he yelled and screamed as his outer skin literally tore away from his body. He was pulled slowly and painfully into the spatial tear despite his futile struggle to resist the overwhelming suction.
Shockwaves tore through the entire plane, spanning thousands of miles throughout the wilderness alerting several powerhouses far away.
"Close!" Mo Lingtian commanded, closing his fists. The spatial tear immediately sealed shut, releasing a torrent of explosive energy. The blast almost hit the dragon beast still stuck in the Dao plane, but Mo Lingtian was quick enough to deflect it with his palm.
Blood trickled from the corner of Mo Lingtian's mouth. He was severely injured, with deep cuts and tears all over his body, but that wasn't the worst of it. The forceful fusion of the cores, combined with the massive amount of energy he had desperately channeled to release that devastating strike, caused permanent damage to his internal organs, his meridians, and his heart.
After this ordeal, he might never get past the vessel cleansing stage of the demon art or the Qi refining realm of the devil art in his lifetime.
But the old hunched man was in a much sorrier state. His Dao intent, his entire cultivation base, his internal organs, and his meridians, they were all completely shattered and ruined. Stripped of every ounce of spiritual power, he could never step onto the path of cultivation again until he met his death.
His outer skin and his tendons had been entirely ripped apart and sucked into the spatial tear. He was now just a breathing skeleton with bits of flesh hanging from him.
"What a scary thing!" one of the cultivators exclaimed, watching the aftermath from miles away. The horrifying state of the old hunched man caused all the cultivators who had retreated to the mountain on the farthest left of the ocean to gasp in fear.
Mo Lingtian stretched his hand out, and the old man was immediately pulled toward him. Mo Lingtian held him by the neck, watching the former powerhouse shake in pure terror.
For the first time, the old man intentionally locked eyes with Mo Lingtian's dark green-hued pupils, and his heart slowed into silence from the terror that struck him. He couldn't even utter a word. All he could do was cry, groan softly, and tremble. Mo Lingtian had utterly wrecked the mighty Dao elder.
With a casual swing, Mo Lingtian threw him down toward the ocean. His heart stopped mid-air before he even hit the water. His body floated along with the several corpses of cultivators who had courted death; it was truly a gory sight.
Just then, that divine voice echoed from the golden, tunneled clouds:
"You have proven your Dao intent!"
The tunneled clouds slowly closed, and the golden brilliance retracted into the sky. The dragon beast opened its eyes with a mighty roar, releasing a powerful gust of wind. In front of it stood Mo Lingtian—bleeding, exhausted, but still standing guard over his beast.
The dragon looked down at the ocean, seeing the scores of bodies that floated below, their blood almost dyeing that part of the ocean red.
"You're finally awake," Mo Lingtian said, before dropping.