Chapter Thirty-Five: When the Dust Settles

Seizing the moment when the Fire Witch Guard and the Giant Spirit Clan clashed in close combat, Qingxu hurriedly swallowed a handful of spiritual pills in one gulp—he had refined tens of thousands of them earlier, and now was the time for them to prove their worth.

Kill!

The leader of the Fire Witches and the chieftain of the Giant Spirits, Dafeng, were the first to engage. The disparity between them was stark: Dafeng’s cultivation was only at the peak of Taiyi True Immortal, while the Fire Witch leader was at the early stage of Da Luo Golden Immortal. Though both bore similar wounds, in their very first exchange, Dafeng found himself in perilous straits. If not for the timely assistance of four or five other Giant Spirits, he would have been overwhelmed.

The Giant Spirits were, on average, weaker than the Fire Witches, but their sheer numbers—nearly a hundredfold—allowed them to swarm their foes. Even the most battle-hardened and ferocious Witch warriors were soon mired in a deadlock.

“The gap between Da Luo Golden Immortal and Taiyi True Immortal is truly an unbridgeable chasm!” Among the combatants, only the Fire Witch leader and vice-leader stood at the early stage of Da Luo Golden Immortal, but to oppose them, almost half of the Giant Spirits’ strongest had joined the fray. Scores of peak Taiyi True Immortals risked everything, holding off the two Da Luo Golden Immortals with desperate sacrifice. The difference in power was enough to leave one in awe.

The Witch tribe, bloodthirsty and warlike, fought the Giant Spirits with savage ferocity. Severed limbs flew, heads rolled, entrails spilled, and rivers of blood flowed—red, white, yellow, all vivid before Qingxu’s eyes, shocking him to his core. In all his lives, whether as a man before or as an immortal now, he had never witnessed a scene so hellish, so reminiscent of the slaughterfields of Asura.

His stomach twisted, bile rising, and he nearly retched. Yet, as an Earth Immortal, his mind was well-trained; the initial discomfort passed, and he gradually regained his composure, though the pallor of his face betrayed that he had not fully recovered.

“Alas! My spiritual cultivation is still lacking. If I can’t adapt to a scene like this, then how could I ever bear the horrors of the War of Witches and Demons, or the Battle of Muye, which would be a hundred, a thousand times more vast and brutal?” he thought inwardly, chiding his own shortcomings.

Elsewhere, the battle was drawing to a close. In the end, numbers told: the Giant Spirits, with hundreds of thousands and fueled by wrath, steadily gained the upper hand, seizing control of the field as time wore on.

“Sons, kill them all!” roared the Fire Witch leader, hurling his blazing axe and shaking his body. At once, the divine armor he wore split apart, and coils of crimson flames spiraled around him. In the midst of the fire, his body swelled from several meters to a towering height of twenty or thirty meters, his features twisting into those of a fearsome beast, fire serpents coiling through his ears, his feet treading on flame dragons.

As the Fire Witch leader revealed his true form, the vice-leader followed suit. Both, at the early stage of Da Luo Golden Immortal, could manifest the aspect of the ancestral witch Zhu Rong. The other Fire Witches, however, lacked this ability. In a dazzling array of monstrous forms, they appeared before Qingxu’s eyes—some with a single horn and four eyes, others with three heads and eight arms, or wings sprouting from their backs—but all were covered in fiery red scales, commanding serpents and dragons.

With their true forms unleashed, the Fire Witch Guard’s power surged by at least threefold. The Giant Spirits could no longer press their advantage and were forced merely to hold their ground, the two sides now evenly matched.

“Elder brother, at this point, we have no choice but to use our ultimate move!” the second chieftain of the Giant Spirits, Dashan, suddenly declared.

At his words, Dafeng’s expression shifted, but a flash of hatred passed through his eyes as he replied, “It can only be so.”

Without another word, the two brothers raised their hands, summoning from the eastern depths of the Red Rock Hills two streaks of golden light. Though Qingxu was far off, he could see clearly: these were two masses of golden substance, neither liquid nor gas, racing toward the Dafeng brothers and merging directly into their brows.

As the golden essence fused with their foreheads, the brothers’ bodies radiated dazzling golden brilliance, casting the sky in a resplendent glow. A vast, terrifying aura enveloped the heavens and earth, not much inferior to the avatars of the Three Pure Ones from before—at the very least, this was the late stage of Da Luo Golden Immortal.

“Yellow Turban Warrior?” Qingxu exclaimed in shock. The Dafeng brothers’ silvery bodies gradually turned to gold, and with this transformation, their cultivation soared from the peak of Taiyi True Immortal to the late stage of Da Luo Golden Immortal in a matter of moments—an utterly monstrous leap.

“What exactly were those golden essences? Could they enable a Silver Giant Spirit to evolve into a Yellow Turban Warrior?” Compared to the shocking transformation before him, Qingxu was even more curious about the two golden substances; instinctively, he felt this was the Giant Spirits’ greatest secret.

Suddenly, a shrill scream tore through the heavens and earth. Dafeng and Dashan threw back their heads and howled in agony, their faces twisted with pain, muscles writhing, crimson threads of blood seeping from their skin.

“Elder brother, this is truly too much for us. Even with our strength, we won’t last much longer than a short while!” Dashan gritted his teeth, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

“A short while is enough. As long as we annihilate these beasts, our deaths will have meaning,” Dafeng replied with a cold laugh, charging at the Fire Witch leader.

“No!” The Fire Witch leader, having manifested the aspect of Zhu Rong and increased his power by more than threefold, was at the height of his confidence, poised to annihilate the Giant Spirits at a stroke. But upon witnessing the Dafeng brothers transform into Yellow Turban Warriors and sensing the might of a late-stage Da Luo Golden Immortal, he was so terrified that his soul nearly fled his body. Each step of cultivation was a world of difference; between the early and late stages of Da Luo Golden Immortal, there was no comparison at all.

Boom!

Dafeng’s fist struck the Fire Witch leader—a blow that combined all his essence, energy, and spirit, a peak-level attack from a late-stage Da Luo Golden Immortal, powerful enough to shake mountains and overturn rivers and seas.

To the Fire Witch leader, the world vanished, leaving only a colossal fist like the firmament itself. In that moment, he could not evade, only meet it head-on.

At the brink of life and death, he could only fight with all his might.

“Ah!” The entire Zhu Rong aspect transformed into a great red sun, surging to meet the celestial fist.

“An ant shaking a tree—futile! Die!” Dafeng sneered, his punch gaining even greater force as it crashed down. The void collapsed, primordial chaos swept out in all directions, waves of earth, fire, water, and wind surged forth, and a ten-mile area became a land of death. Any Taiyi True Immortal caught within would be ground to dust, body and soul alike perishing.

Bang!

The great red sun collided with the celestial fist, bursting into dazzling brilliance, the most radiant light before death.

There was no suspense.

The difference was simply too vast.

A peak strike from a late-stage Da Luo Golden Immortal was not something an early-stage could withstand—not even for the Witch tribe. Under Dafeng’s fist, the Fire Witch leader’s red sun manifestation was utterly annihilated in the void, leaving not a trace behind.

The vice-leader, witnessing this, was struck dumb with terror. One punch—just a single punch—and the leader was dead beyond all hope, a fate almost unimaginable.

“You can die too!” Dashan, likewise sneering, hurled a punch at the vice-leader, a glint of satisfaction in his eyes.

“Ah!” Stricken with despair, the vice-leader no longer even tried to resist, attempting instead to flee—could he escape?

A miserable scream, and he followed his leader into oblivion; fleeing only hastened his end.

With both the leader and vice-leader dead, the outcome was no longer in doubt. The remaining peak Taiyi True Immortal Fire Witches were now nothing more than lambs to the slaughter.

The dust had settled.

“Seems I’ve saved myself quite a bit of trouble!” Qingxu, his magical power and immortal essence half restored, saw the battle’s conclusion and could not help but smile.